Chapter 23
Laurie felt like this Wednesday was the longest in history. Eric was out there, bravely telling everyone they were folding. As one of the last family-owned dairies in town, she felt they had something to prove. Well, after all that had happened, she’d proved that small dairies couldn’t survive in today’s economy.
No, it was her fault. She must feel the full weight of it. Closing the doors on the dairy was all her fault since she lent the money, foolishly putting their dairy in danger. She couldn’t blame Proposition 11. If she’d been thinking straight after Will died, she might have considered the loan to James with a little more weight. Grief made poor decisions.
A knock sounded on the door. The boys and Angie were gone. Maybe it was Carl. She hastened to the door but could tell from the outline through the glass door that it was not a man.
She opened the door and the screen. “Deb? What are you doing here?”
“I’ve come back into town for a few weeks to help out at the bakery. To see my great-niece and old friends.”
“Come in.” She waved her inside. They sat on the couch in the front parlor near the flute and the piano. A fireplace sat opposite of them. “You’ve had so many experiences and traveled since you married Roland.”
“It’s true. But I still like to honor my roots.” Deb sat up straight. “I’ll come quickly to the point: I heard the Sweet Milk Dairy is in trouble. I want to help.”
Tears that Laurie had controlled until now, burst over the rims of her eyes. “You’re so kind, but there’s nothing you can do. The debt is far too great.”
“How much do you need to keep from defaulting?”
Laurie’s lips trembled. “Over a hundred thousand dollars.” She hadn’t looked at the exact figures. Eric knew how much. All she knew was if James had returned with the money, most of their problems would’ve been over.
Deb whistled. “I doubt my husband, as generous as he is, would give that.”
Holding out her hand, Laurie immediately protested. “No, I wouldn’t expect anyone to just give us money. Or even offer a low-interest rate loan. That’s too large of a debt to ever repay. No one could be that generous.”
“However, I am thinking that the Sugar Mamas might be able to help.”
Laurie’s curiosity stopped her tears. “How?”
“We can do something. Let me talk to the rest of the girls and get together a plan.”
Joy replaced anguish. For the first time, hope surged through Laurie. But how could thirty or so women of a certain age find a hundred thousand dollars?
“Maybe we can do a fundraiser.” Deb’s eyebrows knit together in her forehead.
Laurie wiped her eyes. “That sounds generous.”
“Sounds like a lot of work, but between the thirty or so of us, we might be able to pull something off. When do you need the money by?”
“The sooner, the better.” Interest never slept.
“I’ll see what I can do.” With that, Deb gave her a stiff hug and with a determined march, let herself out the door.
Laurie sank into an entryway bench. Could they save the dairy?
Charlotte hadn’t seen Jules in a while. She wondered if he’d finally gone to the spirit world.
With the passing of the proposition, Preston and Coco had been in a whirlwind, getting the papers signed, applying to be on the Historical Register. They started creating a plan to open the place for historical tours.
Charlotte’s mind swirled. She was happy not to lose her home, but she ached for Eric.
Under the weak autumn sun, Charlotte shivered on the stone bench. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Every so often she wiped with the sleeve of her pajamas.
“Can we talk?”
Expecting Jules, she turned. Papa Roland, dressed in a dark pullover sweater, stood between the hedges with a jacket.
Raising her eyebrows, she nodded. “Sure.”
Papa Roland settled the jacket onto her shoulders. “I brought you a coat. I thought you might be cold.”
His thoughtfulness filled her with warmth.
Papa Roland pulled at the tops of his slacks and sat beside her on the bench, staring straight ahead. He tugged at his collar. “Deb told me to come out and apologize before she left.”
“Where’d she go?” Charlotte appreciated the changes in Papa Roland since marrying Deb. She could be serious and short, but she also brought out the best in her grandpa. And for that, Charlotte was grateful.
“She went over to Laurie’s to see if there is something we can do to help.”
Charlotte relaxed a little. From what little she’d heard and seen of Deb, she knew that woman could make things happen. “I don’t understand why you can’t just give Preston his inheritance now.” She didn’t even want her own funds.
“Irrevocable trusts are impossible to change.” He slid her a smile. “Besides, money wouldn’t solve all your problems.”
“Just most of them.” She slumped.
“You don’t need money to be happy.”
“Says someone with more than enough money. You notice people who don’t have money never say that?”
He cracked a smile. “In all your living abroad, did you find people in those rich countries happy?”
Charlotte had lived in some of the richest countries in the world—Switzerland and United Arab Emirates. “Not any happier than they were in the poorer countries in South America.”
“I find it’s usually something else that leads people into financial crisis.”
“Eric was a great manager with excellent judgment.” Except for when he almost got eaten by a bear, but that was beside the point. “I don’t know exactly what happened, but it wasn’t his fault.”
Papa Roland slid her an accusing glance. “Ah. You like Eric, don’t you?”
He knew her so well. “If they lose the farm, they’ll have to leave Sugar Creek.”
