Secrets of the Lost Summer

by Carla Neggers

  She frowned at him as her dog trotted to her side. “Did you decide to pull off the road and wait out the freezing rain?”

  “No, although it sounds like a good idea.” With Buster visibly calmer, Dylan dared to lower his hand. “I’m your neighbor. You wrote to me about the junk in the yard.”

  “You’re Dylan McCaffrey?”

  “I am.”

  “I’m Olivia Frost. I thought—” Her frown deepened as her eyes narrowed on him. As cold as she had to be in her black corduroy shirt and jeans, she wasn’t shivering. “Are you sure you’re the right Dylan McCaffrey? I didn’t get in touch with the wrong one? You own this place?”

  “Right McCaffrey, and yes, I own this place.”

  He was obviously not even close to what his Knights Bridge neighbor had expected. Buster growled next to her. She made a little motion with her fingers and he quieted. She recovered her composure and nodded to the refrigerator in the muck. “Then you’ll be cleaning up this mess. Excellent. It’s turned into quite a junkyard, hasn’t it?”

  “No argument from me.”

  He glanced at the mess behind him. The cast-off washing machine was farther up the slope, in more prickly vines. Between it and the fridge were tires, hubcaps, a rotting rake with missing tines, bottles, beer cans and—oddly—what was left of a disintegrating twin mattress.

  “There was never a report of a break-in,” Olivia said. “We suspect kids partied out here and got carried away.”

  “Hell of a place to party.”

  She seemed to take no offense at his comment. “As I explained in my note, I live just down the road.”

  “The Farm at Carriage Hill,” Dylan said with a smile.

  “More like The Soon-to-be Farm at Carriage Hill.” She brushed raindrops off the end of her nose, then motioned vaguely up the tree-lined road, toward the village. “My family lives in town. They’ll be checking on me with this nasty weather. It’s not as remote out here as you might think. People come by at all hours.”

  Dylan realized her comment was a warning—a self-protective measure, given that the two of them were the only ones out on the isolated road. He didn’t want to unnerve her, but he didn’t think he looked particularly threatening standing there in the mud, mist and freezing rain, especially when she was the one with the big dog.

  Nonetheless, he made an effort to give her an innocuous smile. “You’re lucky to have family close by in this weather.”

  She returned his smile. “Spring can’t come soon enough, can it? As I mentioned in my note, I can help with the yard if you need it.” She glanced at his rented Audi parked on the partially washed-out driveway, then shifted back to him. “I also have access to a truck.”

  “Good to know.”

  “I should get Buster back to the house. You’re not…” Olivia grabbed her dog’s collar. “I thought you’d be older.”

  “You were expecting my father, Duncan McCaffrey,” Dylan said, figuring it was a good guess. “He died a few months after he bought this place. I didn’t know about the property and didn’t realize he’d left it to me until I received your note.”

  “Really? How could you not know?”

  “Long story. You’re not wearing a coat. Why don’t you take mine? You don’t want to get hypothermia—”

  “I’ll be fine. Thanks, though.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come inside and dry off? Looks as if I won’t be going anywhere for a while.”

  “That’s nice of you to offer, but Buster and I will be on our way. He’s not good with strangers.”

  Another warning, Dylan decided as he watched Olivia turn with her badass dog and head through the ice-covered patches of grass, snow, dead leaves, mud and muck. He noticed she was wearing close-fitting jeans and had mud splattered on her butt and the backs of her thighs. She must have tripped or stumbled in the freezing conditions while chasing Buster up the road.

  It was sunny and seventy-five degrees when Dylan had left Coronado yesterday.

  He hadn’t been kidding; he wasn’t going anywhere until the weather cleared, and he certainly wasn’t hauling junk. He didn’t entirely understand Olivia Frost’s fuss over her neighbor’s makeshift dump and overgrown yard. Her place wasn’t visible through the trees. It wasn’t as if she were right next door. Managing not to slip, he made his way to his nondescript little New England house. Loretta had given him the keys. He’d done a quick walk-through already. The front door was on the left side of a roofed porch and opened into an entry with green-carpeted stairs leading up to three small bedrooms and one bathroom on the second floor. To the right of the front door on the first floor was a living room with tall windows and a double doorway to an adjoining dining room with a bay window overlooking the side yard opposite the spot with the junk.

