Page 36 of The Glass Dolphin

Robin looked up and to Alice, who wore a grim line of determination across her lips. She said nothing, and the tension in the cottage rose and rose and rose, until Robin thought she might burst.

“Alice,” she barked.

Alice didn’t move a muscle. She stared straight across the table to Kristen as she said, “In a nutshell, the fact is, Kristen—and thereby Reuben and Jean—does not own the lighthouse. According to the Chronicles, the Coalition does. But there is no paperwork. There is no one claiming they own the lighthouse.”

Alice finally blinked, and she looked at every woman at the table, all the way around it. No one looked at their phones. No one studied the photocopies Kristen had passed out. No one spoke.

Robin trembled when Alice let her gaze land on her. “So the real question is—what does she do about it?”

ChapterFourteen

Alice watched as Kristen poured coffee into mugs. She’d needed the escape from the tension at the table, and Alice understood that too. Currently, Robin stood huddled with Jean and Clara, and all of them seemed to be whispering furiously at the same time.

Kelli had immediately hunched toward AJ; no surprise there. They always liked to bounce things off each other to make sense of them.

Julia and Maddy looked like they’d been hit with water balloons, only to find out the water had been frozen inside first.

Laurel and El stood with Alice, and she nodded over to AJ. “What do you think they’re talking about?”

“Could be baby clothes,” Laurel mused.

“Or what Kelli should name her baby,” El said. She lifted her mug to her lips and took a sip. Alice didn’t want coffee. She already felt too keyed up—she’d been buzzed this morning when she’d rolled out of bed.

She’d known about Kristen’s dilemma for a week now, and she still wasn’t sure what the solution was.

“So,” Laurel said, and Alice appreciated her level head so much. “Under the Destroyed Public Records Act, what, exactly, does she need?”

“Private records,” Alice said. “We’re trying to find a bank ledger, a title company that kept private books, anything like that, where we can find the record of sale. If we can, then we can recreate the title.”

“But it won’t be Kristen’s,” El said quietly.

Alice didn’t have to shake her head to affirm. “According to the newspaper and Rose’s private logbooks here at the lighthouse, it did transfer ownership to the Coalition. The problem is, neither of those are complete enough to recreate the official, public record.”

Robin joined them, her face somewhat flushed. Alice needed to stay cool around her, because this news could potentially impact her. Alice had known Duke was the Vice President of the Coalition when Kristen had dropped this bomb in her lap. In fact, Robin had been her first thought.

Kristen worried endlessly for Jean and Clara, though Clara and Scott didn’t have any role at the lighthouse. Alice had been over every shred of paperwork, any photograph she could find, and through every inch of microfiche in the library in the past week. She’d put together everything she could, and it still wasn’t enough.

Newspapers didn’t always report things correctly, and when she’d inquired at the Chronicles to find out if anyone was still alive who could help her, she’d come up negative. The Coalition changed leadership every two years, and the President and Vice President for the time period in question were either deceased or unable to remember. There was no paperwork at the Coalition, as they only took notes of their meetings.

Alice had requested the notes for the entirety of 1950 and 1962, when they’d allegedly bought the lighthouse, and then when they’d stopped paying Rose Worthington. Surely those things would’ve been discussed at their monthly meetings.

She’d come up empty. Yes, the Coalition had turned over the notes. No, there was no mention of the lighthouse anywhere.

Bank records from almost seventy-five years ago were impossible to get. Rose hadn’t saved paystubs or taxes from that long ago, and even if she had, Kristen—her granddaughter—certainly didn’t have them.

“There’s literally no proof to show that the Coalition purchased the lighthouse,” she said. “The problem is, there’s no proof that says they didn’t.”

“No one has questioned this in decades,” Laurel said. “Why does it matter now?”

Alice had laid awake at night, wondering the same thing. “It does,” she said with a sigh. “Because you need legal documents to hold up in a court of law. For example, let’s say I file a lawsuit against Reuben and Jean for ownership of the lighthouse. Me, Alice Rice. I walk into court and I contest their ownership.” She pressed her palm to her chest. “I tell the judgeIown the lighthouse, and the city of Five Island Cove should be payingme.”

“They have to have some way of proving you wrong,” Robin said, a hint of resignation in her voice.

“Right.” Alice needed something to do with her hands, so she moved over to the plate of crispy rice treats Kristen had made and picked one up. The sugary marshmallow made her taste buds rejoice, and she forced her shoulders to go down a little.

“So we need to recreate that title somehow,” she said. “But who it belongs to…I don’t know. We need documents to prove it, and I’m not sure where else to look.”

“Aaron didn’t have any ideas?” El cocked her head, her eyes thoughtful. Out of all of them, she’d freaked out the least. Honestly, none of them had gone into hysterics or anything, but the news had definitely hit some women harder than others. Jean would not leave Clara’s side, and they both kept looking at Alice like she’d set the records building on fire herself, back in 1962.

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