Heartwishes Read online

  “Listen,” he said. “I want you in bed early tonight. You need time to heal. Promise?”

  “Yes,” she answered.

  “If you need me, you have my cell number, and I put Mike’s number on the desk in the library.”

  “Mike the detective,” she said. “The one in Fort Lauderdale?”

  “He’s home now, and he’ll know what to do in case of any problems,” Colin said. “By the way, Mike set up a makeshift gym downtown in what used to be his wife’s dress shop. It’s very informal, only invited people go, and we don’t have many women. But then, Mike scares them off.”

  “How does he do that?”

  “I think I’ll let Mike show you.” He started toward the door, but hesitated. “You’ll be all right here by yourself?”

  “Perfectly fine.”

  “Okay,” he said at last, then took a step toward her as though he meant to hug her or kiss her cheek good-bye.

  Gemma knew she wouldn’t be able to stand that. She took a step back and the moment passed.

  When he was gone, she didn’t know whether to be relieved or devastated. “He belongs to someone else,” she told herself, then immediately went back to work.

  Without Colin hovering over her and making sure she didn’t strain herself, she started organizing. As far as she could tell, at some point in the life of the Frazier papers some industrious person had “cleaned up.” Gemma had always found tidy people to be maddening. Their one and only goal seemed to be to have everything appear to be “neat.” “Put away.” “Out of sight.” It didn’t seem to matter that bills were mixed in with the kitchen utensils, that research supplies were thrown in with the shoes. Just so everything looked good!

  For Gemma, she put like things together, and if she didn’t have time to put something where it belonged, she left it out.

  Unfortunately, whoever had stored away the Frazier papers had put them away by size. Small papers dated 1620 were in a box with small papers dated 1934. This lack of correct sequencing nearly drove Gemma crazy.

  The first thing she did was take everything off the shelves in the library and storage room. A couple of times she reached too far and felt her stitches pull, but she learned to keep her elbow close to her ribs.

  Once the shelves in both rooms were clean, she mentally categorized the space into decades. As she emptied the containers, she put dated papers into the proper areas. Once they were sorted, she would rebox them in archival storage containers that were acid free and wouldn’t eat up the contents.

  She didn’t stop emptying and sorting until her stomach was growling. After a quick meal—and she silently thanked Rachel for her cooking—Gemma went back to work. When it grew dark, she turned on all the lights. She carried empty boxes from the house to the garage where there was now space since she and Colin had cleared out that area.

  She fell into bed at 1 A.M., was up at six, and started work immediately. The days began to merge together as she went through everything and piled it high on shelves in the house. There were several boxes of account books in the garage that could be taken away to be stored elsewhere, but she had gone through everything inside the house.

  When all of it was out, she went online to Gaylord library supplies and compiled her wish list for storage boxes. Gemma was torn between going to the main house and disturbing Mrs. Frazier or e-mailing her. Electronic mail won out.

  Mrs. Frazier replied instantly, saying that she’d reimburse Gemma for whatever she spent.

  Gemma put in her credit card number, pushed the SEND button on the order, then leaned back in her chair and looked about the room. If Colin were there she’d open the wine in the refrigerator and they’d celebrate. But he wasn’t there. In fact, she hadn’t seen or heard from him in days now.

  An hour later, he called. There was static on the line and a lot of noise wherever he was. She could hear men shouting.

  “Gemma?” he said into the phone, and she knew he was shouting. “I’m sorry I haven’t called you, but there’s no cell service here.”

  “Where are you?” She had to shout the question three times before he heard her.

  “At that ranger station,” he shouted back. “Fire fighting. Whole family here. You okay?”

  Fire? Gemma thought and many images of forest fires ran through her head. “Are you all right? Can I help?”

  “I’m fine. No, stay there. I have to go. They need the phone. I’ll be back when I can. Okay?”

  “Yes,” she said, then heard the phone click off. She stood where she was for a moment. So this is what it was like when you cared about a law enforcement man.

  She went to the TV and turned it on. It took her a moment to find a channel with local news, but there the fire was, roaring across trees, destroying everything in its path.

  She spent an hour watching, saw film of women at a table passing out food and drinks to firefighters and she saw Mrs. Frazier and Rachel. But she didn’t see Colin.

  She had to make herself return to work, but she left the TV on with muted sound. Whenever anything about the fire came on, she listened.

  It took great effort on her part to give her mind back to her research.

  As she looked at the massive amount of data around her, she tried to figure out where to begin. The logical way would be to start with the oldest documents and come forward. But Colin was right in that what truly interested her was his Heartwishes story. She hadn’t realized it, but she’d been thinking of her dissertation while she worked. “The Origin of a Family Myth” was one title she’d thought of. “Myth and Reality in one Family” was another. “The Didacticism of a Myth.” She must have come up with fifty titles, all of them centered around the Frazier Heartwishes.

  She opened the refrigerator, saw that most of the food Rachel had prepared was gone, and knew she needed to go to the grocery. Besides, she wanted to hear what the locals knew about the fire.

  She looked at her watch, saw that it was a little after four. Maybe if she drove into town—in the car she’d not yet used—she could stop by his office and ask his deputy what she knew. The keys were by the back door and the Volvo was in the carport. It was a pretty car with dark blue upholstery. It took her a few minutes to orient herself to the buttons on the car before she pulled out.

  Every time she’d gone to the guesthouse she’d passed the main house, but now she saw that there was a narrow gravel drive out the back and she followed it. To the left was the Frazier house, but Gemma turned right and ended up on McDowell Avenue, which led her to downtown Edilean.

  She parked under some trees across from the grassy little square, got out, locked the car, then stood and looked. Now what? she thought. She had no idea where Colin’s office was.

  “Hi, Gemma,” said a voice behind her.

  Turning, she saw one of the women she’d met in the grocery. In a stroller was the little girl she and Colin had held. Gemma went to the child. “How are you, Caitlyn?” she asked, and the girl smiled happily. Gemma tried to remember if she’d heard the mother’s name.

  “I hear you have a date with Dr. Tris.”

  “Sort of,” Gemma said cautiously. She felt that the invitation from Tris was more about friendship than an actual date, but she didn’t say that.

  “Every unmarried woman in town has tried to get him to ask her out, so what did you do to entice him?”

  Gemma wasn’t sure how to answer that. “I don’t know. I think maybe his niece got him to ask me.”

  The woman smiled. “I can believe that. He adores Nell.” Little Caitlyn began to grow restless. “I have to go, but maybe we can have lunch sometimes.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Gemma said as the woman waved good-bye.

  Smiling, Gemma crossed the street to the square. She stood under the big oak tree and looked around.

  Across the road, she saw stores, all of them obviously under some historic code for their façades, so their signs were barely visible. There was a drugstore and several unbelievably cute little boutiques that s