Inheritance (The Lost Bride Trilogy, #1)(49)

A bear of a man with a brown beard and eyes to match, he grinned at her.

“Get ya up?”

“I’m a working girl. I need to start my day, too. That’s a seriously blue sky.”

“Yep. Should have a stretch of clear days coming. Only got about six inches with this last one.”

They stood, drinking coffee, him in his bulky navy coveralls, her in a coat tossed over her pajamas.

“Heard you ventured into the village.”

She had to laugh. “Is that news?”

“Most everything is in Poole’s Bay. That was my brother’s wife sold you a scarf. Friend of my mother’s daughter’s who makes them.”

“It’s wonderful work.”

“You oughta be wearing it. It’s a cold one.” He polished off his coffee, handed her the mug. “Appreciate it. How about I stack some more wood by the back door for you? You’re going through it.”

“Oh, that would be great. Thanks.”

“Happy to. I’ve gotta get back to it.” He winked at her. “I’m a working boy.”

“Here’s to the workers of Maine.”

She’d unlocked the door, and put the keys in her pocket as backup. As the snowblower started up again, the door opened smoothly.

“Okay then.”

A working girl did best with routine, she decided. Hers began with a quick breakfast, a check of emails and texts. Yesterday’s inquiry moved to a consult. Fingers crossed, she scheduled one for late morning.

A shower, sweats, her water bottle.

She refused to think about the neatly made bed as she dressed.

Not today; today she’d focus.

She took the Poole family book into the library to set on the coffee table before she started the fire.

The rack by the hearth was full. As John Dee said, she’d gone through it, so it shouldn’t be. The logs in the hearth, neatly laid, waited only for a match.

Maybe she’d look up what supplements or herbs—something—helped with memory.

But she wouldn’t think about it. Not today.

Not even when her iPad pumped out the Beatles’ “Good Morning Good Morning.”

She sat down, began refining Anna’s website design.

She broke for the consult, and did a shoulder wiggle, chair bounce as they moved from consult to contract.

Just after noon, Anna sent the final photo and—bonus—a sixty-eight-second video.

Anna at the wheel—and looking good—holding some sort of thin blade to the turning clay, and explaining she’d have a new piece, inspired by the last snowfall, on her website in a few days.

Smart, Sonya decided.

She added it to the inactive website, tested it.

When she broke again, she geared up and took a walk, this time venturing down to the seawall under those clear blue skies.

With the PB&J she’d made—always hit the spot—she sat on the stones and watched a couple of boats glide along. Fishing boats, she thought, doing their cold, hard work.

She nearly dropped the sandwich as, far out, the sea parted and a whale rose up, its massive body spearing toward the sky. Water spewed up, streamed down as it sounded, as he gleamed with it in the strong sun.

When he dived again, the sea rippled and rippled. And stilled.

“I saw a whale. I’m just sitting here eating a PB&J, and I saw a whale.”

Then she cursed herself for not grabbing her phone and getting a picture.

“Next time.”

She slipped a hand into her pocket, closed it around her phone in case it happened again. She waited until she had to admit it was just too cold to sit on a rock wall hoping to see another whale.

She didn’t see the shadow at the window again, and the door didn’t give her any trouble.

“Progress. Settling in.” She studied the portrait as she took off her boots.

“I read about you last night. About you and your Collin, and the crazy bitch who stabbed you. Hester Dobbs. Killed him, too, when you think about it, since he hanged himself, apparently because he couldn’t live without you.”

As she went to hang up her coat, Taylor Swift’s “Lover” played in the library.

“I’m getting used to that.”

She spent the rest of the day on Anna’s project, shifted briefly to start on a mood board for the next client.

And the evening reading a bit more Poole family history.

It seemed Hester Dobbs escaped from her cell shortly before she was to be hanged for Astrid Poole’s murder, only to leap to her death from the seawall at the manor after Collin Poole’s suicide.

Various tools of witchcraft were found in her cabin.

“That’s cheerful.”

She turned to Connor, Collin’s twin, who’d inherited the manor at his brother’s death.

And by all accounts had lived a happy life, from childhood, through his own marriage—with a big ugly murder and suicide in there. He, too, had expanded the manor, and the business, while producing five children.

One of which, she noted, had died on her wedding day.

Just creepy.

Yet he’d died at the age of seventy-two, in his own bed, surrounded by his wife, their surviving children, and his grandchildren.

She decided to end the night’s reading on that happy note.

She then binge-watched three episodes of a new Netflix series and called it a night.