Tess dropped into her own chair at her computer. She did a great deal of her work, but not all, by computer. She still had an easel, oil pastels, drawing pencils, watercolors. She liked to touch and feel what she created, not just see it on a computer screen. Her screen was blank now, her computer in sleep mode. Her U-shaped work area, stacked and overflowing with samples, files, invoices, work in progress, wasn't as tidy and uncluttered as Susanna's. They were yin and yang, she liked to tell her more artistic friends. That was why they could work in the same space without killing each other.

"It was a duel," Tess said. "It's just that it happened to take place in the carriage house. Benjamin Morse challenged Jedidiah Thorne to a duel after Jedidiah accused him of abusing his wife, Adelaide. Jedidiah killed him and went to prison because it just so happened that dueling was illegal in Massachusetts. If Benjamin had killed Jedidiah instead, he'd have gone to prison."

"You're splitting hairs. It was murder."

Whatever it was, it happened in the carriage house within a few weeks of its completion. Jedidiah Thorne never got to live in the estate he'd built in Beacon-by-the-Sea. The Thornes had been seamen on the North Shore for centuries, but he was the first to make any money, prospering in shipping in those first years following the Civil War. After serving five years in prison for killing Benjamin Morse, Jedidiah headed west, only to return, finally, to the East Coast just before his death. It was his ghost people said haunted the carriage house to this day. It was where he'd killed a man-it was where his spirit remained. Why, no one seemed to know.

"I don't believe in ghosts," Tess said. Susanna rocked back in her chair. She was dressed in smart, slim pants and a shirt-top, naturally graceful, her nails done, her makeup perfect. She'd left San Antonio for Boston late last summer, moving herself and her twin daughters in with her grandmother in Tess's old neighborhood. There was an ex-, or soon-to-be-ex-, husband back in Texas. Susanna didn't like talking about him.