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

by Stewart, Mariah

  “I think she did find her owner,” Carly said.

  “I wasn’t planning on having a dog.” Ellie looked unsure.

  “But you don’t really want to give her up, do you?” Cam had listened to the exchange.

  “Not really. Still …”

  “Why don’t you keep her until you decide what you want to do? If you find you really don’t want her, you can bring her into my shelter and we’ll keep her there until the next transport arrives. In the meantime, call my clinic tomorrow and make an appointment to bring her in this week so that we can check her out, make sure she’s healthy.”

  “I’ll do that. Thanks.”

  “Have you met my wife?” Grant asked as a beautiful woman with pale blond hair made her way through the crowded room. “Dallas, this is Ellie. She’s just bought a home in St. Dennis. And this is her friend … I didn’t catch your name.…”

  “Carly Summit.”

  To Cam’s eye, both Ellie and Carly looked starstruck. Well, who could blame them? Dallas was an A-list movie star, someone you don’t meet every day.

  “Nice to meet you both.” Dallas turned to Ellie. “I saw your ransom was paid earlier, and quite handsomely, too.” She poked Cam in the side.

  He nodded and repeated what was beginning to sound like his mantra. “Anything for charity.”

  The crowd began to thin and it was clear that Ellie was getting tired of holding Dune, so Cam walked outside with her and Carly.

  “Where are all those people going?” Ellie indicated a steady stream of pedestrians ambling across the square.

  “The Historical Society is open, and there’s a walking tour of St. Dennis,” he told them.

  “Want to?” Ellie asked Carly.

  “Sure.” Her friend nodded.

  “I guess you’ve seen it all before.” Ellie turned to Cam.

  “About a hundred times. But I wouldn’t mind another stroll through town.”

  “Great.” Ellie looped her arm through Cam’s on one side and Carly did the same on the other. “Let’s do it.…”

  It turned out to be a long day. Cam hadn’t thought about doing all the First Families Day events, but he couldn’t bring himself to give up a chance to spend the afternoon with Ellie, even if they were accompanied by her friend and her dog. They watched footraces at the park and toured the side streets, stopped at Scoop for ice cream, and sat at a small table outside and watched gulls circle over the Bay in large graceful swirls of wings. Cam had extra tickets for the dinner that night, and talked the two women into joining him. Ellie had to take the dog back home and Carly wanted to get her car, which she’d left parked on Charles Street all afternoon, but they agreed to meet him at six at the Grange Hall.

  Cam had time for a quick shower and change of clothing before hopping into his pickup and heading for the Grange. Dinner was the same every year—baked ham, sweet potatoes, green beans, salad, and pumpkin pie—but everyone in town went and it was always noisy fun. The local ladies cooked and served and the guys cleaned up. It was the type of community dinner that could be found in just about any small town in any state in the country. But the routine never grew old, and Cam wouldn’t have missed it.

  First Families Day was one of those annual events—like Christmas or Thanksgiving—that he looked forward to. It was part of his past, something that had remained the same for as long as he could remember, even when other things in his life changed so totally and so quickly—and so violently. Some years had been better than others—the years he’d gone with his family were a blur, though he had memories of his mother making a scene once. He’d been too young to understand what she was fussing at his father about, but he remembered how people at their table had looked away with embarrassment when she’d removed the flask from her bag and offered to pass it around. Then there were other years—better years—when he and his sister went with his aunt after she came to live with them. Most of those years, they’d sat at the table with Lilly and Ted Cavanaugh, and everyone in town knew that the O’Connor kids were going to be okay.

  Tonight would be different because Ellie was there. He wanted to get to know her better, wanted to assure himself that those things about her that hadn’t been sitting right with him were all in his mind.

  It had taken less than ten minutes for his suspicions to be reinforced.

  He’d sat between Ellie and Carly at dinner, and at one point, when Ellie had been engaged in conversation with Clay on her left, Cam turned to Carly and asked, “So how long have you and Ellie been friends?”

