The Heart of Christmas (23 page)

27

A
lthough Eve was dying to learn what Ted had discovered, she had too much pride to call him, especially when Rex didn’t come back that day. She knew Ted would ask if she’d heard from him. So she tried not to think about the murder that had cast such a long shadow over her family’s B and B. He probably hadn’t dug up anything definite, anything that would answer her questions, or the truth would have come out before now.

She’d always loved Victorian Days, more than all the other festivities that preceded Christmas. But her heart wasn’t in it this year. She couldn’t find it in her to care about the decorations or the food or the parties—all the things she usually enjoyed. But it wasn’t only the holidays. She wasn’t even paying attention to her occupancy rate, which was something she always watched very closely.

She just wanted to be with Rex.

At five o’clock, she forced herself to change her clothes and hurry over to the inn. But she should’ve been there much earlier.

“What’s going on?” Pam asked when she entered the kitchen.

A deluge of guilt hit Eve for stranding her staff with all the work, since they weren’t used to performing without direction and support. Normally, everything had to have her touch. The inn was a showcase, especially at Christmas. “I don’t know what you mean. I’ve been really busy today,” she muttered to stave off the inevitable questions.

Cecelia came out of the pantry with a platter of their signature sugar cookies decorated like snowmen. “There you are! What’s up? This time of year, you spend all day here, helping us bake. I tried calling but could never reach you.”

Eve had seen those calls come in. She’d ignored them, which she’d justified by telling herself that her employees had it easy. Most of the time that was true. She was more of a workhorse than any of them, but she could at least have given them some idea of when she’d arrive. “I had complete faith that you guys would do a fabulous job.”

Pam and Cecelia exchanged a look that suggested this was not the response they’d expected, that they couldn’t believe she wasn’t rushing around, tweaking everything they’d done.

“Cheyenne had her baby last night,” she told them, partly to get out from under the magnifying glass through which they seemed to be studying her.

“Seriously?” Cecelia cried. “I hadn’t heard.”

In previous years, she’d had only one of them help her through Victorian Days, to avoid a lot of overtime when her employees were the least likely to want to put in those hours. Cheyenne worked with her for free, for the sake of the charity. But with her best friend so pregnant, she’d asked Pam, Cecelia
and
Deb to be on hand, and now she was glad she’d done that. She’d had no idea Cheyenne would go into labor early.

Pam removed the plastic covering the cookies. “What’d she have?”

“A baby boy. Weighed nine pounds, two ounces.”

Cecilia smiled. “Wow. That’s a big baby.”

“So
that’s
where you’ve been,” Pam said. “Makes sense now. How’s she feeling?”

Eve didn’t correct her. She’d stopped by the hospital to visit, but much more briefly than they assumed. “Great. The baby’s doing great, too. She’ll stay over one more night—”

“Why?” Cecelia broke in, her face creased with concern. “Nothing’s wrong...”

“No. She had the baby in the middle of last night, so she hasn’t been there twenty-four hours yet. Her insurance covers forty-eight, so she’s going to take advantage of that.”

“Good. Maybe she’ll be able to get some rest,” Pam said. “My first baby was so colicky I couldn’t get three hours of sleep in one stretch.”

“Hopefully, little Kellan won’t have that problem.” Eve genuinely wished Cheyenne the best, but she’d had a hard time acting like herself when she’d been at the hospital earlier that day. She’d brought a plant and a card, then promised to call or text everyone on Cheyenne’s guest list to let them know she’d had the baby early and wouldn’t be having the Christmas party this year. The whole visit lasted only a few minutes, since she left with the excuse that she needed to get ready for Victorian Days.

But she hadn’t gone directly to the B and B afterward. She hadn’t returned home, either. She’d driven aimlessly around town, past Mrs. Higgins’s and Just Like Mom’s and any other place she thought Rex might be, which had turned out to be a waste of time. She hadn’t found any trace of him.

I’m thinking it’ll be a miracle if he comes back...

Was he gone for good?

“Eve?”

She blinked as Deb held out another tray of cookies. “Um, shouldn’t we set these out?”

