“Can I see the ledger?”
“I have a picture of it, but the original is locked up in our off-site storage. Do you need it? Because I’d have to send in a special request to have a copy made.”
“Can you print the picture?”
She nodded, and he heard the laser printer humming. She got up and handed him the grainy photo.
C. A. Franklin, in loopy handwriting. And tighter, in sharp, pointy strokes, Duncan T. Rothe.
He could taste his heartbeat. “Thanks, Signe. Come by for that kayak when the ice clears.”
He headed over to the Wild Harbor, unlocked it, and had coffee brewed by the time Ned arrived.
“I think we need a winter clearance sale,” Ned said as if Casper had tossed the night away puzzling over the need for customers. “Maybe a March Madness event.”
“Sounds perfect.” If Duncan showed up with Clara, intending to marry her, what had happened to the marriage certificate?
“I’m going to put together some specials. You figure out when to advertise.”
And how did Aggie figure into the story?
“Casper?” Ned snapped his fingers in front of Casper’s nose.
“Sorry. I was thinking about something we found yesterday at the historical society. An old wedding dress.”
“Neat. But how about taking inventory of our current supply of winter wear so we know how much to mark them down.”
Casper spent the morning surrounded by fleeces, wool socks, mukluks, and Gore-Tex. After Ned took a break, he walked over to the co-op for lunch, grabbed a cup of cauliflower curry soup, and sat down at one of the complimentary computer workstations.
He set his soup to the side, dumped in a handful of oyster crackers, and opened Google.
He started with C. A. Franklin, 1930.
A listing of hits came up, including a biography of Augustus and Clara Franklin. He reached for his soup.
Augustus John Franklin (1860–1930), president of American Steel and Co, 1904–1930. One of the early steel barons, John Franklin took over American Steel as president in 1904 and tripled its holdings into a $3.2 billion company at the time of his death.
Casper skipped over the early life and career information, scrolling down to the Family Life section.
A longtime resident of New York City, John Franklin kept homes in Newport, Rhode Island, and Chicago. Married to Clara Alice Franklin (née Bowman, 1880–1918) at the age of thirty-eight (1898).
He did the math. She’d been eighteen, her husband twenty years older. No wonder she’d run away—except, no. This was Clara Alice. Then who was Clara Augusta? He scrolled down, forgetting his soup as he read of Clara Alice’s death in the 1918 flu pandemic.
He heard patrons enter the co-op lunch area, glanced around and saw a couple familiar faces. Turned back to the computer.
Clara Alice Franklin bore a daughter to the union, Clara Augusta Franklin (1908–1930).
Which meant she left her daughter motherless at the tender age of ten.
He opened a grainy black-and-white family picture of the trio in a separate window, stared at it. A solemn family, the father large and balding; the wife small, dark, fragile. The daughter pudgy-faced, her hair in braids tucked around her head.
A chair squeaked behind him, and he instinctively turned to look.
The patron, her back to him, set her tray of food on the table next to a leather book.
He stilled, his awareness of her so keen it could flood his pores, stop his heart. Today, with her hair in two braids under a pink fleece headband, that powder-blue jacket, and a pair of slimming yoga pants tucked into her boots, she looked like some version of a Norse princess.
He stopped his thoughts there. Closed his eyes. Bless her lunch, Lord. Help her know that she’s forgiven and that she can be set free from the past.
Just like that, her power fled, and he breathed out the pressure in his chest. Returned to his reading.
John Franklin died May 3, 1930, in a fire in his Chicago Avenue apartment. Deceased in the fire included his daughter and two house attendants, a valet and a housekeeper.
There went any leads.
Or not. Because how, if Clara Augusta died in a fire, could she take out a marriage license a month later in northern Minnesota?
He printed the picture as well as the article, then went to retrieve them and dropped a quarter in the cup. Maybe if he headed up to Naniboujou, they’d still have the picture Edith had mentioned.
He turned, and his world stopped.
