“Don’t you dare say a word.”
He pointed to the quiche. “May I say a word about this quiche? I have never in my life seen anyone eat a quiche like this.”
“I wasn’t paying attention. I’ve been a little distracted this morning.”
Paul leaned against the bathroom counter and crossed his arms over his chest. “I think selling your condo is the smart idea.”
She saw doubt in his eyes. “But? Go on, say it.”
“Are you sure about buying Honeysuckle Hollow? It needs serious work.”
Tessa walked out of the bathroom shaking her head, and Paul followed her, balancing the quiche on one hand.
“Weren’t you the one championing me to save it? And I’m aware of how much work it’s going to take. I can handle it.”
“But you’ve never done this sort of work before.”
“I’ve done repairs before. Besides, I have people I can call to help me. It’s not as though I’m going to make all the repairs myself. I’m not an idiot.”
Paul put the quiche on the table. “If I can pry for a moment…what about the money? I know expenses can escalate rapidly when rehabbing homes, and I think that this particular home is going to be an expensive project.”
Tessa knew Paul was only saying out loud what she’d already been thinking, but she wasn’t deterred. “I’ve saved some money, and I plan on using the money from the sale of the condo and my savings to buy and repair the house.”
Paul’s frown deepened. “This is a big job.”
Tessa pressed her lips together and exhaled. She could tell by his expression that he didn’t have confidence in her decision. “I can do this.” Her cell phone rang. “Hello?”
“Ms. Andrews? This is Austen Blackstone. How are you this morning?”
Paul opened the silverware drawer and removed a fork. Then he opened the refrigerator, pulled a few leaves from the head of lettuce, and closed the door. He sat at the table and worked on the quiche from the opposite side of Tessa’s destruction.
“Busy. How are you?” She walked to the map. The mint stretched across the Atlantic and wrapped around silver pins in Ireland, Spain, and Morocco.
“Surprised, actually. I carbon dated the spear, and it’s proving to be at least a thousand years old.”
Tessa’s knees buckled, and she dropped onto the couch cushion. She stared at the spear leaning against the bookshelf.
“That’s impossible. Look at it.”
“I’d have to agree it’s in immaculate shape—”
“Impossible shape. What does that mean now, though?” she asked.
Paul looked up from his breakfast and tilted his head at her, asking her questions with his blue eyes. He tore lettuce leaves into small pieces and then dropped them into Huck Finn’s plastic container. The fish swam circles in the water as if saying thank you.
“It means you have a priceless artifact in your possession. I’d like to discuss options with you on how to proceed from here. The university would love a chance to study it further, and I know a few people in Washington, D.C. and in Chicago who would be more than happy to take it off your hands and display it for the world.”
“E-mail me some information, and I’ll get back with you,” Tessa said.
She ended the call and stared at Paul until she could process the information. She explained Austen’s findings, and then the two of them sat in silence.
Paul grabbed his notebook from the coffee table. “This is quite the find for a small town like Mystic Water. I’ll call a few magazines today, let them know what’s been found here, and see who will want to print the story.”
“What story?”
“The story that I’m going to write about Mystic Water being home to a one-thousand-year-old Native American spear with a Cherokee prayer carved into its shaft,” Paul said, jotting notes into his notebook.
She watched his lips press together into a line of concentration. She thought of Cecilia downstairs and what she’d said to Tessa this morning. There’s the charmer who’s convinced my boy to stay awhile longer.
“So, you’re going to stick around?”
He nodded without looking up. “Until I finish the story, yeah. I’ll need to. I’ve put my trip to the Cook Islands on hold.” He paused and glanced up at her. “Is that okay? I didn’t even ask if you wanted a story written about the spear, but it’s a rare piece of history. It wouldn’t seem fair to keep it all to yourself. Others can benefit from this finding, from knowing something like this exists. And its connection with the house is remarkable. A house that’s been a refuge for hundreds and with a spear of protection buried beneath it. Coincidental?”
Tessa shrugged. “I don’t mind if you write a story.”
