The Adventurer (33 page)

Most of the time she wasn’t even in the shop. She spent a great deal of her time traveling to estate sales and out of the way shops, in search of only those editions that were most rare. She had an eye for it; it was the reason she’d been offered the job. And although she reasoned it was the travel that prevented her from making any real commitment to a relationship, Libby loved her job and wouldn’t have it any other way.

Often her travels had brought her through New England, and she would stop and spend a long weekend with her mother, just the two of them. But truth be told, those weekends had come fewer and farther between in recent years. In fact it had been three months since Libby had last been to Ipswich.

Libby couldn’t deny the fact that her mother had died alone, siting in that very parlor where she now stood, only to be found by one of the neighbors who had grown worried when Matilde hadn’t shown up for the weekly meeting of the Ipswich Gardening Club. Dr. Winston, the family’s doctor since Libby had been a child, had said that her heart had just quit. She’d had no symptoms, no episodes that would have warned of such a thing coming. He’d said it, Libby knew, to try to comfort her and ease the guilt obviously everyone knew she must be feeling. His kind words and gentle smile had done nothing, however, to lessen the harsh reality that Libby should have been there with her.

They were right. Matilde had had no one else.

“I’m here now, Mother,” she whispered, even as she knew it was too late. Libby closed her eyes and waited out the emotions that were rushing through her like a flood wave.

Three hours later, the house was once again empty. Except for Libby, of course, who, after the last of the mourners had left, patting her hand and pitying her with their eyes, had lowered into her mother’s rocking chair on the porch to sit. She’d wrapped herself in the weathered folds of the woolen throw Matilde had kept there, and watched the darkness of the night descend over the Atlantic horizon.

Sitting there while the sea wind blew in across her face, Libby pressed her nose into the scratchy blanket and breathed in her mother’s soft scent. She’d never in her life felt more alone. Growing up an only child, her mother had always made certain Libby had never felt the isolation, always keeping her busy with reading or baking or repainting the kitchen, as she had done nearly every six months throughout Libby’s childhood. Matilde had been more than a mother to her. She had been Libby’s best friend, her closest confidante. Libby had never realized, had never once considered what her move to New York must have done to her mother.

Libby had been excited and young and ready to strike out on her own. And Matilde had never once made Libby feel guilty for having done it. She had taken whatever she had been able to get, those random weekends, those rushed phone calls whenever Libby had been particularly buried in her work, not even raising a fuss when Libby had had to cancel her last scheduled visit in order to attend an estate sale in upstate New York instead.

Libby had always intended to make it up to her mother, take her to Boston for the symphony or the ballet. Only the days had turned into weeks, and Libby just hadn’t been able to get away.

Now it was too late.

Libby got up from the chair and walked the length of the wraparound porch to the screen door. She found a small sense of comfort in its familiar, strident creak as she opened it and headed for the kitchen. She made a pot of tea, taking the time to use loose leaves like her mother always had, and not her usual quickly steeped muslin bag of whatever happened to be handy. She chose her mother’s favorite from the tea rack, a blend which she had sent to her from London each month, and even heated the china pot with a dash of boiling water like her mother always had before adding the leaves and filling the pot to steep.

While she waited, she opened the cupboard and started to reach for her favorite mug, a clunky oversized thing emblazoned with an image of the Statue of Liberty that she’d sent to her mother shortly after she’d moved to New York. But her fingers fell short of it, and instead reached underneath it to one of the dainty porcelain cups and saucers, painted with brightly painted flowers that her mother had always insisted upon using for tea. Libby gave into a smile as she splashed the steaming orange-brown brew into the cup, remembering how she used to badger her mother about them whenever they had tea.

“Teacups like that are for decoration, Mother. Not for drinking. They hardly hold more than a few sips.”

Matilde had simply shaken her graying head. “ ’Tis a far sight more proper than that basin of a thing you insist on drinking from.”

Setting the saucer and cup, and its matching pot on a tray, Libby walked carefully up the curving stairs to her bedroom. But she stopped, and after a moment’s hesitation, continued down the hall until she had reached the door of her mother’s room.

It was not completely closed, so Libby had only to nudge the panel with her knee. It swung open easily over the gleaming hardwood floor, and Libby stood for a moment in the doorway, staring at the room that was awash with the moonlight coming in the tall windows. How many times had Libby spent the night with her mother there in that tall four-poster bed? It had been more often after her father had died when Libby had been just twelve. They would sit and Matilde would brush out Libby’s dark hair, when it had been long and straight and pulled back in its usual ponytail. It was after she had moved to New York that Libby had had it cut to her shoulders—more in keeping with the style of a city girl, she’d reasoned—though she kept it simple, parted on the side and tucked behind her ear which had it flipping up a bit under her chin.

The china clinked softly as Libby crossed the room and set the tray on the bedcover. It was a high bed, made all the more so by the thick featherbed that layered the mattress on top. Libby used the small bed step and sank slowly into the down-filled covering. She was instantly enveloped by her mother’s flowery scent, and lay there for several quiet moments, staring at the ornamental trim on the ceiling as the sea tide softly broke on the shore beneath the house through the open window.

