Cottage by the Creek

by Elizabeth Bromke

  Chapter 22—Amelia

  On the phone the evening prior, Amelia and Michael had made plans to meet for breakfast before their writing session for the re-enactment. Typically, Michael came to Amelia. To the lighthouse. But this time, she needed to be the one to go to him.

  So there they were, in his house in Harbor Hills. The one with the flowerpots and the mailbox—where she’d had a chance to deposit the gun like a misguided thief who second-guessed her bad choices.

  When she arrived, she felt like a kid all over again, walking up the brick path and ringing his doorbell, her boho bag held tightly against her hip.

  He was there in a second, ready, waiting, and anxious to help her with her father’s search and learn more about the locked drawer and the gun inside—the one he didn’t know belonged to him.

  What he didn’t know was that her revelation wouldn’t help the search. More likely, it would derail it.

  In fact, it might push their relationship further away than ever before.

  Michael greeted her with a peck on the cheek and waved her toward his kitchen. “Come on in.” He was dressed leisurely, in sweats and a black tee that clung to the muscles in his back and made her second guess everything she was about to do.

  “Coffee?”

  “Sure,” she replied, hooking the handles of her bag on the back of a barstool and sliding onto it. “How was your night? Did you get any work done?”

  “Ugh,” he groaned. “Yes and no. The whole Island case is a mess. I don’t know exactly how it will pan out, but St. Mary’s needs to just expand back into a high school.”

  “Why did they close that part, anyway? Too few students to keep it open?”

  “Actually,” Michael answered, placing a steaming mug in front of her. “That’s something I wanted to investigate.”

  Her heartrate slowed. It wasn’t a bad thing that Michael had been hired for something contentious and time consuming. It was a nice diversion to remind both of them that the world was bigger than what happened to Wendell Acton.

  “Are you representing St. Mary’s or the families? Or who? I’m a little confused about this whole thing,” Amelia replied, happy to ease into her own revelation on the heels of someone else’s drama.

  “I’m representing the families who wish to bring a suit against Birch Harbor Unified.”

  Amelia’s heart sank a little. “Really? You’re siding with the people who want to sue the school district?”

  “What?” he replied. “It’s not personal, Amelia. It’s nothing against Clara. Or even the school. It’s just a matter of offering a local school option to the Island kids.”

  Shrugging, she felt uneasy all over again. “So, what is it you want to investigate?”

  “Well,” he took a sip of his coffee and winced, “Too hot. Anyway, we know that St. Mary’s went through three iterations. Way back, years ago. First, they offered grades kindergarten through eight and had two campuses. The boys’ building and the girls’. Both ‘schools’ on the campus served Catholic families only and kept the students strictly separated. Then, before it became co-ed and they took in any denomination, they added the high school. But, they only added the high school for a short time and only allowed girls. Your mom’s yearbook is proof of that. But the weird thing about the yearbook is how few girls there were and—” He reached to the far end of the bar and pulled the familiar hardback down to her.

  “Hey,” Amelia cut in. “You took this from my place?”

  “No, no.” Michael chuckled. “I checked out my own copy from the special collections at the library. I was looking for something else when I decided to see what they had from St. Mary’s, too. And, voila.”

  “They don’t check out special collections material.”

  “They do to lawyers and historians,” he replied, grinning. “Which you’re about to become too, remember?”

  A grin shaped her mouth, and she flipped the book open, marveling all over again at the hairdos of the past. The black and white photos of young women in church and at the Village, sipping malts. “You were saying?” she asked as she turned the pages.

  “So, if you really go through this thing,” he pointed at it, “you’ll note that there are only two pages of student portraits, and each page is technically just a half page. The pictures are big, right? Each girl with her own mini bio. Even Judith Banks.”

  Amelia flipped back to the portraits and studied Judith. Her face was almost pain-stricken. Then again, so was Nora’s. No sign of a giggly teenage girl. Just severe expressions beneath beehives of hair. It now appeared that Nora and Judith had known each other long before Gene Carmichael entered the picture.

