Secrets of the Lost Summer Page 6

  Buster rolled over, his back to Olivia, as if to tell her how boring he thought paint palettes were. She stayed in front of the fire and continued working. As darkness descended, she liked having him there, close to her, rather than in the kitchen or locked up in the mudroom. Soon the fire provided the only light in the house. She hadn’t lit any candles or turned on her flashlight. She put away her colored pencils and left them and the sketch pad on the floor.

  The power still hadn’t come on.

  More trees creaked and groaned in the wind. The fire flared in a backdraft in the chimney. She shuddered, a ripple of irrational fear running up her spine. She had locked the front door after Dylan had left and was positive she had already locked the other doors. She knew no one was in the kitchen and mudroom, or in the garage—or hiding upstairs.

  She dreaded turning on her small flashlight and walking up to her bedroom.

  “What’s the matter with you?” she asked aloud. “Nothing’s up there with the power off that isn’t there with the power on.”

  The living room glowed in a flash of lightning followed by a rumble of thunder.

  It was an ice storm. Why was there thunder and lightning?

  Never mind, Olivia thought, grabbing another throw off a chair. She wasn’t going anywhere. She curled up with the two throws on the thick rug in front of the fire, staying close to warm, mean-looking Buster. She had no reason to be afraid alone in her country house, but the occasional bump in the night nonetheless could get her heart racing and her mind spinning with possibilities.

  She wondered how Dylan McCaffrey was doing up the road. Grace’s house wasn’t in good shape, especially after sitting empty for so long. People in town speculated that the new owner had bought it for the land, not for the house itself. After receiving the note about the yard, had Dylan decided to head east to check out his newly discovered inheritance and put it on the market? Olivia would love to have the seven acres to add to The Farm at Carriage Hill, but she couldn’t afford them right now and had her hands full getting her own house in shape.

  Wrapped up in her warm throws, she noticed the wind was dying down and the one flash of lightning and rumble of thunder seemed to be all the storm had in mind. The power didn’t come back on, but she suspected it would soon now that the weather was improving.

  She grabbed a pillow off the couch and placed it under her head. She doubted Grace had left behind blankets and sheets, never mind a bed, or if she had that any of them were usable. Was Dylan sleeping on the floor, too? He probably hadn’t planned to spend the night in a house on the verge of being condemned.

  A run-down house, a yard filled with junk, a confrontation with a big dog, an ice storm and a power outage—not an auspicious first day in Knights Bridge. Olivia shut her eyes, imagining what her neighbor thought of her hometown and if he’d be there in another twenty-four hours.

  The power came back on just after two in the morning, the floor lamp popping on, the refrigerator cranking into gear, startling Olivia out of a deep sleep. She left the lamp on, letting the glow of the low-wattage bulb settle her heartbeat. She didn’t go upstairs to bed and instead stayed under her throws. Buster got up and stretched as if he thought it was morning, then settled down again in front of the fire, just a few hot coals now.

  By morning, the sun was shining and any ice from the storm had already melted. That, Olivia reminded herself, was one of the key differences between early spring and the dead of winter. In winter, the ice would still be there, with more on the way. She could safely hope that last night was the end of any freezing precipitation in her part of New England until next winter.

  She switched off any lights that didn’t need to be on and went upstairs to shower and get dressed, figuring she’d head into the village after breakfast. The house, although not large, felt huge in comparison to her apartment in Boston. Back downstairs, she made coffee and toasted some of her oatmeal bread, spreading it with peanut butter. She ate at her table overlooking the herb gardens. Even without checking her palettes from last night, she knew she’d reject the watery colors. She wanted earthy colors that still felt light, inviting, vibrant.

  Picking out colors, she thought, was the fun part of opening The Farm at Carriage Hill. The uncertainties and the sheer amount of work that needed to be done were the hard parts.

