Edison snorted. Trust his highly organized, geriatric right hand to run a conversation like a meeting agenda. Margaret registered the snort but didn’t respond. “According to the Nana Grapevine, Nora Denton’s long-lost niece is supposed to meet with Clark this morning to talk about…something to do with Shaddow House. Norma wasn’t allowed to look at the paperwork. Then again, I haven’t been able to get her on the phone all morning, so I could be missing out on whatever she’s found out, even as we speak.”
Edison snorted again but had the presence of mind to hide it with a cough. The Nana Grapevine was Starfall’s social media before such a thing existed—an invisible network of well-meaning-yet-competitive grandmothers who shared everything they knew via actual landlines in a constantly escalating news cycle. Norma Oviette had been the legal secretary for more than twenty years at Tanner, Moscovitz, and Graves, Attorneys at Law, not to mention one of the keystone members of the Nana Grapevine. So, if the Nana Grapevine reported that Nora Denton’s niece had arrived on Starfall, it was practically gospel, and it had happened hours ago. He was already a step behind.
“You need to make a move if you want to be part of the unofficial greeting committee. So, toodle on over,” she said, with an unintentionally—maybe?—dismissive wave of the hand. “Maybe take some flowers. Make a good impression. She’ll appreciate it. Get in good with her before she hears about how you got along with her aunt, and the Shaddows’ lawyers close in.”
“I’m a grown man with multiple advanced degrees,” Edison replied. “I don’t toodle. Anywhere.”
“No man should be too proud to toodle, Eddie,” she told him solemnly.
Ignoring the absolutely intentional dismissiveness, Edison shook his head. “Wouldn’t it be better if I went to the house and welcomed her? Otherwise, she’s just carrying a bunch of flowers all over the island, which can be annoying,” he said, not even trying to deny that he was trying to put off social interactions with strangers. It had simply not worked out for him that day.
Margaret gave him a wink before reaching into the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet and pulling out his backup dress shoes, neatly tucked under his backup shirt and tie, and backup pants. “No time like the present, given the circumstances.”
“You know, technically, as a volunteer, no matter how senior, I’m your boss,” Edison reminded her.
“Well, technically, as a member of the library board, I’m your boss,” she retorted, backing towards the door.
“Your husband is on the board. The governing powers are not transitory.”
Margaret shrugged. “I’ll just have to call Burt and tell him to give me a proxy vote.”
“Your husband doesn’t take your calls until his lunch break, which he doesn’t take for another hour,” he said. “So, I guess that puts us at an impasse.”
Margaret’s forget-me-not blue eyes narrowed as she backed towards his door, surprising Edison by letting him have the last word. “There’s no way she’s going to let that stand,” he murmured as the door clicked shut.
From the other side of the door, he heard her call, “I guess it does!”
“There we go.” Edison nodded, pointing absently in her general direction. “Wait, given what circumstances?”
When she didn’t answer, he tilted his back to rest on the worn leather club chair. Of all the things that stuck in his craw about his day so far, it was that knowing that Margaret was right. He did need to touch base with the mysterious Denton niece. Maybe, unlike her aunt, this woman was a reasonable, rational human being and could persuade her aunt to allow him inside Shaddow House. He imagined some middle-aged woman, probably in her forties, given Nora Denton’s age. And given Nora’s aloof, sometimes downright cantankerous nature, he imagined she would be difficult to approach, even more difficult to “toodle” toward.
Miss Denton had never appreciated the flowers he’d tried to give her, telling him she didn’t appreciate his thinking she needed help with her garden. When he’d tried five pounds of Waterstone’s Wonderous Fudge, widely regarded as the best fudge on the island—she scoffed at him, asked him if he thought she’d never explored the main street of her own town. And then slammed the door in his face. And Edison was pretty sure that he heard her laughing at him with other people. But he couldn’t figure out who those people might be, because no one that he’d met on the island so far had been allowed in Shaddow House.
It was just a house, an old, uniquely designed home. A little odd, yes, in its near-constant state of renovation, but nothing to get obsessed over. Until you considered the horde of rare antiques rumored to be contained within. The stories of how the Shaddows had amassed those treasures over the years—Faustian bargains, pawn brokers to the rich and doomed during the French Revolution, really, really fancy garage sales—were as numerous as the ghost stories on the island. But given what he’d seen through the doorway, on the rare occasions that he got Nora to answer the door, he could believe those stories. He’d glimpsed medieval armor, the sort of decorative brassware bits the Médicis used to commission for fun, a massive Swiss-made grandfather clock he’d only seen in the high-end private auction catalog his parents loved to pore over. The Shaddows were the most fascinating island institution that no one seemed to know anything real about—yes, everybody knew the stories about the ways they’d made their money, how they built their house, but no one seemed to know any specific information about any members of the family who had lived on Starfall. No one seemed to know how they’d lived there, how they’d contributed to the community, why they’d left. The Shaddows had somehow managed to keep those secrets trapped inside their walls, and no one seemed to care.
It was so bizarre to him, for a town so devoted to its history to allow such a large part of that history to be locked away from them, hidden from the public. The locals just accepted the Shaddows’ right to privacy, despite nearly every other home of its caliber being open to daily public tours during the high season. It was just common knowledge that Shaddow House was a sort of blank space in the landscape of the island. And that Nora Denton hated fudge, which would have been handy information to have before he tried to buy her off with it.
Also, what sort of human being hated fudge?
Maybe his mother was right. Just because someone refused to tell him something, didn’t mean he had to chase that information down like a dog.
No, that couldn’t be it.
With dry shoes in place, Edison stepped out of his office into what was technically the Van Deevers’ former parlor. The airy space, with its narrow floor-to-ceiling windows and winter sky–colored walls, was home to the nonfiction section, which had always struck Edison as counterintuitive. The children’s section was housed in the former nursery, which was more intuitive. Margaret had probably disappeared into the floor-to-ceiling stacks of the fiction sections upstairs in the family wing. The house’s former library housed the DVD and audiobook sections, which again, struck Edison as an odd choice, but it had been made clear to him when he moved cross-country to beg for the opportunity to work in this tiny town, that he was not there to reinvent the wheel. He was merely meant to carry on what was a pretty solid legacy his predecessor established, all things considered.