The Chesapeake Diaries Series 7-Book Bundle: Coming HOme, Home Again, Almost Home, Hometown Girl, Home for the Summer, The Long Way Home, At the River's Edge

by Stewart, Mariah

  “Ah, yes.” Archer nodded as if he had recalled something about Jesse’s father but wasn’t quite sure exactly what it was.

  “Oh, here comes the parade.” Brooke elbowed Jesse. “Now the entertainment begins.”

  “So what’s the protocol here?” Jesse asked.

  “This is where the action is.” Brooke gestured to the opposite side of the road, where spectators had set up folding lawn chairs. “Just about everyone in town comes to see the costumes. The marchers are lined up according to their age group. When your group is called, everyone gets a chance to pass the judges’ stand, and if there’s some sort of performance that goes along with your costume, that’s when you do it. Like, see, that first group, the little ballerinas?”

  The entire crowd ooh’d and aah’d as six little girls in pink tutus danced around in front of the judges.

  “That has to rate pretty high on the cuteness scale,” Jesse noted.

  “They are adorable,” she agreed.

  Next came a threesome of clowns on two-wheelers, the training wheels of which were still attached.

  “More cuteness,” she noted.

  “So are there winners?” Jesse asked.

  Brooke nodded. “Winners, prizes, trophies, pictures in the local paper, and of course, these days, online at St. Dennis’s Web site well.”

  “Who are the judges?”

  “The mayor, the chief of police, the librarian, and a couple of the shop owners.”

  “But don’t they know everyone?”

  “They know everyone in the parade and there’s more than one relative of each of them, I’d imagine.”

  “How can you be objective if you’re judging your niece or a cousin?” Jesse frowned.

  “Who said anything about objectivity?” Brooke shrugged. “But I think they somehow manage to choose the best costumes and the best performances in spite of themselves.”

  “So, okay, we have the parade and then they announce the winners. Then what?”

  “They don’t announce the winners now. That doesn’t happen until later, at the ball.”

  “They have a ball? A Halloween ball? Seriously?”

  “Seriously. They’ve been doing it for almost one hundred years.”

  “So do you have to be in costume?”

  “Only if you think you’re going to win.”

  “Anything else I should know?” he asked.

  “There’s a queen, and—”

  “A queen?” His eyes danced with amusement. “A Halloween queen?”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “Were you ever the Halloween queen?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “That’s one I missed.”

  Jesse stared blankly at her.

  “When I was younger, I was in a few pageants,” she explained, feeling the embarrassment she always felt when she looked back on the girl she’d once been. “It was all a long time ago.”

  Thinking about those days brought up a lot of old feelings that Brooke would just as soon forget. Back then, she hadn’t been the person she was now, but there were a lot of people in St. Dennis with long memories who didn’t know that. She’d been snubbed on more than one occasion since moving back home by women who, back in their younger days, had been the target of the mean girl that Brooke used to be. She could crawl into a hole and just die every time she looked back on her old self.

  “So what if they announce who the queen is and she isn’t there?”

  “Oh, that’s part of the fun. They send people to get you, to find you in the crowd. The queen doesn’t know she’s the queen until the committee comes for her, and it’s strictly come-as-you-are. In other words, you don’t get to go home to change. Which is why”—she lowered her voice—“there are so many women dressed just a little too well for a parade. They think this might be their year, so they dress up just enough to look good in the pictures, but not so much that they’d look foolish when the crown is handed to someone else.”

  “And if you aren’t in the crowd?”

  “They’ll go to your house,” she told him. “We take our traditions very seriously here in St. Dennis.”

  “Look.” He gestured to the right. “The boys are starting their duel.”

  “How serious they are.” She leaned forward and watched as the two boys parried and thrust their swords as they made their way across the street and past the judges’ stand. Just as they reached the opposite side, they pretended to run each other through, then both dropped dramatically to the ground to resounding applause.

  “It would appear that the duel ended in a draw.” Berry beamed and clapped wildly.