  Or had they? When had Nora met Gene, exactly? When had Judith, for that matter? And did it even matter at all?

  When Clara had initially brought to Amelia’s attention the revelation that Nora and Judith went to school together, it was jarring.

  But over the past week, it fell away, like a boring, bland little truth nugget that meant nothing. It made perfect sense that the women knew each other, especially if Judith grew up out on Heirloom. What didn’t make sense was why Nora’s daughters were left in the dark about it. The only logical answer was that the islanders kept their distance back in those days. Back then, the division between Heirloom and Birch Harbor was sharp as a razor. And if Nora had a beef with any one specific person, she’d have covered it up. Protecting her image was a priority, after all.

  Amelia bristled with her inability to see what any of it had to do with anything. Plus, she still hadn’t addressed the gun in her tote.

  “So what?” Amelia answered. “So what if there aren’t many students? It was a Catholic school for girls. I’d be surprised if there were more.”

  “Fair point,” Michael acknowledged. “But then take a look at some of the names, Amelia.” He pressed a finger to a line of women. “Do any of these names look familiar to you?”

  Amelia shrugged. “No? But this was way before I was even born. Of course I wouldn’t know them.”

  “We should know them. If Nora went to school there, then other Birch Harbor folks must have, too, right? Or, by a different logic, Heirloom Island people must have made their way inland eventually. This town is way too small for only two of these girls to be familiar to us. Where are the Matuszewskis? Other Hannigans? Bankses? Van Holts? Fiorillos?”

  Again, Amelia came up empty. “I don’t know,” she answered. Thoughts of the gun reared back to life, and she was losing interest in his spiel. They had bigger fish to fry, no doubt. She opened her mouth to say so, but he went on.

  “So I cross-referenced the names from your mother’s yearbook and—” he pulled another stack of books down the bar, “—St. Mary’s’ earlier yearbooks. They kept books for kinder through eighth grade, both the girls’ school and the boys’, but I focused on the girls first, of course.”

  “Okay.” Amelia flipped the book on top open. It was thin, too.

  “Amelia,” Michael rested his hand on hers, stilling it and staring into her eyes. “Your mother didn’t go to St. Mary’s until high school.”

  Amelia frowned. “I know,” she said at last. “She went to Birch Harbor until eighth then transferred to St. Mary’s in ninth. Or tenth grade, maybe. I don’t really remember. But so what, Michael?”

  “Why did she transfer?” he asked, his expression hardened.

  Shrugging, Amelia took a long sip of her coffee. “Because her parents were Catholic. Devout, in fact. And so was Mom.”

  He grabbed another of the books in the stack and pointed at its cover. Birch Harbor High. Class of ’54. Birch Harbor High. She lifted her eyebrow at him. He flipped it open to a page he’d bookmarked with a sticky note. Again, he pointed, this time to a black-and-white photo.

  “Aunt Rose,” Amelia murmured. She wouldn’t have recognized the woman, whom she’d only met once or twice as a child, if not for the fact that her name read clear as day beneath her photograph. Rose Hannigan.

  Michael repe
ated the same action again with yet another book from his stack, pointing eventually to another woman. Amelia frowned then pulled the glossy pages toward her, flipping back to the cover. Birch Harbor High. Class of ’61. Aunt Roberta was immediately familiar even before Amelia’s eyes flitted down to her printed name. Roberta Hannigan. The one who moved to Arizona and stayed there. The one who took them in the summer before Clara was born.

  But recognizing Roberta and knowing of Rose didn’t help Amelia understand Michael’s point. “I don’t get it,” she finally confessed, throwing her hands up.

  “Birch Harbor High, Amelia. These two Hannigans went to Birch Harbor High from ninth until twelfth grade. And so did your mom’s brothers, too. They’re in here.” He stabbed down at the stack of books. “Birch Harbor High.”

