The Cats & the Riddle

by Jan Fields

  Suddenly Alice froze and turned around. “All those places we called,” she said. “Does Ivy work with kids somewhere?”

  Annie nodded. “Right here at church in the Sunday school. I remembered that Ellen mentioned it when I was trying to find out if Nancy worked in the Sunday school. She had a photo of everyone in the department. That’s when she told me that Peggy had volunteered for a while because Ivy was sick.”

  “Oh, so you already knew that when we made all those calls?”

  “Actually, yes,” Annie said. “I just hadn’t realized that Ivy could be Candace. She’s definitely not plump.”

  “That’s true,” Alice said. “Oh well. Making all the calls gave us an excuse to eat an entire basket of muffins. That was fun in a bloated way.”

  Annie laughed. “If we had too much fun like that, I’d be the one described as plump!”

  Annie put the whole mystery completely out of her mind and concentrated on enjoying the bazaar. She picked up some darling doll clothes that she knew would fit one of Joanna’s dolls. And she bought a clever wooden coat hook in the shape of a ship that she thought John would enjoy having in his room.

  Alice bought a beautiful, small, grapevine basket. “When you make as many muffins as I do,” she said, “you can never have too many baskets. I actually have a cross-stitch pattern for grapevines and leaves. I’ll make a cloth to line this basket with that design. It’ll be great.”

  When they’d seen everything, they headed toward the door with their new treasures. Just as they got outside, they ran into Ian. “Mayor!” Alice said. “It’s nice to have you home again. Stony Point nearly fell to pieces without you.”

  Ian laughed. “Somehow I doubt that.”

  “Maybe it was just Annie who nearly fell to pieces,” Alice said, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

  Annie just shook her head. “Well, I have to admit, Tartan tried to wear me down to a nub once or twice. I honestly tried to walk him until he wore out.”

  “Oh no,” Ian said.

  “Actually I came close one day when I took him for a walk on the beach,” Annie said. “He slept all the way back to your house.”

  “And bounced like a jumping bean out of the car when you arrived—right?” Ian asked.

  “Yes,” Annie admitted. “It was a short-lived victory, but I still savored it.”

  “Sounds like Tartan had a marvelous time while I was away,” Ian said. “No wonder he’s a little glum. He probably misses you, Annie.”

  “Oh, the dog misses you, Annie” Alice said. “Maybe you should go over there.”

  “Great idea,” Ian said. “How about tomorrow after church? I can make a Sunday dinner and impress you with my cooking. And maybe Tartan will cheer up.”

  “That sounds like fun,” Annie said, “and I’d hate to think of Tartan pining away.”

  “Yeah, cause he’s such a melancholy little thing,” Alice said.

  Annie gave her the look that always worked on LeeAnn when she was a teenager. Alice appeared to be amused and merely grinned at Annie.

  “Excellent,” Ian said. “I’ll see you tomorrow at church. And now I need to go support the bazaar by buying things.”

  When Annie got home, she left the front door open so the warm spring breeze could come in. She hurried upstairs to put the things she’d bought safely away from prying paws in the closet of the guest room where she usually stored gifts. She left her own closet door open a crack too often to make it a Boots-proof area. Then she retrieved her laptop from the living room. If Ivy was coming by, she wanted the room to look friendly and inviting, not cluttered.

  Before she left the computer in her bedroom, she started it up to check her email. She was surprised and pleased to find an email from LeeAnn. The email itself was short, “Things still thawing here, but it’s looking good. Herb’s old boss called and apparently they really can’t get along without him. So the job hunt is over for now. Plus he got a raise! Thanks for everything, Mom. I thought you’d like to see your two little pirates.” Annie clicked the attachments link, and a photo filled the screen. It showed Joanna and John dueling with long cardboard tube “swords.” They were both dressed in bits of pirate costume. John even grasped a “hook” in the hand that wasn’t holding the sword. The twins had their heads turned to face the camera, big grins pasted across their faces. Annie saw then where John had lost a tooth.

  She smiled and typed a quick message back to LeeAnn. “Tell John he looks very rakish!”

