The Chesapeake Diaries Series 7-Book Bundle: Coming HOme, Home Again, Almost Home, Hometown Girl, Home for the Summer, The Long Way Home, At the River's Edge (190 page)

S
o this is St. Dennis
.

Ellis Chapman drove slowly along Charles Street—slowly enough to earn her a few short polite beeps from the cars following her. At the top of the street, where she’d turned off the highway, there’d been an old farmhouse and an orchard on the left side of the road, and woods on the right. Where the farmland ended, a residential area began with a long block of lovely old homes set on nice lawns surrounded by old shade, mostly maples and oaks. The fallen leaves had blanketed many of those nice lawns with yellow and red and brown, all just waiting to be raked into irresistible piles into which the neighborhood children would surely jump.

The commercial district crept up gradually: it took a moment for Ellis to realize that the clapboard houses she’d passed were actually a restaurant, an antiques dealer, a bookstore, a gift shop, a children’s clothing store, and a candy store. The heart of the district had a handful of storefronts. There was a cupcake bakery, a women’s clothing store, another restaurant
with an upscale look about it, a coffee shop, a flower shop, and a small newsstand that apparently sold beverages, judging by its name, Sips.

Nice
, she thought as she drove along.
All the basics, but with a slightly trendy touch
.

She continued on through the town, past a sign announcing a marina, yet another restaurant, and an ice-cream parlor.

Looks like the people around here like to eat
.

“Works for me,” she murmured.

The drive from Massachusetts had taken longer than she’d anticipated, though she was still almost thirty minutes early for her appointment. She made a left turn and drove around the block. Once back onto Charles Street, she made a second pass through town, trying to decide how best to assuage her hunger. There was no time for a meal, but coffee and maybe a quick snack would be welcome. She parked across the street from the coffee shop—the sign read
CUPPACHINO
in a stylized script—and headed down against the wind, dodged the midafternoon traffic to cross to the other side.

She pushed open the coffee shop’s red door and rubbed her hands together to warm them while she glanced around for an empty table. She was just about to head for one when a little wave from the teenage boy at the counter caught her eye.

“I can take your order here,” he told her. He went on to explain, “We’re counter service only.”

“Oh. Well …” She squinted to read the handwritten menu on the chalkboard behind him.

“Take your time. No hurry.”

“I’d like a large regular coffee with whole milk.” She paused to survey the edibles. She really shouldn’t indulge, she told herself, right before she heard herself say, “And one of the vanilla cupcakes with the pink frosting.”

“Excellent choice.” The boy nodded his approval and poured her coffee into an oversize blue mug. “Cream and sweeteners are over on the cart there behind you.”

“Oh,” she said for the second time, and turned to locate the station.

She paid for the coffee and the cupcake and took both to a table that sat off by itself next to the wall, then carried the mug to the cart, where she added milk and a packet of raw sugar. She sat, sipped, and took a bite from the cupcake.

Bliss.

It was excellent, with tiny bits of strawberries in both the frosting and the cake. The coffee was equally good, and she sighed. If St. Dennis had nothing else to recommend it, at least there was great coffee and baked goods to be had.

The door opened and three chattering women entered the shop and went directly to the counter, where they were served coffee in mugs from what appeared to be a special shelf along the wall. Ellis watched surreptitiously while the ladies fixed their coffee at the station.

“… so really, Grace, what else could I have done?” one woman was saying as she added two pink packets of sweetener to her coffee.

“I don’t know that I would have done anything
differently, dear.” The oldest of the three—Grace, apparently—shook her head slightly. “Sometimes you just have to go with your gut.”

“My gut would have told me to smack her over the head with something,” the third woman said drily. “She’s lucky that you have more patience than I, because, really, Barbara …”

The voices trailed away as the women passed by. The woman called Grace, who had white hair tucked into a bun and a gentle face, turned to smile at Ellis.

“Hello, dear,” she said softly without breaking her stride.