  “But my mom didn’t go to Birch Harbor High. She went to St. Mary’s.” Amelia frowned and gently closed the yearbook before looking at Michael. “Nora was the only one in her family who went to St. Mary’s instead.”

  Michael nodded seriously. “Exactly. And I called St. Mary’s and inquired about the time period during which they had the high school open and running. I did some math, but nothing adds up, Amelia.”

  “What does this have to do with the lawsuit, though?” Her brows remained furrowed as she drank from her mug.

  “That’s where our two interests merge, Amelia.” He held both of her hands and stared at her. “At first, I figured I could find out if St. Mary’s has the capacity to add a high school. If they do, then no one needs to sue anyone else. I’d be happy to help facilitate the reopening of a second building. I mean, come on. I’m Catholic, too. It’d do the Island good. Plus, Birch Harbor Unified can squirrel away their funding and not crack into the logistics of taxing the Island and dragging the kids over. Everyone is happy, right?”

  “Well, do they? Have the capacity, I mean?”

  He shook his head. “That’s just it. It’s not even close. The school operates almost strictly from two funding sources: tuition and donations. They get no public money from the state or any locality, of course. And they scholarship a large proportion of their students.”

  “But opening a new high school will draw in more money. More tuition and donations, right?”

  “When I talked to Father Bart, he told me that the only reason they ever even offered the secondary grades—the high school classes—was because of ‘the times.’”

  “The times? More people were religious back then. Devout, no doubt?” Amelia asked.

  But Michael shook his head. “They may have been more religious, yes. But that wasn’t what he meant.”

  Amelia pulled her hands away and pushed her fingertips into the corners of her eyes, rubbing and frowning. She wasn’t enough of a critical thinker for any of their conversation. At last, exasperated by being held hostage by the fact that she still needed to talk about the gun, she forced a smile and propped her chin in her hand. “I give up, Michael. What did Father Bart mean? What does all of this mean?” She passed her free hand across the mess of dusty yearbooks.

  Michael lowered his face to the table, holding her gaze. “Judith Carmichael, Nora Hannigan, and the rest of the unfamiliar girls didn’t go to St. Mary’s.” He dropped his voice another octave, and his face grew closer to hers. “They were sent there.”

  Chapter 23—Kate

  Once her sisters left to see to their Sunday errands, Kate began cleaning. It was her therapy—scrubbing the sink basin until it squeaked, sweeping table crumbs into her hand and replacing them with a fresh candle. Rubbing oil into the wooden fixtures of her little business. Her home.

  Saturday guests would be checking out soon, but a couple of hours remained until Sunday check-in. Over the course of the summer, Sunday had proved to be the second slowest day of the week. Many guests opted to stay through to Monday—three-day weekends were all the rage on Lake Huron. More often than not, however, most needed to return to work come Monday.

  No one had booked for that night, but in the past couple of months, Kate quickly learned that meant rather little in Birch Harbor. It wasn’t uncommon for day visitors to decide they rather liked the little lakeside town and might care to stay an extra day. It was next to impossible to secure an Airbnb on the spot, and the motel up off Harbor Ave. left something to be desired. Once they learned about the Heirloom Inn, charm set in, and with the snap of her fingers, Kate was booked up.

  Now, as she dragged her vacuum attachment down the hallway baseboard, she thought to the week ahead.

  It would be Clara’s second week of school. Probably harder in some ways than the first. Easier, in others. If Vivi kept the peace, then maybe things would settle in.

  Megan and Amelia were hard at work on their fall plans—Megan’s Love at the Lake and Amelia’s grand opening. Kate needed to prepare her own marketing for each event. They had decided as a group to work in conjunction as much as possible, after all.

  Later, Kate would call her boys to check in. See how their semester was shaping up. How their girlfriends were. If Thanksgiving plans were still a go.

  At some point, Kate would need to run to the store, too. She had promised Matt she’d make her famous lemon chicken that night, but distraction was already taking over.

  The problem with running the Inn was exactly what her sisters had warned her about. She lived at work.

