Funny how the room—and the table—had become so much smaller over the years.
He pushed away from the table and leaned over until his face was almost parallel to it, and smiled when he found that the initials he’d scratched into the wood when he was nine—CTM, for “Clayton Thomas Madison”—were still there. He found it strangely satisfying to know that for all the years that had come and gone, this little bit of him had remained.
The last time he’d sat in that chair, at that table, he and Lucy were studying together for exams, and he’d had a really hard time keeping his mind on his notes. Every time he looked up, there she sat, dressed in a tee and cutoff, ripped jeans that were so popular that year, her curly, pale auburn hair piled on top of her head. When she looked up and smiled, his heart beat nearly out of his chest and scared the bejesus out of him because the feelings he was starting to have for her seemed, well, wrong. Lucy was his best friend. He wasn’t supposed to be thinking about what it would be like to kiss her now, but the fact that when they were thirteen, they’d practiced kissing—on each other—in this very room wasn’t lost on him. It still annoyed him to think that Lucy had wanted to practice on him so she’d know what to do if the object of her affection at the time wanted to kiss her at Sherry Marshall’s birthday party.
Clay got up from the table, walked to the window, and looked out. The shrubs that had barely touched the window ledges back then were almost to the top of the window frame, and he was sure they’d been pruned many times over the years to keep them from taking over the entire front of the inn. When he and Lucy were kids, there’d been bird feeders outside the windows. When they were in fourth grade, the two of them moved the feeders closer to the other side of the front door and replaced them with a hummingbird feeder. They’d made hummingbird food from water and sugar and filled the little plastic disk and watched, but that first day, no tiny birds had arrived. By the next afternoon, however, their feeder had been discovered, and over the summer and into early fall Clay and Lucy spent so much time watching the hummingbirds that they could recognize one from another, and had gone so far as to name them.
They’d started out by giving them names that began with H.
“Harry,” Clay said aloud, remembering. “Hortense. Horatio. Helene. Higgins. Hester. Hilary. Hank …”
Before the summer was over, there’d been more birds than H names, and they’d started over with the As.
“Agatha. Amadeus. Archimedes …”
Damn, but they’d had fun when they were kids, hadn’t they?
“What happened, LuLu?” Clay heard himself say, then looked over his shoulder to see if anyone else had walked in and maybe heard him, too.
Didn’t his father always say that you couldn’t change the past, so it was a waste of time to dwell on it?
He didn’t have to dwell on it, but there was no harm in acknowledging it, he reasoned. His friendship with Lucy had been a big part of his childhood, and there was no getting around that. They’d done just about everything together growing up, and much of it right here in this room. They made science projects and wrote book reports, excitedly sharing their newest favorite books with each other. They quizzed each other before tests and shared notes they took in class. They played music here, purloined albums Lucy had lifted from Daniel’s room. As nine-year-olds, they’d learned all the words to every song on Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. album. Later that year, they took turns singing all the parts of “We Are the World.”
They learned how to dance by practicing with each other.
Lucy had really aced dancing, he recalled. She was petite and light on her feet, whereas he was always too tall for his age to be anything but awkward. She never seemed to mind, though, and by the time their first junior high dance rolled around, they were ready.
His eyes narrowed as he remembered how he’d felt when Kevin McMillan had asked Lucy to dance, how something hot and fierce had risen in his chest and his hands had fisted all on their own. He hadn’t had enough experience back then to recognize that first brush with jealousy, and had convinced himself that he was only annoyed because Kevin was such a jerk and, as such, had no business asking Lucy to dance.
Not for the first time, Clay wished he understood what had caused the rift between them. He’d spent hours thinking about it, back then, but had never come close to knowing.
One of these days, he promised himself, he was going to find out. In the meantime, there was a Christmas tree that needed to be set up.
