Free Legacy of Secrets by Elizabeth Adler Page A

useless.
“You’ve got the blood of your fightin’ Irish ancestors, Shannon,”
he had always told her, but it surely didn’t feel that way now.
    Sitting up, she turned on the lamp and glanced around her. Everything looked as it always had: simple, immaculate, and pretty. There were even fresh roses, pink ones, in a vase on her dresser. She would bet she had J.K. to thank for those. That strange man was turning out to be her rock in stormy waters and for the first time she understood what her father had seen in him. Nevertheless, she could not accept his offer. She had to stand on her own two feet. Her father would have expected it.
    The two letters lay on the rug where they had fallen. She picked them up and read Wil’s first. It sounded just as final as she thought it had in the first ten readings and she threw it bitterly back onto the floor.
    The bank’s letter proved more interesting. There was three thousand two hundred and forty-six dollars in her account. Most of it was from the sale of her car, and the rest was what was left from her month’s allowance. She sighed, telling herself people had started life with less, including her father. She was young and able-bodied andwell educated. She could darn well get herself a job and join the real world.
    She read the rest of the letter, which said,
“We are holding the deed to your Nantucket property in our vaults for safekeeping.”
    She read it again.
Your Nantucket property.
She knew about the cottage but she had never even seen it. Her father always promised they would visit it one day, but somehow he had always been too busy to take her, and she had never thought about going there alone. Yet it was the only true “family” possession her father owned.
    He had told her the story of how, when he was fourteen, the head of the orphanage where he had been brought up since the age of five had summoned him into his office. He was a testy, impatient man, ill-suited to his life’s work with children and they were all mortally afraid of him. Everything came from his hands: punishment and beatings, rewards and Christmas largess. He was God in their small, confined world and Bob had been shaking in his boots at having been summoned into “the presence.” Shannon could hear his exact words as though it were a record playing in her head, he had told her the story so often—and it was
all
he had told her about his childhood. “O’Keeffe,” he said, looking solemnly over the tops of the thick-lensed glasses that made his eyes look as bulgy as a toad’s, “you are now considered a ‘young man,’ and therefore it is my duty to tell you that you are also a man of property. You were not left destitute, as most of the unfortunate children here were. There is the sum of five hundred dollars and a small parcel of land with a cottage in Nantucket. The property is almost valueless, because that part of the world enjoys little prosperity. Nevertheless it is yours, and one day you may wish to sell it for what little you can recoup.
    “Meanwhile, I suggest you apply the goodly sum of five hundred dollars toward your education. You are a clever lad, and if you could only control your fiery Irish temperament, you could go far.”
    Of course her father had been excited, but it had beenmany years before he could afford to go and see his “property.” When he finally moved to Boston, where he studied and worked as a laborer on construction sites, he took some of his hard-earned money and caught the ferry to Nantucket.
    “Ah, Shannon, it’s a special, magical place,” he had told her, smiling reminiscently. “All sky and sea and the sound of gulls. Sometimes it’s gray with no colors at all, then suddenly it’s all blue and gold, the sea and the sand. You’ll surely love it there, daughter, just as your mother and I did. It has a touch of magic about it. Since she died I’ve not been able to bring myself to go back, but one day we shall go. One day, little