The Apothecary's Daughter (Romance/Mystery/Suspense) Read online

  “Oh-my-gosh, Emily. You don’t have to be ninety to enjoy feeding the pigeons.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll bring bread so we can feed the pigeons, Crazy.”

  “I’m sorry, Em. I just want to do something that doesn’t require any effort or thought.”

  “No worries. I’ll meet you there in an hour.”

  

  At the park, we competed with old couples feeding the pigeons. As it turned out, it wasn’t as relaxing as I’d hoped.

  “Have you decided if you’re going to call that lawyer?” Emily spoke over the pigeons’ coos.

  I flashed her a look of annoyance. “I was wondering how long it would take you to bring that up.”

  Emily closed the bag of bread. “Don’t you think you owe it to Lucy to find out the truth about her past?”

  “What if the past is better left in the past?”

  Hungry pigeons began to fly restlessly overhead. One of them pooped on my shoulder, then swooped back on the ground and waddled toward me. I threw a small chunk of bread at the pigeon and it bounced off its tail-feathers. The pigeon pecked at it quickly, devouring it before the other pigeons could get to it.

  “What a pig you are,” I snapped at the bird. “You think you can just crap on me and then gobble up all the bread?”

  “Claire. Stop it.”

  “Stop what?”

  “You’re yelling at a pigeon and throwing bread at him. This is obviously upsetting you, so maybe we should just go.”

  “It’s not like I threw a rock at the dumb thing. And I’m not upset about feeding these stupid pigeons. It’s the nerve of that hot lawyer showing up at my mother’s funeral that’s bothering me.”

  “Then call him and yell at him, Claire, instead of taking it out on the pigeons. I mean it. Call him and find out what he wants. Do it before it drives you completely crazy.”

  I couldn’t call Mr. Avery. I was too afraid I’d blurt out how gorgeous I thought he was.

  Isabelle began to cry, and Emily stood up and pushed the stroller to her car without saying another word to me.

  

  I squirmed in my seat in the waiting room of the lawyer’s office, wondering why I’d agreed to meet with him so soon. Maybe I needed more time to think this through before hearing something I couldn’t take back. I’d always had an impulsive nature; it was something my mother claimed I’d inherited from her. If I’d inherited anything from my father, my mother would never have admitted it to me since he was always a sore subject of conversation. The only real conversation we’d ever had about my father took place after I found an old picture of the two of them hidden in the drawer of her bedside table when I was looking for loose change. I couldn’t have been more than twelve years old, but my mother told me everything she knew about the stranger, which in my opinion, wasn’t worth repeating. He was a con-artist and thought my mother had money. He’d left her as soon as he found out otherwise. Just where he got the idea my mother had anything of worth was still a mystery—unless…

  “Miss Mayfield....Mr. Avery will see you now.” The receptionist had been calling my name; for how long, only she knew.

  I stood up and followed her to his office, feeling a little embarrassed.

  His office was fairly large, with an expensive desk in the center of the room. Behind the desk, the entire wall consisted of built-in bookcases that stretched from floor to ceiling. Large law books filled every shelf, and I thought it seemed like an awfully accomplished look for such a young lawyer.

  “Have a seat, Miss Mayfield. Mr. Avery will be right with you.”

  When the receptionist closed the door, I stood with shaky legs, trying to get a better glimpse of the files that lay open on the desk; one in particular that caught my eye. On the left side of the file was a color photo of a mansion that looked remarkably like the one I’d been dreaming about for the past few nights, though I hadn’t been able to place it—until now.

  With trembling hands, I rifled through the pages of the file until an old photograph fell from the stack of papers. I picked up the sepia photo that boasted a wealthy family posed on the lawn of the very mansion from my dream. This was more the way it looked in my dream. I turned the photo over to find faint writing from a quill pen, my focus drawn to the names; The Blackwell Family: Edward, Peyton, Fredrick, Amelia, and Baby Lizzie.

  I nearly dropped the photograph at the sight of the name, but turned it back over to get a better look at the family. There it was; the middle child. She was the same as the child I’d dreamed about. Struggling to breathe, I picked up the file, noticing my mother’s name on the front cover. I let it drop from hands, not caring that the contents scattered across the desk, some pages falling to the floor.

