Refuge on Leebrick (The Hills of Burlington Book 4) Read online

  “Because?” Rob pressed. His voice quiet but determined.

  Carrie sighed deeply, maybe there was a better way to explain. “I talked with your Mom a few times through the years. I won’t say we were buddies by any stretch of the imagination but we talked enough for me to know that no matter who she was, how she lived, or the choices she made, she loved you. She might not have always done things as I would have, but she loved you. It came through every time she talked about you. And in later years I think she knew that in some odd way we shared you. I know that sounds utterly stupid and hard to figure but your Mom and I made peace many years ago because in the end it came down to doing the best both of us could for you. She knew that. I knew it. And because of all that when I say I’m sorry she died I mean it. It’s not just pithy words thrown together to comply with social conventions it’s because I really am sorry she’s gone.” She took another deep sigh to get the rest of it out. “And while I know I’m not nor will I ever be your mother I can’t think of anything that makes me happier than to be what I think she would want me to be. Someone to help you through this when she can’t.”

  Rob closed his eyes. He had a lot to think about but in that moment he just wanted to get past the grief, to be able to somehow press it away as he continually seemed to have to do. “Okay.”

  Because she heard the shakiness in that single word Carrie responded in the only way she knew how. She moved forward. “Good.” She grabbed his hand as she stood. “Come with me.” She led him down the steps and almost dragged him behind her around to the side of the house.

  “Why?” He probably should have asked where but his mind was still as befuddled as it was the moment he’d looked into the bedroom that was more than anything he’d ever had.

  “I’m going to show you why you want the basement and then I’m going to show you all the reasons you want to consider the attic.” And she did. She led him in through the back door of the house that opened up to a small mudroom that had two doors to choose from. She explained the layout, pointing as she did, telling him how the one to the right led into the kitchen and the one directly ahead opened up to the stairs leading down to the basement. “You’d have a completely separate entrance whenever you wanted to use it. I think the key for the front and back door are the same but if not it doesn’t matter because you’d have both in that instance.” She led him down to the basement. Then several minutes later, with the two men following quietly behind them they trekked up to the attic to check it out as well.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Mary laid out photo-copies of the letter in her great-grandmother’s writing on the kitchen table for both Carrie and Casey to read. After no little bit of debate with herself she’d decided against bringing the actual letter with her and instead took photos of it with her phone before leaving the Summer Street house that morning. Somehow it hadn’t seemed right removing it from its place in the small room where it had been hidden away for decades…almost a full century. She waited silently as her cousins leaned over the table, their heads nearly touching as they read the long ago written words from their great-grandmother. Nothing she saw in their faces surprised her. She would bet good money it was like seeing her own expression as she’d read through it that first time. That what she saw in their faces had been the same as on her own. Shock and an overwhelming sense of awe.

  “I’m not certain what to say let alone what to think,” Carrie said softly. There was a slight tremor in her voice after reading the words still sitting before her on the table. She looked at her cousin. “You dreamed about this?”

  “I’m not certain you could actually call it a dream,” Mary said hesitantly. She wasn’t certain what else to say as she had no idea what else you could call it but it hadn’t felt altogether like a dream…not exactly.

  “Was it about the letter?” Casey asked this time as she put together a pot of coffee. The very fact Mary didn’t have one already going told her just how much finding this letter had upset her. Or something.

  “No,” Mary began and then paused. “I’m not even certain it was about the book that I found it tucked behind. But as soon as I got there that’s what I was looking for. I knew exactly which book I was looking for and where it was.” She pulled out the chair closest to her and sat down at her kitchen table. Barely noticed when Carrie pushed the plate filled with chocolate chip cookies in front of her.

  “When you left here this morning what were you thinking?” Carrie asked. “What made you decide to go over to the Summer Street house to start with?”

  “Great-grandmother,” Mary answered immediately. She looked up at both her cousins. Knew they were each in their way trying to help her to put it together in her mind. “I woke up feeling like there was something she needed…wanted me to do.” She stopped, looked at them with more questions in her expression than answers. Lifted her hands palms up almost in a gesture of defeat yet over what she had no clue. “It wasn’t a dream, at least not one I have any memory of, it was more of just a…..” she searched for the word that eluded her to explain how she’d felt that morning when she’d woken up.

  “A sense of knowing?” Casey asked into the silence that had fallen in the room.

  “Maybe.” Mary closed her eyes wearily. She knew what Casey was thinking of. Their great-grandmother’s own words written in her own hand in her journal that they’d found months before. Not in English. And not easily translated. The closest they’d been able to come to the term she’d written down and that she knew each of them was now thinking of was “a knowing.” She written too that it was passed on from generation to generation…from mothers to daughters…for longer than time could tell.

