Chapter 37
SASHA
“Sasha!” Cass exclaims, setting down her phone as I walk through the door at Liberty, a new restaurant on Maple Street in downtown Quince Valley. “So glad you could make it.”
“Thanks for inviting me,” I say, sliding into a chair at the long table next to the picture window overlooking the street.
I smile as Cass talks about how good the menu is here.
But there’s an ache in my chest. My whole body, actually.
It’s still missing Griffin, even though he’s only been gone a few hours.
He woke me up before dawn today, whispering that he had to go again, but that he wanted me to stay with Cass tonight.
He wouldn’t tell me why, just that I was safe, but he’d feel better if I wasn’t on my own.
Part of me wanted to tell him if he was fine leaving me alone, then I should be fine staying on my own. But there was something in the urgency of his voice that had me skipping the petulance. “Okay,” I said.
I had a message from Cass before I even woke up saying she was so excited to have me over—Blake was out of town on business, so we could hang out and watch rom-coms and do girlie stuff. Normally, I’d love all of that.
But I couldn’t shake the worry that hung over me like a cloud.
Not just for me, but for Griffin. The way he’d hugged me when he left—it was like he was going off to war.
It felt like a farewell. I was so upset when the last sound of his bike disappeared over the hill that I went back into the house and shook that stupid canary over and over again before switching it off and sticking it in my pocket.
“Dad’s just washing up,” Cass says now, “and Chelsea’s going to be a few minutes late, but she’s on her way.”
“Okay,” I say brightly, hoping I don’t sound fake. I really am happy to be here. It’s Sunday morning, and Cass arranged for us all to have brunch together. I’m not working at Bijou until this afternoon. I was touched she’d asked me to join.
“What?” she asks incredulously when I tell her that now. “You’re part of the family.”
My stomach churns. If only that were true. Something’s happening back in New York, but I can’t share that, so I smile and nod, taking a sip of the ice water sitting on the table.
It reminds me of that night at Sequoia with Vincent Creelman.
“Is he coming?” I’d asked Griffin as he got onto his bike.
He’d gone stiff, then walked back to me and wrapped me in his arms. “No.”
“How do you know?”
He’d hesitated, then said, “I don’t want to count any chickens before they’re hatched.” After that, he’d kick-started his bike, ending the conversation.
Aggravating man.
I try to find some small bit of relief in that now.
John Kelly comes back to the table and gives me a fatherly hug that nearly makes me cry.
After that, I finally start to relax. When Chelsea arrives, she lets me hold baby Imogen until the food comes.
I order eggs Benedict, and we talk about everything from Imogen’s sleep schedule to Chester, who I checked on this morning.
He seems to be doing better than the last time we saw him.
He was out on his new porch when I arrived, throwing scraps at the chickens. He even gave me a grin.
“No one knows much about him,” John says, leaning back and sipping his coffee. “Not even Griffin.”
I glance between the sisters, but none of them says anything, and I realize Griffin hasn’t made his friendship with Chester known. Even though it seems to me like he holds his cards close to his chest, he tells me so much more.
“Does Chester ever talk about his grandfather?” John asks.
“Not much. Why?”
“He was always a bit of a mystery to us growing up here. He rarely came into town, refused to go on the power grid when they strung lines up that way. People say he guarded his place with a shotgun, but my pop did some work for him and said he wasn’t mean so much as…lonely.”
I feel a sudden affinity for the old man.
“You never told us this,” Cass says.
He shrugs. “Haven’t thought about Joseph Brown in years. I always thought he must have a sad story, to live up there alone. No one at his funeral but Chester, and he’d only been living with him a few years when he passed.”
I frown. “I thought Chester grew up in that house.”
“I suppose we wouldn’t have seen much of him if his grandfather kept him from town.”
I try to remember what Griffin told me about the timing of Chester’s history. But just thinking about Griffin has me feeling that strange emptiness inside again.
“Sasha?” Chelsea asks.
I blink. They’ve asked me a question.
“Sorry,” I say. “I’m a little distracted.”
“It’s hard on us when Griffin takes off without telling any of us,” Chelsea says softly. “Must be really hard on you—he does tell you he’s going, doesn’t he?”
I swallow down the dryness in my throat. “Yes. He tells me.” Just not where. And for what.
