A Stranger in Alcott Manor

by Alyssa Richards

He studied her carefully, his eyes narrowed. She wondered if there was something in her expression that revealed how less than completely honest she was being.

  “What’s hard?”

  “It’s just, too much history.”

  Worry lines deepened on Ira’s forehead. He ran a finger over her brow, smoothing what must have been her own lines of concern. “Wasn’t this the last place you saw your former fiancé before he disappeared? I would guess the two of you spent a good bit of time here over the years.”

  She shrugged, suddenly feeling ten again. A little girl in a grown-up dress.

  “I’m just saying that it would be natural if you were remembering those times and if that left you feeling stressed. Maybe that’s why your stomach is bothering you?”

  Her stomach doubled over on itself and she groaned.

  “You’re not okay.” Ira took her hand in his. He stared at her with the worried concern of a doctor, as if she were one of his patients who wasn’t taking care of herself.

  “I’m okay. Best thing for me to do is get my work done. And, I’m really sorry but I think we need to postpone the ceremony.”

  His lips parted, pain and shock shadowed his face.

  “Just for a little while. Then, maybe we can elope.” Something inside of her relaxed an inch.

  “I knew coming back here wasn’t a good idea. You have a lot of history in this town. Unresolved… romantic history, and girls, women, I mean, don’t fully—” He exhaled hard. “What I’m trying to say is that, that stuff leaves a mark. We shouldn’t have come back to the scene of the crime, so to speak.” He tripped over and around his words, like they were loosely tangled rope around his feet.

  “Your mother just told me about seeing Beau’s photo and how that might have brought something up for you. She talked quite a bit about Beau and that day when he—the day you were supposed to—marry.”

  Hearing Beau’s name on Ira’s lips was wrong, somehow, like he had wandered into a forbidden area. Hearing him talk about that horrible day started her head shaking. “She shouldn’t have done that.”

  “I thought we would be okay here. I thought the publicity would be good for the manor, a favor to your family. But obviously this wasn’t the best location for us to mark the beginning of our life together. I should have seen that sooner.”

  “Ira—”

  “Have you changed your mind about us? Are you thinking of him and is that why you want to postpone?”

  She started to say no, but the relationship book she had read, The Clean Slate Theory, popped into her mind. “Share, share, share. Communicate. Especially the difficult stuff. You’re partners on a journey. You need to work through problems together and that requires honesty.”

  She wanted to be honest with him about what was going on with the manor and Mrs. Miller, so he would understand why she had to postpone the wedding. But that would take too much time, and right now she didn’t have time to spare.

  At the very least, she decided she should be honest and tell him that she had been preoccupied with thinking about Beau. That wasn’t as resolved as she had thought. Besides, he had guessed anyway and if she denied it he would know if she was lying. They should work through this together.

  She didn’t want them to be the married couple that fell apart because of secrets, because they didn’t or couldn’t talk to one another. She certainly didn’t want to be like her mother who kept everything hidden inside. If her parents had talked more, opened up to one another, maybe they wouldn’t have split up.

  She didn’t think that she wanted to confess solely to make herself feel better, as the book cautioned against. She genuinely wanted to talk with him about what was going on, what she was feeling. But Ira was the one she should marry. She knew that. Her mother knew that, too, and often reminded her of all his attributes. He wasn’t one to walk away from. Amanda, her boss, had told her as much, too. So, Peyton found herself standing there with her mouth open and saying nothing. The truth was harder to say aloud than she imagined.

  “Do you still have feelings for Beau?” he asked softly.

  She closed her eyes in a long blink and nodded. “The house is bringing up a lot of memories and it turns out my past is not as resolved as I thought.”

  He nodded, stunned. “Okay. Well. That’s not what I expected to hear. But, okay.”

  “I’m sorry. I just wanted us to have honesty in this discussion for our—”

  “Honesty’s not really working in my favor today, is it?” He chuckled, but not in a way that said he thought anything was actually funny.

  Ira had a bad habit of interrupting her when he felt angry or nervous. Stupidly she had forgotten that. She didn’t think there was enough time at the moment to calm him, give him a sense of security and talk this out.

  He stared at the ocean for a long while, shaking his head now and then, like he was in utter disbelief. There it was, Peyton thought as she watched Ira struggle. A blindingly obvious vote for keeping secrets.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. I just—”

  “Listen, I want to be with you. And if you’re having second thoughts then I guess I need to know. I mean, of course I need to know.”

  Ira turned toward the ocean again and bit his thumbnail. She had never seen him bite his nails before. Then she realized, he must be afraid that his past was repeating. Maybe, as her therapist suggested could happen for some, he wasn’t entirely over his past. Had he chosen someone who wasn’t completely available to him?

  When Ira turned toward her again, there was an icy anger to his eyes. She panicked. Her mind flooded with all the many discussions they had had about second chances. How everyone deserved a second chance—people, businesses, relationships.

  She almost asked for a do-over, a second chance of sorts. A kind of forget-I-mentioned-it, I-didn’t-mean-it, don’t-know-what-I-was-saying type of thing.

