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

  “That’s what Jesse said.” Sophie smiled and added, “Hard to believe she was once the town mean girl, or at least to hear her tell it, she was. She’s such a sweetheart now.”

  “She’s told me that, too, but I don’t see it either. Though she did say that when they were in school, she and Dallas MacGregor were both hot for Grant Wyler.”

  “Well, we know how that turned out, right? Grant married Dallas—eventually, anyway—and Brooke …” Sophie stopped in midsentence and looked away.

  “Yeah, Brooke married my brother and had Logan.” His face was unreadable. “And then Eric went to Iraq and didn’t come back.”

  “I’m sorry.” Sophie turned to face him. “It’s never come up in conversation between us before, but I did hear about your brother, and I’m sorry for your loss. Brooke told me you were very close.”

  He nodded. “Thanks.” He met her eyes for a moment, then looked past her to the table where a student was displaying her project. “Ant farms. I had one of those when I was a kid. Did you?”

  “Jesse had one.” She followed him to the table, where he spoke to the girl.

  “I had one of these when I was your age,” he was saying. “What do you feed yours?”

  For one moment, when Sophie had looked into Jason’s eyes, she felt a connection—a sort of zing—but the moment had passed quickly. It was obviously painful for him to talk about his late brother, and he’d shut down the dialogue before it could turn into a conversation.

  “Sophie!” Logan waved from several tables down. “Come see what I made!”

  “Wow, that’s … that’s really complicated.” Sophie studied the charts that stood on Logan’s table and tried to keep from frowning. She had no idea of what she was looking at. “What’s your project about?”

  “It’s about how exercise helps your brain,” he explained. “Like how when you exercise, you can remember things better.” He led her from one piece of poster board to the next. “These are the kids who played a game at the table …”

  “A board game?” she asked.

  “Uh-huh. And these are the kids who played dodgeball.” He pointed to a second chart. “Then I showed everybody some stuff and they had to write down what they remembered. The kids who played dodgeball remembered more of the things than the kids who played Chutes and Ladders.”

  “Proving what?” Jason asked from over Sophie’s shoulder.

  “That your brain can do more things if you play dodgeball?”

  “Close enough.” Jason nodded.

  “I’m impressed,” Sophie said.

  “You gotta see Cody’s.” Logan pointed to his friend several tables away. “He cloned a cabbage.”

  “Don’t want to miss that one.” Sophie glanced in the general direction in which Logan was pointing and noticed that Cody’s mother, Dallas, was standing in front of her son’s display. “I think I’ll go on over and check out that cabbage.”

  “It’s pretty cool,” Logan told her.

  Sophie passed an exhibit of molds that a student had grown on various food substances, a display of rock crystals, and some poster boards charting the speed of sound through different mediums.

  “Pretty sophisticated stuff,” Dallas said when Sophie approached Cody’s table.

  “Nothing like what I made when I was in second grade. I think I was still growing sweet potatoes over jars filled with colored water,” Sophie replied.

  “That was about my speed, too.” Dallas smiled. “Looks like the whole family has shown up for Logan tonight.”

  “Well, Jason’s the only other person I’ve seen. It’s rumored that Brooke is around here somewhere, and Jesse hasn’t arrived yet.”

  “I saw Brooke and her mother about five minutes ago when I dropped off cookies, and I could swear I saw Jesse talking to someone in the lobby a few minutes ago.”

  “Well, then, I guess we are all here. Just not in the same place.” Sophie turned to Cody. “I hear you have a cloned cabbage.”

  He pointed to the vegetable that appeared to be growing out of the side of a cabbage stalk. “Cool, huh?”

  “Very cool,” she agreed as a giggling pack of girls stepped up to the table.

  Sophie took a step back just as Christina Pratt, the mayor of St. Dennis, stopped to chat with Dallas.

  “Dallas, I just want to tell you again how much everyone is looking forward to the opening of your new studio,” the mayor gushed. “You just can’t imagine what this will do for the town, what it will do for the merchants.”

