My Brother's Crown

by Mindy Starns Clark

  “Not that it’s any of your business,” Nana replied, looking first to me and then to my three cousins, “but I needed to make sure I was legally protected. You girls may not realize this, but that land next door is part of this estate. If indeed a man was murdered there, I feared that I could be liable in some way because I’m the property owner. That’s all.”

  My cousins seemed to accept her answer, but it only served to confuse me more. The Dark Woods were a part of this estate? Owned by my own grandparents? Why hadn’t I known this? More importantly, when I called Granddad four years ago and asked him for the owner’s name so I could get permission to have someone investigate there, why hadn’t he said as much then? Instead, he’d just become quite upset and told me to let it go.

  Had he really been more concerned about some liability issue than his own granddaughter’s emotional well-being?

  I couldn’t imagine such a thing, but now that he was gone, I couldn’t exactly ask him about it. All I could do was give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he hadn’t been avoiding the question so much as reacting to the notion that I wanted to dig up this matter from the past.

  For now, I needed to turn my attention to farewells. It was time for all three cousins to hit the road, and though I was sorry to see them go, I knew this was a different goodbye than ever before. So much had changed in the course of a single night. Even if we did have more questions than answers, at least this first hurdle had been cleared. What we’d always known to be true was now proven at last.

  They told Nana goodbye inside the house, and then I walked them to their cars. As we went, I put an arm around Nicole and gave her thin shoulders a squeeze.

  “One question,” I said softly. “Otherwise, I promise I won’t bug you.”

  “What?” she huffed, though I could see she was smiling.

  “Why did you skip the reunion this year? Are you doing okay?”

  “That’s two questions. But yes, I’m fine. I promise.”

  She sounded so young, more like a belligerent teenager than a woman of twenty-five. I held my tongue, waiting for her to fill the silence that followed with an answer to my other question.

  “I just couldn’t…” she said finally, blinking away sudden tears. “This was the first one without Granddad, you know? I couldn’t stand the thought of it, all those people laughing and playing games and having fun, like life went on as usual. It was just too much. I figured it’d be easier to stay away for this one. I’ll come next year, I promise.”

  “Good. ’Cause it wasn’t the same without you.” With a smile, I added, “Not to mention you missed a killer solo by Aunt Cissy.”

  Then the four of us drew together for a group hug, and we were laughing and crying all at the same time. I promised to keep them posted on any new developments that might happen while I was still here, but otherwise we’d have to depend on someone local—whether Nana or Blake or maybe even Detective Ortiz—for our updates.

  Of course, I should have known better than to bring up Blake, because instantly the topic turned to the question of him and me, starting with whether or not he had kissed me last night in the car. I could feel my cheeks burning as I tried to deflect their interest.

  “It wasn’t the right time or place,” I admitted at last. “But we’re going on our first date in a couple of hours, soooooo… we’ll see.”

  That earned catcalls and whistles as the group dispersed. I hugged each cousin in turn, starting with Nicole and then Maddee and then finally Danielle. I’d miss her most of all.

  Their two cars headed out and I was left standing alone. Turning, I looked up at my grandmother’s big, beautiful home and then walked alongside the garage so I could see beyond it to the wide, expansive lawn behind. Detective Ortiz had told Nana that police would be using the footbridge as their access point to the Dark Woods, and I was pleased now to see that several cars were already parked down on the grass next to the tennis court. I felt sure Nana wouldn’t be too happy about them driving across her lawn, but I wasn’t going to be the one to tell her.

  I continued to the guesthouse, intending to go online and see if any work-related issues had popped up in my absence. I also wanted to do some research about code breaking so that I would be ready when Blake and I heard back from the Smithsonian.

  First, however, now that I was the only one left, I took a few minutes to straighten the kitchen, bathroom, and the Cousins’ Room. I also started a small load of laundry to get me through my unplanned days here and so that I’d have something cute to wear tonight. For my date, I planned to dress my way, not Nana’s, which meant I’d be in jeans for the first time since last Wednesday. Hallelujah.

