“About what?” Ginna had disappeared from view. Neal turned his attention back to Dr. Kirkwood.
“She’s late today. Several of the ladies came to me wanting to know why. Of course, I have no idea what delayed her. But I was afraid she might be ill. She’s here now, though, so I won’t worry about it. She’s probably headed for the veranda to have tea with Elspeth, Pansy, and Sister.”
“The ‘terrible threesome,’” Neal said, with a laugh.
Kirkwood tried to hide a smile. “Where’d you hear that?”
“From old Marcellus Lynch. I don’t think he likes them much. He says they’re stuck-up busybodies. He warned me to stay clear of them.”
Now the doctor chuckled. “Don’t mind Lynch. He’s just jealous. They get to spend more time with Ginna than he does. He’s fallen madly in love with her, you see.”
“That old coot? In love?”
“Be kind, Neal. You’ll be as old as Marcellus, someday.”
“God forbid! Which brings us back to my main problem. How do I deal with living to a ripe old age? I don’t think I can tolerate this guilt that long.”
“For now, my advice to you is to mix with the others. Get to know them. Share your story and listen to theirs. I think you’ll begin to feel better, once you realize that you aren’t the only one here with problems.”
“I know that, but it doesn’t help much right now.”
“Give it time, Neal. Take each day as it comes. Believe me, things will get better.” Dr. Kirkwood rose, signaling an end to their session. “Why don’t you go out on the veranda and join the ladies for tea? I have it on the best authority that the ‘terrible threesome’ are dying to meet you.”
“Thanks, Doc, but I don’t think tea is exactly my thing.”
“You’d like to meet Ginna, wouldn’t you?”
Neal felt torn. The solitude of his room seemed infinitely safer. “You’re sure she’s with the others on the veranda?”
Kirkwood nodded and smiled. “The same as every Monday.”
“Then maybe I’ll wander out there and just have a look around.”
Bald, rotund Marcellus Lynch had joined the tea party by the time Neal Frazier ambled onto the front veranda. For the past few minutes, Lynch had been regaling the four women with tales of his exploits as a young diplomat in the foreign service, dropping names and royal connections as profusely as he dropped cookie crumbs down the front of his well-dated green polyester leisure suit. Every few minutes, Sister would hold up two fingers, her signal to their uninvited guest that she had heard that story before. Of course, Marcellus ignored her and blustered on, trying to impress Ginna with the sophistication and worldliness of his former years. Elspeth, Pansy, and Sister were not impressed. Pansy had sneaked a good look at his file and knew the truth—that he was a retired mail carrier from Hoboken, New Jersey, who had never traveled farther than his trip down to Virginia to be checked into Swan’s Quarter. Seemed he’d had a drinking problem and his only daughter wanted her boozing father removed from the immediate vicinity of his young grandchildren. At least that was Sister’s guess from the information Pansy gleaned from Lynch’s file.
Neal stood by the door, pretending to scan the countryside for several minutes, before he could work up the nerve to make his move. This also gave him a chance for a better look at the group. The three old women were all very different. Elspeth was black with a tight cap of springy white hair, pulled tightly into a knot on the back of her head. She cradled a badly battered doll in one arm, as if it were a baby, from time to time speaking to it, calling it “Miss Precious.” Elspeth was almost as skinny as the one named Sister—“the bossy one,” old Lynch had told him earlier. Her hair was white, too, but she wore it down and chopped straight around at earlobe length, short and severe. Her face was a roadmap of lines, and he couldn’t imagine her ever smiling. Pansy was as plump and pink as a baby. He noticed that even her fingers were dimpled. Her white hair fluffed out about her shoulders, like a girl’s. She smiled almost constantly and seemed to defer to the other two at every turn. Pansy, he figured, had been a follower all her life, never a leader.
And then there was Ginna. The minute he looked at her, his interest was aroused and his blood ran a little hotter. She was lovely—as slender as a model, as pretty as one of those china figurines from France, as bright and pleasant as a sunny day in spring. It was clear that the other three women and old Lynch adored her, and just as clear why. She seemed to form the nucleus of an aura of warmth and love. But why on earth was she wearing that ratty old costume?
