Part 8 (1/2)
”Yes,” Deborah said. ”An apartment actually, and the stairs are outside. And-so the story goes-there's a secret entrance to a hidden room in here somewhere, although where it could be is beyond me. Of course, as I said before, tales like that give the inn a little more mystique, a little more charm. They draw guests to a B and B, which, again, makes the place more valuable.”
Deborah was doing her best to sell the inn. Sam jotted down another entry in her notebook, yet another reason for the owners to accept a much lower price: Ghosts? Although intriguing, they could scare off some guests.
Caroline pulled a box down from one of the stacks, opened it up, and she and Sam peered inside to find an endless number of old National Geographic magazines. ”These are from back in the thirties.” Caroline grinned. ”So much has changed since then.”
”Think they're worth anything?” Sam asked, making another note to check out the magazines on eBay to see what kind of prices sellers were getting.
”Depends on who's interested,” Deborah stated. ”I see them in antique stores quite often. They'd also look nice on the library shelves. Something for the inn's guests to peruse on a stormy day.”
”Sam! Caroline!” Gracie called out from somewhere deep inside the carriage house. ”Come see what I've found.”
Squeezing through the boxes and inhaling mold and mildew and who knows what else, made breathing downright difficult. Sam coughed and sputtered as she followed Caroline and the sound of Gracie's voice.
Suddenly, Caroline stopped dead in her tracks. ”Oh my!”
”What is it?” Sam asked, but Caroline and Gracie didn't need to answer. Over Caroline's shoulder, Sam saw it-an old car. A very big, old car.
Gracie tugged the cloth partially covering it the rest of the way off, revealing empty mousetraps atop the cherry red hood. The paint had been dulled by time, but Sam imagined it would s.h.i.+ne bright with a lot of Turtle Wax. The person who'd stored the car must have known what they were doing, because it seemed to be in impeccable condition-no gashes or gouges and no apparent rust on the body, although there was no telling what it might look like underneath. ”Does this come with the inn too?” Sam shouted back at Deborah, who hadn't ventured inside.
”Everything inside the inn, everything inside the carriage house, and everything on the property is part of the price.”
Sam wondered if Deborah even knew there was an old car hidden away. The tires were flat, but with their wide white sidewalls, they looked original. There was no telling if the car would run, or if it even had an engine or anything at all under the hood, but what a find. Their dad had always loved old cars. He might have even ridden in or owned one like this once upon a time.
”Do you know what kind of car it is?” Sam whispered to Gracie and Caroline.
”Packard,” Caroline said, using the hem of her s.h.i.+rt to rub away the built-up grime on the logo above the oversized front fender. ”Can you see through the windows, Gracie? Does the upholstery look good?”
”The gla.s.s is a bit murky, but everything appears to be in good condition, even the leather upholstery.”
”No rat nests?” Sam asked. ”No other creatures living inside?”
”Not that I can see,” Gracie said. If this car was in decent condition, Sam suspected it could finance a year's college tuition at a good school. If they bought the inn, there was no telling how much they could make selling off this, and a lot of the antiques. They could then furnish their B and B with pieces that would be easier to clean and would look fresh and up-to-date. But then the inn would lose too much of its charm. Its magic.
”Caroline! Sam! Gracie! I need to get going,” Deborah called out to them. ”Next time you can look till your heart's content, but right now, I need to lock up.”
”Be there in just a minute,” Sam hollered back. Next time. Somehow, Deborah seemed certain they would be back. And Sam was beginning to think that maybe she was right.
There must have been a hundred or more seagulls circling the docks when the ferry from Hyannis pulled into the harbor on Friday. From where Sam stood in the waiting area, she could see the pa.s.sengers packed in like sardines, eager to disembark after the hour-long ride from the mainland to the island. She was even more eager to hit the shops, the restaurants, and the beaches with Jamie.
As long as Jamie was up to it. She'd halfway expected her daughter to call last night, but she hadn't, and now she antic.i.p.ated a tearful reunion. If Cory had broken Jamie's heart, Sam just might have to hunt him down in Manhattan and wring his neck.
But for now, all Sam wanted to do was hug her daughter. Sam shaded her eyes with her right hand, watching the ferry's pa.s.sengers disembark. Slowly but surely, the crowd thinned, and at long last she spotted her daughter. Jamie was tall like her dad, the man who'd turned out to be far too controlling for Sam to stay married to. He'd disappeared from Jamie's life when she was barely a year old, and Sam had played mom and dad ever since.
