At the time, Kim had been angry but it’s what she’d thought had happened—and why she hadn’t pursued the matter. At no time did Kim think Dave was scheming to steal the ring. Like Carla, she believed the man’s hints of marriage and a future together. Her problem had been how she was going to answer Dave’s proposal. Travis had shown strong signs of jealousy about Dave, so maybe Travis had plans for the two of them.
Kim hadn’t allowed herself to think of that. She’d reminded herself that Travis was as elusive as a nightingale, that he didn’t stay anywhere too long.
All that day she’d been nervous, and she’d kept wondering where Travis was and what he was doing. When there was no call from him at lunchtime, she wanted to go home early. Maybe Travis was doing laps in the pool. But customers kept her late, and as soon as she pulled into her driveway, Reede parked beside her. When she saw his face, she knew what was coming. He’d at last remembered where he’d seen Travis—on a racecourse when Travis had nearly hit Reede and his donkey.
As she walked to her front door, Kim thought about how she was going to defend Travis. She would point out that Reede had been in the way, that he shouldn’t have been standing in the roadway. Kim was totally on Travis’s side.
What she hadn’t expected was that Reede couldn’t care less about what had happened in Morocco. In fact, he admitted that the whole thing had been his fault. “That doesn’t matter,” Reede said, then proceeded to tell her the truth about Travis.
It didn’t matter to Kim whether Travis was rich or poor, but it did concern her that he’d not told her such fundamental information about himself.
Why? Did he think she couldn’t handle it? Did he think she was so provincia
l that she’d be overcome to find out he’d spent his life in a different circle than she had? Did he think the truth about himself would change what was between them?
She had no answers to her questions.
The scene with Reede had been bad enough, but then to walk into her kitchen and see Travis and Carla’s date standing there was almost more than she could bear. She could tell by Travis’s face, white with shock—and she had to admit some pain from what he’d heard—that if she didn’t get angry she would have died of embarrassment. She would just plain curl up into a ball and disappear.
Somehow she’d managed to keep cool enough to tell Travis what she thought of him. But when she began to remember how she’d told her brother that she wanted to spend days in bed with Travis, her anger was taken over by the embarrassment. She knew that if those two men stayed, she’d dissolve into tears in front of them, so she told them to leave. But she couldn’t bear to be alone, so she went to see Mr. Layton.
Now the morning light was coming through her kitchen window and she was doing her best to be cheerful about her coming weekend. Alone. She tried to think of those old axioms about bowls of cherries and lemonade, but she couldn’t seem to remember them. She’d already called Carla and told her she was to take care of the shop Friday and Saturday. There was another girl who could help, but Kim wouldn’t be there. Carla hadn’t argued or asked for overtime.
Kim packed quickly and was on the road by 10:00 A.M. It was a four-hour drive to Janes Creek, and she used the time to try to think about her next series of jewelry designs. She needed something different, something a person didn’t see every day.
She also needed to think about the task Joce had given her to do. Everything she was to research was based on a few sentences that Colin’s wife, Gemma, had found in a letter written around the turn of the century.
“Please tell me you’re not trying to find more relatives,” Kim said to Joce and Gemma the day they’d asked her to take on the project. They looked at her as though to say yes, that is exactly what they wanted, and why didn’t she understand?
Kim had to remind herself that neither of the women had grown up in Edilean surrounded by what seemed to be thousands of relatives. Joce and Gemma had come from small families where they didn’t know their aunts and uncles, much less their fourth and fifth cousins. Between this lack and their shared love of history, the two women were fiendish at finding out everything about everyone—and as far back as they could go.
“Why me?” Kim had asked when she’d been invited to Joce’s house for lunch. She lived in the big old Edilean Manor, the place Kim had so hated as a child. Joce had done a lot with it, and it was beautiful now, but Kim wouldn’t have taken the house if it were given to her. She much preferred her one-story newer house with its big windows, and floors that didn’t creak with age.
In answer to her question, Gemma had put her hand on her growing belly and Joce had glanced at all the toys around them. She had toddler twins.
Kim grimaced. “If I get pregnant in the next two weeks can I get out of this?”
“No!” Joce and Gemma said in unison.
Joce had done everything. She’d made the reservation at the B&B in Janes Creek and she’d prepared a portfolio with papers that told all that they knew about Clarissa Aldredge, the ancestor she was to search for information about.
Gemma had written a veritable treatise of where Kim should look for the information they sought. Kim glanced at it, saw “cemeteries” at the top, and closed the folder. She didn’t understand why those two women liked doing this.
Kim had been almost grateful when Dave invited himself along. He didn’t seem interested in looking for dead ancestors, but at least he’d be someone to share meals with.
When Carla started giggling and talking about the weekend and saying that she had put a ring in the safe before closing time, it didn’t take much for Kim to figure out what was going on. Just the weekend before, Dave had admired the ring and made a joke about it exactly fitting Kim. His eyes had said the rest of it.
But that had all changed. Just a few days ago Travis . . . Maxwell—she wasn’t used to the name—had shown up and turned Kim’s life upside down.
“But that’s over now,” she said as she pulled into the Sweet River B&B. It was 2:00 P.M. and the parking lot was full of cars bearing plates from the Northeast. She hadn’t seen the town but had assumed it was about the size of Edilean. Maybe they were having some local event and that’s why they were so full.
She got her bag out of the back, put the portfolio under her arm, and went inside. It was an old house that had been converted into some semblance of a hotel. She could hear voices in the back but saw no one. She thought she should get her camera out and photograph the interior for Joce and Gemma, as she figured they’d like the place. There were carvings everywhere, where the ceiling joined the walls, on the stair posts, and on an enormous cabinet against the wall. She was sure there were people who would love the house, but to her it was dark and gloomy.
“Just like me,” she said aloud, then turned at a sound.
“You must be Miss Aldredge,” a young woman said. She was blonde and thin and pretty, and was looking at Kim as though she’d been waiting for her.
“Yes, I’m Kim. I’m early, but is my room ready?”