Carolina Mist Read online

  Not a very gracious way to treat Leila’s best friend. And Leila did promise Belle she could stay in that house.

  Forever. She sighed as she pulled into the driveway. I will be in Primrose forever.

  But that’s just what you prayed for, years ago, her little inner voice piped up mischievously.

  That was then, and this is now, she growled back. That was when I was young and didn’t know any better.

  And when you were in love with Alex Kane. The little voice pricked at her.

  I was sixteen years old, she grumbled. What does a sixteen-year-old know about love?

  Seems that was as close as you ever really got, the voice jeered.

  “Enough,” she snarled aloud through clenched teeth, silencing the little whisperings inside her head as she got out of the car and slammed the door vigorously.

  Forcing a cheerful tone, she called to Belle from the kitchen.

  “What in heaven’s name are you doing, Abigail?” Belle watched in alarm as Abby pitched the old toaster out the back door and into the open trash can at the bottom of the steps.

  “Reducing our risk of death by fire,” Abby told Belle, handing her the box containing the new appliance.

  “Oh my, isn’t that handsome?” Belle admired the new toaster.

  Abby drew the new coffee maker from the bag. “And something to make my morning coffee in.”

  “Coffee is for heathens,” Belle sniffed. “Ladies drink tea.”

  Abby laughed as she plugged in the coffee pot and ran water through the top. She fitted the basket with a white paper filter, measured and poured in some ground coffee beans, and turned on the switch. Belle watched in amazement as the coffee began to drip down into the pot.

  “Why, I never,” she declared, hands on her hips. “What will they think of next?”

  “Belle, meet Mr. Coffee.” She grinned. “Would you like to try some?”

  “Certainly not.” Belle filled the kettle for her tea. “But I’d surely like to try out that new toaster. Perhaps we can have an early lunch, and you can tell me about your meeting with Mr. Tillman.”

  Belle was delighted with her lightly toasted bread. She spread cream cheese and cherry preserves on first one, then a second piece, proclaiming the results “Perfect!”

  Abby was pleased to have given Belle a treat that was so highly regarded.

  “I have another surprise,” she told Belle when they had finished eating.

  “You don’t,” Belle protested, her eyes dancing with anticipation. “Truly, Abigail, this has been a day of surprises.”

  “Well, as the expression goes, you ain’t seen nothing yet. I’ll be right back.”

  True to her word, Abby was back in a flash, lugging her portable television, which she set on the floor beside the table that held Leila’s old black-and-white set.

  “Oh, my goodness,” exclaimed Belle. “Would you just look at the size of that screen!”

  Abby smiled as she removed the old television and replaced it with her own. When she plugged it in, Belle gasped.

  “Lord sakes, Abigail. The picture’s in color!”

  “Belle, what show do you usually watch now?” Abby asked, grinning from ear to ear.

  “Why, I watch ‘The Price Is Right.’ ”

  “And what channel is that on?”

  Belle got up from her seat to search for the channel, but Abby waved her back to the chair.

  “Here, Belle.” Abby passed a black plastic wand-type thing to her. “This is called a remote control. You press the number of the channel you want to watch, then press this button, and voila! Instant channel change.”

  “Oh, good night!” The old woman chuckled with glee. “You mean I don’t even have to get up to change channels? I can do that from this chair?”

  “Absolutely,” Abby assured her.

  “Show me again.”

  Abby did, and Belle giggled like a young girl as she skipped up and down the dial.

  “Oh my, Abigail.” She laughed. “What will they think of next? Wouldn’t Leila have loved this? Channel-surfing, you say? Oh, yes, Leila would have enjoyed the remote control.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re enjoying it so much.” Abby rose and stretched. “I think I’ll bring in the rest of my things from the car. I’ll be back in a few minutes, Belle. Oh, by the way, if you want to increase the volume, you just do this.” Abby demonstrated the features of the remote control to an astounded Belle.

  “Belle, when Aunt Leila sold the jewelry to buy the new refrigerator and the stove, who did she take her things to?” Abby, arms laden with suitcases, poked her head in as Belle prepared to watch her afternoon game show.

