Dan frowned. “I thought that was already occupied.”
“The previous guests had a family emergency and canceled the remainder of their stay. Miss Valentine just happened to call shortly after the room was vacated.”
“Great. This way, please.” Dan hoisted the bag—which was heavier than it appeared, if that were possible—and gestured for “Miss Valentine” to follow him. As they crossed the lobby to the wide stairwell, in an effort to be cordial, he said, “So you’re a writer.” That much of the conversation he’d heard.
“Yes.” She matched him stride for stride, as if she couldn’t get to her room fast enough and had no desire for conversation.
“What do you write?” He wrestled the heavy suitcase up to the landing.
“Nonfiction.” While she climbed the steps, she made a show of looking through her bag.
“History? Biography?” He went right to the top of the stairs, and she followed.
“Self-help.”
“Oh? In what area?” No wonder she’d had trouble with her bag. Damn, but it really did weigh a ton.
“Relationships.” Her eyes remained focused straight ahead.
“How many books have you written?”
“Five.”
“Feels like you brought them all with you,” he muttered.
“Excuse me?” Behind him, her footsteps appeared to pause.
“Your bag feels like it’s filled with bricks.” They’d turned onto a short stretch of hallway, and at the last room, he paused and opened the door, which he held aside for her to enter.
“Might not have been as bad if we’d taken the elevator,” she replied coolly.
“Guess the inn’s architect forgot to pencil one in.” He could have mentioned there was a freight elevator that was added in the 1960s, but it wasn’t for guests, so he didn’t bother. “Okay, so. We call this room Captain Tom’s suite because that’s him, hanging over the fireplace,” Dan recited. He set the suitcase down behind a small sofa that faced a brick fireplace and nodded at the portrait over the mantel. “He was a sea captain, lived here at the inn. Rumored to have spied for the Union during the Civil War. Smuggled slaves up north in his spare time. Spent his last days here.”
She paused partway into the room to glance at the painting. “Handsome devil.” She dropped her shoulder bag on the sofa and removed her large, round dark glasses.
“So it’s been said.” Dan stood with his hands on his hips, watching her. Her eyes, up until now hidden, were the truest electric-frosty-blue he’d ever seen. Well worth a double take. If his phone hadn’t started buzzing—Lucy no doubt texting him to Hurry up, dammit!—he would have taken that second look. “Some think he’s still around. We’ve had reports of cold spots from time to time.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts, but I suppose that’s a good marketing ploy.”
“The inn doesn’t need marketing ploys to keep the rooms filled.” There was that insistent buzz again. “Where would you like your bag? That’s the bedroom through there, bath is the second door. And there’s a balcony off to—”
“Thanks,” she interrupted. “I think I can take it from here and find my way around.”
“Right. If you do need anything, the front desk is zero-one on the phone, room service is zero-four.” Buzz. Buzz.
“Got it.” She paused at the sofa and reached for her bag and took out her wallet. She reached around him to open the door leading out of the suite, making it clear that he was being dismissed. Once he was in the hallway, she held out manicured fingers holding a folded bill. “Here you go. Thanks,” she said before closing the door in his face.
His phone buzzed again, and he pulled it from his pocket. “What, Lucy? You’re being a pain. I know, but for some reason Mom got a sudden bug about me playing bellhop and . . . Oh, never mind. I’m on my way.”
He absently stuck the bill in his pants pocket and put the pretty blond writer with the extraordinary eyes out of his head. Right now he had a fire to put out.
JAMIE CLOSED THE door, hoping that the rest of the staff lived up to the Inn’s reputation of “gracious and accommodating” better than the bellhop. When was the last time she’d had a bellhop comment on the weight of her luggage? This was the first. The fact that he’d been really good-looking didn’t make up for his lack of manners.
She opened the French doors to the balcony, stepped outside, and took her first long, deep breath of the Chesapeake. Lovely, she thought as she exhaled. Just what she needed. A nice change of scenery and a welcome change of pace after the past few emotional months. Two days ago, she’d driven from Caryville to her Princeton home, the car loaded with some of the precious things from her family home that she couldn’t bear to leave behind, like her grandmother’s wedding china and books from her father’s study. She’d given herself a full day to put things away before packing for a month away.
Jamie had deliberated long and hard before making up her mind to take even the first step on this journey, but in the end, she had sent her request to the orphans’ court for a copy of her adoption file. Part of her felt painfully disloyal to the people who’d loved and raised her; she couldn’t help but wonder what her parents would think if they knew. On the other hand, if she’d been told the truth years ago, the search she was embarking on might have been unnecessary. Still, the conflict—the feeling that she was betraying Lainey by searching for her birth mother—was alive and well within her. Every night since making her decision had been a sleepless one.
From her conversation with Curtis Enright, she knew that the records were sealed, but she wanted to follow protocol. The court’s response—that no signed authorization existed—had been received in under the allotted thirty days. Before she lost her nerve, Jamie had immediately followed up with the request that the record be unsealed. Though Jamie suspected that her birth mother might decline, there was always the chance that she would—
Would what? Jamie had asked herself that same question a thousand times since discovering she’d been adopted.
