PRAISE FOR WINTER COTTAGE
“Offering a look into bygone days of the gentrified from the early 1900s up until the present time, mystery and romance are included along with a multifaceted tale that is sure to please.”
—New York Journal of Books
“There is mystery and intrigue as the author weaves a tale that pulls you in . . . This is a story of strong women, who persevere . . . It’s a love story, the truest, deepest kind . . . And it’s the story of a woman who years later was able to right a wrong and give a home to the people who really needed it. It’s layered brilliantly, hints are revealed subtly, allowing the reader to form conclusions and fall in love.”
—Smexy Books
PRAISE FOR MARY ELLEN TAYLOR
“[A] complex tale . . . grounded in fascinating history and emotional turmoil that is intense yet subtle. An intelligent, heartwarming exploration of the powers of forgiveness, compassion, and new beginnings.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Absorbing characters, a hint of mystery, and touching self-discovery elevate this novel above many others in the genre.”
—RT Book Reviews
“Taylor serves up a great mix of vivid setting, history, drama, and everyday life.”
—Durham Herald-Sun
“[A] charming and very engaging story about the nature of family and the meaning of love.”
—seattlepi.com
OTHER TITLES BY MARY ELLEN TAYLOR
Winter Cottage
Union Street Bakery Novels
The Union Street Bakery
Sweet Expectations
Alexandria Series
At the Corner of King Street
The View from Prince Street
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2019 by Mary Burton
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503905320
ISBN-10: 1503905322
Cover photography and design by Laura Klynstra
CONTENTS
START READING
All houses are...
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
April 1, 1939...
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
April 7, 1939...
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
April 8, 1939...
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
April 9, 1939...
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
April 9, 1939...
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
April 10, 1939...
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
April 18, 1939...
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
All houses are haunted.
All persons are haunted.
Throngs of spirits follow us everywhere.
We are never alone.
—Barney Sarecky
PROLOGUE
Adele
Tuesday, September 19, 2017
Cape Hudson, Virginia, in the Chesapeake Bay
11:00 a.m.
In Adele Jessup’s almost one hundred years of living, she had learned that blessings and curses came hand in hand. Love and birth were always counterbalanced by pain and death.
She sat in her wheelchair, watching the dozens of mourners gathered around the casket draped with an American flag. The overcast sky hovered above as strong winds thick with the promise of rain swirled and teased the edges of her black skirt.
She shifted her attention away from the scene before her to the headstones that surrounded the freshly dug hole. These graves belonged to her husband and his brothers. The Jessup boys had all been born and raised on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Good, proud men, they had remained loyal to each other all their lives.
Sitting beside her now was Samuel Jessup, her brother-in-law, the last of the Jessup siblings. He had shaved and had his hair cut. His black merchant marine captain’s uniform was freshly cleaned, its brass buttons polished. However, he wore none of the medals he had earned in more than five decades of service. His tall, lean frame had grown frail, and his right hand trembled constantly, but he had refused his wheelchair. Always too proud and stubborn for his own good.
How many times had the two of them sat here over the years, mourning the loss of one of their own? Like her, Samuel surely must feel closer to the dead now than to the living.
Today, they had gathered to honor the life of her great-grandson, Scott Jessup, a marine who had died five days earlier when his helicopter crashed in the Atlantic Ocean during a storm. He had been on a rescue mission, searching for lost seamen whose ship had been taking on water. He had saved one, deposited him safely on a naval vessel, and then returned to search for more.
Scott, like all the Jessup men, had been drawn to the water. He had grown up hearing the talks of the brave seafaring men in his family, and he fully understood that the weather and ocean gave as easily as they took. Scott had been good, brave, and sometimes too self-indulgent, but then he had been only twenty-seven when he died.
A flicker of movement beyond the mourners caught her gaze, and she looked toward the wrought iron fence that surrounded the small family cemetery on the Eastern Shore.
A young man stood there alone. Her failing eyes could not make out his face. She assumed he was another mourner until he began to move forward, but then she realized it was Scott.
Adele was not surprised to see him. The veil separating her from death was so painfully thin now that spirits were just as easy to see as the living.
Scott walked up to his mother, Helen Jessup, seated in front of her son’s casket. She clutched a worn Bible and openly wept. Helen had adored her only child, and his death had sliced her heart so completely that no words or deeds would mend it.
Scott laid his hand on his mother’s shoulder, but she did not seem to notice. But Samuel saw him, and when the two locked gazes, a faint smile tweaked the edges of Scott’s lips. Samuel placed his hand softly over Adele’s and gently squeezed.
