True Love Read online

  Jilly flew in from Colorado a few days after Jared’s arrival. She was a widow, and her two grown children were in summer camps in their home state. It was their last summer before they left for college.

  Jared had been told that after Jilly’s husband died, she’d been hired by the family to become their genealogist. She’d spent years going through the mass of family documents and writing histories of everyone. Recently she’d posted a detailed family tree online, which was where Alix had found Valentina and Parthenia.

  Jilly brought with her from Colorado three big boxes of photocopied papers. “The originals are in a vault,” she said at dinner at the huge table that first night. In one of the boxes were the letters from Valentina and Parthenia to each other. She recapped them for Jared.

  As she told him what the letters said, of the two young women missing each other and planning to visit, he watched her. She was sweet and gentle while the other Taggerts were big and rough.

  “She looks like her maternal grandmother,” Cale, sitting on his other side, said. “Or else she’s an alien from another planet.”

  Jared laughed. Jilly, so fragile-looking, so soft-spoken, sitting amid her great, hulking brothers, did indeed look as though she were from another dimension.

  Seeing that she had an audience, Cale kept on. “What do you think her planet looks like? All pink and cream?”

  Jared didn’t miss a beat. “I think it must look like Nantucket, with mists and sunsets over the ocean, sun-warmed sand, and houses grayed by centuries of life.”

  Cale blinked at him for a moment, then looked across the table at her husband. “I need your checkbook.”

  “Yeah?” Kane said, his eyes alight. “What are you going to buy?”

  “A house on Nantucket.”

  Kane looked from Cale to Jared and back again. “Let me guess. It has a great story attached to it.”

  “Maybe,” she said and everyone laughed. They knew how much Cale loved stories.

  It was after dinner, the night before he was going to leave, and Jared was sitting outside in a swing with Jilly beside him. Since the first moment he met her, she’d reminded him of someone. At first he’d thought it was Toby. They both had a quiet elegance about them, but at dinner there was something about the way she held her fork—in that tines-down European way—that made him realize that she reminded him of Ken. A gesture here and there, a tone to her soft voice, made him want to call Ken and say he’d met the perfect woman for him.

  But Jared knew that would end it before it started, so he only told Alix about his idea of returning home with Jilly. On the last night, he sat with her and listened as she told more about the letters. “After the first visit to Nantucket, Parthenia returned to Maine and their letters started again. But this time they wrote about the men they cared for. Parthenia had fallen in love with the schoolmaster, and Valentina with—”

  “Caleb,” Jared said. “But what happened to her?”

  “We know no more than you. When Valentina disappeared, Parthenia was married to her schoolmaster and living on Nantucket, so there were no more letters between them. A Montgomery ancestor wrote home that after Valentina disappeared three men from her family went to the island to search for her. They discovered a couple of sailors who said they’d taken her to the Cape, but no trace of her was found there or anywhere else. She certainly never came home to Maine. After Parthenia’s death, all the letters between her and Valentina were sent back to Warbrooke. I’ve read everything and an explanation for Valentina’s disappearance is nowhere to be found.”

  Jared was frowning. “I was told … heard, anyway, that no one had seen Valentina leave the island.”

  “Perhaps it was kept quiet. A woman leaving her child behind wouldn’t have been looked on favorably, and I doubt if her relatives would have spread that information. It was all so long ago. Do you have many family documents at your house?”

  Jared could tell by her voice that she’d like to see them, so he took the opening. “I have acres of them. Nothing is ever thrown away in my family. We own several houses and all of them are packed to the top of the mast with yellowing old papers, letters, and books.”

  “It sounds fascinating.”

  “Not to hear Alix tell it.” He smiled in what he hoped was a persuasive way. “Why don’t you come back with me and spend the rest of the summer going through them?”

  “I couldn’t possibly,” she began, then sighed. “On the other hand, both my children will be leaving home soon and I’ve nearly finished with our family papers. I’m afraid I have a serious case of empty nest syndrome.” Her head came up. “Actually, I’d love to go to Nantucket with you. Should I make reservations to stay somewhere?”

  “There’s an apartment upstairs in my house. You can stay there as long as you like.”

  “But you and Alix need your privacy.”

  “We’ll enjoy the company,” he said, thinking again of Ken.

  She looked at him in speculation. “I don’t know you very well, but you have a look in your eyes that my family, the Taggerts, says means a Montgomery is up to something and you’d better watch out.”

  Jared gave a laugh that could be heard all the way to the inside of the old house. “Does this mean you’re not open to a bit of adventure?”

  Jilly smiled. “I have raised two children on my own since they were three years old and my job has been to delve into eight-foot-tall stacks of old papers. The truth is that if a pirate asked me to go sailing with him I would probably say yes. What time should I be ready?”

  “Is daylight tomorrow too soon? It’ll take five hours to drive down to Hyannis. I found someone to deliver the stained-glass window I’ll be taking back, so we can catch the noon fast ferry to Nantucket.”

  “I will be ready by four A.M.”

  “You’re my kind of girl,” he said.

  “I’m hardly a girl but thank you for the compliment.”

  That had been last night and he’d spent the evening helping Jilly pack. Or rather, he saw the women scurrying about getting her ready. Jared had stayed with the men and watched sports on TV. One by one the women came in to make a comment.

  Mike’s wife told Jared how pleased they all were that he was adding to Jilly’s life. “She’s the sweetest of all the Taggerts.”

  “That doesn’t take much,” a Montgomery said and the Taggerts threw popcorn at him.

  “You men are cleaning that up,” she said as she left the room.

  Cale came in with a laptop, squeezed beside Jared on the couch, and showed him the real estate listing she’d found for a house on Kingsley Lane. “Is this the house you told me about? The one with the time-traveling ghost?”

  “It is,” he said.

  “This house costs rather a lot.”

  “It’s Nantucket,” Jared said.

  Cale didn’t ask what that meant, just glanced at her husband. “This is going to take some persuading.”

  “Do a time-share,” Jared said. “Three or four months per family. Share the cost.” He leaned toward her. “Writers love winter on the island the best. That’s when it’s quiet and the ghosts show themselves.”

  “You really are a Montgomery, aren’t you? A true snake oil salesman.” She was smiling. “I like this idea and I’ll propose it to them.” She put her hand on his arm. “I’m glad you joined the family, and I look forward to meeting Alix.”

  “What’s going on with you two?” Kane asked from across the room.

  “I’m planning to run off with your new cousin,” Cale said. “Where’s Kane?”

  Jared looked up in surprise. “He’s Mike?”

  “Yes,” Cale said. “He’s fat; my husband isn’t.”

  Mike grunted at that and looked back at the TV.

  Jared smiled at the absurdity of her words. He knew that both Kane and Mike used their basement gym to keep in shape with workouts that would be tough for an Olympic athlete. Their muscular bodies showed the results. Neither was the slightest bit overweight.