“Poor guy. How can he know what not to do again if he doesn’t know what he did wrong in the first place?”
“It’ll be good for him. Daris will keep him on his toes.” Suddenly, Jared looked to Ken’s left and his face seemed to drain of color. “Oh, no,” he whispered, then put down his mug.
“What is it?” Ken asked, alarmed.
“Granddad said Alix overheard us. She went back upstairs.” Jared crossed the room in three strides and left.
Ken leaned back in his chair. He didn’t like that his daughter had just had a bombshell dropped on her, but he hated that Jared had just talked to a ghost.
All Alix could think of as she ran up the stairs was that Jared and her father had known each other for years—which meant that her father had spent a lot of time on Nantucket. But he’d never told her. Alix would not have believed that her father would keep a secret like that from her. Her mother, yes, but not her dad. They had a special bond. Or she’d thought they did.
She shut the bedroom door, leaned against it, and thought, Now what do I do? Try to act as though this information doesn’t hurt?
Turning, she tried to lock the door but the key for the old door plate wasn’t there. “It’s Nantucket!” she said aloud, momentarily annoyed that nothing ever seemed to be locked.
She moved a chair under the knob, then, in anger, started stripping the bed of sheets. What else was being kept a secret from her? she wondered. Her mother and now her father. Everyone had been lying to her for what looked to be her entire life. But then hadn’t Jared said that? Secrets kept all her life, is what he’d said. Alix threw the sheets on the floor and looked up at Captain Caleb’s portrait. “Do you have thousands of secrets too? Like all the Kingsleys do? And don’t answer that or I’ll drag your picture up to the attic and nail boards over your chamber pot staircase.”
“Alix?” came Jared’s voice through the door. “Could we talk? Please?”
“Go away,” she said.
“I never lied to you. I told you there were secrets being kept from you. Please open the door and let me explain. I didn’t want to hide anything from you, but I’d made promises. Please let me in so we can talk.”
She started to tell him to leave, but she knew he was telling the truth. She moved the chair away and he opened the door, closing it behind him, but he didn’t come inside any farther. It did help that he looked deeply worried.
“You let me guess that everything had to do with my mother,” she said. “But then I didn’t think my father would … would …”
“Betray you?” Jared asked. “Would it help if I told you that it was all your mother’s doing? She made Ken swear to say nothing to you about Nantucket.”
“But why?”
“She—” He broke off. He had no right to tell about the journals that were the basis for all Victoria’s novels.
“Are you trying to decide how much to lie to me?”
“I’m not going to lie, but some secrets are not mine to reveal.” He took a step closer to her. “I’m sorry that I can’t sit down with you and tell everything that I know, but I owe all that I am, all that I have, to your parents. If it weren’t for your father I’d probably be in prison now—or dead. And as you so shrewdly guessed, your mother paid for the bulk of my very expensive schooling. Your dad helped with that but …”
“Mom has the money,” Alix said.
“Yes, she does. But I learned everything that’s made my career from your father.”
Alix’s eyes widened. “Master builder. You said a ‘master builder’ let you design a remodel when you were just a kid. Was that my father?”
“Yes, it was. That was right after your mother took you away from Nantucket. Ken was very depressed because his wife was divorcing him and he wasn’t going to get to live with his beloved, and may I add, his adorable, daughter.”
“And you’d lost your father not long before that,” she said softly.
“It had been two years but I still didn’t believe that Dad wasn’t going to walk through the door and force me to give up my evil ways.” Jared gave a tentative half smile. “Not that I would have relinquished all of them.”
“I’m glad of that.” She paused, knowing that everything he was saying was true and actually, she liked that he’d honored the vows he’d made. But his vows weren’t hers. She was going to find out all that she could. “I just don’t understand why my mother didn’t want me to know about Nantucket.”
“You expect me to explain Victoria to you?”
“Are you evading my question?”
“Completely. I’ll tell you a secret. Your dad can yell at me until his face turns purple, and an hour later I’m fine. But Victoria … She can make me feel like a worm.”
“Really? It’s the opposite for me.” She looked at him. “This whole thing is very strange. To think that you know both my parents so well … It’s difficult for me to comprehend.”