At the same moment, Gabi exclaimed, “Pizza? Yesss!”
“What’s this about pizza?” Ivy tottered in from the hall. When she saw they had visitors, she announced, “Oh, look, who’s here. The Armstrong boys, two of my favorite people.”
“Hello, Mrs. Winslow,” they chorused, sounding even more identical than they looked.
“I was telling Zoey that after Aidan and I unload your mulch, we’d like to pick up a couple of pizzas and bring them back for all of us to eat here. Is that all right with you?” Nick asked.
“That would be wonderful. The girls and I will make a salad, too.”
Nick’s grin was outshone by his son’s. Why do I feel like the two of them just received permission to take my niece and me on a double date? Zoey asked herself.
But an hour later when they were all seated around the table and she tasted the pizza, she was glad her aunt had said yes; it was so delicious she devoured as many slices as the teenagers did.
“Now, who’s ready for a game of cribbage?” Ivy asked after they had eaten. “We can play with partners.”
“No, we can’t. We’ve got an odd number of people. I’ll sit the game out,” Zoey quickly volunteered.
About five years ago, Ivy confided the reason she had always challenged Zoey, Jessica and their boyfriends to play cribbage against her and Sylvia when they were younger: she was secretly assessing the boys’ characters and compatibility with her nieces. She claimed a card game was a much better indicator of whether the couple had a future together than whatever the boyfriends said and did when “they were working hard to make a good impression on your two old aunties.”
“So if they cheated or they were poor sports, that disqualified them?” Zoey had asked.
“For starters, yes. But I wasn’t just watching them—I was watching you two girls, as well. I’d look for patience. Teamwork. Willingness to forgive each other’s mistakes. I was also looking for a spark of enthusiasm. You need that in a partnership, you know.”
At the time, Zoey had found her aunt’s practice comical, but tonight it seemed uncomfortably close to matchmaking. She wasn’t sure whether Ivy intended to evaluate her and Nick or Aidan and Gabi’s compatibility, but she wanted no part of it.
“I don’t know how to play,” Aidan said. “So I should be the one to sit the game out.”
Gabi immediately told him it wasn’t that hard and Ivy said, “You and I can share a hand, Aidan. The oldster will be on the same team as the youngsters. You and Zoey will be the middle-ster team, Nick. We always bet a penny per point so I hope you brought your wallet.”
As happy as Zoey was to hear her aunt in such good spirits, she was still reluctant. “Aidan will get the gist of it after a couple practice rounds. Then you and Gabi can be a team, Aunt Ivy—women against men. I’ve got other things to do.”
Ivy looked her squarely in the eye and Zoey understood her undertone when she said, “It’s only a game. It’s not a lifelong commitment.”
“Zo-ey. Zo-ey. Zo-ey.” Nick drummed the table with each syllable, and Aidan and Gabi joined his chant.
“Stop ganging up on me,” Zoey whined, covering her ears. Which only made them chant louder, until she finally conceded, “All right, all right. I’ll play. But only if you make it worth my while… a dime per point.”
“Now you’re talking.” Ivy beamed. “This is going to be fun. Trust me, you won’t regret it.”
Chapter Six
If only we hadn’t played so many games of cribbage, Aidan might have had time to put the screens in my windows and I wouldn’t be so hot I can’t sleep. But even as she kicked the sheet off her legs, Zoey knew the heat wasn’t the real reason for her insomnia; it was because her mind was whirling with uncertainty and mixed emotions. So she lay awake, staring at the ceiling and trying to get some perspective on everything that had happened that day.
She smiled when she thought about how she and Nick had won at cribbage three times in a row. Then they switched teams and played men against women—or “boys against girls” as Ivy called them. The foursome was so competitive that every time one couple won a game, someone from the other pair insisted on a rematch or a new partner. It was by far the most raucous evening Zoey had ever spent playing cards at her aunt’s house and she completely forgot Ivy was likely sizing everyone up for their romantic rapport. But even if she had remembered, she wouldn’t have cared because she was having such a good time.
Just after nine o’clock, her aunt had announced she needed to call it a night. “Now that the range isn’t off-limits, I’m going to make a cup of tea and drink it in the living room before I amble upstairs to bed.” She undoubtedly was planning to gaze at the portrait of Denny, too, as was her evening ritual.
