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  But this woman in her dream wasn’t looking at Toby like that. While it was true that there wasn’t any genuine happiness in the woman’s eyes, there was concern. It was as though she really cared whether or not Toby was feeling well.

  “Mother?” Toby whispered.

  She gave a small smile. “You look as though you’ve never seen me before.”

  “I’m not sure I have, actually,” Toby said.

  The woman laughed—a sound Toby didn’t think she’d ever heard before. Her mother was a very serious person. Taking care of her household, helping her husband with anything he needed, and, above all else, finding her daughter a husband were jobs that consumed her.

  “Come along, dear, and get something to eat.”

  When she slipped her arm through Toby’s, Toby’s eyes widened in shock. Casual affection was not something that her mother demonstrated. Toby couldn’t help that her eyes began to grow teary.

  “Valentina was right. You are a bit off tonight. Come away. Silas will be here soon. He is delivering a coffin. People die at the most inopportune times, don’t they?”

  At that callous statement, Toby laughed. This was the mother she knew. “Valentina is the red-haired woman?”

  “You know that.”

  “Yes, of course I do,” Toby said and remembered hearing that long ago Captain Caleb and Valentina had been lovers.

  As they walked toward the doorway, another woman entered the room. “Lavinia, Tabby,” she said in greeting and they nodded to her.

  Outside this vivid dream, in the real world, her mother’s name was Lavidia. “Lavidia, Lavinia, Toby, Tabby,” she said aloud.

  “No more cider for you, dear,” Lavinia said, patting her daughter’s hand.

  They went across the hall to the dining room, where a long table was laden with food. Several people were around it, holding beautiful plates that Toby had seen on display in the Nantucket Whaling Museum.

  “Did Captain Caleb bring these back from China?” Toby asked.

  “You helped unpack them.” Her mother was looking at the food, picking over it.

  It was when Toby reached for a plate that she realized she still had the key to the box in her hand. But then, it made sense that her dream was reconciling the lost key. Maybe if she put the key back in the box it would be there when she woke. Smiling at that idea, she picked up a plate and reached for a piece of fish with mushrooms on it. “So how is Captain Caleb?”

  To Toby, it was an innocent question, but her mother turned to her with the angry face Toby had seen all her life. “No sea captains!” she said in a voice that was more a hiss than human.

  Toby took a step back. “I didn’t mean anything by my question. Isn’t this his house?”

  Lavinia seemed to need a few breaths before she could speak. “Of course it is, but don’t let his riches fool you. You know as well as anyone what it’s like to marry a man of the sea.”

  “I guess so,” Toby said as she picked up a little bowl full of what looked to be custard. “I take it Silas has nothing to do with the sea?”

  Lavinia looked at her daughter across the table. “What has happened to you tonight? You do not seem to be yourself.”

  “I’m just reevaluating my life, that’s all. I want to know what you think of Silas and me. Are we truly in love?”

  “Really, Tabitha! You do ask embarrassing questions! I assume you are since you have pledged yourself to him.”

  “We’re engaged to be married?”

  Lavinia looked hard at her daughter for a long moment. “You’re not thinking of … of him again, are you?”

  “No, certainly not!” Toby said. “He’s not in my mind at all.” Whoever “he” is. What a marvelous dreamer I am, she thought. I had no idea I was so imaginative. As far as she could tell, she—as Tabitha—seemed to be in love with one man but engaged to another—whom she might or might not be in love with at all.

  It certainly beat her current life! “What year is this?” she asked.

  “Tabitha, you are beginning to frighten me.”

  “I don’t mean to. I just need some reassurance that I’m doing the right thing in choosing Silas over … him.”

  Lavinia squinted her eyes. “That will not be a concern, because you will be married by the time his ship returns. He and that brother of his will not be able to turn your head with their looks and their swagger.”

  “And who is his brother?”

  She leaned toward her daughter. “Mark my words, Tabitha Weber, but Captain Caleb will be dead before long. He’s too reckless, too full of his own importance. His crewmen tell stories of the chances he takes when he’s on the seas. Someday that will take him down—and when he goes, he’ll take young Garrett with him.”

  Toby raised her brows in interest at this rather romantic, swashbuckling story and her mother saw it.

  “Do not imagine yourself with him!” Lavinia said and there was desperation in her voice. “We are a house full of sea widows and we need what Silas offers.” Lavinia put her full plate down on the end of the table. “Now see what you have done to me! My heart races. I must lie down.”

  As Lavinia rushed past her daughter, Toby said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—” Her mother was gone. Toby looked at the other people in the room, who were staring at her with eyes of disapproval. She had no doubt that they knew the whole story behind whatever was upsetting her mother.

  Toby put down her plate of food. “I’d better go see about her.” The women looked at her as though to say indeed she should, and Toby left the room.

  She felt a pang of guilt for not trying to find her mother and soothe her, but then, what could she say? That she promised that Tabitha would marry Silas and not the rascal from the ship? But since her mother seemed to have set the wedding before the sailor was to return, there was no need to make a vow that she knew nothing about.

  Instead, Toby went back to where there was dancing and music, wondering when she would wake up. She truly hoped that she hadn’t suffered a concussion when she fell on the slick floor. This dream was taking so long she was beginning to think she was in a coma.

  Not that any of this is real, Toby thought as she looked around at the dancers. There were a few people she’d seen around the island but didn’t know their names. If this was her own dream, made up by her, why was Jared excluded? Victoria/Valentina had never heard of him, but that made no sense.

  When the dancers parted, Toby saw a little girl curled up on a window seat on the other side of the room. She was bent over a board with drawing paper on it, and something about her looked familiar.

  Toby made her way around the dancers and sat down by the child. “What are you drawing?”

  “The windows,” she said.

  Toby smiled, for she knew exactly who the child was. In contemporary times, she was Alix Madsen, who was an architect down to her very bone marrow.

  “Let me guess,” Toby said. “Your father is Ken. I think that here he’s John Kendricks, and today he married Parthenia, who is Jilly.”

  The girl turned to look at Toby as though trying to figure her out. “My sister is Ivy and our mother died.”

  “I’m sorry,” Toby said softly. “Do you like your new mother?”

  “She made my father give me blocks of wood to build with.”

  “High praise indeed!” Toby said and for a moment she watched the dancers. “Do you think Captain Caleb is going to be angry about his house when he returns?”

  The girl was bent over her drawing. “He is here now. I saw him. He went up the back stairs.”

  “Oh, dear,” Toby said. “Just home after a long sea voyage and his house is full of people. No wonder he’s hiding out. I seem to remember Alix telling me something about Captain Caleb and Valentina meeting in an attic. Maybe I should help things along by suggesting that she take a break up there.” She looked at the child. “I’m sure I know your name, but what is it?”

  “Alisa, but everyone calls me Ali.”

  “P