  “Actually, I have an idea,” Dallas replied with a faint smile.

  “Well, we’re just all so excited. This will put our little town on the map.”

  Dallas’s smile remained fixed, and after a brief exchange, Mayor Pratt went on to the next display.

  “As if I don’t know that a major studio would give the town a boost.” Dallas shook her head, the smile fading.

  “I’m sure she’s just grateful and wants to express that.”

  “She’s already done that about twenty times. Like every time she sees me. I don’t need to be patted on the back constantly. This is my home, and I want to work where I live and where we’re raising Cody, but yes, I’d be a fool if I didn’t realize how much revenue this venture will bring into St. Dennis.”

  “How is the studio coming along?” Sophie asked.

  “The renovations on the building are coming along very nicely. The offices are all finished, so I can go to work every day and function quite well. I’ve hired some key people to work in my production company, and some of them are looking for temporary housing in and around the community already.”

  “At the risk of sounding like the mayor”—Sophie lowered her voice—“it really is kind of exciting.”

  “No one’s more excited than I am,” Dallas admitted. “I love the idea of having my business right here in town. There’s no way I could go back to California for more than a weekend with Grant here, and Cody having settled in so well, and my aunt Berry ready to tackle what will most likely be her last screen role.”

  Dallas’s great-aunt, Berry Eberle, as Beryl Townsend, had been, in her day, every bit the major movie star that Dallas currently was. Now in her eighties, Berry hadn’t made a film in years, but she was coming out of retirement to play a lead role in Dallas’s first production.

  “I read the book,” Sophie said. “Pretty Maids. It’s going to make an incredible movie.”

  “Thank you.” Dallas beamed. “I’ve finished the screenplay and we’ve started casting. That’s going quite well—I expect to have some announcements to make very soon, though so far we’ve only signed Aunt Berry and Laura Fielding as her granddaughter.”

  “They’re going to be perfect. Your aunt is totally Rosemarie, and Laura will be amazing as Charlotte. I can’t wait till it’s finished.”

  “There’s a long way to go before we can put this baby in the can, but I appreciate your enthusiasm. Everyone agrees that Berry is going to be radiant in the role, but not everyone’s on board as far as Laura is concerned.”

  “Oh, you know that everyone’s a critic. I think Laura will be wonderful and the movie will win all sorts of awards.”

  “Thank you so much, Sophie. It’s nice to get support from the hometown crowd.”

  Sophie could have reminded Dallas that she wasn’t exactly hometown, but she let it go. Instead, she asked as casually as she could, “So when do you think you’ll be up and running?”

  “By the summer, definitely. I expect to have the cast firmed up and the crew hired on by April, May at the latest. I want to be shooting by the summer.” Dallas smiled. “You interested in an audition?”

  “Me?” Sophie laughed. “I couldn’t act to save my life, but it’s nice of you to ask.”

  Grace Sinclair appeared at her elbow, camera in hand. “Ladies, may I take your picture for the paper? The St. Dennis Gazette has covered this event for the past forty years or so, you know. Always had the money shot on the front page.”


  “I think Dallas is the very definition of money shot,” Sophie said. “I think this is my cue to find my brother.” She turned to Dallas. “Good seeing you again.”

  “Likewise. And if you change your mind about auditioning, you give me a call.”

  “Not going to happen, but thanks.” Sophie drifted off into the crowd, scanning the room for Jesse or Brooke. She did catch a glimpse of Jason, his arms folded, head bent as he appeared to be listening to a pretty dark-haired woman who was looking up at him as if he were a big, yummy slice of chocolate cake and she couldn’t wait to take a bite. A shot of something hot suddenly stung Sophie right around her midsection.

  Ridiculous, she chastised herself. Jason and I have nothing in common except Logan. She turned her back, the hot little nugget in her gut still sizzling.

