PRAISE FOR MARY ELLEN TAYLOR
“[A] complex tale . . . grounded in fascinating history and emotional turmoil that is intense yet subtle. An intelligent, heartwarming exploration of the powers of forgiveness, compassion, and new beginnings.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Absorbing characters, a hint of mystery, and touching self-discovery elevate this novel above many others in the genre.”
—RT Book Reviews
“Taylor serves up a great mix of vivid setting, history, drama, and everyday life.”
—Durham Herald-Sun
“[A] charming and very engaging story about the nature of family and the meaning of love.”
—seattlepi.com
OTHER TITLES BY MARY ELLEN TAYLOR
Union Street Bakery Novels
The Union Street Bakery
Sweet Expectations
Alexandria Series
At the Corner of King Street
The View from Prince Street
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2018 by Mary Burton
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503903883
ISBN-10: 1503903885
Cover design by Laura Klynstra
CONTENTS
MAP
In the depths . . .
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
READING GROUP QUESTIONS FOR MARY ELLEN TAYLOR’S WINTER COTTAGE
Winter Cottage Apple Pie
Lucy’s Chocolate Cake
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
—Albert Camus
CHAPTER ONE
Mrs. Catherine Buchanan
May 2, 1988
Cape Hudson, Virginia
In coastal Virginia on a warm spring day, Mrs. Catherine Buchanan settles tired bones into her cane rocker. She carefully adjusts her green knit dress with gnarled but precise fingers. She is dressed for this occasion, but no amount of fussing or preening can approach the reckless beauty of the girl sitting across from her.
The girl has straight blonde hair and sharp blue eyes that remind the old woman that once her thin white hair was an unruly red mass of thick curls that tumbled down over tanned shoulders and full, high breasts. She was filled with hopes and dreams, and she too knew a man’s sensual touch. She was never as stunning as this girl, but she turned her fair share of heads.
The girl’s name is Elizabeth Kincaid Jessup—Beth to her friends. She has asked Mrs. Buchanan if she can record her stories with a camera borrowed from the high school library. It’s a living-history project, she says, and then adds quickly with refreshing honesty that she needs an A, so don’t hold back on the good stuff.
Youthful hands carefully unfurl the microphone wire attached to the camera. She has a devilish smile that reminds the old woman of another girl who lived here so long ago. And like the other girl, there are whispers about Beth. She runs with a fast crowd, drinks, and has been seen with several boys in town, some not so nice.
Girls like Beth think they have invented rebellion. They believe they’re the first to ignore the rules, but they are simply reinventing a wheel that has been rolling for hundreds of generations.
“Can I clip this to your collar?” Beth asks. “It’ll pick up the sound better when you talk.”
“Of course.”
Beth’s gaze is drawn to the chandelier and then to a portrait of a young woman dressed for her wedding day. The painting hangs over the pearl marble fireplace embellished by a French mason with flowers, scrolls, and greenery.
Mrs. Buchanan doesn’t need to glance to see the portrait. She is the woman in the painting wearing a white satin dress fitted with a beaded bodice and an apron tunic of lace. Woven through red curls are strands of pearls and a waterfall of tulle that graces the floor behind her. The portrait was painted in this very room.
“Do you remember when it was painted?” Beth asks.
The old woman’s coy smile is for the man she loved. “Yes, I remember it all.”
The girl adjusts the focus button as she peers into a lens and then settles onto the floor, easily folding and crossing her legs. “You’ve lived by the bay for nearly a hundred years.”
“I have, for the most part.”
Beth grins. “I heard you know where all the bodies are buried.”
“Bodies?”
Beth shrugs. “A figure of speech. I don’t mean real bodies. Just the juicy stories about the area.”
Mrs. Buchanan straightens but keeps her expression in check. “Yes, I have stories. And buried in those stories is perhaps a body or two.”
“Really?”
Secrets bubble up as time loosens the bindings. There is no one left alive to protect now. “Shall we begin?”
The girl clears her throat and presses the record button. “I’m Beth Jessup, and I’m a senior at Cape Hudson High School. This is my final exam project for Mrs. Reynolds’s history class. I live on Chesapeake Bay’s Eastern Shore in Virginia, and today I’m interviewing Mrs. Catherine Buchanan, who was born in Cape Hudson in 1888. Mrs. Buchanan, can you tell me about your family?”
The rocker squeaks as Mrs. Buchanan leans forward a fraction. “My mother was Addie Smith, and my father was Isaac Hedrick. When my father wasn’t doing carpentry work, he was sailing with the merchant marines. I am the oldest of seven, and my mother died giving birth to her last child when I was twelve.”
The girl looks up, and her blue eyes reveal the pain of the loss of her own mother. At first glance, they might seem to be an odd pair, but strip away money and age and they are simply two motherless girls hungry for love.
“What happened after your mother died?”
