Megan surveyed a collection of old Time magazines, the discarded green curtains, broken fishing gear, and several sets of old, worn boots. It took a chunk of willpower to turn away and let whatever was ruined go.
“You didn’t buy the table?” Lucy asked.
“I made him an offer,” Megan said. “He’s mulling it over.”
“You know there’s enough money in the trust to cover the renovations and also furnishings.”
“It’s going to be the first piece of many. I’ve got to be a good steward of your money.”
“And that’s why I chose you,” Lucy said.
Lucy’s trust and confidence always humbled Megan. She’d been entrusted with renovating not only Winter Cottage but also Lucy’s home. “Thanks.”
“Aren’t you going to say anything about Lucy?” Natasha said.
Megan raised a brow as she studied the girl. “Is there something different about her?”
Natasha rolled her eyes.
Megan asked Lucy, “Are you parting your hair differently?”
“No, hair is the same,” Lucy said.
Natasha groaned as she walked toward the house. Dolly followed on her heels. “You two are hiiii-larious.”
Lucy thumped the coconut bra with her index finger. “What happened to the sweet little girl I used to know?”
“Hormones.”
Megan and Lucy returned to Samuel’s study, which was now actually looking somewhat like a study. A weight had lifted, and the room felt light. Maybe the crabby old house did not mind a bit of attention after all.
“So what took you so long?” Natasha asked.
“Rick took me by his place. He wanted to make sure construction supplies had been delivered.”
“He’s excited about that house,” Lucy said. “I know it’s not much to look at yet, but Hank tells me Rick is very handy. He helped Hank finish installing the last of the plumbing at the vineyard.”
Scott had referred to Rick as a jack-of-all-trades once. “I could tell.”
“It really means something to Rick to have a place of his own. He and his family never owned a house.”
“He’s already made progress. If he ever decides to flip the place, he’ll make a profit,” Megan said. “Have you learned anything new about your grandfather?”
“He had an odd fascination with coconut bras,” Lucy said.
“You mean there are more where those came from?” Megan asked.
“She already has a set for you,” Natasha said. “I’m not putting on mine.” The girl held up a pair of half coconuts and jiggled them until they clanked together.
Megan smiled. “So, that’s what different about you, Lucy? I knew there was something.”
Natasha fished the two remaining sets from a cardboard box. Megan took the larger of the two sets and held them up for inspection. “Natasha, I’m thinking your sleepover party should have a tropical theme.”
“No way,” the girl said. “The girls would laugh me out of school if they saw me wearing those things.”
Megan slipped the halter strap over her head and motioned for Lucy to tie the back. “I don’t know. I think they’re kind of hot. Though I’m not sure if they’ll fit me. My breasts are spilling over my bra.”
Lucy fastened the back. “You’re spilling over the top. But believe me, I’m jealous.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” Megan said, laughing. It took a little more maneuvering to get her expanded bustline into the cups. She thumped each coconut with her index fingers. “What do you think, Natasha?”
Poor Natasha tried to remain sullen, but as tough as she pretended to be, the kid just was not that jaded. A smile spread across her face, and she looked away quickly to hide it.
“Is that a smile I see?” Megan asked.
Natasha rummaged in the box. “No.”
“Is there a grass skirt in there too?” Megan peered inside the box and, seeing a skirt, plucked it out. She stepped into the center and, thanks to an adjustable waistband, pulled it over her belly. Dolly sniffed the skirt and barked.
Megan glanced at the coconuts. “What’s so funny? I think I’m pretty sexy.”
Lucy pulled out her phone, and Megan grabbed Natasha as Lucy moved closer. She took several selfies featuring Megan’s grinning, round face; Lucy’s brilliant smile; and Natasha’s grimace.
“Please do not post that,” Natasha said.
“What? Coconut boobs don’t help build your reputation?” Megan asked.
“Nooooo!”