This would be what life with Griffin would be like if this were real. Him constantly leaving, not telling anyone where he’s gone. Not even me, the person he’s supposedly been telling everything.
“Well, you’ve got us,” Cass says after a moment. “Me, specifically. We’re going to have an amazing time over the next few days, I promise.”
I smile, grateful for her kindness, for all of their kindness, and for taking me in like this.
“But I do want to know about Eleanor,” John says. “Any movement on that front?”
I brighten at the change of subject, though I don’t have much more information for him.
“Nora gave me all the census records from around that time,” I say, “and I’ve narrowed down the results a little, but there are still so many to go through.”
John nods, looking like he’s trying to hide his disappointment.
My stomach does a roll. Nora and Jude made leaps and bounds, and I haven’t done anything yet except go through information they already found. For them it’s family business—part of their legacy. For me it’s just my own curiosity.
Maybe it was a terrible idea to jump into this search. Not when I’m not really a part of this family.
John must see the embarrassment on my face, because he smiles. “I’m just glad to see someone picking up the thread while Nora and Jude are waylaid by life.”
Chelsea nods. “Yeah, none of us have dedicated any time to the project recently either. We all kind of gave up when it got hard. You’re awesome for wanting to keep it going.”
“To be honest,” Cass says, “I wasn’t much of a fan of digging around when everyone started getting into it. Besides being nonsense, the ghost rumors were bad for business. But since Nora’s documentary came out, people are more interested in the story of the people behind the ridiculous rumors.”
I know they’re saying all this to make me feel better. But it works, at least a little.
“Everyone’s touched by the dedication they saw in the movie to seeing Eleanor get justice,” Chelsea says.
“And to getting James’s name cleared,” I say.
“Even just found,” John says. “Though I sometimes fear that’s never going to happen.”
Except for Imogen cooing, we’re quiet for a bit. Then I say what’s on my mind, even though they’ll probably think I’m overly sentimental.
“You know, even though there’s no world where I think this could happen, I like to think James found Clea. That he raised her and got to love her the way Eleanor would have wanted.”
“Oh, that would be the perfect end to a tragic love story,” Chelsea says. I can see she’s got the same emotions going on as me, and suddenly, I’m once again glad I picked this up. It’s not just for me.
We move on to talking about Jude and Cap being in London for the next two weeks and when they think he’s going to propose.
But when I glance at John, he’s staring into the distance, working his thumbs on his napkin on the table.
He’s clearly still thinking about the Eleanor project.
It makes me wonder if anyone’s asked him what he knows.
He’s a history buff. Plus, his wife ran the hotel for thirty years.
He was the one who first got his kids interested in the story.
I’m just wondering if I should ask him when there’s a screech of tires outside, cutting Cass off mid-sentence.
“What the hell?” she says.
We all look out the window to see a gold Bentley cutting across traffic. It noses into an open parking spot thirty feet from where we sit. Cars honk, pausing before going around the Bentley’s rear, which sticks out into the road.
“It’s okay, honey,” John says, holding Chelsea’s hand.
Chelsea grips a babbling Imogen tight across her chest, her eyes wide. Chelsea was in a car accident a few years ago—she still bears a scar across her face.
I shift my body to get a better look and also to block her view in case someone’s hurt. But someone’s moving inside the tinted windows.
A passerby stops and stands in front of the window, obviously checking if the person’s all right. The door opens, and the man rears back. Whoever it is must say something nasty to the man, because he huffs and storms off.
Something tickles inside me. Some spidey-sense that this isn’t just a terrible driver snagging a parking spot.
“Looks like everyone’s okay,” I say for Chelsea’s sake.
Other restaurant patrons murmur behind me, most returning to their meals.
But I don’t.
Because as the door opens farther, my stomach tightens. A pair of long legs clad in an expensive suit unfolds quickly from the driver’s seat.
The person getting out doesn’t even close the door. They just stand in the street.
Staring at me through the restaurant window.
My mouth goes dry. There’s no mistaking the handsome face. No mistaking the square jaw and salt and pepper hair, the eyebrows like slashes over angry, thick-lashed eyes.
“Is that—” John says, his brows furrowed.
“My brother Sam,” I say.