  “There you are.” Jesse, still dressed in a three-piece suit, motioned to her from about ten feet away. “I’ve been looking for you. I wanted to thank you again for going through those résumés. You did a great job. I’m going to ask Violet to call your number one and set up an appointment.”

  “I already did. She’ll be in on Friday morning. I cleared it with Violet. She said you were free.”

  “Thanks, Soph. I don’t know when I would have gotten to it.”

  “If you had a good paralegal, you might be able to have dinner with your fiancée one or two nights a week.”

  Jesse nodded. “Don’t think I’m happy about the way things are.”

  “Look, I’m sorry that I didn’t really believe you, about you being so jammed with work. I thought you were just trying to get me to move to St. Dennis.”

  “Well, there is that.”

  “You can hire another lawyer, Jess. I don’t know how you’re going to avoid it if the firm is going to maintain its reputation.”

  “I didn’t want to be the one to change the name of the firm from Enright and Enright to Enright and someone else.” Jessie’s expression said it all. “But I guess you’re right. The reputation is more important than the name of the firm. I guess I’ll talk to Pop, make sure he’s okay with it.”

  “I think he’d rather see the name change than to see you work yourself into a divorce before you’ve even had time to enjoy a little married life.”

  “Brooke’s a rock—don’t kid yourself. And she works a lot of long hours, too. Runs her business, raises her son …”

  “Yes, but you’re going to have to be more involved with that now, too. You’re going to be his father, Jess. You have to be there for something more than his sports teams on Saturdays.”

  Jesse nodded; it was clear to Sophie that he understood his responsibilities and wasn’t happy feeling that he wasn’t currently totally fulfilling them.

  “Would it be tossing salt into the wound to tell you that you need to hire another office manager–receptionist?”

  “Yeah, but go ahead,” Jesse groaned. “Pile it on.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, it’s all right. It’s true. Violet needs to be able to retire for real this time. Though I don’t know if anything would keep her out of the office completely. I mean, that office is a big part of her life.”

  “I know, but if you hired a manager, Violet could just pick out the things she likes to do, and she could come in two or three times each week for a few hours here and a few hours there when she felt like it, do what she wanted to do, then go home.”

  “That’s what she was doing when I first started here, but she came back full time pretty much because she didn’t trust me.”

  Sophie nodded. Violet had admitted as much to her.

  “She stayed on because she wanted to,” he continued. “I think it makes her feel young, you know, like she did when Pop was just starting out and she came to work for him and his dad. I don’t know if she’d trust anyone else to step into her job.”

  “I think if you found the right person, she’d be okay about turning over the desk and her keys.”

  “Well, the desk, maybe, but I don’t see her giving up that key ring without a fight.”

  “So let her keep the keys for old times’ sake.”

  “That could work.” Jesse’s eyes were drawn to something over his sister’s shoulder. “Say, is that Pop? He said something about wanting to see Logan’s project, but I didn’t expect him to show.”

  Sophie turned in time to see Jason spot her grandfather at the same time she did. Turning away from the woman who was obviously trying to hold his attention, Jason greeted the old man with a pat on the back and a wide grin. The two men fell into what appeared to be an easy conversation. Funny, Sophie thought, that Jason seemed more interested in her grandfather than he had in the young woman, who was looking slightly miffed.

  “Nice of Pop to stop by.” Jesse raised a hand to get his grandfather’s attention, but Curtis, accompanied by Jason, was on his way to Logan’s table. “Let’s catch up with them.”

  “You go on,” Sophie told him. “I’ll be over in a minute.”

  Jesse made his way through the growing crowd while Curtis made slow progress in the same direction. Jason’s steady hand on the older man’s elbow guided him safely to his destination. Once there, Jason stood slightly behind Curtis as if guarding him. Several times, he extended his arm protectively across Curtis’s back. It didn’t take long for Sophie to realize that Jason was shielding him from being jostled by people going by. The small gesture went straight to her heart.

  She walked through the throng to Logan’s display.

  “Hey, Pop.” She greeted him with a kiss on the cheek.

