Tessa cleared her throat. “I didn’t know you were married.”
Crazy Kate huffed. “I don’t suppose you know much about me at all.”
Tessa felt the sting of her words. She had never bothered to know much about Crazy Kate, other than accepting that she was the town crazy. “Your husband—”
“Gone.” Crazy Kate’s shoulders tensed and then stooped forward. She exhaled. “Two years now. I miss him every day.”
Tessa couldn’t even imagine what kind of man Crazy Kate would have been married to. Was he as odd as she was? Did he wear rainbow colors and bury spears in the ground? She glanced around the living room and noticed a grouping of photographs on an end table. Tessa stepped over to it and leaned down to get a closer look. She was shocked to see a young woman, who had to be Crazy Kate in her twenties, standing with a young man. They smiled at the camera, looking as though nothing could have ruined their moment together. Not only was Crazy Kate beautiful, but the man who had his arm wrapped around her waist was gorgeous. Her husband?
In another photograph, Crazy Kate and the man stood with two dark-haired children, one boy and one girl. She had kids? And still in another photograph, the children were teenagers caught laughing with Crazy Kate and the tall man, who looked vaguely familiar to Tessa. Before Tessa could ask Crazy Kate about the man and the kids, Crazy Kate spoke.
With her back turned to Tessa, she said, “You didn’t come to bring the tea and lavender.”
Tessa frowned. “Actually, I did.”
“Actually,” Crazy Kate said, “you came to ask about Honeysuckle Hollow.”
Crazy Kate poured the warmed tea into delicate blue porcelain teacups and placed them on a small kitchen table made of barn wood. She sat and motioned for Tessa to do the same. Crazy Kate brought her cup to her nose and inhaled deeply. Her eyes closed, and she sipped her tea. Tessa wrapped her hands around the teacup and allowed the porcelain to warm her fingers. After Crazy Kate took a second sip, her eyes popped open. She stared at Tessa and lowered her cup immediately. Her fingers trembled, and the cup danced in its saucer.
“Are you okay?” Tessa asked. Oh, please don’t die while I’m here. How will I ever explain this to anyone?
“I remember,” Crazy Kate whispered, her eyes brimming with tears. “Too much. The rosemary is too strong.”
“I’m sorry,” Tessa said. “I didn’t brew it. Mrs. Borelli did. Do you want her to make you a milder batch? I can throw this one out.”
Seeing Crazy Kate’s tears caused Tessa’s throat to tighten. Knowing she’d had a husband and possibly had children out there somewhere forced Tessa to rethink who Crazy Kate really was. And why was she alone as an old woman? Tessa pushed her chair away from the table and tried to stand, but Crazy Kate gripped her wrist, pinning Tessa’s arm to the table.
“It’s not your fault. It’s the garden,” Crazy Kate said. Her eyes closed, and her fingers loosened on Tessa’s arm. “I loved him. I loved them both, but him first.”
When she didn’t say anything more, Tessa asked, “Who?”
“Geoffrey Hamilton.”
She spoke the name with such reverence she could have been speaking a prayer. Her cheeks pinked, and a slow sigh escaped through her lips. Tessa couldn’t imagine Crazy Kate being in love with anyone because Tessa had never imagined Crazy Kate outside of the boundaries she’d always placed around the town nut.
Crazy Kate’s eyes opened, and for a moment, she had the face of a young woman with eyes full of hope and wonder. She reached her thin fingers up to her face and touched her cheek. The longing in her dark eyes made Tessa’s chest ache.
“Youngest son of Alfred Hamilton, long-ago resident of Honeysuckle Hollow. The house…it belonged to the Hamiltons for more than a hundred years until Matthias, my husband, died a couple of years ago.”
Tessa’s forehead wrinkled. “Wait, you were married to Dr. Hamilton? The same Dr. Hamilton who took care of Honeysuckle Hollow? How is that possible? No one ever said anything to me about that…and you…were in love with his brother?”
Tessa had little knowledge of the Hamiltons, but she knew the family had been one of the founding families in Mystic Water, and they had been exceedingly wealthy.
“Before Matthias,” Crazy Kate said. She brought the cup to her lips and drank. “Geoffrey was a boy then, barely eighteen and just out of high school. I was sixteen, and he was the first boy who ever noticed me.”