  The house seemed to shift, change, as if it enlarged itself around her. She felt small in its grasp. She thought of Beau. Then she realized. Yes, she wanted a second chance. But who did she really want the second chance with? Beau? Ira?

  She shouldn’t think that way. Besides, the idea was ludicrous. She and Beau had been apart for a long time. Even if he did come back, they didn’t know one another anymore. He had been hell-bent on traveling the world back then. If he made it back, he would want that more than ever. Now that she had found a career she loved, she wouldn’t leave that to follow him.

  “I can’t compete with the dead. They are saintly and perfect and there’s no way for me to win that comparison.”

  “What? No, that’s not what this is about. I’m—”

  “I’m not going to convince you to be with me.” He took her hands in his. “Tell me what’s really going on in that head of yours. Because I don’t understand where this is coming from.”

  “I no longer think Beau is dead,” she said quickly.

  His grip loosened. “He’s alive?”

  “It’s just a sense I have. A feeling, you know.”

  “You’ve seen him? Or someone has? There’s proof?”

  She shook her head. “No. There’s no proof.”

  He studied her closely. “Peyton. The stomach ache, the extra work, delaying the ceremony, could these be last minute jitters? Is that what’s going on here?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t know. I just need to hit the pause button on our plans for a minute. There are some things I have to do. For the manor. For my family. For you. And for us. I know this is a lot to ask, but I won’t be ready for the ceremony in a few days, and I’m trying to be fair to you.”

  “I should have realized the effect this place would have on you. There’s always been this corner of your heart that I can’t reach.” He tapped the left side of her chest as if he knew the exact spot. He eyed her carefully, as he spoke. “I always suspected, now I know what that secret chamber holds.”

  She thought maybe now he did know about the soft place she kept Beau and their me
mories. She hadn’t been willing to share them. That was wrong, she knew, to keep that from him. But she didn’t think he would understand and those memories were too precious to share.

  She felt herself deflating. As if skin and muscle and organs melted from her bones and dissolved into the house. The manor finally owning her, the way it eventually owned everyone who spent time here.

  He kissed her knuckles. “Okay. So, you take your time. Do your work, sort things out. And, my mother would kill me for even thinking this, literally. But if you would rather elope, I’ll do it. We’ll call the Senator’s and the Governor’s offices and let them know, there’s still time.”

  “The Governor, too?” Her voice pitched high like an angry wind before the storm.

  “It’s not a big deal. He and my dad went to law school together. My point is, that none of that matters, because I love you. I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you.” He took her face in his hands and kissed each cheek, then her lips. “I want you to be happy.”

  With that kiss she remembered what their life had been like together in Boston, when Alcott Manor was so far in the distance, she had finally been able to build something new.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to marry you, I just need to sort everything through.” Her feelings about Beau and Ira had become too complicated.

  His worried expression mixed with his smile. “We can leave. You just say the word. We’ll go wherever you want. Hawaii? Bora Bora? Hell, Detroit, I don’t care. I just want you.”

  She felt a tugging at her stomach area. “It’s too late.”

  “It’s not,” he said. “We’ll leave right now. I’m so sorry, I should have realized.”

  “It’s okay,” she said softly.

  He held her close until she wriggled away, offering him a pleasing smile. The dizziness was starting and she was concerned that she might actually disappear right there in front of him. She made him promise that he would give her the next few days to think and work without interruption. He finally agreed. His lip plumped in a mock pout. She caressed his cheek. Hard as it was to give him this news, it was better this way. He would have been devastated if she hadn’t made it back in time for their wedding day.

  Some women thrived on the control they had over a man, their affection or the withholding of it determining the strength of his soul. But she hated that moment when his happiness seemed to ride on her answers or whether he had access to the tiny piece of her heart she needed to keep for herself. Too much pressure. Too confining. It was infrequent, but it was there. That would change if they married, she hoped.

  Things would settle once he had her final commitment. And everything would calm after she had escaped the manor’s control, after she brought Beau and Ruby back. Horace, too. When she reached the end of her life and looked back, that’s the way she would see things: Before and After. Before Beau left, and after he returned. Before Beau left she had been happy. After he returned, she knew she would be happy, too. She just wasn’t sure yet how it would all play out.

  Peyton closed the double doors that led to the ballroom and tried not to think about what waited for her on this next journey. “They move from tintype to tintype, memory to memory,” Mrs. Miller had said.

  She pulled a chair to the corner of the room. Hopefully, wherever she landed in Alcott Manor history, there wasn’t anything going on in the ballroom at the time. If there was, she needed to be out of sight, not dropping into the middle of some public soiree. She tapped her left hand against her thigh three times, then tapped her right hand. Took a deep breath.

  Her stomach hurt, it wouldn’t be long before she opened her eyes to a memory. An Alcott Manor memory. And within it somewhere was a mystery that she would have to solve if she wanted to get back home with Beau, Ruby and Horace.

  She hoped Beau would be there when she landed. Scenes flashed beyond the windows of the glass ceiling. Suns, moons, light, dark, clouds rolling from right to left as if she were being dragged through all the lifetimes of the manor.

