That Night on Thistle Lane

by Carla Neggers

Eighteen

  Maggie was glad when Phoebe knocked on her door at seven-thirty and dragged her to the library before it opened. That way she couldn’t drive over to Carriage Hill too early and Brandon couldn’t accuse her of hovering over Aidan and Tyler.

  She hated an empty house. She’d never lived alone and she’d lain awake most of the night, hearing every creak and groan, imagining what she’d do if a bat got in, remembering having Brandon asleep next to her.

  A long damn night.

  She met Phoebe on the library steps. It was a perfect August morning. The boys would be having a blast with their father.

  Phoebe frowned. “You okay, Maggie?”

  “Cranky. I’ll get coffee after we’re done.” She stood back, appraised her older sister. Phoebe wore a dull green sundress with no jewelry, her hair down, barely combed, as if she’d had a bad night herself. “What about you? You okay?”

  “Just a lot to do before the fashion show.”

  It made sense but Maggie didn’t think it was all. Phoebe was used to juggling her professional obligations. The fashion show had become personal, too, with the dresses—with Noah Kendrick.

  “Noah left a message that he’s gone back to San Diego,” Maggie said. “I’ll stop by Olivia’s after we’re done here and walk Buster. Did you see Noah before he left?”

  “Just for a minute.” Phoebe waved a hand toward the street. “Here are Ava and Ruby now.”

  The twins joined them, looking curious and sleepy but not as cranky as Maggie felt. Phoebe didn’t waste any time and took them straight up to the attic.

  Her hidden room was even more amazing than Maggie had expected. She had zero interest in sewing and fashion design, but the dresses, the fabrics—the atmosphere of the tiny, cramped room—affected her. She could feel the talent, skill and obsession of whoever had created it.

  How many years ago was it? Thirty? Forty?

  “I can see why you didn’t say anything right away,” Maggie said, looking at the fabrics, the finished dresses, the simple shelves and sewing table. “It feels as if we’ve walked into someone else’s secrets.”

  “Someone who was vulnerable, maybe,” Ava added, rubbing her fingertips over the rose-beige silk of a dress hanging in an open garment bag.

  Ruby raised the lid on a cedar-lined trunk. “Phoebe, did you bring Noah up here?”

  Phoebe opened a creaky corner door, morning light streaming in from a small window. “Why would I bring Noah up here?” she asked casually. “Actually, he came up here on his own. I was checking it out after I called him about running into Julius Hartley.”

  Maggie stood back, reading Phoebe’s expression. Ava did the same thing and emitted something between a groan and a squeal. “Phoebe!”

  Ruby’s eyes widened. “Has Noah fallen for you?”

  “You’ve fallen for him.” Ava raked a hand through her hair. “Phoebe, you know he’s a billionaire, right? He’s not a regular guy. Dylan’s rich but he’s a hockey player at heart. Not that I have anything against Noah, but Phoebe...”

  “I know,” she said. “Don’t worry. There’s nothing between us. Really. He’s gone back to San Diego.”

  Ava seemed to regret her words. “I just want you to be happy, Phoebe. I don’t know Noah. He seems nice.”

  “It was that dress you wore the other night,” Maggie said. “It sucked you into romantic fantasies. They’ll bite you in the end. They always do.”

  Phoebe gave her a knowing look, as if she suspected Maggie’s remark had less to do with Noah than it did with one Brandon Sloan.

  Maybe it did, Maggie thought.

  “What are you going to do now?” Ruby asked.

  “I have to work today,” Phoebe said. “We have a lot to do to get ready for the fashion show.”

  Ruby sighed. “I meant about Noah.”

  Phoebe turned from the open corner door. “My life’s here in Knights Bridge.” She smiled. “What would you all do without me?”

  “Visit you in San Diego in February,” Ava said with a laugh.

  But Ruby wasn’t done yet. “So you’re not doing anything,” she said, clearly frustrated. “Noah Kendrick is interested in you, and now it’s just business as usual?”

  “Maybe what’s next isn’t up to me,” Phoebe said quietly.