“They’d not do much for a historical scholar either. There’s something about coconut bras that stab at credibility.”
“Point taken,” Lucy said. “Our private moment.”
Natasha giggled as she studied the pictures. “We are the craziest family.” She grabbed another armload of stuff and walked out of the room.
Lucy stilled as Natasha’s footsteps echoed through the house. “Family,” she whispered. “Did you hear that? Nothing lately I’ve said is right, but now we’re family.”
“You’re the safe place for her to show her frustrations,” Megan said. “She trusts you enough to be moody.”
Lucy studied the picture, enlarging their faces with the swipe of her fingers. “Thanks for playing along. She’s so worried about being seen as different.”
“I know your family isn’t conventional, but I can promise you, this is all normal. She’s about to turn thirteen, and I can attest to the power of raging hormones.” Megan couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a really good laugh. For the first time since Scott had died, she thought she might actually get back to feeling like herself again.
“I keep telling her she’s great, but she’s having a hard time believing it. I have a whole new respect for my mom and being a single mother.”
Megan rubbed her hand over her belly. “Has her father contacted her?”
“He hasn’t spoken to her directly. I wrote him a letter and reminded him that she’d like to hear from him, but I haven’t heard back from him. And before you make up an excuse for him, I put money in his phone and cantina accounts at the jail.”
“Then he’ll call.”
Lucy wrangled off the coconut bra as if her good mood had evaporated. “He won’t call, but he signed the adoption papers without comment.”
“That’s a good thing, right?” Megan asked.
Lucy sighed, staring out the window toward Natasha, who was throwing a stick for Dolly. “It is a good thing. But Natasha cried when she saw her father’s signature. He spent most of his life ignoring her, and now he’s officially given her up. She’s been in a foul mood since.”
“But he’s given her to her sister, a woman who clearly loves her.”
Lucy shook her head. “You’re trying to reason away emotions that are impossible to understand.”
“When will the adoption be final?”
“The court promised I’d have the final decree in a few days.”
“Maybe we could make it a celebration and fold it into the sleepover party.”
“I don’t know if she’d like that,” Lucy said.
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Her soccer jersey says Kincaid, not Willard, on the back. She’s already chosen your name over her father’s.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” Nodding, Lucy considered the idea. “Let’s make it a blowout.”
“I have a few cake recipes in my arsenal.”
“I thought you were all about pies,” Lucy said.
“I’m multifaceted.”
“Thanks, but I’ll make the cake. It’ll mean more to Natasha.”
Megan envied Lucy’s ease at this entire situation. Lucy had made single parenthood look effortless.
She rapped her knuckles against the hard coconuts. “A tropical vacation sleepover adoption party with a Ouija board.”
It was past seven, and they had put a good dent in the initial cleanup. The crew would arrive in the morning, and then they would really start to make progress.
For now, they were all starving, and Natasha had math homework.
Megan drove down the long driveway that rolled away from Spring House toward the bay where Winter Cottage nestled on the sandy bank. She opened the front door, pausing as her fingers wrapped around the brass doorknob. A wave of pride and energy flowed through her, and she imagined the countless times Claire had walked into this house and felt the same rush.
Her footsteps echoed in the main hallway as she walked toward the collection of tall windows that faced the Chesapeake Bay. The sun had dipped toward the horizon, but it stayed bright a little longer every day. Soon it would be summer. Soon she would be a mother.
“Baby girl, I sure hope I don’t screw this up for you.”
A car door slammed shut, and Dolly barked seconds before she bounded around the side of the house toward the reeds rimming the shore.
“No, homework first,” Lucy said.
Natasha thumped up the stairs. “I know!”
Lucy went into the kitchen and flipped on the lights. Pots and pans clanged.
“What can I do to help?” Megan asked as she entered the room.
“You can sit. I’m making an easy supper for us.”
Megan sat at the kitchen table, running her hands over the smooth wood. “Is Natasha okay?”