“Definitely.” Assuming her usual sense of purpose, she took the tray and headed to the front. Fortunately, her staff had cleaned the inn from top to bottom, and all the Christmas lights were on and twinkling. The B and B was beautiful, even without all the extra attention she gave it. She loved it here, loved her work. And yet none of it meant what it had before, not since meeting Rex.

“I’ve got to snap out of it,” she murmured.

“Did you say something?”

Eve turned from where she’d been putting down the platter. Sophia had come in. “No, sorry. Just...talking to myself.”

“I came to volunteer. I figured that, with Cheyenne in the hospital, you could use some help tonight. The inn is such a focal point during Victorian Days.”

Sophia could be thoughtful. Eve had to give her that. “How nice, but I’m fairly certain that we have it covered.”

Sophia leaned a little closer. “Ted told me about this morning, Eve. I’m sorry. He feels terrible about it. He doesn’t want to make you unhappy. He just...feels so protective.”

“You mean he still feels guilty because he dumped me for you.”

She winced. “Don’t use that word. He didn’t
dump
you. That’s not how
I
look at it.”

“Really?” Eve crossed her arms. “Then maybe you wouldn’t mind explaining how you see things. I’ve always wondered.”

Sophia clasped her hands in front of her. Since Ted and Sophia had appeared on her doorstep last Christmas to apologize, whenever they were around Eve simply pretended she and Ted had never been together. But that almost made it more awkward than addressing the reality. “I prefer to think that...that for whatever reason, Ted and I were meant to be together, and I’m grateful to you for being as gracious as you were when we...we realized our feelings for each other.”

“I doubt that if I’d chosen to be less gracious, it would’ve made any difference,” she said with a humorless laugh.

“That’s not true,” Sophia argued. “Your feelings mattered a lot to both of us. They still do.” She clutched Eve’s forearm. “You were kind to me when I had no one else, when I couldn’t fall any lower. I will never forget that.”

Impulsively, Eve hugged her. So what if the uncertainty of her current situation triggered memories of the rejection she’d suffered before? It was selfish to let what was happening in
her
life adversely affect her friends. “Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. I’m just...”

“Pregnant?”

Sophia finished her sentence when Eve couldn’t find the words to explain the angst and longing that were making her so miserable.

Eve glanced behind her. She didn’t want anyone else hearing that, didn’t want it getting back to her parents before she was ready to break the news to them herself. But the two of them were alone, and Sophia had spoken softly. “Ted told you about that, too?”

Sophia nodded. “Are you excited or scared or—”

“I can’t say yet,” Eve responded. “There’s so much going on in my head and my heart. But...it’ll be a good thing, no matter what happens.”

“Of course it will. Just...know you won’t have to go through it alone. I’ll do whatever I can to make life easier. Help out here at the inn. Go to doctor’s appointments with you. Babysit after the baby’s born. You’ll have Cheyenne’s help, too, of course, but with her being a new mother and all, you might need someone else, and I want you to know I’ll be happy to do anything I can.”

She was
so
sincere. “That’s a lot to offer when you’ll probably be having a baby of your own soon.” Eve couldn’t help remembering Ted’s statement to Cheyenne when they were feeling her baby move.

“I’m thinking we should put it off for a year or so, get you through this first.”

Her response brought tears to Eve’s eyes. “I’ve never heard
anything
so generous.”

“You saved me that night you came over after Skip’s death, Eve. Thanks to you, I’m so much happier—and able to offer my daughter the security she needs. I can’t tell you what that means to me. I’ll do anything for you. I promise.”

“Then maybe you’ll tell me what Ted found out on his trip,” she teased.

“He didn’t tell you this morning?”

Eve made a face. “We didn’t get that far.”

“It was Harriett.”

“What?”

“Yes. Ted said it was John’s descendants who had a story to tell, not Harriett’s. John’s great-nephew, a man by the name of Patrick Hatfield, claims Harriett killed Mary.”

After believing John was the culprit for so many years, Eve had a hard time grasping this new theory. Harriett had told her sister he was innocent, but Eve hadn’t really believed that. “Why? What would ever make a mother do something like that?”

“What makes mothers do that kind of thing these days? Depression? Mental illness? Extreme narcissism? Rage?”

“Which was it?”

“We don’t have all the details. It was just a fluke that Ted managed to locate Pat.”

“I can’t imagine Mary’s descendants kept track of the Hatfields. So how did he do it?”

