Somewhere in Time Page 13

  I faced them. “I can’t go along with this.”

  Blake clasped his hands in front of him. His jaw muscle worked. “I’m not against you on this—in fact, I think this is a house full of people who love you and just want to protect you.”

  I held the bag of chips from my painting and shook it between us. “No matter where I turn—last life, this life, childhood, adulthood—Otto takes my most precious loved ones away from me. I can’t let him continue to do that. I’m not running from him anymore. With or without your help I’m stopping him this time.”

  Chapter 24

  The building was cold. He never liked it cold. Ellen turned off the heating system when the firm shut down. And all of the clients removed their art from the vaults, so there was no longer a need to maintain a temperate climate anywhere in the building. She’d probably turn it back on when the weather heated up again. Just to prevent mold and whatnot.

  He ripped the yellow police tape from the wall so he could pass through the narrow hallway. All of the vault doors were left open, and he glanced inside each one of them as he passed by. They hadn’t been this empty since the firm had its grand opening almost a half century ago. Hard to believe.

  When he finally reached the end of the hallway, he stood quietly in front of the door that had been sealed for several years, and he took a folded piece of paper from his pocket. Written on it were five possible combinations to the old-fashioned dial lock on the door. At one time he knew the combination by heart, but so much time had passed, he had forgotten it. He probably should have written it down.

  He tried the first three combinations, but none of them worked. Same with the next two. He thought about talking with Ellen—she would still have the combination. He knew she wouldn’t want him to do what he was about to do. She would just lie and say she didn’t have it.

  For now, he was in a hurry. So, he’d have to enter the room from the other direction.

  Chapter 25

  I placed one foot on the cool, inky-stained step, then cautiously felt for the next step before placing my weight there. In the dark of this moonless night the stairs were nearly invisible to the sleepy eye and I wasn’t in the mood to break a limb.

  Three more steps to the landing, then four steps to the floor, I counted.

  Blake was still upstairs. Sleeping blissfully, purring a little, actually. My mind was awake and sprinting from thought to thought like a gazelle connecting the numbers on a dot-to-dot drawing. The end result? A picture of Otto that popped me off the bed and sent me in search of calm-inducing, chamomile tea.

  My family was right. Each of them was right. Otto was a soulless creature and shouldn’t be trusted. For that very reason I had to put a stop to him and his repeated presence in my life. Same went for helping my father and my grandfather, and I wasn’t going to run from that, either.

  Just as I placed my foot on the cool, wooden floor, I heard a teary-voiced gasp that came from the direction of the library. I paused mid-step, gathered my old terrycloth robe around my neck, and tip-toed through the family room. Grace stood in my grandfather’s office across the way, near a walled bookshelf with her fingertips to her mouth. She read from a yellowed piece of paper.

  She wiped tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand, audibly smoothed the crinkly letter, and placed it in a box before tucking the box in the bottom left drawer beneath the shelves. She lifted a fresh piece of stationery from a letterbox and penned several paragraphs. She then slid a thin, navy book from the shelf, placed the letter inside the front cover, and returned the book to its home.

  I kept to the shadows of the darkened family room until Grace returned upstairs and disappeared from view. When I heard the faint click of her door, I padded silently to his office. It was damp outside, a condition that gave the room a stronger than usual book smell, one of my favorite scents. When I got close enough to it, I saw that the navy, hardback book she’d touched held little sparkles around it. That was the sign that energy work had been at play.

  But on a book? What was Grace up to?

  I inspected the book more closely, and recognized it as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise. When I reached for it, a tingling of electricity ran up my hand. I retracted my hand, and it lessened. I reached toward the book, and the sensation intensified and traveled up my arm. There was also a funny scent, an acrid, distant burning.

  A faint crackling filled the air when I finally abducted it from its home. When I opened the front cover I was surprised to see that the letter Grace placed there was gone. I held the book by its front and back cover and shook it, expecting the letter to float free. Nothing fell out.

  I had seen Grace put the letter in the book. I scoured the bookshelf to see if there were other books that were navy in color. Perhaps I’d taken the wrong one.

  This was the only one in the area where Grace had been.

  I flipped through the pages in case the letter was wedged tight near the spine and stopped at the front, inside page where it was written in black script:

  To Grace,

  Who embraces the epitome of her name.

  With luck and compliments,

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Grace and my grandfather had several antique and first edition books. How clever that they found one with her name in it. Just like my grandfather to celebrate her in that way, he did the same for all of us.

  I returned the book to its home on the shelf. The sparkles remained. Like the intermittent ringing of both sides of a large bell, one sparkle illuminated, and a moment later another one would appear on the opposite and lower side.

  My hands rested on my hips. Why would Grace do energy work on a book? To make it absorb her writing? Make things disappear? A chill sprinted up my spine and generated a shiver. Honestly, I wouldn’t put anything past Grace. Magically, that is. It seemed there wasn’t anything she couldn’t do.

  The outside lights were on tonight. Through the 100-year-old window-paned glass, I watched the rippled view of water oak branches bend in the wind. A shadow passed in the distance. The soldier, most likely.