  “Why, I believe the man’s name was Robinson.” Belle eyed Abby curiously as she settled in for some serious TV time. “You planning on selling something?”

  “Well, I stopped in the bank and looked through Aunt Leila’s safe deposit box after I left Tillman’s office.” Abby’s eyes sparkled.

  “Ah, so you found them.” Belle nodded slowly as she propped a pillow up behind her back.

  “Belle, you wouldn’t believe…”

  “Of course I would,” Belle snapped. “I know exactly what’s in that box.”

  Abby set the plates back down on the table and stared at Belle.

  “There were sapphires, amethysts, and a heavy gold necklace,” Belle told Abby without looking at her, “and emeralds big enough to choke a horse.”

  “Well, yes.” Abby folded her arms across her chest.

  “And you just can’t wait to sell them, can you?” Belle prodded her peevishly.

  “Belle, it isn’t that I want to sell them. I just don’t see where I have a choice. I need a great deal of money to repair this house.” Abby fingered the outline of the sapphire ring in her jeans pocket, forcing herself to remain calm. “And I don’t have any. That jewelry would bring in a substantial amount of cash. I can’t understand why Aunt Leila held on to it all when she could have sold some of it to have the roof fixed, instead of borrowing money from you.”

  “Oh, you can’t, huh?” Belle’s chin jutted out indignantly.

  “Belle, I look around, and I see windows nearly falling out.” Abby could barely restrain herself from shouting. “Wallpaper dancing its way backward down the walls, a front porch that’s ready to drop into the front lawn, and a chimney that won’t make it through the next big storm.”

  “Forgive her, Leila,” Belle muttered. “She has eyes but cannot see.”

  “What the devil is that supposed to mean?” Abby yelled in exasperation as the doorbell rang from the front of the house. “Now, who the hell is that?”

  Abby stomped to the front door and struggled to open it. A young man in his early twenties stood before her.

  “Yes?” she bellowed.

  “I… I’m Paul Phelps, ma’am,” the young man stuttered, taking a few steps backward. “My daddy—that’d be Pete Phelps, down to the hardware—said you wanted me to look at some work you might be wanting done.”

  His voice trailed off, leery of the wild-eyed woman with the wild curly hair who stood blocking the doorway like some petite and ornery sentinel.

  “I didn’t expect you until later this afternoon.” The words bounced from her mouth before she realized how rude she must sound to the poor young fellow who’d had the misfortune to ring the doorbell at precisely the wrong moment.

  “I… I can come back,” he told her as he took a few steps toward the porch and away from her.

  “No, no.” She regained both her senses and her composure at the same time. Damn, Belle had riled her.

  “I apologize”—she smiled sweetly—“for snapping at you. You startled me, that’s all. Now, Paul.” She stepped out onto the porch and took his arm. “Suppose I show you around the outside first, then we can go inside and look. I need to know what has to be done and how much it would cost. Can you prepare an estimate for me that’s broken down like that?”

  “Sure could.” He bobbed his head up
and down. His light brown ponytail flopped against his back, and his gold earring glittered. Primrose, meet MTV.

  Almost two hours later, a broadly grinning Paul headed back to town in his pickup truck, anxious to begin writing up the estimate for the old house on Cove Road. Abby had stood on the sidewalk with her hands on her hips, trying to comprehend the extent of the work. Paul’s “eyeball number” was somewhere between forty-five and fifty thousand dollars.

  No wonder he was smiling when he left, she grumbled to herself. He's planning on whistling all the way to the bank.

  Abby tapped one foot in agitation, then turned toward the house. Might as well put a call into Leila’s jewelry man, she decided. She would make an appointment with him to appraise—and, she hoped, purchase—the treasure she had left in the bank vault.

  She started toward the morning room, where Belle was still glued to the television, but decided she’d try looking through Leila’s desk to see if she could find the phone number herself. She’d just as soon not get into another discussion with Belle over the fate of Leila’s jewelry.

  I don’t know why it would matter so much to Belle, anyway, she thought to herself as she entered Thomas’s study.

