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

  The first snow of the season was falling on Saturday morning, the fat flakes drifting down like feathers onto the grass and the trees. It wasn’t a snow destined to last, nor would it stick to the ground, but it was a pretty snow, and Gabi had been excited to see what it looked like on the beach, so she and Ellie put on their heavy jackets and took Dune down to the water’s edge to watch the snow fall onto the sand and dissolve into the Bay.

  Gabi had pointed across the Bay. “You can hardly see the other side, the snowfall is so thick. It’s like everything out there is white.”

  Dune leaped to catch the snowflakes even as Gabi caught them with her tongue. The grasses held a thin covering of white that the occasional breeze blew onto the sand. They walked down the beach as far as the remains of the lighthouse, then turned back, the wind having shifted to send cold gusts along the shore.

  “Brr. It’s really cold today,” Gabi was saying as they returned to the house. “How can it be so cold today when it was only chilly yesterday?”

  “I guess this time of the year, you can expect almost anything,” Ellie replied.

  “Is that your car?” Gabi stood in the driveway near the path to the front door. “That is so cool!”

  “It belongs to my friend Carly. She let me borrow it because I don’t have a car.”

  “Why don’t you have a car?” Gabi asked.

  Ellie hesitated for a moment. Honesty, she reminded herself. Total honesty.

  “I bought my car with money that I made from doing public relations work for my father’s company. The government said that the money he paid me had been gotten through defrauding his clients, so they took the car to sell it and put the money into a fund to pay back the people he’d stolen from.”

  Gabi stared at Ellie, the color draining from her face.

  “Can the government take anything that was bought with money he made?” she asked, and Ellie nodded.

  “They could take the town house and my mother’s car and our clothes and—”

  “Whoa, there. Let’s not look for trouble, all right? I don’t know if the FBI even knows about you. And if they do, or if they find out, we’ll deal with it if we have to.” She put her arm around Gabi and walked with her to the front porch. “Right now let’s go inside and make a fire and some hot chocolate.”

  The wood that Cam had stacked on the back porch sat under an overhang and was dry and well seasoned, and caught right away. Ellie and Gabi decided it would be a great place to read, so they took their mugs of cocoa into the living room and curled up on the sofa, Gabi with Anne, Ellie with one of Lilly’s journals. They’d barely gotten comfortable when Ellie’s phone rang.

  “Hi,” she said after glancing at the caller ID.

  “Hi yourself. How are you and Gabi getting along?” Cam asked.

  “Just fine.” She felt Gabi watching from the corner of her eyes and decided to leave it at “fine.”

  “Listen, my sister’s on her way. We usually have Thanksgiving dinner together on the day after—because she’s a chef and always works that day—but this year we had to skip it because of her move. She decided she wanted to do the dinner thing tonight. Any chance you and Gabi would want to join us?”

  “How would your sister feel about that?”

  “I already told her I’d like to invite a guest or two. She’s okay with it. Actually, she’s looking forward to meeting you.”

  Ellie looked out the window. The snow had stopped and none had stuck to the street.

  “Sure. We’d love to. What time is good?”

  “We’re planning on six o’clock.”

  “Can I bring something?”

  “She says she has it covered, so I’ll say no. Just yourselves.”

  “We’ll be there. Thanks, Cam.” Ellie put the phone down and told Gabi, “Cam’s invited us to dinner at his house tonight. His sister, who’s a chef, is making a two-days-late Thanksgiving dinner.”

  “Well, you know, I already had Thanksgiving dinner. At the Foresters’.” Gabi bit the inside of her lip. “Maybe the one at Cam’s will be more fun.…”

  It was fun. Wendy O’Connor was a petite dynamo who had put together a fabulous meal of all the traditional favorites and then some. In addition to the most delicious turkey Ellie had ever tasted (“It’s organic,” Wendy explained), there was zucchini au gratin, corn-bread stuffing with oysters, fresh cranberry sauce, and brandied carrots. For dessert there were cream puffs filled with pumpkin mousse.

