—

I walk out of Donna’s office, into the heat of a summer’s day. The village is bustling, every table taken in the Lobster Trap Restaurant, and a long line of tourists snakes out of Village Cone Ice Cream. But no one seems interested in the white clapboard building that houses the Tucker Cove Historical Society. When I step inside, I don’t see a single soul, and except for the ticking of a grandfather clock, it is silent. Tourists come to Maine to sail its waters and hike its forests, not to poke around inside gloomy old houses filled with dusty artifacts. I examine a glass display case containing antique dinner plates and wine goblets and silverware. It is a setting for a sit-down supper, circa 1880. Beside the place setting is an old cookbook, open to a recipe for salt mackerel baked in new milk and butter. It’s just the sort of dish that one would have been served in a coastal village like Tucker Cove. Simple fare, made with ingredients pulled from the sea.

Hanging above the glass case is an oil painting of a familiar three-masted ship in full sail, plowing through turbulent green waves. It is identical to the painting that now hangs in Brodie’s Watch. I lean in close and am so focused on the artist’s brushstrokes that I don’t realize someone has approached me from behind until the floorboard gives a squeak. With a start, I turn and see a woman watching me, her eyes enormous through the thick lenses in her glasses. Age has bowed her spine and she is only as tall as my shoulder, but her gaze is steady and alert, and she stands without the aid of a cane, her feet squarely planted in ugly but sensible shoes. Her docent name tag reads: MRS. DICKENS, which seems to match her almost too perfectly for it to be true.

“It’s a very fine painting, isn’t it?” she says.

Still surprised by her unexpected arrival, I merely nod.

    “That’s the Mercy Annabelle. She used to sail out of Wiscasset.” She smiles, laugh lines creasing a face like worn leather. “Welcome to our little museum. Is this your first time in Tucker Cove?”

“Yes.”

“Staying for a while?”

“Through the summer.”

“Ah, good for you. Too many tourists just zoom up the coast, rushing through town after town, and everything blends together for them. It takes time to feel the pulse of a place and get to know its character.” Her heavy glasses slide down her nose. Pushing them back up, she gives me a closer look. “Is there something in particular I can help you find? Some aspect of our history you’d like to know?”

“I’m staying up at Brodie’s Watch. I’m curious about its history.”

“Ah. You’re the food writer.”

“How did you know?”

“I ran into Billy Conway at the post office. He says he’s never been so happy to go to work every morning. Your blueberry muffins are getting quite the reputation in town. Ned and Billy are hoping you’ll settle down here and open up a bake shop.”

I laugh. “I’ll think about it.”

“Do you like living up on the hill?”

“It’s beautiful up there. Exactly the place you’d expect a sea captain to build his house.”

“You’ll be interested in this.” She points to a different display case. “These items belonged to Captain Brodie. He brought them back from his voyages.”

I lean in to examine the two dozen seashells which gleam under glass like colorful jewels. “He collected seashells? I never would have guessed that.”

“We had a biologist from Boston look at these specimens. She told us these shells come from all around the world. The Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, the South China Sea. Rather a sweet hobby for a big burly sea captain, don’t you think?”

    I notice the journal lying open in the case, its yellowed pages covered with meticulous handwriting.

“That’s his logbook from the earlier ship he was master of, The Raven. He seemed to be a man of few words. Most of his entries are strictly about the weather and sailing conditions, so it’s hard to tell much about the man himself. Clearly, the sea was his first love.”

And it was ultimately his doom, I think, as I study the handwriting of a man long dead. Fair winds, following seas he had written that day of the voyage. But the weather is always changing and the sea is a treacherous mistress. I wonder about his final words in The Minotaur logbook, just before his ship went down. Did he catch the scent of death in the wind, hear its scream in the rigging? Did he realize that he would never again set foot in the house where I now sleep?

“Do you have anything else in your collection that belonged to Captain Brodie?” I ask.

“There are a few more items upstairs.” The doorbell tinkles and she turns as a family with young children enters. “Why don’t you wander around and take a look? All the rooms are open to visitors.”

As she greets the new arrivals, I walk through a doorway into the parlor, where chairs upholstered in red velvet are arranged around a tea table, as though for a ladies’ gathering. On the wall are twin portraits of the gray-haired man and woman who once owned this building. The man looks stiff and uncomfortable in his high-collared shirt, and his wife stares from her portrait with steely eyes, as if to demand what I am doing in her parlor.

In the other room, I hear a child scampering about and the mother pleads: “No no, sweetheart! Put that vase down!”

I escape the noisy family and head into the kitchen, where a wax cake, artificial fruit, and a giant plastic turkey represent the makings of a holiday meal. I consider what it was like to cook such a meal on the cast-iron wood-burning stove, the backbreaking labor of hauling in water, feeding wood to the flames, plucking the bird. No, thank you; a modern kitchen for me.

    “Mommeee! Let me go!” The child’s shrieks move closer.

I flee up a back staircase and ascend narrow steps that servants must once have climbed. Displayed in the second-floor hallway are portraits of distinguished residents of Tucker Cove from a century ago, and I recognize names which are now displayed on storefronts in the village. Laite. Gordon. Tucker.

I do not see the name Brodie.

The first bedroom has a four-poster bed and in the next bedroom is an antique crib and a child’s rocking horse. The last room, at the end of the hall, is dominated by a massive sleigh bed and an armoire, the door open to show a lace wedding gown hanging inside. But I pay no attention to the furniture; instead my attention is riveted on what hangs over the fireplace.

It is a painting of a striking man with wavy black hair and a prominent brow. He stands posed before a window, and over his left shoulder is a view of a ship in the harbor, its sails aloft. His dark coat is simple and unadorned but perfectly tailored to his broad shoulders, and in his right hand he holds a gleaming brass sextant. I do not need to look at the label affixed to the painting; I already know who this man is because I have seen him by moonlight. I have felt his hand caress my cheek and heard his voice whisper to me in the darkness.

Under my roof, no harm will come to you.

“Ah. I see you’ve found him,” says the docent.

As she joins me in front of the fireplace, my gaze remains fixed on the portrait. “It’s Jeremiah Brodie.”

“He was a fine-looking fellow, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“I imagine the ladies in town must have swooned whenever he came striding down the gangplank. What a shame he left no heirs.”

For a moment we stand side by side, both of us spellbound by the image of a man who has been dead for nearly a century and a half. A man whose eyes seem to gaze directly at me. Only at me.

    “It was a terrible tragedy for this village when his ship went down,” says Mrs. Dickens. “He was so young, only thirty-nine, but he knew the sea as well as anyone could. He grew up on the water. Spent more of his life at sea than he did on land.”

“Yet he built that beautiful house. Now that I’ve been living in Brodie’s Watch for a while, I’m starting to appreciate just how special it really is.”

“So you like it there.”

I hesitate. “Yes,” I finally say, and it’s true; I do like it there. Mice and ghost and all.

“Some people have quite the opposite reaction to that house.”

“What do you mean?”

“Every old house comes with a past. Sometimes people can sense if it’s a dark past.”

Her gaze makes me uncomfortable; I turn away from her and once again lock eyes with the painting. “I admit, when I first saw the house, I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay.”

“What did you feel?”

“As if—as if the house didn’t want me there.”

“Yet you moved in anyway.”

“Because that feeling changed the moment I stepped inside. Suddenly I didn’t feel unwelcome anymore. I felt as if it accepted me.”