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 (94 page)

“They’d known each other all their lives, Ness. They grew up together. It hadn’t taken a potion or a spell for them to fall in love.”

“Maybe so, but then again … maybe not.”

Stef laughed and hurried to her car. The air had grown crisp and cool while she’d been inside, and rain had started to fall. She debated on whether to go back to Olive Street, but knowing that she wasn’t likely to get any painting done tonight, she headed back to her apartment. It was still early enough for her to experiment with yet one more batch of lavender honey ice cream. She’d found dozens of recipes online, and though so far she hadn’t found one totally to her liking, she was certain she would find the one that, with a few additions of her own, would be perfect for Dallas’s birthday gift.

She turned onto her street, still intrigued by Vanessa’s reaction to finding the journals left in her home by the previous owner. Everyone in town knew Alice Ridgeway, and everyone knew that she never left that house. To Steffie’s mind, Alice’s “dabbling” was no more than a lonely woman’s attempt to amuse herself and fill the many empty hours she spent locked inside
her home. The curiosity of some of St. Dennis’s teenage girls wasn’t at all surprising, since many girls of that age are impressionable and might find the whole idea of casting a love spell dramatic and romantic, both of which would hold a certain appeal.

Vanessa, however, wasn’t a teenager anymore, so for her to show interest in the very idea that such a thing was possible struck Steffie as a bit curious in its own right. Steffie smiled in the darkness as she pulled into her driveway. First the Ouija board, now a book of spells. What would Vanessa come up with next?

Of course, she could only be pretending to believe, Stef reminded herself. In which case, her casting a love spell on Stef’s behalf into the—what had she said, the universe?—was sort of endearing. The sort of thing a best friend would do as a way of assuring you that the love of your life really was out there somewhere.

In which case, Stef thought as she unstrapped her seat belt and prepared to run through the rain, she hoped he’d hurry up. Despite her protests to the contrary, she could use some help with the painting.

“What are you doing, dear?” Berry peered through the doorway of the carriage house, Ally, as always, at her side.

“I’m looking for a ladder.” Wade stood in the middle of the room, his hands on his hips, and surveyed the contents. “There used to be one in here. I told Steffie we had one she could borrow. She’s painting the kitchen in her house.”

“I imagine Grant would have one she could use,” Berry pointed out.

“I told her I’d bring her one.”

“I see,” Berry said with that all-too-familiar tone that told Wade she understood there was more than a ladder at stake here. “Try over there on your right, dear. Nearer to the wall. Look around near the canoe.”

“Why don’t you come in here and give me a hand,” he teased.

“Are you crazy?” Berry harrumphed. “I’ve seen those shows on TV where people have piles of things that reach close to the ceiling, sort of like the way things are stacked in here. I’m not giving that old sled an opportunity to jump off that pile and land on my head.”

Wade laughed. “You’re talking about hoarders.”

“Anyone looking inside here would suspect me of doing just that.”

“The place could use a good cleaning out.” He found the ladder against the wall and carried it outside, where he tested it and found it slightly unstable and covered with cobwebs. “I guess I should hose this off and then pound in a nail here and there where I think it’s a little weak. I doubt she’d appreciate me bringing a ladder that was covered with spiderwebs and likely to collapse.”

“Who wouldn’t appreciate you?” Berry appeared momentarily distracted.

“Steffie.”

“Remind me. Why does Steffie need a ladder?” Berry asked.

“She’s painting the kitchen in her house,” he told her. “The house she inherited from her cousin Horace. It’s on Olive Street.”

“I remember Horace’s house on Olive Street.” Berry nodded. “I went to several parties there—years ago, of course.”

“Well, it’s Steffie’s house now, and she’s redoing it before she moves in. It’s pretty dingy and dark inside and it hasn’t been painted in a dog’s age.” He leaned over and patted Ally on the head. “No offense, girl.”

“When were you at Steffie’s?”

“Austin and I were walking past the house the other night when Stef was unloading paint from her car. I helped her carry everything inside, so she gave us the tour. It’s a really nice house.”

Berry smiled. “I always thought that house had charm. The arched doorways, the leaded windows, the wainscot, the tiles around the fireplace—it’s just a lovely, warm, friendly house.”

