Page 24 of In the Pursuit of Haven
The girls were gorgeous. No wonder these scoundrels had done everything they could to get them alone on their boats.
Matthew Crabb was the hardest to pin down, but eventually I found him in a group shot with his yacht crew, posing with a herd of daredevils on a boat. His muscular arms were crossed, and I’d definitely call him a heartthrob, with that dark flyaway hair and his confident, almost arrogant stance… and was that my father-in-law, Peter, beside him?
Jessie’s dad was almost a carbon copy of his son, but with lighter hair cut short and feathered back. He had a distressingly sober frown. And thathadto be another Crabb brother next to him. I read the inscription underneath the picture. Drake.
Was he the one who’d died in the fire on Gerry Island?
Drake was a mix of his two brothers, with Jessie’s expressive eyebrows arched into a devious expression, possibly accentuated by his higher hairline. Pretty much that was Jessie if he was the devil.
There really was no other way to describe Drake.
I caught their friend Leon to the side of them. He was exactly how I’d pictured with his black hair and playboy air. Felicity thought he had a crush on my aunt too. And why not? She was a heartstopper.
I set the pictures aside, my gaze escaping to the window outside.
Shots of orange and pink scraped across a brilliant sky. The sun was already setting on this perplexing day, and I’d hardly eaten a thing. Pressing my palms against the ground, I pushed to my feet to scavenge for some food.
Haven had some crackers that I assumed were safe to eat in the cupboard, and a box of bland oatmeal. Yeah, I’d need to go into town tomorrow to find some more sustenance. For now, I opted for Bette Ann’s chocolates. I fed the cat while I popped one with a delicious caramel filling into my mouth. The sugar melted against my tongue.
Oh! That was exactly what I needed. Sparks of renewed energy flowed through me. So bad and so good!
Stu peevishly ignored his less-exciting meal and followed me back into Haven’s room. I absentmindedly rubbed the cat’s fuzzy head while I opened another letter from Matthew:
“Haven, what are you doing right now? I can’t stop thinking about you. Don’t make fun of me. I just want to know everything about you. You mind putting me out of my misery and telling me if you feel the same? I can read you like a book when you’re worried about something or when you think something is funny, even when you’re angry—Ha! I definitely know when you’re angry, but I can’t see into your heart. Am I in there?
“I hope you’ve figured out by now that I’m nothing like my family. You have to believe me. I don’t care about the money, the drama, or that relentless pursuit after treasure. No, my pursuit is you, Haven.
“If you give me a chance, I’ll do everything in my power to show you I’m telling the truth. I’ll prove it tonight. Meet me at the Old Burying Hill in Marblehead. I want to share everything about me and more! And if you don’t come? I’ll take that as my answer. No matter how much it hurts.”
Old Burying Hill was the cemetery where Haven was buried. Was there more significance to her choosing it as her final resting place?
I peeled up his next letter from the bed to read furiously through it.
“Ha! Your laugh is contagious. How to describe you? I can’t—it’s like you hold the brightness of the sun and the rage of a storm in your fingertips.”
My stomach clenched. This guy knew her. I’d never heard better words to describe my aunt.
“And kissing you? Has anyone ever told you that kisses from you feel like they come straight from heaven?
“They better not. I’m the only one who should be kissing you.
“Haven, I can’t sleep—that’s why I’m writing… and if you’re snuggled blissfully into your bed and dreaming without a care in the world after Willis chased us through that graveyard, I’ll laugh even harder.
“Who would’ve thought you’d be more into treasure hunting than anyone in my family? My old man would’ve blessed the heavens to have a child like you. He’d have stumbled on that pile of loot while you were in diapers with that mind of yours constantly running like it does.
“I swear I didn’t bring you to The Old Burying Hill to look at our ancestors or go after clues for that treasure, but yeah, that gravestone we looked at? Reverend Cheever was rumored to be bosom chums with our old pirate ancestor. My old man says if anyone knew where the treasure was, he did.”
That would be one old gravestone—clear from the witch trial era! Now that I knew that Matthew’s eyes were dark like Jessie’s, his shoulders just as broad, his hair just a little wild, it wasn’t so hard to imagine for myself what had happened in that cemetery. And doing what I usually did when I read about my favorite character in a book, I morphed into Haven as I read through that letter and absorbed every part of her history like it was actually happening to me:
“What’s that?” I pointed to the reverend’s gravestone in the murky darkness. It was shaped differently than the others with a double tympanum. The two arches on the gravestone usually meant two people were buried there. “How sweet. Was the good reverend buried with a wife?” I asked.
Matthew shook his head. “No. Her name’s not there. I don’t know why he got the double arches on his gravestone.”
“Ooh, a mystery.” I ran my hand over the smooth stone, still keeping my distance from him. I wasn’t sure how much I trusted Matthew, and yet… I’d come tonight. He was cute. I guess that meant I was just as silly as the next girl. I laughed to cover my nervousness. “I love mysteries.”
“You do, do you?” He stepped closer, making me catch my breath. “So do I. You’re a mystery, you know.”
He looked a lot like Jessie in my mind, in fact…