“I’ll go up with you in a few minutes,” Zoey offered, knowing that her aunt often needed her arm for support and balance.
“No, no. Don’t interrupt your game on my account. You kids are getting on like peas and carrots.” She shot Zoey a self-satisfied look.
“Yeah, we are, but it’s a school night. We should go,” Nick said.
He suggested before they left that Aidan should bring the screens down from the attic and store them in the garage so they’d be handy the next time he came over. Gabi volunteered to help so Nick stayed in the kitchen with Zoey.
After counting the change she’d won, she announced, “Two dollars and thirty cents. Not too shabby. A couple more hands and I would’ve have been able to afford to buy an ice cream cone at Bleecker’s tomorrow.”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
Zoey snickered. “You sound awfully sure of yourself for a man who won… how much? Twenty cents?”
“Forty,” he admitted. “But I meant you wouldn’t be able to buy a cone because Bleecker’s doesn’t open for the season until Saturday.”
Zoey groaned. “That’s torture. I’ve been craving their cranberry ice cream all winter.”
Dune Island was home to a commercial, organic cranberry bog. Local restauranteurs and eatery owners added cranberries to everything from lemonade and cocktails to ice cream and hot dogs, as well as in the usual things like stuffing, muffins and juice.
“Choco-cran or van-cran?” Nick used the popular abbreviations for the flavors.
“Choco-cran, of course.”
He hung his head, shaking it sadly. “Just when I was starting to like you…”
“You were only just starting to like me?” Zoey feigned haughtiness. “Kind of slow, aren’t you?”
“Why, when did you start to like me?” Nick’s tone was light but his eyes were intense and Zoey felt startlingly self-conscious beneath his gaze.
“Mm… I’ll let you know when that happens,” she teased, breaking the spell.
“Ouch.” He slapped a hand over his heart as if he’d been shot. “That hurts because it’s true.”
She laughed and said, “Nah, I’m just kidding.”
“Seriously though, we’ll have to go to Bleecker’s on opening day. You know they have a tradition of giving the first hundred customers an extra scoop for free, don’t you?”
“That’s cool.” Zoey’s answer had been deliberately noncommittal. And now as she lay in bed, she pondered if he’d been suggesting all five of them should go? Or just him and her? As friends or on a date? She couldn’t decide how she felt about the prospect of going out with Nick.
On one hand, if her relationship with Erik had taught Zoey anything, it was that she could have saved herself—and her retirement fund—a world of hurt if only she had paid attention to the warning signs when they first cropped up. Although Nick was growing on her now, the fact that she’d started out with qualms about him, due to his friendship with Mark, was not a good sign. And emotionally, she still wasn’t ready to start dating.
On the other hand, as Ivy suggested, it wasn’t as if Zoey needed to make a lifelong commitment. And her best friend Lauren certainly would have been thrilled for her if she had a casual summer fling. After such a difficult co
uple of weeks—such a difficult winter—hanging out with Nick tonight had been a pleasant diversion from the things that had been occupying her time and thoughts. Zoey wouldn’t mind repeating the experience.
The more she got to know him, the more she doubted that Nick’s interest in her aunt—and in her aunt’s house—was solely motivated by financial gain. Now that Mark was off the island and Zoey didn’t feel quite so uptight, she could better appreciate the ways Nick demonstrated real fondness for Ivy. Like by coming to Sylvia’s funeral. Or by not pushing her to remodel the kitchen. Even by helping her out of her chair or laughing at her jokes. Maybe the two things were both true: he was fond of Ivy and he wanted to profit financially from whatever renovation projects Mark convinced her she needed to do.
In any case, since he hadn’t explicitly asked her out, not even for an ice cream cone, Zoey figured she was getting ahead of herself, and she didn’t have to decide tonight whether to say yes or no. Obviously, Aidan hadn’t asked Gabi out, either, but that didn’t stop Zoey from worrying that a romance would develop between them.
