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  “I don’t think you are all right,” Stephen said. “Hey! I have an idea. Why don’t I let your dad and mine take the kids camping and I come up there? I could be there tonight—”

  “No!” Amy said, then drew in her breath. The last thing she wanted was for him to see her face as it was, but there was something else. She was enjoying her time alone and…“I mean, no. I have to play this out. I have to do what I’m supposed to do.”

  “Supposed to do?” Stephen asked. “Amy, what’s going on up there?”

  “Nothing. It’s nothing. It’s just…I don’t know, it’s interesting. Look, you better go with the boys. They’d never forgive me if I ruined their trip.”

  “Sure,” Stephen said slowly. “But Amy, if you need anything, I’m here. You know that, don’t you? And you know that I love you, don’t you?”

  “Yes, of course,” Amy said quickly, then hung up. She realized that she’d not told him she loved him and she almost called him back, but she didn’t. It was better to let them leave on their trip that they so looked forward to. A trip without her.

  Amy got dressed quickly, spent fifteen minutes doing all she could to cover the bruises on her face, and left the summerhouse before the others did. She had an idea and she wanted to research it. What she wanted to do was see if she could find out anything about an Englishman named Hawthorne. Of course, the sensible thing would have been to stay in the house and search on the Internet, but there was something that seemed to be pulling her to the little bookstore.

  When she opened the door to the shop, a bell rang and she smiled. The place looked like something out of an old movie, just as she hoped it would, with books piled everywhere. There were shelves full of them, and chairs and tables were covered. She could see that underneath the books the furniture was antique. She smiled as she thought that from the look of the place the furniture had been new when it was put in the store.

  “May I help you?”

  She turned to see an old man with white hair and a straight carriage that made her think he’d spent his life in the military. “I’m looking for something about the history of England in…I guess it would be the eighteenth century, the time of Williamsburg. Personal history. I’m not interested in the kings and queens.”

  “I think we have what you need,” the man said as he started walking toward the back of the store.

  He led her into a room that had been set up like a study in someone’s house. There was a deep-set window with a cushioned seat beneath it, half a dozen old pillows on the seat. A big comfy chair sat in a corner with a brass reading light above it. A coffee table in the middle was covered with books and even a pair of reading glasses.

  “Here we are,” he said. “I think that if you look in this section, you’ll find what you need.” The bell on the front door sounded. “Ah, if you’ll excuse me, I will see to them. Take your time,” he said. “Take all the time you need.”

  “Yes, thank you,” she said, as he left the room to go into the main part of the store.

  Amy liked the smell of old books and she liked the look of the shelves bowing under the weight of what had to be thousands of volumes. She went to the far wall and began to read titles. That case seemed to be about medieval history. But what she’d seen in her dream was later than that.

  Turning, she looked out the window. There was a field full of wildflowers behind the store and the sunlight on them was beautiful.

  As she looked back at the room setting, she thought how much she loved it. Stephen had often told her that she’d read so many historical romances that she should start writing them. “Maybe I should,” she whispered as she looked at the book titles.

  She spent an hour happily rummaging, pulling one book after another out and looking at it, then sliding it back into place. Even though the store was in a tiny town in Maine, the owner certainly did have a good collection of titles on English history. They went from the Norman conquest to the Mitford sisters.

  As Amy looked at the books, she thought she’d like to take the entire selection—and the room—home with her. She’d like to just pick the whole thing up and move it back to her own house.

  I’d have my own summerhouse, she thought. Last year Stephen had said something like that, that they could build a little house in the back for her. “Why would I want that?” she’d asked.

  “Just to get away from us,” he’d said.

  “I don’t want to get away from you. You three are my whole life.”

  Stephen had frowned at that and she didn’t know why. But today she thought maybe she did understand it. Did she hover too much? Did she boss them around too much? Was she too possessive? Stephen’s father rarely visited them because he said Amy had too many damned rules for his taste. He wanted to have a good time and he didn’t want to be told what to do.

  For the first time in days she thought of the baby she’d lost. Had her sadness been about the baby or because her plans hadn’t been realized?

  Frowning, she put the book she was holding back onto the shelf. There were tall volumes at the top, but she couldn’t reach them. She looked about and saw a little stool in a corner, picked it up, moved it in front of the case and climbed on it. She still had to stretch to see the top shelf.

  They seemed to be genealogy books. How to find your ancestors, that sort of thing. She wasn’t interested in them and was about to step down when a name caught her eye. A small book with a spine no more than a half-inch wide had a single name on it. All she could see was “awthor” but it was enough to pique her interest. She reached for it, stretching as far as she could. She had just touched it when she lost her balance and fell.

  When she hit the floor, she put her arms over her head, expecting the entire case to come tumbling down on her, but it didn’t. Instead, the book she’d been trying to reach neatly fell into her lap.

  “Good shot,” she said aloud as she picked up the book and opened it. It had been published in 1838 and its title was The Tragedy of the Hawthorne Family As Told by Someone Who Knows.

  For a moment Amy just sat there staring at the title page, then she got up and went to the window seat and began to read. The sun came in bright and clear and she read, fascinated.

  “There you are!” Zoë said, frowning at Amy.

  She looked up, blinking. Zoë had on a raincoat and water was dripping off her shoulders.

  “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

  “I’ve been here for—” She looked at her watch. It was nearly three P.M. “My goodness, I’ve been here for hours. I just finished the most interesting book. I think I found the man I dreamed about.”

  “You have a dreamboat, remember? I get the imaginary one. Have you had lunch?”

  “No,” Amy said, uncurling herself off the window seat. “It was so nice here, with the sun shining in, that I lost track of time.”

  “Sun? Are you out of your mind? It’s been raining for hours. If it keeps on like this the ocean level will rise.”

  Amy glanced out the window and, sure enough, it was raining. Besides that, she saw that there was an ugly old stone warehouse just a few feet out the window, not the field of wildflowers that she’d seen every time she’d glanced up.

  “Are you okay?” Zoë asked impatiently.

  “Sure,” Amy said, but still blinking in bewilderment. Between what she’d read and the oddity of the rain and no rain, she was feeling a bit dazed.

  “Faith wants us to meet her for tea at some shop about a half mile from here. We’ll have to walk through mud to get there. You look funny.”

  “I know,” Amy said. “I’m sure the makeup’s worn off.”

  “No, you can hardly see that. It’s just…” She trailed off, then shrugged. “I’ve been around Jeanne too long and I’m reading too much into everything. Do you want to go or not?”

  “Oh yes, I want to go.” She opened the little book to the front end papers to see if there was a price on it. Of course she’d have to buy it no matter what it cost. It