“Hey, Casper,” Raina said, standing in his way and smiling at him.
What would it hurt to talk to him, really? For ten minutes she’d snuck peeks over her shoulder at Casper, sitting on the high-top stool, scrolling the computer. For ten minutes she’d sifted through her emotions, testing them.
She might have been too hard on him at the historical society.
Her phone had vibrated and she’d smiled at the text message Monte had sent her. He wanted to see her tonight—so she hadn’t destroyed their budding relationship with her hesitation.
She was moving on.
Which meant that maybe she could look back, see things without the pinch of heartbreak. See how she must have hurt Casper when she pushed him away—even before last week. As if he were somehow to blame for the fact that her heart so easily fell into his arms.
Casper couldn’t help it that he could turn a girl to honey with his smile, the way his hair curled out from under his hat. He had an easy, let’s-be-friends aura that she dearly missed, a laugh that could chase away the darkness that always seemed to threaten her.
She’d cut him off from her the way she might knock the snow from her boots, fast and hard, and now she rose above her shadowed pain to see the scars she’d left on him.
He’d run to Central America to flee her, returned with his heart plucked from his chest, and the gesture, the intensity of it, terrified her.
She simply didn’t deserve that kind of devotion. But now that they were both moving on, maybe they could find a balance. Friendship. Something new and fresh. Safe.
So she’d closed Aggie’s diary and gotten up, intending to simply sidle next to him, to apologize for her coldness earlier. But he headed to the printer, grabbing something out of it, dropping a quarter into the cup.
Then he turned.
And for a second, Raina rued her own impulsiveness. Trapped. Right there, in the middle of the co-op deli, surrounded by patrons eating their lunches, she was about to open her mouth and what—apologize for dismantling his life? For hurting his family, even if they didn’t know it? Would never know it?
Casper stared at her, his eyes widening, the papers he’d printed held like a shield to protect him.
She came up with the only words she could muster. “Hey, Casper.”
“Hey,” he said. His flummoxed expression might have been cute—except for the flash of hurt that rose for a split second, only to die behind a mask of nonchalance.
She didn’t want to consider that his hurt might still burn.
“What are you doing here?”
She gestured to her table. “I’m on lunch break from the shop, and . . . What are you researching? I saw the page open—”
He showed her the picture he’d printed. “Actually, I’m following up on that story I told you about—Duncan Rothe. We found a wedding dress in the boxes donated to the historical society, and it had the initials C. A. F. on it. So I went to the courthouse today and tried to track down the bride. I think I found her. Clara Augusta Franklin. But the article says she died in a fire in Chicago with her father, so I seemed to have run into a dead end . . .”
“Or not.”
He frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“You have that funny tone to your voice. When you’re trying to convince yourself that something is true, but you know deep down it’s not. Like when you were trying to tell yourself that you should probably just quit the race last summer, when you knew perfectly well
that we could win.”
He gave her a slow smile, letting it slide over his face as if he’d pulled up the memory, found it pleasing.
“Okay, yeah.” He gestured to the computer. “According to the article, Clara Augusta Franklin died in the fire in Chicago. But what if she didn’t? What if she got out and ran away with Duncan Rothe? What if she and Duncan did get married at Naniboujou?”
“Did you say Naniboujou?”
“It’s a resort—built in the 1920s, about fifteen miles northeast of here.”
“Stay right here.” She went back to her table and grabbed her tray, piling the book on it. Returned to the counter and slid onto a stool.
“Listen to this.” She opened the diary.
“May 1930. The most wonderful day and the most terrible night. Duncan finally declared his love for me and proposed as we walked along the boardwalk of the lake, the oak trees stirring in the fragrant breeze. Of course I said yes, and then to my delight, he took me to the apartment with the bright news that Father had arrived in town.”
Casper had slid onto his stool. “What are you reading?”
