True Love (31 page)

She shut the bedroom door, leaned against it, and thought, Now what do I do? Try to act as though this information doesn’t hurt?

Turning, she tried to lock the door but the key for the old door plate wasn’t there. “It’s Nantucket!” she said aloud, momentarily annoyed that nothing ever seemed to be locked.

She moved a chair under the knob, then, in anger, started stripping the bed of sheets. What else was being kept a secret from her? she wondered. Her mother and now her father. Everyone had been lying to her for what looked to be her entire life. But then hadn’t Jared said that? Secrets kept all her life, is what he’d said. Alix threw the sheets on the floor and looked up at Captain Caleb’s portrait. “Do
you
have thousands of secrets too? Like
all
the Kingsleys do? And don’t answer that or I’ll drag your picture up to the attic and nail boards over your chamber pot staircase.”

“Alix?” came Jared’s voice through the door. “Could we talk? Please?”

“Go away,” she said.

“I never lied to you. I told you there were secrets being kept from you. Please open the door and let me explain. I didn’t want to hide anything from you, but I’d made promises. Please let me in so we can talk.”

She started to tell him to leave, but she knew he was telling the truth. She moved the chair away and he opened the door, closing it behind him, but he didn’t come inside any farther. It did help that he looked deeply worried.

“You let me guess that everything had to do with my mother,” she said. “But then I didn’t think my father would … would …”

“Betray you?” Jared asked. “Would it help if I told you that it was all your mother’s doing? She made Ken swear to say nothing to you about Nantucket.”

“But
why
?”

“She—” He broke off. He had no right to tell about the journals that were the basis for all Victoria’s novels.

“Are you trying to decide how much to lie to me?”

“I’m not going to lie, but some secrets are not mine to reveal.” He took a step closer to her. “I’m sorry that I can’t sit down with you and tell everything that I know, but I owe all that I am, all that I have, to your parents. If it weren’t for your father I’d probably be in prison now—or dead. And as you so shrewdly guessed, your mother paid for the bulk of my very expensive schooling. Your dad helped with that but …”

“Mom has the money,” Alix said.

“Yes, she does. But I learned everything that’s made my career from your father.”

Alix’s eyes widened. “Master builder. You said a ‘master builder’ let you design a remodel when you were just a kid. Was that my father?”

“Yes, it was. That was right after your mother took you away from Nantucket. Ken was very depressed because his wife was divorcing him and he wasn’t going to get to live with his beloved, and may I add, his adorable, daughter.”

“And you’d lost your father not long before that,” she said softly.

“It had been two years but I still didn’t believe that Dad wasn’t going to walk through the door and force me to give up my evil ways.” Jared gave a tentative half smile. “Not that I would have relinquished
all
of them.”

“I’m glad of that.” She paused, knowing that everything he was saying was true and actually, she liked that he’d honored the vows he’d made. But his vows weren’t hers. She was going to find out all
that she could. “I just don’t understand why my mother didn’t want me to know about Nantucket.”

“You expect me to explain Victoria to you?”

“Are you evading my question?”

“Completely. I’ll tell you a secret. Your dad can yell at me until his face turns purple, and an hour later I’m fine. But Victoria … She can make me feel like a worm.”

“Really? It’s the opposite for me.” She looked at him. “This whole thing is very strange. To think that you know both my parents so well … It’s difficult for me to comprehend.”

“They were like second parents to me. Well, actually, your dad was like a father to me, but Victoria doesn’t seem like anybody’s mother.”

“She does to me,” Alix said, then her head came up. “You don’t think this makes you and me brother and sister, does it?”

At her ability to make a joke, Jared looked greatly relieved and pulled her into his arms, her face buried against his chest. Alix could hardly breathe, but she didn’t mind.

“I would have been a horrible older brother,” he said.

“Ha! You were wonderful with the Legos.”