  Feeling nauseous, I looked around the room, wondering if it would be rude to vomit in his trash can, or risk making a mess by running to the bathroom. All I knew was that I couldn’t have the handsome Mr. Avery seeing me vomit in his office.

  Before I realized, I was leaving the building, whisking right by the receptionist who was calling out my name. I hopped in my car and sped out of the parking lot as though someone was after me—a ghost, maybe.

  I pulled over on the side of the road about a block from the office and searched furiously through my purse for my cell phone. I dialed Emily, tapping my foot on the floor of my car impatiently as it rang once, then, twice, and a third time before her voicemail picked up. I hung up on the voicemail, waited a few seconds, and dialed her number again.

  This time she answered.

  “Isabelle’s sleeping,” she whispered into the phone.

  “I’m sorry, Em, but I have to talk to you.”

  “How did you get done with the lawyer so fast?”

  I pushed aside sweaty strands of hair pasted to my forehead. “I couldn’t do it, Em. I had to get out of there before I threw up.”

  Emily sighed loudly. “What are you afraid of, Claire?”

  I couldn’t hold it in any longer. “Amelia is real. Or she’s a ghost, and she’s haunting me. There was a picture of her with her family in front of the mansion that I’ve been dreaming about. And all of it was in my mother’s file at the lawyer’s office.”

  “Slow down, Claire. You’re not making any sense.”

  “The whole thing doesn’t make any sense, Em.”

  “What did the lawyer have to say about it? Surely there’s an explanation for it.”

  “I didn’t talk to him. I ran out of the office as soon as I saw the picture.”

  “Maybe the picture belonged to another file and they somehow got mixed up.”

  I was growing impatient with her logic. “Amelia’s last name is Blackwell. That picture looked like it was at least a hundred years old.”

  “Then you must have seen the picture when you were younger or something and it stuck in your head. Maybe it does belong to your mother, and it has something to do with the inheritance. But the only way you’re going to find out is if you go back and talk to the lawyer.”

  “No way; I’m done with all of this.”

  Emily sighed loudly into the phone. “Why are you always so stubborn? Why can’t you just go back and find out the truth?”

  “I’m just not ready for all this craziness, Em. I just buried my mother three days ago.”

  “Do you want me to go with you, Claire?”

  “No. I’m sure that gorgeous lawyer already thinks I’m a freak. I don’t need him thinking I’m a baby too.”

  “Why do you care what he thinks? Except that he is pretty good looking. Make another appointment and let me know if you want me to go with you.”

  “Okay.”

  I could hear the baby in the background. “Let me go, Isabelle’s starting to wake up from her nap.”

  I sat in my car on the side of the road, watching storm clouds pushing their way across the sky as though they were in a hurry. Rain poured onto my windshield in heavy pelts, but I didn’t bother turning on my wipers. I just sat there thinking of everything
my mother had ever said to me as a young child about the supposed connection between her and the Widow Karington.

  I wondered if she’d known about the family in the picture, and if she’d ever shown it to me. I remembered my mother telling me the orphanage had been closed from a fire long before I was born. The gossip around town was that my father had something to do with the fire, and they’d been looking for him ever since. Why the people in our town would be worried about an orphanage way over in Wellington, I never could understand. After all, Wellington was nearly an hour’s drive from Milford. Still, the only people I knew that were even aware of the fact were Frank and his wife, Ida, and they would never gossip about my mother’s affairs. Frank and Ida had been like parents to my mother, and they were like grandparents to me since I had none of my own.

  I turned on my lights and my wipers and put my car in gear, heading down the road to Frank’s Diner, hoping for some hot cocoa to warm my body and good conversation to warm my soul.

  

  Ida greeted me at the door and helped me out of my rain slicker. I sat at the counter and watched as she fixed me a cup of hot cocoa with extra whipped cream on top just the way I liked it.

  “Thursday’s her birthday.”

  Ida clutched my hand from the other side of the counter. “I know darlin’. And I think she’d want us to have a party.”

  “I think you’re right. I’m just not sure if I’m up to it.”

  She put a hand under my chin and lifted my face until my eyes met hers. “That’s nonsense and you know it. Your momma wouldn’t want you moping around like the sky fell on you. Let’s have a big party in her honor.”