Jamie's strawberry-blonde ponytail bounced up and down as she made her way off the ferry, carrying a duffel bag, a backpack slung over her shoulders, and wearing jeans and a fitted cotton top.
”Hey, Mom!”
Jamie had her arms around Sam in an instant. She dropped her duffel bag on the ground at her feet so she could use both arms. She hugged Sam extra tight. That's when Sam first heard Jamie sniff. She held her daughter out to arm's length and saw the tears in her red-rimmed eyes.
”Oh, honey, I knew something was wrong.” Sam smoothed away Jamie's tears. ”Let's get in the car, and you can tell me what it is.”
Rather than head for their cottage, which was only a few blocks away, they rode in near silence for three miles and pulled into the parking lot at Dionis Beach. The early afternoon sky was a clear, breathtaking sapphire, and the silver sand was dotted with colorful towels and striped umbrellas. Children ran up and down the sh.o.r.e, and lifeguards in tall stands watched over the people playing in the surf. Arm in arm, they walked down to the sh.o.r.e, where the water was calm and they were sheltered by dunes.
Jamie sat at the base of a dune, where sea gra.s.s grew all around, and hugged her knees close to her. She looked out at the westerly sky and the colorful sails on the boats lazing on the water. Sam sat beside her, quiet, waiting for Jamie to open up.
”How's your research going?” Sam said to fill the silence.
Jamie acted as if she hadn't even heard. She was focused on the horizon.
”I called it quits with Cory yesterday,” Jamie finally said.
That wasn't exactly what Sam had expected to hear, but she was relieved. Thrilled. Yet so, so sorry for her daughter's pain. ”Want to tell me what happened?”
”It all seems rather trivial now.”
”Breakups are never trivial, honey.”
”Cory and I were supposed to get together for dinner the other night, but an hour before, he canceled. Apparently he'd been invited to a networking event with one of his friends from law school, and some people were going to be there from a firm he really wants to work for.”
”I thought he had a job lined up?” Sam was fuzzy on the details, but she thought Jamie had said he would be working for a small firm after he pa.s.sed the bar.
”He does.” Jamie pulled off her sandal and buried her toes in the sand. ”But this is a big corporate firm with offices all over the world. Apparently if he got a job there, he could work on bigger, more important cases.”
”And make more money.” That seemed to be what motivated most of Cory's decisions, from what she'd seen.
”Exactly. And I guess I was just tired of coming last in his life. He a.s.sumed it was okay to cancel on me because I was less important than his career. I'd been feeling like that for a while, and this was just the last straw.” Jamie turned her head and looked at her mom. ”So last night, I told him we were finished.”
”I'm sorry, honey.” Sam tried to choose her words carefully. She didn't want to make Jamie feel any worse than she already did. ”But I think you did the right thing.”
Jamie nodded. ”I can't believe I put up with everything for so long. He sometimes canceled on me to play handball with the guys, or forgot about our dates because he got so wrapped up in his studying. He criticized my apartment and the fact that I lived in Brooklyn over and over, and laughed about it in front of me and his friends. But the other night was the last straw.
”I'd been telling myself that things would get better once Cory pa.s.sed the bar, but the other day I realized things weren't going to get better.”
”It must have been hard to do it.”
”Sometimes the right thing is hard.”
”That's true.” Sam linked her arm through Jamie's and looked out at the ocean. ”How'd you get to be so smart?”
”I always figured I'd been switched at birth,” Jamie said, and laughed. Sam tossed a handful of sand at her.
”Just don't ever sell yourself short, Jamie. You deserve someone far, far better than Cory could ever dream of being. It's his loss that he didn't see that.”
Jamie drew in a deep breath, and another tear slid down her face. ”I know I did the right thing, Mom, but”-she let out a sigh-”it hurts. A lot.”
”Then you've come to the right place. We'll have popcorn tonight, with loads of b.u.t.ter; we'll take a long walk on the beach. And Gracie insists we watch another Cary Grant movie tonight-Bringing Up Baby.”
”Is that the one with Katharine Hepburn and the leopard?”
Sam nodded. ”And Cary running around in Hepburn's silky nightgown. You've got to love a guy like that. One who can make you laugh.”