Ellis returned the smile and felt an unexplainable lump form in her throat. She turned her attention back to the cupcake and her coffee. So far, it seemed that St. Dennis was much like her mother had described: a small welcoming town populated by nice people. For about the one-thousandth time, Ellis wished she’d accompanied her mother on at least one of her trips here, but for Ellis, there’d always been somewhere else to go.

“Why waste your summer in some little nowhere place,” her jet-setting father would say, “when you could be in London …?”

If not London, then Rome or Madrid, or on the small island they owned off the coast of Greece. There’d been summer classes in Cairo when she’d been majoring in archaeology, and another in Paris the year she’d thought about majoring in French. Her father would take Ellis anywhere she wanted to go, as long as it wasn’t St. Dennis, a place that
no one
who mattered had ever heard of. In retrospect, it seemed
that her father had been manipulating both her and her mother for more years than anyone realized.

Well, those days were gone—not just the travel, but the manipulation—along with her mother, and any chance Ellis might have had to see St. Dennis through her mother’s eyes.

She downed the last of the coffee and bused her table as she’d seen another customer do, before returning the plate and mug to the counter.

“Thanks,” the young man told her. “Come back again.”

“I’ll do that.” Ellis tossed her crumpled napkin into a nearby receptacle and started toward the door, stood back while other patrons entered, then stepped out into the sunshine. She was standing on the curb, waiting for the light to change, when she had the inexplicable feeling that she was being watched. She turned back to the shop, and saw the white-haired woman seated next to the front window. The woman raised her hand in a wave. Ellis waved back, then realizing that the light had changed, crossed and went directly to her car.

She slid behind the wheel and glanced back to the window. The woman had turned from the glass and appeared to be once again engaged in conversation with her companions, but there’d been something about the way she’d looked at Ellis, almost as if she knew her. Impossible, of course, Ellis reminded herself, since she’d never set foot in St. Dennis before today.

She pulled away from the curb and drove east, watching for the street where she’d make her turn.

The sign for Old St. Mary’s Church Road was larger than the others because it also sported a plaque that marked the historic district. She made a right and drove three blocks, made another right, and parked along the street, as per the instructions she’d been given. She got out of the car, locked it, and stood on the sidewalk reading the sign over the door on the brick Federal-style building.

ENRIGHT & ENRIGHT, ATTORNEYS-AT-LAW
.

This would be the place.

Ellis took a deep breath and walked along the brick path to the front door, pushed it open, and stepped into a quiet, nicely furnished reception area where an elderly woman sat behind a handsome dark cherry desk. The woman looked up when she heard the door, glanced at Ellis, then did a double take.

“I’m El … Ellie Ryder. I have an appointment with Mr. Enright.”
Ellie Ryder
, she reminded herself. From now on, that was who she’d be, at least for as long as she stayed in St. Dennis, and possibly longer, depending on how much time it would take before the shit-storm subsided.

“I believe he’s expecting you.” The woman at the desk smiled warmly and got up from her chair. “I’ll let him know you’re here.”

The receptionist disappeared into a room across the hall and stood behind the half-closed door. A moment later, a man who appeared to be in his midthirties emerged and came directly into the reception area, his hand outstretched to her.

“Ms. Ryder, I’m Jesse Enright. How was your trip? Can we get you some coffee? Have you had lunch?”
His hand folded around hers with warmth and strength, and Ellis—
Ellie
—felt herself relax for the first time in days.

Reminding herself that he already knew the story, she smiled as she stood.

“The trip was fine. I arrived here in town with time enough to spare for a stop at the coffee shop in the center of town,” she told him. “I had a great cup of coffee and a delicious cupcake.”

“Vanilla with strawberry frosting?” he asked.

Ellis nodded. “You had one, too?”

“One last night and another at lunch. My fiancée is the baker.” He patted his waist. “It’s good news and bad news.”

Jesse turned to the receptionist. “Violet, hold my calls, if you would.…”

He led Ellis to his office and closed the door behind them.

“So how do you really feel?” He held out a chair for her, and she sat.

“Strange. It’s strange to introduce myself as Ellie instead of Ellis. Ryder is my middle name, but I never use it, so that’s strange, too.”

