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  “No, nothing,” Toby said, but then her head came up. “Actually, I did. I lost a key to a box. It’s still in Kingsley House, keyless, but when I saw the box, it contained—”

  “Jade zodiac symbols,” Dr. Huntley said. “Captain Caleb bought them in China as a gift for the woman he loved. The key was lost at Parthenia’s wedding, and the captain always thought one of those Starbuck brats stole it.”

  “How could you possibly know that?” Ken asked.

  “Didn’t I tell you that my Caleb knows everything about this island?” Victoria said, her voice full of pride.

  “In my dream,” Toby emphasized, “I dropped the key behind an unfinished window seat in Kingsley House.”

  “Shall we go look for it?” Caleb said as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world. No one hesitated in leaving.

  It took them only minutes to reach Kingsley House, but when they got there, Caleb refused to enter.

  “I’ll wait out here for you,” he said as he stood on the little front porch.

  “But, darling,” Victoria began, but even she could see that he wasn’t going to budge.

  Jilly put her hand on Caleb’s arm, her face sympathetic. “If it’s ghosts you’re worried about, I have a bit of intuition about them. I’ll warn you if—”

  “Intuition?” Caleb said. “You can see them. Poor creatures have to hide from you. Ghosts hold no fear for me. It’s just that I’ve seen enough of that house. Go and look for your key, then come back out here to me.”

  Everyone, even Victoria, gave up arguing and went inside. Ken flipped the light switches on as they went to the back parlor and Toby pointed out the cushioned window seat.

  “I sat here with Alisa, or Ali, as she liked to be called, and I watched her draw pictures of the windows.”

  Ken pulled the cushion off and looked at the way the seat was constructed. “I know how this was done. I’d not noticed it before but it’s quite ingenious.” He looked at Toby with teasing eyes. “But then that’s rather vain of me to say considering that in another life I built it.”

  Toby knew he was making fun of her, but she didn’t mind. However, part of her almost wished they would find the key.

  Ken got Jared’s big toolbox out of a closet and removed the bottom panel of the seat. He stretched out on the floor to take out the inner panel. When that was done, he had to slide the upper part of his body inside the opening to search with a flashlight and a long screwdriver.

  No one said a word as they listened to the scratching and saw the light move about. When Ken scooted back out, he sat up and looked at them. He took his time before he opened his hand to show a little brass key.

  “That’s it!” Toby exclaimed as she took it.

  It was one thing to laugh about finding a key that had been lost centuries ago but quite another to see it in real life.

  Ken, Jilly, and Victoria were staring at Toby in openmouthed astonishment.

  Graydon stepped forward, put his arm protectively around Toby’s shoulders, and said, “Shall we look for the box full of jade?”

  Ken was the first to recover. “Uh, ah … Does anyone know where it is?”

  When no one spoke, Toby said, “I saw it in the attic but I don’t remember exactly where it was. Maybe I should call Lexie and ask her.”

  Victoria was recovering from shock. “I’ll find out.” She went to the front door and told Caleb that Ken had found the key.

  “I thought he would,” he said. “Third row from the right, halfway down, inside the red lacquer box. When I danced with Alix I knocked the bulbs out, so take a light.”

  “I assume you’re talking of the attic,” Victoria said, blinking.

  “I am. When you find the box, bring it outside so I can see it.”

  The five adults ran up the old stairs to the attic and the treasure hunt began. It took a while, but they found the box exactly where Caleb said it was. They’d had trouble agreeing about the meaning of “halfway down,” and the lacquer box was so old the red was almost black.

  “How did Caleb know where this was?” Ken asked in awe. “It was inside another box.”

  “He really does know everything about the island,” Victoria said, but this time it didn’t sound like she was bragging. She sounded as though she thought it was a bit creepy.

  “Old soul; new body,” Jilly murmured, and everyone was glad to turn their thoughts to someone other than Toby. “Shall we take the box downstairs and try the key?”

  They met Caleb outside, then they all walked to the back of the property to the guesthouse, where Ken and Jilly were staying, and put the old box on the kitchen countertop.

  “This place has certainly changed,” Caleb said as he looked around. “Used to be where we kept the cow.”

  No one asked about that comment. Under the spell of the late night, and the wine and the port they’d ingested, no one questioned his odd statement. Toby gave the key to Caleb. “I think you should be the one to do this.”

  Considering that the box had been locked for over two hundred years, the key turned easily. Caleb didn’t open it but picked it up and handed it to Victoria. “The gift was meant for you.”

  Victoria opened the box to reveal the jade carvings of the Chinese zodiac. Each figure was of a different color of jade: dark green, white, even lavender. Each was exquisitely and intricately carved.

  “I’m a rabbit,” Victoria said as she lifted that figure. “All about family and ambition.” They all began to talk of the year they were born. Only Caleb was silent. When they looked at him in question, he said, “What was the symbol for 1776?”

  There was a hesitation, then Victoria said, “Fireworks!” and they all laughed—and their laughter broke the tension. No one had said it, but the question hung over them all: Had Toby actually time traveled? Did the key prove that her dreams were real?

  Victoria, Ken, and Jilly turned to look at the two young people standing there in their beautiful eighteenth-century clothes, and it was easy to imagine that they’d stepped out of the past.

  Graydon was the first to break the silence. “There’s a room in that house,” he said softly, “where I felt a sense of misery, even tragedy.”

  They hadn’t spoken of it, but Toby knew the room he meant. “The door is hidden behind the paneling.”

  They were all looking at Caleb, waiting for his answer. No one seemed to doubt that he would know. “The birthing room?” he asked. “Back then women gave birth often and they gathered together when the time came. A lot of the houses had birthing rooms. There was indeed much sadness in there, but there was also joy. Valentina gave birth to the first Jared Montgomery Kingsley in that room. He was a big, healthy boy.” He sounded proud.

  “Who grew up to marry little Ali,” Victoria said. “Toby, since the book I’m working on is from Valentina’s journal, I’ll want to talk to you about her. I didn’t realize Ali was older than Jared.”

  No one noticed that Toby and Graydon were silent and slightly frowning. While the others discussed Valentina and her life, Toby turned to Graydon. “You didn’t tell me that you saw that room. I couldn’t go inside it. I also felt a deep sadness—grief—coming from it. I kept feeling that I—I mean Tabby—had died in there.”

  Graydon took her hand in his and kissed the back of it. He wasn’t about to tell her that was exactly what he too had felt. “But you heard Dr. Huntley. Tabby had no children, so she probably wouldn’t have died in that particular room.”

  Toby grimaced. “No, she just willed herself to leave the earth because her life was so unhappy. That poor, poor girl. When I was in my dream, if I’d known what happened to her, I would have tried to save her.”

  “By doing what? Marrying her to Garrett?” He was smiling as though that was a great idea.

  “Then he goes off to sea with his big brother and gets himself killed? That would leave yet another widow in that house and probably more children to take care of. And if she was Garrett’s wife, Tabby wouldn’t have had Silas