Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
T alk to me about the sleeping arrangements for tomorrow night. Alice sent the text to Ginny, wishing she wasn’t quite so nervous about the answer.
Ginny had been dating Bob since late July, and Alice knew that relationships all progressed at different speeds. Charlie and Mandie had been together for a long time before they’d been intimate, but they’d also met and started dating in high school.
Bob was four years older than Ginny. He’d already earned his bachelor’s degree and had started law school. Alice had met him twice, and he didn’t seem like the pushy, pressuring type, but Alice knew better than most that relationships had a secret side that no one else knew about.
She trusted her daughter, and she knew Ginny had a good head on her shoulders, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t hormonal and didn’t want to have sex with Bob. Alice was quite sure she did.
Whatever Eloise assigned us , Ginny texted back. I’m sure will be fine.
Alice had paid close attention to the room assignments for her children. Mandie and Charlie lived together, sharing a bed in an apartment in New York City. She’d expected Eloise to give them one of the smaller bedrooms here in the manor, but she hadn’t. She’d split them up, putting Mandie in the female bunk room and Charlie in the male one. Ginny had also been assigned to the female bunk room, and Bob had not been assigned anything.
That doesn’t help , Alice texted back to Ginny. Eloise didn’t give Bob a room.
Eloise hadn’t been sure if a twenty-four-year-old would want to share a bunk room with a fourteen-year-old—and plenty of others younger than him that he didn’t know.
Parker was only fourteen, and the youngest of the teen boys in the bunk room. Liam, Coldwater’s son, would be coming for Christmas, and Ian was the same age as Billie—and happened to be dating her too.
He’d stay in the male bunk room too, with Charlie and Bob. There were only four of them, while there were decidedly more on the girls’ side—Billie, Grace, Jamie, Mandie, Ginny, and Lena.
But again, Lena had been given the option of staying in a different room instead of the bunk room. She’d gone back to Diamond Island with her parents on Monday, and as far as Alice knew, Scott and Clara wouldn’t return to the holiday house until next weekend. Clara and Lena would then stay while Scott left to run the ferry.
They’d all be there for the Christmas Eve and Christmas Day celebrations.
Alice tapped to call Ginny, forgetting to ask her if she could take a call, which she usually did.
“Hey, Mom,” Ginny said, her voice bright.
“Did I catch you at a bad time?” Alice asked. “I meant to text first.”
“It’s fine,” Ginny said. “I’m just on my way to lunch with Evelyn and Bri.”
“Oh, great,” Alice said. She sighed out her breath and reminded herself that she’d had plenty of talks with her children about sex. “Ginny, I’m really asking if you’re going to share a room with Bob or not. And if you are, if that means you’ve been intimate with him.”
A beat silence went by, and then another. With each one, Alice’s heart pounded harder and harder. Ginny finally said, “Sorry, there was someone right there.”
“So you can’t talk about this in front of other people?”
“Well, I’d rather not,” Ginny hissed over the line.
“So you’ve slept with him.” Alice wasn’t asking, and she wasn’t sure how she felt. Was she happy this was finally out of the way? Or was that sick feeling in her stomach a new layer of worry she’d have to carry each and every day?
“I haven’t slept with him,” Ginny whispered. “And I’m certainly not going to do it in a house full of forty people.”
“Okay,” Alice said brightly. “So I’ll put you in the bunk room unless there are extra rooms. I’ll talk to Eloise, because I haven’t looked at the schedule or the room grid for a while. If there are extra rooms, I’m sure you could have your own room—and Bob could have one for him—or there’s the bunk room, which you’ll share with others.”
“Will there be anyone in the male bunk room with Bob?” Ginny asked.
“Oh, that’s a great question,” Alice said. “I don’t think Kelli and Shad are coming this weekend.” Alice would be surprised if they came back at all, though Kelli hadn’t said that they wouldn’t.