“What happened?” Tessa asked, leaning forward on her elbows.
Crazy Kate released a shuddering breath and lowered the cup, sloshing tea over the lip. “What am I?”
Tessa frowned. “I’m not sure what you’re asking.”
“When you look at me, what do you see?”
A crazy person seems like an inappropriate response. “A woman.”
“And sixty years ago, do you know what you would have said?”
Tessa shrugged. “A girl?”
“An outsider,” Crazy Kate said. “My mama was a full-blooded Cherokee, and my daddy was a Scottish man madly in love with her. He didn’t care what others thought of him when he married my mama. He was a successful architect—brilliant, charming, and imposing. He lived with my mama out here in this cottage, and he never paid much attention to what people thought about us. But people cared. I had a brother, Evan, who was just like my daddy, but dark like mama. He was handsome and popular, and I was his opposite. I was a mix-breed, an outsider, a little girl who belonged entirely to no one’s world. But I was different, and not just because of the color of my skin.”
Tessa nodded her head to encourage Crazy Kate to continue. She’d never seen the woman so lucid in her life.
“I inherited the family gift, but Geoffrey didn’t care that I was different. Not at first.” She turned and stared at a spot in the living room as though seeing the young man’s face before her. “But that didn’t last. Once he found out about my gift, he couldn’t handle it. He let me go, and I was heartbroken. Young hearts are so fragile.” She blinked away the tears in her eyes. Then she smiled. “But Matthias was there. Good, strong, dependable Matthias. He was so handsome, and he loved me, no matter what. He didn’t care about my gift.”
“Wait,” Tessa said, feeling indignant for Crazy Kate, “Geoffrey broke up with you because of some gift?”
Crazy Kate turned her gaze to Tessa. Her eyes shone like black pearls in the sunlight. Crazy Kate stood, grabbed her teacup, and poured the rest of her tea down the sink’s drain. She gripped the edge of the sink.
“Not just some gift,” she said. Sadness rippled off her. Dishes in the cabinets rattled. The wind wailed around the cottage, and Tessa heard the frantic, high-pitched tones of the wind chimes as they clanged together. Crazy Kate exhaled and the wind died down. “A gift I couldn’t control. I’m not talking about being able to sing or build houses. I’m talking about a gift too difficult for most to accept. But it’s why I buried the spear beneath Honeysuckle Hollow.”
Tessa stared at her cup of tea. What memories would surface if she drank it? Would she splinter inside like Crazy Kate seemed to be doing? Would a long-buried yearning surface? She looked up at Crazy Kate.
“What’s the gift?” Tessa asked.
Crazy Kate’s shoulders slumped, and she released her grip on the sink. She turned to look at Tessa.
“I can see the future.”
Tessa eyebrows rose on her forehead. She thought of fortune-tellers at carnivals hidden behind heavy drapes and burning incense. “Like with a crystal ball?”
Crazy Kate scoffed and tapped her finger to her temple. “In here. All sorts of futures tangled together like yarn.”
“So you have premonitions? Is that why people call—”
“Call me Crazy Kate?” A small smile tugged her lips. “People are generally afraid of what they don’t understand.”
An old lady who sees the future? Why not? There is already the possibility of a magically potent garden and a house-protecting spear.
“My
mama once described the gift as being able to see the future in broken pieces. But making sense of the visions would be the same as trying to make complete pictures out of the shattered glass in a suncatcher.” Crazy Kate stared out the window. “But not all of my visions are so broken. Sometimes they are clear, but my mama warned me to never change what I saw, never act on my visions. I was meant to be a bystander.”
The tone of her voice caused Tessa to ask, “Were you always a bystander? Did you ever try to change what you saw?”
Crazy Kate’s dark eyes found Tessa’s. “Would you?”
Tessa shrugged. “Depends, I guess. I might ask for advice first.”
Crazy Kate shook her head. “You don’t trust your heart.”
Tessa groaned. “I’ve been impulsive one too many times, and it has brought me nothing but misery.”
“And allowing others to navigate your life for you will bring you the same.”
Tessa huffed. Now she was receiving advice from Crazy Kate? “Back to the spear,” Tessa said. “Why did you bury it at the house? Because of a vision?”