  The next few hours passed uneventfully. I was wrapping up things online and about to start getting ready for my big evening when I heard from Dr. Underwood. He was calling to say that the folks from the Smithsonian had already finished finding all of the circles throughout the text, phase one of what they had dubbed “Project Pamphlet.”

  “Phase two, decoding the letters, hasn’t started yet,” he added, “but they went ahead and sent me the list for now.”

  I gasped. “And?”

  “And I’m forwarding it to you as we speak. I’d love to take a crack at decoding the thing myself, but I’m tied up tonight with a function. If you have a chance to play around with it and manage to make any progress, do let me know.”

  The email came through as we were ending our call. Holding my breath, I opened it up, took a look, and nearly fell over at the size of the list. I’d expected to see about twenty letters, maybe fifty at the most, but this was far more than that, at least five or six hundred. All this time, hundreds of circles had been inside that pamphlet, just sitting there faded from view, waiting to be discovered. Amazing.

  I couldn’t wait to tell Blake. And though it would have been more fun to spring this on him in person, I knew it would be smarter to call him now. If we wanted to do any decoding, we’d need a hard copy of the list, and that would require a printer, something I didn’t have.

  He answered on the first ring, and I jumped right in, giving him the news. He sounded equally thrilled, readily agreeing to bring a printed copy tonight. He gave me his email address so I could forward the document to him ASAP. I quickly typed it in and hit “Send.”

  “You have to promise you won’t try any decoding on your own first. No cheating. Just download it, print it out, and bring it tonight so we can do it together.”

  “Renee,” he replied, sounding genuinely hurt. “I wouldn’t do that. The whole point is to decode it with you.”

  I smiled, pleased that he, too, wanted this to be something we shared.

  “It just came through,” he added. Then he opened it and read aloud the note at the top of the page from the Smithsonian. “ ‘Update day one, Pamphlet Project. Finished identifying all circled letters. Full list below. Have forwarded along to NCM for decoding. Will keep you posted.’ Huh. What’s NCM?”

  “The National Cryptology Museum. I think they’re affiliated with the NSA.”

  “The NSA?” He sounded incredulous. “To crack a code that was originally created for a nine-year-old girl?”

  I chuckled. “Well, remember, it’s in seventeenth-century French—and it’s really long.”

  “Let me see…” His voice trailed off as he scrolled down to view the entire list. “Nah, piece of cake.”

  I laughed. “Yeah right.”

  “I’m serious. You just wait, Renee. A little thinking, a little tinkering, and the two of us will crack this baby wide open.”

  Blake hadn’t told me where we were going on our big date. He’d just said to dress casually and comfortably, to wear sneakers, and to bring bug spray. I couldn’t imagine what he had in mind, but as long as we could carve out some time to work on decoding the secret message, I was happy to leave the rest to him.

  As it turned out, where it took us at first was about ten miles up Huguenot Trail to a small park on the James River. Though the
place was picturesque, it didn’t seem like anything special. Still, the trees were lush and the water was sparkling in the afternoon sun and there was a picnic table nearby in the shade of an old oak tree. Between that and the insulated tote bags Blake pulled from the backseat, I assumed we were here for a picnic. But when we reached the table he kept going, all the way down to the water, where a man was standing on the bank holding on to a rope connected to a small boat floating nearby. As we got closer, the man turned, and I realized he was Ingles. Looking nothing at all like the uniformed guard from Friday, he was now dressed in the cutoff jean shorts and old gray T-shirt of a weekend fisherman. Completing the ensemble was a hunter-green life jacket, which he began to unbuckle and remove as soon as he saw us.

  I had no idea what was going on here, but once we reached him, I was surprised to see Blake trade the keys to his Durango for the rope to the boat.

  Then, turning to me, he asked if he might interest me in a little trip down the James River.