No matter what, Parker wouldn’t be there this weekend, and neither would Charlie. “I think the bunk room will actually be empty,” she said. “So Bob should be fine in there.”
“And I’ll be with Billie, Grace, and Jamie?” Ginny asked.
“That’s right,” Alice said. “Mandie’s not coming this weekend, and neither are Scott and Clara.”
“Will there be any babies there?” Ginny asked.
Alice smiled, because Ginny did love babies and helping their moms. “Jean has Heidi here; they’re staying the whole time,” Alice said. “AJ and Asher will be here, and Laurel and James as well. So you’ll just miss cute Daphne.”
“Perfect,” Ginny said. “And I should bring my swimming suit?”
“Yes, bring your suit,” Alice said. “There’s an indoor pool and hot tub, as well as a sauna, and the outdoor pool is heated. It’s quite lovely in the afternoon. Arthur and I have been swimming when he gets here after work.”
“Great,” Ginny said. “Okay, Mom, I have to go.”
“Okay, love you, Ginny-bug.”
“Love you too, Mom.”
Alice ended the call, relieved that she now knew—instead of having to guess—about Ginny and Bob’s relationship. They’d be here tomorrow afternoon and all the way through Monday morning, and Alice really wanted to get to know him better.
After all, she only had one daughter, and she wanted to be part of Ginny’s life. And if Ginny was going to choose Bob, Alice had better learn to like it—and him.
Later that afternoon, Alice pulled herself out of the pool when she got a text from Arthur saying he was on his way to the manor from his job at the high school. She hadn’t waited for him to swim today, because he’d had an after-school meeting and had said he didn’t want to swim when he got there.
I want to eat and watch a movie in that theater room , he’d said.
She loved swimming with the crisp, outdoor air against the warm water. She wrapped a towel around herself and walked across the patio and up the steps to the deck, where Kristen sat with a notebook in her lap under the heated eaves of the roof.
“This is lovely,” Alice said, feeling the waves of warmth come down over her shoulders.
“Isn’t it?” Kristen looked up at her as Alice took the second seat in the two-seat couch under the heater.
“What are you working on?” she asked.
“Oh, I’m just reviewing the history of this house.” She passed Alice the notebook, and Alice saw a hand-sketched family tree with the last name “Everleigh” at the top.
“The Everleigh family,” she said. “I feel like I should know that name. It’s very familiar.”
“Clara said they learned about it in school,” Kristen said. “But it’s been a long time since I’ve been to school here in the cove.” She trilled out a light laugh, and Alice smiled with her.
“Me too.” She handed the notebook back to Kristen. “What’s got you interested in the history of the house?”
“I don’t know,” Kristen said thoughtfully. Several seconds passed, and Alice simply waited, because she’d known the older woman for a lot of years now, and if given enough time and space, Kristen would say what lingered on her mind.
“Have you noticed anything strange happening?” Kristen asked. “Besides the lights flashing during our first big dinner together.”
Alice looked across the pool, the grounds with its neatly trimmed shrubs and the cleared flowerbeds to the trees and the walking path along the edge of the property. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I’ve seen a few things.”
Kristen turned a page in her notebook. “What kinds of things?”
Alice looked at her, unsure of how much to say. “Little things,” she said. “Things that don’t even matter.”
Kristen nodded, and she knew Alice’s game too. If she waited, Alice would talk. “Have you seen things?” Alice asked.
Kristen nodded again, and she pointed to the notebook. Alice tilted her head to look at the handwriting there, and she saw curtains moving in library.
AJ reported the chandelier flashing in the foyer.
Sound of whispers in one of the bedrooms when no one was present.
The house was definitely emptier during the week, and while Alice hadn’t spent a lot of time exploring all of the rooms, she had poked her head in a few of them to see the unique design of each one.
“Arthur and I brought stockings,” Alice said slowly. “And there’s no fireplace in the room, but the TV is hung above a shelf that looks like a mantel, and we hung the stockings there. One for me and him, one for Charlie and Ginny, and one for Bob and one for Mandie.”
