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What does she want me to know?Rose woke up thinking.
It wasn’t that Rose believed in ghosts. But something about the Grayson Estate and Natalie’s story haunted her. She had to get to the bottom of it.
The fact that Sean was back in her life felt proof of that, too.
Rose was in her kitchen nook with a mug of coffee and a scone. It wasn’t yet seven, but her head thrummed with questions. For whatever reason, she wanted to look up Natalie’s obituary again. She hadn’t seen it since June 1993. She hadn’t seen it sincebeforeshe’d decidedto believe in everything Oren was, everything he stood for.
I fell in love with him, and he ensnared me. Was Natalie ensnared, too?
But the Nantucket newspaper didn’t have anything that far back online. It was pre-internet. Another time.
Rose went for a seven-mile run, showered, and then drove downtown to the Nantucket Records Office. She’d never actually been there before, but she’d read online it was a haven for every bit of paperwork Nantucketers had left behind: marriage certificates and moving addresses, proof of death and birth. She parked and went into the chilly basement to find the man in charge of the collection bent over his desk, wearing a thick pair of reading glasses. He started when he heard her behind him.
“I’m sorry to startle you!” Rose smiled.
Jeremy removed his glasses and waved his hand. “It’s no trouble. I get so immersed in the past down here. I was several decades away.”
Rose remembered, now, that Jeremy was the husband of Alana Copperfield, which meant he was the brother-in-law of her friend, the woodworker Charlie. Rose reminded him of this connection, and Jeremy beamed.
“Charlie and I have bonded like crazy this summer,” he said. “My daughter just went up to Manhattan to ‘seek her fortune on Broadway,’” he explained with air quotes, “and I haven’t really known what to do with myself. But Charlie and I discovered tennis, and we’re getting better and better.”
It was hard for Rose to imagine Charlie on a tennis court rather than in his woodworking studio. It seemed so active for a man so ponderous and artistic.
“What can I help you with?” Jeremy asked.
Rose raised her chin. She couldn’t beat around the bush. Not with something like this.
“I want to look at someone’s death certificate,” she said, grateful her voice didn’t shake. “Is that possible?”
“Did this person die in Nantucket?” Jeremy asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you know the approximate death date?”
“June 16, 1993.”
Jeremy hopped to it, routing around the aisles of file cabinets, guiding Rose on a scavenger hunt. June 1993 was near the wall. Rose reminded herself to breathe.
“Her name was Natalie Grayson,” Rose said. “Quinne was her maiden name.”
Jeremy gave her a look, which meant he knewexactly who that was.He’d probably been in high school at the time of the fire. It must have been right before the major car accident that had caused him to lose his football scholarship to Notre Dame.He has a past, too.
Jeremy flipped through the death certificates from June 1993. Rose waited with bated breath. She could imagine how devastating it would be to hold the certificate in her hands—proof of the terrible thing that she’d allowed herself to ignore for the entirety of her marriage.
I’m sorry, Natalie.
Jeremy flipped through them a second and a third time, then looked Rose in the eye. “Are you sure you got the date right?”
Rose was taken aback. “It couldn’t have been any other date.”
Jeremy let his arms hang. “It’s not here.”
Rose gaped at him. How was this possible?Maybe somebody stole the death certificate,shethought.
“Do you have newspapers from that week?” she asked.
“We have every newspaper published in the past one hundred and fifty years,” Jeremy announced proudly, guiding her to another section of the chilly basement. “You’re sure it was June 1993?” he asked. There was an edge of doubt to his voice.
