by Marta Perry
Grams came to hug her, her cheek soft against Caro’s. “He loved you, you know. You’d sit on his lap and listen to his stories until you fell asleep in his arms.”
Her throat tightened. “Thank you, Grams.” For the memory, and for the sense of belonging. She wiped away a tear. “And thanks again for being so welcoming about Francine coming.”
“Well, of course it’s fine for your friend to come. She can have the blue bedroom. We don’t have any guests booked until the weekend.” Grams pulled the wooden stool over so that she could watch the enchilada-making. “Goodness, Caro, wouldn’t you know we’d welcome your friend?”
“I know nothing hampers your hospitality. I just thought it might be an imposition if you have other guests booked. Although I’m sure Francine will insist on paying.”
“She’ll do no such thing.” Grams’s response was prompt. “She’s your friend.”
Grams and Francine could battle that one out, she decided. They were both so strong-willed that she didn’t have a clue which one would win.
She transferred the enchiladas to one of Rachel’s ceramic baking pans, trying to concentrate on that instead of on the vague worry that had possessed her since hearing of Francine’s plans.
The thing that bothered her about the proposed visit didn’t have anything to do with Grams’s hospitality. It was more of a reluctance to see two such different parts of her life meeting. The truth was that she felt like a different person since she’d come back to Pennsylvania. With Francine here, who would she be?
She didn’t think she wanted to go back to who she’d been in Santa Fe—the woman who’d fallen in love with Tony and who’d also fallen for his lies. But she wasn’t sure she was ready to move forward, either.
“Are you all right, dear?” Grams touched her arm, her fingertips light as the wings of a butterfly. “You know I’ve been worrying about you. And praying for you, of course.”
Her throat tightened. “I know. I’m going to be all right.”
“Grieving takes time,” Grams said, her voice gentle. “You can’t rush it.”
Shame flooded her. She couldn’t keep doing this—couldn’t go on letting Grams imagine she was grieving for a beloved husband. She set the casserole dish in the oven, closed the door and turned to face her grandmother.
“It’s not what you think. The situation with Tony—” She stopped, because Rachel walked into the kitchen, the dog at her heels.
Rachel glanced from one to the other of them, obviously knowing she’d interrupted something. “Should I make some excuse none of us will believe and go away?”
“No. Don’t go. I want both of you to hear this.” They deserved to hear the truth. Caro took a breath, trying to frame the words she needed to speak. “I fell in love with Tony at first sight, I guess, enough in love to agree when he wanted to elope. But I didn’t know him very well.” That was a massive understatement.
Rachel came to lean on the table, as if wanting to be closer to her. “You found out you made a mistake.”
“That’s a nice way of putting it.” She tried to smile, but she couldn’t manage it. “It didn’t take long to find out that Tony lied constantly—about where he’d been, about his business dealings. He wiped out my savings and checking accounts. When I confronted him—” They didn’t need to know about all the hurtful words Tony had thrown at her. “He was furious. He left, and that was the night he died.”
“Oh, honey—”
She held out her hand, stopping Rachel’s instinctive embrace. There was more to be said before she could let herself accept comfort. “I never did find out what he was doing, but I think he might have been involved in gambling. The other day, when I went to Philadelphia…” She couldn’t watch their reactions. “I learned he was married before. Apparently he never got a divorce. So it looks as if our wedding wasn’t even legal.”
Silence for a moment. And then she felt Rachel’s arms go around her, strong and comforting, the way she had been when Caroline was eight and had broken her arm falling out of a tree. “Caro, I’m so sorry.”
She nodded, those weak tears spilling over again. Grams’s arms went around both of them, holding them tight.
“You cry all you want, Caro. You don’t have to be brave for us.”
Maybe that was what she needed to hear to give her strength. “I’m all right.” She pressed her cheek against Grams’s, and then hugged her sister. “I’ve cried enough over it. I just wanted you to understand that—” She stopped, not sure what she wanted to say.
“That some odd things have been happening since you got back,” Rachel finished for her.
Caroline drew back, shock running through her. “How did you know that? Did Zach tell you?”
“No, he didn’t say a word, but I’m not an idiot. I can see what’s right in front of me. If he’s helping you…well, he’s a good man.”
“We want to help you,” Grams said. “But we don’t want you to think we’re interfering.” Grams brushed her hair back from her face with a gentle touch. “We’re on your side, that’s all. We love you. Just remember that.”
She nodded, wiping tears away, and gave a watery laugh. “I’ll remember. I love you, too.”
She’d told them the worst of it. No one had blamed her or looked at her with that pitying expression that she dreaded. Only with love.
Caroline came down the stairs from the loft, still yawning, and squinted at the bright sunlight flooding through the living room windows. She crossed to the sofa, mindful of the papers she’d left spread across it and the coffee table.
She’d sat up far later than she’d intended, absorbed in the contents of the box Grams had given her. Those fragile papers, with their faded ink, shouldn’t be left where sunlight might touch them. She didn’t know much about preserving old documents, but common sense told her that.
