The Spring At Moss Hill

She nursed her martini. She didn’t want to have two drinks, but she also didn’t want to gulp down this one and end up going home too early. She supposed she could switch to sparkling water, but she knew she wouldn’t. When Marty returned, he tilted his head back, studying her. She wasn’t fooled by his good looks and easygoing ways. He could be as incisive and critical as Russ. Worse, even, since he didn’t have a client relationship with her. She was just a customer who liked the occasional French martini at the hole-in-the-wall bar where he worked.

“Do you wish you felt guilty for sending Russ to your hometown?” Marty asked.

“Knights Bridge isn’t my hometown. I moved there when I was eighteen to get away from my father. I found solace and hope there, and I honed my sewing and design skills. I left at twenty to come out here.”

“That took guts.”

“I think we say that when things work out. When they don’t, we say it was reckless, stupid, irresponsible.”

“This class isn’t a prison sentence, Daphne. You can bow out at the last minute.”

“Imagine how that would look.”

“Imagine how it would look to drive yourself crazy or drink yourself into oblivion because you keep trying to talk yourself into believing you want to do this thing.”

“I do want to do it.”

He raised his palms in front of him. “I rest my case.”

Daphne finished her martini. She was being ridiculous, second-guessing herself. She’d made her decision. She’d made a commitment to Ruby and Ava. Of course she had to go to Knights Bridge next week. With the day drawing closer, jitters were normal.

She thanked Marty and let him put her drink on her tab. It was a late night for her. Usually she was in bed by ten o’clock.

* * *

When she arrived at her bungalow in Hollywood Hills, Daphne was glad she’d opted to take a cab. Her one martini had gone to her head. She was careful not to stagger, because who knew if the cab driver was taking a video, texting his friends—anything was possible these days. Once she was inside, with the door locked, she felt tears on her cheeks. Oh, good heavens, she thought, was she crying? It had to be the martini.

“You need food.”

She went into her kitchen, hoping she could find something to eat. Her house was only fifteen-hundred square feet, but she loved it. She’d bought it after her last divorce and had it painted a warm sunshine yellow in celebration of her new freedom. She’d decorated the interior in creamy neutrals, with the idea that a man would never live here again. So far, so good on that one.

Hard to believe it had been twenty years.

She discovered hummus and cut-up vegetables in the fridge. She arranged them on a plate, poured herself a glass of water and headed out to the patio, turning on the lights since it was darker than the pits of hell. She checked her chair cushion for spiders before she sat down. She hadn’t become a fan of western spiders in the forty years she’d lived in Southern California.

As she ate her dinner, she watched the turquoise pool water ripple in the light and smelled the roses off to the side of the patio. They were pink and peach, and she could see them from her studio window while she worked. Everything was on one floor—she could grow old here.

Her house wasn’t anything special by Hollywood standards, but it was what she’d imagined when she’d boarded her first bus west all those years ago. Her life wasn’t perfect, and she’d made plenty of mistakes, but she’d done all right. She had nothing to prove to anyone, including herself. That wasn’t what this master class next Saturday was all about.

“Yes, my dear,” she said as she dipped a carrot stick into the hummus. “If only you believed it.”

Did she want Russ to come upon something that would force him to recommend she cancel her Knights Bridge appearance?

She remembered the first time she met him at Marty’s Bar. Rugged, focused, task-oriented and so obviously very worried about his big brother. She had no one to worry about her. Some of that was by her own design. Even now, she could hear her father telling her he was smacking her because he was worried about her.

Damn. She wished she had another French martini instead of carrots, celery, broccoli and hummus.

Her great-great-grandfather’s old mill as a theater...a place for children to come and learn about acting, costume design, lighting...ultimately about themselves.

Can I do this, tie myself to Knights Bridge?

Do I want to?

She inhaled deeply. The ghosts of the past were grabbing her from behind. She tried to shake them off, but they clawed at her, refusing to let go, forcing her back to those early days when she’d first arrived in Knights Bridge as a teenager. She hadn’t lived there long, but her life there—working in the library, living in a cottage on Thistle Lane—had transformed her.

