“Oh no. He’s not my friend. He’s just...”
“Detective Sanders,” she called out with a strong, loud voice. “Please join us inside.”
“I don’t want to intrude,” he said.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Evelyn looked at Cressida, a question in her eyes. “Unless you object.”
“No, it’s fine.” She’d just ignore his presence and ask the questions she wanted to ask. Cressida stepped inside, and Braden joined her.
They hung their coats in the coat closet.
“Join me in the sitting room.” Mrs. Monroe led them through the foyer to a spacious room with a view of the ocean.
Though Evelyn’s smile was genuine, Cressida easily saw the sadness in her eyes, in every line of her face.
A trim, neatly dressed woman in her forties brought a tray with coffee, tea, and treats. “Will there be anything else, Mrs. Monroe? I have that appointment we discussed.”
“No, nothing else, thank you.”
Cressida shrugged off the feeling she had stepped back into her mother’s world.
Focus on the interview.Or, more importantly, why Evelyn had asked to seeher. Everything hinged on what Evelyn would tell her, and then she would need to convince this woman to share whatever truth Diggins needed so she could pass it on. The pressure moved from her head and built in her chest.
Evelyn poured Cressida and Braden coffee and took tea herself. She was completely poised and self-possessed, willing to serve as well, even after what she’d been through the day before. All Cressida could think was that Mrs. Monroe—Evelyn—sensed time was running out too.
“Thank you for agreeing to meet with me. I’ve been trying to arrange this...” Oh, could she be any more insensitive? “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have mentioned that, well, considering...” Cressida was a bungling mess, and Braden would be less than impressed. Had sheeverbeen a journalist?
“Please don’t apologize. I’m glad we’re here. Now’s the moment. Please ask your questions. I think I might have been waiting too many years for someone to finally come to my door and ask.”
No pressure there.God, please let me do this justice. Pleaselet me ask the right questions.But Mrs. Monroe insisting that Cressida ask her questions first made her wonder why the woman had requested to see her. Cressida had assumed she had something to talk to her about, even something pressing.
“I was told that you asked to see me,” Cressida said.
“Yes. And here you are.” Evelyn smiled and took a sip from her teacup. Behind her, rolling white clouds blew through a bright-blue day, and Cressida almost felt like she was in a dream.
“Is it all right if I take notes?”
“Certainly. I’d prefer you didn’t record our conversation, though.”
“Of course.” Cressida retrieved her notebook from her bag and opened it, holding her pen, ready to take her notes. She would need to focus on every word the woman said and was glad that Braden would listen in too, since she couldn’t refer back to a recording. But first, she would explain herself.
“My father died just over a year ago, and I’ve decided to finish his book. He was a maritime historian working on a book about shipwrecks and ghost ships. I’m here in Hidden Bay to focus on theSpecter’s Bounty. Your name was in his journal as someone he meant to interview, but he didn’t supply the reasons why. He ended the trip abruptly and didn’t leave more notes. I’m not even sure if he talked to you already. Either way, I’d love to hear your story.”As it relates to the ghost ship. But the woman had a charisma about her, an intrigue, that left Cressida wanting to know everything about her. Braden’s information—that she helped those who were desperate—added to the mystery.
Evelyn set her teacup down with a gentle clank, then sat back. “At the core, the story is simple. My family owned and ran a shipping line back East. My father didn’t like the man I loved, and so he sent him off to work on the other side of the world, and then informed me he’d been killed.”
Cressida’s throat tightened. Though her circumstances were different, she could completely relate to the crushing blow of a parent’s controlling actions. “I’m so sorry.”
She wrote in her notebook.
“I was devastated, of course, and I did the only thing any proper woman could do.”
Cressida waited for more.
Evelyn chuckled. “I told my father I was done with him, then I searched for Nick. I wanted proof that he was dead. Of course, I knew what my father was capable of, and I knew that I had to do this. I hired a private investigator to help me, and he found Nick in Jakarta. I married him and, a year later, we had a beautiful baby boy—Caleb.”
“Did you try to reconcile with your father?”
“Absolutely not. I was afraid of what he might do. Part of me wanted my son to have a grandfather, but then I feared my father’s influence on him. Nick was killed a couple of years after Caleb was born. I had no choice but to go back to Boston and work at Harborstone. My father refused financial assistance unless I came back. I took the job he offered and remained a single mother raising a child. Yes, I had to go back to the man on whom I blamed all my problems. Though I had no proof, I believed he was behind Nick’s death. Again.”
