Enright Family Collection (81 page)

“Most of the soldiers who dropped there that day were buried right there in the meeting cemetery,” Zoey added.

“So.” Nick turned to India and asked, “Shall we go in search of the highwayman’s treasure, or shall we hike out to the old meeting house?”

“Actually, I would like to do both”—India glanced at her watch—“but I don’t think we really have time to do either. Corri has school tomorrow, and I’d like to be back in Devlin’s Light in time for dinner.”

Corri made a face. “I want to see where the ghosts are.”

“Next time, sweetie,” Zoey told her. “Next time you come for a visit, you and I will go off on a trek and we won’t come back till we have seen at least one ghost.”

“Yay!” Corn yelled and started to jump up.

“No! Corn! We don’t stand up in a canoe!” Nick cautioned as the canoe tipped periously to one side. Corn giggled, oblivious to the fact that she almost got the coldest bath of her life, and shot back to the middle of the canoe floor. Nick rolled his eyes to the sky and told Zoey and Ben, “How would you guys like to row back with Corri in your canoe?”

“Nah,” Ben told him. “There’s enough deadweight in this canoe as it is.”

“Who are you calling deadweight?” Zoey leaned forward.

“Well, there’s two of us here, and only one of us is paddling. . . .”

“I’ll show you paddling.” Zoey sat up and squared her shoulders, and dug into the water with her paddle, turning the canoe around in a circle.

“Ah, Zoey, we’re going round and round in a circle,” Ben noted.

“Shut up and row.” She glanced over her shoulder at her brother and called, “Last one home is a rotten egg.”

“If we can’t go look for ghosts and we can’t go look for loot,” Zoey heard Corri ask as the canoe pulled away, “can I go for a ride in Ben’s car when we get back? He said if it was a nice day, he would take me for a ride in his car. With the top off.”

“Sure,” Nick told her as he pushed his canoe past his sister’s, “as long as we don’t have to wait too long for them to catch up.”

“Catch up?” Zoey croaked. “Catch up? You may not realize it, my beloved big brother, but you are messing with the paddleboat champ of Brady’s Mill.”

“Oh, well, then. Did you hear that, India?” Nick called loudly enough to be heard in the next boat. “The
paddleboat champ of Brady’s Mill.”

“Ummm. I suppose we should give up without a fight, Nick,” India called over her shoulder. “How could we hope to beat the
paddleboat
champ of
Brady’s Mill?”

“Wow. Next time we issue a challenge, I guess we’d better find out who the competition is, wouldn’t you say, India?”

Laughing, a full five feet behind the other canoe, Ben rose to the challenge. “Dig, Zoey.”

“I’m digging, I’m digging!” She laughed, though they both knew that India and Nick would not be beaten at rowing. At least not on this day.

“Next time,” Ben told Nick good-naturedly.

“Never,” India told him. “Nick rows the bay every morning for a workout. He’s unbeatable.”

“Maybe I’ll be a sport, though”—Nick grinned—“and we’ll give you a handicap.”

“We’ll take it.” Ben winked at India as they lifted the canoe and started up the incline from the river.

“What’s a ‘handicap’?” Corri skipped alongside of India and tried to keep up. Before India could answer, Corri asked, “And Indy, Ben didn’t make us wait. So can I have a ride in his car?”

“That’s up to Ben.”

“Can we still go, Ben? Please?”

“Sure.”

“Oh, boy, wait till I tell Ollie,” she scampered ahead.

“Who’s Ollie?” Ben laughed.

“Her best friend back in Devlin’s Light,” India told him as they reached the garage and leaned the canoes up against the outside wall.

“Indy, why don’t you go inside and start getting your things and Corri’s ready, while I hose down the canoes?” Nick asked.

“Good idea. Corri can go for a short ride with Ben while I do that and see if Aunt August is almost ready to leave.” India nodded and set off for the house.

“Can Zoey come?” Corri asked Ben.

“Well, there’s really only room for two people,” Ben told her.

“Oh . . .” Corri seemed disappointed.

