Sure she sometimes wondered what it would be like to work somewhere bigger, what it would be like to only have to worry about her own show, not the advertisers, the schedule, vacation cover, and cleaning the washrooms. But that was normal, right? And sure, sometimes she wondered whether she could make something bigger than the few corporate videos she had shot for a few of Marietta’s businesses to put on their websites. She wondered if she could make something that would make a difference. The kind of documentary that had attracted her to her media degree in the first place.
But no one could live their lives on what if and staring over at the lush green grass on the other side. She had a good job, lots of creative freedom, a wonderful home, and a place in the heart of the community she adored. And if the white picket fence was still a long way away well, she was only twenty-five. There was plenty of time to meet someone and settle down. All the time in the world.
“Morning,” she said as cheerfully as she could, not wanting either of her great-aunts to notice or comment on her bad mood. She headed straight for the coffee pot only to skid to a halt as she noticed the long jeans-clad legs and lean torso leaning against the counter. “Why aren’t you at work?”
“Morning to you too,” Zac said cheerfully and Lacey clamped her mouth together to stop a snarl. How could he look so refreshed? Like he’d never had a bad night’s sleep in his life. She eyed him resentfully as she sidled past and grabbed the coffee pot.
“You’re usually at work at this time, that’s what I meant.” Her gaze dropped to his jeans. “And you’re not usually so casual. It is Monday isn’t it?” Maybe she’d dreamt everything. No failed pies, no almost kisses in the snow, no heart-to-hearts to leave her questioning everything that had seemed so simple before Zac arrived in Marietta. She reached out for a cup and a twinge in her side confirmed that yesterday had happened. She only had a couple of bruises, thankfully, but they were making themselves felt.
“I need to spend today on my firm. Some admin tasks, a few tenders to check, that kind of thing, so I’m working from home.”
Home. Such an easy word and yet a word that meant so much. “Oh. Great.” She didn’t know what else to say, where to look, so she pulled her phone out of her pocket and began to scroll through her messages. As she did so a reminder popped up and she squinted at it. “Hoffmann tour. What does that mean?”
“Didn’t you promise to go over to the Summer House and do a marketing video for the realtors?” Aunt Priscilla reminded her as she bustled out of the pantry, her mass of chestnut hair as yet unbrushed and a startling contrast to her bright red Cherry Ripe sweatshirt.
“Did I? Oh, darn it. I did. Was that this morning? I completely forgot. All this Bake-Off stuff put it right out of my head.”
“You can’t cancel, Lacey; Mrs. Hoffmann is counting on you. It’s a big enough wrench for her to sell the house in the first place. We should try and make it as easy for her as possible.”
“No, I’m not going to cancel.” Lacey frowned as she pulled up her schedule and squinted at it. “I’m okay for this morning, I just need to make a couple of calls and let them know I won’t be at the radio station until after lunch. The only thing is I meant to organize for one of the interns from the high school to come with me. It’s easier with two when I need to rearrange the light or sort out backdrops. But I completely forgot and it’s too late now. Never mind, I’ll cope.”
“How long is it going to take? Maybe I can help you,” her aunt suggested.
“A couple of hours but I won’t be able to go there until ten. Mrs. Hoffmann doesn’t receive visitors before then. At least this gives me a chance to spend a couple of hours on my Bake-Off footage this morning.”
“Not until ten? In that case it won’t work. I’m sorry, dear, but your Aunt Patty and I are working on the Browns’ wedding cake today and I can’t get started that late.”
“No worries, I appreciate the offer.”
“Why don’t I help?”
Lacey swiveled and fixed Zac with a glare. “I thought you had tenders to do.”
“I do,” he said mildly. “But my schedule’s my own. I don’t mind getting started now and working a little later if you need a hand.”
What she needed was some time away from Zac Malone. Lacey opened her mouth, a polite refusal on her lips, when Aunt Priscilla forestalled her. “How wonderful. That’s perfect, isn’t it, darling? Thank you, Zac.”