  I was startled but also quite pleased, and I answered his question with a nod and a smile. I loved boating—though my usual jaunts on the water tended more toward sailing on Lake Washington than john-boating on the James.

  “Do we have time, though?” I asked, glancing toward the sky. It was almost five thirty, which meant there were only a few hours of daylight left.

  “Sure do,” Blake said, stepping toward the boat, setting the totes inside, and pulling out a pair of matching green life jackets, the smaller of which he handed to me. “We’re only going a little past Robius Landing. Dinner for two on the deck at River Mill restaurant sound okay to you?”

  “Sounds wonderful.”

  “Great.” Turning to Ingles, he added, “I’ll text you when we’re close, and you can meet us there to trade back.”

  “All righty. See you folks later,” the older man replied. He tossed his life vest into the back and walked away.

  “Should we invite him to join us?” I whispered. “I feel rude.”

  Blake smiled, explaining that it was a trade-off. In return for Ingles’s help tonight, he was going to borrow the boat for the entire weekend.

  “Gotcha.”

  “Besides, I figure we can do our decoding over dinner.”

  I smiled. A boat ride along the James River with a handsome and interesting man, followed by decoding and dinner? Sounded like a dream date to me.

  As I buckled the vest and tightened the straps, I took a good look at our vessel, which was an eleven- or twelve-foot gray metal craft with a double bench seat and a small trolling motor mounted on the back. This part of the James River could get pretty shallow in places, but I knew that with our flat bottom we could easily glide on through.

  Blake took my hand and helped me aboard before settling in beside me as we floated toward the middle of the broad waterway. The afternoon sun was hot, but as soon as he started up the motor and we began chugging forward, the breeze picked right up, lifting the hair from my forehead and fluttering at the fabric of my blouse.

  Somehow, I realized suddenly, this was exactly what I’d needed. After all the hard work of the reunion and the emotional upheaval of the blood testing, the simple joy of a boat ride along a scenic river next to a handsome man on a lovely afternoon was just what the doctor ordered. Giving in to the experience, I allowed myself to be in the moment, to take in my surroundings, and to let my heart soar like the great blue heron that sailed alongside us in the sky.

  After about fifteen minutes, as we rounded a bend and the waterway stretched out straight in front of us, he slowed down and then cut the engine. We drifted in silence for a while, Blake occasionally correcting our course with a paddle he’d pulled from under the gunwale. I did the same on my side. Otherwise, the current was our only propellant.

  And it was sublime.

  “So how exactly did you know this would be the perfect choice for our first date?” I asked, shifting in my seat to fix my eyes on the man beside me.

  He shrugged, suddenly shy. “Best cure I know for when life gets crazy. Couple hours in a boat can bring a person back to himself—or herself, as the case may be.”

  I sighed, tilting my head to look up at the blue, blue sky. “Crazy is an understatement,” I said. “Between the pamphlet and the reunion and the luminol and the detective—”

  “And the new man in your life,” he added, smiling.

  “And the new man in my life,” I repeated. Then I turned to meet his gaze, my own smile fading. “What are we doing, Blake?” I asked softly. “I live in Seattle. You live in Virginia. I’m only here for a few more days and then we’ll be three thousand miles apart. What’s the point?”

  “Ah, that,” he said, busying himself with the paddle to avoid a stump up ahead.

  “Yes, that,” I replied. “Aren’t we being a little unrealistic?”

  He was quiet for a moment before speaking. “For starters, Renee, I’m not exactly married to Virginia.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged. “I love it here, but I’ve lived a lot of places that I loved. I’m always open to change.”

  Even as he said it, I realized there was much I didn’t know about him. Where had he lived before this? We’d been so focused on me—my pamphlet, my weekend, my ancestors, my relatives, my crisis, my dead body in the cabin—that I hadn’t ever taken the time to focus on him instead.

  I apologized for my self-centeredness and then said it was time for him to start talking. “Tell me everything about you, Blake. Go ahead. Pretend we just met the other day.”