  Wendy was busy in the kitchen when Ellie and Gabi arrived, and there’d been little opportunity to engage in conversation with her until they sat down to eat at the beautiful table Cameron had made from reclaimed barn boards.

  “So Cam tells me you’re a new resident of St. Dennis, Ellie,” Wendy had said pleasantly after Ellie had complimented the dinner.

  “New resident, new homeowner.”

  “Bought a house?”

  Ellie paused. Continue the lies, or take the first step toward the truth? She glanced at Cam, whose expression told her, You’re on your own. But I’ll back you either way.

  “Actually, no. I didn’t buy a house.” Ellie put her fork down. “I inherited one.”

  Cam looked up, his gaze flicking from her to his sister and back again.

  “Really? Which one?” Wendy helped herself to the carrots, which had already made their way around the table.

  “The house at the very end of Bay View.”

  Wendy looked up and frowned. “You don’t mean the Cavanaugh house.”

  “I do. That’s the house. I inherited it from my mother.”

  “Last I heard, Lynley Sebastian’s estate owned that house.”

  Ellie nodded. “I’m Lynley’s daughter.”

  “No shit.” Wendy put her fork down on her plate and stared.

  “None whatsoever,” Ellie assured her.

  Wendy turned to Cameron. “Did you know …?”

  He nodded. “Yes. I knew.”

  “You didn’t say anything?” Wendy looked as if she were about to throw something at her brother.

  “I’ve been a little sensitive about telling people who I am,” Ellie said. “Don’t blame Cam. He was only respecting my right to privacy. Because of my father.”

  “Lynley was married to … Your father isn’t …” Wendy’s eyes narrowed.

  “Clifford Chapman, yes, he is.”

  Wendy’s jaw clenched and she stared at her plate for a long time. Finally she said, “Clifford Chapman’s shenanigans wiped out my pension. I lost every penny I’d scraped together to invest, thanks to him.”

  “I’m very sorry.” Ellie’s appetite left her, and she pushed away from the table. “Gabi, maybe we should—”

  “No, no, of course you shouldn’t leave.” Wendy composed herself. “I’m sorry. It was just such a surprise. Cam, I really wish you’d given me a heads-up.”

  “I wanted Ellie to make that call,” he told his sister. To Ellie, he said, “So is this your coming-out?”

  “I guess it is. I hadn’t given it much thought, except that I assumed that you’d told Wendy.”

  He shook his head. “It wasn’t …”

  “… your place. Thank you. I appreciate your giving me the option, but from now on, I think I need to own up. If Gabi can do it, I can do it.” Ellie rubbed Gabi’s back.

  “You know there’s probably people here in St. Dennis who invested through Chapman’s firm and lost their shirts,” Wendy said.

  “Probably.”

  “I don’t think anyone’s going to hold it against Ellie or Gabi,” Cam said. “I think everyone’s going to think of Lynley and how good it is that her daughter has come back. The people who’ve already met Ellie like her. If anyone is bothered by it, well, there’s not much we can do about that.”

  Wendy was lost in thought. “You know that Cam and I spent some time there when we were little?”

  Ellie nodded.

  “It was our sanctuary when we had nowhere else to go,” Wendy told them.
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br />   “Me, too.” Gabi piped up. “I didn’t have anywhere to go, either, until Ellie said I could come to stay with her.”

  Gabi related her own story, embellished by her natural flair for the dramatic.

  “Interesting, don’t you think, that that house was a refuge for the three of us?” Wendy glanced from Cam to Gabi.

  “All four of us, actually,” Ellie noted. “I came here as a last resort. I didn’t have anywhere else to go, either.” She gave Wendy an abbreviated version of her own journey to St. Dennis.

  “The house was a refuge for my mother, as well,” Ellie said.

  “Funny, but I can’t help but feel that it’s just Lilly looking out for everyone,” Wendy said, “just like she always did. I’m not a superstitious person, but I can’t tell you how many times over the years, when things were tough for me, I felt her arms around me. I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve never doubted for a minute that it was her, come to comfort me like she did that day when …” She paused and glanced at Gabi. “That day we came to stay with her …”

  On the way home, Gabi asked, “Who is Lilly?”