“She wants to watch television and do her homework later.” Lucy pulled a head of lettuce and some tomatoes and cucumbers from the refrigerator.
“I always loved doing my history homework. But when it came to math and science, it was like pulling teeth. I remember when we were living in Portland and I was in a new middle school and hating it. My mother promised me a trip to a living-history museum if I got an A in math.”
“Did you?”
“Not even close. A C minus,” she said.
Lucy set a pot of water on the stove and turned on the gas before she started chopping. “My mom and I had our problems, but it was usually me reading her the riot act. Since I was five, I had been the adult in our relationship. Hell, she’d even insisted I call her Beth.”
Within fifteen minutes, Lucy had made a simple salad to accompany pasta and heated up bread she’d made the day before.
The smell of food lured Natasha into the kitchen, and she plopped into a chair, her gaze on the tablet that Hank had given her.
“Homework done?” Lucy asked.
“Yep, it was super easy.”
“Electronics off.”
Natasha did not look up. “Okay. Okay.”
“Now,” Lucy said.
When Natasha seemed to slow-walk closing down the video, Lucy took the tablet from her. “Hey, that’s mine!” the girl yelped.
Lucy shut it off and set it on top of the refrigerator. “One more comment, and it’s mine for a week.”
Natasha’s eyes widened with shock and frustration. “Hank gave it to me. You can’t just take it.”
“Two weeks.”
“You’re not the boss of me.”
“Three weeks, Natasha.”
She thrust out her bottom lip in what could be described only as a power pout.
“I can call Hank right now and ask him what he thinks about you watching a video at the dinner table.”
Natasha scrunched her face and then flounced back in her chair. “No.”
“Thought so. Let’s eat.” Lucy’s grin was forced and stiff.
“I’m not hungry,” Natasha said.
“Then you may sit there and watch while Megan and I eat.”
“I don’t see why I have to,” Natasha said.
“Because I said so.”
The classic mother words tripped off Lucy’s lips so easily, Megan almost smiled . . . until she thought about wrangling a preteen girl alone one day. Her heart beat a little faster, and all her worries and doubts doubled in an instant.
Without a word, Lucy made a plate of spaghetti with extra sauce, salad, and bread with double butter for Natasha, before she made a plate for herself.
Natasha shrugged, clearly doing her best to be defiant.
Megan sneaked a quick look her way and winked. “I’ve been thinking about the planchette and the dreidels and how they came to be together,” she said. “The items really don’t go together. I keep wondering why Samuel would have them.”
“You’re asking the wrong person. I don’t know anything about my family,” Lucy said.
Remembering the picture Mr. Crawford had found in the desk, Megan pulled the image up on her phone. “Have a look at this. I think the woman on the left is Claire.”
Lucy set down her fork and took the phone. With the swipe of her fingers, she enlarged the photo. “That’s Claire.”
“I know my great-grandmother spent time in Paris with the Buchanans,” Megan said.
“Who do you think the woman is with her?” Lucy asked.
“Rick theorized it’s her sister.”
“She had three of them. And three brothers. I know a little about the brothers because they stayed on the peninsula, but the sisters were scattered to the wind after their mother died.”
Natasha reached for a second slice of bread and took great care pulling it apart. She was paying attention.
“Stands to reason Claire would make friends while she was in France,” Lucy said, handing back the phone. “This woman could be anyone.”
“Agreed. I have another picture that I thought you might like to see.” She scrolled through her phone. “This was taken on the front porch of Spring House. But as you can see, Winter Cottage had not yet been built.”
Lucy wiped her fingers on a paper towel and took the phone again. “She has dark hair, and her eyes are light just like the woman in the Le Havre picture.”
“Which supports the theory that the woman is Claire’s sister.”
“Which one would she be?” Lucy asked.
Megan reached out and swiped the screen to the next picture taken of the four Hedrick girls. “I think she was the youngest sister, Diane.”
