True Love

by Jude Deveraux

  “What?” They leaned forward.

  “One time my mother was quite angry at me and—”

  “That’s her usual state from what I’ve seen of her,” Lexie interrupted, her tone showing her disapproval.

  Toby continued, “One night after dinner, Mother wanted Dad and me to hurry up to go somewhere. She grabbed our half-full plates and put one on her forearm and one in her hand. It was very efficient. I said, ‘Mother, you do that like an experienced waitress.’ I wouldn’t have thought anything about it except that she immediately dropped the plates and stomped off—and my dad couldn’t stop laughing.”

  “Very interesting,” Lexie said. “That sounds like a mystery worth pursuing.”

  “Lexie loves mystery novels,” Toby said.

  Lexie grimaced. “In this mystery, the only man your mother would approve of for you is Prince Charming.”

  “Too late,” Alix said, her face serious. “I already got him.”

  Toby laughed and Lexie groaned.

  “We want to know about your mother,” Toby said. “What’s it like to live with someone who is as unique as she is?”

  “Unique?” Lexie said. “Toby is being polite. Victoria Madsen is an international sensation, beautiful, successful, and those books!”

  “You do know the Great Secret of the origin of them, don’t you?” Alix asked.

  “That they’re about my family?” Lexie said. “Of course. Everyone on Nantucket knows that.” She waved her hand in dismissal. “I know about my family. I want to know about yours.”

  “Well,” Alix said slowly, thinking how to explain her mother in a way that wouldn’t take hours. “She is a mix of practical and flamboyant, vain and selfless, naive and very sophisticated.”

  “That sounds either horrible or wonderful,” Lexie said. “But what we want to know is what it was like to be with her on a daily basis.”

  Alix thought for a moment. “All right, I’ll tell you a story that might illustrate my life with her, and I only know the details because years later so many people told me what happened. It was my fifth birthday, and Mom and I were living in an apartment on the sixteenth floor of a building way downtown in New York City. It was after her first book had been accepted for publication, but before it came out and hit the best-seller lists. But what was important to me was that my parents had recently separated and I was missing my dad a lot.”

  Alix looked away briefly. “Anyway, on the morning of my birthday, I woke up looking into the eyes of a real live pony.”

  Lexie smiled. “That’s nice. Your mother took you to a stable while you were asleep.”

  “No,” Alix said. “I was in my own bed in our apartment in New York. My mom had brought the pony up in the service elevator. She had so charmed the doorman—I think she even wept a bit at her failed marriage—that he’d looked the other way.”

  “I wonder what the neighbors thought,” Toby said.

  “You hit it there. My mother couldn’t have cared less that the floor was permanently damaged by the hooves, but when the neighbors complained about the noise, she had to do something.”

  “What did she do?” Lexie asked.

  “She turned it all into an impromptu party. She chose the ugliest little man there, who was standing silently by his angry wife, and asked him to go buy some booze. And of course my mother had no money so he paid. Then she got some big, good-looking teenage boy to make drinks for everyone who showed up to complain.”

  “I don’t think using an underage boy like that was legal,” Toby said.

  “My mother doesn’t believe that laws apply to her. When school let out, even more neighbors showed up with their kids and they rode the pony around inside the apartment.”

  “What about the mess?” Lexie asked.

  “My mother went to two teenage girls who couldn’t take their eyes off the boy at the bar and told them he wanted them to help out.”

  “They got the poop scoop detail?” Lexie asked, grinning.

  “Exactly,” Alix said. “And you know what? Years later my mother told me that one of those girls married that boy.”

  Both Lexie and Toby laughed. “Your mother is a matchmaker.”

  “She loves romance in any form,” Alix said.

  “What happened to the pony?” Toby asked.