Lacey’s mouth snapped shut.
“No worries,” Zac said. “Call me when you’re ready, Lacey. Thanks for breakfast, Mrs. Hathaway.”
“Aunt Priscilla to you, young man.”
He strode to the kitchen door before turning and fixing Aunt Priscilla with one of his most devastating smiles. “I could never be so irreverent. I’ll see you all later. Whenever you’re ready, Lacey.”
She nodded. So much for keeping her distance from Zac. Unless… Lacey darted a suspicious glance at her great-aunt. Aunt Priscilla looked innocent enough as she flipped through a cookbook, humming to herself as she did so, but there was telltale tilt to her mouth and a self-satisfied set to the plump shoulders. “You do know he’s going to leave in a few weeks.”
“What, dear?”
That innocent voice wasn’t fooling Lacey, not for one moment. “Zac—he’s heading back to San Francisco as soon as this contract is done and there’s no reason for him to come back to Marietta. Just don’t get too attached.” But Lacey didn’t know if her warning was aimed at her great-aunt—or at herself. Either way she was pretty sure it was falling on deaf ears.
Chapter Twelve
Summer House was also on Bramble Lane, just a few houses along from Crooked Corner. It was a huge, imposing Victorian mansion—rounded, witches’ hat-topped towers on both sides giving it the appearance of a medieval castle. Although Mrs. Hoffmann had a veritable army of gardeners, handymen, and maids to help her keep the house up it still felt like a place that had seen better days.
“Apparently Mrs. Hoffmann’s father used to hold amazing garden parties,” Lacey told Zac as they climbed the steps to the front door. “There are pictures in the Marietta archives of croquet matches on the lawn and children playing hide-and-seek. It’s funny to think of all the people who have climbed these steps, long since dead and forgotten. When they were dancing the Charleston and drinking cocktails under the eyes of the prohibitionists they must have felt invincible, that life and youth would always be theirs, and now they’re nothing but forgotten photos in albums no one looks at anymore.”
He shot her an unreadable glance. “I’ve never thought about the world that way.”
“Really? I can’t help but think about the past, especially here on Bramble Lane. When this house was built women still wore crinolines—imagine! It’s seen two World Wars, flappers and flower children, horse-drawn carriages, and solar energy. Poor old thing.” She patted the porch balustrade affectionately. “No wonder it’s tired.”
“It’s always belonged to one family?”
Lacey nodded. “Mrs. Hoffmann’s grandfather built it at the end of the nineteenth century, her father inherited it, and then when he died it was passed to Mrs. Hoffmann. But her only son died in Vietnam and so there’s no one to inherit. It’s sad. Who’s going to buy a place like this?”
“It needs some work,” Zac said standing back and assessing the shingles on the roof. “It will probably end up as another B&B or bought by a developer and turned into condos.”
“Such an end of an era. I’d like to see garden parties on the lawns again. Croquet and iced lemonade and children running around. This is a house that needs a family.”
“A large family—it must have at least ten bedrooms.”
“Oh, at least,” Lacey agreed as she pressed the bell. It tolled solemnly and they waited for a short while until the front door swung open.
A middle-aged woman peered out at them. “Yes?”
“Hi.” Lacey held out her hand and smiled. “I’m Lacey Hathaway. I’m here to do the vi
deo, for the realtor?”
Her smile wasn’t returned. “Come on in.”
Lacey raised an eyebrow at Zac before accepting the grudging invitation. The double doors opened into a large octagonal room, a piano on one side and a magnificent sweeping staircase on the other. Two uncomfortable-looking formal chairs were positioned around a polished wrought-iron fireplace and a highly polished round table in the middle of the room held a staggeringly ugly vase filled with dried flowers. The woman held her hand out for their coats. “I expect you’ll want to see Mrs. Hoffmann before you go traipsing through the house?
“Yes, please. If she’s up to it.”
