True Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

my mother did arrange all this about the will, when did she do it? She told me we spent a summer here when I was four. That’s when she and Dad split up, but she’s never mentioned Nantucket since then. When was she here? How did she know this Miss Adelaide Kingsley?”
    “What I want to know,” Izzy said, “is who is ‘she’?”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “In the drugstore you said, ‘ She bought things here.’ Did you mean your mother?”
    “I guess so,” Alix said. “But I don’t think so. Right now it’s like I’m sinking down into another time. I have no conscious memories of this island but with every step I take I see something familiar. That store …” She was looking at Murray’s Toggery with its gray and white painted wood and the full glass front. “I know that children’s wear is upstairs and she … someone, that is, bought me a pink cardigan there.”
    “If it was your mother, surely you’d remember her . Victoria is rather distinctive.”
    Alix laughed. “Are you referring to her red hair and green eyes and a figure that causes car wrecks? I’m glad I look more like my father. Where do you think the bank is?”
    Izzy was smiling at her friend. To hear Alix tell it, a person would think she was a plain little sparrow when compared to hermother, but far from it. While Alix didn’t stand out in a crowd as her mother did, she was extraordinarily pretty. She was taller than her mother and slender, with reddish blond hair that was naturally streaked. She wore it long with wispy bangs swept to one side and fat curls at the end. Whereas Izzy had to work to get curls in her dark hair, Alix’s were natural. She had blue-green eyes and a small mouth with full lips. “Like a doll’s,” Victoria had said at lunch one time, and her daughter had turned red at the compliment.
    Alix’s modesty about her looks, her background, and even her talent was something Izzy had always admired about her friend.
    Alix drew her breath in and came to a halt. “Look at that.” She was pointing to a tall, majestic-looking building at the end of the street. It was on a raised foundation, with a steep curved staircase leading up to the front door, which was set under a curved roof portico. The elegant building seemed to look over the town, a grand empress watching her subjects.
    “A knockout,” Izzy said, but she was more interested in finding Kingsley House.
    “No. Look at the top.”
    Raised letters said THE PACIFIC NATIONAL BANK .
    Izzy had to laugh. “Doesn’t look like my bank. What about you?”
    “Nothing here looks like anything anywhere else,” Alix said. “If that’s the bank, we need to take that road on the left.”
    They crossed the cobblestones on the brick walkway and headed up Main, past Fair Street. It was a road of houses, and each place was a historian’s dream nestled under graciously weathered old shingles. There were very few of the usual gaudy Victorians that so many small American towns treasured as historic homes. Nantucket had been formed by Quakers, people who believed in plainness in their clothes, their attitudes, and especially in their houses. As a result, the homes weren’t covered in unnecessary ornament. To Alix’s trained eye, every roof, door, and window was a work of art.
    “Think you can stand looking at this town for a whole year?” Izzy asked, laughing at Alix’s expression.
    When they reached the three brick houses Alix looked like she might go into an old-fashioned swoon. Big, tall, impeccably maintained, the three houses were indeed impressive.
    Alix seemed to be glued to the sidewalk as she looked up at the buildings, but Izzy moved past her.
    Next to the last house a narrow lane opened up, the entry to it almost hidden by trees. A little white sign said KINGSLEY LANE .
    “Come on,” Izzy called and Alix followed.
    There was a narrow sidewalk on the right and silently the two of them started down it, looking at the house