“Oh!”
I gave her a gentle smile, my most reassuring one.
“I’m so embarrassed.”
“Don’t be. I’ve been known to cry a few times in my life.”
She laughed and walked over to me. “You’re so much like Winnie.” I took it as a compliment. “I miss her so much.” The tears started flowing all over again. She poked at her eyes with a handkerchief. “I’m sorry. I’m just really emotional right now. Must be PMSing.”
I pulled one of my minister cards from my purse and handed it to her. “If you’d ever like to talk.”
“Thanks.” She glanced down at the card in her hand. “Oh. Yes. Can I call you?”
“Of course.”
I left the bookstore one step behind her. I walked a few steps and popped inside the next door down the street, anxious to see Seth.
“Hey, you’re early.”
“I finished what I was doing earlier than I thought I would. But if you have more work—”
“No, we can go.” But still he sat comfortably behind the cushion of his desk.
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.” Still no movement but the intense gaze toward me.
I laughed, somewhat self-consciously which must have jolted him from his daze. He grabbed his jacket and shoved his arms into the sleeves. “Ready.”
I was almost to the door when he grabbed my arm and spun me around.
“What?”
He shook his head, but his eyes were telling me it wasn’t nothing. So was his voice when it cracked as he spoke. “I’m just glad you’re here.”
“So am I.”
“I mean—”
“A man of few words,” I teased.
His eyes were moist and shiny and I almost forgot they were blue.
“Jenny.”
It was our first real kiss. It was a nice first kiss. Actually, it was a fabulous first kiss. It took me a moment to get my balance and a moment longer for the room to stop whirling.
He laughed lightly and I joined him. “I’ve been trying to do that for a while,” he confessed.
“Yeah?”
“It was okay, wasn’t it?”
“Definitely okay.” I slipped my arm through his as he closed the door behind us and locked up.
We sat by the fire, at what had become our usual table. So much for trying new places. Pen brought us our Belhaven and Guinness without our asking.
“Ah, something is going on here,” she said, studying us closely.
“Just dinner as usual,” Seth said.
“And our usual dinner,” I said.
“Un huh. Right. Two orders of fish and chips coming right up.” She was nearly giggling as she headed for the kitchen.
Seth took my hand and held it between both of his. “Maybe she happened to be standing outside at that critical moment and saw us—”
“Or maybe a customer happened to be walking past your office at that critical moment and saw us. And now everyone in the pub knows that we were kissing. And by morning the entire island population will know.”
“Especially with a little help from its local newspaper.” He was joking, of course, but still it was nice that he wasn’t embarrassed about his feelings for me or his display of them.
I almost made it through dinner on the wings of that kiss. I was on my second piece of fish and my last few French fries before I remembered how I had come to know Seth in the first place.
“I’m still puzzled about the missing microfiche. Why 1949 and 1951?”
Seth left behind his last bite of fish and leaned back.
“Was something reported as actual fact, or was something said in the gossip column?”
“I wasn’t around back then, remember?” There was a slightly harsh edge to his voice.
“I was just wondering out loud,” I explained.
“I know. But somehow I feel responsible for it all. I feel as though I should be able to answer all your questions.”
“I’m sorry. I just—Never mind. So, how long were you over on Gael Island visiting the General?”
“Just a couple hours.”
“Do you visit him often?”
“A few times a month maybe.”
“That’s very sweet of you.”
A hint of pink migrated up his cheeks. “He’s—he was a great guy. And a wonderful newspaper writer.”
“It must be hard to see him this way.”
“Yes. Alzheimer’s is a cruel illness.”
I didn’t know that much about the illness, but I knew I would find out more. “Does he have any memory at all? Does he recognize you when you visit?”
“He remembers having known me—not necessarily who I am. And not always.”
“Is his family local? Do they visit him?”
“He doesn’t have a lot of family or many visitors,” Seth said.
And that was why he visited on a regular basis.
After dinner, I wasn’t ready to leave him. Apparently he wasn’t ready to leave me either. Otherwise he wouldn’t have stood beside me at my car, looking into my eyes, holding my hand.
“I have some lovely English tea at the cottage and some homemade pie.”
“You bake?”
I laughed. “I’ve been known to—on rare occasion. But since I’ve come to the island, I’ve found myself doing the oddest things—baking, planting a vegetable garden, even some sewing!”
He laughed. “Is that because we only get three television channels?”
“It’s because I haven’t set up my pottery studio yet, or my spiritual counseling practice.”
“Ah. Well, to answer your invitation, if that’s what it was. A cup of tea and a slice of pie sound wonderful.”
He followed me back to the cottage. I wasn’t sure what I had in mind, but I knew I wasn’t ready for the evening to end.
Seth built a fire and put one of Winnie’s old Dixieland jazz records on her old record player. I popped the peach pie in the oven for a re-warming and put the kettle on the stove. As I stood in the kitchen doorway, watching him stoke the fire, a sense of warmth came over me. For the first time since I had moved here, I actually felt at home. It was also the first time in a long time that I believed that my faith in men could possibly be restored.
