And worry because of Hannah.
"Valerian root," Piper muttered, shaking her head as she started up the steep stairs in the small vestibule to her tiny, traditional half-Cape with its side entrance and massive brick chimney. Unlike many antique houses throughout New England, hers hadn't been expanded over the centuries. The first floor consisted of a small front parlor, a fair-sized keeping room across the back, off of which were a tiny borning room and buttery. The keeping room, with its large, open-hearth fireplace, served as her kitchen and main living area. She'd converted the borning room, where in past centuries women gave birth, into her office and had kept the buttery as a pantry; it had its own trapdoor down to the dirt cellar. A cozy bedroom and bathroom under low, slanted ceilings comprised the upstairs. The chimney served fireplaces in the parlor and bedroom as well as the keeping room, a plus on frigid, damp winter days.
Putting thoughts of her elderly aunt out of her mind for the moment, Piper pulled on shorts and an old polo shirt one of her brothers had thrown out two years ago. It wasn't one of her dress-mirror above a battered pine bureau that had come with the house. Dark circles under her eyes, freckles standing out in her pale face, worry etched in her brow. Hannah would see the worry and be annoyed. She hated having anyone fretting about her, although it seemed as if everyone in Frye's Cove did.
Piper quickly brushed and braided her hair. Given its weight and straightness, the braid wouldn't last past noon.
Two minutes later, she was on her mountain bike with the valerian root tucked in her knapsack and the breeze in her face. It was a warm, beautiful morning with low humidity and not a puff of fog in sight. Only a few fair-weather clouds dotted the sky. Every oak leaf, every pine needle, every blade of marsh grass was in sharp focus, and the air smelled clean and fresh, scrubbed by yesterday's rain. The only sounds were of birds, the wind, the tide, and a few distant boats.
Slowly, Piper relaxed as she pedaled along her narrow, winding, isolated road, a rarity on Cape Cod. It dead-ended behind her, just past the Frye House, at the back of a wildlife refuge that was accessible only at its opposite side, which was actually within the boundaries of the next town over; visitors were discouraged from making it that far out. Tourists would sometimes drive out her road, missing or ignoring the dead-end signs, then have to turn around and head back through the protected marshes and meadows to the village of Frye's Cove.
Frye's Cove wasn't a tourist town by Cape Cod standards. It didn't have spectacular beaches or cute, upscale shops and restaurants or even that many places to stay. There were beaches, if not miles of them, and there was breathtaking scenery, and there was potential, a lot of it, for Frye's Cove to become a favored tourist destination. It had its share of summer people who preferred a quieter retreat and didn't mind its shortcomings, but the year-round residents of what was just, in their view, another historic village on Cape Cod Bay had simply never given much thought to tourism. Frye's Cove was where they lived, worked, and usually died. That was it. They had exploited and battled both land and sea for centuries, but now, for the most part, had made their peace.
Piper paused at the sliver of a town green to catch her breath. There were a post office, a pharmacy, a hardware store, a bank, an iffy antiques shop, and—the big news in town—the almost-restored Macintosh Inn. A Macintosh had built the place as a tavern back in the 1840s, only to lose it, in true Macintosh fashion, to mounting debts and another failed moneymaking scheme. In their three hundred years on Cape Cod, the Macintosh family had made and lost fortunes in shipping, salt making, cranberries, whaling, and who knew what else. Theirs was a history filled with tragedy, bad decisions, shortsightedness, and relentless optimism buoyed by an occasional bit of glory. Having a notorious whaling captain in the family tree would have been plenty for Piper, but every manner of hero, victim, and scoundrel seemed to lurk in the Macintosh past.