She remembered walking to the mill at Moss Hill one fine spring morning with the full intention of flinging herself off the dam. It was early on after her arrival in Knights Bridge. She figured people would think she’d slipped amid the tall grass, broken glass and debris.

An unfortunate accident befalling the last descendant of the mill’s original owner.

A fitting end to the Sandersons.

She hadn’t jumped. She’d decided the dam wasn’t high enough, and it was too damn risky. What if she just got banged up and lay there alone, no one to find her?

She really hadn’t wanted to die a slow death.

She’d walked back to town. She vividly remembered her annoyance at getting blisters.

It wasn’t long after that little brush with oblivion that she’d started sewing, copying dresses she saw in movies and magazines and dreaming of a different life.

She didn’t want to go back to who she’d been forty years ago. She was Daphne Stewart now, not Debbie Sanderson, the abused, insecure teenager with no money and no prospects.

Four

Russ collected his rental car in Boston. He’d reserved an all-wheel-drive car because he didn’t know the terrain in Knights Bridge, and potholes and rutted dirt roads were a distinct possibility. And because Loretta had warned him. Get a good car. I’m always in fear of wrapping myself around a tree when I’m out there.

He had a text waiting for him when he got behind the wheel; it was from Marty. You there?

He typed an answer. Yep. Why are you up?

Working on a screenplay. On a roll. Stay in touch.

Will do. Get some sleep for me.

Russ tossed his phone on the seat next to him and started the car. Marty might be working on a screenplay, but he’d be up anyway, waiting for his brother to land safely in Boston. Russ felt like a heel for not texting him sooner, but Marty would never say anything. His fears, he’d told Russ more than once, without getting specific, were his burden. He would deal with them in his own way.

Gritting his teeth, Russ drove out of the airport and made his way through a tunnel and onto Storrow Drive. With Boston’s notoriously poor signage and the unfamiliar roads, he regretted not using GPS to get him to Knights Bridge. He’d slept little on his flight. Nothing new there. At wheels up, he inevitably saw Marty in his hospital bed ten years ago, with morphine keeping the pain at bay.

Your brother sustained severe injuries but we think he’ll survive.

Think? You’re not sure?

Russ had turned then, seeing his mother in the doorway. She’d had no color except for her own bruises and lacerations. But she was on her feet, not on morphine, not fighting for her life—not her physical life, anyway.

Russ... I can’t do this. I can’t.

He’d thought she was talking about her older son. He’ll make it, Mom. Marty’s strong.

Your dad was strong and he’s dead.

I know. I’m sorry.

Marty’s an adult. We’re not obligated in any way. It’ll be months...months and months...

Mom?

Her dark blue eyes had fastened on Russ, and he’d realized she was talking about Marty and his recovery, and how she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t be there for him. She had sustained relatively minor injuries in the helicopter crash that had killed her husband, the father of her two sons, and at that moment, realizing the loss she’d suffered, the months of rehab ahead of Marty, she wished the crash had killed him, too.

Maybe not all of her had wished it. Maybe only a part of her, traumatized and grief-stricken, had wished it. Maybe she’d believed she couldn’t get through it—couldn’t cope with seeing her son in pain, the ups and downs of a long, uncertain recovery, and her shortcomings would hurt his chances of getting back to a hundred percent.

Not that a hundred percent had ever been an option.

She’d rallied, if only because of the expectations of the people around her. Russ tried to tell himself what he’d seen that day at the hospital was the fight-or-flight reflex at work. His mother had wanted to flee from her suffering son, and who was Russ to blame her? He’d taken as much emergency leave from his naval duties as he was allowed to bury his father and see to his mother and brother.

In the end, he’d abandoned his brother, too.

An insane roundabout brought Russ back to the present. He was on the road to Knights Bridge, Massachusetts. Marty was hanging out in Hollywood. Their mother had three miniature poodles at her home in Scottsdale and liked to joke she had full charge of the television remote now that she lived alone. Russ called her once a week. She never called him. He didn’t know when he’d visit again now that Marty had moved away from Phoenix.

Traffic thinned as he drove west into the countryside, and he rolled down the windows, letting in the cool morning air as the sun climbed into a blue sky and chased away the memories. He could be in Knights Bridge in time for breakfast, but he’d grabbed coffee and a protein bar at the airport. They’d suffice. He planned to keep things simple in this little town. In, out, head down, do his job, then he’d be back on his way west.