  “She was my great-great-aunt,” Ellie explained. “She lived in my house a long time ago. When Cam and Wendy were little kids they stayed with her for a while after their parents … died.” She thought it best not to go into detail on that incident.

  “Does she have white hair?”

  “I imagine she could have.” Ellie turned from Charles Street onto Bay View. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because when I woke up to go to the bathroom last night, there was a lady with white hair sitting in my reading chair.”

  “You must have been dreaming, Gabi. Lilly’s been gone for a long time.”

  “I wasn’t dreaming. She smiled at me when I walked past her to the bathroom.”

  “People smile in dreams.” Ellie pulled into the driveway and turned off the engine.

  “She was there,” Gabi insisted as she got out of the car. “I was sleepy but she was there and I saw her.”

  Ellie slid out from the driver’s side and locked the car. Gabi was already at the front door, waiting for her to unlock it.

  “Maybe she’ll come back tonight, and you’ll see her, too.” Gabi went inside when Ellie opened the door. “You’ll see her and you’ll know I’m not making her up.”

  “I don’t think you’re making her up, I just think you were dreaming and only thought there was someone there. Sometimes in the middle of the night, our dreams seem very real.”

  “She was real,” Gabi grumbled.

  “What was she doing?”

  “Nothing. She was just sitting there, watching me.”

  “She didn’t scare you?”

  Gabi shook her head. “She’s too nice to be scary. Like she’s an angel or something.”

  Ellie watched Gabi chase Dune into the living room, where the two flopped onto the floor, then went into the kitchen, where she tucked the leftovers she’d brought home into the refrigerator and thought about Gabi’s midnight visitor, the white-haired old woman who sat silently, watching the girl sleep. Gabi was absolutely certain of what she’d seen, and well, who could say she hadn’t?

  It wouldn’t really surprise me if Lilly did watch over her, Ellie concluded. And it certainly wouldn’t be the first time that someone described Lilly Cavanaugh as an angel.…

  Chapter 20

  Sunday morning was brisk and sunny, and after breakfast, Gabi set off for the beach with Dune. Ellie stood in the doorway and watched the girl and the dog run over the dune and disappear behind the tall grasses. She was just about to close the door when a white Toyota pulled into her driveway. She stepped out onto the porch and watched Wendy O’Connor exit the car and walk toward her.

  “Good morning,” Ellie called to her.

  “Got a minute?” Wendy called back.

  “Sure. Come on in. I was just going to have a cup of coffee.” Ellie stood back to allow Wendy to enter the house. “May I offer you one?”

  Wendy appeared not to have heard. She stood in the foyer and looked up the stairs, then from side to side, as if taking it all in. Finally, she said, “You haven’t changed much in here.”

  Ellie shrugged. “I don’t have any furniture of my own anymore—everything was confiscated by the feds when my father was arrested—and I haven’t had time to do more than start painting the kitchen. So, no, not much has changed.”

  “You know that Cameron’s always planned on buying this place.”

  “He and I have discussed that. He knows that when the time comes, I’ll give him the opportunity to buy it before it officially goes on the market.”

  “I hope he can count on you to do that.”

  “I gave him my word, Wendy. Why wouldn’t I keep it?”

  “I hope you do. I mean, you probably will. It just means a lot to him, that’s all. He’d be so disappointed if you went back on that.”

  “You don’t have to worry. I wouldn’t hurt him like that. I know what the house means to him. And frankly, I wouldn’t want anyone else to have it. It should be his.”

  “Even if someone else could afford to pay a lot more?”

  “We haven’t discussed price or terms or anything else. But my intention is that he’ll be the next owner.”

  “Good. Because it’s going to be hard enough for him when you leave.”

  When Ellie didn’t respond, Wendy said, “You have to know that he cares about you. Like, a lot.”

  “Cam and I have become … close.”