Neal didn’t have long to ponder the question before the women spotted him.
Ginna felt Elspeth’s sharp elbow nudge her ribs. “Look there! At the door. It’s him!”
Marcellus tried to continue his rambling monologue, but now all three of the old ladies were yammering at once. Only a deaf person would have called it whispering.
“I vow! He’s never set foot on the veranda before,” said Pansy. “Should we invite him to tea, Sister?”
“There’s no tea left,” she snapped, glaring up at Lynch. “This one drank it all.”
“Surely there’s a drop or two in the bottom of the pot,” Elspeth put in.
“Oh, Mr. Frazier!” Pansy called, without waiting for an end to the discussion. “Do join us, won’t you? We’ve all been dying to make your acquaintance. We have someone visiting who’d like to meet you, too, and she only comes once a week, and she’s single.”
Ginna felt her cheeks warm with embarrassment. She did want to meet Neal Frazier, but she hadn’t said one word about it. Now their introduction would be spoiled because he would think she was the pushy sort, always chasing after handsome men. And he certainly was handsome—dark and mysterious looking. Her friends had not exaggerated on that point.
“Pansy, please!” she whispered, trying to silence the over-eager matchmaker.
“You needn’t beg, my dear. He’s coming right over.”
“You, Lynch!” Sister hissed. “You make the formal introductions. It wouldn’t be proper for us ladies to have to introduce ourselves to a strange man.”
Marcellus nodded his agreement and snatched the last sugar cookie from the plate before they could offer it to Neal.
“’Afternoon, ladies,” Neal said, pantomiming a tip of his nonexistent hat.
The older man hurrumphed loudly, then said, “Mr. Neal Frazier, I would like to present Mrs. Elspeth McAllister, Mrs. Sister Randolph, and Miss Pansy Pennycock.” In a whispered aside, he added, “She’s an old maid.”
“Charmed, ladies,” Neal said, with a smile, never taking his eyes off Ginna for an instant.
“And this fair young maid is our Ginna,” Lynch said, alarmed by Neal’s rapt attention to their guest.
She offered her hand. “Ginna Jones, Mr. Frazier. I hear you’ve just arrived.”
“Please, call me Neal, all of you.” Still smiling at Ginna, he added, “I hate to say it, but the four days I’ve been here seem like four years.”
“You’ll adjust,” Sister said sharply. “We all do, in time. Set yourself a routine and stick to it. That’s the way to get by.”
“We understand you’re single,” Pansy piped up. “Just like Ginna.”
Ginna clutched her throat, horrified, but Neal only chuckled. “So Dr. Kirkwood told me, Miss Pennycock. Personally, I don’t know how she’s managed it, as pretty as she is.”
The three older women tittered over his reply. Ginna first blushed deeper, then chuckled. The private look Neal gave her, with his wine-dark eyes twinkling, let her know that he had said what he had simply to delight Pansy, Elspeth, and Sister.
“How long will you be here?” Ginna asked.
“I really don’t know. I suppose that’s up to Dr. Kirkwood.”
“Well, Neal, you just consider yourself invited to tea every single afternoon,” Pansy said. “We don’t want you to get lonesome, staying all to yourself like you have been. Why, me
rcy’s sake, we thought you’d never come out of your room!”
He bowed slightly and smiled. “Thank you, ma’am. It’s always nice to be invited to a party.”
“Some party!” Sister snapped, turning a vicious eye on Lynch. “We don’t even have the crumb of a cookie to offer you.”
“That’s quite all right. Supper won’t be long, now. I wouldn’t want to spoil one of Swan’s Quarter’s gourmet meals.”
They all laughed. The very thought of anything gourmet coming out of the kitchen at Swan’s Quarter!
Ginna rose suddenly. “I didn’t realize it was so late.”
The ladies all begged Ginna to stay a little longer.