  Off the dining room was the kitchen, with doors to the cellar and backyard.

  That was it.

  The house was modestly furnished with a couch, a cupboard, a dining room table and chairs, and old player piano. Bookcases upstairs and in the dining room were filled, but otherwise, there were no personal belongings. It was as if Grace Webster had left behind whatever she couldn’t find room for in her new residence or just didn’t want or need.

  Dylan flipped a switch on a dusty overhead in the living room.

  The power was out.

  He sighed. “Great.”

  Naturally the house didn’t have a landline, and he couldn’t pick up a signal on his cell phone. He glanced out the front window and saw the power lines were drooping with the ice that had formed on them.

  What about his neighbor? The power had to be out at her place, too.

  Dylan wondered if he should check on her. Small towns looked after their own, didn’t they?

  Olivia Frost’s family and friends wouldn’t be able to get out here. No one and nothing would be moving in these conditions.

  Dylan buttoned his jacket and stepped back out to the porch. As far as he could tell, the precipitation was still freezing rain—it fell as rain and landed as ice, creating treacherous “black ice” conditions.

  “Miserable,” he said, pulling up the collar to his jacket as he ventured down the slippery porch steps.

  Slipping and sliding, Dylan made his way down the road to The Farm at Carriage Hill. Clear ice and a film of rainwater covered everything, including the sand that was supposed to help with traction.

  He heard a branch snap somewhere in the woods, then nothing.

  The silence was downright eerie.

  He reminded himself he liked ice. He had been a natural on skates. These weren’t rink conditions, but he was good at keeping his balance, or so he told himself as he considered that if he fell, he was on his own. No one would find him.

  Unless Buster sneaked out again, he thought with a grim smile, pressing on.

  Smoke was curling out of the chimney of his only neighbor’s cream-colored house. An ice-and-rain-coated walk took him to a wide stone landing, and he knocked on the front door, painted a rich blue. There was another door to his right, to a newer addition. This was obviously the oldest part of the house.

  “Miss Frost?” he called. “It’s Dylan McCaffrey.”

  She opened the door. Her hair was still damp, and her cheeks were pink from the cold—or warmth, Dylan realized suddenly. Even from his position on the landing, he could tell that her house was toasty. She obviously had a fireplace or woodstove going. Hence, the smoke coming out of the chimney.

  With his dripping coat and wet, muddy pants and shoes, he felt marginally ridiculous coming to her aid. It probably should have been the other way around. He was the unprepared stranger.

  “I thought I’d check on you,” he said. “The power’s out at my place.”

  “Here, too. I called the power company and notified them. Power’s out all over town. We’ll be among the last to get it restored.”

  “The power company doesn’t like you?”

  He was joking but Olivia gave him a cool look. “W
e’re on a sparsely populated dead-end road.”

  “It’s just the two of us out here in the sticks?”

  “I have my dog,” she said.

  “Buster. He’s—”

  “Asleep out by the fire at the moment. It wouldn’t take much to wake him.”

  Dylan wondered if his presence was making Olivia nervous. That wasn’t his intention, but he could be thickheaded at times, or so Noah Kendrick, various hockey coaches, teammates and an assortment of women had told him. Often.

  He attempted to look amiable and easygoing, not half frozen, hungry and out of his element. “If you need anything, I’m right up the road in the cold and the dark.”

  “You weren’t expecting to spend the night in Knights Bridge, were you?”

  “I thought I’d figure that out once I got here. I wasn’t counting on an ice storm.”

  “Do you have food? I have homemade parsnip soup and oatmeal bread from lunch that I’d be happy to send back with you.”

  Parsnip soup. He felt a fat, cold raindrop splatter on the back of his neck. “Thanks, but I brought some basic provisions with me, just in case.”

