by Hope Ramsay
He didn’t want to be awake. His leg hurt, and that only reminded him that he was here, sleeping in, while his old buddies were out on the bay racing their boats.
And even worse, the tourists and sailors would be all over town. Howland House was certainly awash with them, and the swimming beach would probably be busy all day.
But he needed a swim in order to clear his head. This morning his mind was consumed with a bunch of unhelpful thoughts.
Starting with the idea that Jessica might have welcomed his kiss. He rolled up in bed as the back of his neck itched and tingled with a deep-seated embarrassment.
He was unworthy of her. He might not have made up any stories about her all those years ago, but he sure as hell had been willing to believe them. He’d spread the gossip along with everyone else at Rutledge High.
He needed to back off and put her solidly into the box called “business associate.”
He stared out the bedroom window. Beyond the Bahama shutters, another glorious late-summer day had dawned. He wished he could be out on the bay sailing, instead of stuck here, thinking forbidden thoughts and longing for things that made his chest ache.
He couldn’t woo Jessica. She’d turn him away the way Marla had done after the accident.
No. He’d keep it professional. He’d pay Jessica handsomely for his house and then he’d tell all his friends and business associates what a great job she’d done for him.
Maybe a little positive word of mouth would cancel out all the negative stuff she’d had to endure as a kid.
It wouldn’t absolve him from blame for the damage his gossip had caused. And it sure wouldn’t do a thing about the longing that suddenly filled his chest. But at least it was an honorable plan. Much better than last night’s dangerous and out-of-bounds impulse.
Feeling a little better about himself, he got out of bed, gulped down a few ibuprofens, and headed to the beach, prepared to endure the stares of the other guests.
But the beach was deserted. Evidently, most of the other guests had gone out to sail. The swim improved his mood, and moving his dead leg made it feel better.
When he returned to the cottage, he showered and then decided he would go out for breakfast. He grabbed his cane and walked down Harbor Drive in the direction of Bread, Butter and Beans.
But before he got to the coffeehouse, he found himself walking into the barbershop across the street, where he got himself a shave and a haircut.
By midmorning, after a lazy cappuccino at the coffeehouse, he was feeling so much better about himself that he picked up his dirty clothes and took everything to the Laundromat on Lilac Street.
Later, he was cleaning up the dishes in the kitchenette sink when someone knocked at the cottage door. He opened it to the sight of Jackie Scott, standing there with his freckled face and his big eyes staring up at him with the worshipful gaze football fans used to turn on him.
He hated that look. And he wanted to tell the kid to knock it off, but he held his tongue. There was something fragile about the boy.
“What?” Topher asked.
“You were going to take me to the library. Did you forget?” The accusation in the kid’s voice was enough to make him take a step back. It hurt. Down deep. And it raised a fountain of shame.
He met the kid’s stare. “Yeah, I did forget,” he said.
The kid cocked his head. “So, we aren’t going?” Jackie’s voice shook a little.
“Of course we’re going,” he said. “I don’t have anything else on my schedule today. Why don’t we walk?”
Jackie’s smile made the summer sunshine a little brighter.
It took about fifteen minutes at Topher’s slow pace to reach the 1940s-vintage redbrick building on Oak Street. Inside, the air smelled leathery, and the well-worn cork floors creaked underfoot as Topher and Jackie made their way to the information desk.
The librarian, a fiftysomething woman, immediately assumed the stare as they approached. Topher fought the urge to rage at her. But it had been a mostly good day, and raging would probably spoil it and scare the kid.
So he pulled his punches and said, “Hi. I understand you have some original correspondence from Rose Howland in your collection. My young friend here is doing his Heritage Day project on Rose, and we wondered if we might view the letters.”
The woman stood in order to peer down at Jackie. One eyebrow rose, and then she reseated herself, squinting up at Topher. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You need to have permission to look at those materials.”
“We do,” Topher said.
The woman blinked. “I’m sorry. I haven’t received any written instructions about the Howland collection.”
Topher smiled at the woman, certain it would fold up the left side of his face into something quite horrible. Her eyes shifted to the right as he started to speak. “My young friend here”—he gestured toward Jackie—“is Ashley Scott’s son. Which means he’s the youngest Howland heir.”
The woman stood again in order to look at Jackie. “Is this true?”
The kid nodded and dug into the pocket of his too-big shorts, pulling out something that looked like a credit card. “This belongs to Mom,” he said. “She told me I would probably need it. It’s her library card. And she told me that it’s okay for me and Topher to look at the letters.”
Jackie handed the card over, and the librarian examined it closely before shooting another gaze at Jackie and then Topher. “Well, imagine that. Y’all are the first to come looking for those letters in a very long time.”
She stood up. “I’ll have to keep this until you’re finished with the collection.” She waved the library card, then stepped from behind the desk and led them to a small room at the back of the building with a single oak desk and a couple of straight-backed chairs. “The original versions of the letters are kept at the main branch of the library in Georgetown. But we do have photocopies.”