  “Maybe…just maybe,” Carrie began, wanting more than anything to erase the worry from Mary’s expression. “Maybe if we go with that, at least for the moment…”

  “It’s not like each of us hasn’t experienced something along the lines of a knowing sensation over these last couple of months or so…probably even long before that. So I think going on the assumption that we’re able to unexpectedly sense things others can’t or don’t want to isn’t too far out of the realm of our personal reality.” Casey said in a way that broached little argument.

  “This is true,” Carrie agreed as she gave her cousin a look that said loudly…tread gently. “Given that, maybe the same could be said for how you knew exactly what you were looking for once you got here.”

  “And knowing just where it was,” Casey added.

  Mary ran her hand over the copy of her great-grandmother’s letter. She had more than just a suspicion that it had been written not too long before her death. How must it have felt, she wondered, to put so much faith in something that was to happen decades after you were gone. She sighed. Faith. Wasn’t that so much of what all of this was about?

  “There’s more.” She looked into their faces. Almost laughed at the look on Casey’s face. “Not more letters,” she said. “My new boarder showed up while I was there.”

  “Boarder?” Both asked at almost the same time.

  “A friend of Jake’s.” She looked at Casey, wondering with her years spent in the news industry if she might know him, or know of him, as well. “Tom Holland.” She saw the recognition come into Casey’s eyes but continued on knowing if her cousin had anything to add she would soon enough. “He needed a place to stay and it’s an idea I’ve been toying with for a while now.” She shrugged. Then pushed forward with what had been more than a suspicion since she’d left him at the house where he had already been making plans to move what little he’d brought with him into the room he’d chosen the night before. “Remember Jake’s expression when he first walked into the room?”

  “You mean especially since it’s not supposed to effect men…only the daughters down through the family?” Casey asked dryly.

  “That too. Well,” Mary watched both cousins closely. “Tom had almost the exact same expression on his face before he got halfway into the room.” She thought back, pictured t
hat moment in her mind. “He hid it well. I didn’t think at the time why he would bother but that’s a thought too.”

  Casey wasn’t anyone’s example of being slow off the mark. She picked up immediately on what she figured was at least her cousin’s initial suspicion. “You think he’s somehow related to us.”

  “Maybe.” Mary let the possibility swirl in her mind. “Probably,” she said more firmly as if coming to a decision within her own thoughts. “And it would likely be as much of a surprise to him as to us.” She looked at both cousins. “But I know this. He sensed something when he walked in that room. It was like seeing Jake’s expression all over again. And we know how hard it hit him. All that hit him. Whether it was supposed to or not.”

  “So we check out his family genealogy,” Casey said easily. “If he and Jake are good friends then it shouldn’t bother either of them if they turn out to be cousins ten times removed or some such thing.” She was already planning on how she would do the research to find out if that was just the case.

  “It feels….” Mary paused, uncertain exactly how it felt.

  “Nosy?” Carrie supplied the word that had immediately come to her.

  “Nosy is hiring an investigator to dig up all and anything on him,” Casey replied into the void of silence that hung over the cozy kitchen at Carrie’s simple word. “For that matter for less than a hundred bucks we could do just that all on our own online. What I’m suggesting is we dig around one of the genealogical sites and see if we’re connected.” She smiled at both cousins. “In a distant family sort of way, that’s all.”

  “It still seems a bit…” Mary stopped at the brisk knock on her front door. With a shrug she left both cousins to answer it. When she swung it open without looking first she decided that if there was ever a day to fit the definition for karma it would be this one. “Tom.” She knew both women in the kitchen were most likely rolling their eyes. “Funny thing,” she said with a smile that met his. “We were just talking about you.”

  “My ears weren’t feeling any different than usual,” he said lightly as he stepped into the room and followed her towards the back of the small house.

  “Tom.” Casey stood and crossed over to where he had stopped in the doorway. Any trepidation she might have felt was erased by the easy smile that lit up his face when he saw her.

  “I wondered when I might run into you. I hear congratulations are in order.” He returned her quick hug then set her back from him but still held lightly on to her arms. “You never change.” He shook his head, the smile still on his face. “I imagine Jake’s happy not to have to keep constant tabs on his little sister as much as he used to.”

