At last Ellie was ready to find out where fate had led her. She’d come all the way from Rayford, Tennessee to Martha’s Vineyard to stay in this house and uncover whatever secrets it held. Yet the echo of her footsteps across the sidewalk had stopped a few yards from the door. Why was she hesitating?
Taking a deep breath, Ellie put her hand on her small rolling luggage bag. She'd only reserved one week at the bed and breakfast. A week should be long enough to find out what she needed to know. She walked up the long pathway, her apprehension increasing with each step. She didn't like feeling unsure, but in the past two months turmoil had replaced her natural confidence.
Two months ago she found the sketch inside the wall and everything she thought she knew about herself had turned upside down. It was time to right her world, at last.
Ellie had been working on her house. She was always working. Even with contractors stumbling over each other, she felt the need to get her hands dirty, put her mark on every single part of the house she called home.
The memory of the moment everything had changed played through her mind as she fought the growing anxiety. She'd been protected against everything a renovation job could throw at her: a white elastic cap protected her hair; a face mask with a charcoal filter that exaggerated her breathing protected her lungs; and clear goggles protected her eyes. Even her t-shirt and jeans were covered by white overalls. But there had been nothing to protect her from what she was about to find while renovating the last room in the Tennessee home that had been in her family for generations.
She loved restoring old houses, especially this one. She planned to make her ancestors proud with her loving restorations. And then she planned to live in the house and enjoy the fruits of all her hard work.
The upstairs guest room was the last of the old structure that needed renovation. She’d worked her way room by room until she arrived there. And then, as she worked to fix a damaged section of plastered wall, she'd found it. A cache hidden behind the wall.
She'd found hidden caches before, of course. But nothing more than old newspapers, or abandoned shoes. This time, however, she had found something that was clearly valuable.
She'd stopped her work and stared at it. And then she'd grabbed an old towel and carefully removed her find from the wall.
It was a mahogany chest, inlaid with Mother of Pearl and sealed tight with paraffin wax. Her heart beat fast at the date on the bottom. 1827. The box had been placed in the wall the same year the house was built. But even then, she hadn't understood how much this find was going to turn her life upside down.
A gull cawing overhead brought her thoughts back to the present. Time seemed to release her feet and she reached her destination at last.
Opening the door, she heard the jingle of a bell. She glanced up to see what caused the old-fashioned sound, blinking away the sensation that she'd just crossed the threshold into a previous time. Ellie pulled her suitcase in and walked across a beautifully appointed room to a reception desk. On it was a guest register. She smiled. It was a paper register, something you signed in on. In this electronic world, Ellie never expected to see this. She’d made her reservation electronically and expected the same amenities of a 5-star hotel. But already she felt as if the Manor was a portal into the past. Good, because the past was where she needed to go if she wanted to understand what she'd found inside that mahogany chest.
As Ellie admired the desk and register, a woman came from a room at the back and smiled at her. Accompanying her was a large grey and brown tabby cat. Ellie glanced at it with a smile.
"Welcome to Blythe Cove Manor. I’m Blythe Calvert."
"Eleanora Sloan," Ellie introduced herself.
"Ms. Sloan. We've been expecting you. Won’t you sign the register?" Blythe spun it around to face Ellie.
Ellie looked down. She took the pen lying on the crease of two pages, surprised it was a ballpoint and not a quill, and leaned down to sign her name. "I never expected to see a real register. Most hotels have everything on computer." Ellie spun the register back toward the woman.
"We have it on computer too. This gives the place a nice Old World touch." Blythe's smile wrinkled her nose. Ellie instantly liked her. "All right, Ms. Sloan. You’re in the Cove View Room. You’ll love it. It’s a beautiful room with sweeping views of the ocean."
"It's Ellie. No one calls me Eleanora."
Blythe smiled and repeated her first name. The two women shook hands becoming fast friends. Blythe turned and pulled a large skeleton key from a mahogany cubbyhole behind her. "Is that all your luggage?" she asked.
"I travel light," Ellie answered.
"Some guests arrive with truckloads," she said with no censure in her voice. "Here’s your key. The room is the second one along that hall." She pointed to the right. "The name is printed on a plate next to it."
Ellie accepted the key. It was heavy and large in her hand, not at all like a normal key.
"Ms. Calvert—"
"Blythe," she corrected.
"Blythe," Ellie said. "Is there a history of the Cove or of Blythe Cove Manor anywhere?"
Blythe frowned. "Strange, no one has ever asked me that before. There isn't a history of this place. You can find some facts about the Cove itself at our local library. Why do you ask?"
"No reason," Ellie lied. She didn't want to tell anyone what she was doing. Not until she had more information. "This is such a picturesque setting. I love history—in fact, I teach it back home—and I like to read about the places I visit. I'll check at the library.".
She noticed the cat had settled next to the registration desk and was no longer paying her any attention.
"That's Martha," Blythe said. "She thinks she owns the place.
Ellie nodded, understanding that cats were territorial.
