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

  As Ellie made her morning coffee, she could hear Gabi chattering away in the other room, and it pleased her enormously to have been able to buy the phone. It was the first time in her life—the only time in her life—that she had to work and save money to buy a gift for anyone. She’d put in a lot of hours with Cameron over the past four weeks, and had been pleased with the money she’d made. The compliments she’d gotten on her work had pleased her as well. The men on Cam’s crew, while picking up right away on the relationship between Cameron and Ellie, may have been skeptical at first, but over the weeks they came to admire the quality of her work and her no-nonsense approach to the job. She came prepared to scrape paper every day, and she attacked every wall with skill and energy.

  “You are really good,” Cam told her when she’d called him in to look at a room she’d finished in a Colonial home in the center of town. “Want to learn how to hang paper?”

  “Sure.” She’d nodded. “That might be fun. When do we start?”

  “No. It’s not fun. But I appreciate your enthusiasm. And we start in your dining room. We’ll do a trial run as soon as the holidays are over.”

  Later on Christmas morning, Cam had arrived with a stack of wallpaper books for Ellie to look through and a neatly wrapped present for Gabi.

  “Your gift isn’t finished yet,” he told Ellie. “But it’s coming.”

  Ellie had three duck decoys in one big box, wrapped in red paper and tied with white ribbon, sitting under the tree for Cameron. He’d not been expecting such a gift, and Ellie could tell he was truly moved.

  “Thank you.” He’d leaned over and kissed her, would have kissed her more if Gabi hadn’t come into the room.

  “I love my journal, Cam.” She wrapped her arms around his neck for a hug. “Thank you so much.”

  “You’re very welcome, Gabi.” He glanced at Ellie. “I had to resort to asking Paige for a suggestion, too.”

  “She’s my best friend here in St. Dennis. She knows what I like,” Gabi said before scampering off to finish making breakfast—bacon and French toast, her gift to Ellie and Cam.

  “I was dreading today.” Ellie leaned back against Cam on the sofa. “I was afraid it would be terrible for her.”

  “It still may be.”

  “She’s been pretty good. Only had one or two melt-downs over the past week. We went to the midnight service at church last night, though, and she did cry most of the time we were there. But for some reason, I expected that. I have to admit, I cried a little myself.”

  “For her?”

  “Partly.” She turned in his arms. “But selfishly, for me, too.”

  “Well, this past year hasn’t been easy for you, either.”

  “True, but it’s funny, when you’re focused so much on easing someone else’s pain, you forget about your own. What made me sad in church was thinking about all the time my mother spent here in St. Dennis, here in this house, that I didn’t get to spend with her. All the times I spent in places like Paris and London with people my dad thought were important but who I mostly didn’t care about, I could have been here, in this house, with my mother. I’d have known Lilly, and …” She sat up straight. “I keep forgetting to ask you. Have you ever seen Lilly here, in this house?”

  “Sure. I used to live here, remember?”

  “No, no. I mean after. After she died.”

  “You mean, did I ever see her spirit?”

  Ellie’s eyes narrowed. “Why didn’t you say ‘ghost’? Most people would say ‘ghost,’ not ‘spirit.’ ”

  He twirled a strand of her hair between two fingers, a gesture she’d learned was something he did while he was thinking of something to say.

  “Because I never think of her as a ghost. It’s her spirit that’s still here.”

  “So you have seen her.”

  Cam nodded. “I take it you have, too?”

  “No. But Gabi has. She says there’s a white-haired lady who sits on the chair in her room and who watches over her while she sleeps and comforts her when she cries.”

  “That sounds like Lilly, all right.”

  “I’m her descendant. I don’t understand why Gabi sees her and I don’t.”

  “Maybe she thinks you don’t need her.” He dropped the strand of her hair and tucked it behind her ear. “Which room is Gabi in?”

  “Back room on the left side,” she told him. “The Bay side.”

  “That used to be Lynley’s room,” he told her. “After that, it was Wendy’s when we stayed here.”

