Part 23 (2/2)
”Yet that seems pretty reasonable,” Sam added, ”since he said he had to write a sermon.”
”True.” Jamie broke off a piece of her cookie and fed it to Max. She brushed the crumbs from her hands. Gracie bit her tongue as they fell on the floor. ”We can also say with pretty much certainty that he lived in Boston, since that's where all the postcards were mailed from.”
”Too bad he didn't have an unusual name like Hezekiah or Thurston,” Caroline said, ”That would have made it easier for us to try and find mention of him in Boston historical records. We'd never in a million years be able to nail down a William.”
”I hate to be a nag,” Gracie reminded them, ”but none of us has time to do a lot of historical research on anything right now.” She was tired of this never-ending talk of Hannah and William. ”Our number-one priority is getting the inn up and running by the middle of May. I know a lot has been accomplished, but there's still so much more.”
”We have the logo from the designer, and it looks great,” Caroline pointed out. ”And the wallpapering downstairs is finished.”
”But we have a whole lot of furniture to reupholster and most everything to do in the guest rooms,” Gracie said, hoping she could get her point across. ”And let's not forget, we have to have almost everything ready by Christmas. I want Brandon and Stacy and the kids to see it finished. I don't want them to think we made the wrong decision to buy the inn.”
Sam put down her scissors. She took the pins out that she'd held clamped between her teeth and stuck them in her pin cus.h.i.+on. ”You know what I think?”
”What?” Gracie asked, knowing Sam was trying to change the subject.
”I think we need a break.”
”I couldn't agree more,” Jamie said. ”In fact, I know exactly what we should do.”
”Which is?” Gracie asked. She wanted to continue on with the upholstery projects, but was sure she'd be outvoted.
”I want to take a look at the places William sketched on the postcards.”
”We've been by each one dozens of times,” Gracie said. ”I don't see how paying each one a visit will help figure out if there's a secret code hidden in the messages.”
”Maybe not,” Jamie said, ”but it might put all of us in a different mind-set. Make us think a little more creatively. Besides, it will help me with my paper. What do you say?”
”It's educational,” Sam said. ”How can you say no?”
”You know me,” Caroline said, ”I'm always open to a bit of sightseeing.”
Always open to a bit of goofing off is more like it, Gracie thought. But maybe she needed to goof off a bit too. Life really was too short to always be the stuffed s.h.i.+rt in the family.
Any luck?” Sam asked Caroline and Gracie when they climbed back into Sam's van. They'd split up, with Gracie and Caroline visiting the Unitarian church, which had been sketched on the earliest postmarked postcard they'd found, while Jamie and Sam had visited the Methodist church a few blocks away. They had been hoping to accomplish as much as they could in a short amount of time.
”Not really,” Caroline said, putting on her seat belt. ”They have records going back as far as 1808, but we didn't find anything of use. No mention of Hannah Elliott or Hannah Montague. No Jedediah, none of his family members, and no minister named William. How about the two of you? Did you find anything?”
Sam shook her head. ”Not a thing, other than several very helpful people. No Jedediah Montague. No Hannah. No Hettie. No Elliott listed as a congregant, and the only nineteenth-century pastor whose first name was William died from consumption in 1862.”
”Please tell me you don't think we should visit every church on the island and look at their historical records,” Gracie said. Caroline could tell the hunt for information about the elusive William and Hannah was wearing Gracie out.
”There were a lot of churches here in the late 1800s,” Sam said. ”And we don't know how many have old records.”
”Personally,” Gracie added, ”I think we should a.s.sume that William simply drew pictures of places that intrigued him.”
Caroline knew Gracie didn't want to be out on this seemingly impossible mission. She wanted to be back at the inn working. Caroline couldn't help but wonder how much of that had to do with her drive to stay focused, and how much had to do with guilt, with wanting to get most everything done before she returned home, so most of the burden would be taken off Sam's and Caroline's shoulders.
They really had needed a break, though, and Caroline, for one, wasn't about to make Gracie feel guilty when she returned home. Something told her that Brandon, bless his heart, was making his mom feel guilty enough about being here and leaving him and Stacy in the lurch when they needed a babysitter.
”So, where do we go next?” Sam asked.
”The Quaker Meeting House.”
Visiting each building or location William had sketched on his postcards had seemed like such a good idea in the beginning, but as they went from place to place-the Old Mill, Brant Point Lighthouse-they began to feel like they were spinning their wheels. The only thing they learned by visiting the cemetery where Jedediah Montague was buried was that his grave was next to that of his first wife, Hettie, and his sons, Lachlan and Fitzwalter. There was no sign of Hannah's grave anywhere nearby.
They sat in the Brant Point Light parking lot. The structure was blindingly white against the clear blue autumn sky. A few tourists milled around them. ”You know,” Jamie said, looking over the chart she'd printed out, ”we-or I-could be overthinking all of this. The postcard with the church sketched on the front was postmarked April 20, 1880. I probably should have looked at church records to see if anything significant happened right around that date.”
”You mean something like a robbery?” Sam asked. ”Remember s.h.i.+rley's telling us that there had been rumors that Hannah was a thief? Maybe she and William were up to no good, and-”
”I can't believe that about Hannah,” Caroline said, interrupting her sister. ”I just don't see her doing anything illegal.”
”We don't know anything at all about her,” Gracie pointed out. ”There are no pictures, no diaries, nothing but a few old dolls and some postcards.”
”And the sampler.” Sam closed up another b.u.t.ton on her light coat. ”And her hymnal with that horrid message from her father written inside.”
”I think they were old friends, and William was trying to keep up their friends.h.i.+p,” Caroline said.
”Via very cryptic messages?” Sam asked. ”That's just too strange, Caroline. There has to be more to it.”
But what?
”I think I might have the Packard running by Christmas,” George said, taking a second helping of the mashed potatoes. Sam had made them with garlic, heaps of b.u.t.ter, real cream, bits of bacon, and sunflower seeds, and they were decadent and delightful. ”The engine's in a lot better shape than I thought, and I ordered a new alternator while you four were out playing sleuth.”
”Failed sleuths,” Gracie said. She wished they'd never discovered that first postcard. ”It seems that the more we think about all our so-called clues, the more questions we end up with.”
”How's the meat loaf?” Sam asked, serving Jamie another slice of the savory gourmet version of the traditional comfort-food favorite. She seemed to be steering the conversation away from Hannah before Gracie's irritation boiled over into something more.
”Such as?” George asked, ignoring Sam's question.
”Well, we're a.s.suming-and it seems to be a pretty good a.s.sumption-that William was a man of the cloth,” Gracie said, trying to remember all their questions. ”Would he travel from Boston to Nantucket for cloak-and-dagger meetings with a married woman?”
”She was married when he first started writing the postcards. She was widowed later on,” Caroline reminded her. ”William may or may not have been a minister at one time. Why he wrote, we may never know, but I'm beginning to think he wrote to console her, that there was nothing romantic involved.”
”Why do you say that? That's a big stretch of the imagination,” Gracie said. ”Think of some of the wording he used in his postcards. 'Once more with great pleasure I embrace a few moments to write you a short letter.'”
”That could very easily have been written by a minister to a former congregant,” Sam said.
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