A knock sounded at the door, and Tessa glanced at Paul. They both shrugged. She opened the door, and a gust of wind smelling like lavender and green pine needles rushed into the room. Tessa’s mouth dropped open when she saw Crazy Kate standing on the landing.
“Where is it?” Crazy Kate asked.
“Where is what?”
Crazy Kate pushed her way into the living room, causing Paul to stand from the couch and greet her.
“Morning, ma’am,” he said.
Crazy Kate frowned at Tessa. “What have you done with the spear?” she asked. “It’s mine.”
14
Hot Cross Buns
Tessa closed the door and stared at Crazy Kate’s angry, dark eyes. She was dressed in her usual colorful attire, wearing an ankle-length turquoise skirt, a purple blouse covered with a vest made of fabric swatches stitched together in a rainbow patchwork pattern, and a black scarf tied over her silver-streaked hair, which laid in a long plait down her back with wisps of hair falling around her sharp cheekbones.
“Please, come in,” Tessa said, not bothering to hide the sarcasm from her voice. “I think you must be confused about the spear.”
“I’m not confused about anything,” Crazy Kate said. “You should have never taken it from the house.”
Tessa’s skin tingled. “Why?”
“Why do you think?” Crazy Kate said. “It was protecting the house. It has been for a lot longer than you’ve been alive.”
Tessa couldn’t stop the laugh from bubbling up her throat. Crazy Kate narrowed her eyes, and the sun shifted behind the clouds outside, throwing the room into shadows.
“You haven’t wondered why those men were unable to tear down the house? Not a second thought as to why their machines failed?”
Tessa inhaled a sharp breath. She met Paul’s gaze and saw that his blue eyes were wide.
“What do you know about that?” Tessa asked.
Crazy Kate stepped toward her. “I know that the reason they failed is because of the one thing you stole from the house. Still haven’t grown out of your thieving ways, I see.”
A flush crept across Tessa’s cheeks, and she felt as though her mama had scolded her. “That’s not fair. I was a kid—”
“A thieving kid.”
“I borrowed the spear. I only wanted to learn more about it.”
“So you have. What you need to do right now is give it back to me,” Crazy Kate said. “It belongs to the house, not here. It’s not yours any more than my suncatcher was yours.”
When Tessa said nothing in response, Crazy Kate’s eyes filled with tears, and Tessa felt an overwhelming desire to console the strange woman. Sunlight crept back into the room and stretched across the floor until it reached Crazy Kate’s feet and paused.
“You don’t understand,” Crazy Kate said, her voice trembling. She wrung her hands together, and her glassy, brown eyes pleaded with Tessa.
“Actually,” Paul said, “the spear belongs to Tessa because the land belongs to her. That means she’s the rightful owner of anything in the land as well.”
Crazy Kate’s eyes widened. “You? You bought the land? The house? When?”
“This morning,” Tessa said. “It’s not official yet, but I have a verbal agreement with
the current owner, and Honeysuckle Hollow will be mine.”
“Trudy.” Crazy Kate hissed the name as though it burned her tongue.
“How do you know Mrs. Steele?” Tessa asked.
“I won’t let you tear down that house,” Crazy Kate said, blinking her eyes until they were clear again. Her thin fingers rolled into her palms and clenched at her sides.
“I have no plans to tear down Honeysuckle Hollow, but why is the house so important to you?”
“For reasons you would never care about,” Crazy Kate said.
Tessa shook her head. “This conversation is almost too crazy for me to accept. It’s just a spear. A piece of wood with carvings. Sure it’s old, but it’s not the reason they couldn’t tear down Honeysuckle Hollow. The bulldozer wasn’t working the first day, and the second day was because of the foggy weather.”
“And what caused the weather? You don’t think the weather protected the house?”
“You think the spear caused the fog?” Tessa asked, making a scoffing noise in her throat, but she remembered the feeling she’d had the night the fog arrived, the feeling that the fog was concealing Mystic Water, protecting it. “That’s absurd.” Tessa’s fingers itched to grab her notepad and write, It’s absurd to think the spear caused the fog, right?
“Is it? And I suppose you’re going to tell me that you don’t believe in the garden either? I didn’t think you were a liar too.”