“It’s okay, Corri. I can take Zoey another time. If she wants to go someplace with me sometime.” Ben turned
to her and asked, “Do you think you might want to go someplace with me sometime, Zoey?”

“Odds are that I could be persuaded.” She nodded.

“Well, then, Miss Corri, you’re on. Let’s do it.” He held her hand out to the little girl and they raced to the spot where he had parked his sports car earlier that day. In anticipation of the event, he had left the top down. Corri climbed in and fastened her seat belt.

While they were too far away for their voices to be heard in the garage, Zoey was certain that Corri’s mouth was moving the entire time.

“She’ll talk Ben to death, you know,” Nick told his sister, and they both laughed.

“What a shame to lose your friend after finding him again after so long.” She grinned.

“Yeah. Isn’t that something? Ben turning up again after all this time?” Nick untangled a length of dark green garden hose. “I still can’t believe it.”

“Ummm.” Zoey nodded happily.

Nick glanced at Zoey, wondering if he should ignore the obvious. Nah.

“So,” he said meaningfully.

“‘So’ what?”

“So what’s up with you and Ben?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“Really?”

“Really.” She sat down on the concrete apron of the driveway and asked, “What are you getting at?”

“There’s a current.”

“There’s always been a current.”

Nick frowned. “The last time we saw Ben, we were kids. Kids don’t make currents.” He sprayed one side of the canoe and turned the water off and said meaningfully, “Last night, there was current. Today there was current. I could feel it.”

“Good.” She grinned happily.

“I don’t know about that.” He shook his head.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that as soon as his leg is better, he’ll be off to
Monte Carlo or Monza or Silverstone or wherever the next Grand Prix will be run.”

She sat and pondered this.

“No, he won’t,” she announced. “He won’t leave.”

“Zoey, don’t delude yourself. This is Ben’s life. He was just reaching a point in his career where he was about to make his mark before he had the accident.” He sprayed the other side of the canoe, then turned it to dry in the sun. “If he can go back to it, he will. And besides, he told me that once he retires, he’s planning on going into business with a friend of his back in England, Zoe. Ben has no plans to move back to the States. He’s here to help Delaney out on a temporary basis, but as soon as he can, he’ll be going back to the life he’s made for himself in England.”

“He won’t,” she said stubbornly, not willing to delve into
that
particular pot right then and there, then before he had a chance to add another two cents, caught him off guard by asking, “What was Mom crying about this morning?”

“What do you mean?” Nick turned his back and sprayed the second canoe.

“Nicky, don’t play that game with me.” She exhaled loudly. “I saw you in the garden with Mom this morning. She was crying, Nicky, and you know that she was.”

“Well, you know how Mom is,” he said, not looking at her. “She gets sort of overcome sometimes when she thinks about the wedding.”

“Nicky, are you lying to me?” Zoey asked quietly. “Are you and Mom keeping something from me and Georgia?”

“Yippee!!” Corri called as the little sports car spun into a soft slow arc at the foot of the drive. “That was so fun! Zoey, it was so fun! We went all the way down the road, then back up around the pond!”

“Wow! I’ll bet that was fun,” Zoey’s gaze was still fixed to the back of her brother’s head. He still had not turned around to look her in the eye.

“Come on.” Corri grabbed Zoey’s arm, “Let’s go tell Aunt August.”

“You go on without me, sweetie,” Zoey told her. “I’ll be along in a minute.”

“Go on up with her, Zoey.” Nick turned around. “There’s nothing I can tell you.”

Zoey stared at her brother’s eyes and could see there was something there, something he would not share. A chill of fear shot through her.

“Nicky,” she whispered, “just tell me if she’s sick.”

“What? Oh, sweetie, no. No one’s sick. I swear it.”

“Then why won’t you tell me, Nicky?”

“Sweetheart, there’s nothing I can tell you,” he repeated, then turned his back again. “Mom just has a lot on her mind, with the book tours and the wedding. . . .”

“Come on, Zoey. We have to get some apples from Mrs. Colson.” Corri pulled her in the direction of the house, and Zoey followed her for a dozen steps or so before turning and calling over her shoulder, “You’re sure that’s it, Nick?”