Still, her fingers lingered as she started sorting them back into the box. Grandfather hadn’t, as far as she could tell, done anything more than put together whatever he’d found relating to the 1850s and ’60s. The papers weren’t grouped in any way, and she’d found the Civil War enlistment papers of one Christian Unger shoved in among a sheaf of household bills and letters.
The letters were what fascinated her. Most of the ones she’d found so far dated from the 1850s. Elizabeth Chapman Unger, Grandfather’s grandmother and the maker of her quilt, had come from Boston, Massachusetts. She seemed to have kept up a lively correspondence with her sister, Abigail, after she married and moved to Churchville. Judging by Abigail’s replies, Elizabeth had found plenty to say about her new surroundings and her husband’s family, apparently not all of it complimentary.
Caro smiled at one passage, where Abigail urged her sister to be tactful with her new mother-in-law. Human nature hadn’t changed very much in the past 150 years.
She laid the papers gently back into the box and put the lid on. There’d been no mention of the quilt in what she’d found so far. Maybe the best thing would be to sort out everything she could find that related to Elizabeth and then go through it chronologically. Grams had promised to continue looking for anything else that related to her. The old house held the accumulated belongings of at least ten generations of the Unger family, and finding any one thing could be a challenge.
Grams had also suggested that Emma Zook would be a good person to give advice about repairing the quilt. She had a long tradition of quilting, as most Amish women did, and she’d know how to handle it.
But that could come later. Right now she was starving, and Rachel had insisted she come to the house for breakfast this morning to taste a new frittata recipe. Over supper last night, as if by unspoken consent, they’d kept the conversation on quilts and food, not on Caro’s painful revelations.
She slid the box into the closet and headed out the door, careful to lock it behind her. Nothing had happened recently, but still, she didn’t intend to take any chances.
She paused, hand still on the knob, wondering at the turn
of phrase. Chances of what? Was she afraid that someone was trying to convince her that Tony was still alive? Or afraid that he was?
Tony wasn’t her husband. At some point over the past two days she’d accepted that. She didn’t have any obligation to him.
But she’d made the promises before God. She’d meant them, even if Tony had been lying the whole time. Her mind winced away from the memory of that ceremony. Tony, so tall and handsome in the dark suit he’d worn, seeming so solemn when he took his vows.
Had he been laughing inside, even then? She didn’t know, and the more she thought about it, the less sure she became that she could rely on anything she thought she knew about him.
Well, standing here obsessing about it wasn’t going to help. She started down the path that led around the corner of the barn. She was far better off to get on with things. She’d have breakfast, see if there was anything helpful she could do at the inn this morning.
This afternoon she’d work on the quilt and try to get a few more things ready for the next craft show. Once the moving company got around to bringing the rest of her belongings, she’d have a better choice of things to sell. There was an entire box of jewelry and some weaving that she’d left for the movers.
She ought to be working on jewelry instead of the quilt. Some simple pendants that she could price at under twenty dollars would be a good balance to the more expensive pieces. Plenty of people went looking for bargains, or what they thought were bargains, anyway, at craft shows.
The path led around the pond, past the gazebo toward the house. She glanced back at the barn and stopped. One of the double doors into the barn stood ajar a couple of inches.
Had she left it that way after that disturbing talk with Zach yesterday? Surely not. She was careful to lock things up, although there wasn’t much in the barn to attract a thief—just the quilt frame she’d set up and the table on which she’d laid the quilt to vacuum it. She’d packed the quilt up afterward to take to the Zook farm.
Coffee and frittata were waiting at the house. She sighed. It would worry her all through breakfast if she didn’t check now, just to be sure.
She cut across the lawn toward the barn doors, the damp grass soaking her sneakers in only a few steps. Well, that was foolish. She should have backtracked along the walk instead of trying to save time.
She went up the gravel ramp to the upper level of the barn, slowing as she reached the door. Silly, to be worried about it. She’d probably left it that way herself. Certainly she’d been cut up enough emotionally after betraying herself to Zach. Hardly surprising if she’d forgotten a little something like shutting the barn door.
But at some level she knew it wasn’t true. She’d closed the door and made sure it was latched, just as she always did.
She reached out, grasping the handle. Everything was perfectly still, except for the family of barn swallows who chirped under the eaves. If someone had been there, he or she wouldn’t hang around to be found. She shoved the door open and took a step inside.
Sunlight poured through the opening, casting a spotlight on the interior. Nearly empty, just as she’d left it.
Except that the table she’d been working on had been tipped over, and the quilting frame she’d brought down from the loft had been smashed to pieces.
Zach sat at the kitchen table at the inn, steam rising from the coffee mug Rachel had just set in front of him. By the looks of her, Caroline was the one who needed the coffee, but instead she was holding a cup of chamomile tea that her grandmother had forced on her.
Mrs. Unger and Rachel were hovering over Caroline, so he waited, letting them do all the fussing they needed to before he started in with more questions.
Come to think of it, their concern seemed a bit out of proportion to the cause. If so, that probably meant Caroline had finally told them about her husband. High time, too. They were capable of dealing with that trouble.
He’d sat in this kitchen before. The Hampton women seemed to be—well, not trouble in themselves, exactly. It was more as if they found trouble.