“You don’t have to do this, you know.” Jesse sat behind his desk in a dark green leather chair. “I think you’ll find people here to be much less judgmental than you assume.”

“Over the past year, I’ve had more judgment passed on me than you could possibly imagine. Friends I thought for sure I could count on stopped returning my calls as soon as the news broke.” Her best effort not to sound bitter was failing her. “My father had
very little family, but what he has turned their backs on me, as if somehow this whole thing was my fault. My home was confiscated, my car, my jewelry, my bank accounts—I lost everything I worked for. If not for the one friend who stuck by me, I wouldn’t even have had a car to drive down here.”

“The Mercedes you parked out front belongs to a friend?” Jesse raised an eyebrow.

When she nodded, he smiled. “Nice friend.”

“The best,” she agreed. “I don’t know where I’d have been this past year without her.”

“I understand that you’ve had a rough time these past ten months or so, but I’m asking you to keep an open mind as far as the people in St. Dennis are concerned. You’ll find them welcoming and friendly, if you let them.”

“I’m not here to make friends, and frankly, I hope I’m not here any longer than it will take to sell the house my mother left me.” She looked at him across the desk and added, “You don’t know what it’s like to have people judge you because of something your father did.”

“Oh, but I do.” Jesse leaned back in his chair. “My father was the black sheep of the Enright clan. Still is, actually. Suffice it to say, I had to earn my grandfather’s trust to join this firm, prove that I was good enough to call myself an Enright here in this town where Enrights have practiced law for close to two hundred years. So yes, I do know what it’s like to be judged because of something your father did. I overcame it, and so will you.”

“But you were still able to work as a lawyer somewhere, right?”

“In Ohio, before I came here, yes.”

“I can’t get anyone to even give me an interview or return my calls. I ran public relations for a major corporation for eight years, and I can’t get anyone to hire me. Granted, the company was owned by my father—hence the confiscation of my worldly goods, since everything was considered ‘fruit of the poison tree,’ as the FBI told me repeatedly—but still, I was very good at what I did. One of the investigators even said that one of the reasons the entire scheme came as such a shock to everyone was that I’d done such a good job creating the company’s image. So even though I had no hand in the fraud, I did have a hand in the public’s perception of CC Investments.” She blew out a breath. “When I think about all of the lives my father ruined, I get sick to my stomach. All the retired people who’d trusted him with their pensions, their mortgages, their futures …”

“What your father did was unconscionable, but you’re not responsible for the decisions he made. As I recall, both the FBI and the SEC have totally exonerated you from any involvement in your father’s scheme.”

“Intellectually, I do know that I’m not responsible. I do. But then I think about all the suffering he’s caused, and I just feel sick all over again.”

“I understand,” Jesse said. “But you’re here to pick up the pieces and put your life back together again. I want you to know that you can call on this firm for anything, anytime.”

“I appreciate that, Jesse. You’ve already done so much. My mother was wise to have entrusted the Enrights with her estate.”

“Actually, it was your mother’s great-aunt, Lilly Cavanaugh, who first came to us, as best I can determine from reading the file and from talking to Violet.”

“Violet?” Ellis tried not to panic. Someone other than Jesse knew …?

“My receptionist. You may have noticed she’s a bit … advanced in her years.”

“She knows who I am?”

“She knows that you are Lynley’s daughter, and that you’ve inherited the house, yes.” Jesse held up a hand. “There’s no way she wouldn’t have known. Violet’s been here forever—she worked for my grandfather for many years. She typed up the original wills. But she also knows there’s a confidentiality issue here, and she will not discuss it with anyone, I can assure you of that. That woman has kept more secrets than either of us will hear in a lifetime. Your identity is safe with her.”

“I trust you, so I will have to trust her, I suppose. Though the way she looked at me when I came in …” She paused, remembering the woman in the coffee shop. “There was another woman, one in the coffee shop, who greeted me as if she knew me—”

“Don’t let your imagination run away with you. I told you, it’s a friendly little town.”

“Still, I’d like to stick to the explanation we discussed on the phone.”