  Ruby groaned. “Then who is it up to?”

  Phoebe didn’t answer as she ushered her sisters back downstairs. Ruby and Ava stayed behind to work on the fashion show, but Phoebe made them promise not to pester her about Noah.

  As she drove out to Carriage Hill, Maggie remembered the look on Phoebe’s face when they’d found her billionaire shirtless in Olivia’s kitchen. Maggie didn’t need confirmation. There was no question in her mind that her sister had fallen for Noah.

  If he broke her heart, Maggie would fly to San Diego herself.

  And do what?

  Noah was Dylan’s best friend, and Dylan was Olivia’s fiancé. That wouldn’t stop Maggie from giving Noah a piece of her mind, but it would Phoebe. She’d just keep her pain to herself and carry on.

  But what if Noah had fallen for Phoebe, too? What if they were meant to be together, just like Olivia and Dylan?

  “Then what?” Maggie asked herself aloud as she climbed out of her catering van.

  She ignored a pang of loneliness, loss—she didn’t know what it was. She wanted all three of her sisters and all of her friends to be happy and knew they wanted the same for her. Except she wasn’t happy, she realized. Not romantically, anyway.

  “What you are is discombobulated because the father of your sons is living in a damn tent.”

  Muttering to herself couldn’t be a good sign of anything, she thought as she headed into Olivia’s kitchen. There was no sign of Buster. She assumed Noah had also let Brandon know he was leaving. She’d run into a couple of Sloans yesterday when she’d stopped at Dylan’s place and tried to surreptitiously check out Brandon’s tent, telling herself she just wanted to see where the boys would be camping. Sloan & Sons was working hard on carrying out the plans for the property. Brandon’s uncle and his eldest brother had caught her peering into the tent and teased her. She’d found their underlying assumption that she and Brandon would get back together both annoying and comforting.

  That kind of ambivalence couldn’t last, she knew. She needed clarity in her life. Tyler and Aidan needed it, too.

  She heard laughter and went into the mudroom, debated a moment before she stepped outside onto the terrace. It was a stunning morning, clear and dry, the sun shining on Olivia’s flowers and herbs. Tyler and Aidan were charging up a path, laughing. Brandon ambled behind them with Buster on a leash.

  Maggie felt a jolt of awareness as her husband approached the terrace. He hadn’t shaved, wore a black flannel shirt over jeans. She noticed the shape of his shoulders, his hips, his legs as he unclipped Buster’s leash and warned him to stay out of the gardens. She blamed overwork and her sleepless night for her reaction and quickly looked away, although not before she saw Brandon grin. He’d noticed.

  Of course he had. Bastard.

  She smiled at Tyler and Aidan as they jumped onto the terrace. “Have you guys had breakfast?”

  “Cereal,” Aidan said. “I wanted pancakes.”

  “I bet I can find the ingredients for pancakes,” Maggie said. “I know Olivia has a griddle and maple syrup.”

  Tyler obviously liked that. “Can we have blueberry pancakes?”

  “I don’t know if there are blueberries—”

  “We picked some with Dad,” Aidan said.

  She hadn’t noticed the small covered plastic container that Brandon had in one hand. He set it on the table. “Should be enough for pancakes.”

  It was what they’d done every summer since they were teenagers. Picked wild blueberries together. Made pancakes. Maggie fought back tears and grabbed the container. “Why don’t you guys burn off some energy out here and I’ll see what I can do?”

  “Do you need any help?” Tyler asked.<
br />
  He was her budding chef, but she shook her head. “You’re on vacation today.”

  She returned to the kitchen. She’d catered a number of events for The Farm at Carriage Hill already and knew her way around the kitchen well. She quickly got out a pottery mixing bowl, measuring cups, measuring spoons and ingredients—stone-ground cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, salt, canola oil, buttermilk.

  Brandon came inside and dug out the electric griddle. Maggie tried not to think about how familiar it felt to have him there, working in the kitchen with her while the boys played outside. Familiarity was an illusion. They had gone their separate ways months ago.

  “Noah’s gone back to California,” Brandon said.