  Wendy snorted. “You don’t know my brother. He’s thirty-five and he’s never brought a woman to have dinner with me. Ever. I’ve never met any of the women he’s dated. He doesn’t get involved and he walks anytime he thinks he’s starting to care about someone. He’s told you about our parents, so you can figure out why.”

  Ellie nodded. Their father had loved their mother deeply, and she’d killed him. It wasn’t a stretch to figure out why Cam wasn’t a believer.

  “So for him to bring you to dinner last night—well, you can see that this is a big move on his part.”

  Ellie crossed her arms over her chest, not certain of the point Wendy was making.

  “If you turn around and sell this place to someone else, he’ll be angry. But if you leave St. Dennis, you’ll break his heart.”

  “Wendy, I’ve already told you that I’ve committed to selling him the house.” Ellie sighed. “And he knows I have no intention of staying here.”

  “I think he’s hoping you’ll change your mind about that.”

  Before Ellie could reply, Wendy glanced at the mantel.

  “Mr. C.’s decoys. He let me play with them when I was little. I loved those ducks. I used to pretend they were real, and they were my pets. I’d sneak one or two upstairs with me at night to sleep on my bed.” She smiled. “At least I thought I was sneaking them. Years later, Miss Lilly let on that she knew all along.”

  Ellie could tell that Wendy wanted to pick them up, so she went into the living room and took one from the mantel. “Cam said this was a pintail duck, I think.”

  “He did not. He knows better. That’s an old-squaw. The one next to it is a pintail.”

  Ellie handed it to her.

  “Mr. C. did the most amazing work. He’d spend hours working on these things.” She stroked the wooden side of the duck, her finger tracing the painted feathers. “Cam said something about you giving some of these to him.”

  “No, he’s earning them. The house needs a lot of work, some of which needs to be done by a professional. I can’t afford to pay him in cash, so we agreed I’d pay him in decoys. He’s up to, I think, almost two whole ducks now.”

  “That’s nice of you, but why don’t you just sell the house now and be done with it. Move on now, before you and Cam take this thing any further.” Wendy placed the duck back onto the mantel carefully. “You want to move on, then go. Go now.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Wendy.” Ellie was debating whether to shar
e the terms of her mother’s will with Wendy, when Gabi blew in through the front door.

  “Ellie, guess what?” She ran breathlessly into the room. “We saw … oh, hi, Wendy. I didn’t know you were coming. Thanks again for dinner last night. Everything was delicious. We’re having turkey sandwiches for lunch today.” She turned to Ellie. “The eagle is back. He’s down by the old lighthouse. You need to come see! You can come, too, Wendy.”

  “Actually, I was just leaving,” Wendy said, her gaze on Ellie. “Thanks for showing me the decoys, Ellie. It’s good to know they’re still here.”

  “They belong here. They’ll always be here.” Ellie grabbed her coat on the way to the door with Wendy. “Thanks for stopping by. I hope we’ll see you at Christmas.”

  “Maybe you will.”

  They all walked outside and Wendy got into her car. She rolled down her window as if she were about to speak but merely waved instead.

  “Bye, Wendy!” Gabi called as she ran to the beach. “Come on, Ellie. He’ll have flown away by the time you get there.…”

  Cameron stopped over later in the afternoon, ostensibly to make sure they had enough dry wood for a fire.

  “Want to stay for dinner? We’re having leftovers from last night,” Ellie said.

  “Funny, that’s what I’m having. Thanks, I’m going to have to pass. I have an estimate I need to go over with a client in the morning and it’s nowhere near finished.”

  “I think I’ll go upstairs and read for a while,” Gabi told them.

  “Sure.” Ellie nodded and watched her go up the steps two at a time, Dune trailing along behind.

  When they heard Gabi’s bedroom door close, Cam asked, “How’s she doing today?”

  “She seems okay. Spending more time alone in her room, but maybe she needs some time alone right now. All things considered, she’s doing remarkably well. I just hope it isn’t an act, so that she falls apart one of these days.”

  “And how are you doing?” Cam drew her into his arms.

  “I’m doing okay, too.”

  “No regrets?”