Next to Helen sat a grim-faced man dressed in a US Marines uniform. Rick Markham had not only served with Scott and all the pallbearers, but they had also been good friends. His dark hair was closely cropped and accentuated stern features. Though he could not have been much older than Scott, he seemed to carry the burden of Atlas on his shoulders.
Scott offered Rick a reassuring smile, but that too went unseen. Adele took it all in.
Finally, Scott moved beyond the crowd toward a woman who stood outside the fence. She was alone and looked lost. Adele knew the look all too well.
Altho
ugh she had never met the girl formally, Adele knew her name was Megan Buchanan. She had been Scott’s fiancée but had broken up with him two weeks earlier. Although no one had shared the details of their relationship with Adele, she knew the young woman had abruptly canceled the wedding.
If Scott had been angry with Megan in life, he did not appear to be in death. He stared at her with loving eyes that held no hint of blame. When he kissed her tenderly on the cheek, her eyes widened and she raised her hand. Slowly, she looked around as if she expected to see him.
Adele studied the young woman more closely, deciding there was no single thing particularly remarkable about her. Her round face, full lips, and green eyes were fairly ordinary as individual features. Yet combined, they created a striking appearance. There was something special about Megan Buchanan.
Another native son, Hank Garrison, also dressed in his US Marines uniform, ordered five enlisted men to raise their rifles toward the sky and fire three volleys. Samuel gripped the edges of his walker and pushed himself to a standing position. Rick quickly rose and tried to steady Samuel, but the stubborn old man refused help.
A solemn stillness settled over the crowd, and for several moments no one moved.
Rick helped Samuel back into his chair and then walked with the marines single file to the casket, where the group dispersed equally to either side. They folded the flag with neat, crisp precision until it was a sharp triangle, which Rick presented to Helen on behalf of a grateful nation.
Scott hovered close to his mother as she pressed the flag to her chest and drew in a shuddering breath. The ceremony ended, and the next few moments were filled with more tears, people lingering around Helen, and some acknowledging Adele and Samuel before they all slowly walked out through the old iron gate.
“I’ll be right back,” Helen said.
Adele raised her gaze as Scott looked toward her. He tossed her an impish grin that reminded her of when he was a boy stealing cookies from her kitchen. “There’s no rush,” she told Helen.
For a moment, the living left Adele and Samuel alone with Scott. Content to sit in silence, Adele was grateful for this moment, for she was certain it would be her last with either man.
“You see me, don’t you?” Scott asked.
She shifted her gaze from the stand of trees ringing the small cemetery back to his sun-weathered face. “Yes,” she said.
“I’m not too far behind you myself, boy,” Samuel said.
“Yes, sir,” Scott said.
“There’s no sense waiting on me,” Samuel said. “I’ll find my own way.”
“He’s not waiting on you,” Adele said.
“Then who?” Samuel asked.
She watched as Helen approached Megan. Whatever they were saying to each other did not look pleasant. “Them. He’s waiting on them.”
Samuel drew in a breath and nodded. If Samuel and she understood any truth, it was the power of unfinished business and secrets, which anchored the living as well as the dead.
CHAPTER ONE
Megan
Monday, March 5, 2018
Norfolk, Virginia
8:00 a.m.
A blustery wind flapped the edges of Megan Buchanan’s coat and brushed back freshly cut and frightfully short bangs as she hurried toward Ragland’s Mariner Antique Shop. She opened the door to a rush of warmth and the chiming of a ship’s bell that jingled overhead to announce her arrival.
As the heat seeped into her bones, she drank in the atmosphere and savored the clutter of the old lanterns, buoys, and ropes that seemed to fill every bit of open space. Mounted on the back wall was a large collection of wooden figureheads carved into shapes ranging from unicorns to full-breasted mermaids. Each ornament had once been mounted on a ship’s bow and meant to capture her spirit and prowess.
Tracing her fingers over the iron of an ancient anchor, Megan angled her pregnant belly down a narrow aisle toward the counter. As she waited, her attention was drawn to an eclectic collection ranging from board games to a large jar of red and white marbles and a box of dominoes. None really fit the seaman’s theme, but shop owner Duncan Travis never passed up any item that could be purchased for pennies and sold for dollars.
When she reached the counter, she tapped a small bell. “Duncan, it’s Megan.”
Footsteps shuffled behind the curtain separating the front of the store from a desk that she knew sported a brand-new computer and piles of books, papers, and magazines. Though Duncan maintained a retail front, his bread and butter came from the items he scouted for private clients, collectors, and designers.
“Megan?” A gnarled hand gripped the edge of the purple curtain. The pause reminded her that Duncan enjoyed making an entrance.
“Yes, it’s me.”