“Whose permission must I ask to take a walk with Ginna?” Neal glanced around the group.
“Who says she wants to walk with you?” Marcellus bellowed, feeling threatened by another fox in his henhouse.
As the others talked, Ginna kept staring at Neal. Where had she seen him before? He seemed so familiar. And it wasn’t only that he looked like someone she knew: Seeing him also awoke feelings that she had experienced in the past. Mentally, she flipped through a file of all the men she had ever dated. Neal’s face was not among them. He seemed a part of her distant past, yet a part of her immediate present, too.
“Miss Jones, since I’m new here, will you show me around the grounds?”
Ginna snapped herself back to the present. She smiled and took the arm Neal offered. “It’s late and I really must be going now, anyway,” she said, by way of apology, to her friends. “Neal can walk me down the hill. I’ll see you all next Monday. Thank you for tea.”
There was cheek kissing all around—except for old Lynch, who got a brief hug—then Ginna started down the stairs holding Neal’s arm. An attendant in a starched white uniform appeared on the veranda to usher the ladies inside, out of the twilight chill.
“Ginna—I like that,” Neal said thoughtfully, as they headed down the path toward the swan pond. “What’s it short for?”
“Nothing that I know of.”
“A family name, then?”
“I had no family to be named for. The stork simply dropped me on the steps of the hospital in Winchester. I had a silver locket around my neck with that name engraved on it. That’s all I know.”
“So it really was your foster mother you first came to visit here?”
Ginna stared up at him through the gathering twilight. “Who told you that?”
“Dr. Kirkwood. I was in his office when you came up the path. Among my other many faults, I’m a nosey cuss. I hope you don’t mind that he told me.”
“Not really. And, yes. She was at least one of my foster mothers. I never seemed to stay long in any home, and, of course, I was never adopted.”
“Why not? From the looks of you now, I’d say you must have been a sweet, beautiful baby.”
She rolled her eyes at him for laying it on so thick. “I had some medical problems when I was young. People want perfect babies when they adopt. But enough about me. What about you, Mr. Neal Frazier. What in the world are you doing at Swan’s Quarter?”
“You mean the ladies didn’t fill you in?”
“Well, sort of,” she admitted. “I know you’ve been through some sort of trauma.”
When his arm tightened under hers, she wanted to bite her tongue. She should never have brought up his problem. It was his place and his alone to do that.
He sensed her reaction. “It’s all right. The doc says it will do me good to talk about the plane crash. That’s what it was—the trauma.”
Ginna shivered. “I’ve never liked flying.”
“Flying never bothered me. It’s when your plane stops flying that it gets scary as hell.”
Wanting desperately to change the subject, Ginna said, “I’ve seen you somewhere before. Have we ever met?”
Neal chuckled. “That’s a line as old as the hills. I used to use it on girls, when I was in the Army.”
“It’s not a line. You really do look familiar to me, Neal.”
“If you read the newspapers, you probably saw my picture with ‘HERO’ plastered all over it, after the crash. I’m a long way from fitting that label, but I did bring a little girl out with me, thanks to her mother.”
“Oh, yes! I remember reading all about that. I even saw you on television.” She thought about it for a moment, then shook her head. “No, that’s not why you look familiar. You had a beard then, if I remember correctly. Your hair was a lot longer, too.”
“Yeah, I’d ridden my motorcycle out to Colorado and camped in the Rockies for a couple of months. I still looked like a mountain man when I came back.”
“No, I’m sure that’s not it. It’ll come to me, though.”
“Hey, if I’d ever met you before, I’d remember. You can take that to the bank. I never forget a pretty face. When will you be back? Tomorrow?”
Ginna smiled at the eager tone in his voice. “Next Monday. I have to make a living, you know.”
“Shoot!” He sounded truly disappointed. “You? Work? And here I thought you were a Southern belle, suspended in time, living in a phantom plantation house deep in these woods.”
“Don’t I wish!” She laughed. “No, just plain old flesh and blood Ginna Jones, who works hard for a living.”
