Free Secrets of the Lost Summer by Carla Neggers Page B

shirt, his usual outfit even through a good chunk of summer. “There’s no point in sinking money into trying to renovate it.” He stood next to Jess. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”
“When did you get here?” Jess asked, regaining her composure.
“A few minutes ago, but I’m not staying. I just need to check on an order. I saw you two talking and figured I’d say hi.”
She yanked open the door. “What were you doing, sneaking up on us?”
He gave Jess a mystified look. “You probably couldn’t hear me over the water.” He left it at that and turned to Olivia. “I ran into Dylan McCaffrey at breakfast this morning. I understand he’s the new owner of Grace Webster’s old house, but I can’t believe he’s staying there. That place is a dump. I’m not sure it’s even safe there.”
For no reason that could possibly make sense to her, Olivia felt her cheeks flame. “He looked alive and well an hour ago. He was digging out a drain, and the house was still standing.”
“What’s he doing here?” Mark asked.
Jess either hadn’t noticed his mystified look or was pretending she hadn’t. “Olivia wrote to him.”
Mark raised his eyebrows at Olivia. “You wrote to him? Why?”
“I asked him to clean up the yard,” she said, trying not to sound defensive. “It’s an eyesore. It sends a bad message to people passing by—”
“What people passing by?” Mark asked, amused.
“No one now, but I am opening a business. My clientele will want a picturesque country setting. They won’t want to go by rusted appliances and cast-off mattresses.”
“Relax, Liv,” Mark said. “People who want to eat chive soup won’t mind passing the Webster place. You can tell them it’s authentic country.”
“Not funny, Mark,” Olivia said good-naturedly as he continued across the parking lot to the mill entrance. “Not funny at all. And it’s not chive soup. It’s potato-leek soup sprinkled with chives.”
He laughed. “I feel so much better.”
Jess watched him disappear inside the mill. “Don’t mind him, Liv. He’s getting to be as big a stick-in-the-mud as Dad. I can’t wait to try your soup.”
“Thanks, but he was just teasing. Jess—”
“I have to get going. I’ll see you later. Good luck with McCaffrey.”
She climbed into her truck. Olivia shook her head with bemusement and returned to her car. She drove the short distance into the village, turning onto another of Knights Bridge’s narrow roads, this one dead-ending at a popular gate that fishermen and hikers used to access Quabbin. She pulled into Rivendell, a small assisted living facility situated on open land dotted with sugar maples and white pines, with views of the waters of the reservoir in the distance. Audrey Frost, Olivia’s grandmother, lived in a one-bedroom apartment down the hall from Grace Webster.
Grace had been entirely unhelpful in tracking down the new owner of her house, which Olivia had attributed to her advanced age. Grace was, after all, in her nineties. With Dylan’s arrival, Olivia was no longer as sure age had anything to do with it. The story of how he’d ended up with the house had too many unanswered questions.
Maybe Grace was hiding something. Maybe whatever she was hiding had brought Duncan McCaffrey to Knights Bridge—and now his son.
“Or maybe I didn’t get enough sleep last night,” Olivia muttered under her breath as she passed the sunroom. She spotted Grace in a chair, alone in front of a wall of windows, and went in. “I thought that was you. Good morning, Miss Webster.”
Grace beamed, her eyes sparkling at her visitor. “So good to see you, Olivia. You know you can call me Grace now. I was always ‘Miss Webster’ to my students, but I’m no longer a teacher. We live in a more casual age than when I was younger.” She set a small but powerful pair of binoculars on her lap. She was a tiny woman with snow-white hair she kept neatly curled, and light blue eyes that added charm to what