“My father could not go to sea and also care for seven children, so he farmed us out. The boys went to the Jessups, a childless couple in town. My sisters were sent to live with families on the mainland, and I went to work for the Buchanans.”
“That must have been terrifying.”
Mrs. Buchanan locked this pain away a long time ago and is not anxious to handle it again. But when she agreed to this interview, she promised herself the truth would not die with her. “The Buchanans took me with them back to New York City. I was so homesick. The city was noisy. Bright. I didn’t really sleep for months. But I eventually learned to adapt and move forward.”
“Did you ever see
your sisters or brothers again?”
“Eventually. But it would be a long time.” The words hung between them for several seconds before Beth cleared her throat.
“What did you do for the Buchanan family?”
“I assisted the ladies’ maids, and then later I became Miss Victoria’s personal maid.”
“Who was Victoria?”
A breeze sneaks past the silk taffeta curtains, and she feels the pull of the spirits that have been circling closer these last few months. Old pains bob like distant buoys.
“Mr. Buchanan’s daughter. She would later become my sister-in-law. In fact, you remind me of Victoria. She was restless like you.”
Beth’s grin is sly, as if she’s been busted. “What happened to her?”
The old woman smiled, pleased by the girl’s genuine curiosity. “Maybe if you come back another day I’ll tell you.”
“You’ve barely told me anything today.”
“If you want to know more, then you’ll have to come back. I’m old. I get tired easily.” A half truth at best. She wants to see the girl again. She enjoys talking to her.
“I work in the afternoons at the restaurant. I can’t afford to come back.”
“Then I’ll pay you. Consider it a new job.”
The wariness in the girl’s eyes reminds her of a wild fox her father once captured in a trap baited with fish. “I’m a pretty good waitress, Mrs. B. I make good tips.” Beth names her price but seems to expect some haggling.
“Agreed.”
Blue eyes widened. “Seriously? All I have to do is tape while you talk?”
“Correct. And be punctual.”
Beth seems to wait for the catch. When none comes, she says, “I’ll do it. But you have to pay me as we go.”
“Of course. Can you return this Friday?”
“Sure.” The girl’s gaze catches the portrait again, and she asks, “Was it love at first sight?”
Mrs. Buchanan is silent for a long moment. The drumbeat of secrets grows louder. “Yes. But that love wasn’t for my husband, Robert.”
Beth’s blue eyes are calculating, just like the fox’s were when he sniffed fresh fish in the trap. “Who?”
“See you on Friday.”
CHAPTER TWO
Lucy
January 15, 2018
Cape Hudson, Virginia
Lucy Kincaid arrived with a nor’easter pressing against her back, its sharp, cold winds heavy with the scents of Tennessee whiskey, smoky honky-tonks, fried and glazed doughnuts stuffed with chocolate custard, burgers cooked on a greasy griddle, and the sickly sweetness of death.
The icy fingers of the storm’s remnants brushed her cheeks, startling her awake from a restless night’s sleep. Hand to her face, she glanced into the mist rising over the tall reeds by the swirling waters of Chesapeake Bay. She was in her Jeep, parked in the spot she’d chosen in the early-morning hours. Beside her was Dolly Parton, her mother’s two-year-old German shepherd, nestled under the blanket, sleeping peacefully. The back seats were packed with everything she owned: a duffel bag full of clothes, sketch pads, her mother’s guitar, a sleeping bag, and a grocery sack filled with sodas, peanut butter, and bagels. In between the seats lay the scuffed wooden baseball bat, dubbed the Peacemaker, and beside it, the metal urn that held her mother’s ashes.
When she’d crossed the seventeen-mile Bay Bridge–Tunnel, driving toward the Eastern Shore shortly after two in the morning, the waves were choppy, and the gusts had forced her to slow and turn on her hazards. In the middle of the bridge, over an expanse of water and under a blanket of stars, she’d felt as if the universe were daring her to turn back. But if anything, Lucy was stubborn, and she never shied away from a challenge.
Once on shore, it’d been too late to find the man she’d come to see, and she’d been too broke for a motel room. A barren stretch of road beside a barn near the bay had had to do. When she shut off the engine to save the last of her gas, she’d discovered that without the heater running, the air in the Jeep quickly chilled.
Under the light of a full moon skimming choppy waters, she’d covered Dolly and herself with her mother’s large, worn quilt and tried to sleep as the rain beat against the car.
Lucy shuddered, wrapped the blanket closer, and stared at the orange-gold sunrise as it nudged above the waters stretching to the horizon. The rains were gone, and fresh light danced over the tips of frosted seagrass bending to wind that teased the rippling waters of the bay.
“What do you think, Dolly?”
Dolly raised her head and snorted before returning to the warmth of her blanket.
“We’re going to have to love it. It’s all we’ve got for now.” Her mother’s medical bills had drained Lucy’s savings, leaving her with a hundred bucks in her pocket, a quarter tank of gas, and the best possibility of a job a thousand miles away in Nashville. To uproot her life and just start over, even for a little while, was insane and the kind of thing her mother had often done.