  “I remember Miss Webster had a woodstove. Did she leave it behind?”

  He hadn’t even considered a woodstove. “It’s in the dining room.”

  “You’ll want to check to make sure a bat or a squirrel hasn’t taken up residence in the chimney.” Olivia leaned out of her warm house and pointed a slender finger vaguely in the direction of her garage. “You can help yourself to some dry wood if you’d like.”

  Dylan figured he would only be able to carry enough for a few hours’ fire. There wasn’t much point. At the rate he was going, he’d die of hypothermia before he reached his house, anyway.

  It was only a slight exaggeration.

  He thanked his neighbor and noticed she didn’t press him to take wood or offer him a spare bedroom. “Thanks for stopping by,” she said politely, then shut the door quietly behind him.

  He half skated back to the road, which was even more treacherous. What had his father been thinking, buying a house in this backwater little town? There couldn’t be lost treasure in Knights Bridge, or even clues to lost treasure. Impossible.

  Then again, Duncan McCaffrey had been a man who relished taking on the impossible.

  When Dylan arrived back at his inherited house, he examined the woodstove that was hooked up in a corner in the dining room. It looked like an oil drum. It couldn’t be that efficient, but it was better than a cold night in the dark. He found dry wood in an old apple crate in the kitchen and hit the stovepipe chimney with a log to warn any critters before he lit matches.

  He wasn’t worried about a buildup of creosote. If the house burned down, so what?

  The wood was dry enough that he needed little kindling and only one match to get the fire started. As the flames took hold, he checked his cell phone and walked around the house until he got a weak signal by the back door.

  He dialed Noah in San Diego. “Tell me there’s been an emergency and you need me back there,” Dylan said.

  “All’s well. What’s happening in New England?”

  “Freezing rain. No heat, no electricity. I’ve turned into Bob Cratchit.”

  “What’s the house like?”

  “It’s a dump.”

  “Have you met Olivia Frost?”

  “I have.” Dylan pictured her pink cheeks and hazel eyes. “She’s warm. I wonder if she has a generator.”

  “Not sharing her heat?”

  It wasn’t a bad quip for Noah, who wasn’t known for that particular variety of verbal quickness. “She offered me cordwood. I’m not going anywhere for a while. We’re in the middle of an ice storm.”

  Noah burst out laughing.

  Their call got dropped just as the ceiling in the kitchen started to leak.

  Dylan slid his phone back in his pocket and watched water pool on the wide-plank floor.

  “Well, hell.”

  What could he do? He was stuck here.

  He hoped Grace Webster had left behind a bucket.

  Four

  Olivia’s house had come with a generator for nights just such as this one, but she only turned it on for an hour before she decided to wait out the power outage. She had little food to worry about spoiling, and she didn’t like generators. In storms, people too often misused them and died of carbon monoxide poisoning. She had dutifully read all the instructions and had her father do a dry run with her, but the thing still made her nervous. She wanted to be positive she knew what she was doing before she ran it for any length of time.

  As she snuggled under a soft wool throw in front of the brick fireplace, she told herself it was decent of Dylan McCaffrey to check on her. He hadn’t meant anything by his visit except to make sure she was all right in the midst of a nasty ice storm.

  The wind picked up, and a spruce tree swayed outside the front window, casting strange shadows in the living room. She heard the crack of a branch breaking off in the old sugar maple in the side yard. Right now, the branches and power lines were weighed down with ice, but once the temperature rose above freezing, the ice would melt as if it had never been. Spring would resume its steady march toward daffodils, tulips and lilacs in bloom.

  The fire glowed, the only light in the darkening room. A chunk of burning wood fell from the grate, startling her, but she quickly told herself it was nothing. She had lived alone in her Boston apartment, but she had to admit that living alone in her antique house in Knights Bridge was taking some getting used to. The creaks, the groans, the shadows, the dark nights—anything could fire up her imagination. At first, she’d slept with her iPod on, playing a selection of relaxing music, but she was beginning to develop a routine and was getting used to the sounds of the old house and country road.