“I agree.” Wade hooked the old hose up to an outside spigot and turned it on. Water sprayed through cracks in the hose, which leaked like a sieve. “I guess I should run out to the hardware store and get a new one. This one is beat. I can pick up some nails and just stabilize a rung here and there.”

“What were you going to do with the hose?” Berry frowned.

“I was going to clean off the ladder.” He stood and dropped the nozzle. He went to the spigot and turned off the water. “Berry, are you all right?”

“Of course I am.” She appeared puzzled. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“That’s the second time in this conversation that you seemed to miss a beat.” He shook his head.

“What are you talking about?” Her eyes narrowed and shot a laser beam directly to his.

Well
, he thought,
she hasn’t forgotten The Look
.

“First you asked me why I needed a ladder, and I told you it was for Steffie, who’s painting the kitchen in her house,” he said gently. “Then a few minutes later, you asked me to remind you why Steffie needed a ladder.”

Berry shrugged. “So?”

“So then I said I was going to wash the cobwebs off the ladder, and two minutes later you asked me why I needed a hose.”

Berry waved a hand as if to dismiss him. “I’m a little distracted, and a little tired. I’m not used to having such a young one in the house. Not,” she hastened to add, “that I’d have it any other way. I adore that boy, as I suspect you know.”

Wade nodded. “I do know that, and I’m grateful that you’re putting us up for a while.”

“I’m not rushing you, of course I don’t want you to go, but I’m just wondering when you’re leaving for Connecticut.”

“I was planning on leaving next week, but I think now I’ll wait until after Dallas’s birthday party.”

“That’s only the weekend after this one coming.”

“I know.”

She started across the yard, but the uneven terrain made Wade nervous that she might fall. She didn’t seem as steady on her feet as she used to be. He left the ladder leaning against the carriage-house wall and locked the door, then took Berry’s arm and together they started across the lawn. Ally ran ahead to chase a dozen or so Canada geese from the grass. The birds squawked as they scattered and sought refuge on the river.

“It’s a lovely morning,” she said. “Can you sit with me for a few minutes over there under the trees?”

“Sure.” He glanced up at the house. Austin was still napping and Dallas was inside reading. She’d let him know if his son woke up.

There were several white Adirondack chairs, and Berry lowered herself into the closest one.

“Don’t you love to watch the river on days like this?” She smiled and gazed out across the water. “I know that fall is in the air and I know what the calendar says, but on days like this, I just want to hold on to the very last threads of summer. The sky is always so blue this time of the year.”

“It’s a beauty of a day, Berry.” Wade nodded and sat in the chair next to hers.

“So.” Berry turned to him. “You’ve agreed to use your brewmaster talents to make someone else’s beer. How do you feel about that?”

Wade shrugged. “It’s not what I thought I’d be doing at this point in my life, but then again, a lot hasn’t gone as I’d planned.”

“You didn’t answer the question, dear. I asked you how you felt about someone else using your expertise to make their beer.”

He winced. “Do I like the thought of my beer being bottled under someone else’s label? No. Not one damned bit.”

“Then why did you agree to work for someone else?”

“I closed up shop and sold the building and all my equipment, Berry. There were a lot of debts to be paid. I don’t have a business of my own anymore.” Even though he’d thought he’d accepted this fact, he
still found it hard to talk about. “But I do have to work. I agreed to work for someone else because I need a job.”

“Forgive me if I sound dense, dear, but why don’t you start another business? Why do you have to sell all your secrets to another brewery?”

“For one thing, it takes a lot of money. For another, it just seems, I don’t know,
disloyal
maybe, to start over again without Robin. The company had been her idea. She financed it.”

“But you actually made the beer, am I right?”

Wade nodded.

“I see no reason why you shouldn’t be making beer again. From all you’ve told me, Robin was a very level-headed young woman. Certainly you don’t think she’d have wanted you to leave the business behind forever.”

“Probably not,” Wade admitted.

“Who’s the fellow you’re going to work for?”

“A guy I met at a couple of brewers’ conventions.”

“Oh? A former rival?”

Wade grimaced. For someone who’d momentarily appeared not to have followed a conversation a few minutes ago, she was right on point now.