Or in Caroline’s case, brought it with her. He took a sip of the coffee, nearly scalding his tongue. Everything that had happened since she arrived had its roots in her life in Santa Fe—that seemed certain.
“You ought to have some breakfast.” Rachel gestured toward a casserole that sat on top of the stove, still bubbling from its time in the oven. “I’m sure we called you out before you had time to eat.”
“No, thanks. I had breakfast with Ruthie before she left for school. Now, about the damage—”
“It’s just a good thing Caro left the quilt in the house last night,” Mrs. Unger said. “I’d hate to think what they might have done to it.”
So she was assuming the unknown intruders were vandals. Most likely that was true, but he didn’t want to take anything for granted.
“This quilt—was it the one I saw you working on yesterday?”
Caroline nodded. Her face was a little pale. Natural enough, having vandalism strike so close to her.
She’d been getting the dust off it with a vacuum brush when he’d come in, he remembered. “Is it valuable?”
She looked up, seeming startled. “I don’t know. We hadn’t really looked into the value of it.”
“I gave the quilt to Caro because she loved it,” Mrs. Unger said. “No one is thinking about selling it, so its value is immaterial.”
“Not to someone who planned on stealing it,” he pointed out.
“Surely this wasn’t intended to be a theft.” Rachel poured a little more coffee in his cup, even though he hadn’t taken much more than a sip. “If someone wanted to steal an antique quilt, they’d hit a quilt shop. There are several between here and Lancaster.”
“I suppose, but I can’t ignore the possibility. The more valuable the quilt, the more likely, it seems to me.”
“I suppose we could find out.” Caroline threaded her fingers back through her hair, letting it ruffle down to the shoulder of the white shirt she wore with jeans. That was probably the most conservative outfit he’d seen her wear yet. “I described the quilt to Agatha Morris, though, and she seemed to disregard it.”
“Agatha doesn’t know everything.” Mrs. Unger’s voice was tart. “We could call an expert for a valuation, if you think it’s important.”
“That wouldn’t be a bad idea.” It also wouldn’t be a bad idea if he could speak to Caroline alone, but that didn’t seem likely, the way her grandmother and sister were protecting her.
“I’m not worried about what it’s worth. There’s just something about the quilt that speaks to me.” Caroline gave him an assessing look. Can you understand that? That was what it seemed to say.
“Right.” He pulled a notebook from his pocket and put it on the table next to his mug. He didn’t need to write any of this down, but somehow people seemed to find the action reassuring. “Now, who might know about the quilt?”
She frowned down at the straw-colored brew. “I talked about it at the quilt show, I know. To your sister. She was the one who suggested I speak to Mrs. Morris.” She shrugged. “There were a lot of people milling around. I suppose anyone might have heard us. But if someone did want to steal the quilt, why smash up the quilting frame?”
“Good point. It’s most likely vandals. Something about spring seems to bring them out of the woodwork. I don’t suppose any of you have seen anyone hanging around the place?”
Blank looks, heads shaken. People didn’t notice, unless they were the type who saw lurkers in every innocent bystander.
“Maybe you should move into the house.” Mrs. Unger’s brow wrinkled as she looked at her youngest granddaughter. “If you had run into them, whoever they were—”
Caroline patted her grandmother’s hand. “I didn’t, and I hope I’m smart enough not to go wandering around investigating strange noises by myself.”
“Did you hear any noises?” He slid the question in. She should have—that was the first thing tha
t struck him. The damage had to have made considerable noise, and her apartment was on the other side of the barn wall.
She was already shaking her head. “No. I’ve been thinking about that, and I should have if they were in there at night. But I spent the evening in the house, and we wouldn’t have heard anything from here.”
“That explains it, then.” He supposed. It got dark fairly early, so the damage could have been done any time after, say, seven in the evening. Still, whoever had done it was taking a chance on being seen.
He wasn’t accusing her of lying to him, not even in his mind. But no matter how sympathetic he felt toward Caroline, he couldn’t let that affect his judgment.
He put the notebook in his pocket as he stood. “Well, I think that’s it for now.” He looked at Caroline. “If you’d like to walk out with me, maybe we could have a word about the locks.”
She nodded, getting up quickly. “I’ll be back in a minute,” she said, and followed him to the door.
The patio was sun drenched and bright with spring flowers. Caroline stopped at the low wall that surrounded it and looked at him.
“This isn’t about locks, is it?”
“No, I guess not, although it wouldn’t hurt to put dead bolts on all the doors. More to the point, why don’t you want to move into the house? Seems like that would be the sensible thing to do.”
She shrugged, evading his eyes. “No one has ever described me as sensible.”
“Your grandmother would probably feel better.”
“You mean she’d be able to fuss over me more.” She folded her arms across her chest.
“That’s not a bad thing, you know.” He could understand why she was prickly, given her history, but her grandmother obviously loved her.
“I like my independence.” Her mouth set in a stubborn line.
He looked at her for a long moment, weighing how much to say. “I hope that’s it,” he said slowly. “I hope you’re not just staying there because you want to make it easier for Tony to reach you.”