Jayne Krentz: Summer in Eclipse Bay

Eventually the door opened a crack.

"What on earth are you doing here at this hour of the morning?" Edith Seaton demanded.

"I think you know why I'm here," Octavia said gently. "I came to get the Upsall."

Edith stared at her through the narrow opening for a long moment. Without warning her face suddenly crumpled. In the space of five or six seconds she seemed to age at least a decade.

"Yes." She stood back and held the door open. "Yes, I suppose you'd better take it."

Octavia stepped into the shadowy foyer.

Edith turned, not speaking, and led the way toward the living room. She wore a long, faded dressing gown and slippers.

Octavia took a quick look around as she followed Edith. The house was decorated with what appeared to be leftovers from Edith's shop. There was a display of carnival glass in a case that stood against one wall. Small porcelain figures were arranged on the end tables. The furniture was heavy and old-fashioned.

Edith sat down very stiffly in a rose-patterned rocking chair. Octavia went to stand at the window that overlooked the garden.

"How did you figure it out?" Edith asked in a resigned voice.

"I came across a key in my back room. Last night I asked the Willis brothers if they recognized it. They said they had installed a special lock in the door of your shop. We checked. The key fit. Last night I got a phone call from Noreen Perkins. Sean Valentine had tracked her down to ask her about a missing painting and she was worried that I might think she'd had something to do with the theft."

"And you asked her about the key, I suppose," Edith said dully. "She no doubt told you that several months ago we exchanged keys and that she also gave me the security code to the gallery."

"Yes. She said that both of you had occasionally gotten accidentally locked out. She had trouble remembering the security code for the alarm system so she made sure you had it in case she ever needed it."

"We thought it would be a convenience for both of us."

Edith said. "But after she left, I forgot all about having the code and a key in my desk. Just never gave it another thought."

"Until the day you and everyone else in town discovered that Claudia Banner was my great-aunt."

"I couldn't believe it." Color rushed back into Edith's face. Her gnarled, spotted hands knotted into fists. "It was as if her ghost had come back to haunt me. Worse yet, it was happening all over again, just like it happened all those years ago. But this time it was my grandson she, I mean you, seduced."

"I did not seduce Jeremy."

"All that talk about putting his pictures on display in your gallery. Encouraging him to do more paintings for you. It was seduction, all right, and well you know it."

"It was business, not seduction."

"You went out to dinner with him several times, too."

"We are friends, Mrs. Seaton. But not lovers."

"Only because something better came along," Edith shot back hoarsely. "You dropped my Jeremy like a hot potato when Nick Harte started to date you. Don't deny it."

"I do deny it. Every single word. You're putting your own spin on this, Edith, but I think deep down you know that it isn't the truth."

"You caused trouble between Jeremy and Nick the same way Claudia Banner did with Mitchell Madison and Sullivan Harte."

"So you took the painting the night of the storm and tried to destroy my good name in a noble attempt to defend Jeremy from my wiles?" Octavia shook her head. "I'm not buying that, Edith."

Edith sat in rigid, stubborn silence.

"Do you know what I think?" Octavia sat down in the chair across from the older woman. "I think you used Jeremy as an excuse to take revenge for something that Claudia Banner did to you all those years ago. She is beyond your reach and maybe you told yourself you had put it all behind you. But when you realized that I was her niece, the old anger came rushing back, didn't it?"

Edith flinched. "She got away with it. But then, Claudia Banner got away with everything. She never paid for the trouble and pain she caused."

"Tell me what my great-aunt did to you, Edith."

"She seduced my husband." Edith surged up out of her chair. "And then she used him."

Octavia was on her feet now. "How did she use him?"

"Phil was the accountant for Harte-Sullivan. She got him to doctor the company books while she carried out her scam. That was the reason Mitchell and Sullivan never saw the bankruptcy coming until it was too late."

Octavia drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I see."

"It was as if she was some sort of sorceress," Edith whispered. "She put my Phil under a spell for a time. The poor fool never realized how she'd manipulated him until he woke up one morning and discovered that she had vanished. He actually thought that she would contact him after the heat died down. He really believed that she loved him and wanted him to run off with her. It was months before he finally understood that he'd been used."

"Was that when you discovered his role in the bankruptcy?"

"Yes. I'd suspected he was having an affair with her, but I never dreamed that she had seduced him into helping her drive Harte-Madison into bankruptcy. I was stunned. He was a Seaton, after all. How could he do something like that?"

"But you kept the secret."

"I had no choice. I had to think of the family name. I had the children to consider. Just imagine what they would have had to face here in Eclipse Bay if it had come out that their father had had a hand in the destruction of Harte-Madison."

"It would have been rough on them."

"And then there was the financial situation. If the truth had surfaced, my husband's career as an accountant would have been destroyed. At the very least the shame and humiliation would have forced us to leave town. Where would we have gone? This was our home."

"So you buried the past as best you could. Your husband never told Mitchell and Sullivan what he'd done."

"Of course not. I pointed out to him that there was nothing to be gained by confessing his part in their disaster and everything to lose."

"You succeeded in protecting your husband and the Seaton name, but you never forgave him or Aunt Claudia."

"I swear she was some sort of witch. She never paid for her wicked works. Probably never even gave her victims a second thought."

"You're wrong there, Edith. Aunt Claudia thought about the past a lot toward the end. In a way, she was obsessed with it."

There was no need to get into the specifics, Octavia thought. No point bringing up the fact that Claudia had never even mentioned the name Seaton during those times when she had talked about her adventures in Eclipse Bay. The only people who had concerned her at the end had been the Hartes and the Madisons.

"I have no right to ask you to forgive me for what I did," Edith said. "My only excuse is that, for a while after

I discovered who you were, I went a little mad. It was as if a curtain had opened and I was looking at the past again. It all came crashing back and the only thing I could think about was punishing that dreadful woman."

"It's called visiting the sins of the father on the son, or in this case, visiting the sins of the great-aunt on the niece."

"I told myself I was doing it to show Jeremy and Nick the truth about you, but you're right, of course. I did it to avenge myself."

"So you took the Upsall and started the rumors that I was the thief."

"When I finally came to my senses, it was too late. It will all come out now, won't it? What Phil did in the past and what I tried to do to you. This time I won't be able to keep the stain off the family name. Jeremy will be embarrassed. The rest of the family and most of the people in town will think I've gone senile. And as for my friends-" Edith trailed off, bowing her head.