The parting curtain revealed a tiny old man with a thin body, hunched shoulders, and sparse, graying hair tied back in a ponytail. Seventy-plus years in the sun had left his tanned face etched with deep lines.
He wore a striped, collared shirt, faded jeans cinched with a worn leather belt, and black shoes. A Masonic onyx ring winked from his left index finger, though Megan was fairly certain he had chosen the ring for its dramatic effect rather than its symbolic origins. A gold watch that had stopped working decades ago wrapped smartly around his wrist.
“You’re early,” he said.
“I finished up early at my doctor’s appointment.”
He glanced at her round belly. “You look mighty ripe.”
“I feel like a beached whale.” Everyone talked to her about the baby and her belly as if both were public property. Though she appreciated the interest, talk of the baby reminded her that she had no idea how to raise a child alone. “I’d rather talk about the artifacts you said you found for me.”
Megan had been hired in January to oversee the renovation of a historic hunting lodge called Winter Cottage. Her great-great-grandfather, George Buchanan, had built the massive, twenty-one-thousand-square-foot structure for his second wife, who’d shared his love of duck hunting on the Eastern Shore. Construction of the house had been completed in 1901, but in 1916, George had gifted it to his daughter-in-law, Claire Hedrick Buchanan. Claire had lived in the house until her death in 1990.
Duncan studied her a moment, his eyes narrowed. “You changed your hair.”
She brushed back her diminutive bangs, sorry now that she’d filled the gap between the ob-gyn and the antique shop with an impromptu visit to a hair salon. The instant the hairdresser had snipped the bangs from her long, straight hair, Megan realized she had made yet another terrible mistake. “I feel a bit like the little Dutch Boy.”
A smile tugged at the edges of his lips. “I’d say more like Friar Tuck.”
She laughed and reminded herself short hair was not a forever mistake. “I shouldn’t come into town. I’m safer on the Eastern Shore.”
Duncan chuckled. “The bangs ain’t that bad.”
“Liar.”
He shrugged as he reached under the counter. “I have an object for you. Can you tell me what it is?”
“Duncan, don’t you ever get tired of this game?”
“Never.”
They played this game every time she came into the shop. If he had an unusual item, he would ask her to deduce its history. She was rarely wrong, but then again, she had built a reputation in the art-restoration world as an expert in the odd and unusual.
“Come on,” he coaxed. “Show me what you know.”
She held out her hand. “I’ll have to make this quick. I’m due back home within the hour.”
From a red velvet box he removed a gold pocket watch covered in a fine patina and scrolls that looped around the letter S.
“I thought maybe you could give me an idea of who owned it,” Duncan said.
The locket was the size of a silver dollar, and its finely worn gold facing felt cool to the touch. She rubbed her thumb over the engraved S and then pressed her finger against the tiny latch. The top popped open.
Made
by French watchmaker Cartier around 1850, the watch had a champagne face and roman numerals. The time had stopped at 11:20, and engraved on the inside were the words To my dearest wife. In 1850, few in the region could have afforded such an expensive timepiece.
“Where was this watch found?” she asked.
“I bought it in an estate sale in Alexandria, Virginia. The family had no information on it.”
She closed the locket and ran her thumbs over the delicate scrolls carved on its outside. “You said Alexandria?”
His eyes narrowed. “That’s right.”
Alexandria had been a thriving port city from the colonial days when tobacco was king through the mid-1800s. The city had a population of roughly eight thousand, and of those, twenty-five hundred were African American. There had been a financial crisis in 1819, but by 1850, the town was again booming.
Megan had a working knowledge of the city elite of the time. “Search the name Captain Robert Stewart.”
He scribbled the name. “Why him?”
“A wealthy ship’s captain who had a fascination with watches. Over two hundred were listed in his last will and testament.”
He shook his head. “You’re right. You must be psychic.”
She wasn’t psychic, but she was blessed with a mind crammed full of endless historical facts that she never forgot. She was accessing that database and not the spiritual realm.
Her keen memory for historical facts had been a great icebreaker when she’d landed in a new school. Her father had worked for the shipping arm of the Buchanan Corporation, and he’d been transferred ten times during his years with them. For her and her brother, Deacon, that had translated to as many schools. By elementary school, they were both expert at packing toys and books, saying goodbye to friends, and finding something to dislike about where they had been and something to love about where they were going.
Her athletic brother never had trouble finding a place in a new school, but for her, transitions were always awkward and unsettling. Somewhere along the way, she had learned if she spun a vivid story featuring a new friend’s lunchbox, piece of jewelry, or picture, she could entertain and win the hearts of her peers. Her assessments, which some of her friends said were spookily accurate, were always harmless and diverting. It had been a quirky way to fit into new crowds, but it worked for her.
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