  “Forever.” Carly smiled. “We went all through school together.”

  “Where did you go?” he’d asked, and her face had frozen.

  “What?” she’d asked.

  “You said you and Ellie went to school together. I asked where.”

  She hesitated for a moment, and he’d said, “Was that a tough question?”

  “Oh. No. Of course not.” She forced the smile back onto her face. “We went to Rushton-Graves in Massachusetts.”

  “You grew up together, then?”

  “You could say that.” Carly turned her attention back to her dinner, the smile still tightly fixed to her face.

  “What do you do, by the way?” he’d asked.

  “I manage an art gallery.” Carly had become visibly uncomfortable.

  “Sounds interesting.”

  “It is.” She took a sip of her ice water.

  And that was that, as far as Miss Carly Summit was concerned. She barely said two words for the rest of the night, and her “So nice to have met you” as she and Ellie left was more than a little on the cool side.

  Cam wasn’t sure what was going on, but he was more convinced than ever that something about Ellie wasn’t adding up. It might take awhile, but one way or another, he was going to figure it out.

  Chapter 12

  “That was fun,” Ellie said as she unlocked her front door. “I didn’t expect it to be so much fun. A little on the hokey side, but fun.”

  “Of course you had fun. You got carried off by a hot pirate,” Carly reminded her. “Shiver me timbers.”

  “You know, that whole thing was so silly, it’s hard to believe that an adult thought it up.” Ellie unfastened Dune’s leash and followed the dog to the kitchen. “Grown men dressing up like pirates, women being carted off like sacks of rice …”

  “Good times.”

  Ellie nodded. “Best time I’ve had in a couple of years.”

  “Silliness—laughter—can have that effect on the best of us.” Carly stood in the kitchen doorway while Ellie filled Dune’s water dish from the faucet. “Not to mention the effect of the aforementioned cute pirate.”

  “He is pretty cute,” Ellie agreed.

  “El, I might have said something to him that could backfire.” Carly looked uncomfortable.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Cameron. He asked me how long we’d known each other and I said forever, that we went to school together.”

  “So? All true.”

  “The bad part came when he asked me where we went to school, and I didn’t know what you’d told him.”

  “And …?”

  “And I probably waited a little too long to answer him. I think he might have wondered why I couldn’t just answer such a simple question without having to think about it.” Carly looked uncharacteristically sheepish. “Actually, I know he did.”

  “You told him Rushton-Graves?” Ellie leaned back against the counter.

  Carly nodded. “Of course. But if he looks it up, he’ll know there’s money in your background, El.”

  Ellie shrugged. “There are always ways to get around that. I can say a grandparent or a wealthy uncle paid my tuition.”

  “I didn’t mean to complicate things for you. I’m really sorry.”

  “You didn’t complicate anything.”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive,” Ellie assured her even while the thought niggled that Cameron was probab
ly too smart to have overlooked Carly’s hesitation.

  “Good.” Carly straightened her back. “Let’s go up to the attic and look at paintings.”

  “You have a one-track mind when it comes to that stuff.”

  “Damn right. That’s why I am so good at what I do.” Carly started toward the steps. “That’s why in the world of art, Summit is a very highly respected name. Soon to be the talk of that very same art world when I announce the discovery of all of those lovely Carolina Ellis paintings.”

  Ellie caught up with her friend at the top of the steps, and opened the door to the attic. Carly needed no invitation to climb the stairs.

  The attic was dimly lit, the contents covered with a thick layer of dust.

  “I haven’t spent much time up here, as you can see,” Ellie said. “There’s been so much to do on the first two floors. I thought I’d save this to go through with one of the antique dealers in town. There’s a lot of furniture and trunks filled with who knows what.”