  “Little girls who needed to be comforted,” Ellie murmured. “Little girls who missed their parents.”

  “That would be my guess.”

  Ellie got up, walked to the tree, and pretended to straighten an ornament.

  “What?” Cam asked.

  “I don’t believe in ghosts,” she said. “I never have. I’m surprised that you do.”

  “What can I tell you? It’s not like I look out the window and say, ‘Hey, look. I’ll bet that’s the ghost of one of André Bonfille’s men.’ I know that Lilly is still here. I’ve seen her, but more, I’ve sensed her. Felt her.”

  “When was the first time?”

  “Right after she died. I couldn’t believe she was gone. She’d been our rock, mine and Wendy’s, and I couldn’t imagine what life was going to be without her.”

  “You really loved her.”

  “She was more of a mother to us than our mother had been. And I still love her. She’s here for me when I need her, El. I can’t explain it any other way.”

  “Is she here now?”

  He shook his head. “Maybe for Gabi, but Lilly knows I’m good now. I have you.”

  “You think she knows?”

  “She knows. It makes her happy.”

  “Stop it. You’re making that up.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Can’t leave you two kids alone for ten minutes.” Gabi stood in the doorway, one of Lilly’s old aprons tied around her waist, trying to look stern, but she couldn’t hold the pose. She giggled. “Come quick. The French toast is awesome!”

  The French toast was awesome, made even better by Gabi’s sheer joy in having prepared it for them. Sitting in her warm kitchen, the morning sun shining through the windows and spilling onto the table, with Gabi chattering away and Cameron’s leg resting against hers, Ellie couldn’t help but compare this Christmas with last year’s, when she’d been engaged to a man who was so disastrously wrong for her. She and Henry had exchanged expensive presents—his to her had been an exorbitantly pricey watch that he’d probably sent his secretary to pick out, and that, in the end, had been confiscated to pay off those unfortunate people he had helped to defraud. This year the only presents under the tree had been the ones she’d bought for Gabi, Cam, and Carly, whose next visit wouldn’t be for another two weeks. And yet she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so contented, so happy in her heart, and she realized that for all the angst and all the shame and the emotional trauma of the past year, she had, as Carly had once pointed out, landed in a very good place. It was becoming harder and harder to think about leaving.

  “What are you doing New Year’s Eve?” Cam asked as he was getting ready to leave to meet Wendy in Baltimore for dinner, a yearly event.

  “Nothing. You want to be my date?” Ellie fastened the top button of his jacket against the cold air.

  “I want you to be my date for Lucy and Clay’s wedding at the inn.”

  “I’d love to be your date. I heard it’s going to be the Big Event.”

  “Lucy’s a famous wedding planner. Wedding planner to the stars and other assorted celebrities. So yeah, it’s going to be big.”

  “I think Paige is supposed to be doing something for that wedding. Like hand out programs or something. She asked Gabi if she wanted to do it with her.”

  “Then we’ll make it a family affair.” He kissed her, called good-bye to Gabi, who’d gone upstairs to write in her journal, and left.

  A
family affair.

  Long after he drove away, those words were ringing in Ellie’s ears, wonderful and terrifying at the same time.

  Chapter 22

  Ellie wasn’t sure exactly when the thought occurred to her, but once it did, she knew it was the right thing to do. It wasn’t hard to figure out the best means of accomplishing it.

  “I must say, I was happy that you called and gave me a good excuse to leave the inn,” Grace said when she met Ellie at Cuppachino. “I’m nearing the breaking point with Lucy’s wedding. Honestly, that girl is a whirlwind. You can’t believe what she’s doing in our ballroom for their reception. And with so little time to plan, so little time to make it happen. She makes my head spin.”

  “But you’re happy about the wedding, right?” Ellie asked.

  “Delighted. I love Clay like a son. It’s exactly what I wanted for Lucy. He’s the right man. I think they’re going to be very happy together.” Grace frowned. “It’s just that the wedding preparations are making me crazy.”

  “Well, only a few more days, and it’ll be over.”