  She finished her toast and coffee and cleaned up the kitchen, wondering what her neighbor was doing for breakfast. She watered her rapidly growing herbs and decided that Dylan McCaffrey was perfectly capable of looking after himself. The roads were clear. He could get out now, and Knights Bridge had a restaurant, run by family friends, that served a great breakfast.

  If he wanted her help, he’d ask.

  She walked Buster and left him in the mudroom with his bed and bowls of food and water. She didn’t put up the gate. He seemed calmer, more at home. “Back soon, my friend,” she said, and headed outside. The air was sharply colder than yesterday, but it’d warm up to the fifties by midafternoon—another difference between winter and spring.

  She started her car, a Subaru in serious need of body work, and turned onto the road.

  When she came to the Webster house, Olivia noticed Dylan’s Audi—undoubtedly a rental—was still there. A rivulet of rainwater was running down a split in the dirt driveway. A massive, overgrown forsythia, however, was about to burst into yellow blossoms, a telltale sign of spring in New England.

  Which also meant her opening day mother-daughter tea was getting closer, and she had much to do before it arrived.

  She was surprised to see Dylan down by Grace’s old mailbox at the bottom of the driveway. He had a long-handled shovel and stood it up, leaning into it as Olivia braked and rolled down her passenger window.

  “Morning,” he said. “Quite an ice storm last night.”

  “We’re lucky the temperature rose as fast as it did. Everything all right here?”

  “Just fine. The driveway didn’t wash out into the road. The leak in the kitchen stopped. Life is good.” There was only the slightest trace of sarcasm in his tone as he picked up a take-out coffee he had set atop the crooked mailbox. “I’ve already been out for breakfast. Nice little restaurant in town. I suppose you know the owner.”

  “The Smiths. Sure. I’ll tell them you liked your breakfast.”

  Olivia watched him sip the coffee. Even in sunlight, without the adrenaline of yesterday’s storm, her missing dog and the surprise of discovering Dylan McCaffrey wasn’t in his seventies, she still found him incredibly sexy. She probably should have just waved on her way past him.

  “I see you found a shovel,” she said.

  He set his coffee back atop the mailbox. “It was in the kitchen, interestingly. I’m not even going to try to guess why. The drainage culvert down here got filled up with leaves and ice, and the water was diverting onto the road. I figured I’d dig it out.” He picked up the shovel again, his eyes on her as he smiled. “Then I’ll get the junk removed.”

  “I have to run out for a little while, but I can help when I get back. Feel free to check my garage for any tools or materials you might need. It’s unlocked. There might be work gloves in there that would fit you.”

  “Good to know.”

  His tone suggested he hadn’t considered work gloves. Although he was from Southern California, the chilly morning temperature and stiff breeze didn’t seem to bother him.

  Olivia suppressed a shiver when the cold air coming in the open window overtook the warm air blowing out of her car heater. “You aren’t planning to do all this work yourself, are you?”

  He stabbed the tip of the shovel into the gravel and squinted at her in the bright sunlight. “Not if I can help it.”

  Maybe, she thought, she should mind her own business. “I’ll leave you to it.”

  “Where’s Buster?”

  “Who knows. I threw caution to the wind and let him have the run of the house instead of locking him in the mudroom.”

  Dylan’s deep blue gaze
settled on her. “Is that fair warning?”

  Olivia laughed. “If you want to look at it that way.”

  She rolled up her window and continued into the village and on to Frost Millworks, located on a wide, rock-strewn brook. The building was just ten years old and occupied a section of flat land above the brook, its exterior designed to fit with the rustic surroundings, its interior modern. Jess lived in an apartment in the original nineteenth-century sawmill overlooking the rock dam and millpond. It was one of the few surviving sawmills that had once dotted the streams and rivers of the region. As kids, Olivia and her sister used to swim in the millpond. The water was clear, clean and ice-cold, even on a hot August afternoon. They’d grown up a half mile down the road in the same house where their parents still lived.