Alice cleared her throat. “Please don’t say anything to Robin, but I wanted to have a little celebration with my core family, and right now, that includes Mandie and Bob, even though my children aren’t married yet.”
“That’s nice, dear,” Kristen said, and Alice knew she wouldn’t get any judgment from her.
“Anyway,” Alice said. “I came out of the bathroom the other morning, and it looked like one of the stockings was moving. Sort of like it had been touched—or there was an air current.”
Kristen started writing in her notebook, and Alice almost wished she wouldn’t.
“Anyway, I went over there, and it didn’t seem to be swaying at all.” She shrugged, though she hadn’t doubted what she’s seen.
“I see,” Kristen said. “Anything else?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Alice said. “Little things here and there. Faulty wiring. My curling iron plugged in when I thought I’d unplugged it. Things like that.” She waited while Kristen wrote those things down too, and then she asked, “Do you think the house is haunted?”
“I don’t know,” Kristen said. “And even if it is, they don’t seem menacing.”
A chill stole across Alice’s shoulders despite the heat from above. “The kids and I once took a trip to California,” she said. “We stayed in this really old hotel that was said to be haunted. The elevator would just stop randomly on different floors.”
She smiled at the memory. “The kids loved the swimming pool there.”
“It could just be an old house,” Kristen said.
“That plugs in curling irons when they’ve been unplugged?” Alice cocked her eyebrows at Kristen. “I’m far too much of a lawyer to believe that.”
Kristen grinned at her. “Do lawyers believe in ghosts at all?”
Alice let out a laugh. “No, we don’t.” She stood. “I’m going to go shower; get warmed up.”
The moment she said it, a blast of heat came down from the heater installed in the roof above. She looked up and saw the glowing, red grill, and Kristen said, “Oh, wow,” somewhere outside her mind.
The heat continued to flare, flashing across Alice’s ears and shoulders and down her bare arms. It went on for another few seconds, and then the redness in the coils vanished, and the heater returned to its normal function.
Alice sat back down on the patio furniture and said, “Maybe you should add that to the list.”
The next afternoon, Alice had not seen nor experienced any paranormal activity in The Starlight Manor. She had found a spot on the wrap-around porch where she could watch for vehicles coming through the gate, where she could then get back into the house before Ginny or Bob would know she’d been loitering.
She had Ginny’s pin on her maps, and she knew they had arrived on the Nantucket Steamer twenty minutes ago. Without checking her app, she suspected her daughter and her boyfriend would be here any minute.
Tears choked in Alice’s throat. She was so excited to see her daughter. Just then, movement caught her eye as the gate rumbled open and a dark-colored SUV rolled through it.
Alice jumped to her feet and hurried toward the front corner of the house. She didn’t want to seem overeager, though she suspected Ginny would know how Alice felt the moment Alice grabbed her and held her tight.
Dinner sat a couple of hours away, and Alice hoped to simply sit and visit with Bob and Ginny—ask them about school, ask them about their finals, get to know Bob better, and maybe even get a little hint as to what Bob and Ginny were thinking for their future.
You will not be pushy , she told herself as she gained the front door and hurried inside. She took a deep breath in the foyer, glanced up at the chandelier that AJ had said had flickered, noticed nothing, and continued into the back of the house.
Alice had lived in big houses throughout her life, but this one was so much more compared to the monstrosity she’d owned in the Hamptons, nor the vacation house she and Frank had owned right here on Rocky Ridge. Alice had never seen anything like The Starlight Manor, unless it had been a hotel or another commercial enterprise.
It seemed to take forever for the SUV to arrive and for Ginny and Bob to get their things out before the door opened and Ginny called, “We’re here.”
Alice spun from where she stood and started walking back the way she’d come. “You’re here,” she echoed back to Ginny, and she moved right into her daughter’s arms and hugged her tight. “Oh, it’s so good to see you.”