“It’s a shame that’s what it is. Chasing an old lady out of her home,” the woman grumbled as she ushered them into a sunny room directly off the hall. Books lined two walls, a fire danced in the grate, and three couches surrounded a low square coffee table. Lucia Hoffmann lay on one sofa, a delicate lace blanket over her knees. Like her house she was a relic from another era but despite her evident age and frailty her gray eyes were intelligent and keen.
“Hello, Lacey, very kind of you to help me with this.”
“It’s my pleasure, Mrs. Hoffmann. This is Zac Malone. He’s going to give me a hand today, if that’s okay.”
“Absolutely. Carola, can you bring my guests some tea? Coffee?”
“Tea would be lovely,” Lacey said and Zac agreed. Carola tossed her head and stomped back out to the hallway. Mrs. Hoffmann sighed as she watched her go.
“Poor Carola. She thinks I’m being driven out of my home. But it’s been too much for me for many, many years. I just wasn’t ready to leave my ghosts behind.” Lacey followed her gaze as it traveled over the photographs and portraits dotted on every surface and spare bit of wall until it rested on a large portrait of a handsome man in his late fifties. The man was smiling but there was a lurking sadness in his eyes that drew the viewer in.
“I’m sure your ghosts will travel with you,” Zac said with such gentleness Lacey felt tears start in her eyes. She swallowed hurriedly. She would be no use to anyone if she allowed herself to get emotional about a house!
But this was more than a house. Four generations of Mrs. Hoffmann’s family had loved, quarreled, eaten, played, made love under this roof and now they were all gone except for the pale, silver-haired old lady.
“What do you need from me, Lacey?” Mrs. Hoffmann asked after tea and little sugar cookies had been served. “Would you like me to tell you a little about the house and the family who lived here or would you rather just wander round alone and film whatever you need? I don’t mind either way.”
“The realtors know what a special house this is,” Lacey said thoughtfully. “That’s why they wanted me to produce a proper film for their website, not the usual quick walk-through filmed on someone’s phone. If you did want to talk to me about your family, about the people who lived here, I could use it as a soundtrack to the tour and that would certainly add some character to the video, but only if you’re up to it.”
“I’m always up for reliving my memories. I hate to think that when I leave this house my family will be forgotten.”
Lacey took her camera out of her bag and switched it on. “Your family will never be forgotten; they’re at the very heart of Marietta. If it’s okay with you, Mrs. Hoffmann, I’ll ask you some questions and film while you answer. I’ll show you the video when it’s done and anything you don’t like will be edited out; but whoever buys this house will be buying a piece of Marietta history and I think we should make that as clear as the size of the rooms and number of baths, don’t you?”
“Let me sit up straight then. I don’t want to be filmed lying down—most undignified.” The older lady folded the blanket and laid it to one side, slowly moving her legs down off the couch, smoothing her skirt until she sat up straight-backed and proud, her hands clasped in her lap.
Lacey honed the camera in on her. “Your grandfather was one of the earliest settlers here wasn’t he?”
Mrs. Hoffmann smiled. “He was. He was born in New York and, like many Americans, Ted Bartlett headed West looking for a chance to make his mark. Even though Marietta was nothing but a two-horse town when he got here, he saw which way the wind was going. The copper mining bubble was bursting by then and ranching beginning to draw people in. He figured that cattle needed feed and he invested the money he’d saved working on the railroads in a mill. When that did well he built a paper mill to take advantage of all the felling that was going on and he invested in transportation too. Within five years he was one of the richest men in town. Of course, rumor has it he had his fingers in many pies, legal or not. I couldn’t possibly comment on that!”
“Did he marry a local girl?” Lacey panned the camera over to the series of black and white photographs on the grand sideboard, focusing on the very oldest, a suited, bearded man standing beside his seated wife, a fat baby, all curls and ribbons, perched on her knee.