  I forced a smile. She was right. Ida made a few calls, and before long, a party was scheduled for Thursday night. Maybe a party would help. Still, the idea of having a birthday party for a dead person felt pretty strange. My mother was more the type to participate in such a thing than I was, but she’d always had a free spirit and an open mind.

  I phoned Emily. “Hey, be at the diner Thursday at four o’clock. We’re having a birthday party for my mother.”

  “Um, Claire—you do remember your mother is dead, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do, Em. I haven’t gone completely bonkers. Ida wants to have a party for her.”

  “We’ll be there.”

  I could hear the strain in Emily’s voice, but I chose to ignore it.

  Ida finished her last call, then, turned her attention to me. “Is there anyone special you want to invite to the party?”

  “I just hung up with Emily. She’s coming.”

  Ida’s look softened. “That’s not what I meant. What about that nice-looking man you were talking to at the funeral?”

  I practically choked on my hot cocoa. Ida pushed a few napkins toward me so I could wipe my chin.

  “Ida, that man was a lawyer.”

  “What did he want with you?”

  “He said he’d been looking for me to talk to me about my mother’s estate, but when I told him he had the wrong woman, he left.”

  She looked down and started wiping the already clean counter. “Oh, that.”

  I put my hand on Ida’s to stop her furious wiping.

  “What do you mean; Oh that?”

  Ida folded her hands and looked at me solemnly. “I was hoping for a better time to tell you about your Momma’s last wishes, but I suppose this is as good a time as any.”

  I looked around to see that the diner had emptied of its last customer, most likely because of the storm. “I already know what my mother wished for me. We talked about me going back to school before things got too painful for her and…”

  I couldn’t finish the sentence around the lump in my throat. My mother told me that she wanted me to go back to nursing school since I’d dropped out six months ago when she’d become really ill. She’d made me show her my re-enrollment for the winter semester, since we both knew I’d be too late to attend the fall semester. She didn’t want me working at the diner all my life the way she had; she wanted a better life for me. She’d protested on more than one occasion about my working there to care for her when she’d become ill, but after a while, working and going to school was too much to juggle when I had to help care for her, too. I didn’t mind, and she knew that. But that didn’t stop her from lecturing me with her last breath about going back to school.

  Ida looked at me, tears welling up in her eyes, threatening to spill over. “There’s quite a bit more to it than that, darlin’.”

  Something was amiss. “What do you know about the visit from the lawyer?”

  “I didn’t know that handsome stranger was a lawyer, but I knew your momma hired one to handle her affairs.”

  “What affairs, Ida? Will someone please tell me what the heck is going on here?”

  “Calm down child, your momma did what she did to protect you from that no-good, swindler of a father of yours.”

  My patience was wearing thin. “What did she do, Ida?”

  Then it registered.

  “What do you know about my father?”

  Tears rolled down her face, and she didn’t bother to wipe them. “I told your momma you were strong enough for the truth, but she thought she was protecting you. Making sure that con-artist didn’t steal from you.”

  “Ida, slow down. I don’t understand a word you’re saying. Did she know where my father was this whole time?”

  “Yes. He was actually lurking behind a tree at the funeral—that no-good coward.”

  I could feel the blood leaving my head and slamming to my feet, then, back again, pounding in my skull like a jackhammer. “Why didn’t someone tell me he was there so I could have talked to him? How could she keep him from me all these years?”

  Ida grabbed both my hands. “It wasn’t like that, child. He was only after your inheritance. And he’s not going to stop until he gets his hands on it.”

  “Even if my mother saved every bit of her tips over the years, it couldn’t have amounted to much. How bad off is he?”

  “He was after the estate.”

  There was that word again. “What estate?”

  “Peyton Manor.”

  “That old abandoned mansion over in Wellington? The one with the cottage across the lake? What does that have to do with me? Oh wait! Peyton Manor?”

  “It belonged to the Widow Karington and she left it to your momma.”

  I jumped up from my seat. “You mean the rumors are true?” I was practically screaming.

  Ida walked around to the other side of counter where I was now pacing furiously.

