by Kathi Daley
“So let’s do it.”
Georgia pulled off her heavy boots, then crossed the room in her stocking feet and sat down at the table across from me. She reached out to hand me the envelope.
“You can go ahead and open it,” I said. “After all, you are the one who schlepped all the way out to the road to get it.”
Georgia grinned, then slit open the envelope with a thumbnail. “It is an inquiry from a woman who wants to have her wedding here in September.” Georgia looked up at me. “On one hand, I am thrilled to have a request for such a large booking, but on the other, I am also hesitant.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “I don’t see any way we won’t be up and running by September, but we are dealing with a major renovation, and really, once you start tearing out walls and replacing plumbing and electrical, anything can happen.”
Georgia bit her lip. “Should I call to tell her we can’t?”
I was really torn. “How did she hear about us anyway?”
Georgia looked back down at the sheet of paper in her hand. “It says here that she was in town for the Christmas Festival and mentioned to several people that she wanted to get married in Holiday Bay in the fall. She said everyone she spoke to recommended the inn, so she drove by and was drawn in, not only by the location but by the romantic history of the place.”
“Romantic history? I’d be more apt to refer to the history of the inn as somewhat tragic.”
Georgia shrugged. “I suppose that tragedy and romance can go together. The man who built the place did in fact do it for his one true love.”
“A true love who died four months after he married her,” I pointed out.
Georgia looked back down at the paper in her hand. “It’s odd that this woman didn’t just email her inquiry.”
“I guess a true romantic might see the artistry of a handwritten note,” I suggested.
“I suppose.” Georgia set the paper down on the table. “What should I do?”
“Does she want to book the inn for the beginning or the end of September?”
“The end. The last weekend, in fact. The area will be lovely then. The weather should be good, barring rain, and the leaves should be in full color.”
I sat back and considered the situation. “Why don’t you call her to explain the situation? Let her know that if we are open, which we very much plan to be, we would love to host her wedding, but remind her of the unpredictability of any sort of construction. If she is willing to agree to what I guess we can refer to as a soft booking, let her know that we are willing to reserve the dates, but we will wait to collect a deposit until we get a bit closer. I would even be willing to provide a contract of sorts as long as there are contingencies for us actually being up and running. If she will book under this set of circumstances, I say we do it; if not, I think we should pass.”
Georgia nodded. “Agreed. That sounds like a wonderful plan.”
I returned my attention to the computer, and Georgia got up to pour herself a cup of coffee. After starting a fresh pot, she returned to the table. “Are you working on your book?”
“No, something else.” I paused and looked up. “Remember when we stopped by Tanner’s yesterday to pick Nikki up for our shopping excursion?”
“Yeah. What about it?”
“And Tanner’s Aunt Charlee was there and Nikki was chatting with her, so she wasn’t quite ready to go?”
“Of course. I went out to the barn to see the new, potential FEMA arrivals, and Nikki went upstairs to change. So?”
“While you were both otherwise occupied, I took advantage of the opportunity to ask Charlee, who has lived in Holiday Bay as long as Velma, about Velma’s sister.”
Georgia raised a brow. “Velma has a sister? She’s never mentioned her to me.”
“Well, she did to me. She doesn’t talk about her much because they haven’t spoken in over thirty years.”
Georgia looked confused. “Whyever not?”
I leaned back and settled in, in preparation for what I suspected would turn into a long conversation. “It seems that Velma’s sister was in love with the same man as Velma. He chose Velma, so the sister left town. Velma hasn’t seen or heard from her since.”
“That’s awful.”
I nodded. “It is. My situation with Annie has made it very clear to me that family is more important than almost anything else, and long-standing feuds should not be allowed to fester and grow until they become unmanageable. I told Velma as much and suggested that she should be the one to contact her sister, but she didn’t know where she was or how to find her. The situation has been on my mind since I first heard about it, so when I realized that I was alone in a room with a woman who may have more of the details, I took advantage of it to ask her about it.”
Georgia crossed her hands on the table. “And…?”
“Charlee told me that Velma’s sister’s name was Regina Upton, but everyone called her Reggie. She was just twenty-six when she left town, and Charlee thought it was more like thirty-five years ago when it happened, so she estimates that Reggie would be sixty-one or sixty-two today. Before she left, Reggie was dating a man named Adam Miller, and from what Charlee could remember, it seemed that the couple were quite serious. There was even talk of an engagement in the near future, but then Adam met Velma, who had been away at college and recently graduated.”
“Let me guess,” Georgia said. “Adam and Velma hit it off, and Adam dumped Reggie and hooked up with her younger sister.”
“Basically. When Velma and Adam became engaged, Reggie decided she wasn’t going to stay around to watch her sister marry the man she loved, so she took off. Velma told me that she thought Reggie would cool off and, once she had some perspective, she would see that Velma and Adam were meant to be together and come home, but she never did.”
Georgia frowned. “That is so sad. Velma isn’t married now, so what happened to Adam?”