She could tell by her niece’s giddy behavior that the evening had provided as much levity for Gabi as it had provided for her. She desperately wanted the young girl to be happy here. To feel stronger and more serene than when she’d arrived on Dune Island, just as Zoey always had. Which was exactly why she was concerned about the two teenagers becoming more than friends.
Granted, Zoey’s impression of Aidan was that he was well-mannered, diligent and smart. She couldn’t imagine many other guys his age who’d be so content to spend an evening playing cards with his dad and the elderly lady they worked for, even if it also meant he got to be around a pretty, winsome girl like Gabi. So there was nothing about him in particular that gave Zoey pause.
Her hesitation was that Gabi was sensitive, easily influenced and had a tendency to be a people-pleaser. Plus, her birthday was in August, which meant she was one of the younger students in the ninth grade. Although in some ways she was mature for a girl who wasn’t quite fifteen, she was still nearly three years younger than Aidan, who mentioned he’d turn eighteen in October. At those ages, a few years made a big difference. And Gabi had already demonstrated, through her antics with her father’s car, that she didn’t exercise good judgment when she was involved with a boy. Zoey wanted to prevent her from making any more mistakes like the kind she’d made at home, as well as from getting her feelings hurt.
I’ve already hurt her feelings enough myself, she lamented, recalling their conversation on the beach. Although she’d been trying to model openness, Zoey regretted ever telling Gabi about her financial situation. She hadn’t expected her disclosure to affect her niece the way it did. Inwardly, she resolved to be more careful about what she shared. She wondered how often Gabi worried about her father’s and Kathleen’s problems, too. I’m glad she has some distance from them right now. I hope the longer she’s here, the freer she feels.
Still sleepless, Zoey reluctantly contemplated Gabi’s theory about Sylvia and Mr. Witherell. She would have preferred to dismiss it out of hand, but that was the problem with gossip: once the seed was planted, it took root, no matter how inane it was.
One thing Zoey did know for certain was that it would have been completely out of character for her aunt to execute a scheme like the one Gabi suggested. Sylvia was too kind and frankly, too mild-mannered. Zoey couldn’t imagine her plotting to deceive anyone—especially not Ivy, who loved her like a sister. Furthermore, Ivy often described how tender Sylvia had been to Marcus, patiently nursing him through bout after bout of illness. From her own experience, Zoey understood how much love and compassion that must have taken. No, Sylvia hadn’t married Marcus for his money—Zoey was sure of that.
However, she kept thinking about the curious exchange Mr. Witherell had with Mark at the funeral. She was still 99.9 percent confident that Mr. Witherell had been trying to rile her cousin in retaliation for his arrogance. But if Zoey allowed herself to entertain Gabi’s theory—as implausible as it was—that Mr. Witherell was Marcus Jr.’s father, then his comment to his “grandson” made a bit more sense.
If he was able to hear Mark’s rude jab about quitting tobacco, then he might have been able to hear him bragging to his friends that one day he’d inherit the house, she speculated. According to Gabi’s classmates, Mr. Witherell resented being shut out of Sylvia’s and the baby’s lives. If that was true, it might explain why he’d want to take Mark down a notch. To let him know that carrying the Winslow name didn’t necessarily make him a Winslow. Maybe after keeping his son’s paternity a secret all his life, Mr. Witherell felt more at liberty to disclose it after Sylvia died.
“That’s absurd,” Zoey said aloud.
And yet… what about the fact that her aunt delivered Marcus Jr. more than a month early? She’d never heard any stories about him being underweight. One explanation for that could have been that she was pregnant before she got married. According to Ivy, whenever she and her sister-in-law went shopping or out to the bank, all the men vied for her attention. What if Mr. Witherell had been one of them? Sylvia and Marcus had had a very short courtship. It was entirely possible that on the day they wed, she wouldn’t have known for certain that she was already pregnant by someone she’d dated earlier—or pregnant by Marcus, for that matter. Maybe Marcus Jr.’s paternity was always a question in her mind, Zoey hypothesized. In Mr. Witherell’s mind, too. After all, he didn’t tell Mark he absolutely wasn’t Marcus Winslow III. He only said he wouldn’t be too sure of that.
