“Could be,” Alix said. “Or maybe Miss Kingsley was a great fan of Mom’s books.”
“Could I …? You know … tonight?”
Alix had teased Izzy that she was her mom’s biggest fan, and with every book, one of the first copies off the presses was given to Izzy. “Sure. Just as long as you also don’t sleep in the nude.” Alix left to explore the other rooms.
“What?” Izzy asked, following her. “Your mother sleeps naked?”
“Shouldn’t have said that,” Alix muttered as she looked in the fourth bedroom. It was pretty but didn’t look as though anything new had been put in it for about fifty years. “It wasn’t me who told you,” Alix said.
Izzy crossed her heart and made a motion of zipping her lips and throwing away the key.
“It’s just one of my mother’s many peccadillos. Extremely expensive sheets and her bare skin together. A true love match.”
“Wow,” Izzy said. “Your mother …”
“Yeah, I know.” Alix opened a narrow door at the back of the house and entered what had obviously once been the maid’s quarters. A sitting room, two bedrooms, and a bath.
As clearly as though she were seeing a movie, she knew that she and her mother had stayed in these rooms. She looked in the doorway to her right and saw a pretty little room done in pink and green, and she knew that as a child she had chosen the fabric for that bedspread and those curtains. On the floor was a needlepoint rug with a mermaid swimming about in coral. She’d always loved mermaids. Was that rug the source of her fascination with them?
A white desk had a bowl of shells that Alix knew she had collected off the beach. And she also knew that the hand she’d been holding while walking through the sand had been old. Certainly not her mother’s hand.
When she heard Izzy in the sitting room, Alix left the little bedroom and closed the door.
“Anything interesting?” Izzy asked.
“Nothing,” Alix said, knowing she was lying. She looked in the other bedroom. It was larger but impersonal; everything was of the most utilitarian nature. The bath was all white, with a pedestal sink and a big enameled tub. She could remember how cold the tub could be and how she’d had to stand on a box to reach the sink.
“You okay?” Izzy asked.
“Great. In awe, I guess. Shall we open the bottles and toast the Kingsley family?”
“Now you’re talking.”
Chapter Two
An hour later they were sitting on the floor of the little TV room eating tuna sandwiches and a pizza they’d found in the freezer.
“Wonder what the grocery stores on Nantucket are like?” Izzy asked. They’d found some beautiful crystal glasses and she was using one. “Maybe Ben Franklin drank out of it,” she said, knowing his mother was from Nantucket.
As for Alix, the only thing she wanted to drink was rum.
On their first survey of the house they’d missed the kitchen. They found it hidden away at the back of the house, behind the dining room. Compared to the kitchen, the rest of the house was downright modern. Nearly everything was exactly as it had been in about 1936. The stove was green and white enamel with a lid over the burners. The big sink had drainboards on both sides and all the cabinets were metal. The fridge was new but quite small, as it had to fit into a space that had been made for a thirties-era refrigerator. On the far wall under the window was a seat and a little table with a well-worn top of wood that she’d be willing to bet was once decking on a ship. Alix knew that she used to sit there and color while someone made her a sandwich. Again she had a vision of an older woman. If that was Aunt Addy, the owner of the house, where was her mother? And if they were guests of Aunt Addy, why had they stayed in the maid’s quarters? None of it made any sense.
“Doesn’t this make you itch to tear it out?” Izzy asked as she looked around the kitchen. “I think there should be granite countertops and maple cabinets. And I’d take down that wall into the dining room.”
“No!” Alix said with too much force, then calmed herself. “I’d leave it just as it is.”
“I think this place is taking you over,” Izzy said, then exclaimed over finding a frozen pizza. “We’ll feast tonight! Think this thing works?” She was referring to the oven in the old range.
To the amazement of both of them, Alix knew how to ignite the pilot light in the oven, knew that the knobs were quirky and just how to jiggle each one.
Izzy stood back, watching her, but refused to comment.
Alix was looking around the kitchen and again she had the idea that she knew something but couldn’t remember what it was. When she saw the doorknob of a pirate’s head next to the fridge, she said, “Ah-ha!” and gave a pull.
Izzy went to see what she’d found.
“This cabinet was always locked and I was fascinated by it. I even tried to steal the key but I couldn’t find it.” She had a vague memory of a man with a deep voice telling her that she couldn’t have the key, but Alix didn’t tell Izzy that.