  And Kate wouldn’t mind living there if she at least had some reprieve throughout the day. But hiring someone felt monumental. She’d need to scour her finances and see if such a proposition were even feasible.

  If so, though, Kate did happen to have a couple of young locals in mind to man the front desk, turn rooms, and help with cleaning.

  Whether they were up to the task was another question.

  After she finished the hall, Kate went to find her phone. Perhaps it didn’t hurt to reach out now to see if the girls she had in mind were looking for a part-time job for the fall. Maybe something to help them save up for Christmas?

  “Hello?”

  The voice came from the open window by the front door.

  Had Kate missed the doorbell?

  “Hello?” she answered, dropping her phone on the desk and moving toward the door.

  As she opened it, she started to apologize… that she was vacuuming, you see, and she didn’t hear—

  “Oh.” The wind flew from Kate’s chest, and she had to grope for a breath when her gaze settled on the source of the greeting. “Mrs. … Carmichael, is it?”

  “Judith, please,” the woman replied. “I hope I’m not disturbing you?”

  Kate pressed the porch screen open and waved her hand back out of pure muscle memory. “No,” she said, still breathless. “Come in.”

  “I try to keep up with local businesses, you know.” Impossibly, Judith sat on Kate’s very own back deck, sipping an iced tea and generally luxuriating in the discomfort that her uninvited visit had established.

  “Mmm,” Kate replied, perched stolidly at the edge of her seat, one eye on Judith. One on the door. Who knew what this woman had up her sleeve?

  “So, you’ve been open since the beginning of the summer, as I understand,” Judith noted, her hands now clasped on the table.

  “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Carmichael,” Kate interrupted, regaining some of her wherewithal at last. “But is this a common habit?”

  “And what’s that, dear?” she replied. Her newly assumed grandmotherly tone didn’t quite strike right.

  “Summer representatives of the town council popping in on local businesses in a sort of informal… evaluation?”

  “Oh, my stars, no.” The woman’s voice shook. “This is not an evaluation. Hah!” A craggy edge cut across the bitter laugh, and Kate wondered if Judith had ever been a smoker. The lines along her mouth were more prominent than those on her forehead. Then again, the ones on her neck were most prominent of all. Had she had work done? Could two retired educators afford a home, a houseboat, and a few rounds of Botox? Kate thought not.

>   In the absence of a response from Kate, Judith filled the conversational void. “I like to support the local businesses, and so that’s what I’m here to do today, Miss Hannigan. Kate. Or… weren’t you married?”

  “Widowed,” Kate answered. She ignored the first part of the question and found footing to take the upper hand. “So what, then? You’re here to buy a gift card?”

  “Actually,” Judith replied, glancing down at her drink and then out to the water. “I’d like to book a night at the Heirloom Inn.”

  Chapter 24—Clara

  After a curt exchange, Clara had continued past Mrs. Carmichael and to the marina, but not before she stole one last glance over her shoulder to watch as the woman slipped into the house on the harbor. The Inn.

  Bewildered, Clara retrieved her phone from her bag to call Kate and demand to know what in the world was going on, but just as she was about to hit Call, another voice pulled her attention away.

  Jake’s.

  “There she is,” he said as he strode toward her.

  Almost immediately, Clara forgot about Judith Carmichael and Kate and the Inn.

  He jogged the last few yards and slipped his arms around her waist, pulling her into him. He smelled fresh—like he’d stepped out of the shower and onto the marina, and her knees turned weak.

  “Hi,” Clara replied, grinning, once he let go.

  “Are you ready for this?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.” Clara let out a sigh, her chest rising and falling as Jake grabbed her hand and guided her down to the office. Once there, the deckhand hefted one bag up, and Jake took another, falling in step behind the boy so he and Clara could walk together.

  “There’s a great place where we can start down near the private homes in Heirloom Cove,” he told her, striding to her side. “When the instructors take students, they go up here or north toward the lighthouse. I figure that area might be a little busier since it’s the weekend.”