  By the time Olivia parked in the small lot, she had decided she didn’t have the whole story about Dylan McCaffrey and his intentions in Knights Bridge. Whatever they were, her reaction to him was perfectly normal. He was sexy, and there was no point in denying otherwise, at least to herself. His presence up the road from her was her doing, and if he complicated her life, it was her own fault.

  She found her mother at her cluttered rolltop desk in the office just inside the mill entrance. Louise Frost smiled brightly at her elder daughter. “How’s your road?”

  “Not a problem, except for the potholes. They’re brutal this year.”

  “Do you keep a bag of sand in your trunk, just in case?”

  Olivia shook her head. “I figure I can always call you or Dad if I get stuck.”

  “That’s true, but sand makes sense.”

  Her mother stood up from the desk. At five-five, she was shorter than either of her daughters. She worked out most days and was in good shape, wearing a fleece vest over a thick turquoise corduroy shirt, jeans and mud boots. She had dyed her hair auburn about five years ago and kept it cut short and, with her green eyes and round face, reminded Olivia of her younger sister. She tended to favor their father.

  She peered at a new photograph taped to the top edge of the antique desk, this one of palm trees, sandy beach and ocean. It joined a dozen others her mother had printed off the internet of the famous 123-mile Pacific Coast Highway in central California: Monterey, Carmel-by-the-Sea, San Simeon, Cambria, Morro Rock, sea otters, sunsets, surf crashing on sheer rock cliffs.

  “That’s the beach in Santa Barbara,” her mother said.

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “We’re going to fly into Los Angeles and spend the night in Beverly Hills or Malibu, then head up to Santa Barbara for at least one night. I’m investigating hotels and inns. I haven’t made reservations yet. I’d do a bed-and-breakfast, but I don’t think your father would like it.”

  Olivia smiled. “You could try. It’d only be a couple nights, right?”

  Her mother nodded, staring at the pictures on her desk. “They say driving south-to-north isn’t as unnerving with the cliffs and water as north-to-south, but people do both. Driving south you hug the coast. You see more, I guess. I think we’ll see plenty.”

  “Are you going as far as San Francisco?”

  “I think so. It depends on how much time we have.” She shifted from the photographs to a map of California she had tacked to the wall, with pushpins marking various stops she wanted to make. She seemed transfixed, then took a slow, deep breath and turned to Olivia, obviously forcing a smile. “It’ll be fun. I can’t wait.”

  “When do you leave?”

  “We haven’t set a date yet. Depends on the work here. Your father is overdue for a vacation.”

  “You are, too,” Olivia said.

  “I suppose. I started dreaming about this trip a few years ago when we did the custom windows for that house in Carmel. Remember, Liv? It was outside our usual area, but the family used to live in Boston and knew about us. They sent pictures…” She sighed, standing back from the desk. “It’s beautiful here. I don’t want to live anywhere else, but I knew I had to go to California, see this part of our country.”

  “Good for you, Mom.”

  “Yeah.” She seemed a little shaken, as if she’d said too much. “Thanks.”

  Olivia heard the main door open. In another moment, Jess appeared in the office doorway, tightening the belt to her tan raincoat. “I’m on my way to Boston and thought I’d stop in. I’m meeting with clients. Want to come, Mom?”

  “I should mind things here.”

  “It’s quiet today. There’s nothing to mind—”

  “There’s always something. I’m never bored.”

  “You haven’t been out of town in weeks,” Jess said, impatient. “It’d do you good.”

  “I have plans, Jess.”

  Olivia could see their mother wasn’t about to budge and would only get her back up and go on the defensive if Jess kept pushing her. “I’m heading over to see Grandma. Care to join me?”

  “You go, Liv,” her mother said, dropping back to her chair at her desk. “Tell your grandma I said hi. We’re having her out to the house this weekend. I’m doing a Sunday dinner for a change. You two will both be here?”

  “Of course, Mom,” Jess said with a sigh, then left.