  “I know. He left me a message.”

  “We talked some about Dylan’s plans to get into adventure travel. I could almost see the wheels turning in Noah’s brain. Guy’s smart. Always thinking.”

  “Does he want to get into adventure travel, too?” Maggie asked, surprised.

  Brandon shook his head. “No, but he thinks I should. He figured out I have a touch of wanderlust.”

  “More than a touch,” Maggie said. “You’d be good at adventure travel, Brandon. Do you think you’ll talk to Dylan about it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She whisked together the dry ingredients for the pancakes. “It’d be okay with me if you do. I’d like that. I never wanted you to give up your dreams. I just...” She set aside the bowl and lifted the strainer of blueberries out of the sink. “I was scared.”

  Brandon opened his hand an inch above the griddle, testing the heat. “I was in a dark place last year. Took it out on you.”

  “No, you didn’t.” Maggie dumped the blueberries onto paper towels. “You took it out on yourself, and I reacted. I let my fear of going broke and all that went with it infect everything. What I did, how I felt, how I thought.”

  “My lack of faith in my future—our future—affected you. I didn’t see that. I was caught up in my own stuff.” He pulled his hand from the heat and turned to her, his eyes dark, filled with pain. “I was out of work and I let pride get in the way of making good decisions. I didn’t do right by you, Maggie.”

  She patted the blueberries dry, grateful that she had something to do. “I don’t want you coming back to Knights Bridge and working for your family just for me.”

  “There’s no better reason, is there? Come on. Let’s get these boys fed.”

  Maggie mixed the dry and wet ingredients, and Brandon dropped the pancake batter onto the hot griddle while she sprinkled on a handful of the freshly picked blueberries. While they waited for the bottoms to brown, he leaned against the counter, holding a spatula. “What are you going to do with your best friend marrying a multimillionaire and your sister marrying a billionaire?”

  Maggie took a breath. What would she do? She scooped up another handful of berries. “You’re jumping the gun with Phoebe and Noah.”

  “Nope.”

  In spite of her concern for her sister and her emotional state—the risks of getting involved with a man as complicated and intense as Noah—Maggie liked hearing the confidence in Brandon’s voice. She watched him flip the pancakes, smelled the sweetness of the heated, softened blueberries.

  “What’s on your mind, Maggie?” he asked.

  “Phoebe and Noah...I don’t want him to break her heart.”

  Brandon leveled a steady gaze on her. “What if she breaks his heart?”

  Maggie opened a jar of maple syrup that her mother had made in the spring from her own trees. Was he talking about Phoebe and Noah, or about himself and her? She didn’t want to read too much into his words. Being physically close to him had her in a mess.

  “Noah’s the one who left Knights Bridge,” she said. “Phoebe’s still here.”

  “Maybe that’s part of the problem. Maybe Phoebe’s got to give a little, too. See the possibilities.”

  “They’ve only known each other a few days.”

  “Instead of all their lives?”

  Before Maggie could respond, he grabbed a platter and flipped the pancakes onto it, then dropped more batter onto the griddle. She added the wild blueberries, wondering if he was right about Phoebe. About her. About them.

  He went to the mudroom and called out the back door for the boys to come in for the pancakes. “Get them while they’re hot.”

  Maggie watched him return to the griddle, wink at her as he picked up his spatula, and she realized she was in danger of falling in love with him all over again.

  * * *

  Phoebe worked in her backyard when she got home from the library. Pruning, weeding, checking for insect damage. It was a beautiful evening, and she appreciated having time to herself.

  Needed time to herself.

  After her sisters had left that morning, she’d checked with the library’s part-time custodian, a retired machinist and avid reader, but he didn’t know a thing about any hidden room. His predecessor hadn’t mentioned it. He’d died last year. Phoebe remembered him as a solid, unimaginative man. He could have cleaned the hidden room periodically and not thought twice about it.

  She went back inside. She’d stacked up the books that she and Noah had knocked over. Her skin burned when she thought of sitting on the table with her dress half off.

  What was he doing now in San Diego?

