The House on Blackberry Hill (Jewell Cove 1)

“And you know this because?”

He grinned and his eyes twinkled. “Well, I suppose that would be because I was one of those teenagers.”

She smiled as she looked down into her chowder bowl. Art Ellis could be a charmer too, couldn’t he?

“But you need to talk to someone who knew Edith and Elijah,” he said. He looked around the diner until he found who he was looking for. “Hey, Isabel. Come on over here a minute.”

Abby’s fingers tightened on her spoon. Good heavens, anyone who had known her great-grandparents would have to be at least ninety, wouldn’t they? She spooned up more chowder, determined to eat before it got stone-cold.

“What are you going on about, Arthur? And it’s Mrs. Frost to you,” the sharp voice replied from a corner of the restaurant.

Mindless of the other patrons, Art let out a sigh. “Well, if you don’t want to meet Marian’s niece, fine by me.”

It took a while for the elderly woman to shuffle her way over to them, but when she got there she didn’t mince words. Her white curls bobbed as she nodded at Abby. “I’ll sit over here, if you don’t mind. I won’t be sitting next to the likes of you, Arthur Ellis. Biggest troublemaker I ever had in my class. Always teasing the girls.” The white-haired woman used the counter to help lever herself up, and sat down with an oomph on the other side of Abby. She leaned ahead and wagged her finger at Arthur. “You were always more trouble than you were worth.”

“You loved me and you know it,” he replied. He gave Abby a wink. “They all loved me. I was a good-looking kid.”

Abby took the bait. “I think you are probably right, Mrs. Frost. Charming, for sure, but a smart woman can see right through that, don’t you agree?”

Isabel Frost laughed, a wheezy sound that made Abby grin. “Your aunt Marian would have said just that,” she confirmed. “And she probably did, many a time.”

Once again Abby had been compared to her aunt, and in a positive way. She wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that.

“Mrs. Frost taught most of the Cove until she retired in the eighties,” Art explained. “She knew Marian. Knew Edith, too.”

“Edith Prescott was beautiful,” Isabel proclaimed. “She was a few years older than me, but I remember. Sweet and polite, bit of a stubborn streak, and with the most gorgeous hair. It was a hazelnut brown and so thick. And a beautiful bride, too. The day she married Elijah Foster she was radiant. Not a year later she had Marian. She was so happy then. Elijah doted on her and she had everything a girl could have wanted. We all lived for an invitation to the Fosters’ for a party. And oh, my, they threw some grand ones.”

Gorgeous, dark hair—could the woman in the photo on the mantel be Edith? The baby was probably Marian then. The records showed that Edith had died in 1945. Maybe, Abby considered, it was the only picture Marian had of herself with her mother. How sad.

Isabel’s soft tone of remembrance continued. “The last party they threw was not a week after Pearl Harbor. It was a last hurrah, really. Elijah was gone after Christmas of ’41, when he signed up with the Navy. Came back in ’43 a changed man, with a limp and a cane for his troubles. Still, things seemed to come around for a while. Iris was born in ’44. But then there was that tragic accident. The whole town was in shock. The war was just ending, you know. We were celebrating V-E Day and everyone knew Japan was next. Rumor had it that there’d been a little too much celebrating up at the house and Edith fell down the stairs.”

Silence surrounded them. It was so much more than Abby had ever expected to learn today, but it raised even more questions. And the stairs … She suppressed a shiver, remembering the odd, oppressive sensation she always felt crossing by the bottom. It creeped her out a bit to realize that her great-grandmother had died there. Ghosts …

“A rumor?”

Isabel clasped her fingers. “No one ever said differently.”

There was something about the way she said it, though, that made Abby perk up. Perhaps it was what wasn’t said that was most telling.

“What about the children?”

Isabel folded her hands. “Elijah was never the same after Edith’s death, they said. Became a bit of a recluse, either gone for work all the time or hiding away in that house. One of the maids had a particular liking for Marian, and she brought her up almost as her own. Iris, though, she was an infant, barely even walking. Too much for a widower to handle alone. The Prescotts were in Houlton and took Iris in with them.”

That followed with what little Abby knew simply from family records. Iris had been brought up by her grandparents in the town close to the Canadian border. Abby swallowed around a lump in her throat, hungry for information but sad that it had to come after Gram’s death. Why? Had she been ashamed for some reason? Angry at being cast out? There had to be more to the story. Families didn’t just … split, did they?

“What about Elijah?”

“Had a heart attack in the sixties. Marian inherited the house and the Foster fortune with it. Art here can tell you a lot more about your aunt Marian. He looked after the grounds and did a lot of handyman work around there, didn’t you, Art?”

“Sure did. She had her hands full lookin’ after all the girls she helped.” He frowned. “Some people didn’t approve of what Ms. Marian did up there, but she was a good, kind woman.” He smiled a little. “’Course, I’m a little biased, as that’s how I met my Margaret.”

There were so many stories waiting to be discovered, weren’t there? Abby was surprisingly curious about the family she’d never known. Art and Isabel were so entertaining, Abby thought she could listen to the pair of them forever. And they didn’t seem to mind that she was a stranger. They were quite welcoming when all was said and done. They accepted her at face value with an ease she’d never quite experienced before.

She wasn’t quite comfortable with feeling so … comfortable.

Isabel patted Abby’s hand. “You never knew any of this, dear?”

Abby shook her head. “I’m afraid I didn’t know anything at all about the family.”