“The journal of Aggie Wilder.” She glanced up, saw him watching her, and could see in his expression the old, easy friendship, the camaraderie. Yes, see, now that she had Monte, she could allow herself to put Casper in the right, permanent place in her heart. Friend.
“We arrived to the terrible discovery that Father had been murdered. Duncan found his body at his desk, shot, and although he bade me wait, I too impulsively ran in behind him to witness the horror. In my grief, Irina put me to bed.
“I awoke to the apartment in flames. Had it not been for Duncan, I would have perished. He tore me from the house in my nightclothes and we escaped death in Father’s roadster.”
Raina looked up and smiled at Casper’s openmouthed expression. Without thinking, she reached over and touched his arm. “I know. But there’s more.”
She kept reading.
“He is taking me north, to a retreat where he says I can recuperate—his friend Jack’s place, an Indian lodge of some sort. We will marry there, and someday I will forget all I have lost.”
She closed the book.
“Where did you get that?”
“Aggie’s estate. It was in her bedside table. It goes all the way to 1982, when Thor died. I’ve only read the first few entries, but . . .” She took the picture. “What if this is her? Aggie—that could be Augusta, right?”
“You are brilliant, Raina Beaumont.”
“But if she married Duncan, how did she end up with Thor?”
And right then, it happened again, just like last summer. He lifted his blue eyes to her, gave her a look that could grab her up, make her feel shiny and bright. She couldn’t help but grin back.
“I want to go to Naniboujou and see if they have any old pictures or records, just so we can get a confirmation, and then figure out what happened from there.”
“I want to go with you.” She said it quickly, before the urge, the courage, died.
“You do?” Casper frowned, ran his hand over his forehead as if working out a knot. “I don’t understand. You said you were trying to move on—”
“I know. But . . . well, I realized that maybe . . . You were a good friend to me last summer, and I probably shouldn’t have been so—anyway, I was a little afraid you were going to say something about . . .” She nearly said her name aloud. Layla. But she bit it back.
“It’s not my secret to share.”
She looked around at that, but no one picked up on his words.
“To that point, though, if you do ever need anyone to talk to, I . . . I can be that friend.”
Yes. She believed he could. She held out her hand, and after a quick blink, he took it. Shook it. She tried to ignore his touch, the feel of his skin on hers, how it sank into her pores and warmed her. Memories, nothing more. “Deal.”
“I’ll pick you up on Saturday morning.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” she said. It slipped out. But she didn’t take it back, just grinned as she slid off the stool, carrying her tray to the counter. Then she returned and picked up her book, heading for the door. “See you Saturday.”
Casper wasn’t sure what really transpired at lunch, but by the time he returned home—bypassing the historical society for a take-out burger and fries from the VFW—he’d decided that maybe he should stop dissecting his conversation with Raina and just . . . be her friend.
The impulse, the thought, solidified inside him. And it seemed she longed for it also because she’d shaken his hand and even acted like she meant it.
Aye, aye, Captain. Her friendly moniker dredged up tangible, heartbreaking memories of last summer’s nickname. Captain, my Captain.
If he didn’t watch his heart, this could really hurt. Unless . . . he kept praying for her.
Lord, help her to see that You love her.
Casper pulled up to the lodge and got out, cheered by the sight of his father’s truck in the lot. Indeed, when he opened the door, the smell of his mother’s homemade spaghetti met his nose.
So much for the burger and soggy fries. “Mom?”
Ingrid Christiansen came around the corner, so much joy on her face it turned him into a child. Thirteen or maybe five and wanting to leap into her embrace.
“Casper!” She threw her arms around him, pulled his head down to her shoulder. “You’re home.”
He held on. It seemed she’d lost weight, but she still had that softness to her, the sense of belonging that made him feel that no matter what sins he committed, he could find forgiveness in her smile. “Mom.”
She squeezed him a bit longer, then stepped back and held him at arm’s length. She wore jeans and a long-sleeved blue thermal shirt, a fleece headband in her bobbed blonde hair, as if she hadn’t just gone tromping off like a hippie, backpacking through Europe.