Lucy studied the image. “The four Hedrick sisters all together. And that’s their mother sitting between them?”
“Addie Hedrick,” Megan said.
“From what I know about Claire, she was quite traumatized after her mother died and she was sent away,” Lucy said.
“I’m sure that was true for all the girls,” Megan said.
“Do we know where the other sisters were sent?”
“Jemma and Sarah went to farms in the western part of Virginia, but Diane vanished. I’ve not been able to find records of her.”
Natasha rose and looked over Lucy’s shoulder. “She looks like a witch.”
The girl’s response surprised Megan. “Why do you say that?”
Natasha shrugged. “Her hair, her eyes, and that wild scarf around her neck. She’d have been the kind of person to work that triangle thingy on the Ouija board.”
“But how did it end up in my grandfather’s desk?” Lucy asked. “He wasn’t even born when this picture was taken.”
Natasha sat, popped a torn piece of bread in her mouth, and then wound thick strands of spaghetti around her fork. “Can we break out the Ouija board?”
“Finish up your dinner,” Lucy said.
“And then we can do it?” Natasha asked.
“You did finish your homework?” Lucy asked.
“And the extra credit,” Natasha replied.
The girl was smart, especially in math, where she was already outpacing her teacher. Lucy had confided in Megan that she worried Natasha wouldn’t get the challenge she needed in her regular math class, but she’d already spoken to the school about all advanced classes in the fall.
Megan dropped her gaze to the image of the two women. She felt drawn to the exotic young woman’s face with her sly smile. The tilt of her head suggested independence, uncommon to women in that era.
Diane Hedrick. What happened to you?
Natasha cleared her voice, coughed, and said, “Cell phone at the table.”
“Touché.” Megan closed
her phone and laid it facedown.
“So are we agreed we’ll do a magical game night kind of sleepover party?” Lucy asked. “I can read fortunes and decorate the house to make it look haunted.”
Natasha shook her head. “I don’t know. Brittany had a pool party for her thirteenth, but it’s too cold.”
Lucy nodded thoughtfully. “We could dress up like the people that used to live at Winter Cottage in the 1920s.”
“Or we could dress as zombies,” Natasha countered.
“I’ll throw in 1920s cuisine and music, and we’ll sketch portraits.”
“I know some great secondhand stores,” Megan offered. “I could get a deal on clothes from the era, so if the girls don’t have anything, we can have it here.”
“Tempting,” Natasha said. “I think I’d rather dress modern.”
“What if we did a scavenger hunt?” Megan asked. “Or solved a murder mystery.”
“I like the murder idea,” Natasha said.
“Think about it.” Lucy kept her tone casual, as if she’d learned the harder she pushed, the more her sister resisted an idea. Lucy had the bait in the water and a few nibbles; now all she had to do was wait before she reeled her in.
It took another hour for the trio to finish up dinner, which was filled with chatter about Brittany’s new outfit, the math teacher who was so lame, and a discussion about tomorrow’s moving logistics.
When the dishes were put away and the table cleared, Megan brought out the old Ouija board set she had found in the antique shop. It was cracked and torn in several places, adding more mystery to where it had been before.
“Cool,” Natasha said.
Megan touched the edges, amazed it was in such good shape. “Let’s fire this sucker up.”
Megan removed the planchette from the wooden box and set it on the table. It felt heavy in her hands, which surprised her. Usually these devices were designed to be light so they could be easily manipulated. Carefully, she handed the piece to Lucy.
“It’s been a while, but I think I can do this.” Lucy made a show of flexing her fingers. “Who wants to ask the first question?”
Megan then shifted in her seat, suddenly nervous at the idea of talking to anyone who had crossed over. It was one thing to research the lives of people who had passed, but another to have a conversation with the other side. There were so many things that had remained unsaid between Scott and her, and as much as they needed saying, she could not bring herself to do it yet.
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