would have known would challenge him to a duel? Maybe Jedidiah had been in love with Adelaide Morse.
Tess had no answers. There were two small rooms at the other end of the house that immediately presented possibilities. Tess pictured domestic things like sewing machines, library shelves, overstuffed chairs, hooked rugs—and herself, working here. She could create a design studio upstairs, put in skylights and state-of-the-art equipment, work overlooking the sea instead of an historic graveyard. The designer and the ghost of Jedidiah Thorne.
She was getting ahead of herself, and she knew it. She returned to the main room and stood very still, listening for ghost sounds.
Nothing, not even Princess Dolly’s missing cat. “Ridiculous,” Tess muttered, and headed back out to her car.
As soon as he reacquainted Dolly with the rules of the house, Andrew grabbed two beers and sat out with Harl in the old Adirondack chairs under the shagbark hickory. It was a big, old, beautiful tree, probably planted by Jedidiah Thorne himself, before he took to dueling.
“Where’s Dolly?” Harl asked.
“Sulking in her tree house.” It was six rungs up into a nearby oak, and she’d helped Harl build it out of scrap lumber. Andrew, an architect, had stayed out of it. Some things were best left to Dolly and Harl. But not all. “She thinks if she didn’t go out into the street, she didn’t really leave the yard.”
“She’s going to be a lawyer or a politician. Mark my words.”
Andrew gritted his teeth. “It’s that damn cat.”
“I know it. If it wouldn’t break Dolly’s heart, I’d wish Tippy Tail would sneak off and find herself a couple of new suckers to take her in. She’s a mean bitch. Clawed me this morning.” He displayed a tattooed forearm with a three-inch claw mark, then opened his beer. “I should’ve taken her to the pound.”
But Andrew knew that wouldn’t have been Harl’s way. He was a soft touch with children and helpless animals. Tippy Tail was scrawny, temperamental and pregnant, but once Dolly saw her, that was that. Harl had seen and committed more violence than most, first growing up in a tough neighborhood in Gloucester, then in war, finally in his work as a detective. Yet, he was also the gentlest man Andrew had ever known. His first and only marriage hadn’t worked, but his two grown daughters adored him, never blaming him for retreating to his shop, working on furniture, staying away from people.
Sometimes Andrew wondered if Joanna would have approved of Harley Beckett taking care of their daughter. But not tonight. Tonight, Andrew accepted that his wife had been dead for three years, killed in an avalanche on Mount McKinley. She’d only started mountain-climbing the year before, when Dolly was two. Ike Grantham’s idea.
“He makes me want to push myself,” she’d said. “He makes me want to try something out of my comfort zone. Leaving you here, leaving Dolly—it scares the hell out of me. And excites me at the same time. I have to do this, Andrew. I’ll be a better person because of this experience. A better mother.”
Maybe, Andrew thought. If she’d lived. But climbing mountains, even in northern New England, had made Joanna happy, eased some of the restlessness and desperation that had gripped her with Dolly’s birth. She hadn’t been ready for a child. He could see that now. She’d felt, in ways he couldn’t understand, that she’d lost herself, needed something that was hers, that felt daring and not, as she’d put it, “tied down.” She hadn’t meant Dolly in particular. She’d meant everything.
“I love Dolly with all my heart,” she’d tried to explain. “And I love you, Andrew, and my job.” She was a research analyst with the North Atlantic Strategic Studies Institute. “I’m not dissatisfied with anything on the outside, just on the inside.”
Ike Grantham seemed to understand. Or pretended to. Andrew wasn’t any good at pretending.
“Ike and I aren’t having an affair, Andrew. Please don’t ever think such a thing.”
Andrew had believed her. Whatever would have become of their marriage if Joanna had come home from Mount McKinley no longer mattered. She hadn’t, and he’d had to go on without her. So had Dolly. He didn’t blame Ike for Joanna’s death—that would have meant robbing her of her independence, and perhaps even denying her her love of climbing.
He drank some of his beer and listened to the birds in the hickory. Winter had finally let go of the northern coast of Massachusetts. “So, Harl, who the hell is Tess Haviland?”
“No idea. Why?”
“She says she owns the carriage house.”
Harl frowned. “Lauren sold it?”
“I don’t think so. Not recently. We’d have heard.”
“Ike.”
It was possible. Andrew said nothing, picturing Tess Haviland in front of the lilacs. Blond, athletic build, attractive. Pale blue eyes, and a touch of irreverence in her smile and manner. It was difficult to say if she was Ike Grantham’s type. Most women were.
Harl grunted. “All we need is that bastard resurfacing. Things have been quiet this past year.” He settled back in his chair and stared up at the sky. “I like quiet.”
“I’ll find out what the story is. Ike might not have anything to do with this Haviland woman.”
But he knew Harl was dubious, and Andrew admitted he had his own doubts. When most of Jedidiah Thorne’s original property had come onto the market not long after Joanna’s death, Andrew bought it. He’d tried to buy the carriage house as well, but Ike had refused to sell. Not that Andrew had wanted it particularly, given its sordid history, but it seemed odd to have it separated out from the rest of the property—and it meant he had no control over who might end up on the other side of the lilacs.
He finished his beer and decided he should get on with making dinner. Harl sometimes ate with them. Not always. Sometimes his cousin would fix a can of baked beans or chowder and eat out here on an Adirondack chair, in the shade—or the snow. And sometimes, Andrew knew, he didn’t eat at all.
“Dolly’s teacher came out today when I picked her up from school,” Harl said abruptly.
“Why?”
“She’s worried about Dolly’s ‘active imagination.’”
Andrew grimaced. He knew what was coming next. “You didn’t let her wear one of her damn crowns to school, did you?”
“She likes her crowns. I told her to leave them home, but she slipped one into her lunch box. It’s her favorite. What am I supposed to do, frisk a six-year-old?”
Andrew felt his pulse pounding behind his eyes. His daughter had a rich, creative mind, and it was getting her into trouble. He didn’t know what was normal for a six-year-old, what was peculiar. And Harl sure as hell didn’t. They’d both grown up on the wrong side of the tracks in Gloucester, in a neighborhood where there was always a fight to be had. Whether at sea, on a battlefield, on the street or in a bar, the Thornes always knew where to find a fight. The enemy didn’t matter.
A lot of people in Beacon-by-the-Sea would say neither he nor Harl had any damn business raising a kid like Dolly. Any kid.
“She thinks she’s a princess,” Harl said.
“That’s what she told Tess Haviland.”
The corners of Harl’s mouth twitched behind his white beard. “A princess has to have a crown.”
“Jesus, Harl. What did Miss Perez say?”
He shrugged his big shoulders. “No more crowns in school.”
Andrew knew there was more. “And?”
“She wants to meet with you.”
“Damn it, Harl—”
“You’re the father.