  “I imagine you’re pleased I won’t be dogging your heels anymore,” she returned right back at him. She slipped her arm around him, wondered at the weight she realized almost immediately that he’d lost, then introduced him to the other woman in the room he hadn’t yet met. “Carrie, this is Tom Holland. He spent years avoiding my unfaltering devotion and being unbelievably kind in letting me down gently more than once.” She smiled at the undisguised snort that came from the man she spoke of. “Tom, my cousin Carrie who has just recently married the man next door and is in line for congratulations as well.”

  Tom reached out to take the hand that was offered. “Congratulations. But I have to say Casey is being far too kind. I recall a time when I told her she needed to play with boys her own age. Her response at the time wasn’t anything close to what you just heard.”

  “I was barely twenty.” Casey shook her head at the memories. “I had the biggest crush on this man who never even noticed me until I practically forced the issue.”

  “Sweetie, any man would have had to be brain dead not to notice you. But you were almost half a dozen years younger and the baby sister of one of my best friends. And best friend or not he would have knocked me flat had I thought or treated you any way other than his baby sister.”

  “Obviously the two of you know each other,” Mary interrupted the back and forth as she desperately struggled to contain her laughter. “Casey, considering our earlier conversation just before Tom got here and how well you know him, why don’t we include him in our suppositions.”

  “Sure.” Casey turned her fun-filled eyes back to the man still standing just inside the small kitchen. “It turns out that we could actually end up being…” she paused searching for exactly which term to use when the man she spoke to filled it in for her.

  “Kissing cousins?” Tom said into the silence not at all surprised when three sets of eyes turned on him. He shrugged, gave Mary a look that she interpreted easily and lifted her hand. He found a mug in the cupboard she pointed to then poured himself a cup of the coffee he’d caught scent of almost from the moment he entered the house.

  “How did you know?” Casey was the one to finally break the silence.

  “There’s a story that has come down through my family. I never paid much attention to it other than the general gist of it, mostly because it was all about the women of the family and….well it just never really interested me that much.” He turned around with the cup in his hand, now filled with steaming hot coffee and leaned easily against the edge of the counter. Three sets of eyes were still focused on him, each waiting for what he had to say next. Casey’s were still filled with the laughter he’d always found there but like the other two she was intently waiting for what he had to say next.

  “But I remembered enough.” He looked past the women sitting around the table to the window behind them. Wondered if this was where he’d been heading all along without ever knowing. He turned his gaze back to the table, looked directly at his new landlady. “When I walked into that room today it was almost as if something hit me. But not in the physical sense. I’m not even certain I could begin to explain how it felt but it was strong and not easily brushed off as something I imagined.” He took a couple of big sips of the hot coffee, happy at the strength of it as it helped to clear the remainder of the cobwebs from his tired mind. “As interesting as that was something else was even more so. I suddenly remembered the story I had mostly paid little attention to. By the time I walked out of that room I remembered it almost word for word. I’m not certain whose words but the memory is there.” He paused then looked at Casey. Knowing her best as he did he knew she would understand. “Not to mention a whole lot of other memories that I had no knowledge of before I walked into that room.”

  “Tom…” Casey began tentatively only to be interrupted before she could get very far.

  “It threw me off.” He smiled slightly as he watched their expressions shift from questioning to speculation. “This is by no means a critique on your gender in any way, but I’d always heard it went from daughter to daughter. Pretty much, no men allowed. A very important point my sisters always enjoyed pressing home at every possible opportunity.”

  “Probably part of why you never paid much attention to the story to start with.” Casey offered with a smile. She knew his sisters.

  “Very possibly,” Tom agreed. “Anyway, the first thing I did when I got back to the hotel was to crank up my laptop and do a little research. Signed up with one of the genealogy sites and it didn’t take long to figure out that we spring from the same ancestor about half a dozen or so generations back.” He watched the silent looks that said plenty without a single word spoken, silently shared between the three women, a communication that only came with time and a deep sense of connection. Was this what he was looking for? “I get the feeling I’m not telling any of you anything that surprises you.”

  Before any one of them could respond another voice came from the direction of the front door.

  “Mary, you here?”

  “In the kitchen, Jake.” Mary glanced in Casey’s direction. The barely noticeable shake of her cousin’s head told her she hadn’t spoken to her brother. His unannounced visit wasn’t unusual. The timing was interesting. Jake rarely left the newspaper before early evening and often far later than that.
She watched him come in and was more than slightly surprised when his attention honed in almost immediately to the only other man in the room.

  “Got your message. What’s up?” Jake took in his friend’s casual and very relaxed slouch where he now sat in one of Mary’s fairly comfortable kitchen chairs. He looked more relaxed than he’d seen him since his arrival…even the other night when both had been telling Beth some fairly exaggerated tales of their youthful adventures….such as they were.