“Come on,” Jared said. “Let’s go downstairs and talk to your father. He’ll want to go out to get some seafood for lunch.”

“Did
you
teach him how to clean fish?”

“I did,” Jared said. “When he first got here, he didn’t know top from tail.” He had his arm firmly around Alix, as though he was afraid to let her get even inches away from him.

Alix halted at the top of the stairs and looked up at him. “How many more huge, enormous secrets are you keeping from me?”

“Two,” he said.

“And they are …?”

Jared gave a groan of pain. “If I promise to go with you to get whatever Izzy needs for her wedding, will that make you pre-forgive me for not telling you now?”

Alix thought about that for a moment. “Are you saying that you will go with me to pick out flowers?”

“Sure. Toby can—”

“No, you and I will go to a florist together. You’ll have to look at photos of flower arrangements that I can send to Izzy.”

Jared winced but he nodded.

“And you’ll help me choose the cake to show Izzy?” she asked.

“You mean one of those tall things?”

“Yes,” she said. “It’ll have tiers.”

“Tears?” He ran his fingertip down from his eye.

She gave him a look.

“Okay. Wait! How about making a cake that looks like a Gaudi building? Or I could design something—”

“No buildings in sugar,” Alix said. “Izzy is very traditional. She’ll probably want pink and lavender roses.”

With a look of horror, he grabbed the newel post for support. “What else?”

“Tent, food, a band. A dress for me.”

“I see a ghost,” Jared blurted out as he broke under the pressure.

“Who wouldn’t, living in this house?” Alix said as she started down the stairs, then looked back up at him. “Come on, it won’t be that bad.”

“I’d rather swim in a pool of sharks,” Jared mumbled as he followed her down the stairs.

“Good idea,” she said. “Hey! Maybe we can get some reproduction lightship baskets and fill them with flowers.”

“Reproduction?” Jared whispered, the word catching in his throat as though it were poison. “You’re going too far.”

Laughing, Alix slipped her arm in his. “Where can I get shoes suitable to wear to a wedding? You like kitten heels?”

Jared looked like he might start to cry.

Chapter Sixteen

T
hree weeks, Ken thought. He’d been on Nantucket for three whole weeks and he didn’t think he’d ever been happier in his life.

At first he’d stayed in the guest bedroom of the big house. Not Victoria’s Palace of Green but in the one across from Addy’s, now Alix’s, bedroom. Over the years, he’d often stayed there. He liked being near Addy in case she needed him during the night. Smiling, he thought of the many times he’d heard her voice when she was alone in her room. He’d thought she’d been talking in her sleep, but one night over their rum drinks—she could easily drink Ken under the table—she mentioned Alix and Caleb. He knew she was talking about his daughter, but who was Caleb? Another Kingsley relative he’d yet to meet?

It took several nights and multiple bottles of rum before he got Addy to tell him the whole truth.

It seemed that his dear daughter, Alix, at four years old, used to regularly converse with a ghost. If Ken had known back then what was happening, he would have … The truth was he didn’t know what he would have done. At that time he’d been so angry and depressed that he wasn’t rational. If he’d been given any reason to do so, he feared that he would have taken his wrath out on Victoria, which could have meant that the rage would have filtered down to little Alix.

As it was, Ken had shown only Jared his fury at what life had done to him. Oh, but the shouting matches the two of them used to have! Never before or since had Ken yelled like that. Cursed like that. But then he’d never again been so unhappy. Nor had Jared.

There was one night when Ken found Jared crying. He was a six-foot-tall teenager who had an attitude of Don’t Mess with Me, but he was sitting by a pond on land his family owned, and crying. Ken reacted naturally and put his arms around the boy. They didn’t say a word but Ken knew of the boy’s continuing grief. Jared’s mother had told him what a good and loving man her husband had been, and how he’d doted on his son.

“I couldn’t have any more children after him,” she’d told Ken. “I begged Six to divorce me and get some healthy girl who could give him a lot of babies. But he said that one perfect son was all he needed.”