  “At the end of the day, when the owner returned, he was livid! Mom had lied, telling him she had a farm in the country and a trainer. She’d been so convincing that he’d turned the pony over to her. When he found out the truth, he was furious, but Mom flirted with him so much that by the time he took the pony back down in the elevator, he was smiling. And by that point, Mom had to push everybody out of our apartment because they were drunk. She gave me a bath, then snuggled down with me in bed and read me a book. That it was the galleys of her own novel with the sex skipped didn’t matter. I was asleep instantly. And after that I was the most popular child in the building. Everybody cried when we moved to the suburbs.”

  For a moment Lexie and Toby sat in silence, taking in the story.

  “How wonderful!” Lexie said with a sigh. “I could stand some adventure in my life.”

  “Doesn’t your boss—” Alix began.

  “He’s too in love with himself to matter,” Lexie said.

  Alix and Toby looked at each other. From what they’d seen of Roger Plymouth, he was madly in love with Lexie, not himself.

  After that first evening, the young women became a threesome—when they could, that is. Both Toby and Lexie had jobs, and Alix was trying to complete her sketches for Jared’s clients.

  And then, of course, there was Izzy’s wedding to work on. Without the rose arbor and with the inclusion of the chapel, everything changed. Alix came up with a theme of wildflowers based on the dishes in Kingsley House. She showed Toby a place setting and Toby made an arrangement that looked like the china pattern. They planned everything around small flowers, many of them on a stem, all of them light and airy, nothing heavy.

  “I think you’re onto something,” Toby said to Alix as she began to sketch the flowers for the table settings.

  For the chapel they designed swags of robin’s-egg blue ribbons that hung from the ceiling along the wall. At every loop would be a bow with bouquets of blue larkspur and tiny white daisies dripping down. They put them on a background of ornamental grasses.

  “I think it’s beautiful,” Alix said, looking at what Toby had done, and Lexie agreed.

  Alix photographed everything and sent it all to Izzy, but she couldn’t focus very well. Her morning sickness was bad, and she told Alix that she kept falling asleep. “You know what I like,” Izzy said. “What would you like for your wedding? That’s what I’ll take.”

  Alix didn’t allow herself to think of her own wedding; if it did happen, it would be years in the future.

  On the evening after Jared left, Alix got on her computer and began searching for Parthenia. With only one name to go on, it wasn’t easy. But she added a place—Nantucket—and she found a Parthenia Taggert Kendricks. The name Taggert led to the Montgomerys of Warbrooke, Maine.

  “Bingo!” Alix said, then began searching to see if she could find any contemporary Montgomerys or Taggerts who might still be living in Maine. To her joy, she saw that there were a lot of them.

  By the time Jared called that night, she had a great deal to tell him. “She was Parthenia Taggert, Valentina’s cousin, and they both came from Warbrooke. Parthenia married a Nantucketer named John Kendricks, but I couldn’t find much about him other than that he was a schoolmaster. I’ll email you the dates.” She hesitated.

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “I think you should drive to Maine and talk to those people,” she said.

  “And ask about something that happened two hundred years ago?” Jared asked.

  “Why not?” she said. “Maybe the family is like yours and they have a big old house full of junk that no one has thrown out in centuries.”

  “There couldn’t po
ssibly be two of us.”

  Personally, she didn’t think there was anyone on earth like him.

  “So you think I should go?” he said.

  She loved that he was asking for her encouragement and maybe even her approval. “Yes, I do.”

  “I have to go to Vermont to get the hinges so maybe I’ll just drive up to Warbrooke, Maine,” Jared said.

  Alix was smiling broadly. It made her feel good that he’d taken her advice. “Were they glad to see you in New York?” She wanted to know how he was feeling about being back in his office, but she’d long ago learned to never directly ask a man about feelings.

  “Tim and Stanley were ecstatic, but I ripped apart eight designs of the employees. They wanted me to go back to hell, where they think I live when I’m not in the office.”

  Alix laughed. “Wouldn’t they be shocked to hear what a nice man you really are?” she said, then took a breath to get up her courage. “Miss me?”

  “Ferociously. I showed three of your hand sketches to one of the morons Tim hired. The kid now hates you.”

  “Really?!” Alix said with so much enthusiasm that Jared laughed.