  She offered no resistance. Hoping she would be with Beau soon, that she would be able to bring everyone back and quickly. Questions floated up like bubbles of oil in a tall glass of water. Would Jayne Ella be able to handle the meeting with the bankers? Would Beau’s father let them keep the loan? Did Beau still love her? Or had time and captivity effectively killed what they once had?

  14

  Jayne Ella waved from the wide wraparound porch of Alcott Manor as three bankers exited a black Lincoln town car in the front drive. She wore a wide confident smile as a testament to her bravery, but inside, her stomach had more knots than she could count. Each man buttoned his suit jacket. One removed a toothpick from his mouth and tossed it onto the ground. They all looked up at the manor, no doubt eyeing their investment. Maybe wondering how much they could get for it if the manor ended up in their possession.

  She knew they would have calculated the value of the land to the final cent. Every investor who had loaned the family money to restore the manor knew how much the land was worth. There wasn’t another oceanfront parcel as large as this anywhere east of the Mississippi. They were drooling over its investment potential.

  Jayne Ella scanned the end of the long, white-pebbled driveway, hoping to see Peyton pulling in behind them at top speed, a last-minute rescue. She didn’t want to handle this meeting on her own, but the girl was nowhere to be found.

  She had always been able to steer Peyton’s focus away from that night at the manor. Because she hardly remembered a thing, it had been easy to tell her she was imagining things. But now bits and pieces were trying to break through. It was as if the manor was tickling Peyton’s memory, trying to get her to cough up its secrets. Jayne Ella had to make certain they stayed buried.

  Car doors slammed and the three men in navy blue suits approached her. These were the men who held her family’s future in their hands.

  Jayne Ella smoothed the front of her red sleeveless dress, extended her right hand. “Hello, gentlemen.”

  “Jayne Ella.” The three men took turns shaking her hand.

  Austin Spencer was the last, the tallest and the most handsome. His blond hair was now mixed with gray, and his year-round tan set off the light blue in his eyes. He greeted her professionally, as if they had only just met. He was one of the best liars she’d ever known.

  “Are we expecting your daughter?” Austin asked.

  “Peyton had an unexpected emergency that she had to attend to,” she said.

  “Wedding errand?” he asked.

  “No. It was personal. She’s very sorry to have missed the opportunity to speak with you. But I have her notes, so—”

  “Must have been some emergency.” His gaze combed the walls of the manor.

  “It was. Please. Come in.” She closed the heavy front doors behind them.

  Austin didn’t look at Jayne Ella but instead studied the ornate foyer. He hadn’t stepped foot in the manor in several years. Whatever he thought the home might look like, she knew he hadn’t expected this.

  “So, we have effectively acquired all of the bank’s assets and loans and so forth,” Austin said.

  “Yes, I gathered that from your letter,” Jayne Ella said. A phone call would have been nice, she wanted to say. After all we shared, a little heads up wouldn’t have hurt anyone. She couldn’t believe that the manor’s loan had fallen into the hands of Austin Spencer, a businessman in the community who had been very outspoken against the restoration of Alcott Manor. He was quoted in the paper as saying that the manor was cursed, that there was something evil about it, that it was a danger to the community and needed to be destroyed.

  “Austin—Mr. Spencer, I saw your quote in the paper recently. Again, I’m very sorry for your loss. We loved Beau. He was family to us. I hope that some day you won’t associate his disappearance with our family home.”

  He nodded without showing any emotion, poked his head into the long living room.

  “And I hope that won’t n
egatively color your judgment, considering that we have a business relationship with you now.”

  He waited a beat before he answered. His light blue eyes fell flat and cold with plenty of judgment. “Our relationship with you and Alcott Manor is no different than with any other client. Objectivity is one of the hallmarks of our bank.”

  She would have hoped to be comforted by that answer, but his tone sounded as though he would lower the ax on their agreement without a second thought.

  She wished again that Peyton were with her. She was supposed to run the meeting, show them the revenue projections she had prepared—the prospectus as her daughter had called it. These were the spreadsheets with all the revenue numbers and expenses, the ones that were supposed to show the bankers how they were going to make their money back and then some.

  Once they were seated at the dining room table with paperwork distributed, Jayne Ella folded her hands in front of her. “Peyton has done a great deal of work and today I’m going to show you how we have organized the manor’s revenue model. Peyton has run three different profit scenarios—one that is ideal, one that is middle of the road and one that is a worst-case scenario. You can see how they all show a profit.

  “She’s also drawn up a very detailed marketing plan that highlights all the different ways she is going to promote the manor to the tourist channels. She’s listed hotels, bed and breakfasts, convention centers, tour boat companies, vacation home sites, the chamber of commerce and—oh! Even wedding planners. We’re going to host weddings at Alcott Manor.” Jayne Ella beamed.

  She didn’t necessarily expect the bankers to match her enthusiasm for their plans, but she did expect them to be at least a little impressed. Or ask questions. All she got in return were three non-committal nods. She felt her temper rising.

  “Would you like to see the manor? I can give you a tour and show you how impressive the house has become. Oh, and Mr. Spencer, your wife’s charity league has even offered to support our events here at the manor. They might help us with a tea room and a gift shop. Those profits aren’t reflected in this paperwork, but we can work it in for you.”