“When Darek wrote that you’d come home, I told your dad we had to cut our trip short—”
“And I told her that you needed time to get on your feet again.” John Christiansen came from the next room, wearing jeans, a green woolen shirt, a baseball cap on his bald head. “Son, it’s so good to see you.”
He reached out to shake Casper’s hand, then pulled him tight. Clapped him on the back. “You look good.”
Casper nodded, a little unsettled at the emotion in his chest. “Thanks, Dad. I got a job at the Wild Harbor.”
“That’s what Darek said.”
Ingrid took the take-out bag, looked inside, and made a face. “I’ll put this in the fridge for later.”
He followed her to the kitchen, sliding onto a stool. “So how was Europe?”
Ingrid looked at John, and something in their exchange had Casper frowning. Then she said, “Good. Interesting.”
“Casper! You’re home.”
He stilled, then turned to see—Amelia?—trotting down the stairs.
No, gliding. The girl who’d left Deep Haven in a pair of yoga pants and a sweatshirt arrived home in a deep-blue dress, a gold belt, her red hair long around her shoulders. She looked . . .
Grown-up.
“It’s so lovely to see you!”
Lovely . . . ?
She reached the bottom, walked over to him, slipped into his embrace. “I missed you!”
“Sis—hi. Wow. You look great.”
She smiled, but it didn’t touch her eyes. In fact, she’d lost weight, her face finely etched, and a slight edging of shadow darkened her green eyes.
“What are you doing home? Are you okay?”
She nodded. “Of course. It was just . . .” She exhaled a shaky breath and glanced at their mother. “Time. Just time. I missed everyone.”
A lie hung in the air, but he didn’t chase it. Yet.
“Are you home on break?”
“Nope. Just . . . home. For a while.” She lifted a shoulder and slid onto a stool, crossing her legs. “Tell me everything about the dig. Did you find a lost treasure?”
&nb
sp; Since when did Amelia wear dresses? And there, on the inside of her wrist—he actually reached for it.
A dove tattooed in red and yellow.
She frowned and pulled her arm away.
“Would you set the table, Casper?” Ingrid said quietly.
Oh, he was missing something, and by the way Amelia tightened her jaw, swallowed, it couldn’t be good.
Casper got up, and like he’d traveled back in time to a year ago, he reached into the cupboard and took out the dishes. A fire crackled in the hearth while the snow piled against the sliding-glass door on the deck, the night already dense and murky.
Yeah, it could be last summer, with Darek and him working side by side on the cabins, back when he, like Amelia, had secrets to hide. Like the fact that he’d quit school. And didn’t know where he belonged.
Back before he’d met Raina and thought he’d found the answer.
He finished setting the table as his mother laid out the spaghetti, garlic bread, and salad.
“Wow. I’ve been living on takeout, Darek’s leftovers, and ramen noodles for a month.”
Amelia cracked a soft smile, this one real. “The first month I was there, I think I ate ramen noodles every night.”
She pulled out her chair and sat. Their father took her hand, squeezed it, something protective in his eyes. “Not anymore. Now you’re home.”
Safe. Casper could nearly hear the word on his father’s lips.
“Let’s pray,” John said.
Casper listened to his father’s voice, thought of his own prayers.
“So tell us everything about Roatán,” his mother said. “I have to admit, when you didn’t make it home for Christmas, my only consolation was that you were on a beach instead of enduring this deep freeze.”
He watched Amelia out of the corner of his eye. How she played with her food, stirring it around her plate.
How his mother leaned over and said, “Eat, Amelia.”
Amelia offered another brittle smile and nodded. But continued to worry her food.
“When did you make it home?” his father asked.
“Middle of January. I was here when the pipes burst in cabin three. Helped Darek repair it.”
His father went silent. When he glanced at Ingrid, Casper wanted to grab those words back, maybe run them by Darek before outing him.
Always on My Mind Page 16