Clay set the stand in the alcove where Grace had indicated and went through the big front door to the porch, where he found a Scotch pine leaning against the wall. He brought it inside and wrestled it into the tree stand in the alcove, then stepped back to see if it was straight.
“A little to the left maybe,” Dan noted as he joined Clay and handed over a cup of black coffee. “You still take it black?”
Clay nodded. “Sometimes. Thanks.” He took a sip, then set the cup and saucer on the table. “You’re right. It’s leaning toward the left.”
“Let’s see if we can fix that.”
After several tries, they were both satisfied that the tree was as straight as it was going to be.
“Nice of you to help out Mom,” Dan told him. “She’s running herself ragged, trying to achieve perfection for the tour.”
“Judging by the way the lobby looks, I’d say she’s well on her way to succeeding.” Clay opened a box and started to unwind the lights. “How many more rooms is she going to do?”
Dan shrugged. “I’m trying to talk her into limiting the tour area to the two lobbies, this room, and the sitting room across the way. I don’t see any reason to do anything else.”
“I saw some trees going into the dining room,” Clay noted.
“I’ll do those later. Otherwise the dining room is almost done, thanks to your mother and a few of her friends who pitched in yesterday and again this morning to do centerpieces and the mantel. Tomorrow it’s only going to be open to guests who have bought tickets to the tea that follows the tour.” Dan watched Clay struggle to untangle the lights for a moment, and was looking about to give him a hand when his cell phone rang. He answered it, listened, then said, “All right. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Dan dropped his phone into his pocket. “Diana needs to be picked up from her sleepover at a girlfriend’s. How ’bout I give you a hand with those lights?”
“I’ve got it.” Clay held up the bundle of wires and searched for an end. “I’m good at this. Really. Go get your daughter.”
“If you insist.”
“I do,” Clay said without looking up. Normally he was good at untangling things. He stared at the jumble, then placed it all on the table, where he proceeded to unknot the tiny white lights, one at a time. When he was finished, he draped the strands on the tree, then stood back to admire his work.
“Nice,” he said aloud.
Grace had said something about using the plaid ribbon as garland, but he didn’t have a clue about that, so he passed directly on to the ornaments. He was just sorting through the boxes when Grace returned.
“I feel much refreshed,” she told him. “Thanks so much for giving me a little time off.”
“Don’t mention it.” Clay glanced up from the box he’d just opened.
“My, but you certainly accomplished a lot in a short period of time.” Grace went right to the tree. “The lights are lovely. You did a great job.” She walked around the three exposed sides. “I like the way you draped them. Very nice.”
“I didn’t understand the ribbon-thingy, so I put that aside.”
“We can save that until the decorations are on the tree.” Grace came closer to see what he’d uncovered. “Oh, I love these ornaments.”
She reached around him to pick up a blue-green glass ball. “Dan and I bought this in Maine one year. It was the first time the two of us went on a vacation together—just the two of us—since Ford was born. We’d left Daniel in charge of Lucy and Fo
rd—he was home from college—and I was a nervous wreck the whole time that something was going to happen.” She held the ball up to the light. “But apparently nothing did. That was one of those times when my instincts proved unreliable.”
“How long ago was that?” Clay unpacked a few more glass balls and handed them to Grace, who hung them on the tree.
“Oh, dear, let’s see … well, it was the year that Ford started junior high. The year between Lucy’s freshman and sophomore years at the high school.” She searched in a box for some ornament hooks, and paused for a moment, a gold glass ball in her hand, her gaze fixed outside the window. She sighed loudly. “Of course, I was so happy that everything had gone well in our absence, and yet …”
“And yet?” Something in her voice drew his attention. Clay stopped unwrapping and turned to her. She was still staring out the window.
She shook her head as if to shake off whatever it had been that had bothered her. “Oh, it was nothing, I suppose. In retrospect, I have to think I’d misunderstood what I’d been feeling.”
