Heartwishes (15 page)

Gemma asked him what he knew about how the town started. “No one knows the true story,” he said, “but it’s been passed down that it involved a wagonload of gold and a beautiful young woman named Edilean. She was a McTern or a Harcourt, we’re not sure which. We don’t know where the other families came from.”

“Do you think they were friends of Edilean’s? Did they come from Scotland together?”

“We’re pretty sure the Fraziers came from Scotland, and so did the McDowells and the McTerns.”

She glanced at the list she’d made of the names. “What about the Aldredges and the Connors? And the Welsches? Where did they all meet and why did they settle here?”

“No one knows for sure.” “I think the real question is why did they all
stay
here,” Gemma said thoughtfully.

“Are you disparaging my beautiful little town?” “No. It’s just that Americans tend to move a lot. Actually, I rather like what I’ve seen of this town so far.”

“And you’ve seen little of it,” he said. “I’m looking forward to the barbecue.” “Barbecue?” Colin asked. “Oh, right. Your date with Tristan. I better warn you that—”

“Every woman falls in love with him?” Gemma asked. “Nell already told me.” If she’d been hoping for a flicker of jealousy from Colin, she was disappointed.

They’d spent the morning in the garage while Colin took boxes off the shelves and showed the contents to Gemma. If there was nothing inside but household accounts, he put the box in the bed of the utility vehicle. When it was full, Colin drove it to another storage place on the estate and unloaded it. When he returned, they filled it again.

Through the whole process, he’d been adamant that Gemma was to lift nothing heavier than a packet of letters.

At noon they’d returned to the house for lunch.

Gemma was now looking down at him as he sat on the floor. “You don’t have to spend the whole day with me. I’m sure your family would like some time with you.”

“Actually, Mom told me to stay here with you. I think she’s worried about your injury.”

“That’s nice of her.” Gemma held out her hand for his plate and took them both to the kitchen. As she put them in the dishwasher, she took a few breaths. Part of her wished Colin would leave and let her work alone. But the larger part of her never wanted him to go away. Last evening and this morning they’d bounced ideas back and forth.

Well, actually, she’d talked and he’d listened. As they went through boxes and trunks and bags, making the first cursory inspections, they’d talked about Gemma’s dissertation. He wanted to know what interested her. What era in history most intrigued her? Were there any historical mysteries she’d like to solve? Some myth she’d like to expose as false?

“You know, don’t you, that the first rule of a dissertation is that no one other than your professors will read it?” she said.

“If you find out something about the eighteenth century, Luke will put it in one of his books and a million or so people will read about it,” Colin said.

“If I did that, do you think he’d write me a recommendation and help me get a good job?”

“Definitely,” Colin said. “Luke knows some people at William and Mary.” He looked at her for a moment, and she knew he was asking her if that school suited her.

It almost seemed as if he were asking if she’d like to settle in
Edilean permanently. Gemma felt blood rushing to her face and had to turn away. She really did need to get herself back under control!

At last, she said, “That school has an excellent reputation and I’d be proud to be associated with it.”

Colin didn’t say anything, but the way he smiled made her heart jump into her throat.

After lunch, they worked some more. Gemma was happy sitting on the library floor, but Colin persuaded her to move to the living room. He took the couch and she sat in the big club chair and they read in silence.

But as the hours went on, Gemma found that she couldn’t concentrate. She kept looking at Colin, at his big body sprawled on the couch, one leg hanging down to the floor. There was a cold bottle of wine in the refrigerator, and she thought about suggesting that they open it. What happened afterward . . . Well, she’d leave that to fate.

At four, Colin stood up and stretched—and Gemma felt her heart start to pound.

“I need to go to the gym,” he said. “This is too much sitting for me. I’d ask you to go with me, but with your side, you can’t risk it.”

Gemma thought that what she needed was sixty minutes on a treadmill, forty-five minutes with the gloves, then an icy shower.

“Listen,” he said. “I want you in bed early tonight. You need time to heal. Promise?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“If you need me, you have my cell number, and I put Mike’s number on the desk in the library.”