They paused beside the swan pond. Neal slipped his hand into hers and noticed that her fingers were cold. He brought both her hands to his lips and blew hard to warm them.
“Swans are nice,” he said out of nowhere. “Did you know they mate for life? It’s the swan’s way.”
“I never thought about it.”
“Well, you have it on the best authority now. They do. If one is lost, the other spends the rest of its life all alone—searching, never giving up hope that someday…”
“Stop!” Ginna whispered. “You’re going to make me cry. Poor swans!”
“They look happy enough to me,” he said, “gliding around their pretty pond.”
“But now I’ll worry all week, until I can get back and make sure that they’re both still here.”
“People could learn from swans,” Neal said.“When you find love, don’t let it go.”
It was a good thing Ginna didn’t question him about the strange remark. If she had, he couldn’t have explained himself. He had no idea why he had said such a thing. He had never been the poetic type—far from it. He only knew that here in the dying sun that turned the swan pond as golden as Ginna’s hair, he felt a little less lonely, a little more hopeful. Maybe the best part of his life wasn’t behind him. Feeling the warmth of Ginna’s body close to his, having her to talk to, knowing that she would come back—even if he had to wait a whole week—made him feel better, gave him something to look forward to, something to live for, after all.
“I really have to go now,” Ginna said.
“So soon?”
“Yes, and you’ll miss supper unless you hurry back up the hill.”
“I’m not hungry anyway.”
“We’ll have more time to talk when I come back next week. I’ll show you around. Have you seen the greenhouse yet?”
“No. I’ve been sticking pretty close to my room, nursing my own misery.” He laughed, but there was no humor in it.
Ginna gave him a bright smile. “Well, we’ll just fix that, won’t we?”
“Will we?” He searched her face with his sad, dark eyes.
“I promise,” she whispered, and then she was gone.
It was dark when Neal climbed back up the hill. He didn’t notice that shortly after Ginna disappeared into the woods, the tall tulip poplar vanished as well.
Chapter Three
Ginna left Swan’s Quarter on Monday evening feeling like a woman transformed. Meeting Neal Frazier had reawakened some part of her that had been dormant for a long, long time. For most of her life, she had felt like an outsider, merely an observer as things happened to other people, while she went
about her own unvarying routine. Nothing ever seemed to touch her personally. Don’t get involved. Stay clear. Stay safe. It had been the creed she’d lived by. Her early years, passing from one family to the next, had taught her that to love someone meant to be hurt, sooner or later.
Now, for the first time in her life, she was willing to allow herself to be vulnerable. It seemed that Neal possessed some magical key that might release her from her self-imposed prison of loneliness. Somehow she knew that their meeting today could make all the difference in her life, if she let it.
Getting off the bus, she walked the short distance to her apartment, just east of downtown Winchester. Nearby stood Stonewall Cemetery, where several thousand Confederate and Union soldiers lay buried. Her gaze was drawn to the memorial obelisk that marked the common grave of several hundred Confederate unknowns. A shiver ran through her. How sad it must have been for these men’s families to never have their loved ones accounted for.
Ginna turned away, unwilling to allow such grim thoughts to intrude on her good mood. Twilight’s brisk breeze had turned to a blustery, cold wind with the coming of darkness. Bending into the gusts, she quickened her step, craving the warmth of home and bed. It had been a long day, an amazing day.
Her “apartment” had once been a small antebellum house. Some recent owner had installed a tiny modern bath and built another unit at one end, creating a duplex. Often, Ginna wished that she had chosen the newer quarters over the historical part. But she did enjoy the huge, flagstone fireplace, where she imagined meals had been cooked over a century ago, the rustic beamed ceiling, and the quaint atmosphere of a bygone era.
Before she pulled off her coat, she struck a long match and touched it to the kindling she had laid before leaving for work. Instantly, orange and blue flames leaped through the small stack of pine and oak logs. She hovered close, warming her hands. After several minutes, she felt comfortable. She yawned. She was tired. It was good to be home by her cozy hearth.
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