House on the Harbor

by Elizabeth Bromke

  “I think it’s awful, sure. But Kate is there now, reading some private paperwork. So maybe there’s another heirloom for Clara, you know? Maybe Mom put together the will, then later added a letter that indicated Clara should actually keep The Bungalows or the cottage or the land. Or maybe there was cash left. Michael didn’t tell us about her liquid assets, right?”

  All good points, and all reasonable assumptions.

  “If Mom left Clara out of the will, Amelia—” Megan went on, as Amelia thrust the brass key into the lock and turned it, spurring Dobi into a feverish barking barrage.

  Amelia answered before Megan could finish. “We don’t know what the letter says, Megan. Mom was kooky, but she wasn’t evil. I’m positive she left something substantial for Clara, too.”

  “But what if she didn’t?” Megan pressed.

  Amelia scooped Dobi into her arms and attached a thin leash to the dog’s collar before frowning at her younger sister. “Why wouldn’t she?”

  Megan crossed her arms. “You know exactly why.”

  Chapter 12—Clara

  Clara unlocked the door at the end of her hallway, effectively sneaking in during the tail end of the lunch period.

  Any moment now, stinky pubescent pre-teens and teenagers would be tumbling into the hall, lining up outside one of the four classrooms, anxious to collapse into a plastic desk chair where they would spend the next fifty-five minutes complaining, peeking at their phones, and generally doing anything other than learning.

  It was Clara’s burden to bring them back on board. One she relished. One she was good at. Her kids, as she called her students both affectionately and sometimes aggravatedly, had become her world. Even before her mother died, Clara wrapped up all of her hopes and dreams in her classes. Their test scores were her test scores. Their spelling errors were her spelling errors. Their engagement in the lesson was hers. And their bad moods were hers, too. It was a symbiotic relationship of the highest order.

  They taught each other.

  And today’s lesson was going to fail everyone. Especially Clara.

  She propped the heavy wooden door, the same one that the old school was built around in the early twentieth century, the one that sequestered her with hormonal seventh and eighth graders.

  “Miss Hannigan?” a small voice echoed from the doorway as Clara tucked her handbag into the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet.

  She turned on a sensible clog heel to see Mercy Hennings standing there, her hands clutching her backpack straps at the shoulders. Mercy Hennings was possibly the prettiest girl at Birch Harbor Secondary, even when compared against the makeup-faced seniors. And, surprisingly, Mercy was by far the kindest.

  She was Clara’s favorite, actually. Yes. Teachers had favorite students.

  “Hi, Mercy,” Clara answered. “Is everything okay?” They glanced up at the clock at the same time, budgeting how many minutes they had for whatever private conversation the girl was hoping to start.

  “You weren’t here this morning,” Mercy pointed out.

  Clara nodded. “I know. Did things go well with the sub? I had a family matter to handle.”

  The girl shrugged. “It went okay. I just wanted to pass in my homework to you instead of to the substitute.”

  Clara smiled. This was classic Mercy. Anxious. Worrisome. “Thanks, Mercy. I’ll take it.” She reached out as the girl handed over a neatly typed page.

  After glancing at it, Clara frowned. “I think this is the wrong paper, sweetheart.”

  Mercy had given her a science report rather than the literature analysis she’d assigned the week before. The girl winced and began shuffling furiously through her backpack.

  “Mercy, don’t worry about it. You can bring it in tomorrow.”

  “No, no. I’ll find it. I promise. I don’t want to use my homework pass—”

  Clara held up a hand. “You don’t have to. Just bring it tomorrow. No problem, okay?”

  But Mercy would not accept the exception, apologizing again before zipping her backpack in disappointment and muttering that she’d run home after school and bring it back by four o’clock.

  Frowning and sighing, Clara again redirected her. “I won’t be here, Mercy. I have some things going on that I have to see to after school.”

  The bell rang, and Mercy muttered a final apology then scurried off through the halls just before fifth period piled up by the doorway.

  “Good afternoon!” Clara sang out as cheerfully as she could muster.

  Typically, a day at work could distract Clara from bad news that seemed to take a regular hold on her personal life. She could sink her fears into Robert Frost or Edgar Allan Poe and find herself deep in the enchantment of bringing to life the old stuff for the new set of emerging readers. Emerging literarians, as she often called her students to their half-hearted scoffs.

  But not today. All through her grammar lesson she kept stealing glances at her phone, waiting for a text from Kate. Some indication that the will was phony or wrong.

  Anything.

  But it never came.

  Fifth hour slogged along. Then sixth. By seventh hour, Clara’s planning period, she was ready to ask Mrs. Adamski if she could leave before the final bell.