  She was heading back down the stairs when she heard a soft knock at the door. Annie spied Ivy standing on her front porch. She opened the door and smiled. “I’m so glad to see you, Ivy. Please, come in, and I’ll put on the kettle for tea.”

  “I’ve been wanting to come inside since the day I left the little cat,” Ivy said. “I spent so many happy hours in this house.”

  “So have I,” Annie said. “Gram made this place the most love-filled house I’ve ever seen.”

  “She certainly did,” Ivy agreed as she followed Annie down the hall to the kitchen. Annie put the kettle on to boil, and gestured toward the table. “Do make yourself comfortable. Can I offer you anything to eat? I think I have some cookies, or I could make you a sandwich if you’re hungry.”

  “No, no thank you,” Ivy said. “Tea will be fine.”

  Annie poured the water when it neared boiling, just as Boots marched into the kitchen. “Oh, Boots!” Ivy cried. She slipped out of her chair and scooped the cat up into her arms. Boots purred loudly and rubbed her head against Ivy’s chin. “I don’t think she’s changed a bit since I saw her last.”

  “She certainly seems to have a long memory,” Annie said. “I can see that she likes you a lot—and misses you.”

  Ivy buried her face in the cat’s soft thick fur. “She reminds me so much of Betsy too.” Ivy looked at Annie. “I miss your grandmother terribly.”

  “So do I,” Annie said.

  Finally, Ivy placed the cat gently on the floor, and the two women sipped their tea in companionable silence, each lost in thoughts and memories. Ivy began reminiscing about specific things Betsy had done or said that she remembered. Annie chimed in with her own memories of her grandmother. With each shared memory, Annie could feel a bond forming between herself and the quiet woman across from her.

  “Mary Beth told me that Gram had tried to talk you into joining the Hook and Needle Club,” Annie said when they finally began to run out of memories to pour out.

  “Betsy was always trying to get me to mix with people more,” Ivy said. “She worried that I was lonely.”

  “Were you?” Annie said.

  “Not really,” Ivy said. “I really have never needed to be around lots of people. If I have one good friend, I’m content. When I get in groups, I feel overwhelmed. It’s been that way my whole life. Your grandmother was that good friend for me.”

  “Are you lonely now that she’s gone?”

  “Sometimes,” Ivy admitted. “But my circumstances have changed now too. I’m not certain I would be a particularly good friend for anyone.”

  “Why do you say that?” Annie asked. “I admit I don’t know you, but in the little time we’ve shared, you seem like someone who would be a wonderful friend.”

  Ivy smiled, and the smile was so incredibly sad that it almost made Annie weep. “There’s something about me that you don’t know.”

  “What’s that?” Annie asked.

  Before Ivy could answer, they both heard a loud rattling knock on the front screen door. “Oh, I’m sorry,” Annie said. “That’s probably Alice. Do you mind if I ask her in?”

  “Of course not,” Ivy said as she stood up. “I remember Alice. Your grandmother often told me stories about the two of you.”

  “Oh no,” Annie said as they walked down the hall toward the front door. “I hope they were good stories.”

  “They were certainly interesting stories,” Ivy said, her voice full of good humor.

  Just at that moment, they both reco
gnized who stood on the other side of the front screen door, and he recognized them. Adam Smithfield stared open-mouthed at Ivy as she stood frozen in the hallway. He didn’t wait for Annie to reach the screen door, but merely opened it himself. “Candace?” he said, his voice full of amazement. “I can’t believe it’s you. It is you, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, Adam,” she said sadly. “Why are you here?”

  “Because the possibility of never seeing you again was unthinkable.”

  24

  Annie stood between Adam and Ivy. She wasn’t sure what to do. Should she try to make him leave? As she looked into the man’s stricken face, she wasn’t entirely certain if she could make him do anything.

  “Ivy?” Annie said.

  Ivy pulled her gaze away from Adam to look at Annie. Seeing the concern on Annie’s face, Ivy smiled weakly. “It’s all right, Annie. I suppose I wasn’t being very realistic, thinking I could avoid this. Thinking Adam would leave me in peace.”