  Louise Frost stared at the spot her younger daughter had vacated, then finally said, half under her breath, that she needed to get to work and started tapping keys on her computer. Olivia said goodbye and headed back out.

  She found her sister standing on the rock wall at the edge of the millpond. “You can’t enable her, Liv.” Jess shoved her hands in her coat pockets and watched the rushing water, high with the spring runoff and yesterday’s rain. “It won’t help.”

  “Arguing with her isn’t going to change anything.”

  “What will? Medication? Therapy? Some herbal potion?”

  “There are a number of herbs that can help alleviate anxiety, but she has to want to do something about it.”

  “Planning a trip she’ll never take…”

  “Maybe she will take it,” Olivia said.

  “Dad doesn’t think so. It’s pathetic, Liv. She didn’t used to be this bad.”

  Olivia watched a dead leaf float over the small dam into the rushing stream below. “I think she’s trying, Jess.”

  Jess didn’t respond at once. The only sound was the rush of the water over the old dam. “I’m worried I’m catching it,” she said finally.

  “Catching what, Jess?”

  “Mom’s anxiety. I woke up last night in a sweat and couldn’t go back to sleep. I was ready to jump out of my skin. The power was out....” She pulled her hands out of her pockets and raked her fingers through her hair. “I turned on a flashlight and just sat there, trying to calm myself.”

  “The weather was nasty.”

  “Freezing rain, clouds, fog, darker than the pits of hell…” Jess shuddered. “I felt closed in. I couldn’t breathe.”

  “We’re all feeling closed in after the long winter. Green grass and daffodils will help. What about Mark? Was he—”

  “He wasn’t here. He never stays past sunup. We’re old-fashioned that way, with Mom and Dad right up the road, working here.” She squatted down suddenly, picked up a stone and flung it into the millpond as she stood again, the ripples spreading across the clear, coppery water to the opposite bank. “What if I was freaked out at the prospect of going to Boston today?”

  “Did that run through your mind?”

  “Everything ran through my mind.”

  “Who are you seeing in Boston?”

  “The manager of a small law office in the North End that wants to redo the interior of their building, the owners of a house on Beacon Hill, a hole-in-the-wall library that specializes in early New England history. It’ll take all day.”

  “You’re feeling the stress,” Olivia said.

  Her sister almost laughed. “I hope that’s all it is. I hope I’m not…” She didn’t finish. “There’s so much I want to do, Liv. I don’t want to be afraid to leave Knights Bridge. What about you? You won’t f
ly.”

  Olivia averted her eyes. “I’ll fly.”

  “Ha. You’re not a good liar.” Jess abandoned the subject and spun away from the dam. “Mom’s driving us all crazy. She’s driving Dad crazy, too, but he’ll never admit it. Mark hasn’t said anything but I know he’s getting impatient.”

  “Jess, is anything going on between you two?”

  “Nothing, no—” She stopped, turned back to Olivia. “I don’t know. This California trip has taken on a life of its own. I sometimes wonder if Mark’s waiting to see how it turns out, if he looks at Mom and sees me in twenty or thirty years. She’s a mess, Liv. You haven’t been around day to day. You haven’t seen her.”

  “I know but I’m here now.”

  “We all are so busy. You, me, Mark, Dad, Mom. My hours have been insane since January. It’s a sign business is good, which is terrific, but I have to do almost all the off-site client meetings. Dad does what he can, but he and the crew have their own work here. It doesn’t make sense to hire someone just because Mom’s gotten to the point she’ll hardly go anywhere.”

  “Have you talked to them? Told them you’re feeling overburdened?”

  “Wouldn’t do any good.”

  Her sister, Olivia realized, was in a mood to vent, not to work on solutions. “I can always help.”

  “You have your hands full as it is.” Jess sighed, calmer. “It’s going to be a long day.”

  “Why don’t you stay in Boston and not kill yourself to get back here tonight? You can stay at my apartment. I have it until the end of the month. I left the couch. It’s not bad to sleep on.”