  Tightening her throw around her, she turned her attention back to her neighbor. Elly O’Dunn must have run into Duncan McCaffrey, Dylan’s father. When Olivia had written to Dylan, she hadn’t expected him to show up in Knights Bridge, and she certainly hadn’t expected to meet him the way she had, muddy, yelling in panic for her wandering dog.

  She especially hadn’t expected the new owner of Grace Webster’s house to be a man close to her own age, with a sexy grin, sexy broad shoulders and sexy black-lashed deep blue eyes.

  The McCaffreys had no ties to Knights Bridge that Olivia knew of. Because of the massive Quabbin Reservoir, her hometown was out-of-the-way, not an easy commute to any of the major cities in Massachusetts. The University of Massachusetts Amherst, Mount Holyoke College, Hampshire College, Smith College and Amherst College—the Five Colleges—were a more reasonable commute. A number of people from town worked at the different schools. She had no idea what Dylan McCaffrey did for a living but supposed he could be a college professor.

  She pictured him standing in the snow and mud.

  He wasn’t a college professor. She knew some rugged-looking professors, but Dylan McCaffrey didn’t strike her as someone who could sit in a library carrel for more than ten minutes before he needed to get moving.

  Olivia heard a gust of wind beat against the windows. The truth was, she hadn’t given her neighbor much thought once she wrote to him. She just wanted his place cleaned up. She had so much to do before her mother-daughter tea. She swore she had lists of lists of things to do to get ready.

  She wished the power would come back on before nightfall. She didn’t look forward to sitting there in the pitch-dark.

  Her landline rang, startling her. Buster barked but settled down, spent from his romp up the road. She reached for the phone on an end table, a flea-market find that she planned to paint. It was on one of her lists, she thought as she picked up and said hello.

  “Hey, kid,” her father said. “You and Buster okay out there? Everything’s at a standstill but we’ll be through the worst of it soon.”

  He didn’t sound concerned, and Olivia assumed that her mother had put him up to calling. “The power’s out but we’r
e fine here.”

  “Are you using the generator?”

  “I did for a while but not right now. It’s okay. Buster and I are nice and cozy by the fire.”

  “Cozy. Right. If you need anything, call. I’ll find a way out there.”

  He would, too. Olivia debated a moment, then said, “My neighbor’s here.”

  “Neighbor?”

  “Dylan McCaffrey. He’s the guy who owns Grace Webster’s old place.”

  “I thought he was dead.”

  “You did? I should have asked you about him. That was his father.”

  “I met him a couple of years ago. Ran into him at Hazelton’s.” Hazelton’s was the general store in the village. “I didn’t ask why he wanted to buy a house in town. Why’s his son here?”

  “I wrote to him about the junk in his yard. He lives in San Diego. I didn’t expect him to actually come out here. I offered to do the work. I figured he’d jump at the chance since no one’s touched the place in two years.”

  There was a moment’s silence on the other end of the phone. “I hope he doesn’t mind freezing rain,” her father said finally.

  After she hung up, Olivia got out a sketch pad and colored pencils and, curled up in front of the fire, worked on a color scheme for the interior of her house. She had narrowed down her choices to three different palettes. For each, she drew a large rectangle, then drew smaller rectangles of various sizes inside it. She filled in the large rectangle with her main color and the smaller rectangles with secondary colors and accents. She had decided against a traditional New England look, as much as she loved it. She wasn’t sure exactly what colors she wanted, but she definitely wanted a palette that was lively, vibrant and welcoming, with a touch of rustic charm.

  Intrigued by the play of the flames in the fading natural light, she chose a golden yellow lightened with white for her first large rectangle. For the smaller rectangles, she used two shades of aquamarine, a watery blue, a creamy linen, a splash of red. She wanted to choose colors and paint finishes that worked with the sharp differences in New England seasons—from the frigid temperatures of winter to the hot, humid conditions of the dog days of summer. She would have to pay attention to the orientation of her different rooms. An eastern room that received the cool light of morning might need a different shade or tone than a western room that received strong afternoon light.