He shook his head. “It can be a celebration meal. I’ll be back with an assortment. Don’t start the party without me.”
“Wouldn’t dare.”
Tessa closed the front door and hurried up the staircase, causing every other stair to moan and pop. Voices flowed down from the attic. Mrs. Steele sat in a dusty wooden chair with a faded embroidered cushion. Crazy Kate sat in a rocker that creaked with every movement, and swirling dust motes danced around the floorboards. Dorothy had pulled over a stepladder beside her grandmother’s chair. Mrs. Steele flipped through a photo album and pointed out the people on the pages. Crazy Kate used her toes to rock herself in a slow, steady rhythm that fell into sync with Tessa’s heartbeat.
Four portraits were lined up near the window, two leaning on the trunk and two on either side. Moth-eaten sheets lay puddled on the floor. Four dark-haired young men stared at Tessa. Curiosity pulled her to them. “Where did these come from?”
“They’ve been stored up here for years,” Crazy Kate said. “Matthias didn’t want them hung in the house. I think he worried something would happen to them, but now they’ve grown old and worn.”
“Like us,” Mrs. Steele said.
Tessa touched one of the hand-carved wooden frames. “Who are they?”
Crazy Kate’s voice filled with warmth when she answered, “The Hamilton brothers.”
Tessa felt the answer before she’d been given it. The young men looked too much alike to not be related. With the same dark hair and strong jawlines. Theclomp, clomp, clompof Trudy’s cane sounded against the floor.
“That’s Benjamin,” Mrs. Steele said, pointing with her cane. “The oldest and wildest. Then Richard, the follower. He did anything Benjamin asked him to.” She looked over at Crazy Kate. “Do you remember when Benjamin dared Richard to spend the night on Red River Hill?”
“But it’s haunted!” Tessa blurted out.
Mrs. Steele laughed a brittle, raspy sound that shook her frail body. Laughter changed the old woman’s face, and Tessa saw how she once had been lovely before the years of resentment had withered her features.
“Richard jumped at shadows for weeks,” Crazy Kate said, shaking her head. “He swore there were ghosts living in those woods.”
Mrs. Steele’s smile pushed wrinkles across her cheeks. “Those last two are Matthias and Geoffrey.”
Tessa exhaled a breath of admiration.Without a doubt, the two most handsome brothers. “I can have these restored and then rehang them in the house.”
Mrs. Steele leaned on her cane. “I hope you know what you’re doing, trying to rehab this whole place.” She shuffled across the floor toward the chair.
“I don’t, but knowing the house is saved gives me hope that the good guy can win sometimes.”
Mrs. Steele sat, and one thin eyebrow rose on her forehead. “Should I assume that I’m the bad guy?”
“Well, no, I mean, notnow, but maybe for a few minutes. Well, that’s rude, isn’t it? Have mercy, my mama would be—” Mrs. Steele’s laugh cut off the rest of Tessa’s words, and she glanced at her feet before clearing her throat. “Paul went to get lunch, if anyone’s hungry. We could eat downstairs in the dining room. Maybe you both could tell us how the house used to look, back when it was taken care of. Share a few stories.”
Mrs. Steele leaned forward and cut her eyes over at Crazy Kate. “We have more than a few stories about this place and about the Hamiltons. Never a dull moment with those boys.”
Crazy Kate leaned her head back against the rocker, closed her eyes, and shook her head. “Never.”
By the time Paul returned with bags of warm food, drink carriers with coffee and lemon-balm tea, disposable plates, napkins, and utensils, Tessa had the dining room cleaned and ready for lunch. After hearing about the rocky reunion, Cecilia had taken lemon balm from her garden and brewed a batch of tea. She’d said hernonnaalways swore that the herb could bring peace to even the most unsettled heart, and Tessa believed her. She no longer doubted the power of the garden nor the mystical possibilities all around them.
The atmosphere in the dining room was one of happiness and renewal. It was almost as if Mrs. Steele and Crazy Kate had been friends for all the years they’d spent disliking one another.
Paul jotted notes and stacked sketches around him as he listened to the women. Mrs. Steele and Crazy Kate had given them so much detail about the house, and Paul had pages’ worth of ledger-lined notes. Tessa pulled apart a cinnamon roll and pushed one half toward Paul. He reached out for it without lifting his pencil from the pad.
“When we’re all finished, you’ll have to come back,” Paul said to Mrs. Steele. “Bring your family so they can see where the magic happened.”
Tessa flinched, thinking Mrs. Steele’s experience with losing Geoffrey in the house outweighed the fact that she’d fallen in love with him in the same house, that her children had played there every summer, and that the whole Hamilton family had celebrated holidays there for years. But Mrs. Steele nodded her head.
“I’ll expect a formal invitation and not to be disappointed by the renovations. I can’t have my family thinking their father and his family lived in a dump,” she said.
“I hardly think this could ever be called a dump,” Paul said. Then he tapped his fingers on the table. “Except for the graffiti in the kitchen and the boarded-up windows.”
Tessa grinned. “Don’t forget the bats and the mangy cat.”
“Since when have you cared so much about a home?” Crazy Kate asked him, but her words were gentle.
