Page 128 of The Treasure House

“She’s fine. I was there before supper and she looked fresh as a daisy.”

“I meant Zoe, not Mom.”

I agreed with him. I was in no state to meet his mother. I was crumpled and worn and running on empty.

“We’re tired,” he pleaded with his grandmother.

But Marly was determined. And she was intimidating when she was determined.

“Just be warned, Amber’s not much of a talker anymore,” she told me, as she jammed her hat on her head and left the car. “But there’s something you need to see.”

“What does she want me to see?” I whispered to Jake as he opened the passenger door and took my hand to help me out.

“Hell if I know,” he admitted. He reached out to zip my jacket up to my chin. He had snowflakes clinging to his eyelashes.

“We don’t have to do this right now if you don’t want to,” I told him.

Jake nodded. “I know. But, I mean…” He bit his lip and gave me a shy look. “I was planning to introduce you soon. If you wanted to…”

I did want to. Just maybe not after turning my mother in and crying my face off.

“Come on!” Marly insisted.

“It’s up to you,” Jake said quietly.

I glanced at Marly, who was giving us an impatient look, and sighed. “Well, I guess we’re here now…”

The care home was quiet except for the soft chatter of a TV and the hum of medical equipment. I felt like an intruder as we followed Marly across the foyer. She gave the nurse at reception a wave and led us down a corridor. As we reached the end, she turned and held her finger to her lips, gesturing for us to be quiet.

I felt Jake squeeze my hand as Marly silently eased open the door to the last room in the corridor. Buttery light spilled out and there was the soft rasp of a voice reading aloud. Marly gently pulled me forward, so I had a clear view through the crack in the door. She peered over my shoulder.

Jake’s mom was sitting up in bed. She was surrounded by stuffed animals of all shapes and sizes. The yellow lamplight caught the planes of her face; she had a net of lines around her sea-glass-colored eyes and bracketing her mouth, and her long gray-streaked hair was braided. Her eyes shone as she smiled and listened to her visitor read to her.

My gaze settled on the man beside her bed, and I felt a shock zip through me.

Freddie de Marche.

He was older and his hair was thinner and his jaw softer, but it was clearly the man from the photographs. An old Montgomery Clift. His chair was pulled up close beside the bed, and he was reading softly. To his daughter.

“It’s always the same books,” Marly whispered behind me. “He must be bored to death, but he reads them just the same, because she loves them.”

I couldn’t believe it. Freddie de Marche had stepped out of the past and into my life. He wasn’t dead. Marly wasn’t a widow. All my assumptions of heartbreak and grief were wrong. Again.

I listened to the peaceful rasp of his voice and felt another shock. He was reading one of the Anne of Green Gables books.

“ ‘Gilbert, darling, don’t let’s ever be afraid of things,’ ” he read. “ ‘Let’s be daring and adventurous and expectant. Let’s dance to meet life and all it can bring to us, even if it brings scads of trouble and typhoid and twins!’ ”

It was from Anne of Windy Poplars. I’d read it so many times I almost knew it by heart. As I listened, I saw Freddie de Marche reach out a hand and pull a tissue from a box on the nightstand. Without breaking stride in his reading, he wiped his daughter’s damp lips. She let him, as though she were a small girl.

“Nobody told me he was still alive.” I was stunned.

“Nobody told you he was dead either,” Marly whispered back. “You just assumed the worst.”

Hearing the whispers, Freddie looked over to the doorway. He peered over his reading glasses, saw us there and grinned. He had thick expressive eyebrows, just like his grandson. “Hey, Amber, sweetheart, it looks like Mom’s here, and she’s brought visitors.” He pulled his glasses off and gestured to us.

Jake’s mom looked over at us. She frowned, clearly not pleased that her book had been interrupted.

“Hi, Mom,” I heard Jake say softly, as he ushered me into the room. He bent to kiss his mom, even though she seemed confused by his presence.