“Mike the detective,” she said. “The one in Fort Lauderdale?”

“He’s home now, and he’ll know what to do in case of any problems,” Colin said. “By the way, Mike set up a makeshift gym downtown in what used to be his wife’s dress shop. It’s very informal,
only invited people go, and we don’t have many women. But then, Mike scares them off.”

“How does he do that?”

“I think I’ll let Mike show you.” He started toward the door, but hesitated. “You’ll be all right here by yourself?”

“Perfectly fine.”

“Okay,” he said at last, then took a step toward her as though he meant to hug her or kiss her cheek good-bye.

Gemma knew she wouldn’t be able to stand that. She took a step back and the moment passed.

When he was gone, she didn’t know whether to be relieved or devastated. “He belongs to someone else,” she told herself, then immediately went back to work.

Without Colin hovering over her and making sure she didn’t strain herself, she started organizing. As far as she could tell, at some point in the life of the Frazier papers some industrious person had “cleaned up.” Gemma had always found tidy people to be maddening. Their one and only goal seemed to be to have everything appear to be “neat.” “Put away.” “Out of sight.” It didn’t seem to matter that bills were mixed in with the kitchen utensils, that research supplies were thrown in with the shoes. Just so everything looked good!

For Gemma, she put like things together, and if she didn’t have time to put something where it belonged, she left it out.

Unfortunately, whoever had stored away the Frazier papers had put them away by size. Small papers dated 1620 were in a box with small papers dated 1934. This lack of correct sequencing nearly drove Gemma crazy.

The first thing she did was take everything off the shelves in the library and storage room. A couple of times she reached too far and felt her stitches pull, but she learned to keep her elbow close to her ribs.

Once the shelves in both rooms were clean, she mentally categorized the space into decades. As she emptied the containers, she put dated papers into the proper areas. Once they were sorted, she would rebox them in archival storage containers that were acid free and wouldn’t eat up the contents.

She didn’t stop emptying and sorting until her stomach was growling. After a quick meal—and she silently thanked Rachel for her cooking—Gemma went back to work. When it grew dark, she turned on all the lights. She carried empty boxes from the house to the garage where there was now space since she and Colin had cleared out that area.

She fell into bed at 1
A.M.
, was up at six, and started work immediately. The days began to merge together as she went through everything and piled it high on shelves in the house. There were several boxes of account books in the garage that could be taken away to be stored elsewhere, but she had gone through everything inside the house.

When all of it was out, she went online to Gaylord library supplies and compiled her wish list for storage boxes. Gemma was torn between going to the main house and disturbing Mrs. Frazier or e-mailing her. Electronic mail won out.

Mrs. Frazier replied instantly, saying that she’d reimburse Gemma for whatever she spent.

Gemma put in her credit card number, pushed the
SEND
button on the order, then leaned back in her chair and looked about the room. If Colin were there she’d open the wine in the refrigerator and they’d celebrate. But he wasn’t there. In fact, she hadn’t seen or heard from him in days now.

An hour later, he called. There was static on the line and a lot of noise wherever he was. She could hear men shouting.

“Gemma?” he said into the phone, and she knew he was
shouting. “I’m sorry I haven’t called you, but there’s no cell service here.”

“Where are you?” She had to shout the question three times before he heard her.

“At that ranger station,” he shouted back. “Fire fighting. Whole family here. You okay?”

Fire? Gemma thought and many images of forest fires ran through her head. “Are
you
all right? Can I help?”

“I’m fine. No, stay there. I have to go. They need the phone. I’ll be back when I can. Okay?”

“Yes,” she said, then heard the phone click off. She stood where she was for a moment. So this is what it was like when you cared about a law enforcement man.

She went to the TV and turned it on. It took her a moment to find a channel with local news, but there the fire was, roaring across trees, destroying everything in its path.

She spent an hour watching, saw film of women at a table passing out food and drinks to firefighters and she saw Mrs. Frazier and Rachel. But she didn’t see Colin.