“It’s convoluted, but the husband of one of Mary’s cousins went to college with Pat for a year. They even played rugby together on weekends—never realizing they had a family connection until it came up one day. So when Ted contacted Mary’s relatives, they put him in touch with Pat. To make the story even more spectacular, Pat lives in London now. He married a woman who was born there. But he makes documentaries and was in Toronto on a project. So Ted talked him into a quick meeting and flew up there to speak to him.”

“Sounds like it was worth the time.”

“It was. Pat says that Harriett was never quite right in the head, that John protected her and took care of her for years. He didn’t feel he had any other alternative. He couldn’t bear the idea of a woman going to prison. Back then, most people didn’t believe that women could really be that terrible. And he thought an insane asylum would be even worse.”

“Despite what she did?”

“Apparently she tried to warn him that she didn’t like her own child, that she was jealous of his love for Mary and didn’t want Mary in the house. He thought it was just more of the crazy things she sometimes said, never suspected she’d act the way she did. When she was herself, she was a wonderful person. But, according to what he told his brother, she had these dark moods. He didn’t know what they were all about or how to get her the help she needed. Things back then weren’t like they are today when it comes to depression and mental illness, you know? So John handled the situation the best he could, by keeping her separate from other people, making sure she couldn’t harm anyone else.”

“No wonder everyone thought he was the bad guy. He took total control of her. But...people reported seeing bruises on the rare occasions when she did get out.”

“It probably became difficult, at times, to keep her under control. Maybe she tried to slip out, and he had to physically hold her down. Or her behavior frustrated him so much his temper occasionally boiled over. I’m not saying he was a saint. But he wasn’t a murderer. From what Ted heard, she might even have hurt herself. She tried that sometimes.”

“So why would she burn his train set?”

“Ted wondered the same thing. He thinks it reminded her of the basement and what she’d done.”

“What a tragic situation.” Somehow Eve found it worse to imagine Harriett as the culprit than John. Poor Mary!

“In every way,” Sophia agreed. “That Harriett could do it, and that John would not only have to bear the grief of Mary’s loss but care for a woman who was mentally ill for the rest of his life.”

“John held the truth so close. Why did he finally tell his brother?”

“He had to. Once he fell down the stairs and broke his hip, he knew he might not be able to act as her guardian. If he died, someone had to take care of her, had to know she couldn’t be trusted around children.” She paused. “Willard, John’s nephew, and his wife, Betsy, took over the house—with the stipulation that they look after Harriett.”

“So she ran away because she feared she couldn’t rely on his nephew to be kind to her?”

“It’s possible he wouldn’t have been. He was considerably younger, and he and Betsy were newly married. Anyway, that’s what Ted believes.”

“Wow.” Eve shook her head. “Is Ted going to put all of this in his book?”

“He is. The pieces finally fit together. He won’t be able to present any forensic proof, of course, but he’ll do what he can to clear John’s name—for Patrick and John’s other descendants, and Mary, too.”

Was that what Mary had been waiting for? Would the strange noises and disturbances now stop? Either way, Mary had died just before Christmas. Somehow it was fitting that the truth had finally come out at Christmastime.

“Thanks for everything,” Eve said. “And please tell Ted how much I appreciate what he’s done. The truth, despite its sadness, does bring some closure.”

Sophia winked at her. “Maybe you’ll call later and tell him yourself.”

When Eve nodded, Sophia squeezed her hands and left.

Pam came out of the kitchen carrying the heated container of wassail. “I hope we get a good crowd tonight,” she said.

Feeling teary-eyed, for Mary’s sake and because of the friendship Sophia had just shown her, Eve averted her face and pretended to smooth a wrinkle out of the tablecloth. “I’m sure we will.”

“It’s been so hectic this season I haven’t really taken the time to enjoy it,” Pam said. “But I’m feeling the Christmas spirit tonight.”

Although Eve couldn’t look up—she didn’t want Pam to see that her eyes were wet—she had to agree. This evening was dedicated to raising money for children who wouldn’t get anything for Christmas otherwise. That, along with John’s long-ago sacrifice for his mentally ill wife and Sophia’s sacrifice in offering to put off having her own child, even though Eve would never encourage her to do that, was what Christmas was all about.