Chapter 1
Lin Coffin and her cousin Viv sat outside at a picnic table finishing the sandwiches they’d purchased at a Nantucket shop located in the Cliff neighborhood. It was a beautiful warm July day with an azure blue sky and a pleasant light breeze coming off the ocean. The picnic tables sat on a lush green lawn that abutted Coffin Park.
Lin and Viv were descendants of some of the earliest settlers of the island. Viv had lived on Nantucket all of her life except for her four years away at college and a summer spent in Europe traveling with a musical group. The young women were descended from two different lines of the Coffin family on their fathers’ sides, but their mothers had been sisters whose ancestors were from the Witchard family of Nantucket.
Lin was born on the island, but after her parents were killed in an accident, she was raised by her paternal grandfather and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts and spent time on-island in the summers and on many weekends when they returned to the grandfather’s island cottage.
Before lunch, the cousins had stopped by to see Lin’s husband Jeff who was renovating an antique house with his business partner Kurt. The place had been built in the late 1700s and the careful restoration work respected the home’s beautiful period details.
“Want to walk back through the park?” Viv asked as she ate the last bite of her sandwich. A short, pretty woman, Viv carried a few extra pounds, and had chin-length light brown hair flecked with gold. Her perfect skin was complemented by rosy cheeks and a warm, lovely smile.
Lin eyed her and wondered why Viv wanted to walk through the park, but she didn’t ask. “Sure. You don’t want to go back through town?”
“If we go through town, I’ll feel compelled to check in on the book shop.” Located on the cobble-stone main street of Nantucket’s town center, Viv’s popular bookstore-café, Viv’s Victus, was always busy with customers browsing the book aisles and sitting at the café tables sipping beverages and eating cake, soup, or sandwiches.
Lin smiled. “You took the day off. Mallory has everything under control. There’s no need for you to check on things.”
“I know that.” Viv sipped the last of her iced tea. “That’s why I want to avoid the temptation. So let’s walk back to your house through the park.”
“Fine with me. Ready to go?” Lin scooped up their sandwich wrappings and empty drink cups and carried them over to the trash can.
The cousins headed off through the park walking along the narrow trails past the trees and the meadow filled with wildflowers and emerged next to the oldest house on Nantucket. There was a wooden bench under a big old tree where Lin often liked to sit and enjoy the quiet spot.
As they walked around to the front of the house, Lin looked up at the huge chimney with the upside down horseshoe built into the bricks and she unconsciously reached up to touch her horseshoe necklace.
The necklace had been owned by her ancestor, Emily Witchard Coffin and it had been found in Viv’s storage shed, hidden there hundreds of years ago by Emily’s husband, Sebastian, an early settler of Nantucket.
In the center of the pendant was a white-gold horseshoe which tilted slightly to one side. The design of the horseshoe could be seen in the chimney bricks of several old houses on the island and was intended to ward off witches and evil spells. Sebastian and Emily Coffin used the symbol on their own house’s chimney to draw people who had been accused of witchcraft to their home where they gave them a safe place to stay and helped them get settled on the island.
Viv gave Emily Coffin’s horseshoe necklace to Lin because she and Emily shared the same skill … Lin and her ancestor could both see ghosts.
The old Nantucket house had been built in 1686 as a wedding gift for twenty-three- year-old Jethro Coffin and sixteen-year-old Mary Gardner. The Gardner and Coffin families had bad blood between them, but the marriage of Jethro and Mary helped to dampen the feelings of animosity. The house was built on land owned by the Gardners with lumber belonging to the Coffins, and was a physical symbol of their marriage and unity.
The house was now a National Historic Landmark and a museum, open to the public for tours.
“I love this old house,” Viv said.
“Me, too.”
“How many times have we been in there?”
“A thousand?” Lin kidded. “Probably more.” She noticed that Viv had stopped so she turned toward her cousin to see her staring at one of the first floor windows. “What’s up? What are you looking at?”
“Nothing. I’m just looking.”
A shiver ran over Lin’s arms. “At what?”
“I feel … I don’t know … something.”
Lin’s blue eyes widened and she stepped over to Viv. “Like what? What do you mean?”