“If you don’t even have the real letters, why all the cloak-and-dagger about getting permission?” Topher asked.
The librarian turned her back and opened a flat file cabinet in the corner, pulling out a large black portfolio. “I have no idea,” she said. “I just know that Mary Howland, God rest her soul, made it clear that she didn’t want anyone reading these letters. And since Mary Howland gave the money to establish this branch of the library, she got her way.”
“But Aunt Mary is dead now,” Topher said.
“She’s your aunt? Why didn’t you say that in the first place?”
“I’m not a Howland, and neither was Aunt Mary. She was born a Martin.”
The librarian shrugged. “I know, but she was the matriarch of the Howland family nevertheless.”
Arguing with the woman was a futile exercise, so Topher shut up. He waited for the librarian to leave and then turned toward Jackie. “I wonder what your great-grandmother didn’t want people to read about in these letters?” he asked in a conspiratorial whisper.
The boy hopped up onto one of the chairs and opened the portfolio. There were a lot of pages in the file, all hand-written in an old-style script that would be hard for the third grader to read. There weren’t any transcriptions. Obviously Aunt Mary wanted to keep whatever was in these letters under wraps.
“Can you read handwriting?” Topher asked, as a sudden preternatural shiver worked its way up his spine. What the heck? The library was damned drafty for a warm day in early September.
Topher looked up at the ceiling, searching for a nonexistent AC vent while the kid pawed through the pages, pulling one out seemingly at random. “This one. Read this one.”
“Why this one?” Topher asked.
The kid focused over Topher’s shoulder, and for a moment he thought Jackie was giving him the stare. But Jackie had never done that before.
Another shiver worked up Topher’s spine. He turned, finding nothing, and then glanced down at the kid. “The captain’s here, isn’t he?” he asked.
A sly smile tipped Jackie’s mou
th as he nodded. “The cap’n says you could see him once.”
Topher didn’t say a word as he took the page from Jackie’s hand.
It was a letter from Rose to her father, John Howland—the man who had disowned her when she’d bedded William Teal and produced a child out of wedlock. The letter was dated 1719, six years after the hurricane that had taken William Teal’s life. If Topher remembered his history correctly, Captain Teal and Rose Howland’s son, Thomas, would have been about seven or eight by this time.
Thomas was the subject of the letter. Rose’s father wanted his grandson back at Oak Hall, the family plantation, which had once stood along the banks of the Black River. Rose didn’t want to give up her son, and her letter enumerated all the reasons she regarded her father as an unworthy guardian for the young Thomas Howland. At the end of the letter she wrote:
You will not force me to leave this island as you forced me to live here in the first instance. I am well here. I have made a home. I am cared for. I am not alone.
And I feel close to the captain here, as I cannot feel close to him any other place, but perhaps in death. If you make me leave, or take young Thomas from me, it will be the death of me.
“Wow,” Jackie said. “You think she died because she had to leave the island and never see Cap’n Bill again?”
“I don’t know,” he said. It struck him as odd that he hadn’t really thought about what had happened to Rose after the flowers had been planted. She’d probably ended up back at Oak Hall because Thomas Howland, the son of a pirate, had founded the family empire.
Which meant little Jackie was Captain Teal’s great-something-grandson. It was enough to make Topher smile as he thumbed through the rest of the letters, scanning them.
“I’m not sure we’re going to find any maps to a buried treasure here,” he said.
“It’s okay,” the kid said. “Just take a picture of this one.” He pointed to the letter he’d pulled from the stack of pages.
“Sure, why?”
“’Cause it’s proof that the ghost exists.”
“Um, I’m not sure it exact—”
“It does. She says she doesn’t want to leave the island ’cause she’s close to him here. I don’t think the ghost can go much farther than the oak tree. I mean, he was here a minute ago, but kind of thin and transparent.”
Topher bit his tongue before he said the word “invisible.” “Um, Jackie, it doesn’t exactly say that. It—”
“Just take the picture.”
Oh, great. Ashley wasn’t going to be happy about this sudden turn. But Topher took out his cell phone and snapped a photo of the letter anyway.
* * *
Friday found Jessica sitting at her desk working on Topher’s house as she tried, somewhat futilely, to keep her mind from rewinding to that moment last night when he’d touched her cheek.
And ignited a totally unwanted fire within her. She did not want to find Topher Martin attractive. She was not even the slightest bit curious about what it might be like to kiss him. She did not want to have a fling with him.
He was her client. She needed to focus on what he wanted in a house design, and nothing else. So she edited that moment out of her thoughts and focused exclusively on what he’d talked about last night: a large house in a Carolina Coastal style.
She drew inspiration from MeeMaw’s house, and that was enough to kick-start her creativity.
The first question was whether Topher could manage an elevated house. He’d certainly made it up the stairs to her door. Twice. So she jettisoned her concerns about that, along with Ashley’s warnings, and started her plans with a house up on stilts, with a backup elevator that would run on emergency generator power in a pinch.