  Carly had already pulled the drape off a group of paintings that were stacked against one wall. Ellie knelt down and began to study them, one by one. Every once in a while, she heard a quiet gasp, as if Carly’s breath had caught in her throat. Ellie busied herself looking through a trunk that she found to be loaded with hats. She took them out, one by one, and tried them on.

  “Carly, tear yourself away for a moment and check out this hat.” Ellie plopped a wide-brimmed dove-gray felt number adorned with a trio of peacock feathers onto her head. She turned to show it off and realized that Carly was crying.

  “Car? What’s wrong, honey?”

  “This …” Carly pointed toward a painting she’d separated from the others and placed against the window wall.

  “What’s wrong with it?” Ellie leaned closer to get a better look at the portrait of a very young woman.

  “Remember I said Carolina Ellis never painted portraits?” Carly sniffed.

  “I guess.”

  “I was wrong.” Carly turned to Ellie, her face wet with tears. “She painted this one. It’s her daughter.”

  “Lilly?” Ellie’s eyes widened. “Why do you think that’s Lilly?”

  Carly turned the painting around. A piece of vellum glued to the back of the canvas read, Lilly at sixteen.

  “Oh, but she was pretty, wasn’t she.” Ellie knelt down in front of the painting. “Look how pretty she was.”

  She looked back at Carly. “But I don’t understand why it’s making you cry.”

  “Carolina Ellis is a woman whose works are just getting the recognition they deserve. Her landscapes are exquisite, but nothing she’s done comes close to this. It’s beautiful in every way.” Carly smiled. “You can tell she loved her daughter very much. And it’s something totally unexpected. I have never felt so overwhelmed in my life. It’s what Howard Carter must have felt when he looked into Tutankhamun’s tomb that first time.”

  “So this is a real find, is what you’re saying.”

  “My head is spinning.” Carly leaned against a nearby trunk. “And, Ellie, that’s not all. Lilly apparently inherited her mother’s talent. There are some lovely paintings here with her signature.”

  “I want to see.” Ellie stood up and started toward the stack.

  “There’s something else you should see.” Carly walked to the paintings and went through them one by one, searching for something. Her hand stopped on a large painted frame. “You might want to sit down for this one.”

  “Why?”

  “Did you know your mother painted?”

  “I know she dabbled in watercolors sometimes.” Ellie nodded. “But I don’t remember that she was ever very serious about it.”

  “If she wasn’t, she should have been.” Carly lifted the painting and turned it around for Ellie to see.

  A very young golden-haired child sat in the midst of a garden, tall white daisies and some low-growing pink flowers surrounding her.

  “That looks like …” Ellie came closer, her eyes narrowed.

  “You.”

  “It is me.” Ellie momentarily struggled for words. “I’ve seen that dress before. I found it in a box with some other baby clothes that my mother must have saved. But how do you know for certain that she was the artist?”

  “She signed it here, in the corner.” Carly pointed out the name in black print.

  “Lynley Rose,” Ellie murmured. “Not Lynley Sebastian or Lynley Chapman. Just her first and middle names.” She smiled. “Years ago, a cosmetic company marketed a nail polish and lipstick called Lynley Rose. There was a big marketing campaign, magazine ads, billboards. I was only about five or six then, but I remember.”

  She stared at the painting a moment longer. “I must have been two or three when she painted this.” She looked up at Carly. “I wonder why she didn’t sign her full name.”

  “Maybe she was hoping to exhibit it someday and wanted to be judged by her talent alone, not her celebrity name,” Carly suggested.

  “Maybe.”

  “Ellie, didn’t you say that you’d never been here before?” Carly asked after studying the painting for another moment.

  “As far as I know, I hadn’t been.” Ellie lifted the painting and brought it into better light. “But that’s the carriage house here in the background. And right over here is the corner of the back porch.” Ellie looked up. “She could have painted it from memory.”

  “Maybe she brought you here and you just don’t remember.”

  Ellie shook her head. “I don’t think my dad would have let her.”

  “Maybe she did it when he was away on business. He used to travel a lot, as I remember,” Carly reminded her.