Over the past several weeks, Jamie had spent hours searching websites devoted to helping adoptees reunite with one or both of their birth parents. On one of the sites, there was a page where either birth parents or adoptees could post birthday messages anonymously. Jamie had skimmed the postings much as she had skimmed over other websites, but almost as if drawn directly to one particular post, her eyes had settled on the greeting from “Maryland Mommy” posted on October 12 of the previous year: Wishing my birthday girl only happiness and joy, wherever you are. Always.
A search for Maryland Mommy found the same message repeated every year since the website was founded.
Of course, there could be dozens of Maryland mommies who posted birthday greetings to their lost children on this same website, children who were born on the same day as she. And surely Jamie’s birth mother wasn’t the only woman in Maryland whose October 12 baby had been adopted. There was absolutely no reason to think that the messages were intended for her, but something drew Jamie back to the site over and over again.
She knew that her birth mother had never made any attempt to find her (She’s never in all these years mentioned you at all). But maybe somewhere deep inside, the woman remembered the baby born on October 12, whom she’d allowed to be placed in the hands of strangers thirty-six years ago. Maybe if she knew Jamie was looking for her . . .
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Regardless of whether her search ended in a dead end or a reunion, once she’d decided to contact the state, Jamie made up her mind. She was committed to pursuing the truth wherever it might lead.
In the interim, she’d resumed her book tour, but she’d felt like a total fraud for the past week, talking about how important truth was in establishing solid relationships, how nothing of lasting value could be built without total honesty. There were times when she could barely respond to readers who
came to book signings, eager to tell her how important her books had been in their lives. From city to city, talk show to talk show, she’d felt as if she were playing a role. All the joy she’d once experienced when meeting readers and talking about her books was gone. It had been increasingly difficult to get through the tour, but it was at a library discussion in Maine—her last stop of the tour—that she realized she couldn’t pretend any longer. Once the tour was over, she promised herself, she’d find the truth, no matter how long it took or what she might find at the end of her search. The truth, as The X-Files promised, was out there.
The irony that she might be led to that truth by the lie that had been her life was not lost on her.
When the week was over, Jamie reminded both her agent and her publisher that she was taking time off. She had already studied the website for St. Dennis, and after looking over the selection of places to stay, decided on the Inn at Sinclair’s Point. The reviews and the photographs showed a charming, sprawling historical building with its own dining facilities as well as room service, and when she called to ask about available suites, she found that a two-room suite with a fireplace and a waterfront balcony had just become available. She booked it for a month, promising herself that if she were no closer to finding answers in that time, she’d leave St. Dennis and not look back.
But now that she was here, the enormity of what she was undertaking settled in. Jamie had to face the reality that if she succeeded, she’d learn the identity of the woman who gave birth to her. If she failed, she’d be no more in the dark than she already was. Either way, her life would never be the same.
Jamie leaned on the railing and watched a group of teenagers heading to the tennis courts, rackets over their shoulders or swinging from one hand, chatting and laughing. She’d been young and carefree like that once, when summers seemed made for friendships and boyfriends and days in the sun. But that was a long time ago, back in the days when she knew who she was, when it never occurred to her to question her place in the world or to whom she belonged. Back in the days when she was Herb and Lainey Valentine’s daughter.
On her way out of Caryville, she’d stopped at the cemetery where her parents and many members of her mother’s family had been laid to rest. She’d carried the last of her mother’s prized peonies wrapped with the honeysuckle vines her father had favored, and sat in the space between the two graves, the makeshift bouquet in her hands.
“I hope you understand,” she’d said softly. “I love you both more than anything, and I don’t want you ever to doubt that. But now that the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, I have to chase it. I need to do this for myself. I need to know. I don’t know what I’ll find—if anything—but I need to look.” Leaving the flowers on the ground, she’d blown them a kiss and whispered, “Wish me luck.”
She’d left Caryville at peace with her parents and herself. Aunt Sis was a different story. Jamie had taken her out to dinner to tell her she’d be vacationing in St. Dennis.
“Oh, honey,” Sis had said, sighing. “Do you think that’s wise? What if you can’t find her?”
“Then I go home, no worse off than I am now, and I go back to the business of writing my book. At least I’ll know I made the effort.”
“But what if you do find her? What if she’s . . .” Sis had lowered her voice. “You know, not a nice person. Or in prison for selling drugs or something?”
“Being forced to give up your baby when you’re sixteen years old could do all sorts of things to a young girl’s mind, so I suppose anything is possible. But we’re going to take the high road here, Aunt Sis, and we’re going to assume that she’s an upstanding citizen and a perfectly nice person. Until proven otherwise, anyway.”
“I just don’t know how Lainey and Herb would feel about all this. Don’t you worry they might be upset that you’re tracking this person down?”
“ ‘This person’ gave birth to me. I’m pretty sure that if I could have more than a one-sided conversation with them, they’d understand.”
“Well, it sounds like you’ve made up your mind,” Sis had said, obviously still uneasy with Jamie’s decision.