Once Topher got up into his house, all the living space would be on one level. It would have a wraparound veranda with a portion screened off that could be used for a parlor or a sleeping porch, which would give him plenty of guest bedroom space in the summers without trying to build a house with a gigantic footprint or even the five bedrooms he wanted. Three would be enough, and one of them would have two built-in bunk beds and could sleep four.
She planned to use Southern cypress, a hardwood that was locally grown and sustainable, and the design would incorporate passive solar heating and cooling, a rainwater collection system, and special windows and hurricane shutters to withstand storms.
She was deep into the details, consulting local flood plain, beach, and residential building codes, when her telephone rang, jolting her back to the real world. She snatched up the phone, hoping that it might be Topher. She was filled with enthusiasm for the project and couldn’t wait to share her ideas.
But it was Hillary.
“Hey,” she said, connecting the line.
“Hi. I was just checking up on you. I haven’t heard from you in a couple of days, and the last time we talked, you were kind of freaked out.”
“I’m less freaked out now. But it has been a crazy few days.”
“So? What happened?”
Jessica got up from her desk and stretched her legs, moving to the front windows, which provided a view of Harbor Drive. The business district was busy today and would get busier tomorrow, what with all the sailors in town for the boat races.
“For starters, I went back to talk to Topher, and I ended up saving his life.”
“What?”
Jessica filled her friend in on Topher’s narrowly averted swimming disaster, followed by Ashley’s attempted intervention, and then her confrontation with Topher the day he’d dropped by her house unannounced.
“He thought I’d been sent away to have a baby,” Jessica said.
“What?”
“I gather that’s what everyone thinks.”
Hillary laughed.
“You think it’s funny?”
“Yeah, sort of, seeing as you were probably the only virgin at Longwood Academy.”
Jessica’s face heated. “Well, I certainly got an education there.”
Hillary chuckled. “Honestly, how could anyone think you’d gotten knocked up? You are the only girl I’ve ever met who wanted to save yourself for your husband.”
“I was a good virgin back then. I’m not so good or virginal now.”
“What does Colton say about this gossip?”
“I haven’t talked to him about it. I haven’t talked to him at all since he suggested that we move out of the friend zone.”
“What? Oh my God, you need to talk to him.”
“Why? It’s all water under the bridge.”
“Listen,” Hillary said, sobering. “You know how I feel about Colton. I think he’s fabulous. He checks off all the boxes any woman would ever want.”
“Hillary, how many times do I have to tell you that I’m not interested in having any man in my life? I’m not interested in marriage.”
“I know. I know. You don’t want to be your mother, married off young and always under the thumb of her man.”
“Daddy was a bully.”
“I know. And he banished you because you embarrassed him. And I really do understand that this new gossip inflames those old wounds. If your father hadn’t sent you away, people would never have thought this wrong thing about you.”
Jessica blew out a long breath, the pain close to the surface. Why had Daddy refused to believe her when she’d spoken the truth about Colton? Why had he banished her? Even after she’d graduated from Longwood Academy, he’d forbidden her from coming back home.
He’d given her some BS about wanting to save her reputation, when he’d done nothing but help the gossips trash it. She’d never reconciled with him. He’d died just five years after she’d graduated from Longwood Academy of the same heart defect that had taken his father at a young age.
But all of it was truly water over the dam. She needed to move on. “I don’t want to dwell on this,” Jessica said in a tight voice.
“I know you don’t. But listen to me. This is something you have to talk to Colt
on about. What if he doesn’t know about this rumor? And even if he does, you two need to decide if your friendship is over.”
“What do you mean, over?”
“Come on, honey. If he wants out of the friend zone and you don’t, that’s something you need to talk over. Because regardless of how you settle the question, he’s a contractor and you’re an architect. Your paths are going to cross. Often.”
“I guess you have a point.”
“I always do.”
* * *
Hillary’s advice rattled around in Jessica’s brain until quitting time, when she screwed up her courage and gave Colton a call.
He didn’t answer the phone, which was unusual, since he was one of those guys whose cell phone was almost surgically attached to his ear. She went back to work for another hour and then called again with the same result.
Was he avoiding her?
Maybe. And it was her own fault for being such a wimp about tackling the ugly, painful parts of their shared past.
She left work around six o’clock, determined to find him and settle things. She swung by his office, but the door was locked. That was strange. Colton usually worked until after seven, unless he was out at one of his job sites.
She decided to go by his house—a place she usually avoided because he lived in the same neighborhood as her grandmother. Every time she was spotted knocking on Colton’s door, the whole community seemed to know about it.
Granny never failed to question her if she’d been spotted too often in Colton’s company. Good grief, did Granny know about the love child gossip? Probably.
Knowing Granny, the talk had undoubtedly mortified her years ago. And now she was probably terrified that Colton and Jessica would turn the rumor into reality. Her grandmother was not even remotely woke. She wasn’t even very tolerant.
Jessica pulled up to Colton’s house and was just about to leave the car, when his front door opened and he emerged, wearing a pair of well-washed jeans and a white T-shirt that stretched across his muscled chest.
He looked good. But he wasn’t alone.