The Cove View Room was beautiful. If it wasn’t for the spooky feeling that she’d been here before, Ellie would have been in heaven. Unlike hotel rooms and other bed and breakfast places where she'd stayed, this room was huge. Two hundred years ago people had large families and they didn't account for heat rising to the high ceilings or making a room just for sleeping. Often, bedrooms doubled as sitting rooms. This one sported a queen-size bed, something more modern than a two hundred year-old antique. It had a padded headboard and a quilted coverlet.
French doors on two sides opened to the ocean and gardens. Even before she went to the doors, she knew the view would be spectacular. With a sense of deja vu, she went to the doors and opened them wide. She was right. She had a panoramic view of both the ocean and an explosion of flowers to delight each visitor. The ocean spoke to her, depositing its waves on the distant shore, a beckoning call for her to join the story it told.
She wondered if Blythe would be able to fill in the missing pieces of the story Ellie had uncovered in the mahogany box? Turning from the window, Ellie opened her suitcase and removed the clothes she'd brought with her. At the bottom of the case lay the diary and letters she had found in the wall of her home. They had led her to the Vineyard, or maybe she should say the Vineyard had called her to bring them home?
Ellie changed from her travel clothes into shorts and a shirt and headed out toward the ocean, hoping the sea would calm the anxiety that still roiled within her. She skirted around the Cove and found an ancient stairway that led down to the sand.
The stairway was steep, but sturdy, so Ellie was surprised when at the last step she stumbled and fell. Strong hands caught her and pulled her up before her knees hit the sand.
"I'm sorry," she apologized pushing herself out of the arms of a stranger—an almost naked stranger.
"You need to be careful of that last step," he said. "So many people are concentrating on the ocean that they don't realize the bottom step is steeper than the others."
Ellie looked back at the step. It was a good six inches higher than the one before, almost as if a step were missing. She was lucky he'd been there to catch her. "Thank you," she said.
"Arrived today?" h
e asked.
"I suppose you can tell that by my fascination with the view."
"It's the pale skin. Drew McAdams." He stuck out his hand.
"Eleanora Sloan," she said. "Are you the local lifeguard?"
Drew turned his head to one side and the expression on his face changed as she said her name. It was almost as if he was listening to something that no one else could hear.
"Is something wrong?" Ellie asked.
He shook his head, more like he was clearing it than answering her question. " I wondered if we'd met before."
Ellie took stock of her rescuer. He appeared to be tanned from neck to feet, so she assumed he either lived or worked on the Vineyard. Strong arms and hands had caught her and she could see his tapered waist and muscled legs. He had brown eyes and a square jaw that added to the strength his body exuded. No, Ellie said to herself. She'd never met this man before. She shook her head. "I teach American History at Rayford University in Tennessee."
"A teacher," he commented.
Ellie couldn't tell if he was being derisive of her profession or complimenting her on the choice.
"What do you do, other than rescue damsels in distress, that is?"
He laughed at that, a deep belly laugh. Ellie liked the sound of it.
"I run several franchises, a few of which are on this island."
Ellie didn't like people who refused to answer simple questions straightforwardly. "Well, thank you for saving me, Drew. I think I'll go for a walk along the beach. Is there any other danger I should be aware of?"
"The water can be deceptive, but since you're walking, you should be safe."
Ellie told herself she wasn't going to look back, but ten feet from the edge of the water, she turned to see if he was still there. He was, his eyes trained on her.
Ellie reached down and removed her tennis shoes. She held them as she walked in the wet sand, playing footsie with the waterline.
Before she'd found the mahogany box, she wouldn't have thought twice about the conversation. But now she couldn't stop wondering. Who was Drew McAdams? Why did he think her name was familiar? And why did she feel like she'd been in the Cove View Room before today?
A decorator Ellie wasn't, but her senses seemed to have heightened in that room. She felt as if the pulling together of two separate eras also pulled together two separate …she didn't know what. She wanted to say two separate people, but that sounded foolish? Then Drew had said her name sounded familiar. Sloan wasn't an uncommon name and neither was Eleanora,.
Ellie had been named after her mother's Great Aunt Eleanora. Aunt Eleanora reared Ellie's mom in the very house that Ellie had recently renovated. But that was about all Ellie knew.
The ocean water was cool and Ellie's feet were getting cold. She turned back and started walking toward the B&B. She was only going to be on the Vineyard for a week. She needed to stick to her plan. First, she'd visit the library. Surely something there would point her toward the truth. Ellie only hoped she'd recognize it when she saw it. Since she’d pulled that wall down in the guest room and discovered what amounted to a time capsule her life had been a mess.
Ellie had watched enough HGTV and DIY Network shows to know that people put unusual things in walls for some future resident to find. But this time she was the resident and what she found was put there before there was television, let alone an HGTV or DIY program.
The small chest, sealed with paraffin to keep air and water out, preserved the findings. Reluctant to open it for fear that the contents might disintegrate upon contact, Ellie had taken it to a friend, Samara Scott, who worked as a document preservationist at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. In a controlled area, they unsealed and opened the box. Inside Ellie found a leather bound and perfectly preserved diary, handwritten on delicate paper. Samara confirmed the parchment was over two hundred years old, and it was a good thing that Ellie hadn't opened it to the atmosphere of a twenty-first century room.
