| |
Abby stopped the small rental car and fell back against her seat. She was late. Her siblings would have already arrived home, and they would want to hear about her wedding plans. She snorted and squeezed the steering wheel. There would be no wedding. They didn’t need to know the details.
She let out a loud sigh, opened the car door and, stepping out, gazed at the house she had grown up in. She bit her bottom lip as memories flashed through her mind of laughing children chasing their father around the house. Although times like that were few and far between, Abby had to admit, she and her siblings had happy times growing up.
She peered up at the massive white brick building, a shiver running up her backbone.
The few occasions she had been home before her parents died, she hadn’t felt anything unusual. This time, though, her senses seemed heightened, as if something wasn’t quite right. She tipped her head and took in the entire building. The apprehension probably came about because this was the first family get-together since their parents’ fatal accident. The first time she, her sisters, and her brother would be home at the same time. The first time without their parents either about to go somewhere or coming from somewhere.
Once she’d pulled on her suit jacket, she slung her overnight bag over her shoulder. She had worn her favorite black pants suit for the trip to cheer herself up, but she regretted the decision. She felt overdressed. She twisted her hair into a spiral ponytail and clipped her auburn locks to the back of her head.
Drawing in a deep breath, she stepped up onto the porch and rested her hand on one of the heavy oak doors for a moment to center herself.
Physically, the house didn’t appear any different from the last time she saw it, but emotionally, it had her nerves aquiver. She didn’t like feeling apprehensive. She was usually the one who had it all together, the one her younger siblings looked to for strength when they were beaten down by life. Maybe she was hungry. After all, she hadn’t eaten since that horrid snack on the plane. She hoped someone had made dinner.
She unlocked the right door and slowly opened it inward, stepping over the threshold. Her shoulders relaxed as she spotted her brother’s paintings hanging on cream walls. Her jaw dropped as her gaze caught on a painting with a black stallion rearing at the edge of a cliff, with a magnificent multicolored sunset filling the background. She immediately knew it was her brother’s work, but she hadn’t seen this one before and wondered when Garrett had hung the painting.
Before she took another step, Maxine swooped down the curving staircase.
Abby eyed her familiar attire—blue jeans and low shoes—but her eyes lingered on the soft lemon shirt for a second. She thought it suited her sister’s dark looks to perfection, and it was much more feminine than the black or gray shirts she usually wore.
“Max!” Abby rushed forward and hugged her younger sister. Max, being shorter, wrapped her arms around her back and gave her a quick squeeze before letting go.
Taking her sister’s arm in hers, Abby leaned back. “I love that shirt.”
“Thanks.”
Max allowed the show of affection only for as long as they took to walk arm in arm into the dining room. Abby scanned the room. Someone had set the table for four, but no one else was there. “Where is everybody?”
“They’ll be here soon enough. Garrett might not talk much, but he’s a darn good cook.”
The sisters sat down in the same Elizabethan chairs they had used since childhood.
Max held the coffee pot up to her. “You still take sugar?”
Abby grinned. “Yeah, I’m still not sweet enough.”
Max laughed. “You’ll never be sweet enough.”
They sipped from their mugs, and after a while, Abby eyed her sister. “I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve missed you.” She took another sip of coffee. “You know Izzy’s been spending a lot of time with me this last year? She took Mom and Dad’s deaths badly, but I don’t know what Garrett is feeling. He’s so hard to read.” Abby smiled. “Maybe having all of us here will help them move forward.”
“They’ll be fine. How are you, though?”
Abby’s smile wavered. She couldn’t very well tell her sister she didn’t feel grieved as much as she regretted the fact they would never truly get to know their parents. She scratched a small itch on her neck. “I’m okay. What about you?”
Max shrugged and leaned back. “People die. It’s not as if we were close to them. They were never around, always too busy with their dumb old bones or fifteenth-century jugs.”
She stood up, strolled to the mantel, and held up their parents’ last find, waving the jug in the air. “What good is a fifteenth-century jug, anyway? To look at? To always be on edge in case someone broke the stupid thing?” She threw Abby a grin and bobbed, pretending to drop it.
“Put it back, Max. I think it’s beautiful, and you know it’s worth a fortune.”
She did. “Yeah, worth so much more than four rowdy kids, huh?” Max plonked back down onto her chair.
Abby couldn’t say anything in response to that. Max was right. Their parents lived and breathed archaeology. She understood their passion—after all, she was an ardent historian herself. But why they bothered to have four children was beyond her. They had spent months away at a time, tracking down old stuff. Even when they were at home, they spent all their time in either the attic or the basement, reviewing and cataloging their finds, so it felt as though they might as well have been traveling.
The earlier memory of her father came to mind, and Abby said, “We did have some happy times, though, didn’t we?”
Max shrugged again. “I stopped in Brukstoe on the way here, and Ellie Hadden, you remember her? Anyway, she told me there’s a new spa open at Hadden Inn, and it’s supposed to have all the latest stuff. She thought you’d like to know.”
Abby laughed. She, her sisters, and Ellie had spent most of their older teenage years either in beauty parlors in Brukstoe or, when they could swing it, in spas in Chicago. Of course, if Abby’s parents hadn’t felt guilty for the lack of time they spent with their daughters, the girls would never have been able to afford such luxuries. Izzy loved them as much as Abby did, and although Max always said she only went for the company, Abby was sure she enjoyed them too.
Even now, Abby spent time in any that she could find. The spas relaxed her, and she found them rejuvenating like nothing else. She had decided long ago she would open her very own spa one day and was excited that Ellie Haddon had done just that. “I’ll ring her first thing tomorrow.”