We sat by the fire sipping tea and eating pie and listening to music from the 30s and 40s. Ain’t Misbehavin’. It Was Just One of Those Things. If Stars Could Talk. Long Ago and Far Away.
He took my hand and pulled me up beside him. What was he going to do? Take me upstairs to bed? Panic struck. I wasn’t ready for that. I really wasn’t ready for that.
Did he sense my panic or had I misread his intention after all? I was in his arms, swaying back and forth in rhythm to the music. We danced through two records. Nothing more. And then he kissed me goodnight. It was the kind of kiss that tempted you to ask a man to stay even though you knew you were not ready for him to stay.
I was grateful he left before the battle in my mind intensified. I was also glad I had a soft couch to fall back on when my knees buckled.
I didn’t want to fall in love. It was too soon. There were still so many tentacles stretching between Joe and me. It would take years to cut all those ties and memories. And I didn’t want to make a mistake, another mistake.
No, I self-corrected. Marrying Joe was not a mistake. Nothing we do is a mistake. They are simply choices we make along the way and when one of those choices turns out differently from what we expect, we can make a new choice. They are not mistakes, simply opportunities to grow and to become stronger. Besides, I got Matthew and Holly out of the deal.
But I was not ready to fall in love again.
I cleared our cups and plates and put away the pie, nibbling a tiny piece of crust that had fallen off the edge of the pan. As I turned out the kitchen light, I noticed the light blinking on my telephone answering machine. I pressed the red button.
Holly. She missed me and was thinking of flying home for a few days before sc
hool started. But I knew she wouldn’t.
Joe. There was an offer on the house. Where should he FAX the papers?
Strange hearing his voice. It didn’t warm the cockles of my heart as it once had.
Sheriff Sam. He’d heard from the forensic anthropologist.
MacGregor. He was back from Bellingham. Was it my imagination or did he really sound disappointed that he had missed me when I was in Seattle?
I was suddenly too awake to go to sleep. I threw another log on the fire, and curled up with one of Winnie’s diaries, as was becoming my nightly habit. I scanned several pages of the leather-bound book until I came to one that demanded my full attention.
May, 1951
He would not do this. He would not leave the island without saying good-bye. I know him better than that. Yet he is gone.
I have asked my friends but they have not seen him for three days now. It is clear to me that he left. Was I so mistaken in my assumptions? Has my intuition failed me? Perhaps when the heart is so full, it masks the intuition. We believe we are sensitive and know what the other person is feeling, but when our heart is longing for it to be so, we believe it is so.
I am distraught. And if able to admit it, I am certain I will recognize the loneliness I am feeling. Perhaps then I can admit that I love him. I have not told him. I have only now told myself. What good does it do me now? He is not here.
The tears are coming. They do not come often, but they are coming now. They are not only tears of sadness. They are tears filled with fear. What if he never returns? What if I never see him again?
Chills engulfed me. I moved closer to the fire, but could not feel it. I glanced once more at the year and the chills again consumed me. Nineteen fifty one. Something must have happened in 1949, but 1951 seemed to be the essential year.
I knew with complete certainty that if the forensic anthropologist were able to identify a year of death, it would be in either April or May of 1951. Everything else was pointing to that time period. Including Winnie’s love leaving the island. The questions were mounting in my mind. Who was her love? And had he really left the island?
If he hadn’t left the island, and if he was the one who had died here, it meant that he was buried in my aunt’s backyard all those years and she didn’t know it. But how was that possible? It was not possible, not with my aunt’s keen intuition.
Chapter 12
I had fallen asleep on the couch with Winnie’s leather diary clutched against my chest. I awoke in the same position and continued reading as though it had been minutes, not hours.
June, 1951
It was good to be away. I missed my home, but did not allow myself to return until nearly a month passed. Being in the city was stimulating, and it reminded me little of him. For that I am grateful.
Now I am home and everything reminds me of him. I try not to spend time in my garden because it is where I last stood with him, in his arms. This saddens me that I must forsake my garden because it has always been a place of nurture. It will be again.
It saddens me too what they have done to my koi pond and my rose garden. Who has done this? Do they despise me so? Or is it simply a childish prank? How could it be when it feels like a death on my land. The death of my koi and of my beautiful rose bushes—that he planted for me. And the death of a love affair.
For the first time, I have allowed myself to be vulnerable and I do not feel welcome on this island. This too shall pass, I know. But I will not hurry the sadness.
She had left the island for a month so she would have no reminders of the man she loved. I had no doubt it was the month when a body was buried on her property. I was shivering as I reread the words, It saddens me too what they have done to my koi pond and rose garden.
What had they done? Something to prevent her from knowing there was a body buried there—something dramatic enough to cloud her intuition. Or perhaps it was the death of a love affair that had done that. I glanced automatically at the urn filled with her ashes. Soon they would be freed to the Strait and perhaps other destinations. But something told me that soon would not come until after the resolution of this mystery.
Who was this man who had abandoned my aunt? And why had he left her? Had his leaving been intentional? If I were to figure that out, would I also be solving a half century old murder?
