“I understand Mattie and Nick are in town,” he said.

Dani wasn’t surprised. That kind of news would travel fast. “They arrived yesterday afternoon.”

“And they’re already up to their old antics. I was with a friend at his stables this morning, and who should float overhead in a bright yellow balloon but those two. Mattie still has that orange flight suit of hers, I see. I should have thought by now they were too old for ballooning.”

“Not according to Mattie. Nick I don’t know about-she probably had to browbeat him into going. It’s fairly calm out. They shouldn’t have run into any problems.”

He didn’t seem reassured. “Danielle-why are they here? Why is your father here? And what really happened to him?”

It went against every fiber of her being to confide in him. Dani dropped her feet to the floor and jumped up, wishing for an interruption. A fax, another call from New York, papers to sign. But she walked over to the window and stood beside her tall and very dignified grandfather. She inhaled, suddenly sympathetic to this old man who’d lost so much. But how could she explain questions she barely understood herself-never mind their possible answers?

“I don’t know exactly why Mattie, Nick and Pop are here, except that some things have been going on…” But her nature, years of mistrust and miscommunication, and maybe a touch of concern for him, stopped her from going further. She added gently, “I’m sure it’s all a tempest in a teapot.”

He turned to her, and she could see where he’d nicked his chin shaving, where the dark, puffy circles had formed under his eyes. “There’s something I think you should know. Zeke Cutler and his older brother, Joe, were in Saratoga the week your mother disappeared. I didn’t know it at the time-no one thought to tell me.”

“How did you find out?”

He smiled thinly. “It was the one reasonably interesting detail my private investigators managed to produce. Oh, I had both Cutler brothers checked out. Joe was in the army then, Zeke was in high school in Tennessee. Apparently they came north to inform Mattie that her father was dying of cancer.”

“Zeke told me-”

“But did he tell you his brother had decided while he was up here that he was in love with your aunt Sara?”

Dani felt a rush of cold. Sara? And Joe Cutler? Zeke had to know. And he’d chosen not to tell her. She didn’t feel betrayed, only a tug of hopelessness. She was falling in love with Zeke-no use pretending she wasn’t-but how could they ever really work together? The past seemed destined to extinguish the possibilities that had sparked between them.

“Of course,” her grandfather went on, “Sara’s heart already lay with Roger. It was right around that time that they began seeing each other.”

“Did he know about Joe?”

“I don’t think so. I believe Joe knew more about Roger than Roger knew about Joe.”

“Then Sara dumped Joe?”

Her grandfather wrinkled up his face in distaste. “I don’t think their relationship ever progressed to the point that she needed to be that direct. I’m sure she discouraged him as sensitively as she could.”

Dani sank onto the piano bench, remembering her aunt at twenty. She’d been pretty and rebellious, still shattered by her mother’s death. Having two men as different as Roger Stone and Joe Cutler falling for her must have been a welcome distraction. But how different was the Sara Chandler Stone of today. “Does Sara realize you know this?” Dani asked.

He shook his head. “There would be no point. She’s had enough to endure without another reminder of that terrible summer. Joe Cutler…” He hesitated, turning from the window. “It’s too late now, I suppose, but I’ve often wondered if he might have known something…” He trailed off. “But there’s never been any evidence to suggest his involvement with your mother’s disappearance.”

“Could Roger and Sara know anything and just not realize it?”

“It’s possible. I intend to ask.” His eyes clouded. “Danielle-I brought you something. I don’t know if it will make any difference to you, but-” Stopping midsentence, he reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a small, black leather volume; it looked old. “This is one of my mother’s journals. Her last, actually. The entries stop right as her three oldest children became ill with diphtheria and died. Lilli and Sara both read it when they were younger-I’d have given it to you sooner to read if I’d thought you were interested.”

Dani felt a stab of guilt. “Grandfather, I had no idea…”

He held up a hand. “I’m not criticizing. I’m merely explaining why I’ve waited until now to give this to you. Danielle, my mother and your great-great-grandmother-Ulysses’s wife-maintained a quiet, almost secret friendship.” Handing Dani the diary, he went on. “I’ve marked an entry I think might interest you right now, given what’s been going on in your life.”

Dani opened up to the marked page. Her great-grandmother’s handwriting was delicate and clear, faded with time. She looked up at her grandfather, but he waved her on. She read:

I saw Louisa today. Despite her tremendous financial woes, she has finally decided not to sell the gold key that Ulysses made to match the gate key to the pavilion at Pembroke Springs, where they met in a more optimistic time. However, neither can she bear to keep it. Ulysses caused her so much joy, and yet brought her so much suffering. She has chosen instead to bury it in the fountain inside the pavilion, as a testament to what I frankly do not know. Her ambivalence about her late husband, perhaps? At least she has made her decision, however little I understand it. I have promised to go with her tomorrow morning to help her dislodge the fountain tiles. Naturally I have told my husband none of this…

Dani pictured the two refined women smashing up the fountain in their ruffled tea dresses. She shut the volume. “Did Nick know about this?” she asked her grandfather.

“Not unless Lilli told him. I’m quite sure his grandmother never told him about having buried a large twenty-four-karat gold key. Otherwise he would have…” He deliberately didn’t finish.

But Dani did. “He’d have hocked it first chance he got.”

Eugene Chandler let her have the last word on that one. “I only wish Lilli had left us with a similar insight into her character as my mother did.” He became strangely quiet, his shoulders slumped. “It would be a blessing to know what happened to her before I pass on. I’ve always thought I wouldn’t have to die with her disappearance still unresolved.”

“I hope you won’t,” Dani said.

“But,” he went on awkwardly, “I would rather leave the past alone and not know than to see anything happen to you.” He kissed her lightly on the forehead. “It’s always a pleasure to see you, Danielle.”

She was too stunned to say goodbye. As she watched him leave, it struck her that despite his inability to know what to say to her-his seeming lack of emotion-her grandfather had suffered and had been changed by the long years of not knowing what had happened to his firstborn daughter. His inability to know what to say to Dani-his seeming lack of emotion-didn’t mean he didn’t care.

She remembered the day he’d marched down to her Greenwich Village apartment for the first and only time, not long after she’d gone into business for herself. He had demanded to know why, if she insisted on a career, didn’t she take a position with Chandler Hotels? She’d been mystified. Not only did he disapprove of Chandler women taking careers, and generally disapproved of her choice, but her father had embezzled from Chandler Hotels, betrayed his father-in-law’s trust. Betrayed his coworkers. How could her grandfather expect her to work with the same people her father had robbed?

“I’m a Pembroke, Grandfather,” she’d told him.

And he’d looked at her with his grave steel-blue eyes. “You don’t have to be.”