* * *

Kylie poked a stick at the wet, browned leaves that clogged a spring, tucked amid moss-covered rocks in the woods above the mill, about a third of the way up Moss Hill. She liked to think of the spring as her secret discovery, but a nearby stone wall indicated the land had once been cleared. Others had been here long before she had ventured off a trail last summer and come upon the spring, a precious spot where fresh groundwater had broken through to the surface.

She didn’t want to take the time to push the leaves aside and wait for the water to clear in the small pool created by the spring’s trickle. Normally she would. She loved this spot. She would come up here on breaks from her work. She would sit on a rock by the spring and allow the landscape to envelop her, cradle her, as all her distractions and intrusive thoughts fell away.

Not this morning.

She breathed in the smells of a gnarled hemlock, the early spring greenery, the mud and the cold water of the spring. She shut her eyes, listening to the narrow stream below the spring flow downhill over rocks. She could hear birds twittering in the trees. She breathed deeply, feeling her heart rate calming after her trip to town yesterday and her bad night last night. She’d awakened at dawn and gone out to her balcony to watch the sunrise.

After a hearty breakfast of Scottish pinhead oatmeal, yogurt and coffee, she’d tried to work, but her head hadn’t been into Little Red Riding Hood.

She gave up after ten minutes, got dressed, put on trail shoes and headed up Moss Hill.

She’d brought her phone and a bottle of water, but she hadn’t left a note on her kitchen counter, as she usually did, describing her route and the time and date of her departure.

Sometimes the spring wasn’t easy to find. Everything looked so similar up here. She’d go too far and end up in a field or atop Moss Hill, or just miss it when it was right under her nose. This morning she’d had no trouble, following a narrow, seldom-used trail partway up the hill, then veering off through a gap in a stone wall to the stream and up to the spring.

She set her stick in the sodden leaves and mud next to the spring and stood straight. She could feel the air warming, the pinks and lavenders of the sunrise long melted into a blue sky. Rain was in the forecast for tomorrow, but it was pleasant now.

Russ Colton would be arriving sometime today. Once she got that out of the way—knew he was on the premises, doing his thing—she could concentrate.

At least she could picture him, had a good idea of what he looked like. Last night, tossing and turning, she’d remembered that an investigator had come to town ahead of Daphne Stewart’s visit in September—in his fifties, supposedly a decent guy. Kylie hadn’t met him, but she’d seen him in town. Gray-haired, casual, not the least bit intimidating. There’d been some confusion between him and Phoebe O’Dunn over Daphne Stewart and Noah Kendrick, now Phoebe’s fiancé, but everything had worked out, apparently a case of multiple misunderstandings.

That California investigator had to be the one on his way now. This Russ Colton.

Kylie started back through the woods to the stone wall and the trail. Her left side was wet and muddy, but she didn’t care. She might be restless, but the spring was one of her favorite spots. She wished she’d thought to ask what time this California PI was getting here, but she wasn’t sure that would have helped with her distractibility. But she felt better, and if she couldn’t get a lot done today, she could at least draw a few trees for Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother’s house.

When she got back to her apartment, she lasted ten minutes at her worktable.

She sighed at Sherlock Badger. “I know. It’s crazy.”

He stared back at her. He looked unsympathetic. Just start, he would say.

Most days it would be good advice. Not right now.

Kylie grabbed her phone and keys and headed back out. She’d seen ducks on the river from her balcony.

Yes.

She’d check on the ducks.

* * *

Kylie took the stairs to the lower-level garage. Each apartment had its own parking spaces and storage compartment. She’d left her Mini in the parking lot, so her two spaces were empty. She didn’t have anything to store yet. She’d put her bike in the compartment once winter returned. In the meantime, she wanted to buy a kayak or a canoe and the requisite gear. They could go in storage. Maybe a tent? No. She hated camping.

She could easily lose an hour wondering about what could go in her storage compartment.