Viv looked at her cousin with a worried expression. “Do you feel anything?”
Lin took a quick glance at the window on the right-hand side of the front door. “I was here with Jeff the other day. We’d been riding the bike trails and we swung by here to sit under the tree in the shade.”
Viv narrowed her eyes. “You do feel something, don’t you?”
“When we were here, I thought I saw a light in the window. Not an electrical light. A different kind of light.”
“Do you see it now?” Viv questioned.
Lin shook her head. “But I feel like we’re being watched.”
“Oh, man,” Viv groaned. “Really? So soon after we all had that same dream experience thing?”
A few weeks ago, Lin, Viv, and Lin’s landscaping partner Leonard had been having the same nightmares which ended in a shared lucid dream that led them to discover the answer to a long-ago mystery.
“We never get to decide the timeline,” Lin smiled. “When a ghost needs something, they make themselves known.”
“Maybe it’s just the summer breeze that ran over my skin,” Viv suggested.
Lin lifted an eyebrow. “And the breeze caused me to see a light in the window the other day?”
Viv sighed. “Always throwing cold water on my idea.”
Lin chuckled. “Only when you don’t want anything to do with ghosts.”
“So what should we do?” Viv asked as her eyes focused on the house. “Get closer to the window? See if you can see someone?”
Lin looked at the house. “Not yet. I don’t think whoever it is, is ready to contact me.”
“A shy ghost?”
“Probably not shy. Just not ready. Who knows why? But it won’t be long.”
Viv kept her voice soft. “Do you think it’s Jethro Coffin? Or Mary Gardner?”
“There are lots of other people who’ve lived in this house and lots of people who visited it over the centuries,” Lin pointed out. “It could be any one of them.” After a pause, she said, “It’s interesting that you picked up on a presence here.”
Viv had only seen a ghost twice in her life. The cousins’ friend and relative Libby Hartnett always told Viv that she had a duty to use her skills to help the ghosts, but so far, the young woman wasn’t quite onboard with that idea.
Lin had been able to see spirits since the time she was a little girl. She didn’t like being different from the other kids so she willed her ability to go dormant and her skill didn’t resurface until she moved back to the island.
Viv rolled her eyes. “It is never interesting when I sense something. I’m happy to leave all of that to you.”
“You might have to re-think your involvement.” Lin enjoyed teasing her cousin about ghosts. “Sometimes I need your help.”
“I always help you.” Viv glanced around and lowered her voice. “That doesn’t mean I have to see or interact with ghosts myself.”
“We’ll see. Come on. Let’s leave it for now. The time isn’t quite right yet.”
The cousins walked down Sunset Hill and along the winding streets to Lin’s cottage just on the outskirts of town. When they went inside, Lin’s dog Nicky, a small light brown mixed breed with a darker patch of brown around his right eye, and Viv’s gray cat Queenie greeted them. The two animals were fast friends and loved playing and snoozing in the sun together.
“How about a cup of tea or coffee before we start painting?” Lin asked. “I have some coffee cake. Want a slice?”
“You don’t have to ask me twice. Coffee, please. I’ll help you make it. I need strength to be able to paint.”
Lin and her husband Jeff were in the process of renovating the unfinished second floor space of the cottage to add two more bedrooms, an office for Jeff, a sitting space, and two bathrooms. They wanted to do it themselves to save money and they knew it would take forever, but they’d finally finished the sitting room area and Lin and Viv were going to paint it that afternoon.
“I appreciate you helping me with it. It will be so great to have that room done.” Lin took some dessert plates out of the hutch and set them next to the coffee cake. She was about to slice two pieces when the doorbell rang.
Nicky let out a low woof and then he and Queenie ran to the entryway.
“Are you expecting anyone?” Viv asked as she took milk from the fridge.
“No. Maybe someone wants to help us paint,” Lin kidded and started for the door to see who was there, but she stopped before leaving the kitchen.
An icy chill ran down her arms.
“Lin? Is something wrong?” Viv asked. “Do you want me to go?”
“What? No.” Lin took in a slow deep breath trying to banish her feeling of apprehension. “I’ll get it.”
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