  She grabbed a Diet Coke out of her refrigerator and put the cold bottle against her cheek. She sat at the table. It stood to reason that someone who’d created a hidden room in a library would like to read. Seventy years ago, Grace Webster had buried herself in classic adventure tales while her world disappeared around her, literally scraped, burned, razed and carried off. She’d read The Three Musketeers, Scaramouche, The Scarlet Pimpernel.

  Phoebe wondered if Mary Stewart, Victoria Holt and Helen MacInnes had fired the imagination of her seamstress, diverted her on a bad day, entertained her on a good day.

  Maybe she’d collected the books for someone else or just hadn’t gotten around to reading them.

  Who was she?

  As Phoebe fingered one of the sewing books, she couldn’t shake the feeling she’d had when she’d first discovered the attic room—that somehow the woman who’d sewn there, dreamed there, had felt trapped by life in Knights Bridge.

  Had she abandoned the life—escaped the life—Phoebe was now living?

  She gave an inward groan. So what if her mystery seamstress had hated Knights Bridge? Phoebe didn’t. She loved her work. She loved her cottage. She loved her family and friends, being close to them, connected to her childhood.

  She was just on edge and overthinking everything because of what had happened between her and Noah. She never should have let herself get so carried away with him. What had she been thinking?

  She hadn’t been thinking, obviously.

  Once again she opened the yellowed copy of Le Petit Prince, its pages brittle with age.

  Lorsque j’avais six ans j’ai vu, une fois, une magnifique image, dans un livre sur la Forêt Vierge qui s’appelait “Histoires Vécues.”

  Could her unknown seamstress have taken off to France? Phoebe flipped through the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry novel. She didn’t know what she hoped to find. An old letter tucked in the pages? A signature?

  She opened her Diet Coke and methodically checked each of the books, looking for anything that could offer answers, even a clue that would point her in the right direction.

  There was nothing.

  Had her mystery woman sat here, in this spot, listening to the crickets on a pleasant summer evening?

  She heard a knock on her front door. “Phoebe?” It was her mother’s voice. “Can I come in?”

  “Of course,” Phoebe said.

  She started to get up but her mother was already through the living room. “I worked late and thought I’d stop by,” she said, getting a glass down and filling it with water from the tap. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  Phoebe shook her head
. “It’s water, Mom. Do you want anything else?”

  “No, this is fine.”

  She had on her work clothes, a flowered tunic over wide-legged white linen pants with neutral-colored slides. Phoebe had changed into shorts for her gardening. “Mom?”

  She drank some of her water, then set her glass on the counter and walked over to the table. She patted the top book on the pile. “The Vogue Sewing Book. My mother had a copy. She taught me to sew. I was never any good at it, but she did her best. I was always more interested in gardening and boys. My best subject in school was math. Isn’t that funny? It didn’t translate into being good with money, obviously.”

  “You’ve always managed to get by,” Phoebe said.

  “Barely.” She tapped a finger on the front cover of the sewing book. “Ava and Ruby told me about their visit to the library this morning. They said you gave them permission to tell me about the attic room.”

  “Did you know about it?”

  “No. I’ve only been in the attic once. A friend and I went up there in search of ghosts. We were in junior high...” She sank into a chair, clearing her throat before she continued. “We took French together. My friend was good at it but I just couldn’t get the hang of it. There was a young woman who worked at the library who was fluent in French. She offered to tutor me.”

  Phoebe stared at her mother. “What was her name?”

  “Debbie Sanderson.”

  “Sanderson?”

  “She said she was George Sanderson’s great-great-granddaughter but none of us ever believed her. She was here such a short time. It’s been forty years, Phoebe. I was just a kid myself.”

  “What was her job at the library?”

  “I don’t really know. An assistant, I think. She wasn’t a librarian. I know that much. There was a bigger staff in those days.”

  “Four people instead of two,” Phoebe said with a smile. “How long was she here, do you know?”

  “It couldn’t have been more than two years. She tutored me for half the school year. She didn’t want any money, but my parents insisted on paying her.”

  “Did it work? Did you pass French?”

  “I most certainly did pass.”