“Velma told me that they did get married, but that it only lasted a few years. He is long gone from her life, which she seemed happy about. I know this is none of my business, but as I said, my situation with my sister has me looking at relationships a lot more seriously. I decided that it couldn’t hurt to see if I could track Reggie down. I don’t have a lot to go on: a maiden name that probably isn’t the name she is going by anymore and a few other small hints that will most likely go nowhere.”
Georgia wrapped her hands around her warm cup. “I assume you are doing a Google search for Regina Upton?”
I nodded. “I am. It’s early yet, but so far no luck. I asked Charlee if she knew where Regina might have gone when she left Holiday Bay, and she told me that Velma and Reggie had an aunt who lived in Oregon named Maddie Westmore. Reggie talked about her quite often and might have gone to stay with her. I thought I’d try to see if she still is alive and living out west. It isn’t a lot to go on, but it is something.”
“Have you found out anything else?”
I nodded. “Charlee said that Reggie was the shy, introverted, awkward sister, while Velma was the gregarious, animated one who everyone noticed. It seems Adam wasn’t the first man who Velma had taken away from Reggie, and had Reggie not left town, he might not have been the last.”
“So there was a history of conflict between the two, even before Adam.”
I nodded. “It sounds that way. I spoke to Gilda from Gilda’s Café, who has been around for quite a while, but not as far back as when Reggie lived here and had never met her. Though she did say that she had heard that the one subject on which Reggie completely outshone Velma was intellectually. She’d heard that Reggie had gone to work at some big university; it might have been Harvard or Princeton, but she wasn’t certain. It’s not a lot, but I suppose that gives me another place to look for her.”
“Does Velma know you are looking for her sister?” Georgia asked.
“No,” I admitted.
“Do you think you should discuss it with her before you go any further?”
; “I thought about telling her what I was doing, but I was afraid she would tell me not to get involved. And maybe I shouldn’t. But Velma’s story really hit home with me and I wanted to do something to help reunite the sisters if I was able. I know that Velma’s relationship with her sister is probably none of my business, and she might not be happy that I am getting involved, but when she told me about Regina, I could see the regret and the longing in her eyes. I understand those emotions.”
Georgia’s expression softened. “I know this is hitting close to home for you. How are things going with Annie? Have you heard from her at all?”
“Not since Ben’s birthday.”
Georgia raised a brow. “Ben had a birthday recently? Why didn’t you say anything?”
“It was a couple of weeks ago, and I didn’t say anything because I was trying not to get mired in the depression that had set up camp in a corner of my mind.”
“I get that. I probably would have done the same thing. So you heard from Annie then?”
I nodded. “She sent me a one-sentence email that just said that she was thinking of me. I replied to the email that same day and made it very clear that I was touched that she had reached out. I told her I was sorry for everything that had come between us and hoped that we could one day be friends again. I said that I loved and missed her and that my life felt incomplete without her in it. I hoped that she’d email right back, maybe even call, but she didn’t. I’ve sent her two emails since then, even called and left a chatty voicemail, but she hasn’t replied.”
“I’m sorry that she didn’t get back to you.” Georgia hugged me. “I know this has been very hard. Still, the fact that she reached out on a day she knew would be difficult for you shows that she still cares. If she didn’t care, she wouldn’t have gotten in touch at all.”
I shrugged. “Yeah. I guess. I just wish this didn’t have to be so difficult. I feel like I am doing what I can to patch things up, but I have no way of knowing whether what I’m doing means anything to her.”
Georgia reached out and took my hand in hers. “It will. It may take some time, but eventually it will. I’ve never met Annie and I can’t claim to fully understand the dynamic between you, but my guess is that her heart is longing for you as much as yours is longing for her.”
******
Later that afternoon, I was working on my novel when Georgia came in from outside. She had a stack of envelopes in her hand that had been tied together with a piece of twine. “More mail?”
Georgia laughed. “No. The plumber found these in the wall of the library when he opened it up to replace the water line. I haven’t opened any of the envelopes, but they look like letters. Old letters.”
I reached out and took them. “I wonder how long they have been in the wall.”
“Lonnie thought they must have slipped down between the shelves and the wall, so I would say they probably belonged to the last owner, or at least the last one who actually lived in the house.”
“The last owners to occupy the house were Jasper and Joslyn Jones,” I informed Georgia. “They bought the house in 1932 and ran it as a resort until 1954, when a storm damaged the pool, which had been purported to have healing powers. There have been several owners since, but none lived there.”
“I suppose the letters could even have been left there by one of the guests who stayed at the resort,” Georgia said. She narrowed her gaze. “The postmarks are all from 1948. Should we open them?”
I nodded. “I don’t see why not. It’s not as if whoever wrote them is still around to care one way or another.” I opened the first envelope and pulled out a single sheet of paper. “It appears that this letter was written by someone named Victor to someone named Ursula.”
“Love letters?” Georgia asked.