  Adam reacted to her words with a wince. “Is that what you want? You want me to just leave?”

  Ivy looked back at him, her gaze steady. The shy woman Annie had seen earlier was gone now. “Would you?”

  “I don’t think I can.”

  “You should go home, Adam,” she said quietly. “Go home to your wife.”

  “If that’s what you want,” Adam said, “but let me explain.”

  “Explain a wife?” Ivy said, raising her eyebrows. “I may never have been married, but I believe I don’t need wives explained to me. I understand the concept, though I’m not certain you do.”

  “I deserve that,” Adam said, “but I’m still asking for a chance to explain.”

  Ivy sighed. “All right, all right! We can talk here, if Annie doesn’t mind.” She turned to Annie, and for a moment Annie saw a flash of self-doubt in the woman’s eyes. “Would you stay with me? I’d rather not have this discussion alone with Adam.”

  Adam looked horrified. “You have to know I would never hurt you.”

  “That ship has sailed, Adam,” she said, her gaze snapping back to him. “You could have hit me with your fist and not caused as much hurt as I’ve had from you. Can you begin to fathom the pain of finding out the person you love is married and simply didn’t tell you?”

  “Love?” Adam said softly. “Do you love me, Candace?”

  “Candace Caine is dead,” Ivy said. “She died the day she heard about your wife. She’s just a pen name now—a ghost I use to publish books.”

  The two of them stared at each other silently. Annie took the opportunity to ask quietly, “Would you like to come into the living room? Surely it would be better not to have this conversation in the hall.”

  Adam looked at her in surprise as if he’d forgotten that Annie, too, was in the room. He nodded mutely. Annie led them into the living room, and Ivy sat perched on the edge of a chair while Adam sat on the sofa as close as he could come to her.

  “All right,” Ivy said. “Try to explain yourself, and I won’t interrupt.” She folded her hands into her lap and looked at him expectantly. The pose reminded Annie of a child sitting politely for a particularly dull lecture.

  Adam ran a hand through his hair, his eyes darting around the room as if looking for inspiration. Finally he said, “When I was a boy, there were two small publishing houses in London that struggled. My parents owned the one that my father’s parents had begun. The other house belonged to the Chethworth family. They had one child, just as my parents did. Their child was a daughter—Honoria.”

  “Your wife,” Ivy said.

  “Eventually.” Adam smiled grimly. “Our marriage was championed heavily by both families. It would unite two companies into one strong unit, without either house leaving the families that founded them. It was the sensible, dutiful thing to do.”

  He stopped for a moment. His eyes dropped to his own folded hands. “Honoria was beautiful. Tall. Icy in many ways. But we got along well enough, considering.”

  “Considering?” Ivy repeated.

  He smiled sadly. “Honoria didn’t really care for me—or for any man. She made her preferences known to me before the wedding. It wasn’t a surprise. I didn’t care. I had no real interest in the traditional marriage and family. Our parents were unhappy when no children came along, but they resigned themselves to it, I suppose.”

  “That sounds lonely,” Annie said.

  He turned his eyes to her. “Not as much as you’d think. Honoria and I were friends. She’s pleasant company. And all our energy went into our work. It worked for the first years, but then her interests veered away from publishing. She became interested in fashion. Our company began a fashion magazine. Honoria moved to Paris, a city she adored. I stayed in London. We saw one another yearly for a business meeting.”

  He turned to Ivy. “I wasn’t looking for anything different. I thought my life was fine. Then I met you. In my life, everything was planned, orderly, and rigid. You were completely different and utterly brilliant. I was fascinated.”

  Ivy didn’t speak, but Annie could see her eyes swimming in tears.

  “Still, I didn’t mean for our relationship to be more than friends,” Adam said. “I told myself that was all it was. I told myself you were like my lively little sister. I told myself that my protective feelings for you were brotherly, and my desire to be with you constantly was friendship.”

  “You could have told me,” she said softly.