“Excuse me?” Tessa asked, bristling. “I am not a liar.”
Crazy Kate stepped so close to Tessa that Tessa tried to back away but ended up with her back pressed against the living room wall.
Crazy Kate spoke in a hushed tone, “You have experienced how the garden changes you, yet you continue to deny it?”
Paul stepped toward them, asking Tessa with his eyes if he should manhandle the wild woman out of the apartment. Tessa shook her head.
“What’s this about the garden?” Paul asked.
Tessa exhaled. There was enough crazy going on in the room right now without telling Paul that she was pretty sure his mama’s garden was magical. Crazy Kate turned and looked at Paul. Then she smiled at him, and her expression softened. The mischief in Crazy Kate’s gaze made Tessa’s skin itch.
“It’s what brought you here,” Crazy Kate said to Paul.
Paul grinned at her as though Crazy Kate was a child sharing her wild imaginings with him. “My parents brought me here. I came to see them.”
“Does it give you comfort to deny the obvious?” Crazy Kate asked, looking at Paul and then at Tessa.
Crazy Kate reached into her pocket and pulled out a small object. Then she stretched out her closed palm to Paul, offering him whatever was hidden in her hand. He held out his hand to her, and she dropped a red, heart-shaped pushpin into his open palm. She nodded her head toward the wall map.
“You cannot escape the truth forever,” Crazy Kate said. “It will keep turning up until you accept it.”
Tessa’s heart slammed in her chest, frantic and desperate beats that caused her vision to blur as she tried to focus on the red pushpin in Paul’s hand. His lips parted, but he said nothing. He stared at the pushpin until his fingers closed around it. Neither one of them tried to stop Crazy Kate as she snatched the spear from the living room and rushed out of the apartment.
Without a word, Paul walked into the bathroom. A few seconds later, Tessa heard the rush of water through the pipes as the toilet flushed. When he returned to the living room, his hands were empty. He grabbed his notepad, cell phone, and pen from the coffee table and barely glanced at Tessa.
“I’m going for a walk,” he said as he left the apartment.
She stood alone in the living room before sitting on the couch and staring at the wall map. She exhaled a deep breath, and the mint shivered, filling the room with its calming scent. Tessa closed her eyes and inhaled. She looked at Huck Finn swimming in his plastic home. “What have we gotten ourselves into, Huck?” The fish had no answer.
With no idea how to react to Crazy Kate’s appearance and what had been said, Tessa grabbed her laptop and purse. She slipped the quiche back into the brown bag Cecilia had given her and walked up the street to work.
Tessa sat at her desk staring at the listing for Honeysuckle Hollow. Owning the home was within her grasp. Her fax machine beeped, and a flurry of papers rolled into the tray. The contract for the earnest money. The remaining documents concerning the sell of the house arrived right behind the first contract. Tessa’s heart performed a pirouette in her chest. Her fingers trembled on the paper. She looked up the number for the local bank branch and called her contact at the bank—a close friend of her daddy’s—who would likely help her to push the paperwork and approval through much faster than the standard time frame normally associated with buying and selling a home.
Tessa informed Mr. Rogers that she would need money wired from her savings account. Even through the phone line, Tessa heard the skepticism and questioning tone in Mr. Rogers’ voice. Are you sure about this? he asked. Of course not, she thought. That’s a lot of money, Tessa, he said. Have you talked to your dad about this? Am I a kid? Tessa thought. But she had pulled out her notepad and written the question: Should I send this much money? Beside the number one, she’d scribbled, Do I have a choice? She asked Mr. Rogers to get the necessary paperwork going and told him she would be at the bank in fifteen minutes.
After the wire transfer, Tessa sat in her car and stared at the receipt. She’d never spent so much money at once, not even to put a down payment on her condo. She knew she should feel sick at her stomach, but instead, excitement bubbled through her veins. The sun shined through the windshield and warmed her cheeks. She opened her notepad and flipped to the page that read: Should I send this much money? In the past two years, she’d never made so many decisions without making sure she asked the opinions of five people, and now she’d made two life-altering choices without so much as her mama’s input. What was her mama going to say?