  “Yes, really. You know, you should invite Dr. Huntley of the NHS over and ask him to find out what he can about that guy Kendricks. Besides, Huntley probably misses Aunt Addy’s tea parties. And he’s great friends with your mother, so if you talk about her, no doubt he’ll do whatever you want him to. Just be sure you don’t let him near the attic. Those historians can be kleptos if you give them a chance. If it’s old, they want to put it under glass and charge admission to see it.”

  “Gladly,” Alix said, laughing.

  “I have to go. Think you can find me a name and address of who to see in Warbrooke?”

  “Sure.”

  “I have to go now but I’ll call you about nine and we can talk about sex.”

  “Great idea!” she said with enthusiasm and they hung up.

  Alix tossed her phone on the bed and went to stand in front of the portrait of Captain Caleb. “Did you hear that? The Great Jared Montgomery showed my sketches to an employee! I am in heaven!” She danced around a bit, then pulled out her sketchbook. She had an idea for the guesthouse and she wanted to get it down before it faded.

  A few days later, the permits for the North Shore chapel came through so Alix’s father, with contractor Twig Perkins and his men, broke ground. From the first day Ken had forbidden Alix to help. “You have enough to do for Izzy,” he’d said. “Let me do this.”

  She knew he meant to make the building as a gift, but still, she wanted to stay the day of the ground breaking. What would they find in the ruins of the old house? Bones?

  There was nothing. Some charred timbers, but nothing else. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. So far, they’d found out nothing that could be used in solving the mystery about Valentina.

  Alix knew she should go to the attic and start her research, but something inside her said, Not yet. Besides, Jared kept discouraging her from delving into it. “Just stay on the Net and wait until I get back and we’ll go through all of it together,” he’d said. It was too enticing a suggestion for her to turn down.

  When Ken heard from Alix that Jared was driving north into what he called “antiques country,” he immediately called him. Alix had to conceal her laughter when she heard her father tell Jared what he was to buy somewhere between Vermont and Maine. “A stained-glass window,” Ken said. “And I don’t want one of those cheap, modern ones with heavy lead and big sheets of glass. Get something old and well made. Nothing later than about 1910. After the war, all that craftsmanship and attention to detail fell apart.”

  What was funny was that he was talking to a man considered to be one of the greatest … etc. But Ken treated Jared like a fourteen-year-old kid who knew more about hot-wiring cars than how to choose a stained-glass window.

  “Did you write down the dimensions?” Ken asked. “Good! Just don’t lose your phone. When you get to Maine ask someone where you can get antiques of quality.” Ken listened. “Yeah, yeah, architectural salvage will be fine. What? Oh, yeah, she’s right here.” Ken handed the phone to his daughter. “He wants to talk to you.”

  “Your father!” Jared said in exasperation and she understood. “Heard from your mom?”

  “No. You thought she’d show up here right away.”

  “The only reason she hasn’t is because I called her and said I was hot on the trail of Aunt Addy’s journals. But I added that if Victoria showed up on Nantucket she’d so dazzle my informant that I’d lose my contact.”

  “And you made all that up on your own?”

  “I did,” he said.

  “Don’t tell Mom you’re so good at lying or she’ll want you to plot her next novel. I bet she loved hearing that she’d dazzle someone,” Alix said.

  “I think she took it as her due. She certainly wasn’t surprised by the accolade,” Jared said. “By the way, if your dad doesn’t like what I buy he can damned well shove it.”

  “I’ll give him your message.”

  Jared lowered his voice. “You tell him I said that and I’ll tell your mother you have the journals.”

  “You are cruel,” Alix said. “Really cruel.”

  She invited Dr. Frederick Huntley to tea on Sunday afternoon. Alix was surprised at how much she remembered about Aunt Addy’s tea parties. She knew where the good set of Herend china was hidden. Getting on her hands and knees, she rummaged far back inside a cabinet to pull out the beautiful green and white teapot, the sugar and creamer, and two cups and saucers.