  He chuckled. “We did just meet the other day,” he replied, and then we both laughed.

  “Sure doesn’t seem like it.”

  His eyes met mine. “You can say that again.”

  For a moment, I thought he might kiss me. But then we realized we’d drifted too far to the left, and the spell was broken as I grabbed the paddle and worked us back out to the middle. The moment having passed, I repeated my request.

  “Only if we eat while I talk,” he replied, reaching for the tote bag and pulling out its contents, producing a delightful array of before-dinner snacks and a thermos of sweet tea.

  As our little johnboat drifted along with the current and I nibbled on fresh strawberries, I listened to the facts of Blake Keller’s life. How his father’s job as a special envoy to the United Nations had given Blake a childhood lived in numerous exotic locations—all of which had been temporary. How he continued the pattern himself once he graduated from NYU and went to work for Eagleton Trust, advancing through the ranks but repeatedly refusing the biggest promotion because it would keep him in one place rather than allow him to travel on special assignments as he did now.

  He went on to say how lately he’d begun to realize that he was tired of all that shifting around, that maybe the life his parents had handed him wasn’t the one he wanted for himself now that he was an adult.

  “My company has a branch in Seattle, actually,” he added, causing my pulse to surge. “You never know. I could end up taking that promotion and talk them into basing me out of there. Under Eagleton’s tuition reimbursement program, I’ve also been planning to go to UVA law school, but I could do the University of Washington instead.”

  I gaped at him, astounded that he would even consider such radical changes to his life for a woman he’d known less than a week. Then again, he seemed to understand, as I did, that this might not turn out to be an ordinary relationship.

  “Maybe the first step would be for you to plan a trip out there to see what you think,” I said evenly, not wanting to get my hopes up.

  “Already working on that,” he replied with a grin. “How’s two weeks from Friday? There’s a conference in Tacoma my boss has been wanting me to attend. Maybe I could add on a few extra days after and shift myself up to a hotel in Seattle. Get a peek at your world.”

  I gazed into his deep green eyes. “In other words, you’re willing to do what you can to give this a shot.”

  “To g
ive us a shot,” he replied softly with a nod.

  That’s when he kissed me at last, moving his lips to mine ever so slowly, pausing partway to gently cup my cheek in his hand. When our mouths finally met, we were tentative at first and then quickly grew more passionate. As he slid both arms around me and pulled me even closer, we kissed hungrily, as if we couldn’t get enough, could never get enough. My hands pressed to his rock-like chest, my heart pounded with a fierce rhythm, and all I could think was, I have found you at last.

  When it was over, we sat back against our seats, our fingers entwined. The current continued to carry us slowly along, but inside my heart was coursing through rapids—and I was ready for whatever lay ahead.

  “So what do you think of the scenery through here?” Blake asked suddenly, gesturing toward the overgrown bank on our right.

  “Beautiful. Lush. Verdant. Just like the rest of the river.”

  He nodded. “Good. Because that’s the Dark Woods.”

  “What?”

  “Beginning right about there at that dead tree and running all the way to the bend. That’s one reason I wanted to bring you out here, to give you some perspective.”

  “How incredibly sweet,” I replied, squeezing his hand, “but to be honest, all of that changed last night the moment the luminol began to glow.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it did. But I thought you should see the place from here too, to understand that these woods are neither foe nor friend. They’re just another stretch along the river.”

  After gazing at the dense foliage for a long moment, I settled into the curve of his arm, realizing he was right. This place that had loomed so large in my mind for so long was simply one more scenic element in a region filled with beauty. That was all.

  We drifted on past, and once we’d made the curve it was my turn to point something out to him. Gesturing toward the left, I told him I was pretty sure we were looking at the original land grant where sixteen-year-old Emanuel Talbot first got his start in Virginia more than three hundred years before. Of course, the acquisition of his own property on the opposite side of the river, the eventual building of the paper mill, and then the family printing business came later. But this was where it all began.