  “And then I’ll be crying in my tea that it all happened so fast.”

  Ellie sipped her coffee and tried to decide how to open the conversation. She’d tried memorizing a few lines but it sounded stilted and phony.

  “Grace, I need your advice on something.”

  “Oh? A problem?”

  “One I created for myself.” Ellie told Grace the full story of Gabi’s coming to live with her. “When I met with Jesse that first day I came to St. Dennis, I told him I was going to drop the Chapman from my name and go by Ryder. I was so afraid of the backlash against my father, so afraid that people would hate me if they knew who I was. Chapman’s not such an unusual name, but if everyone knew I was Lynley’s daughter, they’d know exactly who my father was.”

  Grace listened intently, stirring her tea.

  “Jesse told me that I should keep an open mind and give people a chance to get to know me, that people here weren’t as judgmental as I assumed they’d be. But I’d been so badly burned during and after the investigation, by people I’d known and worked with for years, that I couldn’t believe that strangers would be any more kind to me than my so-called friends had been. He said that people here were warm and friendly.” Ellie smiled weakly. “But I told him I wasn’t here to make friends.”

  “And yet you have, in spite of yourself,” Grace pointed out. “People here do like you, Ellie.”

  “I’m regretting those words. I regret that, right from the start, I didn’t own up to who my mother was.” Ellie’s hands were folded on the table. “I don’t want to hide who I am anymore. I’m embarrassed that, at thirteen, Gabi has been braver than I, that she hasn’t made any effort to hide who her father is. I’m sorry that I started this charade, but I don’t know how to set things right now. I was hoping you might have some suggestions.”

  “Well, dear, it’s easy enough to get the word around. A ‘By the way, were you aware …’ or a ‘You know, of course …’ ” Grace patted Ellie’s arm. “And we could do that interview we suggested when we first chatted.”

  Ellie flinched. She did remember. Her reaction had been somewhere between “Over my dead body” and “Hell, no.”

  “We can focus on the fact that you’ve inherited the house from your mother and you’re remodeling it. And there’s the angle of how many generations of women in your family have lived there. We can mention Clifford or not.” Grace paused as if to consider this option. “Everyone in town knows that Lynley was married to the scoundrel; I’m not sure we need to mention his name.”

  “But we probably should, if I’m going to go back to using Chapman.” Ellie thought for a moment. “Do you think people will resent me for having lied?”

  “Let’s think of it as an omission more than a lie. Besides, how many people have you actually met as Ellie Ryder? Other than those people who have become your friends, of course.”

  “People at First Families Day. People at dinner on Thanksgiving at the inn. Mr. Enright, for one.”

  “People you meet once might tend to remember your first name more than your last.” Grace waved her hand dismissively. “And for the record, Curtis knew exactly who you were.”

  “He did?”

  “Of course. He wrote the wills for both Lilly and Lynley. He knew there’d been no sale of the house.” She took another sip of her tea. “I think you’ll find this will be all much ado as far as most people are concerned.”

  “Except for those people who invested in my father’s company.”

  “There may be some of that. There were some who invested with him because he was Lynley’s widower. So there may be some backlash, but you’ll survive it.”

  “You’re right. I will.” Ellie nodded.

  “Now, we have a little time.” Grace pulled a notebook out of her bag. “Let’s take care of that interview right now. I can run it in my paper on Thursday so it’s done before the wedding. I hear you’re coming with Cameron. Such a nice young man …”

  Ellie could hardly believe that the room she entered was actually in Maryland and not a tropical place. The lobby and the ballroom of the inn sported a forest of palm trees, the trunks and branches of which had been wrapped in tiny white lights. Real orchids of every color, appearing to grow on the branches, delicately scented the air. Silver pitchers on each table held lush arrangements of orchids, stephanotis, pale pink roses, dusty miller, and ivy. The cloths covering the tables were silvery gray and the napkins were palest pink. Somehow, in the shortest possible time, the ballroom had been turned into a subtle fantasy of flowers and soft lights. It was the most romantic wedding Ellie had ever attended.

