An Invincible Summer (Wyndham Beach), Mariah Stewart [best classic novels TXT] 📗

a fortune into it.” She ran a possessive hand along the counter covering the island.

“Granite?” Maggie asked to have something to say.

Barbara shook her head. “So last year. This is quartz. Much trendier. Easier to care for with the look of marble.” She lowered her voice. “Those beams overhead? Planed from a tree in the backyard that came down in a storm a few years back.”

Maggie went to the french doors that opened to the yard and peered out. Gone were her mother’s flower beds and the vegetable garden she’d planted every summer, and there was no trace of the ageless peonies she’d prized. Maggie fought a wave of nausea. This might not have been as good an idea as she’d first thought.

“Wait till you see the master bedroom.”

Maggie started to follow Barbara from the room when the Realtor stopped and said, “Oh, the dining room. It’s this way.”

The door to the dining room had been moved when the addition was built. Maggie felt even more disoriented approaching the room from a different direction. It pained her to see that her mother’s beautiful wallpaper had been stripped off, and the gorgeous crystal chandelier that had hung over the dining room table for three generations was gone, replaced by a chrome-and-glass fixture that took Maggie’s breath away with its starkness.

“I know, right?” Barbara apparently noticed Maggie’s reaction and had mistaken shock for awe. “That fixture is to die for.”

Maggie bit her bottom lip. “I’d have expected a house of this age and style to have a more classic fixture.”

“They said there had been an old chandelier there but, of course, during the remodeling, it had to go. It was so yesterday.”

“Any idea what they did with it?” Maggie asked.

Barbara shook her head. “My guess would be that they sold it to a dealer, but I don’t really know.”

Maggie left the room and headed for the staircase, her head pounding.

“Now get ready for the most amazing master suite. Honestly, it has everything.” Barbara went up the steps ahead of Maggie and proceeded to the end of the hall when she reached the second floor. “This is truly to die for. If you’re looking for luxury, look no further.” She opened the bedroom door with a grand sweeping motion and stepped in.

For a moment, Maggie felt lost as she tried to remember the exact layout of the second floor.

“This is of course all new,” Barbara was saying. “The original bedrooms are across the hall and next door to this one.”

Maggie wandered from the bedroom with its contemporary furnishings—all white to match the walls—into the bath with its overload of chrome. But the layout was actually functional, with the soaking tub and the large glass shower. The double vanity held a surprise: the bowls of the twin sinks were embellished with flowers that seemed almost incongruous with the starkness of the rest of the house, but they were lovely. Along one wall was a gas fireplace, which Maggie had to admit made the room pretty much perfect. Painting the walls a pretty color—palest blue or sea glass green, maybe—would elevate the room to perfection.

“Aren’t you blown away?” Barbara asked anxiously, as if just realizing her would-be buyer had been mostly silent.

“That would be one way to describe it.” Maggie paused at the wall of windows that looked out on the bay. At least they’d kept the view.

“It’s beautiful, right? Like a painting.”

Maggie nodded and left the master suite and stepped into the hall. She opened the door to what had been her parents’ room and what was now apparently home to two boys. The bunk beds in the corner were built to look like a pirate ship, and the interior wall had been painted—hallelujah!—navy blue. She took a few steps across the hall to her old room, which was now an office with a chrome-and-glass desk and a white fuzzy rug on the refinished heart pine floor. She paused at Sarah’s old room before stepping inside to find a nicely appointed guest room with a colorful quilt on the bed.

“Seen enough?” Barbara poked her head into the room.

“I think so.” Maggie left the room without a backward glance and went directly downstairs.

“I’m sure you’re overwhelmed,” Barbara was saying as she followed in Maggie’s wake. “There’s so much to see here. If you’d like to take a minute to . . .” Her phone rang. “Oh, let me take this. I’ll just be a moment.”

Maggie went into the kitchen and tried to conjure up a memory that would reassure her that this was in fact the house in which she’d grown up. Closing her eyes, she breathed in, her senses searching for a familiar scent. Vanilla and cinnamon, the staples of her mother’s basic cookie recipe. Her mother’s stuffing for the turkey on Thanksgiving morning, sage and onion and celery. She wanted to be able to see herself and Sarah, their elbows leaning on the kitchen table, watching their mother roll out cookie dough until she had it exactly the way she wanted it. The memories remained even if the room had been transformed.

And everywhere she felt the ghosts of everyone who’d lived in this house watching anxiously from the shadows. For the first time in her life, she understood the meaning of something her grandmother Lloyd used to say: Sad ties you to a place as sure as happy.

Maggie turned the car around at the end of the street and headed for the center of town, her head still reeling from the house tour. It was strange that while everything had changed, the feelings that had been conjured up had been the same. Somehow the innate warmth that had defined her home still lived below the stark white surface. It had tugged at her with every step she’d taken inside those walls. It had been a somewhat surreal experience. On the one hand, she’d been saddened to see how the owners had tried to transform the house, but on the other, it retained its