  “Then I would have been lying to both of us,” Adam said. “I was falling in love with you. I knew better than to suggest anything illicit. Even I am not such a total idiot that I couldn’t see you would never be open to becoming someone’s mistress. So I began looking into the legalities of divorcing Honoria. I knew it wouldn’t be a hostile divorce. She has no possessive feelings toward me. Then one day, I called you, and you didn’t answer. I came to your flat and all I found was Ebenezer and a note saying only that you were leaving, and that I should not follow.”

  “And,” she said, “you stayed married after I left.”

  He nodded. “At first, I simply didn’t have the time to move forward with the complexities of unraveling the marriage from the business. All my energy went into finding you. I was certain that would take only days, maybe weeks.” He looked up at her. “I underestimated just how much you hated me—how much energy you’d put into running from me.”

  He paused. Annie wondered if he was waiting for Ivy to say she didn’t hate him. Annie knew she didn’t, but Ivy sat silently and waited for him to finish.

  “Then when I got back to London, I was angry,” he said. “I was angry with you for not giving me a chance to speak. I threw myself back into the business and told myself that it wasn’t worth the effort to divorce over a relationship that never really existed.”

  That last remark made Ivy wince, but Adam just went on. “Then your books began coming in again. Of course we published them. You were just as brilliant, and the books took on a sense of melancholy that struck a chord with awards committees. Each time a new package came, I took up the search again at the city where the package was sent. Each fruitless new search drained away more and more of my hope, but I couldn’t stop. Then you sent me a letter.”

  She nodded, but still didn’t speak.

  “I couldn’t quit after holding a note in your own handwriting, even though the contents offered me no hope of reconciliation,” he said. “I hired detectives, but they gave up. So I came to America. I came here. I found you.”

  “To what purpose?” Ivy asked. “You’re still a married man.”

  He shook his head. “You’ve not kept up so well lately. Honoria died two years ago in a plane crash on the way to fashion week in Milan. There were so many more well-known people on the plane that no one paid much attention to Honoria. I hadn’t seen her in several years. She’d even stopped attending the yearly business meeting, but I was still sad. We had been good friends, after all, if nothing more.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ivy said. �
�I didn’t know.”

  “Even if Honoria were still alive, she would have granted me the divorce. We had no claim on one another beyond the company.” He laughed without humor. “If we had been Catholics, we might even have been able to get the marriage annulled since it was never consummated. It was a business deal entered into to make our parents happy—it was never a marriage.”

  Ivy shook her head. “So what do you want now?”

  “I love you,” he said. “We’ve lost so many years. I’m willing to stay in America. That easily can be arranged. We can start slow if you want. I’ll buy you flowers and take you to the theater. We can walk on the beach. Whatever you want.”

  She shook her head. “You should go back to London.”

  “No,” he said. “Not now that I’ve found you again. I’m not walking away.”

  “Not even if it’s what I want?” she asked.

  “How can it be what you want?” he said.

  “Because I don’t have time for you, Adam,” she said. “I don’t have time for us. I don’t have time for anything. Look at me. Don’t you see how I’ve changed?”

  “You look beautiful to me.”

  “Look closer. Does it look like I’m dying?” she asked, her voice nearly a whisper. “Because I am. And your money, your stubbornness—they can’t change that.” She stood up and walked out of the room as Adam and Annie stared after her.

  25

  Annie heard the screen door close with a quiet bump and knew Ivy must have left the house. She looked at Adam, but had no idea what to say to him. She had found the answer to the mystery. She knew why Ivy was giving gifts to the people and places she loved in Stony Point. It was a quiet gesture from a dying woman. She knew why Ivy had left Adam years before, and why Adam had come to Stony Point. She knew the answer to her mystery, and the knowing broke her heart. She couldn’t imagine how it felt to Adam.

  He finally stood without speaking and turned to the door.

  “Will you be all right?” Annie asked him.

  He shook his head, not turning around. “No, I don’t believe I will.” His voice cracked. Then he walked out of the room, and Annie heard the front screen door again. Annie sat back down, unsure of what she should do. After a few minutes, Boots jumped into her lap, startling her. She tearfully wrapped her arms around the cat, and they sat together as shadows slipped across the room.