She had to make herself return to work, but she left the TV on with muted sound. Whenever anything about the fire came on, she listened.

It took great effort on her part to give her mind back to her research.

As she looked at the massive amount of data around her, she tried to figure out where to begin. The logical way would be to start with the oldest documents and come forward. But Colin was right in that what truly interested her was his Heartwishes story. She hadn’t realized it, but she’d been thinking of her dissertation while she worked. “The Origin of a Family Myth” was one title she’d thought of. “Myth and Reality in one Family” was another. “The
Didacticism of a Myth.” She must have come up with fifty titles, all of them centered around the Frazier Heartwishes.

She opened the refrigerator, saw that most of the food Rachel had prepared was gone, and knew she needed to go to the grocery. Besides, she wanted to hear what the locals knew about the fire.

She looked at her watch, saw that it was a little after four. Maybe if she drove into town—in the car she’d not yet used—she could stop by his office and ask his deputy what she knew. The keys were by the back door and the Volvo was in the carport. It was a pretty car with dark blue upholstery. It took her a few minutes to orient herself to the buttons on the car before she pulled out.

Every time she’d gone to the guesthouse she’d passed the main house, but now she saw that there was a narrow gravel drive out the back and she followed it. To the left was the Frazier house, but Gemma turned right and ended up on McDowell Avenue, which led her to downtown Edilean.

She parked under some trees across from the grassy little square, got out, locked the car, then stood and looked. Now what? she thought. She had no idea where Colin’s office was.

“Hi, Gemma,” said a voice behind her.

Turning, she saw one of the women she’d met in the grocery. In a stroller was the little girl she and Colin had held. Gemma went to the child. “How are you, Caitlyn?” she asked, and the girl smiled happily. Gemma tried to remember if she’d heard the mother’s name.

“I hear you have a date with Dr. Tris.”

“Sort of,” Gemma said cautiously. She felt that the invitation from Tris was more about friendship than an actual date, but she didn’t say that.

“Every unmarried woman in town has tried to get him to ask her out, so what did you do to entice him?”

Gemma wasn’t sure how to answer that. “I don’t know. I think maybe his niece got him to ask me.”

The woman smiled. “I can believe that. He adores Nell.” Little Caitlyn began to grow restless. “I have to go, but maybe we can have lunch sometimes.”

“Yeah, sure,” Gemma said as the woman waved good-bye.

Smiling, Gemma crossed the street to the square. She stood under the big oak tree and looked around.

Across the road, she saw stores, all of them obviously under some historic code for their façades, so their signs were barely visible. There was a drugstore and several unbelievably cute little boutiques that sold toys, children’s clothing, outdoor gear, body products, a jewelry store called “Kim’s,” and a shop full of old maps and prints.

On the corner was a door and a window with D
R.
T
RISTAN
A
LDREDGE
written in dark green letters. Beside it was a tall, narrow brick building with S
HERIFF
written over the door. Gemma looked up and saw the small windows on the second floor. She smiled as she remembered Colin’s description of his dark, smelly apartment.

She crossed the street to the office. An old-fashioned bell rang when she opened the door. Inside were two big oak desks, the kind a person saw in an old black-and-white western starring Henry Fonda.

On the far wall was a glass-doored case full of rifles, looking ready to be used if anyone tried to get the bad guy out of jail.

“You’re Gemma,” said a voice to her right.

She turned to see a tall woman, early thirties, with sleek black hair pulled into a bun at the nape of her neck. She wore a brown uniform that fit her athletic body perfectly. The heavy black belt around her small waist was filled with leather pockets, one of them containing a handgun.

“Oh,” Gemma said, surprised that the woman knew who she was. “Did Colin—” She cut herself off. “YouTube.”

“Right. Pretty heroic stunt for a civilian.”

“It was Tom’s idea, and Colin did all the work. I just grabbed the kid.”

The young woman looked Gemma up and down. “Uh huh. If you want to work out together sometime, Mike’s gym is at the end of the block. By the way, I’m Rolanda. Roy.”

“I’ve heard about you. Colin says you’re great on a computer.”