“And leaving is a bad thing?” His voice held an edge to it.
“His family has been here for generations, too.”
“But surely he can find work elsewhere, build a new life somewhere else.” He kept both hands on his knees.
She huffed. How could he so easily dismiss her concerns? “You’re missing the point.”
“All I am saying is that we often get locked into one solution. A problem like this has many solutions.” He gestured with his hand.
Was he speaking truth? Perhaps she’d been thinking about the solution, not the problem, all wrong. For some reason she thought of Jules. “What do you know of your ancestor Jules Laurent?”
“Not much. Only that he was killed here at this house about a hundred years ago by some ruffians. He was involved with some shady people. No one talked about it. He brought shame on the family.”
“He ran rum illegally to save the mansion.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“How do you know that?” He turned his gaze on her.
Charlotte couldn’t imagine telling Papa Laurent how she’d met Jules. He was exactly the type of person who would scoff if she told him he was a ghost. “I’ve been doing some research. The local library had newspapers and stuff.”
“Hm.” He straightened his lips. Either he was convinced or pacified, but the library story quieted him.
“I think he was a good man, caught up in something bigger than he could control.”
“I have no doubt.”
“Should we not bring to light things that happened in our past?”
“Is that better than burying things under the carpet?”
Charlotte giggled at his misuse of the idiom. “The expression is sweeping things under the carpet. And yes, I think it’s time we stop burying our past and embrace it.” For some reason, the word buried triggered her memory. “I heard Jules was killed for thousands of dollars in gold. Do you know anything about that?”
Papa Roland shrugged. “We’ll never know.” He looked over the property. Vibrant hues of fall color accentuated the hills. “This place calls to our family. I regret not coming back here sooner. There is a healing in this place that I miss. I’m glad that Preston will be able to keep the property and keep it in his family.”
Preston will be able to keep this mansion. But what will happen to the Bentons?
Speaking of Benton, Eric’s pickup pulled into the driveway.
Papa Roland patted Charlotte’s knee. “I see you have company.”
Eric got out of the truck, spotted her, and headed up the brick path through the shrubbery, crunching across fallen leaves.
Papa Roland headed back to the house, making a quick nod to Eric as he came closer.
Eric’s face was remarkably happy considering the news they’d all been living with the last few days. He grinned. And held a book?
Charlotte smiled and patted the bench next to her. Maybe he found a loophole or something.
“Guess what I found.” He sat next to her and opened the book.
“What?” She leaned closer, brushing back her hair to read the pages.
“Your great-great-grandfather wasn’t running rum the night he was killed.”
“Really?”
He pointed to a few lines of text, the wind fluttering the pages. “My great-great-grandfather persuaded him to give up the criminal activity in favor of hiring him to deliver milk across the border to Canada. Roads were bad and conditions dangerous. Some kids in small towns developed Ricketts.”
“He delivered milk?” Sounded like an inglorious occupation for a Laurent, but better than running rum.
Eric closed the book, keeping his finger in his place. “This is what old Charlotte told Percy. It seems when he quit running rum, his customers, owners of speak-easies in Boston, weren’t very happy and wanted him to pay back everything they’d given him. They came here to claim the money, but Jules had hidden it somewhere to keep his family solvent. He said he left a hint to its whereabouts with Charlotte, but she didn’t know where the clue was. And the bad guys bumped him off because he wouldn’t tell them where he hid it. Maybe his wife found it.”
Charlotte shook her head. This part of the family history, she knew. “But Grandma Charlotte must not have found it. She left Sugar Creek, disgraced and in poverty, and went to live with her family in Canada who had money. People said the house was cursed. It sat empty and in disrepair until my Papa Roland’s father, Paul, and his wife, Martine, took up residence and, with their inheritance, rehabbed the house.”
With eyebrows raised, Eric pointed with the book. “Or Grandma Charlotte found the gold but didn’t want to tell anyone or alert anyone that she found it, lest the bad guys come after it again. She never came back.”
“Maybe she couldn’t stand to live in a place where her husband had been murdered.” Charlotte brushed the hair out of her face and leaned closer. “What did Percy say?”
“That could be true, too.” He opened up the book again. “But I don’t think she ever found it. At least according to my ancestor, she had to sell him the property because she didn’t have enough money even to make it home to Canada. If she had the money, she wouldn’t have sold the dairy.”
“So the money is still here on the property?” Goosebumps ran up her arms. “But how would we even begin to look for it? If Grandma Charlotte couldn’t find it, what makes us think we can.”
“Because we happen to know the guy who hid the treasure. And you’ve been talking to him.”
“But it’s not that easy. Jules doesn’t remember much about that night.”
He held up the blue diary. “Maybe with a little help from Percy’s journal, we can jog his memory.”
Charlotte inhaled, looking out onto the property. Knowing how bad his memory was about the details of his life, she was doubtful. “We’ll have to talk to Jules. But I wouldn’t hold my breath on finding it.”