  The wind howled, the house creaked, and I froze where I stood. In a house this old I never could be sure which noises to attribute to weather, people without bodies, or people who still had their bodies. I hoped it wasn’t Grace. I really didn’t want her to see me down here snooping.

  After a while I was satisfied that Grace remained safely behind her bedroom door. I breathed a moment of relief. It was silent in the room and every sigh, every footstep, was louder than I wanted it to be.

  Slowly I opened the deep drawer where I’d seen Grace place the box. It glided open to a halt, a whiff of unfinished rosewood climbing from the drawer that must have spent much of its time closed. There sat the silver and blue enamel box that had been my grandfather’s. When he used this office, the box sat on top of the round side table in the corner. Tonight it was hidden in the middle of this drawer.

  Careful that my grandmother might magically appear at just the wrong time, I left the box in the drawer and opened the lid. The hinges tight, it squeaked slightly, then stood on its own. Just as I had when I was a child and searching for treasures, I peered inside the box.

  Yellowed letters were folded in half and stacked neatly in two piles, side by side. The bundle toward the back was tied together in a white, satin ribbon. Gently I unraveled the ribbon and started at the top of the pile. Letters written from Grace bore the current date, but they were yellowed and deeply creased. I turned the brittle paper over, and found another letter written on the other side.

  A slight breeze seeped through the aged windows but that wasn’t what chilled me. I recognized the handwriting.

  The stiff, yellowed paper crackled when I unfolded it:

  Dearest Grace,

  Love and greetings !

  Travel by plane is still quite unregulated and no one keeps to a schedule here. Last week we spent an entire day in a cornfield in rural New York, waiting our turn to fly to Sav
annah. There were about ten of us, I would guess, and each of us carried enough cash in our pockets to get to our destination. Travel is too slow by train and not according to our custom.

  Do let us know if you’ll be in New York again soon.

  Love,

  John

  My grandfather had penned this letter.

  “Need company?”

  I jumped and saw Blake, sleepy-eyed, boxer-clad, and standing in front of me.

  “You scared me.” I pressed my hand to my chest. My heart banged against my fingers.

  Blake walked over to the desk and frowned at the pile of antiqued letters. “What’s this?” He placed his hand against my upper back, his thumb stroking gently.

  “Letters from my grandfather. To Grace.”

  “Old love letters or something?” Blake yawned and scratched at his wild hair.

  “These were written during the time that he and my dad have been gone.”

  Blake stared at me, incredulous. “Are you sure?”

  I picked up a stack of letters and placed them in front of him. “Holy shit, the last letter was written two days ago.” I pointed at the date Grace had written in elegant longhand in the upper right hand corner. “And these two were written just last week. Damn it, she lied!”

  Blake took the two letters I handed him. “Effectively, too. I believed her. Why are these so yellowed?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, and told him how I’d seen her place a handwritten letter into a book, and how I couldn’t find it a few minutes later.

  “Which book?” he asked.

  I handed him the F. Scott Fitzgerald book and he shook it just as I did, flipped through all the pages, then searched for a pocket on the inside of the covers.

  “You’re sure it was this book?”

  “Positive,” I said.

  “Is she asleep?” Blake asked.

  “She’s in her room. She has a way of popping up when you least expect her to.”

  Blake peeked out the double doorway of the office and searched the shadowy layout of the main floor. “Let’s take these upstairs.” He lifted a stack of the crisped letters as if he handled a hollowed Easter egg, and handed them to me. “We can come back for more after we’ve read these.”

  “Good idea.” I tucked them into the front pocket of my robe and patted them twice.

  I walked with gratitude behind Blake while he led the way up the wide stairway. If Grace were to pop out from around some corner, I’d rather he be the front line of defense.

  We stepped into my old room and placed the letters on the quilt that was folded on the end of my bed. Then pressed my hand about a foot in the air over them to command them to stay put. I locked the door behind us with the brass skeleton key that rested in the antique mortise lock.

  “So, you realize,” Blake said, holding my face in his hands, leaning in close with that heart-stopping smile of his, “that there’s no reason for you to work with Otto if Grace knows where Campbell and John are.”

  An unexpected wave of relief washed over me and left me near drunk with happiness. A giggle burst free. “They’re not dead.” I snuggled against his bare skin and gazed at the array of letters in front of us.

  Blake pressed me close to him and swayed, just a little.

  “For the first time in twenty years I have proof, and in their own handwriting. They’re alive.” I sighed and pressed my hand to my chest. “First thing in the morning, I’ll confront Grace.”

  Chapter 26

  Freshly showered and dressed, Blake and I made our way downstairs. I’d retied the satin ribbon around the letters and tucked them safely into the pocket of my long jacket. With every step I rubbed my thumb over the fold of the letters and anticipated the moment when I’d confront Grace about what she knew. She was a force to be reckoned with, and she didn’t take kindly to confrontation of any kind. Even so, the rest of us had a right to know where these men were. Because they were alive. And, I believed, they needed our help.

