The Carriage House

Davey Ahearn was smoking a cigarette on his front stoop across the street from the pub when Tess headed out into the cool evening. He walked over to her. "You take the subway?" He tossed his cigarette onto the street. "I'll walk you to the station."

There was no point in telling him she could see herself to the subway station. He'd walk with her, anyway. "Thanks."

He glanced at her as they headed to the corner. "You didn't tell him about the ghost, did you?" Tess hoisted her satchel higher onto her shoulder.

"I don't believe in ghosts." "Tess." "No, I didn't tell him, okay? For God's sake, I'm a grown woman. I don't have to tell you or my father that a few highly imaginative people believe my carriage house is haunted."

"Not a few people. It's in the goddamn guidebooks." She gripped her satchel with one hand. "How do you know these things?"

He gri

"If I decide to turn the place into a bed-and-break-fast, a ghost could be good for business."

"Not that ghost."

Tess didn't respond.

Davey grunted. "No wonder you still keep your old man up nights. He wants to go to his grandkids' Little League games, and he's got a daughter wanting to renovate a barn haunted by a murderer."

"I'm not answering you, Davey. Answering would only encourage you."

They turned onto the main road, traffic streaming past them, the last of the daylight finally fading. She thought of Beacon-by-the-Sea, how quiet it would be.

Davey eased back. "Go on. Go home, Tess. If you screw up, you screw up. You're smart. You'll figure it out."

She smiled at him. "And you and Pop will be there. Don't think I don't know that, Davey."

"Hell, no. I'm not cleaning up after this mess. You're on your own."

She laughed, not believing him. "Look, I'll invite you up for scones and tea one Sunday. Okay?"

"I'll wear garlic."

"That's for vampires."

He shrugged. "Close enough."

Five

Susa

Tess emptied her satchel onto her desk. She hadn't done any work last night when she'd gotten home from the pub. "Pop and Davey don't know anything about me."

"They don't understand anything about you. They know everything."

Susa

"It's got great potential."

"That's what we say in Texas when we're about to tear a place down and put up a new one."

Tess never knew when Susa

"My neighbor's a Thorne," Tess added.

"As in Jedidiah and the bloodstains by the front door?"

"So he says."

"What's he look like?"

Tess thought of Andrew Thorne's piercing blue eyes and lean good looks. "A nineteenth-century duelist."

"Your basic rock-ribbed Yankee?"

"If that's the way you want to put it."

"Okay." She tilted back her chair and sipped her coffee, which she drank black and strong. "It's going to be tough, paying rent on your apartment and office and keeping up this carriage house. At least there's no mortgage. Damn, you must have a good accountant-"

"I do." Tess crossed their small office to the coffeepot, filled her own mug. She added more milk than she normally would since Susa

"I doubt it. I think he was just unloading a white elephant."

Tess had meetings from noon until three, which gave her a break from Susa

Tess cut down Park Street across from Boston Common, then up Tremont to Old Granary. She'd picked up a sandwich for lunch-Susa

For no reason she could fathom, Tess found herself looking for the Thorne name. Her own family had come to the shores of Massachusetts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, not back with the Pilgrims and the Puritans.

She found one, her heart jumping. Thankful Thorne, born in 1733, died in 1754. Not a long life. Was she an ancestor of the man Tess had met yesterday, of his six-year-old daughter with the Red Sox shirt and crown? Tess suddenly wondered how Andrew Thorne's wife had died. From Dolly's reaction, she suspected it had been a while-but one never knew with children that age. Tess remembered coming to grips with her own mother's death, discovering the reality of it over time, the finality.

She slipped out of the graveyard. The streets were clogged with noontime traffic, one of many daily reminders of how glad she was she didn't commute. So why was she thinking about hanging on to a place an hour up the coast?

Her first meeting went well. They loved her, they had plenty of work for her and were pleasant, intelligent, dedicated people. The second meeting was just the opposite. The clients from hell. They were impossible to please, and they didn't know what they wanted, leaving her on shifting sands. She'd learned early on in her graphic design career that not everyone would love her or her work-and some would be rude about it.

When she returned to her office, she plopped her satchel onto her chair and started loading it up. Susa

Susa

"Thanks, Susa

"Don't thank me. As soon as you walk out that door, I'm looking up the name and address of every mental hospital on the North Shore. Don't worry. I'll pick out a nice one for you."

Tess ignored her. "The weather's supposed to be great this weekend. I think I'll stop on Charles Street for scones."

"Glorified English muffins," Susa

"And you don't call yourself a Yankee."

They both laughed, and Tess heaved her loaded-up bag onto her shoulder and was on her way.