“What had you been feeling?” Clay had heard the stories about Grace having some kind of sixth sense, some kind of “sight,” though no one seemed quite sure exactly what it was that she could sense or see. He’d never had the opportunity to ask her directly, though, and his curiosity got the best of him.
“Just that something was happening here that had been very bad.” Her voice dropped to a near whisper, and her hand clenched around the glass ball she was holding. “But obviously I was wrong, and everything was fine when we got back. Still, I never can seem to think back on that summer without having that same feeling of dread that I’d felt as we’d driven away, that same sense of panic and fear and pain …” She shook her head as if shaking off a bad dream, and her hand tightened around the glass ball she’d been holding until it cracked.
Grace looked down at her right hand and opened it. Shiny gold shards were embedded in her palm.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she muttered. “Would you look at that? I wonder how I managed to do that …”
“Miz Grace, your hand is bleeding,” Clay told her. “I’ll get some towels from the kitchen.”
“There are paper towels in the restroom right through that door.” Grace pointed to a door directly across the hall. “If you wouldn’t mind …”
“Not a bit.” Clay went into the bathroom, grabbed some paper towels, and held a few under cold running water in the sink. He returned to the library and asked, “Do you think you got all of the glass out?”
Grace nodded. “I’m pretty sure. Here, give me those.” She reached for the wet paper towels and cleaned her palm of the blood that had puddled there. “I don’t know what I was thinking to have broken that ball like that.”
Grace wrapped one of the paper towels around her hand and cleared her throat. “Well, then, I suppose I should probably get a bandage of some sort, shouldn’t I?”
“Would you like me to—”
“No, no. I’m fine, dear. I’m sure there’s a first-aid kit in Daniel’s office …” Her voice trailed away as she passed through the door and into the hall beyond.
Clay gathered up the discarded shards of broken glass that had fallen onto the floor, wondering what had spooked Grace back then that had been so powerful that it still frightened her just to think of it, all these years later.
Chapter 5
Lucy held the phone between her shoulder and her ear. It kept slipping, and every time it did, she dropped the place cards she was trying to artfully drape over the miniature orchids in their little pots. Tomorrow’s bride had been very specific: her calligraphied seating cards had to be hung by thin silver cords from the stems of tiny white orchids in little terra-cotta pots spray-painted silver. The paint job had gone to Ava, but since Bonnie had taken their assistant with her for tonight’s event, the job of making the cards work perfectly fell to Lucy.
“So it sounds like the inn is decked out to the teeth,” Lucy replied to her mother’s lengthy description of what had gone where in preparation for the Christmas Tour.
“And then some. Oh, I do wish you could see it, Lucy. The old place has never looked so elegant.” Grace paused before adding, “Well, excluding the MacGregor-Wyler weddings.”
“It all sounds grand, Mom. Make sure Danny takes lots of pictures. I’m glad you had so many volunteers to work with you.”
“Yes, but we could have used your touch. You always know how to make things look special.”
“Hey, I learned everything I know from you.”
“That’s very sweet of you, dear, and I appreciate the thought, but I’ve never had your artistic touch.”
“Nonsense. I remember how you always came up with something new, every year, for the mantels and the tables. How you used whatever was still green in the garden and how, when there wasn’t anything left that was green, you sprayed whatever you could find—twigs and pinecones and ivy and acorns—silver or gold and put them in glass bowls with those vintage Christmas decorations.”
Hmm, Lucy thought. Vintage Christmas decorations …
“Well, I’ll send you some pictures so you can see how pretty everything is,” Grace told her.
“I can’t wait. Tell Danny to email them to me.” Lucy opened a storage closet and began to look for the box of old decorations she’d bought at an estate sale a few years ago. If there were enough of them, they’d add just the right touch to the two-foot Christmas trees her Christmas Eve bride had wanted for centerpieces. Lucy had plenty of silver ornaments on hand, but a few of the very delicate glass balls could lend a special touch. She found the box on one of the top shelves and had a dickens of a time getting it down without dropping the phone or her train of thought.