Which brought Zoey to her cousin’s reaction—rather, to his overreaction—to Mr. Witherell’s remark. Not only had he harangued the old man long after he’d hobbled out of view, but he’d instructed Gabi to cross the street if she saw him, too. It was understandable that Mark didn’t appreciate what he’d said, but why not shrug it off? And why go to the lengths of telling his young cousin to avoid him? Was he afraid of what she might find out once they started talking? It makes me even more sure that when Mark attended school here, he heard the same rumors Gabi heard—but it seems as if he’s not entirely sure they’re baseless.
Zoey bolted upright in bed. Could Mr. Witherell’s remark have anything to do with what Mark was looking for in the attic? Was he searching for proof of his father’s paternity?
Down the hall, a door creaked. Zoey froze, her skin prickling. But it was only Moby, making his rounds. Her reaction to the eerie noise reminded her that she was letting her imagination run wild about Mr. Witherell being Marcus Jr.’s father. It was understandable why Gabi would believe the rumor; she was a gullible teenager who wanted Zoey to inherit their aunt’s home. And it was equally understandable why Marcus would fear that kind of gossip; he was a money-grubber who imagined his inheritance was at stake. But Zoey knew the possibility that Mr. Witherell was Marcus Jr.’s father was infinitesimal at best. And as she’d told her niece, there was no way she was going to bring up the topic with him or with Ivy, anyway. So I might as well put the idea out of my mind, she thought, before falling back against the pillow and going to sleep at last.
“Guess what?” Zoey excitedly asked Gabi the following Friday. She had just finished running a three-mile loop around Benjamin’s Manor, ending at Rose Beach where she met her niece after school. It had become her daily afternoon ritual, since that’s when Ivy was napping.
“My dad called?”
Ack. Why don’t I think before I speak? “No, sorry. Nothing as exciting as that.”
“Oh.”
“I’m sure he’ll call as soon as he can. Kathleen told me the center discourages the patients from—” She interrupted herself mid-sentence, unsure whether ‘patients’ was the right word. “I don’t know what they call the people who are in a recovery program, do you?”
“Drunks.” Gabi’s tone was decidedly sarcastic. Since she’d arrived on Dune Island, she’d said very little about her father, causing Zoey to suspect she was angry at him. The edge in her niece’s voice now con
firmed her suspicions. Zoey didn’t blame her, but she wasn’t going to refer to Scott that way herself.
“Kathleen said your dad isn’t allowed to make phone calls for couple of weeks.”
“Why? Did she take away his phone, too?”
“No. It’s one of the rules at the cen—” Zoey started to say until she realized Gabi was being sarcastic again. That wasn’t like her. Had she had another argument with Kathleen? Was there a problem at school? “Is something bothering you?”
Gabi shook her head. “What were you going to tell me?”
Zoey’s excitement had flagged, but she said, “This morning I got a call about a librarian position I applied for. I have an interview in Providence a week from Monday.”
“Providence?”
“Yeah, but if I get the job, it doesn’t start until late August. So you don’t have to worry about moving and enrolling in a new school again.”
Finally, a smile on Gabi’s face. “Good, because I think I’m going to join the band.”
“Hey, that’s great!” Zoey had been hoping she’d start playing her flute again but she didn’t want to nag her so she hadn’t said anything.
“Yeah, but we’ll have practice after school and I’m not sure how long it lasts, so… I’m probably not going to be able to meet you here any more.”
“That’s fine. You never want to go in swimming anyway,” Zoey teased. Most people considered the water and weather still too cold for swimming, but she didn’t. Every day she’d suggest they zip home, change their clothes, and then return to the beach to take a dip. And every day, Gabi refused.
“You sure you’re okay with that? I mean, with me not coming home right after school?”
Would Kathleen and Scott have objected? Gabi was so motivated to excel academically that Zoey didn’t see any reason not to let her manage her own schedule. “Of course I’m fine with it. I know you’ll keep up with your school work. Just call us if you’re going to be late for supper or you need a ride.” Zoey stopped walking and held up her index finger. “Hey, I have an idea! If this is going to be your last free afternoon for a while, why don’t we zip home and change and then come back here for a dip?”
Aunt Ivy's Cottage: A totally gripping and emotional page turner Page 11