* * *
Dressed in jeans, a gray turtleneck and my favorite fisherman’s knit cardigan, I went for my morning walk. I needed the exercise and the fresh air. Besides, chances were Sheriff Sam wouldn’t be in his office this early.
It was colder this morning. The fog had crept in to hover above my lighthouse. I thought I saw a figure moving toward the trees, but decided it was purely my imagination. My intuition disagreed with that assumption, but what did it know? Maybe it was time to get a dog. I had always wanted a dog.
When I reached the water’s edge, I stood and gazed out into the blanket of fog. How odd it was to think that this water stretched half way around the world when all I could see was a few hundred feet.
I rubbed my arms to help warm myself. I had come away without my jacket. How unlike me. I really did need this walk. My thoughts were jumbled. No wonder, after the discovery I had made my first day on the island.
I wanted this over. I wanted this mystery solved. It was cheating me of the peace and quiet I had sought by coming here. It was keeping me from the healing that I needed after the end of a twenty year marriage. That wasn’t entirely true. In some ways it was helping. It certainly was distracting. My mind had found its way to Joe so few times since I had come here. That in itself was a miracle. But today my thoughts would not be free of him. I would have to return his phone call before the day was over.
A rock that looked more like a chair beckoned me. Had it always been so smooth and curved in just the right spot or had that happened with years of use? I closed my eyes and tried to remember my childhood on the island. Yes, I knew this rock. I had sat here with Winnie and with Bryn and Cameron.
I decided right then and there that time definitely does not exist. In that moment when I was presumed to be forty years old, I was suddenly seven and ten and fourteen. And my dear aunt was still alive.
I sat in silence, the cold replaced by a shawl of warm memories. When I opened my eyes again, the questions were still lingering, no answers, only more questions.
Who had buried a body beneath my aunt’s rose garden? And was it the same person who had taken the microfiche from Seth’s office? If it was, that ruled out my prime suspects, Eleanor and Daisy who had made the same trip to Seattle that I had made. I had no grounds for suspecting them, except that I wanted to! But the truth was, they were too young back in the early fifties. Actually, anyone who was likely to have commit murder—if it was murder—back in the fifties, was now plenty old. Too old to break in to a newspaper office? Was it the same person? Or was someone protecting the murderer? Was the murderer—assuming it was murder—still alive? And if they were still alive, were they still living on Anamcara Island?
The cold air had seeped beneath my sweater and I hurried back to the house. I gathered up my purse and car keys and my jacket, and headed into town. My first stop was the sheriff’s office.
“Jenny! You’re up bright and early. Wondering what they found out about our body?”
I nodded. “And other things.”
“They’re not finished yet. But they say it was a male, early to mid thirties. And they did figure an approximate period of time when it—he was buried.”
“Let me guess. Nineteen fifty one?”
“How’d you figure that?”
“May, 1951 to be exact.”
“They couldn’t get that close. Hey, you psychic or somethin’?”
“Just a lucky guess.”
Sam’s eyebrows twitched.
I didn’t explain. “I need you to look up something for me. June, 1951.”
“I already checked 1951, remember? Nothing. Zip. No missing people or buried bodies.”
“How about a koi pond?”
“Hunh?”
“Just check, okay?” This time I waited while he searched his records.
A few minutes later, he looked up at me, his face as pale as the white wall behind him. “You trying to spook me here, Jenny?”
“What is it?”
“Vandalism. Out at the Wainwright—your place. Someone dumped soap into the fish pond, killing twenty some koi.”
Anger flared inside me as though it had happened yesterday. “Anything about a rose garden?”
He read some more, looking at me again only a moment later. “Hacked up some twelve rose bushes. Only six remained intact.”
I sat down in the chair opposite Sam, feeling the shock as my aunt must have felt some fifty years earlier.
“Wow! You think someone dumped that soap in the koi pond to make it look like vandalism and to cover up—?”
“The fact that they’d murdered someone and buried them in the garden?” I finished for him.
“Well, this gives us a bit more to go on, doesn’t it?”
“You think we’ll solve it, Sam? Fifty years after the fact?”
“Who knows. We can give it a shot. Of course, you’ve already searched the newspapers and I’ve looked at my records. There’s not a whole lot more we can do until we get more information on the body. Even then . . . ”
“We can talk to people, people who were living on the island in 1951.”
“True, not many of them still around, but we can do that.”
“Will you let me see that forensics report when it arrives?”
“Of course.”
“Thanks, Sam. I appreciate it.” It was a relief to know that he was not one of those sheriffs whose ego got in the way of his work and he wouldn’t divulge information for fear that someone else might solve a crime.
“Uh, Jenny, before you go—”
“Don’t worry, Sam. I’m meeting Sasha for lunch. We’ll work on planning your date with Frankie.”
He took his hat off, rubbed his forehead, and plunked the hat back over his mop of brown hair. “You are psychic!”
“Naw, you’re just easy to read.” I winked at him, then turned and opened the door.
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