  “Oh my God.” Brooke laughed. “Did you ever see anything so funny?”

  The crowd was on their feet after the two boys stood up and grinned.

  “What timing,” Berry said proudly. “What showmanship.”

  “You can tell that Cody spent his formative years in Hollywood”—Dallas leaned halfway across Berry to tell Brooke—“but Logan is just a natural.”

  “That’s going to be a hard act to follow,” Jesse agreed.

  “Here come the jugglers.” Berry pointed to the street below. “I do believe they’re Nita’s grandsons.”

  “Nita owns the antique shop across the street from Cuppachino,” Brooke told Jesse.

  “Which sort of proves my point about everyone knowing everyone here,” he leaned over to whisper in her ear.

  She tilted her head slightly so that his lips were dangerously close to the side of her face. For a moment she met his eyes, and her heart thumped inside her chest.

  Stop it, she commanded herself. Just … stop it.

  Jesse was so easy to be with, such fun to be with, because all he wanted from her was her friendship. Hadn’t he made that clear? He hadn’t asked her out, hadn’t called the house like some love-struck teenager the way some others had. And she did like him—a lot—but since she wasn’t looking for a relationship, she appreciated the fact that he hadn’t put her in an awkward position by trying to be something more. Which would ruin their friendship, she reasoned, and that would put an end to days like today, when she’d totally forgotten herself and simply enjoyed his company without feeling any pressure to be anything else. Besides, he wasn’t attracted to her in the way other guys were, or he’d have pursued something other than friendship, right? So it was a good thing that they could just be friends, wasn’t it?

  Wasn’t it?

  An hour later, when the last of the parade participants had passed the judges’ stand, Brooke stood and stretched.

  “So will we see you at the ball tonight, Jesse?” she asked.

  “Are you going?”

  “Sure.” She pointed to the crowd of costumed children. “There could be a prize in someone’s future. No way I’m going to get out of attending.”

  “Where do they hold it?”

  “In the old Grange Hall on Harbor Road. It usually starts around eight, it’s over by ten. Not a real ‘ball’ in the traditional sense. Though I suppose it was at one time.” She turned to Berry, who was slow to get up and grumbling about having stayed in one position for too long. “I’ll bet Berry would know.”

  “What’s that, dear?” Berry leaned on Archer’s arm.

  “Didn’t there used to be a real ball on Halloween night? With fancy costumes and a band and champagne at midnight?”

  “Oh, my, yes.” She nodded enthusiastically. “Back before Halloween became such a big holiday for children.”

  “Back before members of our generation started dying or moving away,” Archer added.

  “True enough, dear. There aren’t quite so many of us former queens left in town.”

  “You were a Halloween queen, Berry?” Dallas turned to her great-aunt in surprise. “You never said.”

  “You never asked.” Berry sniffed and started down the bleachers to the street below.

  “She was magnificent,” Archer told them over his shoulder as he accompanied her.

  “Of course I wa
s,” she said grandly.

  “The woman never changes.” Dallas shook her head, and followed the elderly couple. “And may she never …”

  “She was quite the thing back in the … what, thirties, forties, fifties?” Jesse took Brooke’s arm to steady her as they made their way through the crowd. “She was a real film star, right?”

  Brooke nodded. “She was the most famous person ever to come out of St. Dennis. Well, until Dallas, but Dallas wasn’t born here. She and Wade started coming to stay for the summers after their father died. He’d been Berry’s only nephew, and they were very close.”

  Jesse appeared to be about to speak, but they were distracted by the small group of three who started to climb the bleachers toward them. Brooke’s first thought was that it was strange that anyone would be coming up the bleachers when everyone else was going down. Until she saw Grace Sinclair’s beaming face—and the sparkling shiny thing Grace held in her hand.