I passed the paper to Georgia so she could read it herself. While I wouldn’t call the letters racy, they were fairly intimate, and I would have felt odd reading such private thoughts out loud. How strange that someone—presumably Ursula—had left a batch of letters on the shelf in the library in the resort in the first place.
“It sounds like Victor and Ursula were having themselves quite the affair.” Georgia giggled. “Not that these letters are inappropriate; they are pretty flowery, though.” She turned the paper over to read the writing on the back. “The prose style makes this sound as if it was written a lot earlier than 1948. In fact, if we found out that this was written by Chamberlain Westminster, the man who built the house in the late 1890s, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit. Don’t you think this has a bit of an English flair to it?”
“I suppose that just because the envelopes were postmarked in 1948, that doesn’t mean the letters inside them were written then.”
Georgia looked at that envelope again. “This one is addressed to Bluff House Spa and Resort. There’s a room number, six, but no name to whom it was to be delivered.” She looked up. “That seems odd to me. Shouldn’t the letter be for Mrs. Jones, or whatever the recipient’s name was, care of the Bluff House Spa and Resort, followed by the room number, and then at least the town and the state?”
“You would think so. I suppose that simply adding the room number might have seemed like enough of an address to a local postman seventy years ago. Maybe the recipient was a long-term resident at the resort.”
Georgia frowned. “I suppose. Do you mind if I hang on to these? I’d like to read all of them.”
“Knock yourself out.”
A dreamy look came over Georgia’s face. “I suppose the spa would have been a very romantic place to have a fling back in the day. When the guests were pampered. The house must have been divine.”
“From what I understand, the place was a real showpiece in its day. Still, an illicit love affair in the resort doesn’t interest me the way the romance between Chamberlain Westminster and Abagail Chesterton does, especially with her dying young and leaving him brokenhearted.”
Georgia grinned. “I suppose you are right.” She looked down at the letter in her hand. “I’ve always believed that the heart wants what it wants.”
Chapter 5
Life can be frustrating. Not just frustrating—infuriating.
While I had been on a roll with my novel and actually thought that I might finish it ahead of schedule, I now found myself totally blocked at the 90 percent point. I was a professional and knew to deal with these temporary blocks, but it had been three days and I had rewritten the same page eight times, which had me believing that this time I wasn’t going to be able to find a way out of the corner I’d written myself into. To be honest, at this point I was considering chucking the whole manuscript and my laptop into the ocean. In my mind, a burial at sea was the only option left, because I had tried everything else, up to and including pounding my fists energetically on my desk, cursing loudly at the imaginary being who had robbed me of my creativity, and stomping around the room with my arms in the air demanding to know why the universe hated me. Now I was comparing myself to every other writer on the planet and close to deciding that every single one of them was, in every way, better than I.
I guess you could say that being blocked did not bring out my best qualities.
I had just unplugged the laptop in preparation for its journey to the sea when my phone rang. I looked at the caller ID to see who it was and answered.
“Are you busy?” Colt asked.
“Not even a tiny little bit. What’s up?”
“I’ve been looking in to the details surrounding Karen Stinson’s death and I’ve found enough irregularities to cause me to investigate further. I thought I’d hike up to the falls where she died to take another look. Do you want to come?”
“Hike?” I looked out the window at the three feet of snow on the ground. “You do know that there is snow on the ground, right?”
Colt chuckled. “Yes, I had noticed. I plan to wear snowshoes.”
“Snowshoes?”
“Yes. Shoes you secure to your feet that help you walk in the snow. Have you
ever tried them?”
“Never.” Nor was I the least bit sure I ever wanted to.
“I have an extra pair you can borrow.”
I hesitated.
“It’s easy. I can show you what to do, and I will even take you to dinner when we get back.”
I glanced at my traitor computer and knew that it was unlikely to cooperate with me even if I spent the entire day glaring at it. “Okay,” I eventually said. “But keep in mind that I am probably going to suck at walking through the snow on big ping-pong paddles.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. I have some work to do this morning. How about I pick you up at one?”
“Okay. I’ll be ready.”
“And dress warmly, but not too warm. Wear layers. I know it seems like you will be cold, but once you start walking, I guarantee you will warm up real fast.”
What had I gotten myself in to? “Got it. Lots of layers. I’ll see you at one.”
Deciding that tossing my laptop into the Atlantic Ocean was no longer going to give me the satisfaction it would have a few minutes before, I headed out into the living area of the cottage, where I found Georgia sitting at the dining table scowling at the stack of letters she had been reading and rereading for days. “I see the mystery of Victor and Ursula is still causing you angst.”
Georgia let out a long breath. “Yeah.”
“Anything I can help with?” I opened the cupboard, pulled out a mug, and poured myself a fresh cup of coffee.
“In the letters, Ursula refers to a gift that Victor has left with her. At first I figured it was a piece of jewelry or some other item of great value because she seemed to be so focused on it, but after reading the letters about a million times, I’m beginning to think the gift must be something else.”
“Something else like a car, or maybe a fur coat?”
“Something else like a baby.”
I frowned and sat down. “A baby? Are you sure?”
