Inheritance (The Lost Bride Trilogy, #1)(20)

Eyes damp, she looked at Sonya. “If we’d had a boy, he wanted to name our first son Collin.”

“Do you think he knew, somehow?”

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know what to think. I know he would’ve loved having a brother. I wish he’d had a chance to know.”

“Do we tell Nan and Grandpa?”

“Oh yes. Yes, they have a right to know. They loved Drew so much, and he loved them.” She sat back, closed her eyes a moment. “You say his brother died last month.”

“Before Christmas, Mr. Doyle said. I didn’t think to ask how.”

“And he left you a house?”

“In Maine, on the coast near some little place. Poole’s Bay. The Pooles started a shipbuilding company, and built the house—or the original house. Mr. Doyle said they’d expanded it over the years. He called it the manor. He said there were photos. I didn’t look yet. I read the will, then I got Cleo to come here.”

She opened the second packet. “Maybe in here, because the other one looks to have mainly legal stuff. The will, the trust, life insurance, appraisals.”

She pulled out papers. “More of that here, too. God, it’s a lot. And here, in this folder. Whoa, wow!”

She gaped at the photos of the house on the cliffs. The cobbled brown stone of many shades, the contrast of deep blue cladding, the twin turrets flanking either side with their conical tops, with a kind of half turret centered. Chimneys rose from the roof, which held a railed platform.

A widow’s walk.

The bare branches of a weeping tree seemed to shiver above a white blanket of snow.

“It’s gorgeous,” Cleo said over Sonya’s shoulder. “Gothic spooky gorgeous. Victorian Gothic. Here’s one of the back. Has to be more modern additions, but fully in keeping with the Gothic gorgeous. The cladded bump out here, with that line of windows and the conical top to connect the look of the turrets. A deck over what looks like a flat-roofed addition. I love they mixed arched windows and tall square-edged ones. There’s nothing ordinary.

“I’m going to have to use this someday. I just need a book to illustrate that works.”

“Your dad drew this house.”

“Mom?”

“I don’t know if he painted it. I never saw it if he did. But he drew this house. Wait.”

She stood and rushed upstairs.

“Okay, first the face in the mirror, and now this? Sense memories, blood memory. Something.” Cleo laid a hand on Sonya’s shoulder. “I’m going to open a bottle of wine. I’ll order Chinese. I think we’ve got a lot to talk about.”

By the time Winter came back, Cleo had the wine opened, three glasses poured, and the order placed.

“There may be more,” Winter began. “I found it in these two sketchbooks, but there may be more.”

She laid the open sketchbooks on the table, picked up one of the glasses.

“The first time I saw one of the sketches, I asked him where he’d seen the house. Because it’s fabulous. He told me in dreams. He dreamed of it. He dreamed of it, and he’d hear the waves crashing, feel the wind.”

She took a long sip.

“We laughed about it. He’d tell me he’d had the dream house dream, but this time there was a woman in a white dress on the widow’s walk, or this time there’d been a party, with women in long gowns and men in old-fashioned suits strolling around the yard. He might see a man, the man from the mirror, standing at a window looking down at him.”

Sonya looked at the sketchbooks again, at the photos of the house.

“How can this be?”

Winter sat. “What do you want to do?”

“I have no idea. Maybe Dad saw the house as a child, and it imprinted. It made an impression. But for him to dream of it, to draw it—and more than once—it meant something to him. He never had the chance to find out. I do.

“I need a lawyer.”

“You know my boss will help you with this.”

“I do, and I’m going to dump this in his lap. I want to go through Dad’s sketchbooks, see if I can find more drawings of the house, and look for the sketches he made of the mirror.”

“You’re going to Maine.” Cleo said it matter-of-factly. “Unless Winter’s very smart boss advises against it, and gives you solid reasons, you’re going. And you’ll want to,” she added, “because your dad had this visceral connection. Because that house is you, Son, right down to the ground. Last? Because you’re just going to need to know.”

She picked up her father’s sketch pad. “I do need to know.”

“I’m going to call Marshall.”

“Oh, Mom, you don’t have to call the boss at home. There’s no hurry.”

“I think you’ll sleep better tonight knowing he’s on top of this. I know I will. Go on up, both of you, see what you can find. I’ll let you know when dinner gets here.”

Her father had converted the attic into what he affectionately called his garret. Sonya remembered climbing those steep, narrow steps, coming into the space, the light, the smell of paints and oils and solvents. She remembered how he’d looked standing at an easel—battered jeans, a sweatshirt in the winter, a T-shirt in the summer. The mop of dark blond hair shining in the light from the windows, the light shooting down from the skylights.