Out of nowhere, a shiver passed down Abby’s spine, and she looked around to find a reason. The windows were open but there wasn’t a breeze blowing the curtains, and it was a warm day. She looked down at the floor. They were never allowed in the basement when their parents were alive, but now there was nothing stopping her from having a look. She looked up and found Max staring at her.
Her sister grinned. “You can go down there anytime.”
“Have you?”
Max shook her head. “Nope, not yet. I wanted someone with me. Don’t know why, but I just did.”
“Yeah, I get that. I do too.”
“How about we wait till everyone’s here, and we can all go down together.”
Abby wasn’t sure the others would want to, but it wasn’t a bad idea.
“Abby,” Izzy called out as she swept into the dining room.
Abby stood up as her little sister paused by the fireplace. “Hang on,” she said, pushing her long blonde hair from her face as she plucked her cell phone from her bag.
Watching her sister, Abby smiled. Izzy was always girly, and today she was no different with her pretty blue-and-white printed dress with flutter sleeves and a ruffled hem.
A frown flashed between Izzy’s eyes as she checked her cell.
“Bad news?” Abby asked.
“No, everything’s fine.” She hurried forward and gave Abby a quick hug. “I better tell Garrett you’re here.”
And with that, Izzy nearly ran back out the door. The girl was always rushing about as if she would never have time to accomplish all the things she wanted to do in her lifetime. Even as a young child, she never walked if she could run.
Since their parents’ deaths, Izzy seemed to be even busier every second of the day. Even when she had visited Abby, she either shut herself in her room to write her novels or constantly talked and texted on her phone.
Abby spotted Garrett on the threshold holding a large tray of roast meat and vegetables. As he walked into the room, Izzy ducked past him with a jug of gravy.
Abby waited for Garrett to put the tray on the table, and held out her arms. He hesitated, and she thought he might not accept the offer, but then he wrapped his arms around her, squeezed for less than a second, then let go and moved to sit down at the table.
She grimaced inwardly. Her little brother, dressed in his usual leather jacket, white T-shirt, and tight blue jeans, was becoming more and more alienated from the family. He never showed up for get-togethers anymore. She had to stop herself from pushing his black hair from over his eye. His nose was still a little bent from colliding with the fist of a so-called friend, but she was thankful it looked no worse than the last time she had seen him. No new injuries meant he had hopefully not been in too many recent fights.
She gazed at him, trying to see under the armor he’d slowly built around himself his entire life.
As Max and Izzy filled their plates with food, the scent of rosemary and garlic wafted to Abby’s nose and her stomach grumbled. Her gaze drifted from the platter to her sisters, and she spotted a box at the end of the long table.
“What’s that?” she asked no one in particular.
“Don’t know,” Max said. “It was here when we got here. There’s a note from the lawyer that we couldn’t open it until we all were together.”
“I wonder why Carter didn’t meet with us himself,” Abby said, still eyeing the box. “I haven’t seen or spoken to him since he read the wills after the funeral.”
“Me either,” Max said.
“He was really upset at the funeral,” Izzy added.
“He would be,” Max said. “He was Dad’s friend since grade school, and then his confidant and lawyer their entire adult lives.”
Garrett put his empty glass down with a thud. “I didn’t say anything before because it might have been my imagination, but did any of you notice how cagey Carter acted when we asked questions about Mom and Dad and what they did? It seemed to me like he was hiding something.”
“Now that you bring it up, I did notice that,” Max said. “But I thought he was just grieving like we all were and didn’t want to talk about anything personal.”
“That’s what I thought too,” Izzy said.
“I didn’t notice anything different about him. Oh, he was upset—we all were—but he seemed like the same old Carter to me,” Abby said with a shrug.
She stood up and strode over to the package. “Maybe that’s why he isn’t here now. He was obviously keeping whatever’s in this box from us.” She stroked the cardboard top. “Let’s see what’s in it that Carter couldn’t have shown us a year ago.”
Izzy swallowed. “Maybe it holds something special for each of us. Maybe they left a personal letter just for us.”
Garrett sniffed in disdain. “You really think they took the time to write us a love letter?”
“I didn’t mean a love letter, but yeah, something to let us know how much they cared for us.” Izzy pursed her lips and flicked her blonde hair over her shoulder. “Why not?”
Abby put a hand up to stop their arguing. “Why don’t we just find out?”
As she said the last words, she was already tearing at the cardboard box. She pulled out a long, black cloak. “That’s strange.”
Izzy hurried to her side and pulled out an envelope. Using her fingernail to open it and unfold a sheet of paper, she silently read it.
Abby put the cloak over the back of a chair. “Well? What does it say?”
“It’s from Mom and Dad,” Izzy said, her eyes wide with excitement. “But written in Dad’s hand. He says, If you’re reading this, it’s been twelve months since both of us or the surviving parent died. Please know we have loved you all and regret not spending more time with you as you grew into the wonderful adults we know you now are.
“Read the journals in the box and keep the artifact safe, and be careful. It is a . . .”—she paused and gaped at her brother and sisters in turn before continuing—“time device.”
Abby snatched the letter from her. She quickly scanned the words and discovered that was exactly what her father had written. She snorted. “Dad does say that.”
“Ooh, a mystery,” Izzy said, looking around as if she thought Indiana Jones would barge in at any moment.
Garrett had joined them at the end of the table and plucked out a white orb from the box. It appeared clean and new, with gold filigree leaves circling the middle.
“Time device must be some sort of code name for this,” he said, turning the orb in his hands. He waved it about and made ghostly noises. “It’s probably a portal to the dark side. We’d better be careful, or we’ll have poltergeists swarming all over the house.”
Max laughed, and Abby chuckled. “I doubt we’re in any danger. They wouldn’t do that to us.” She gazed at the orb and shivered. “Would they?”