anyway.
“I do love Christmas, but you’re right, I can’t imagine what it was like, living in winter wonderland twenty-four-seven.”
“We’re even,” she said as he opened a box and handed her a linen napkin rolled with real silver inside. “I only had to put up with a make-believe character. I can’t imagine living with the number of real people you reside with on a daily basis. At least my army was inanimate and perpetually jolly.”
“Oh, I’d say the Gallaghers are a pretty perpetually jolly bunch.” He winked at her. “You know, you could actually cross the street and come inside where we could sit and eat at a real table.”
She inhaled the scent of beef and potatoes like a woman starved and sighed in deep satisfaction. “If this tastes half as good as it smells, you could probably lure me over there just by dangling a bowl of stew under my nose.”
He grinned. “I’ll keep that in mind.” He popped open his own take-out box, then nodded at the book still tucked in her lap. “What’s that you’re reading?”
She couldn’t believe she’d forgotten. “I found this in the little rolltop desk there, in a secret compartment. I’d just unearthed the desk earlier today and discovered it wasn’t anywhere on the inventory list. I was hoping the book might explain where it came from and why it’s here.”
“And did it?”
“Well…not exactly. But it explains a lot of other things. And it involves both of our families.”
He paused in midbite. “What?”
“And the Hamilton family, as well.”
“Hamilton family. As in Hamilton Industries, Hamilton?”
Holly nodded.
Lionel Hamilton, who was in his eighties now, about nine or ten years older than her parents, was the last in a long line of Hamiltons who had either owned or run most of neighboring Randolph County. Hamilton Industries, and the Hamilton family, were responsible for keeping pretty much everyone who lived there employed for at least the past century or so, and it was through their varied businesses that the otherwise rather rural county continued to prosper. And prosper well.
“Anything juicy?” he teased.
“Oh, you might say that.”
Sean’s smile faded and he laid his fork down. “Really? Like what?”
“Did you know that Trudy Hamilton used to live in this very house? Well, back when the bottom part was a rare and antique bookshop and these rooms up here belonged to Old Lady Haversham, she did.”
“Lionel’s wife, Trudy? Didn’t she pass on some time ago?”
Holly nodded. The Hamiltons were local royalty, like the Kennedys must have been to the folks of Hyannis Port and the rest of Cape Cod. The details of their very privileged lives had always been reported on in both local papers and the bigger circulations in D.C. and Richmond. “This was long before she became Mrs. Hamilton, though. Her maiden name was Haversham.”
“She was related to Old Lady Haversham?”
Holly nodded again. Neither she nor Sean had ever met the older woman, as she’d long since passed on before they were born, but stories of the eccentric old woman were a well-known part of the small town lore. The black sheep of the Havershams of Charlottesville and Raleigh, a very well respected and wealthy tobacco family back in the day, all deceased now. “Trudy’s fortune went to Lionel. She was the last of the family line.”
“Right, there was talk about how it was actually the Haversham fortune that rescued Hamilton Industries from near bankruptcy way back when, right?”
“Right. And I think Lionel is only survived by his great-nephew, who—”
“Famously rejected the family fortune. Doesn’t he live somewhere down South?”
“North Carolina, I think.”
Sean picked up his silverware again. “So, what’s the juicy part?”
“Well, Trudy and your grandmother were good friends. At least for the length of one spring and summer.”
Sean’s eyes widened. “Really? How could that be?”
“And they babysat my mother, on many occasions, that summer.”
“How old were they?”
“Trudy and your grandmother were probably only a few years apart at most, if that. They were teenagers, the summer I’m talking about. Fifteen and sixteen, respectively. So…about sixty-five years ago. My mom would have been around seven or eight.”
“Interesting, for sure. I’ll have to ask my aunts if they’d ever heard any stories. I mean, having Trudy Hamilton here in our town…that would have been quite something.”
“Well, she didn’t become Trudy Hamilton for another five years, but I guess even as a wealthy Haversham, it might have made a little noise. Certainly, later on, after she married Lionel, I would have imagined there would have been ‘Trudy slept here’ kind of