Crazy Kate nodded. “Fifty years ago, I saw that a terrible sickness would come through Mystic Water just before Christmas. I saw…” Her quiet voice broke with sadness. “I saw that many people would become sick and some would die.”
“The Hamiltons?” Tessa asked, sliding to the edge of her chair and staring at Crazy Kate.
“I saw Dr. Hamilton—their father—would bury his wife and all four sons.”
“All of them?” Tessa gripped her teacup.
“The sons and their wives and children came to Mystic Water to spend Christmas at Honeysuckle Hollow. There was nothing I could do to deter them. Mrs. Hamilton wouldn’t listen to my warnings. She never accepted that Matthias chose me as a wife.” Crazy Kate almost smiled. “Can you blame her?”
“But you tried to save her and them with the spear?”
Crazy Kate wandered toward the suncatcher in the living room. She touched it with her fingertips, and rainbows skittered across the wood floor. Tessa turned in her chair to follow Crazy Kate’s movements.
Crazy Kate sighed. “I tried, but the future is not so easily changed. I stole the spear from my mama. It had been in her family for hundreds of years, but I couldn’t let them die. I couldn’t. Not Matthias. Not Geoffrey, but…” When Crazy Kate turned to look at Tessa, tears streaked her cheeks. “It wasn’t enough. I couldn’t save them all. We lost Benjamin and Geoffrey. They faded in the night like snuffed candles inside Honeysuckle Hollow. Lost to their fevers and fitful dreams.”
Tessa gasped. “No.” She covered her mouth. Chills rushed up her arms. “I’m so sorry. But you tried. You saved Matthias and another brother and their mama, right? They should have thanked you for that. You did all you could.”
Crazy Kate returned to the kitchen and grabbed the bottle of rosemary tea and held it up into a shaft of sunlight. The tea sparkled like sea glass. Her shadow trembled on the floor, and Crazy Kate crossed the small space and placed the bottle on the table in front of Tessa.
“Take this away. Those memories are too strong.”
Tessa stood and grabbed the bottle. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know—”
“Don’t apologize for what you could never have known. I’m going to rebury the spear, and no one should ever touch it again,” she said. “Do you understand? You may have bought the house, but this spear is mine and it belongs there. Trudy Steele may want to see the house torn down because she’s still angry and blames Mystic Water for taking her husband, but I won’t let that happen. Matthias and I may not have lived in the house, but he still loved it and his family. He spent his life making that house a place of good and hope.”
Tessa frowned. “I don’t understand how Trudy Steele owns the house and not you.”
Crazy Kate shook her head. “I never wanted Honeysuckle Hollow. It belonged to the Hamiltons in a way I never did. When Matthias died, the house went to the next, oldest living relative, Trudy Steele.”
“But who is she?”
“Geoffrey’s widow.”
Tessa let that truth resonate in her brain before she spoke again. Crazy Kate’s first love had married someone else and that someone now wanted to tear down Honeysuckle Hollow because Geoffrey had died there. No wonder the old lady had sounded so bitter and angry on the phone. “You don’t have to bury the spear,” Tessa said. “Since I own the house—or practically own it—you could keep the spear inside. I wouldn’t let anyone mess with it.”
“I’m to trust that you won’t sell it or give it away to some foolish museum like Austenaco Blackstone suggested?”
“It’s your choice whether to trust me or not,” Tessa said. “But I wouldn’t sell it or give it away for anything now.”
Crazy Kate narrowed her eyes. “Why? It’s worth a lot of money. I doubt anyone alive has ever seen a spear like it.”
Tessa shrugged. “I don’t know how to explain it, but I’ve been drawn to Honeysuckle Hollow since I first stepped foot in it a few days ago. If it weren’t for you, your protection prayer, and your love, I would never have been given the chance to own a home like it.”
“And this chance to own Honeysuckle Hollow is the right decision for you?”
Tessa chuckled. “It’s probably the most impulsive, stupidest decision I’ve made in a couple of years. It’ll probably ruin me and bankrupt me, but,” she shrugged, “my heart is telling me yes.”
Crazy Kate smiled. “Finally, you are learning. You’re a slow one.”