“I have, Aunt Sis. And it’s going to be fine.” Jamie had hugged Sis to reassure her. “I promise I’ll keep in touch and will let you know what, if anything, I find.”
The trip to St. Dennis now a reality, Jamie had arrived at her destination exhausted. Leaving the balcony doors open, she went into the bedroom, slipped off her shoes, and lay across the quilt. Pulling a pillow under her head, she hoped that her parents, in whatever dimension they might be, would understand and approve of her journey. She fell asleep wondering where she might have been at that very moment had she never found the envelope hidden in her father’s desk, and whether or not ignorance, in the long run, truly was bliss.
IT WAS LATE afternoon when Jamie awoke, shadows from the large pines outside her window blocking the afternoon sun. Jamie stretched, realized where she was, and checked her phone for the time. Her stomach reminded her that she’d slept through lunch and was only an hour or so away from a very early dinner. She’d planned on making her first foray into the center of town first thing to get a preliminary lay of the land. If she hurried, she could still grab a late lunch on Charles Street at one of the restaurants touted by the town’s website and still have lots of daylight left to explore the town.
She splashed water on her face, refreshed her makeup and her ponytail, then changed into black capris and a sleeveless black-and-white button-down shirt. She grabbed her bag on the way out of the room and closed the door softly behind her. She smiled at the young family she passed in the hall and made her way down the wide stairway; the lobby was busy with people coming and going. She headed through the back doors and into the parking lot. Her car was exactly where the valet had told her he’d left it. She started the ignition, waited for a trio of young teen boys to pass, then headed for the exit and the main street.
The only stoplight on Charles Street was smack in the center of town. Jamie had studied the online maps of St. Dennis and knew where the cross streets were and where to find each of the shops she’d read about. On the corner of Charles Street and Kelly’s Point Road was the flower shop, Petals and Posies, where red and purple and pink flowers overflowed the pots that neatly lined the steps. Next door was Cuppachino, the coffee shop that bragged it served the best coffee on the Eastern Shore. Next came Lola’s Café—“fine dining with a local touch”—declared an absolute must by a number of restaurant reviewers.
Directly across the street was Bling, a high-end women’s clothing and accessory shop that boasted a string of five-star reviews on their website and had a gloriously decorated storefront window. It was nestled between Book ’Em—she’d definitely have to check out the bookstore—and Sips, a small storefront that served take-out beverages. The bookstore was followed by an antique shop and a small supermarket. The main shopping district appeared to end with a bakery—Cupcake—the sign for which was, aptly, a large pink-frosted cupcake.
The streetscape was all Jamie expected, with large planters filled with flowers lining the sidewalks on either side, and window boxes on every building overflowing with vinca vines and bright geraniums. People strolled along in small groups and in couples, many of them tourists, she guessed, judging from the cameras hanging around their necks. The total effect was utterly charming, the perfect picture of upscale summer leisure and small-bay-town chic. Jamie couldn’t wait to see more.
She drove slowly up one street and down the next, trying to get a feel for the town. The historic homes—from white clapboard colonials to fancier Victorians—were marked with black lawn signs and brass numbers stating the year they were built. Scattered here and there were a few bungalows, and she discovered a section of new townhouses with views of the river. All in all, St. Dennis was a pretty place, exactly as its website had promised. There were worst places her quest could have taken her.
>
She followed River Road to its end, past Blossoms, the breakfast-and-lunch spot that had closed at two, and past the new film production facilities owned and operated by Dallas MacGregor, the A-list movie star who’d moved to St. Dennis to marry her high school sweetheart and establish her own studio. The town’s website proudly noted that the first feature film would be ready for distribution by the end of the year, and that the studio—Lavender Lady Productions—had just bought the rights to another book and would be naming the cast soon.
Jamie sighed. She’d been a fan of Dallas’s forever and knew that her roots went deep into St. Dennis’s past. She amused herself momentarily by thinking how cool it would be if she and Dallas turned out to be related. Still smiling at the thought, she drove to the end of River Road, past huge summer cottages and smaller, more humble residences.
At the corner of Old St. Mary’s Church Road, she followed the signs for the historical district. Though she’d initially planned on just a drive around town today and a stop for a bite to eat, she parked her car on a side street and walked to the square, where the tiny brick church—the original St. Mary’s Church—still stood. The front door was locked, but a sign on the lawn noted that the building had served the earliest settlers as their house of worship, and that visiting hours were on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Had Jamie’s St. Dennis family been among those early settlers? she wondered. If they had, how might she find out?
With her phone, she snapped a picture of the church and made a mental note to stop back later in the week, when she could go inside.
Halfway down the block was the white clapboard house where the St. Dennis Historical Society made its home. It, too, was locked but offered the same visiting hours as the church. Across the street stood the sprawling brick library. It had obviously been added on to time and again. While not reflecting the historic nature of the neighborhood, it wasn’t totally without charm, surrounded by a courtyard and tall trees. Jamie snapped a few photos and looked around to get her bearings.
That Chesapeake Summer (Chesapeake Diaries Book 9) Page 6