He stared at her a moment, then growled, "Hell," and left, shutting the door firmly but not loudly behind him.
She shot to her feet and ran to the window, breathing in the sea breeze, the smell of the ocean, the memories that seemed to hang over the rocks and sand.
"Oh, God, Mom."
It was the voice, not of a six-year-old, but of a woman almost the same age as her mother when she'd died. So young. How had she known so much? How had she been so wise? "Live well, Tess. Love well. That's what matters most."
She loved well, all right, she thought with a rush of sarcasm. She was hyperventilating, bursting with a turmoil of emotion that seemed to press against her chest, rob her of air.
Meet a man on Friday. Lie to him and argue with him about skeletons on Saturday and Sunday.
Fight with him on Monday. Fall in love with him on Tuesday.
Yeah, she loved well. She just wasn't smart about it. Never had been. Love made no sense to her whatsoever. There was no logic, no trusted instinct she could rely on for direction.
Just this feeling of panic. And yearning. And somewhere deep inside where she couldn't quite reach…an incongruous sense of calm.
She turned from the window, wishing she had her white-noise machine. She scanned a bookshelf, coming up with a frayed copy of Emma. That was something. Jane Austen on the bookshelves. It had to be a positive sign. A man didn't have to read Jane Austen himself, but having a book in the house signaled an open mind. An ability to compromise. An understanding of different tastes and sensibilities.
Then again, he hadn't renovated this room yet. He might come in here, throw out all the Jane Austen and put in how-to books on things like building your own gazebo.
For no reason at all, she smiled and opened to page one. At least, she thought, nobody'd be sneaking around stealing dead bodies out of old cellars in Emma.
Andrew gave up on sleep around 1:00 a.m.
He rolled out of bed and headed downstairs, noting the lights were out in the guest room. He checked on Dolly, fast asleep with about a million stuffed animals.
The lights were on in Harl's shop. Andrew walked out across the dark, dew-soaked lawn. He made sure Harl knew it was him coming, not anyone he'd require a baseball bat against.
They sat out on the Adirondack chairs in the dark. A half-moon and stars shone overhead, and they could hear the tide coming in. "You working on the rolltop?" Andrew asked.
Harl nodded. "I'm treating that thing like a museum piece. The people who own it don't care. They just want it to look good and not fall apart. They're going to use it for bill-paying." He looked over at Andrew, his white beard and white hair standing out against the darkness. "Tess Haviland keeping you awake?"
Andrew didn't answer.
"You need a woman raised in a bar that makes the best chowder in Boston and serves college students and working stiffs both. She's the kind of woman Joanna would have wanted for Dolly. She told me, you know. She said she wanted to be stronger, more self-reliant, for Dolly's sake." He stretched out his thick legs, this much talk more than Harley Beckett would ever consider easy. "Joanna couldn't make herself happy, never mind you."
"It wasn't her job to make me happy."
"That's part of the problem with you and women. I'm not saying I'm any expert."
"Good."
But Harl was on a roll. "You were always too independent for Joanna. She wanted more control over you. She was smart, and she was a damn good woman, but I think she figured she could control a mountain better than you. Tess is used to independent men. She can hold her own."
Andrew stared over at his cousin. "You've been doing a lot of thinking, Harl."
"Up yours, Thorne. You want to self-destruct, send this woman back to Boston, go ahead."
"Her relationship with Ike-"
"Maybe it was a real friendship. Ike never had friends, and not just because he was a pain in the ass. He was rich, he had a lot of energy, he could do things. People projected stuff onto him, fed off his optimism. I mean, he could home in on a person's weaknesses, and he was self-centered-but he was arrogant enough to think he had enough energy and charisma to go around."
Andrew settled back in the old Adirondack chair and gazed up at the shagbark hickory, the stars and moon shining through its branches, creating black silhouettes against the sky.
"I wonder if Ike had a premonition he'd need Tess to find him," Harl said.
"And that's why he gave her the carriage house? Not Ike."
"It could have been an unconscious premonition. They were friends, and he knew if something went wrong, Tess had just the kind of bulldog personality that'd get the truth out on the table, make everyone see what was what." Harl nodded, pleased with his theory. "I think about Jedidiah. Who knows what happened at the carriage house that day? Maybe the truth's never come out, justice has never been served."
"He had years to tell his story."
"Maybe his sense of honor stopped him. You know those nineteenth-century types."
"You could have a point."
"Or I could be full of shit. I need to get some sleep if I'm going to face six-year-olds tomorrow." He got heavily to his feet. "Forget what I said. I talked too much. Must be the ghosts."
He went back into his shop, but Andrew didn't move. He listened to the ocean and stared up at the hickory, the stars and the moon. For all he knew, Harl was right about everything. Joanna, Ike, Tess, Jedidiah. And the ghosts.
Twenty-Four
Tess tried to sleep in. She thought it would be easier if the Thorne household went on their way before she got up. Then she could shower, have a cup of coffee on the porch and figure out what to do with her day. She definitely wanted to slip down to Boston and check her e-mail archives. She'd gone through her saved e-mails from Ike, but not the ones from her to him.
Not that she intended to do any actual graphic design work. If the distractions up north continued, she'd be so far behind she'd never catch up. And her reputation would be in ruins. It wasn't just a question of doing good work-it also had to be done on time. What she'd found in her cellar on Friday night wouldn't help clients facing their own deadlines.
She sighed at the ceiling. She could hear Dolly singing a made-up song in her bathroom, something about kittens.
The Beacon-by-the-Sea police, Tess thought, needed a greater sense of urgency about her skeleton report. They were supposedly looking for Ike, but not with any apparent energy or enthusiasm. She could try lighting a fire under them. As Susanna, who knew such things, had said, the police didn't like missing bodies. Much easier if hers was a ghost or a figment of a highly creative imagination.
"No kidding," Tess muttered sarcastically to herself.
It was only seven-fifteen. What time were Andrew and Dolly on their way in the morning?
Dolly burst in. "The kittens' eyes are open!"
Tess just managed to squash a startled yell. "They are?"
"Dolly," Andrew said from the hall, nearby, "you should always knock. Tess might have been asleep."
Not a chance, she thought.
Dolly was too excited to waste time on apologies.
"Sorry. Do you want to see the kittens? They're so cute!"
Andrew had the grace not to appear in the guest-room doorway. Tess didn't know what she'd have done if he had. She felt exposed as it was, out of her element. Dolly had a scraggly stuffed cat tucked under one arm. Tess sat up in bed. "I'll meet you in the pantry once I've gotten dressed."
Dolly skipped out, leaving the door open behind her.
Andrew closed it.
So much for sleeping in, Tess thought, the brief image of him in his work shirt enough to eliminate any prospect of sleep or even calm. She quickly got dressed, a cool ocean breeze floating in through the open window as she pulled on jeans and a fresh shirt.
Down in the kitchen, Andrew had a mug of coffee poured for her. Dolly motioned excitedly, but silently, from the pantry.