Other than the papers, Samara found a small part of the chest's lining that looked at if it had been repaired. Feeling along its edge, she discovered there was something tucked inside. Using a machine much like an x-ray, she found a stone. They opened the lining and pulled it out. Samara examined it and said it looked like an ordinary stone but she'd have to have it dated to see if there was anything special about it.
And that's when it started.
Ellie opened her hand and Samara placed the stone in her palm. A world flashed before her. The stone burned and with a startled scream, Ellie dropped it. Grabbing her hand, Ellie squeezed it shut. Her breath came in huge swallows as she clenched her teeth together to hold the panic in.
"Let me see," Samara cried. She tried to open Ellie's hand, but Ellie kept it tightly shut. Hopping around the small basement room of the National Archives Building where Samara worked, Ellie waved her hand in the air to try to cool the burning.
Eventually, the pain subsided. Ellie opened her hand. There was nothing there except the smooth skin of her palm. No redness. No discoloration. No charred flesh. Only the creases of a long lifeline appeared before her. The pain was gone. She couldn't even remember it a second after it stopped forcing tears to her eyes.
"What happened?" Samara asked looking from Ellie's palm to her face.
"I don't know. It burned me."
"But there's no burn. Your hand isn't even red."
Ellie looked at it again. She looked at the stone where it had bounced off the table and skittered across the floor. Samara picked it up with her bare hand and placed it in her own palm. Nothing happened to her. Raising and lowering her shoulders in a silent question, she switched it from hand to hand. For her, it was only a rock. But for the instant Ellie had held it, it had shown her another world, one in the past— in Martha's Vineyard.
The scene had been light, overexposed as if she was looking at a three-dimensional play through curtain sheers. She saw the house, the walkway. The ocean smelled of salt and pounded against the shore in the distance. Gulls cawed overhead. She'd watched as a figure walked through the house into what she now knew was the Cove View Room. She'd even seen Blythe, but only from the back and she wasn't wearing modern clothing. The only person who wasn't part of the vision was Drew.
And yet he seemed to think he knew her. Why had this happened to her? Ellie had asked herself that question a thousand times since she found the box. She'd sworn Samara to secrecy, and entrusted her with the original papers. Ellie carried a copy, one she'd read and re-read until the pages were dog-eared and she felt she knew the author better than she knew her own sister.
But she didn't know Drew.
"You're back," Drew said as Ellie climbed up the last step and was on level ground with the Manor.
Ellie had been thinking of him and here he was, exactly like the people in the diary, and yet not like them. Drew was real—flesh and blood—and she reached out to touch him. The people in the diary were long dead. The stone had only showed shadows of them. They were gray and colorless. Drew was alive and real, his skin brown from the sun.
"Enjoy your walk?" he asked.
"I did. We don't have any oceans in Tennessee and the air here is salty and different." Ellie stuck her tongue out to taste it.
"This is a magical kind of place," he said.
Her head snapped around and she stared at him. "What do you mean magical?"
"I didn't mean real magic," he corrected. "It's just that being here is like the outside world, the world on the mainland, doesn't exist. Like this is the only place in the universe."
A chill passed through Ellie. She couldn't have described her feelings more accurately than what Drew had said.
"I thought it was just me," Ellie told him. "The Vineyard feels like a world unto itself."
"Wait until you've spent a night here."
"By here do you mean the Vineyard or the Manor?"
"Both, but mainly the Manor."
"Are you staying here, too?" she asked.
He nodded. "I
stay in the house behind this one. My grandmother once owned it. I usually find being in the time bubble of the Vineyard calming. But not this time. This time I feel as if something is about to happen and I can't quite tell what."
"Intriguing," Ellie said, giving nothing away that would let him know she had the same feeling. Again, she wondered why she could see the shadowy people and not see Drew when it appeared he had the same feelings she did. "Are you trying to figure out why you feel that way?"
For the second time, Drew cocked his head and looked at her as if he could find out something that only she knew. " I figure if I stay here a while, whatever is supposed to happen, will."
"Do you think it's something good or something you should prevent?"
He frowned. "I don't know, but…you're the first person I've mentioned this to who didn't look at me as if I'd grown another head."
Ellie smiled. "If you had a second head, maybe it could explain the feeling to you."
He crossed his arms and the bulging muscles of his arms and chest were not lost on Ellie. "I believe there are things in the universe we can't explain. There are people who are more susceptible to these nuances than others. Are you one of them?" he asked.
She shook her head. "I'm the practical, rational type. Remember, I teach history. It's pretty cut and dry. No room for the mystical."
"Now why do I think there's a little bit of a lie in that statement?"
Ellie smiled, shrugged, tossed her head, and headed back toward the Manor.
She was here. Drew had stalked that Cove for days, waiting. He knew she would come, but not what day—only that she would nearly fall off that bottom step. Now that she'd arrived, what was he supposed to do? She was staying at the Manor. He'd have to offer to take her sightseeing. Although she had a magnificent view from the Cove View room.
He felt a chill run down his spine. How did he know that? After a moment, he realized he had known it the same way he'd known that she would fall from the step.
Summer Magic Page 5