  “That would explain a few things,” Ellie conceded. “Like why some of the wallpapers look vaguely familiar. Funny how she must have loved it here so much, and yet he could never understand the attraction it held for her.”

  “Do you?”

  “Oh, yes. I do now, anyway. Back then, when I was younger, it was all glitz and glamour with my dad.” Ellie dusted the glass over the child’s face with her fingers. “Everywhere we went with him, it was like New Year’s Eve and the Fourth of July and Christmas all at the same time. He always made St. Dennis sound like the last place in the world anyone would want to come to.”

  “Your father was wrong about a lot of things.”

  “So true.” Ellie held the painting. “Let’s take these downstairs and wash off the glass so we can see them better.”

  “We’ll take them down but we’ll just dust with a dry cloth. I’d hate for any moisture to find its way under the glass and spoil a masterpiece.”

  “I don’t think my mom’s dabbling would qualify as a masterpiece.”

  “We’ll see what we see once we’re downstairs in better light.” Carly grabbed the portrait of Lilly and headed for the steps.

  It took several trips, but soon all of the paintings from the attic had been brought into the living room. After they’d been propped up against the bookcases and dusted, Carly sat on the sofa and just stared at their findings.

  Carly looked up when Ellie came into the room, carrying two mugs of tea.

  “I made chamomile,” Ellie told her. “It’s supposed to soothe and relax.”

  “It’s going to take more than tea to relax me tonight.” Carly wrapped her hands around the mug Ellie offered her. “This has been the most incredible weekend of my life.”

  Ellie laughed. “I really doubt that.”

  “It’s hard to explain what a find like this means to someone like me.” Carly took a sip of tea. “I’ve worked very hard to make Summit Galleries a respected name in the art world, and yet there are so many people who still consider me a lightweight because my parents funded the start-up. I always feel like the Rodney Dangerfield of the art world.”

  “Your parents haven’t supported you or the gallery for years.”

  “Absolutely true. But no one knows that. I can’t very well shout from the rooftops that yes, family
money started me off but yay! Now I’m self-supporting.” Carly made a face. “It sounds like the lady protesteth too much.” She took another sip of tea. “But these paintings … this find …” She shook her head from side to side. “Maybe now people will take me a little more seriously.”

  “You certainly deserve it,” Ellie agreed. “I’m so happy to have a small part in that.”

  “A small part?” Carly laughed. “You own these paintings. At least, we’re assuming you do. For you to entrust them to me is huge.”

  “There’s no one else I’d consider entrusting them to.”

  “Thank you, sweetie. I promise to get as much for each of them as I can. When this is over, you’ll have enough money to start up a new business or go and do whatever you want.”

  “That would be nice. I still don’t know where I’ll go or what I’ll do, but it’s nice to know I’ll have some options I hadn’t planned on.”

  Carly returned her attention to the paintings while Ellie sat on the sofa, Dune curled up next to her, the dog’s head on her lap. For a few moments, the only sounds were the clock ticking on the mantel and the dog’s breathing.

  “You used to paint, too,” Carly said. “I remember at school, you did some watercolors that were really pretty. I seem to recall the head of the art department entered a couple of them in state and regional competitions.”

  “I won a few of those.” Ellie smiled grimly. “The feds permitted me to keep the awards since I’d earned them before my father started robbing unsuspecting folks of their life savings.”

  Several other minutes passed in silence before Carly said, “I have an idea.”

  “Should I be frightened?”

  Carly smiled. “I think you should write a book about these women. Your great-great-grandmother. Your great-aunt. Your mother. We’ll self-publish it if we have to, but it could be incredible. We could have pages of photographs of the paintings and release the book right before we put the paintings on display.” She turned shining eyes to Ellie. “The publicity will be phenomenal. Three generations of artists in the same family, written by their one common descendant. You have to do it, El.” Carly paused. “We could include a few of your works, too.”