Page 51 of An Island Summer
“Do you recognize this at all?” he asked.
Confused, she turned her attention back over to it, running her hands along its slick finish, admiring the glamorous French design. “No,” she said, captivated. “Why do you ask?”
His gaze shifted back over to the piece of furniture with a strange mix of confusion and interest evident. “I was hoping you’d have seen it before.”
“Why?” she asked again. “What is this?”
“I was talking to Gramps last night, and he told me a story about Hester and how she used to write at her dressing table. He said that she hadthis—he described it exactly, down to the engraving in the drawer that said Côté Frères. I don’t speak French, so I had him write it down for me because I didn’t understand what he was saying. I checked online and Côté Frères doesn’t exist anymore, so it would be a little difficult to find.” He pulled out the empty drawer and, engraved into the side of the wood, was the Côté Frères logo. “I thought perhaps you’d told him about it or something.”
“No, I’ve never seen it in my life. Where did you find it?”
“Simp had it over at The Memory Box.”
“You shop there regularly?” she teased.
He allowed a smirk through his usually sullen features, her stomach whirling at the sight. “Gramps told me it was there, along with more of Hester’s things. He said Hester had tried to move in with him and she’d shown up out of nowhere, with a driver who’d filled a truck with her furniture—the pieces still full with her things, her personal items in all the drawers—and driven all the way from her house in New York. When he got home, she was unloading it all right there in his front yard.”
“New York?” she asked, remembering the journal entry in Lost Love Coffee.New York is terrifyingly large for a girl, but I’m managing.
He nodded. “He said he had to turn her away because, by the time she finally came back, he was married.”
“To your grandmother,” she said, piecing the story together.
“She left everything right there in the grass, got into the truck in tears, and drove away. She never came back. After a few years, he took it all to Simp’s dad who ran The Memory Box.”
“How do you know it wasn’t your grandmother’s, and he’s confused?” she asked, surprised and delighted by his willingness to believe.
“Because when I spoke to Simp about it, he remembered his father telling the story about Hester and your grandmother. It’s quite the local folklore. He said that my grandfather had a crush on her when she first arrived on the island. He also said that years later, Gramps dropped all this off, telling him it was Hester’s and he could probably get good money for it.”
Meghan pressed her fingers to her lips in utter shock. “Rupert’s not delusional,” she said through her hands. “It’s all true.”
“It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” Toby asked, visibly wrestling with the idea, his gaze unstill. He gestured to the dressing table. “Do you have anything you can do with this?”
“You want to give me Hester’s table?”
“I bought it because I couldn’t let it go to just anyone, but I don’t know what to do with it. I thought maybe you might have a use for it.” The kindness in his eyes made it hard to breathe. He’d thought about her.
“Let me buy it from you,” she offered, knowing good and well that she didn’t have the kind of money it would take to buy a stunning piece of furniture like that.
“Absolutely not. It’ll be my gift to you for bringing out this piece of my grandfather’s history for his family.” He stared at it, unmistakably stunned as the reality of it set in. “It’s… unbelievable.”
“I’ve never taken a gift this large before,” she said, the beauty of it making it very difficult to say no.
“I insist,” he said, pulling out his phone. “Let me call Mariner’s and tell them that you’ll be late today.” He dialed the number, putting the phone to his ear. Before she could protest about how she didn’t want the other servers to have to absorb her tables, he was already speaking to Meredith, telling her that Meghan would be late.
He was quick to leave them shorthanded and she wondered again about his plans for the inn and whether both sides of the story could be his truth.
“Want to take this to your house?” he asked, sliding his phone into his back pocket.
Well, at least she could check on Charlie…
Hester’s ornate dressing table looked out of place in Pappy’s old bedroom. Meghan stared at it, trying not to think about the fact that a pile of her folded clothes and undergarments were sitting on the chair over in the corner. There was something so intimate about having Toby in her bedroom unexpectedly.
He seemed to read her, an uneasy smile playing at his lips, the sound of Charlie lapping fresh water in the other room keeping the moment in check for her.
“I’d planned to paint the bed frame a cream color,” she said, trying to divert the focus. “This will go perfectly with it.”
“Is your air broken?” he asked, wiping beads of perspiration off his forehead.