  Abby had assumed Leila’s desk would be there, where Thomas’s own desk stood, a massive roll-top affair. Never having known the man, Abby felt every bit the intruder. Standing in the center of the room, she surveyed Thomas’s private domain. Wide shelves with glass doors completely wrapped around the walls of the room. A well-used, overstuffed chair and matching ottoman stood at an angle to the fireplace. Other than the desk and a small table upon which rose a tall brass lamp, there was no other furniture in the room.

  Next to a photograph of Leila in a wide frame of thick polished wood, Thomas’s notebook lay open on the desktop, a pen resting in the valley made by the spine of the book. Leila obviously had taken care not to disturb her husband’s personal things in all the years since he had died. Abby had no intention of doing so now. She all but backed out of the room.

  Abby discovered the small oak lady’s writing desk in the sitting room next to the front parlor. The writing surface squealed slightly as she let the top fall forward to reveal a dozen small compartments and a flat surface upon which sat a stack of pale yellow writing paper. The top three sheets had been written on. Abby took them to the window to better see the words.

  Dear Susannah—that would be Sunny Hollister, Abby’s first cousin—Thank you ever so much for the lovely birthday greetings. Abby flinched, trying to recall if she, herself, had sent a card the previous February. I did greatly enjoy your note, and deeply appreciate being remembered. I so rarely hear from anyone in the family, and so am very happy when someone thinks to bring me up to date. I am delighted to hear that your business is doing so well, dear. I do hope you will be able to stop in Primrose on your way to Atlanta later this fall. I would like to pass on to you a few family mementos which I feel should go to you. In remembrance of our shared February birthday, I would like you to have several amethyst pieces which I have cherished and a gold necklace made in the shape of leaves. (Quite an interesting piece, by the way. Thomas had brought it back on one of his forays into treasure hunting, though I seem to forget the origin of it.) And also the portrait of my mother, your greatgrandmother, Serena Dunham, whom you so resemble. I’d never realized how much you look like her, dear, until you sent the photograph from your wedding. Of course, I remember you best as a child…

  Abby’s heart was in her knees. The amethysts and the gold necklace—probably the single most valuable piece in the vault—were intended for her cousin, Sunny.

  Unconsciously, she began to pace the length of the room, the letter clutched in one hand. It was dated just two days before Leila died. Sunny obviously did not know of Leila’s intentions. Who would know if Abby didn’t tell anyone that Leila had planned to give the jewelry to Sunny?

  I would know, she told herself as she plunked down on the chair closest to the window. And Leila would know.

  Her eyes scanned the room, coming to rest on the portrait that hung over the fireplace. Serena, the great-grandmother she and Sunny shared, seemed to arch a dark eyebrow in her direction. Did Sunny look like her? Abby wouldn’t know. They hadn’t seen each other since they were fifteen.

  “And you’d know, too.” She addressed her greatgrandmother from across the room. Serena’s wry smile was as good as a nodded acknowledgment.

  Abby stared up at the portrait. If Sunny looked anything like Serena, she’d be magnificent. Thick dark hair piled high above an unforgettably lovely face. The high cheekbones Serena had inherited from her mother, Elizabeth, a full- blooded Cherokee. The deep blue eyes—a gift, no doubt, from Serena’s father, Stephen Cameron—close in hue to the blue satin dress. Closer still to the stones in the necklace that wound around her graceful neck. The same necklace Abby had held in her hands earlier that day in the bank vault. From her ears dangled ovals of sapphires surrounded by diamonds. The ring that graced Serena’s left hand lay, at this minute, in the bottom of Abby’s jeans pocket. Leila had chosen not to sell them because they had belonged to her mother.

  Belle’s invocation to Leila rang in Abby’s ears. She has eyes but cannot see.

  Okay, Aunt Leila. Serena's sapphires will stay in the vault. And Sunny will have her inheritance, just as you intended.

  Sighing deeply, she went back to Leila’s desk and rummaged through the cubbyholes, hoping to find an address book. She had no idea where Sunny was living these days or what her married name might be. She located the small book and flipped through it till she came to the H’s, where she found the listing for Susannah Hollister. Either Sunny had not changed her name when she married, or Aunt Leila had not bothered to change the entry in her book. Abby wondered if the Connecticut address was current. She would to write to Sunny and tell her of their aunt’s bequest.