When Ken met Jared—or Seven, as his mother called him—the last word he would have used to describe the boy was “perfect.”

Somewhere in there, he and Jared stopped fighting. Ken was sure it was when the boy showed his extraordinary, dazzling talent for architectural design. Only by accident did Ken see Jared drawing in the dirt. No one else paid any attention to the marks, but Ken recognized them as a rudimentary floor plan.

Ken discussed it with Jared’s mother, and she showed him a whole
drawer full of sketches her son had made. “He and his dad were planning to add a big room to this old house. Six told him that he could design it. But after … afterward, Seven put it all away.”

Ken had to push Jared to get him to show his ideas. As Ken looked at the drawings, he acted as though he was just thinking about them rather than ready to set off cannons in praise. Slowly, Ken showed the boy how to put on paper what he saw in his mind. And since Jared knew nothing about construction, over the years Ken taught him how to build what he envisioned.

But no matter that Ken had made a life for himself on Nantucket, he knew that if he wanted to see Alix regularly he had to leave the island. He felt torn in half. He had a daughter in America and an honorary son on Nantucket—and his ex-wife was decreeing that Ken couldn’t openly have both of them.

The day Ken left, he saw in Jared’s eyes that he didn’t think Ken was coming back. But he had. Every holiday he wasn’t with Alix, Ken was on Nantucket. Vacations, accumulated sick days, playinghooky days, whatever time he could manage to scrape together, he spent on the island.

Even after Jared left for school, Ken still visited as often as possible. By that time he and Addy were good friends and he knew a lot of other people on Nantucket. It was natural that he began to look after the houses owned by the Kingsley family. He’d tell Addy what needed to be repaired, then she’d tell Victoria, who would pay the bills. At first Ken hadn’t liked that arrangement, but Addy said that all Victoria’s money came from the Kingsley journals, so why shouldn’t she pay? Ken didn’t argue. Roofs that didn’t leak took precedence over his pride.

All in all, Ken thought everything had worked out well—except that Alix had been left out. Victoria never budged on her rule that her daughter was not to go to Nantucket, not even to hear about it. At first Ken had fought her, argued with her, questioned her, but she never showed the slightest weakness in her resolve.

It was on a snowy night when the big old drafty house was colder than the outdoors and Ken had made a roaring fire that Addy had told him about Alix and the ghost.

“Does Victoria know about this … this person?” Ken asked, not sure whether to believe or not.

“No,” Addy said, smiling. “Victoria thinks I’m a boring old woman. She thinks I’m …” She leaned toward Ken. “Victoria thinks I’m a virgin.”

Laughing, he told Addy that she was much too sexy for men to be able to stay away from. She’d laughed in delight, poured them both more rum, and told him that none of the other women had written about Caleb. “They could see him but they never told about him.” She took a drink. “They wrote about their affairs and even about murders, but they told no one about seeing and talking to a ghost.”

“But you did,” Ken said, smiling as the rum coursed through him.

“Oh yes, I did,” Addy said. “And when Victoria finds out, she’s going to look hard for my journals.”

“Where are they?” Ken asked.

“I’ve hidden them quite well,” Addy said, smiling. “And Caleb and I worked out a plan so that someone who can see him will be told many things. But that will be after I’m gone.”

At the time Ken had been too mellow to question her, and he’d only found out at the reading of Addy’s will that “someone” was his daughter.

It was after that conversation that Ken thought about what he’d been told. Years before, even if Victoria didn’t know about a ghost that Alix could see, she’d known
something
was wrong. After that, Ken quit badgering her to tell Alix about Nantucket. They never spoke of it, but it seemed they had reached an understanding.

When Addy died and her will decreed that Alix could stay in the house for a year, Ken was fairly sure he knew why and he hadn’t liked it at all. As a father, he wanted to protect his daughter.