Piper contained an unexpected smile. "No, he just threatened to call the police."
Hannah seemed disappointed. "Why on earth would he have called the police?"
"I was trespassing, Hannah."
"Phooey."
"You sold your house to him. You can't come and go as you please anymore, and neither can I. This is the last valerian root you'll have picked before dawn unless you manage to plant some off your deck."
"The committee would consider it a weed."
The committee might have a point. "Look, Hannah, I know this isn't easy for you—"
But her aunt wasn't listening. "Was he pleasant?"
"He wasn't totally insufferable, but he was not in any sense of the word pleasant." She quickly dismissed an image of his searing eyes, his tousled dark hair, and stubble of beard. "He made it quite clear he expects to be left alone and didn't come to Cape Cod to mingle with the locals."
"You're his only neighbor—"
"He's rich enough that he doesn't need neighbors."
"Nobody's that rich," Hannah said with a sniff.
"Well, he obviously chose your house because of its isolation. I wouldn't count on him indulging the eccentricities of its former owner."
Her aunt blinked in surprise. "I've never been an eccentric."
There wasn't a person in Frye's Cove and probably not on Cape Cod who didn't think Hannah Frye was an eccentric, one of the few things saving her from having her mental fitness openly challenged. As it was, there were stirrings. Worrisome stirrings. Piper pushed them aside. "I'm sorry you were wrong about Clate Jackson."
"Wrong? Oh, I'm not wrong. He's the man for you, Piper. What does he look like?"
Piper hesitated, a mistake.
Her aunt pounced, smiling. "Ah."
"It was still dark, I wasn't really paying attention, I couldn't—"
"Nonsense."
But Piper didn't want to admit that she'd paid very close attention to Clate Jackson in his tattered jeans and unbuttoned denim shirt. "He's not particularly good looking, I can tell you that much."
"He wouldn't be. According to my vision—"
"Hannah." Piper gritted her teeth. "You know I don't believe in that stuff."
Hannah calmly tucked wisps of white hair into a hand-crocheted bun cover. "It doesn't matter what you believe. Your destiny is your destiny. And so is his."
"I don't believe you put a spell on him."
She snorted. "This isn't 'Bewitched,' Piper. I don't put spells on people. I merely appeal to the life force and—well, I won't get started."
"Thank you."
Hannah had been muttering about romance, destiny, vision, and the stars for weeks. In Piper's estimation, it was all an attempt to justify selling her house to the first buyer willing to meet her price and set her up with a microwave, new dishes, new furniture, good wiring, town water, and a bathroom with a whirlpool tub.
"Fate and destiny don't have anything to do with Clate Jackson buying the Frye House," Piper said. "You just got tired of dealing with extension cords."
"I have at least one outlet on every wall. Do you want to see?"
Piper laughed in spite of her frustrations and concerns. Okay, so her aunt was not only incorrigible and maybe dotty, but she was also very happy in her new life. That had to count for something. "I'll pass, thank you."
Hannah grinned. "Come, Piper, sit down. I have a nice peppermint tea that will soothe your nerves. You need to calm down after your first encounter with your Mr. Jackson."
"He's not my Mr. Jackson. He just wants to be left alone."
"No." She spoke with certainty, her faith in her vision, or whatever it was, unshakable. "On the contrary. That's the last thing he wants."
"You haven't even met him!"
"Not in this life, no."
That did it. Piper headed for the doorway. "I've got a full day ahead. Enjoy your valerian root, Hannah. Don't do any mischief with it."
"Mischief? Me? What do you mean, Piper?"
She glanced back and saw, amazingly, that her aunt was truly mystified. "I mean Stan Carlucci."
Hannah waved a bony hand. "That fool. I served him a perfectly ordinary medicinal tea that was meant to benefit him and everyone else in town. We'd all have an easier time of it if Stan Carlucci had improved digestion."
Carlucci was a recently elected member of the board of selectmen whose ideas about the future of Frye's Cove differed from Hannah's. She generally considered people who disagreed with her narrow-minded and dead wrong, but at least she would grudgingly acknowledge their right to hold an opinion different from hers. Stan Carlucci, however, tested her ability to agree to disagree, particularly when he sneered at the way Frye's Cove used to do things, namely when Hannah was keeping the town's books. She'd taken his comments as a personal affront. Possibly they had been meant as such. A relative newcomer to town, Stan Carlucci didn't have the benevolent view of Hannah-as-orphan that so many did.
"He said he had cramps for three days," Piper pointed out.