  Several small pieces of paper escaped from the inside cover of the book. On one was written the name “Edwin Robinson” and a phone number. Abby tucked the paper in the pocket with the ring, thinking that perhaps she would call him in the morning. She wondered what the emeralds would bring.

  “Okay, Belle,” she said with resignation as she slumped onto the small sofa in the morning room. “I know about the sapphires. And I know that Leila wanted the gold necklace and the amethysts to go to my cousin, Susannah.”

  “Did she, now?” Belle asked without taking her eyes from the television. “I thought perhaps she was holding on to them because of their sentimental value.”

  “Which was?”

  “Thomas gave the amethysts to Leila on their wedding day. Which was also Leila’s birthday.”

  “Well, it was apparently Sunny’s birthday, too,” Abby noted. “And the gold necklace?”

  “Thomas gave it to Leila when he proposed to her. He had brought it back with him from a trip he’d made to one of those Asian countries that ends in ‘stan.’ I can’t remember which one. His next expedition was in search of some silver mines in Montana.”

  “Where he met Leila.”

  Belle nodded without taking her eyes from the television. “He came back to Primrose a changed man. He only stayed a few weeks before returning to Montana, where he married Leila. He gave her the gold necklace. It was a symbol, he said.”

  “A symbol of what?”

  “That he loved her more than he loved the life he had led before he met her. He never went on another trip, just stayed here in Primrose and wrote books about his adventures.”

  “And she chose to live in a house that was falling down around her, rather than sell it?”

  “There are some things that are worth more than money, Abigail,” Belle said pointedly.

  “Well, it just seems to me that…”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake.” The old woman fairly exploded. “Hasn’t there ever been anything that meant something to you, not because of its monetary value but because you loved the person who gave it to you? Hasn’t there ever been anything you
simply couldn’t bear to part with, because of the memories?”

  Abby straightened her spine and glared across the room at Belle. “I think it’s time to start dinner,” she said flatly as she turned heel toward the kitchen.

  The bells from the center of town were chiming three a.m. Abby punched her pillow for about the twentieth time and tried to find a comfortable spot on the ancient mattress. Maybe she was chilled, she thought.

  Maybe if I pull up the quilt…

  Abby searched in the darkness at the end of the bed but could not find it. She turned on the lamp on the bedside table, threw back the covers, and got out of bed. The quilt had slipped to the floor. She retrieved it and spread it over the blanket.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, her feet dangling almost to the floor, she looked around the room. It had been reserved just for her as a child and had known all her childhood dreams.

  My childhood dreams, she mused.

  Almost without thinking, she rose and opened one of the suitcases she had carried in that afternoon. There, in one of the satin compartments, was a small wooden box wherein rested her most cherished possessions. Her mother’s plain gold wedding ring, the one her father had placed upon his bride’s finger, the one that years later had been replaced by another that had been much more expensive. Pearl earrings given to her on her twelfth birthday by her mother. A thin gold chain with a tiny gold heart, a gift from her father when she turned sixteen.

  At the bottom of the box lay a small ring, two lengths of thick silver rope that wound endlessly around each other. Turning it around and around in her hand, she glanced out the window toward the pine where Alex had carved their initials the night he placed the silver band on her finger.

  “Hasn’t there ever been anything you simply couldn’t bear to part with, because of the memories?” Belle had asked her, and she had not answered.

  Abby dropped the ring back into the box, snapped the lid closed, and turned off the light.

  9

  Abby sat on the front porch steps in the late-November sun, unconsciously fanning herself with the sheets of notepaper on which the Phelps lad had composed his estimate for the repairs on her house: $53,475, a nice, round, tidy number. It might as well be fifty-three million, she thought, questioning for the first time the wisdom of having so promptly sent off a letter to her cousin Sunny to let her know what was awaiting her in Primrose. She leaned back against the wobbly railing, rethinking her decision to keep Serena’s sapphires in the vault.