She glanced toward the tarnished secondhand urn the funeral director had sold to her for thirty bucks. There was a large dent in the top, which had something to do with a dispute between two wives and one dead husband. The urn’s dramatic history would have appealed to her mother, and the price had been right.
Her mother had died two weeks ago of brain cancer. She had never been sick a day in her life, so she’d chalked up her first migraine to the half a bottle of rye whiskey she’d drunk the night before. Not enough sleep had explained the next one away. The third had crippled her for days and driven her to call Lucy, who’d been managing a bar on Lower Broadway in Nashville. The emergency-room visit had led to an MRI neither could afford and a doctor’s devastating news. The tumor had been malignant and inoperable.
Lucy had given up her place and moved into her mother’s small apartment in November. She’d administered painkillers, comforted her mother, and waited for the end. On their last day together, Beth had stirred. Her eyes had opened and focused on Lucy as they hadn’t done in days.
“You take good care of Dolly for me.”
“You know I will.” Lucy reached for an extra blanket and covered her mother as Dolly nestled closer to her thin frame. As death circled closer, her mother was growing more anxious about the dog’s fate. Other than Lucy, Dolly was her best friend.
“She hates being alone.”
Her mother winced and struggled to catch her next breath. Lucy reached for the bottle of prescribed morphine. A few drops on her tongue relieved the panic that came as her body shut down.
A sigh shuddered through her mother. “I need you and Dolly to take my ashes to Virginia.”
Lucy and her mother had had their share of troubles, but they didn’t keep secrets, so she figured this first-time mention of Virginia was just the morphine talking. “Mom, you’ve never been to Virginia.”
Her mother struggled with her next breath. “A letter came about a month ago.”
“What letter?”
“Under my mattress. Look.”
Lucy lifted the mattress and found the large manila envelope lying beside a crumpled cigarette pack and a taco wrapper. Lectures about eating well and not smoking had long passed, so she simply scooped up the envelope. The letter was from Henry Garrison, Cape Hudson, Virginia.
“What’s going on, Mom?”
Her mother moistened her pale lips. “I’ve come into some property, but it’ll be yours now. It could be a real home. Just like you always wanted when you were little.”
A real home. At twenty-nine, she didn’t know what the hell that meant.
Now rolling her stiff neck from side to side, Lucy pulled a rubber band from around her wrist and wrapped her hair into a ponytail. Why hadn’t her mother told her about Virginia? Why the secrets? Her mother had always prided herself on brutal honesty. Told it like it was. Shot from the hip.
“Why the lie?” Lucy tightened her hands on the steering wheel, wishing for just a few more minutes with her mother.
Cold, hungry, and needing to pee, she searched the woods and the thick, tall grass that skimmed the hundred yards between them and the water. She opened her door and grimaced as the morning wind bit at her skin.
She coaxed the dog out. “Come on, girl. I know you have to go.” Dolly flattened her ears. “None of that. You’ve got it easier than me.”
The dog rose slowly and crossed over the gearshift. Yawning, she hopped down. Dolly, part human as far as Beth was concerned, didn’t need a leash.
“Don’t chase anything. You’ll freeze your ass off if you get lost, and I’ll freeze mine off looking for you.”
Together they trotted toward the reeds. Lucy’s brown cowboy boots, inlaid with turquoise leather, squished in the soft soil as she tried to keep up with the dog, who bounded, snorting, into the cold air, finding a burst of energy she’d not had in weeks.
Dolly squatted and raised her nose into the wind. She sniffed and ran along the reeds.
“Remember what I said about wandering off.” Lucy reached for her zipper and tugged down her pants. The wind blew over her naked backside, and she peed as quickly as possible. By the time she tugged up her jeans, she’d lost sight of Dolly.
“Hey, we’re not supposed to leave each other alone. That was the deal. Come on, girl! It’s freezing!”
Dolly dashed toward the water. Weeks of being cooped up in Beth’s apartment with only short walks hadn’t been enough for the seventy-pound dog. She was now free, on a scent, and loving it.
Lucy wrapped her arms around her chest and stamped her feet. “Dolly, don’t do this to me now. We need to get back in the car and get warm. I promise, you’ll get a chance to run later.”
The dog barked, and a bird flew from the reeds that jostled as the dog moved through them. “Treat!” Lucy shouted. “Dolly, want a treat?”
The reeds stilled, and the dog’s head popped up, a clear indication that she could be bribed. She ran up, tail wagging, as Lucy opened the car door. The dog gave her a quick glance, hopped over her seat, and settled into the blanket on the front passenger seat to wait for her treat.
“I’m a little lean on treats,” Lucy said, closing the door and scrounging for a fast-food bag. She fished out a few stale fries, which Dolly promptly gobbled.
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