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Next, she drew out several letters and a faded, sepia-toned photograph of a woman sitting in a wide chair dressed in a simple dress and a straw hat over what seemed to be masses of hair.
“This is Annabelle,” Jamie said. “I recognize it from the other photos I had before the fire. I had them displayed all around the inn. All that was lost, obviously.”
I inspected the photo carefully, curious about this woman from the past. Since the photo was in black and white, I couldn’t make out too many details, but it was obvious she had been a beautiful woman. She had a round, merry face, a small waist, and curvy hips. I remembered seeing a photograph of Clive Higgins that Jamie had had hanging on the wall of the inn before the fire. He had been broad-shouldered with a face as square as his wife’s was round and wide-set eyes that seemed to stare at the camera as if he expected something bad to leap out of the contraption and kill them both. “I’m remembering you had Clive’s photo up on the wall.”
“That’s right. Their wedding photograph as well.” Jamie tapped the end of her nose with her index finger. I’d noticed she did this when she was thinking. “I always thought they seemed like an odd couple.”
“How so?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I’m not sure how to explain it. She seemed worldly and sophisticated and he was kind of big and rugged. Obviously, they were in love and were married for a long time, so what do I know?”
“Why do men in old photos always look wary?”
“I don’t know, but I totally agree.” Jamie peered more closely at the photo. “She was a redhead, but you can’t see that in this picture.” She looked up at me and said, as if I’d asked her how she knew all that, “I read anything I could find on her when I bought the inn. Clive was already here when she arrived to live with Quinn Cooper Barnes. Alexander Barnes had sent for her and Quinn’s mother. They’d been in Boston, practically starving.”
I nodded. This was all Emerson Pass folklore around the high school, which was named after Quinn Cooper Barnes. The history of our little town was simple but sweet. Lord Alexander Barnes had come from England and transformed a town ruined in a fire into a thriving ski community. He’d had five children before his first wife passed away and was raising them on his own until he met Quinn. She’d been hired to be the town’s first schoolteacher. They’d fallen in love and married, adding two more daughters to Lord Barnes’s five. “Trapper’s dad has a lot of information on the history as well. He let me look at some of the old letters and journals one time.”
“Lucky.”
She sounded so genuinely envious that I laughed. “I’m sure he’d let you take a look if you asked,” I said. “He’s proud of his Barnes family heritage.”
“I would be too.” She sighed and touched the silver heart that hung around her neck. “It’s all like over-the-top romantic. Don’t you think?”
“Indeed.” I couldn’t help but grin back at her animated expression.
She drew from the box a dull silver pocket watch and handed it to me.
The hands had stopped forever at four minutes to five. What day, I wondered? “This is beautiful. If we polished it up, it would look like new.”
“Does it work, do you think?”
“We could wind it and find out,” I said.
“Not yet. We don’t want to mess up the last recorded time.”
“Agreed.” I turned it over in my hand to see a small etching on the back.To my love. Forever yours. A.“She must have given this to Clive for a present.”
“It’s weird she put it in the box,” Jamie said.
“Or any of this stuff.”
“Maybe after Clive died she put it all in here? She wanted to keep it safe?”
“Could be,” I said, thinking out loud. “It could be a way she dealt with her grief. Who knows? Maybe she only meant to put it out there temporarily and then died before she could bring it all back in the house?”
“If that’s the case, then she was way more eccentric than what I’ve ever read about her. She was, by most accounts, passionate about her work and family, including all the nieces and nephews the Barnes family gave her.”
“But where’s the jewelry that was in here?” Jamie held up the skinny box and shook it. “Why is the watch here but not whatever this was?”
I looked at the small stack of letters, tied together with a red ribbon. They were addressed to Annabelle Higgins. The return address had no name but was listed as Canal City, Florida. “I think that’s about an hour south of Tampa,” I said. “Who did she know there?”
“Maybe a bride?” Jamie asked as she opened the journal. A separate piece of paper slid to the floor. She picked it up and said, “Oh, this is interesting. It’s like an intro to whatever’s in the journal.”
“Read it immediately,” I said.
“I’m with you.” She began to read.
This is Annabelle Cooper Higgins. Wedding dressmaker. The year is 1924 as I write this. I have a secret. One I cannot hold inside me another moment. I cannot tell anyone what I’ve done. Not my husband, obviously. Not even my beloved sister, Quinn. We have never kept anything from the other but my shame keeps me from telling her the details of my heart. If I don’t write it all down and confess, I shall perish. So I’ll put it all here in the contents of these pages and then I’ll lock it all away. All of it. The jewelry and letters. The watch Bromley returned to me. The one gift I gave him he could not bear to keep. Not after we’d agreed to walk away. Within the pages of this journal are the details of my indiscretion. I’ve included all the letters we exchanged as well. Per my request, Bromley sent them all back to me. He understood my need for control. My desire to pretend it never happened.