Tessa wasn’t sure if Crazy Kate was insulting her or teasing her. “Who am I to stop protecting Honeysuckle Hollow? Bury the spear or we can display it inside the house. Think about it,” Tessa said. She walked toward the door.
“And what about Paul?”
A breeze tickled her skin. Tessa paused with her hand on the doorknob. “What about him?”
“He’s tangled up in all of this too. What does he want with the house?”
Tessa shook her head. “He’s not part of this, so I don’t think he wants anything.” Tessa opened the door. She remembered the heart-shaped pushpin Crazy Kate had given to Paul. “But where did you find that pushpin? Paul threw one just like it out the window.”
The mischief returned to Crazy Kate’s dark eyes. “In my morning coffee. Sometimes we find the truth in the most unlikely places. And you’re wrong about him. There is something he wants—a place to pin that heart.”
15
Lady and the Tramp
Just before lunch Tessa dropped off the key at Honeysuckle Hollow, and then she grabbed a bag of chips and a diet soda from the gas station. She finished both while sitting in the Great Pumpkin. After lunch, she met with a client, and then she spent less than half an hour talking with the interested condo buyer. He had spent his morning at the bank and with his lawyer. He promised Tessa she would have the necessary paperwork by Monday. If she agreed to sign the papers, she would officially be condo-free and on her way to living in a dilapidated mansion. As soon as she had the money from the sale of her condo in the bank, she’d start the renovations.
By the time Tessa returned to the apartment late that afternoon, Paul was lounging on the couch, typing on his laptop. A large map was spread out on the coffee table, and a pink bag of caramel crèmes sat on the west side of the map. She dropped her purse on a kitchen chair and glanced around the kitchen.
“Where’s Huck Finn?” she asked.
Without looking up at her, Paul answered, “In Mr. Fletcher’s pond with approximately thirty other koi. His family just expanded exponentially. I dropped the Tupperware back off at the diner, and Mom told me to bring you a couple of Belgium waffles. They’re in the fridge.”
Tessa smiled even though Paul still hadn’t made eye contact with her. He used two couch pillows to prop against, and the laptop was balanced on top of another pillow that sat on his thighs. She inhaled slowly, thinking she could get used to seeing a good-looking man stretched out on her couch. That thought cau
sed her pulse to thump against her throat.
She walked into the living room and sat on the edge of the couch. “Whatcha working on?”
He paused in his typing. “An article about Mystic Water. I pitched the idea to Southern Living. They seemed to fancy the idea of an article on a quaint Southern town, and when I tossed in the information about a century-old Native American spear, they weren’t sure they could say no.” He returned to his typing. “If they accept the article—and I don’t know why they wouldn’t—they’ll run a longer article in the next issue of the printed magazine as well.”
Tessa realized the unfolded map was of Mystic Water. He’d circled the location of Honeysuckle Hollow. She reached out for a caramel crème.
She unwrapped the candy. “I learned more about the house today.”
“Uh huh…library research?” He scrolled through his document and added more text to a previous paragraph.
“No,” she answered, “I went to see Crazy Kate—or Mrs. Muir, I guess, would be more appropriate. She’s not actually as crazy as people say.”
Paul stopped typing. He saved his article and closed the laptop. Then he sat up on the couch and slid the computer from his lap. “You went to see the lady who stole your spear?”
Tessa nodded and popped the candy into her mouth. “Mmmhmm.”
“Did you get it back?”
“Well, that’s an interesting story actually.”
“A long one?” He stood and stretched before grabbing his boots and pulling them on.
Tessa’s disappointment flared. “Oh, are you busy? Going somewhere?”
He looked up from tying his boots. “No, I just thought if it was a long one, you might want to go walking with me. You could tell me the story on our walk.”
“Oh,” she said, standing and glancing down at her work attire. “Yeah, sure, I’d love that.” Settle down, Tessa. Love is a strong word. “Let me get changed.” She disappeared into the bedroom and inhaled a few deeps breaths. There was no reason to become excited about a walk, but still she couldn’t stop smiling at the idea of spending more time with Paul. She pulled on the only pair of shorts that had survived the flood and a T-shirt. She smiled down at her gray “good luck” tennis shoes.
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