  Oh, no, no, no. Please no. Not me. Not me. Anyone but me …

  Chapter 9

  Overhead, gulls were circling and squawking, and a breeze had kicked up off the Bay. Jesse had just taken Brooke’s arm so that she wouldn’t stumble on the somewhat unstable bleachers, and he was thinking that so far today, he must have scored some serious points, when she stiffened and her entire demeanor changed. Her face had lost its color and her eyes had widened as if in terror. And frankly, the grip she had on his arm sure did feel like real fear to him. She’d stood motionless and mute as Grace Sinclair and two people Jesse recognized but didn’t know approached her with a sparkly crown.

  “Brooke Madison Bowers, we’re happy to say that you’ve been unanimously selected as queen of this year’s Halloween festivities,” Grace had said. She leaned forward and added softly, “We’re all so proud of you. Your acts of kindness have not gone unnoticed.”

  “Congratulations, Brooke,” the two men had said with much enthusiasm.

  Brooke had appeared to be in a daze. When she finally snapped out of it, she’d said something like, “I don’t think … that is, maybe someone else …”

  “No, no, dear. We all agreed that you were the perfect choice.” Grace had stepped behind her and placed the crown on her head. “Hold still now. We’re going to have to secure this with some pins.”

  Grace had pulled some bobby pins from her pocket and proceeded to affix the crown to the unsmiling Brooke’s head. The look she’d shot Jesse had been sheer misery.

  “Now come along so we can make our announcement.” Grace had started toward the street, leaving Jesse to descend with Brooke.

  “What’s wrong?” Jesse had whispered. “What’s the problem?”

  “I don’t want to do this.”

  “Are you nervous because there’s a large crowd?”

  “I just don’t want to be queen, Jesse.”

  “You said you’d been in pageants before, right?”

  She’d nodded.

  “Did you win any?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what’s the difference? Pretend this is just another pageant win.”

  “You don’t understand.” There’d been panic in her eyes when she looked up at him. “I’m not that person anymore.”

  “Which person is—was—that?” he’d asked, somewhat confused.

  “The person who enters pageants to win, the one who wants to stand out all the time.” She’d looked close to tears. “People are going to hate me all over again.”

  “What are you talking about? No one hates you.” He’d almost laughed at the absurdity of the thought. How could anyone hate Brooke?

  “Look, you didn’t know me before. When I was younger, I … I wasn’t always a very nice person. Actually, most of the time I wasn’t very nice at all. I was the girl who always got everyone to gang up on people she didn’t like. I was Miss Perfect. I was more concerned about how I looked than how I acted.” Her sigh had been full of regret. “I put the mean in mean girl.”

  “Well, like you just said. You’re not that person anymore.”

  “I haven’t been back here long enough for most people to figure that out. There are a lot of women here”—she’d indicated the crowd—“who I picked on when we were kids.”

  “I think you’re doing yourself a disservice. I think people like you just fine,” he’d said softly.

  “Everyone is going to see this as just one more time when Brooke won.” She tapped her foot nervously on the seat she was standing on.

  When he started to protest again, she said, “Look, you didn’t grow up here, so you wouldn’t know, but I was Miss Everything. Miss Eastern Shore. Miss Regatta. Holly Ball Queen. May Queen. I was Memorial Day Poppy Princess an unprecedented three times.” She looked up at Jesse and explained, “My dad and granddad were both vets.”

  “Do you really think that’s what everyone here is going to be remembering?”

  “I think they’re going to be remembering that under my picture in the yearbook, they wrote ‘Princess’ as my middle name.”

  “What is your middle name?”

  “Diana.”

  “Nice.”

  She smiled weakly at his attempt to lighten the mood.

  “Look, maybe this is a good opportunity for you to show people who you’ve grown up to be,” he said.

  “Since Logan and I moved back to St. Dennis, I did everything I could think of to live it all down. I joined the PTA and volunteered for every job no one else wanted to do. Last year, I was homeroom mother and chaperoned every single class outing. I teach English as a second language at the library two nights a week and I go to the senior home every Sunday afternoon to read to the residents. And still this.” She pointed to the crown.