  The ceremony itself was performed by Reverend Alston at the church in town that both Lucy and Clay’s families had attended for many years. It, too, was handsomely draped with flowers and candlelight. Lucy had asked her business party, Bonnie Shaefer, to be her maid of honor, and Brooke, Clay’s sister, to be her lone bridesmaid, and Clay had tapped Cameron for his best man. Clay’s business partner, Wade MacGregor, and his eight-year-old nephew, Logan, served as ushers. Because there’d been little time to prepare, Lucy opted out of having a slew of bridesmaids.

  “I don’t have time to deal with the drama of bridesmaids’ dresses,” Lucy had told Ellie when they ran into each other at one of the houses on the Christmas Tour. “This one doesn’t like that color, that one likes the color but not the style. I only had a few weeks to put this all together. I didn’t have time for dress drama. Brooke understood completely, and chose a dress that she and I both liked. So much easier when you’re only dealing with one or two other people.”

  Lucy did have time to find a dramatic dress for herself: a pure white silk floor-length sheath with one shoulder and silk-covered buttons all the way down the back. There was a wide sparkly belt complemented by long sparkly earrings, and a long lace veil that both Grace and Grace’s mother had worn. Escorted down the aisle by both her mother and her brother Daniel, Lucy carried an enormous bouquet of orchids and wore high silver shoes that added four inches to her petite height.

  “Gorgeous.” Steffie Wyler, seated behind Ellie and next to Vanessa and her husband, had sighed.

  “Totally.” Ellie had turned around to agree.

  “I heard the ballroom is drop-dead magnificent,” Vanessa whispered.

  “It is. Wait till you see,” a wide-eyed Steffie said. “I peeked when I dropped off ice cream before we came to the church. It’s gorgeous.”

  “Shhhhh …” A woman at the end of Ellie’s row hushed them.

  Steffie mouthed the words “You’ll see,” and turned back to the program, which her niece Paige and Gabi had handed out at the door to the church. The two young girls wore white blouses and black straight skirts, and had carried out their duties in a mature manner that made Dallas, as stepmother of the former, and Ellie, as sister of the latter, quite proud.

  The church was still dressed for the holidays, resple
ndent in white poinsettias, the altar marked with urns filled with evergreens and hollies, to which Lucy had added twinkling lights. The ceremony was brief but deeply personal, the minister having known both the bride and the groom from their preschool days. Lucy and Clay wrote their vows together, promising to be “best friends always, to celebrate the passing of the seasons together, to greet each new day with love, and to never be too busy to spend an afternoon crabbing on the Bay.”

  Ellie looked upon the cocktail hour at the inn as a sort of coming-out—the first time she was in a crowded public place since Grace’s interview ran in the St. Dennis Gazette. While the paper had played up Ellie’s relationship to Lynley, and had barely mentioned her father, there was no question that the cat was definitely out of the bag, just as Ellie had wanted it to be. For every person who made a comment about her father—polite or otherwise—there were ten who wanted to talk about Lynley. Before the reception was over, Ellie had compiled a list of older residents who remembered Lilly and who might be excellent sources of information for Carly’s book.

  “Are you having a good time?” Cameron’s arms slid around her on the dance floor and they swayed to the band’s rendition of “Wonderful Tonight.”

  “The best time ever.” Ellie leaned back to look into his eyes. “I feel … I don’t know … free, I guess is the right word.”

  “Free to be Ellie Chapman?”

  “Yes, but more than that.” She looked around the floor and saw several of her new friends dancing and chatting with their significant others. Steffie and Wade. Vanessa and Grady. Brooke and Jesse. “I feel like I’ve come home. I feel like I’m where I was meant to be all along.” She grinned. “Do I sound like Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz?”

  “I don’t know, was that the clicking of heels I just heard?”

  “Quite possibly.”

  They moved around the dance floor, cheek to cheek, and Ellie closed her eyes, just to savor the moment. She’d made a decision tonight, one she’d share with Cameron before the night was over, and she hoped he’d understand. She had only to find the right moment.