“I’ll have him send the pictures from the Enright mansion, too. I hear it’s magnificent. Barbara from the bookstore stopped in there for a peek before she came here. She said Brooke and Jesse are doing an amazing job. I just may have to sneak over there tomorrow and take some pictures for the Gazette.” Grace yawned, then excused herself for having done so.
“You sound tired, Mom.”
“It was a long day,” Grace admitted. “But it wasn’t too bad. I had a lot of help from the Historical Society and, of course, some friends stopped by to lend a hand. Oh, and Clay came by and he—”
“Clay?” Lucy made it to the conference room table with the box, which she tried not to drop. “Clay helped you with the Christmas decorations?”
“Yes, he stopped by to see if I needed a hand, and it was perfect timing on his part. I have to admit, I was starting to fade, but he took over in the library so that I could grab a quick cup of tea and put my feet up for a few minutes.”
“Huh.” Lucy opened the box and started to unwrap a few of the ornaments.
“He brought in the tree for the library and put it up,” Grace continued, “hung the lights and the ornaments on it. Hung the wreath over the fireplace, cut some greens for the centerpiece on that old library table. Wasn’t that nice of him?”
“Huh,” Lucy said, then realized it was her second “huh” in less than thirty seconds. She knew she could do better. “Well, yes, that was very nice.”
“Very nice indeed. He’s such a nice boy.”
“Clay’s not a boy anymore, Mom.”
“He’ll always be a boy to me, dear. Just like you’ll always be a girl in my eyes.”
“Mom …” Lucy sighed and hoped her mother wasn’t working herself up into trying to sell her on Clay again. Lucy got it. Her mother wanted her to give up her business, move back to St. Dennis, marry someone local—Clay would do nicely—and have babies.
“Oh, I’m going to have to run,” Grace said. “We have guests who want to check in and Andrea is not at the desk. Good luck with tomorrow’s wedding, dear. I’m sure it will be a smash.”
“Thanks, Mom. You, too. I know the inn will be …” Lucy heard her phone disconnect but finished her thought aloud anyway. “… the star of the show tom
orrow.”
She slid her phone back into her pocket, trying to process the fact that Clay had spent the afternoon helping her mother decorate the inn. The concept raised a number of reactions. On the one hand, it really was nice of him to pitch in and help her mother. Grace might not want to admit it, but she wasn’t as young as she used to be, and between the newspaper that she ran almost single-handedly, and whatever she got involved in at the inn—not to mention all of her community projects—she could very easily run herself into the ground. So for Clay to just stop in and offer to help, well, Lucy had to admire him for that. On the other hand, the fact that anyone else in town had to give of their time to help get the inn ready for the holidays only reinforced the feeling Lucy got every once in a while—like now—that she—not Clay, not family friends or members of the Historical Society—should be the one taking on those tasks for her aging mother.
And how, Lucy wondered, would Grace react if she knew her daughter thought of her as “aging”?
Putting aside her guilt and all thoughts of being an unworthy daughter, Lucy focused on counting the old ornaments in the box only to find there weren’t enough. As nice a touch as the antiques would have been, she’d have to be content with the ones she’d purchased for the occasion. Unless, of course, she could find others. Making a mental note to check a few online sites, she started to rewrap them, then paused.
She really should thank Clay for helping her mother.
Call, or email? She pondered the choices. A phone call is more personal, would require a different level of engagement than email. If she called him, she’d have to say something other than thank you. What else did she really want to say to him? Knowing Clay, he’d want to talk. He’d ask her how things were going, and then she’d have to be polite and ask him how things were going for him, and before she knew it, they’d be engaged in conversation.
The Chesapeake Diaries Series 7-Book Bundle: Coming HOme, Home Again, Almost Home, Hometown Girl, Home for the Summer, The Long Way Home, At the River's Edge Page 127