Refocusing on her mission to see the ducks, she went out through the back and crossed the driveway that wound into the garage from the parking lot. She stepped onto a strip of soft, newly planted grass level with the river. The landscapers had added a few shade trees, now just saplings supported with ropes and stakes. The river was down from its early-spring runoff peaks, but still running high. Two ducks swam peacefully in the quiet millpond, with no apparent concern for the nearby dam and rushing waterfall. Above the dam and pond, the river widened and turned shallow, flowing over rocks and boulders toward the mill its waters had once powered.

The sounds of the water didn’t soothe Kylie’s agitated mind.

She had the keys to the heavy back door to the main building and unlocked it, heading inside. The ground level held a kitchen, storage rooms, the mechanical room and a large health club she was welcome to use in addition to the exercise room in her building.

She switched on a light and went upstairs to the main entry. She didn’t have keys to any of the interior rooms except the health club. No one would be around on a Sunday morning, but she wanted to have a look at where Ava and Ruby O’Dunn were hosting the master class with Daphne Stewart. Moss Hill’s sole meeting room was located on the other side of glass doors and a glass partition. More glass doors opened onto a balcony that jutted out over the river, a perfect spot for a romantic photo. The space was ideal for weddings and parties of all kinds. It was empty now, its gleaming wood floor obviously original to the building given the unevenness and glossed-over nicks and discolorations.

Kylie peered into a glass case in the entry. It had been empty on her last visit here but was now filled with a display of antique straw hats that had been made at the mill in the nineteenth century, a nod to the building’s origins. Moss Hill had character, one of its chief draws for her. She noticed the display also held museum-mounted, blown-up photos that depicted the mill’s history, from when it had been a thriving business employing scores of workers to a century later, when it had been abandoned, left to decay and a wrecking ball, and, finally, to the present, with its comfortable blend of old and new setting it up for another century of use.

She heard footsteps echoing behind her and turned just as a man she didn’t recognize appeared behind the glass doors in the meeting room. He was tall, broad-shouldered and frowning right at her.

She decided not to take any chances.

Pretending she hadn’t seen him, she retraced her steps, running down the stairs to the lower level and out the back door. She didn’t breathe until she was outside. She shivered in the cool morning air. She’d encountered all sorts as construction on Moss Hill had wound down—engineers, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, landscapers—as well as Mark Flanagan’s employees and clients now that he had moved his offices here. She hadn’t gotten a good look at the man who’d interrupted her snooping, but he wasn’t anyone she’d met before. She’d remember. He hadn’t been wearing a coat and tie. A denim jacket, khakis. That didn’t tell her much.

If he decided to come after her, she needed to get moving, because he’d be fast.

She pulled off her running jacket and crossed the grassy strip to the driveway that led to the garage under her building. When she reached the pedestrian entrance, she stopped, keys in hand, and groaned.

She had the wrong man. Russ Colton wasn’t the investigator she’d seen last summer. He was the man up in the meeting room.

Had to be.

“How to draw attention to yourself when you don’t want attention,” Kylie muttered to herself. “Run like a lunatic.”

What now? Go up to her apartment, lock herself in and hope for the best? Buck up and introduce herself to her new neighbor, act as if she hadn’t seen him and bolted?

Take a long bike ride?

Fly to Paris?

The bike ride won.

She went inside and took the stairs up to the main level and headed out to the breezeway and the bike rack. She wore a thigh-length dark purple sweater, black leggings and sneakers with highly visible bright orange laces.

The man from the meeting room was standing by a blue sedan in the parking lot.

No avoiding him now.

“You must be Russ Colton,” Kylie said, leaning against her bike. “Ruby O’Dunn mentioned you’d be arriving today from California. Kylie Shaw. I live here.”

“You’re my new neighbor, then. Sorry if I startled you.”

He walked toward her. He’d put on sunglasses, which had a way of making him look even more humorless.

She decided not to deny he’d startled her. He probably wouldn’t believe her, anyway. “No problem.” She grabbed her bike helmet off the handlebars where she’d left it yesterday. “Did you just get here?”

“Here to Moss Hill. I arrived in Boston a few hours ago.”

“Ah. You took the red-eye. It has an appropriate name, doesn’t it”

He smiled. “It does, but it’s not the reason I’m wearing sunglasses.” He pointed a thick finger at the blue sky. “The sun is.”