  “Even the orphanage belongs to you. Your momma used some of the money from the estate to re-open it after the fire, and it’s been housing children all this time under the supervision of that lawyer—with the help of the nuns, of course.”

  I continued to pace while Ida tried to fall in step with me. I stopped short and turned abruptly, causing the poor woman to run into me. Frustrated, she grabbed me by the arms and guided me back to my seat at the counter.

  Stunned, I looked at her blankly. “If my mother was so rich, why did she struggle to raise me on tips from waiting tables?”

  “Your momma loved working here. She used some of the money from the estate to buy the house you live in and to make sure you never went without a meal. But she didn’t want to spend too much or live too extravagantly for fear that your father would discover the money and try to take it from you.”

  “You mean we lived in that small house on purpose when we could have had more?”

  “Listen to me, Claire. Your momma wanted you to have that money and the estate when you finished school. None of it meant anything to her since she never knew her benefactors. The Widow Karington was ninety-four years old when she dropped your momma off at the orphanage. Rumor had it that she died just days after. Her own granddaughter died giving birth to your momma.”

  “Why did she let me believe all this time that this was nothing more than a rumor?”

>   Ida finally wiped her tear-drenched face with a napkin. “She didn’t do it to hurt you. She did it to protect you. She knew you’d heard the rumors, and she wanted them to stay rumors because she wasn’t ready to tell you the truth yet. Problem was, she didn’t plan on dying so quickly. She thought she had more time to tell you—to ease you into it. She hoped to give it to you as a gift for your graduation, but the cancer made her sick faster than she thought it would. She was too busy struggling to spend one more day with you than to worry about this. Maybe it was the medicine that made her forget to tell you, I can’t say for sure, darlin’. I wish you could have heard it from her. It might have made things a little easier for you.”

  “So how do I find out the whole truth about this?”

  Ida wiped new tears from my face with a clean napkin. “I think you have to talk to the lawyer. Your momma never wanted to have much to do with the estate so she let the lawyers handle everything, including running the orphanage. She never talked too much about it. I think she was really afraid of what your father would do if he found out the rumors were true. He hounded her about it all the time, but she never admitted it to him. Geez, I don’t even think she ever fully admitted it to herself.”

  Feeling overwhelmed, I stood up and walked out of the diner, leaving my rain slicker behind. Thunder echoed in my ears, and the heavy rain felt cold as it soaked through my clothes, making them cling to me like cellophane. I couldn’t think anymore. The only thing I wanted was to be at home, because at the present, it was the only reality I could count on.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The sun came up the next morning, the same as it did every day, giving the appearance that life all around me was going on as usual. In my world, however, life had come to a sudden, painful halt. I wasn’t looking forward to my mother’s birthday party at the diner, and had nearly talked myself into getting sick just so I’d have an excuse for not showing up. But I knew I had to go because my mother would never forgive me if she knew I was planning on being so disrespectful to the friends she considered family.

  In an effort to distract myself, I opened up my laptop, thinking I’d catch up on my emails. Before I realized, I was conducting a search of Peyton Manor. Every search came up the same. Article after article spoke of the mansion as being haunted, and of passersby sighting the ghosts of the three children who were murdered in their sleep by their father in 1901. One week after being imprisoned for their murders, the father, Doctor Edward Blackwell, hanged himself in his prison cell. Peyton Manor had been named for Dr. Blackwell’s wife, Peyton, who had died of leukemia a few days before the children’s murders. Officials claimed Peyton’s death may have resulted from untested medicine and unorthodox treatment methods practiced by Dr. Blackwell. In turn, the burden of responsibility for his wife’s death must have caused Dr. Blackwell to go mad and murder the children he intended to put in the orphanage the day following his wife’s funeral. The manor had remained vacant since the 1901 murders, but the lake house had been inhabited by Dr. Blackwell’s older, widowed sister, Lucinda Blackwell Karington, until her death on October 17, 1953; only two days after my mother was born. There were unconfirmed reports that the Widow Karington had been sheltering her great granddaughter who’d died giving birth to an illegitimate child two days before the ninety-four-year-old Widow Karington had passed away in her sleep. Speculations were made as to the whereabouts of the child, but to date, no one has officially come forward to claim the estate, making it the longest-standing vacancy of record.