“It’s all I can tell you, Zoe.” Nick turned back to the job of hosing down the canoe.

With absolute certainty, Zoey knew that her brother was lying to her, pure and simple. Nick was simply not an accomplished Liar. He never had been. It was obvious to her that he was lying now. It would nag her until she found out the truth.

Why was he lying? And what in the world was he—and their mother—hiding?

Chapter
18
 

“Wow. Flowers for me?” CeCe grinned. “Can’t say I can remember the last time someone brought me a bouquet of anything.”

“Picked them myself.” Zoey handed over the enormous bundle of lilac and followed her friend through the apartment door into the small living room.

“They really are beautiful.” CeCe bent her face into the blooms and inhaled. “And the fragrance is heavenly. My mother had this color”—she touched the deepest of the several shades of purple—“and tons of the white. And she used to have this lavender growing along one side of the barn, but my brother, Schuyler, flattened it with the pickup the year he was learning how to drive.”

Zoey laughed. “Now, Schuyler is your twin, right?”

“No, that’s Trevor. Sky is a few years younger. Trevor and I are the oldest. Actually, I am the oldest by about seventeen minutes, which makes me everyone’s big sister.” CeCe dragged a cardboard box from one of the corners in the living room and pulled open the top. “None in there,” she muttered.

“What are you looking for?” Zoey asked.

“A vase.” CeCe poked into another box. “Maybe in here . . .”

“I realize I may be going out on a limb here, but it may be easier to find things if you unpack,” Zoey deadpanned. “Now, it may not work the same for everyone, but I’ve definitely noticed an increase in success in locating things once the boxes were emptied.”

“Very funny.” CeCe made a face. “I’ll unpack. Someday.”

“If you need help . . .”

“Nah. It’s just that I don’t really want to stay here, in this apartment, but I haven’t found anyplace else I’d want to live in, either.” CeCe sighed. “I guess I just don’t feel settled here.”

“Didn’t you sign a two-year contract?”

CeCe nodded somewhat glumly.

“Are you planning to live out of boxes for the next two years?” Zoey asked.

“I guess not.”

Finding a vase large enough for the tall woody stalks of lilac, CeCe took it into the kitchen to fill it with water.

Zoey followed her into the small, all-white room. “Is it the apartment that you don’t like?”

“The apartment is okay. It’s smaller than what I’m used to, though.”

“So find another one.”

“I guess.” CeCe shrugged, then said, “I think I’m just a little homesick today. I got a phone call this morning from my mother. All the family news makes me wish I was back there with them.” She set the vase in the middle of the kitchen table, then passed a plate of cheese, grapes, and apple slices to Zoey, who took the plate and set it down on the table.

“Well, don’t you have some vacation time coming up?”

“Next month. I’ll be going back for my cousin’s wedding.”

“That should be fun.” Zoey picked at a grape, peeling it absentmindedly with her teeth.

“It will be.” CeCe nodded and took a pot down from the pot rack.

“Will the skating cowboy be there?”

“He’s the best man.” CeCe grinned.

“Ah, I see.” Zoey nodded, then wiggled her nose. “By the way, that smells wonderful. What are you making?”

“Pasta primavera.”

“You really should be doing the cooking shows.” Zoey shook her head and popped another grape into her mouth. “I am so pathetic. My future sister-in-law’s aunt called in this morning during the show to tell me that I had the flame too high on the chicken fryer and if I didn’t lower it, I would most likely suffer burns from hot oil flying out of the pan when I put in those cold pieces of chicken.” Zoey rolled her eyes. “How embarrassing.”

CeCe laughed. “Well, the word is that your cooking show is gaining viewers at a faster rate than any other recurring show to date.”

“And no one is more surprised than I am. Do you know they are planning to do a cookbook of the recipes that people have sent in to me?”

“How are they going to decide what goes in and what gets pitched?”

“I suggested that they give all the recipes to India’s aunt August and pay her to do the editing. Which they are doing. She’s a natural. And she calls in during most of the shows now, so the viewers are familiar with her. I asked if we could do a special from time to time and have her come on and be a guest cook. You know, at holidays, or for special events.”