Thankfully, the tears she’d experienced earlier stayed dormant, and only a rush of happiness poured through her as she held her daughter. Ginny stepped back, and Alice moved right over to Bob.
“How are you, dear?” She hugged him too, glad when he didn’t seem to mind the invasion of his personal space.
“Just fine, Alice,” he said.
“How was the Steamer?” She stepped back and looked from him to Ginny.
“I love taking the Steamer,” he said.
“Oh, did you come to Five Island Cove before you knew Ginny?”
Alice flicked a look over to Ginny, who reached for Bob’s hand. The touch between them seemed easy and casual, and Alice sure did like it. Bob stood a few inches taller than Ginny, and together, they made a handsome couple—her with her blonde hair and him with his dark looks.
Bob said he’d once been on the rowing team, and he had the chest and shoulders to prove it, but that law school had started to soften him.
Alice knew there was nothing soft about law school.
She wanted to know how things were going for Bob in his second year, but she told herself there was plenty of time to ask more questions. Instead, she gestured for the younger couple to head into the house. “Come on,” she said. “Come take a tour of this place.”
“It’s enormous,” Ginny said, looking around.
“Yes,” Alice said. “There are four levels of this, with every type of room you can imagine.”
She didn’t want to be a helicopter mom, hovering around her daughter and her boyfriend, so she let Ginny and Bob go around by the house themselves, enjoying the way they exclaimed over this room or that one, or how big the home theater was in the basement.
Once they’d concluded their tour, they joined Alice in the living room, where Ginny sank onto the couch and pulled Bob down next to her.
Alice got to her feet. “Would either of you like a drink? I can make mocktails.”
“You’ll love my mom’s mocktails,” Ginny said. She turned to Alice with a bright look on her face. “Can you make the cranberry-lime one?”
“I can make whatever you want.” Alice traced her fingertips across Ginny’s face as she passed her. “What do you like, Bob? Citrus, lime? Something more fruity?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Alice,” he said, and Alice liked how he called her by her first name and not something more formal like ma’am . “Whatever you’ve got is fine.”
“He likes fruity stuff, Mom,” Ginny called as Alice moved into the kitchen.
Alice quickly put together three mocktails, wondering where AJ and Jean had gotten to this afternoon. Their kids took naps in the afternoon, and Alice had learned that they often retreated during that time as well. Since they had suites, they had sitting areas, televisions, and walls of windows in their own rooms.
“Cranberry-lime,” Alice said, giving the fizzy drink to Ginny.
“I made you a raspberry lemonade,” she said, handing another glass to Bob. “With mint.”
“This is beautiful,” Bob said about the bright pink liquid with the green leaves in it.
Alice returned to the kitchen to get her own drink. She loved something with a lot of orange and a lot of lime. When she returned to the living room, she smiled at Ginny and Bob. After taking a delicate sip of her mocktail, she asked, “What does your family do for Christmas, Bob?”
He finished sipping his drink, his smile returning quickly. “They’re going on a cruise this year,” he said. “That’s why Ginny and I decided to come here.”
“You didn’t want to go on the cruise?” Alice looked between Ginny and Bob, and Ginny shook her head, something flashing through her eyes that Alice would have to find out more about later.
“Not this year,” Bob said brightly, clearly concealing private conversations between the two of them.
The nosy part of Alice wanted to know everything they talked about, and yet, a quieter part told her that such a thing simply wasn’t possible. That Ginny was going to start living her own life, and that she should have a relationship with Bob that Alice didn’t know anything about.
They should have private conversations. They should be sharing parts of themselves with each other and no one else.
While that made part of her heart sing with sadness, it also made her realize that her daughter had grown into a beautiful young woman who knew how to have a healthy relationship with a man.
And dang it, tears stung Alice’s throat and eyes with such a realization.