  The last step squeaked when my bare foot hit it. Grace cleared her throat and set her coffee cup audibly into the saucer. My heart did a triple thump, its little dance of dread. Blake must have known because he placed his hand on my shoulder and descended the stairs behind me.

  “Good mornin’, sugar,” Grace said, and bowed her head to see over her frameless reading glasses. “Sleep well?”

  “Mostly. Had a lot on my mind, I guess.”

  “I understand.” She returned to her paper.

  Apparently, she did understand.

  With hair piled high on her head, Alexa dunked a glazed doughnut into an extra large coffee cup. She lifted her eyes from her phone screen and winked at me.

  “Let me get you both some coffee,” Isabella said, and kissed my head when she passed by. “Espresso okay with you, Blake? Or cafe americana?”

  “Espresso is fine.” Blake’s smile warmed the room.

  “Lex, love, do you want anything?” Isabella tied her hair together in a braid and fastened a brown elastic to the ends of her gathered hair. She and Lexie looked like two variations of the same model.

  “Yes, please,” she said with a mouthful, and tapped her cup.

  “I’ll help you.” Blake followed Isabella into the kitchen.

  My father’s and grandfather’s energy shot up through my palm, and my pulse rocketed with it. “Grace, there’s something I need to ask you about.”

  She folded the newspaper and placed it in front of her. Though her smile was kind, there was a fierceness to her eyes and for a change, I took it as a challenge.

  I lifted the letters out of my pocket and placed them on the table between us like the unveiling of a secret weapon. Alexa’s eyes glommed onto the letters. Grace stared at them, too. The seconds ticked by.

  “I see you’ve been through my things,” she said. Her cool blue eyes met mine and sent adrenaline on a trip through my system. There were many characteristics undeniably feminine about Grace. Her figure. The way she wore her hair, her jewelry. The way she held a glass of wine. When she was angry, though, she became less than a woman. More of a creature. She forced a closed-lipped smile and I half expected to see the white tips of fangs peering beneath her top lip.

  Alexa put her coffee down and her doughnut floated in the cup.

  I touched the edge of one letter for comfort. “I wasn’t snooping. I came down for tea last night and I saw that you were upset—I wanted to know why. To see if I could help.”

  Alexa cleared her throat.

  “You don’t know what you’re getting into here. This isn’t what you think,” Grace said.

  “You know where Dad and Grandad are. And you’ve kept it from us all this time,” I said.

  “What?” Alexa gasped.

  “Kept what from you, love?” Isabella reappeared from the kitchen and placed a cup of freshly made espresso in front of me. The platinum band of her square cut diamond engagement ring chimed against the cup.

  “Letters from Dad and Grandad,” I said. My throat convulsed a swallow.

  Isabella followed my line of sight to the letters on the table and stopped cold.

  “Oh, no,” she said.

  Blake walked behind me and sat down. His cup and saucer clinked when he placed them on the rosewood table.

  I placed my hand on his knee for comfort.

  “How did you find those?” Isabella asked.

  “You know about these, too?” I asked and felt my face color.

  “From Dad and Grandad?” Alexa asked. She stood partially and peeked at them, her eyes hopped with caution between the letters and Grace.

  “Current-day letters,” I said.

  “We were protecting the both of you.” Isabella crossed her arms in front of her and fiddled with her engagement ring.

  “Protecting us…from what? Our own father and grandfather? You’ve known all these years that they’re alive and well, and where they’ve been, and you didn’t tell us.”

  “What do you mean they’re ali
ve?” Alexa’s voice shook.

  I leaned toward Grace. “And you told us just yesterday that they were dead. How could you do that?”

  Grace placed her hand in front of me on the table and I moved the letters a little farther out of her reach. “Addie, honey, this is not what it seems. This is complicated—”

  “And dangerous,” Isabella said. She crossed her arms a little tighter.

  “It’s a lie is what it is. You told us that our father and grandfather were dead. When in reality they’re alive and well and corresponding with the two of you!”

  “It’s not quite like that,” Isabella sat down across from me. She glanced at the letters, then to Grace, then back to me. “It’s hard to explain,” she said. Her head twitched a tiny shake.

  “Try me. You’ll find me to be oddly bright and sufficiently capable of understanding the…complicated and dangerous.”

  “You need to trust us when we tell you that we are protecting you and Alexa.” Grace clicked the pearls of her necklace against one another.

  “You had my trust,” I said. “Now I need the truth.”

  Grace's teeth were clenched behind tightly closed lips, her nostrils flared slightly. It was a far more intense version of the look I’d received as a child whenever Alexa and I had ruined something of hers—furniture, a party, plans for the future. “I can’t believe you’ve done this,” she said.

  “You should be happy I found these letters. Because if you know how to get to Dad and Grandad, then I don’t have to partner with Otto.”

  She opened her mouth to respond but a loud knock on the front door prevented it, and made me jump, instead.

  Grace’s shoulders stiffened, her chin jutted out slightly. With steady eyes on mine she snatched the letters, and headed toward the door.

  Grace returned with a package and laid it on the table.