  Toby helped Alix make petit fours, even putting the yellow rosebuds on top. They made little sandwiches with the crusts removed and filled them with thinly sliced cucumbers. And Lexie entertained them with more stories of Roger Plymouth’s escapades.

  When Dr. Huntley arrived, Toby and Lexie slipped out the back, and Alix opened the front door.

  Alix’s first thought when she saw him was that he was a very unhappy man. He stood with his shoulders hunched a bit forward, and his eyes tended to dip down at the outside corners.

  It took only minutes for Alix to ask for his help in finding out about John Kendricks. He wrote down the name and dates, said he’d look into it, then sat there as though waiting to hear what else she needed.

  “Won’t you have some tea?” Alix asked as she began to pour. “My mother speaks so highly of you.” It was a flat-out lie but she thought that in this case it was allowed.

  Dr. Huntley gave a bit of a smile and Alix thought the man might be younger than he seemed.

  He stayed for over an hour. They drank two pots of tea, ate all the food, and Alix got to hear a lot about the charm of her mother, and how Dr. Huntley and his wife had so enjoyed the company of her and Adelaide.

  “They were such interesting women,” he said. “There was Victoria’s extensive travel to research her wonderful novels, and Addy knew everything about the island. Her details were so vivid it sometimes seemed as though she’d actually known the people who lived in this lovely old house centuries ago.”

  Captain Caleb’s ghost probably told her everything, Alix thought but didn’t say. As for her mother! Travel indeed. She was more of an armchair explorer. Alix now knew that the descriptions of foreign places that ran through her mother’s books were from the journals of women who had actually been there. Her mother certainly wasn’t going to go traipsing across some remote South Sea island trying to find where some awful event had happened so she could describe it. Alix used to think she made it all up. Now she knew that she just transposed it.

  Dr. Huntley remembered when Alix was a child and spoke of how she’d built towers out of museum-quality artifacts. “When I got home, my wife had to revive me with a shot of brandy.”

  “You’ll have to bring her with you the next time,” Alix said.

  It had taken an hour to get the sad look from the man’s face, but in an instant it was back.

  Quickly, and in a wa
y that sounded rehearsed, as though he couldn’t bear the pain of actually telling it, he said that his wife had died two years before. He had been diagnosed with cancer and while she’d been with him throughout his treatment, her own illness had been neglected.

  “By the time I was in remission, it was too late for her.” When he looked back at Alix, the grief in his eyes was horrible to see. “Well, now,” he said as he stood up, “you’re young and you have your life ahead of you, and I mustn’t keep you any longer.”

  Alix was glad that she’d never experienced anything like what this man had. She stood up and put her hand on his forearm. “I very much wish I could have met your wife.”

  “She would have liked you. She adored Victoria, so alive and energetic and always looking ahead. And Victoria never stopped talking about her wonderful daughter.”

  “Did she?” Alix asked, surprised.

  “She said it was one of the hardships of her life that you always chose to spend the time she was on Nantucket with your father.” He gave her a chastising look. “You should have visited us at least once.”

  Alix somehow managed to keep her smile even as she vowed to give her mother a piece of her mind—not that it would do any good, but it might make Alix feel better.

  On Monday, Ken took the fast ferry to Hyannis to greet the truck the superefficient Stanley was escorting to the port. He’d outdone himself in so quickly getting together all the building materials.

  “Give me some men and a fleet of pickups and in two days I could assemble a cathedral,” Stanley had told Ken, who reported the brag back to Alix. When she twisted it around that Stanley was proof of how good Jared was at hiring people, Ken was glad the phone hid his eye rolling.

  He bought extra tools in Hyannis and, like all Nantucketers, he went to the local wholesale warehouse and loaded up on household supplies. The truck drivers, who weren’t local, were shocked at the sheer number of things, like giant packages of paper towels, they were expected to jam between the lumber and nails. When they asked what was going on, the ferrymen looked at them like they were crazy. “They live on Nantucket” was the answer for every question, as though that explained it all—and to an islander, it did.