  “Maybe it’s because of all those things that they wanted you to have it”—Jesse pointed to the crown just as she had—“this year.”

  Brooke had gone quiet then.

  “Didn’t Grace say something about your acts of kindness not going unnoticed?” Jesse straightened the crown on her head. “Maybe it’s not because of who you were, but who you are. Hasn’t that occurred to you?”

  She shook her head.

  “You think people think you’re Miss Perfect? That you’re only interested in appearances?” He’d tugged at the sleeve of her sweatshirt. “Would Miss Perfect appear in public with … what is that on your shirt, anyway?”

  “Chocolate frosting.”

  “There you go. Not so perfect after all.” He’d stepped down to the seats below and held out his hand. “Put your head up and smile and act like you’re as happy about this as Grace seems to be.”

  She’d nodded then, taken his hand, and made her way down the bleachers with him. He stood aside as the hoopla began, and before he realized what had happened, Brooke had been whisked away in a convertible as the parade was led back through town the way it came. She’d looked back frantically as she was escorted from the judges’ stand and he’d been pretty certain she’d been looking for him, but there was no way she’d have found him. He stepped back and let her have her moment, then fell in with the crowd and followed the parade to the marina, and to Scoop. But there, too, there’d been a crowd, and he’d been unable to get close to her.

  He left the festivities and walked to his office, where he reread some files, wrote a few letters, and made some notes for an upcoming settlement conference. He finished one last letter, then walked back to his rented house, where he ate leftover spaghetti for dinner, then watched the tail end of a college football game while he waited for seven o’clock.

  The conversation with Brooke had baffled him. He couldn’t imagine anyone not liking Brooke. Okay, so maybe she hadn’t been as nice back when as she was now. Do people really hold grudges for that long? Well, except for the Enrights, that is.

  Yeah, he supposed a lot of people did, but he honestly hadn’t seen any evidence of that as they’d walked through the crowd earlier in the day. People had smiled at Brooke and greeted her like, well, like an old friend. He wondered if
she noticed that no one had made a hex sign when she approached.

  It was sort of endearing that she’d been so contrite about her school-age self, and it was clear to him if not to her that she’d tried really hard to redeem herself in the eyes of her hometown. It was hard to believe that she’d ever been as bad as she said she was, though. From the first time he’d met her, one thing that had attracted Jesse to Brooke was her sweet nature.

  That and her mane of curly pale reddish blond hair that had a sassy swing to it when pulled back in a ponytail, the way it tumbled around her face when it wasn’t. Heart-shaped face, pale green eyes, a mouth that was quick to smile and widen in a laugh.

  And then, there was her body. Brooke was petite, but perfectly proportioned.

  Best not to go there, he thought, while they were still on the friendship track.

  He wondered how long he was going to have to pretend to be her best buddy before she started to think of him as something more than a friend. And what if she never did? What if she thought this BFF thing was just swell? What if Clay had been wrong when he’d suggested that the only way to make Jesse stand out in the pack was to treat her differently than everyone else had?

  If she never saw him in any other way, he’d have to accept that. He wasn’t a fatal attraction kind of guy. Something was better than nothing, and at least they’d still be friends—real friends—which was more than those other guys could say. Besides, he was finding that the more time he spent with her, the more he genuinely liked her. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d dated someone that he hadn’t gotten to know while they were dating, instead of before.

  Practicing law had taught Jesse patience, and he’d long since learned that some things couldn’t be rushed. But he had to admit that he was getting a little antsy waiting for Brooke to realize that he had so much more to offer than friendship.

  Then again, considering the alternative, he figured he could practice patience for a little longer. What did he have to lose?

  The Grange Hall in St. Dennis had been built in 1878 by the farmers who grew corn and wheat and barley in the fields that lay east of the town limits. What had been started as a social organization had grown political when Midwestern farmers organized to protest the high transport prices set by the railroads. Years later, the conflict resolved, the Grangers, as the members were called, went back to being a social organization.