“I guess you could call him that,” Wade conceded, recalling the time when he and Robin had called Ted Billingsly that and more. “The guy made me a good offer, and like I said, I need a job.”

“Maybe you should take more time off to think things over a little more carefully. You’ve been through a lot over the past few months, you know. Decisions made in haste, and all that.”

“In all fairness to Ted, he has a business to run. He
can’t wait indefinitely for me to show up. He wants to get this new line of beer into the stores for the holidays.”

“He wants to get
your
beer into the stores for the holidays. With his labels on the bottles.”

Wade nodded.

Berry poked him playfully on the arm. “You know, St. Dennis has never had its own beer. You could call it ‘Berry Beer.’ ”

He laughed in spite of himself. “I’m afraid Berry Beer doesn’t have a particularly manly ring to it.”

“Perhaps not.” Berry smiled. “But I still wish you’d stay awhile longer in St. Dennis.” She sat back in her chair and gazed out toward the Bay. “I haven’t had nearly enough of you or of that boy of yours.”

“Don’t you miss having your house to yourself? With Dallas and Cody here, and now Austin and me …”

“Bite your tongue. I wasn’t aware of just how quiet things were around here until they no longer were. Frankly, I’m enjoying it. And look at it this way”—she leaned over to confide—“it’s keeping me young. Why, it’s almost like having Ned back again.”

“Ned? You mean my father?”

Berry nodded, a faraway look on her face. “What a delightful boy he was. From the moment of his birth until the day he left us, he was the greatest joy of my life.”

“Were you there, when he was born?” Wade asked.

“What?” Berry slowly turned to him.

“Were you there with your sister, when my dad was born? You said, from the moment of his birth …”

“I meant, from the time he was a newborn, of course.” Berry turned her face back toward the Bay.

“I guess you and my dad were really close. I remember seeing pictures of him here in this house when he was really little.”

“He stayed with me from time to time, when I was between pictures. Sometimes I took him to California with me, and several times to Europe.”

“But not so much his sisters?”

“They were a pair of twits.” Berry dismissed them with the wave of her hand. “Neither particularly smart nor interesting as children, less so as adults. Unlike Ned.”

“How did your sister and brother-in-law feel about that? About you taking their son on trips but never their daughters?”

Berry shrugged as if it mattered to her as little now as it must have back then.

“So, in other words, you didn’t care what they thought about that.”

“Not in the least.” She slanted a glance in his direction. “Why all the questions? Why the sudden interest in your father’s early days?”

“I’m just curious. And it’s not so sudden. I’ve always been interested in my dad. I was only seven when he died, remember?”

“I remember. Your mother brought you and Dallas here in the middle of a thunderstorm—at night—and essentially just dropped you off before she headed back to New Jersey.” She smiled at Wade and added, “Which was perfectly fine with me, since Roberta and I never got along all that well.”

“Why was that? I mean, I know my mom can be difficult at times …”

“Truthfully, I just never thought that she …” Berry paused, as if remembering that this was Roberta MacGregor’s son she was talking to. “I never felt that she and I were on the same page much of the time. Conflicting personalities, and all that.”

“How did she get along with Grandma Sylvie?”

“About what you’d expect,” Berry sniffed. “My sister wasn’t involved as much with Ned as she was with her daughters.”

“You and Grandma Sylvie were twins, right?”

She nodded. “Physically, we were identical, but our temperments, our personalities, couldn’t have been more different.”

“How about Grampa?”

“Duncan went along with pretty much whatever Sylvie wanted, as far as the children were concerned. I believe he thought that taking care of the children was her realm.”

“Even when it came to having his only son spend more time with you than he did with them?”

“Even then.” Her eyes narrowed. “What brought this all on today? Has someone said something to you about your father that you’d like to discuss with me?”

“No.” Puzzled, he shook his head. “What would someone have said?”

“Nothing of any consequence, I’m sure.” She turned her wrist to check her watch. “Oh, look at the time. I told Dallas I’d pick up the sale papers for the warehouse she’s buying from Hal Garrity when I was in town today. I’m meeting a friend for lunch at Captain
Walt’s, but I wanted to get the paperwork on the property resolved. It’s going to make a fine movie studio for Dallas. I suppose I needn’t tell you how thrilled I am that she’s formed her own production company and she’s going to be making her own movies.”