Tessa returned to her office and sat on the edge of the desk. She speared a piece of cold quiche and poked it into her mouth. She chewed slowly, thinking about the house and her thoughts drifted to Crazy Kate. Why would she have buried a spear of protection beneath it? She recalled her first real run-in with Crazy Kate at the candy shop. Crazy Kate had told her when the rosemary in the garden was mature, she wanted brewed tea. Tessa forked another piece of quiche into her mouth. Are you really thinking of having tea with Crazy Kate?
“Why stop there?” she asked out loud. “Why not stay for dinner?”
Her cell phone rang, and the local mechanic, Norman Benson, informed her that the Great Pumpkin had not died. They’d tinkered with the inner workings and brought it back to life. One of the shop guys needed to come into downtown, so he was going to drop off the car for her. Mr. Benson told Tessa she could swing by and pay her bill when she had a chance. Tessa thanked him and felt her spirits rise. She glanced at the clock. She still had time for a visit with Crazy Kate before her afternoon meetings.
She closed down her computer and returned to the diner. Tessa found Cecilia in the backroom, and she asked if they’d brewed any rosemary tea for the day. Tessa explained she needed it for a friend and asked if she could have some to go. She also asked for a tin of dried lavender from the garden. Fifteen minutes later, Tessa walked out of the diner with a silver tin of lavender and a bottle of rosemary tea that smelled like wildness and green pine needles. She found the car keys to the Great Pumpkin on the right front tire, and she drove toward Juniper Lane before she could change her mind.
The dirt driveway leading down toward Crazy Kate’s cottage had potholes the size of kiddie pools. Trying to navigate the Great Pumpkin around the craters was about as easy as cuddling a beehive without being stung. She parked, grabbed the tea and tin of lavender, and climbed out of the car.
Colored glass bottles had been shoved onto branches, turning the trees into kaleidoscopes. Wind chimes whispered in the trees, mesmerizing Tess
a with their tinkling, music-box notes. Suncatchers shimmered in the sunlight, and Tessa stared, unable to move, completely charmed by the magic of the forest. She vaguely heard a door open.
“Come to steal a new prize?” Crazy Kate asked, yanking Tessa out of her daydream.
“Huh?” Tessa asked. Then she shook her head and lifted the glass bottle of tea and the tin. “I brought you rosemary tea and lavender.”
Crazy Kate’s eyebrows rose. “This is unexpected.”
She turned around and walked back into her house, leaving Tessa standing in the side yard. After a moment, Tessa walked toward the front door. “Umm, Cra—Ms. Muir?”
“Mrs.,” Crazy Kate yelled from inside the cottage.
Tessa stood on the front stoop. She peered through the door. “Excuse me?”
Crazy Kate appeared in front of her, startling Tessa. “It’s Mrs., not Miss.”
“Oh.” She was married?
Crazy Kate reached out for the bottle and the tin, and Tessa handed them over. “Thank you.” She disappeared back into the house and said, “Either come in or stay out, but don’t stand there with the door open. The blue jays like to come inside, and it’s the devil trying to get them out.”
Was that an invitation? Tessa swallowed. The wind rustled through the trees, filling the air with the tinny sounds of music. Tessa stepped inside and closed the door. The interior of the cottage was nothing like Tessa expected. She had imagined a hoarder, an old lady squirreling away magazines or newspapers from the past one hundred years. She wouldn’t have been surprised to be overwhelmed with the scents of rot and decay, of a life that had stopped moving years ago.
Instead, Crazy Kate’s cottage was clean and cozy, and it smelled like freshly cut lavender and roses. Overstuffed leather armchairs and a chocolate brown couch gathered around a stone fireplace. A suncatcher hung in one window and cast rainbows across the small living room. The open kitchen connected to the living room, and Crazy Kate stood at the stove, pouring rosemary tea into a wide-mouth kettle. The gas stove ignited, and Crazy Kate grabbed a wooden spoon. She stirred the tea in slow, deliberate circles.
Honeysuckle Hollow Page 15