  “Well, there’s my girl.” Curtis reached out for her hand. “Did you see Logan’s project? Brilliant, don’t you think?”

  “I do,” she agreed.

  “Pop, look,” a beaming Logan called to him.

  “What’s that you’ve got there, son?” Curtis stepped closer to the table.

  “I got an honorable mention.” Logan held up the ribbon.

  “Thanks for watching out for him,” Sophie whispered to Jason. “He should be using a walker—or at the very least, a cane in a crowd like this—but he’s too proud.”

  “He’s doing okay,” Jason assured her, leaning in a little closer. “We just need to keep an eye on him.”

  “I appreciate that you’ve been doing that.”

  Jason shrugged, as if his vigilance were of no consequence. “He’s a good man, your grandfather. I’ve been working with him for the last few months and I’ve grown very fond of him.”

  “It looked to me as if he’s equally fond of you.”

  “We get along,” Jason replied.

  She took a few steps back so as to not be overheard.

  “I think he’s slowed a bit since Christmas.” She waited for his response. “Have you noticed any changes in him over the past month or so?”

  “Maybe a few steps slower, but mentally, the man is as sharp as they come.”

  “I understand you’re designing some gardens for him.”

  “We’re working together on that. He wants to restore the formal garden that was behind the house at one time—probably a hundred years ago or so—and he wants to re-create his wife’s rose garden. We found the remnants of a wall near the carriage house, and he’d like that rebuilt and some beds there refurbished.” Jason looked down at her and smiled. His eyes held hers for a second or two.

  There it was again. That zing.

  “He’s the best kind of client,” Jason continued. “He knows what he wants, and he gets out of my way and lets me do it.”

  “Has he seemed … not sure how to say this … somewhat fatalistic to you lately?”

  Jason frowned. “I’m not sure what you’re asking me.”

  “Does he talk a lot about dying?” she blurted out.

  “Sometimes. I guess at his age, the thought does cross your mind from time to time. He doesn’t seem particularly concerned about it, though. If anything, he’s pretty blunt about looking forward to being with your grandmother again.”


  “To hear him tell it, they’re together all the time.” Sophie made a face. “According to him, she’s never left.”

  “Oh, right. The gardenia thing.”

  “You’ve smelled it? Gardenia?”

  “Sure. At least, I think I have. But do I know where the scent’s coming from?” Jason shook his head. “I thought I figured it out when he was showing me around his greenhouse. There’s a huge old gardenia plant in there, but it wasn’t in bloom. I even picked a leaf off and sniffed it to see if it gave off any fragrance, but it didn’t.”

  “He swears it’s her. My grandmother.”

  “Who’s to say it isn’t? And why does it bother you so much?”

  “I’m a prosecutor. I deal strictly in facts. Are you telling me that you believe in ghosts? You believe she’s really there?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I believe, only what he believes. Whether she’s really there with him …” Jason shrugged.

  “So in other words, it doesn’t matter what I think, either.”

  “Not to sound rude, but no, actually, it doesn’t. Your grandfather isn’t a stupid man. He’s one of the smartest men I’ve ever met. If he believes she’s there, that they communicate with each other, that’s good enough for me.” Jason turned his attention for a moment to the man under discussion, watched his interaction with Logan.

  “How did he get here?” it occurred to Sophie to ask. “God, I hope he didn’t drive that big old Caddie of his …”

  “He said one of his neighbors gave him a ride. I told him I’d drive him home, though.”

  “That’s nice of you, but I can drive …” Her phone buzzed in her jacket pocket. She reached in and pulled it out, checked the number. Her office. “I should probably take this.”

  She answered the call, but the background noise in the auditorium was so loud, she couldn’t hear. She made her way through the crowd as quickly as she could, passing through the double doors into the hallway.

  “Hello?” she repeated when she reached the lobby.

  “Sophie … it’s Christopher.” He added hastily, “Don’t hang up, it’s about work. One of your cases.”