Libby reached and clicked on the bedside lamp on the nightstand, took up the tea cup for a quiet sip as she eased back against the feather-filled pillows. Earlier, she had changed from her black suit into her favorite flannel lounging pants and oversized Boston College sweatshirt. She had pulled her hair up into an unruly ponytail and had removed her contacts from eyes that were red and irritated from crying, wearing her glasses instead. Somehow she could imagine her mother sitting up at some heavenly tea table, shaking her head in dismay. Libby had countless crisp linen nightgowns that her mother had given her each Christmas, but somehow they had always been too pretty, too pristine for her to wear, so instead they filled an entire drawer in her apartment, scented with a floral sachet and never, ever worn.

She finished the tea, poured another cup but found she wasn’t tired, not at all. She should be exhausted, having slept little in the past week as she’d made the arrangements for her mother’s funeral service and burial and met with the family lawyer, John Dugan, to discuss the details of the estate.

Even he had suggested she might sell the house. The truth was Libby didn’t know what she was going to do with it. It was a big place, with some five acres of land that ran down to its own private stretch of shore. Leaving it to sit empty except for her occasional weekend visit seemed cruel somehow. But selling it went against everything Libby had ever been raised to believe. Her mother had loved the house. If she sold it, the land would likely be sold off in lots, divided up and developed. Dugan had suggested it would make a fine B&B, and Libby had considered it, but in the end, she’d decided not to jump to any decisions until she’d had time to properly grieve for her mother, and think with a clear head.

Restless now from the conflict of emotions’ that came with her thoughts, Libby reached for the drawer to the nightstand in search of something to read that might occupy her mind. Her mother always kept whatever book she was reading there, and Libby smiled as she recognized the weathered leather cover of one of Scott’s Waverley tales tucked away inside.

It was from a set that Libby had given her mother for her birthday several years earlier, a complete Centenary edition collection that Libby had splurged on. This particular title was
Castle Dangerous,
one of her personal favorites, and Libby turned the book, looking for the usual ribbon that marked Matilde’s reading place.

But it wasn’t a ribbon pressed between the heavy vellum pages. Instead, it was an envelope, addressed to her,
Isabella Elizabeth,
in her mother’s hand.

Libby felt her breath catch in her throat. She turned the envelope and pulled the glued flap free to read the letter contained inside.

My Dearest Isabella, if you are reading this then I am well and truly gone. Please don’t despair over my passing. I have felt it coming for some time now. I have had a full and wonderful life, blessed with much happiness. My dearest happiness, my daughter, has been in having you.

With my passing, the time has come for me to tell you something of a family secret. Do not be angry that I did not choose to share this secret with you before. In time, you will understand. If you will look underneath the lamp on my nightstand, you will find a key. The box that the key will open is contained in my armoire, on the very bottom, behind my slippers. Find it. Look at what it holds, and I promise everything will become clear to you. Just know that I love you more than I ever thought it was possible to love.

It was signed simply “Mother.”

Libby set the letter aside and slid off the bed. She lifted the lamp, found the key just as her mother had written waiting underneath. It was a small key, the old sort of skeleton style, the sort now only used for decoration. She walked to the tall mahogany armoire and opened its double doors. Again she was overwhelmed by her mother’s scent, as if she was standing right beside her. Libby searched the bottom of the compartment where her mother’s blouses and skirts hung neatly, reaching to the back, behind her row of slippers until her hands found the shape of a small wooden chest.

Libby pulled the chest out, fitted the key inside its lock and turned. Her mouth fell open and she sucked in a breath when she lifted its lid to reveal a large crystal attached to a silver chain lying inside.

It was at once beautiful and mysterious, and Libby lifted up the chain, watching the stone dangle from it in the lamplight. It sparkled and seemed to grab the moonlight, reflecting a milky blue. How odd, Libby thought, that she had never seen the stone before, for she had often raided her mother’s jewelry chest to play dress-up when she’d been a girl. She would have remembered seeing this stone.

Libby slipped the chain over her head and felt the weight of the stone around her neck. It was the most spectacular thing, the way the stone seemed to capture the light and hold it deep inside.

Libby searched further inside the chest and found a set of books tucked beneath the cloth where the stone had lain. She picked up the topmost one, and recognized her mother’s handwriting on the pages of what revealed itself to be a journal. It was a journal of her mother’s life, a journal Libby had never known her mother kept.

As the clock ticked through to the early hours of morning, Libby sat on the floor before her mother’s armoire and read, read every page, learning of her mother’s childhood in Scotland, before she had come to America. It was in those pages Libby learned for the first time that her mother had not been married to her father when she had come across the ocean as she’d always believed. She had met him in Boston, had married him some two years after she had arrived. Libby had been nearly three when the man she had always known as her father had officially adopted her.

Adopted.

Libby stared down at the paperwork. Her heart was pounding. Why? Why had her mother never told her? All of her life, Libby had only known Charles Hutcheson as her father, had never once thought that he might not be. If he wasn’t truly her father, then who was?

Libby sifted through the documents, soon spying the letterhead of John Dugan, Attorney at Law, lifelong family lawyer who had made the arrangements those nearly thirty years before.

And she knew just where she would begin the search.

The search for who she really was.