A sense of humor. Kylie was encouraged. “I work at home. Feel free to knock on my door if you need anything.”

“I will, thank you. What kind of work do you do?”

“I’m a freelance illustrator.”

“You’re not registered for Daphne Stewart’s class next Saturday.”

“I only just learned about it. I’ve been busy with work the past few months and haven’t paid attention.”

“Do you know Ava and Ruby O’Dunn well?”

Kylie shook her head. “Not well. Do you?”

“I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting them yet. I’m here on behalf of Daphne Stewart.”

“So Ruby said. Fantastic she’s taking the time to give a lecture in little Knights Bridge. It’s very generous of her.” Kylie tried to look nonchalant. She wanted to keep the focus away from herself. “When I saw you—”

“Deer in the headlights.” He gave her an easy smile. “You froze for a split second, and then you bolted. I sometimes have that effect on people. Again, sorry.”

She returned his smile. “I didn’t freeze. I just bolted. Do people tend to run when they see you?”

“Not always. Sometimes I wish they’d run, and they don’t.”

“Comes with the job, I imagine. I had a different Russ Colton in mind. I thought you’d be the man who accompanied Miss Stewart last time she was in town. I didn’t meet either of them, but I saw him.”

“You were expecting Julius Hartley?” Russ grinned. “That’s awesome. I can’t wait to tell him.”

“Sounds as if that one will keep you two laughing over your beers for a while.” Kylie couldn’t wait to get out of there. “Well, it’s a beautiful day. I love springtime in New England. I’ll be off on my bike ride now. Good to meet you, Mr. Colton. Enjoy your stay.”

“Thanks. Enjoy your bike ride.”

He returned to his car as she climbed onto her bike. As she rode across the parking lot to the exit, she was positive he was watching her, but she didn’t look back to make sure.

She turned up the road, away from the village, welcoming the cool air and the sounds of the river tumbling toward the dam.

Russ Colton wasn’t what she expected on a Sunday morning at Moss Hill.

Any morning at Moss Hill.

As she rounded a curve, she felt her phone vibrate in her pocket and remembered she hadn’t called her sister back. She stopped next to the guardrail and checked her messages. A text, but not from Lila.

It’s Ruby. Join us for lunch at Smith’s at 12:30.

Kylie blinked at the text. Lunch? In the ten months she’d lived in Knights Bridge, no one in town had ever invited her to lunch, nor had she invited anyone to lunch. She hadn’t even realized Ruby had her phone number.

Something was up.

Thanks but...

Kylie hesitated, then deleted the but.

Thanks I’d love to join you.

Great.

And that was that. She was joining Ruby O’Dunn for lunch.

Five

Russ got his bag out of the back of his rented car. He’d watched Kylie Shaw until she disappeared around a bend on the winding country road in cute little Nowhere, Massachusetts. She was blonde, pretty and quick. He hadn’t expected her to get the jump on him outside the meeting room.

And she was cagey.

“Now, why is that, I wonder?”

An interesting development, his Moss Hill neighbor.

He took the covered breezeway to the residential entrance. Ruby O’Dunn had left keys to the two buildings in a flowerpot. First place Russ would look without instructions. Basic security at the renovated hat factory—his home for the next few days—was rudimentary but could easily be improved should the need or desire arise.

He’d had no trouble finding Knights Bridge or Moss Hill, even without GPS. When he’d pulled into the mill’s parking lot, he’d noticed the mud-encrusted bike, unlocked, leaning crookedly on a stand. Now it was occupied by his neighbor.

She obviously wasn’t thrilled to have him bunking across the hall, but she’d been expecting Julius Hartley. Probably would take a while to sort that one out in her mind. Russ had that effect sometimes. Maybe it was his scary eyes.

He could always unzip his jacket and show more of the palm-tree shirt Marty had given him.

Russ located his apartment and went inside, dropping his bag on the floor by the front door. He liked the industrial loft feel and modern furnishings of the place. Late morning sunlight streamed through the huge arched windows overlooking the dam and river. The design allowed residents privacy and solitude while also not being too isolated, at least by Knights Bridge standards.