“He did. My grandmother was a homesteader’s daughter, as canny and hardworking as her husband and much more thrifty—my father told me, she always said a house the size of Summer House was too prideful for normal folk but my grandfather said a man’s home was his castle and a castle was what they would have! I never knew her; she died of a broken heart they say after her two youngest sons went over to France in 1917. Neither of them ever came back.”
Lacey slowly moved the camera over to the next photo: two smiling, boyish men in uniform, arms around each other’s shoulders, looking more as if they were headed on a great adventure than as if they were heading off to war. “How terrible. Your poor father, losing both his brothers.”
“He felt so guilty. He was exempted. He was running the mills by then and they were temporarily turned over to war use. He always said he should have gone and kept an eye on his brothers. They were only eighteen and nineteen when they enlisted. Just boys. I guess that’s why I feel so sad about getting so old, about being the last of the line, that there’s no one who will remember Samuel and Joshua Bartlett. My father used to tell me bedtime stories about their childhood. They were wild boys, wild and spirited and good-hearted.”
“When we’re done here today,” Lacey said, “let’s make a date and I will come back and record everything you can remember of those stories. I’ll send the recording to an oral library. They won’t be forgotten, I promise.” She felt Zac’s gaze, intent on her as she spoke, an unspoken approval that warmed her through.
“I’d like that; thank you, dear.”
“So your father inherited the house and the mills?”
“He did. My grandfather died not long after I was born and I was raised right here in Summer House. My father met my mother when he went back East for a short while. She was Boston born and used to society ways. She agreed to live in Marietta if she could raise the children the way she wanted and my father agreed; but unfortunately for them there was only one child and I was a real trial when I was young. Stubborn and wild, just like my uncles! My mother would hold garden parties and other entertainments and I’d usually have a rip in my skirt, grass stains on my stockings, and my hair would be wild. Oh, how she despaired. Especially when I got older. She and my father wanted me to settle down and marry a nice young man of their choosing who would take over the mills.”
“And did you?”
“What do you think?” Mrs. Hoffmann smiled and in her grin it was easy to see the wild young girl she had once been. “I insisted on college first and then just after I graduated the United States entered the Second World War. I had turned twenty-one and so I took my fancy degree from a fancy college and enlisted in the Women’s Auxiliary Corps. Oh, my parents were mad. Looking back I realize they were just worried. I know how it feels, now, to have your only child sent overseas and not knowing if you’ll ever see them again, but at twenty-one and with the prospect of traveling overseas I was too excited to care.”
“But you came back to Marietta and to Summer House after the war ended?”
“Eventually.” Her voice softened. “I met Karl in Berlin. I was a driver for a US general and he was our interpreter. He hadn’t lived in Germany for ten years. He’d been sent to live with his English aunt after his brother was arrested for anti Nazi activity.”
She stared into the distance. “Karl never did find out what happened to him although he never stopped looking, right until he died. It was shocking for him, seeing what had happened to his country, to his people. He was anti Nazi, not anti German. Still, when I came home engaged to a Karl Hoffmann, a man who, despite ten years in England, still had a German accent, it was not well received. My father threatened to disinherit me, my mother took to her bed, and more than one neighbor refused to acknowledge me. Once someone threw a stone at me as I walked down the road.”
“Here in Marietta?”
“Oh yes. People had lost sons—my own uncles had been killed in the last war so I understood the sentiment. But how could we recover from such devastation without love and forgiveness? I told my parents I could settle in London, or Germany, or New York or here in Marietta but wherever I settled it would be with Karl and if it was to be in Marietta they had to accept him. They agreed to meet him, traveling to New York when he arrived in the States. After the first night my father gave us his blessing—and Karl ran Bartlett Mills until we finally sold up twenty years ago.”
“A happy ending.”
“We were very happy, mostly. We lost our way a little in the early seventies after our son died. We named him Samuel Joshua after his great uncles. Ironic isn’t it, that he also died fighting on foreign soil?”
Lacey panned to the final photo, another smiling young man in military uniform, hair short in a regulation cut. He looked so young. Too young. “I can’t imagine how you felt.”
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