  She shuffled the papers on her desk into tidy piles, turned her computer off, and collected her handbag. Just as she opened the door to leave, her phone buzzed loudly.

  Scrambling for it, Clara nearly missed the call. It was Kate.

  “I don’t have much news,” her older sister admitted, as Clara hesitated to leave her classroom.

  Feeling the threat of tears, Clara thought better of heading to the principal’s office. Instead, she slid into a student desk and asked Kate to explain.

  “Well,” Kate started, “I talked to Michael, and he thinks we have a case for protesting the will.”

  “Protesting?”

  “Right,” Kate answered. Clara could hear traffic in the background. “You should have a claim. The fact that you were totally left out is unconscionable. Michael agreed, but... ”

  “But what?” Clara dropped her purse on the desk and stood, pacing now. A renewed energy coursed through her veins. Anger, probably. Anxiety, too.

  “There’s a complication,” Kate said at last.

  Clara shook her head. “What complication? That Mom was losing her mind? I fed her. I gave her sponge baths, Kate. I was there with her in the cottage every single day until the end. How could she do this?”

  Kate’s voice shook as she replied, “Mom wasn’t well. But, that’s not the complication, Clara.”

  “Then what is the complication?”

  A pause filled their phone call, and a million things ran through Clara’s mind. The unfairness. The bizarreness.

  Something did not add up.

  Especially when Kate said, “Just, you know. Something funky. A complication. Clara, I have to go. Let’s get together later tonight. We’ll talk it through, okay?”

  But Clara didn’t have a chance to agree. Kate had already hung up.

  Chapter 13—Kate

  Kate slid into her car and pressed her fingers to her throbbing temples. She had two choices. Read the letter now, or read it with Amelia and Megan, people who knew the truth and could support her if the letter was upsetting.

  But that was just the issue. What was in the letter? Was it something she’d prefer to keep private?

  Who knew?

  She’d share it with Amelia and Megan. They’d figure everything out together and then bring Clara in. They’d fight the will, the properties and the furniture and heirlooms inside of the properties would be split evenly, and they’d all move on. Back to normal.

  Kate would find an affordable, smaller house. Maybe closer to the boys. Clara would keep teaching and carry on as Birch Harbor’s pretty hermit. Maybe, Clara would even take on the family membership plan at the Country Club and start hosting stilted dinner affairs where she flitted from catered table to catered table.

  D
oubtful, but at least Clara could start to love her life for once.

  Amelia would land an acting gig and never talk to them again once she found that fame she’d been searching for. And Megan would get a divorce and stay put in her three-bedroom two-story in the suburbs, doing whatever it was she did with her free time. Scrolling through her phone with a permanent scowl, probably.

  With the plan firmly in mind, Kate dialed Amelia and threw her car into reverse.

  Her sister answered on the first ring. “Hey, how’d it go?”

  Kate replied quickly, her breath shallow. “Meet me at the house on the harbor. I’m on my way there now. Bring Megan.”

  ***

  Kate stood on the street side of the house. Harbor Avenue stretched like an artery from the south side of the marina up through to the village, but it forked off into something of a frontage road, offering private access to the strip of homes that dotted the lake.

  Each of the houses along that narrow side street was immaculately maintained. The Hannigan home, however, less so. Clara had done all she could, no doubt, but she—unlike the couples and families who summered in Birch Harbor—didn’t quite have the motivation or even the means to hire a landscaper or a handyman to come and regularly help with upkeep. Plus, Nora had refused to budget for it.

  In Nora’s years of tending to various rental properties, she relied, as she often said in a put-on Blanche DuBois drawl, on the kindness of strangers.

  That wasn’t entirely true, since there were few strangers among those who lived in Birch Harbor year-round. However, Nora was a woman who got her way.

  A sweet smile to the custodian at Birch Harbor Secondary set her up with an emergency contact for water leaks or power outages.

  The right compliment to the groundskeeper at the Country Club resulted in a lifetime of monthly hedge trims and brush-and-bulky hauls.

  As for nearly everything else, well, Nora had figured it out herself. Applying her father’s knowledge and her mother’s intellect, she came to be able to fight her way to fix or update anything all by herself. No hired man necessary. Just a second trip to the salon to touch up her manicure.

  Still, it was curious that, when Nora decided she was abandoning the big house for her creek-side cottage, she also abandoned her hard work there. And with that, the helpful friends who no longer found their paycheck in the enigmatic smile and home-baked goods of their patroness. Those gentlemen, who’d aged along with Nora, found other ways to spend their time.

  Unsurprisingly, Nora allowed her daughters to pick up the slack, much of which fell to Clara. She grew tired of it, or so was Kate’s observation of the matter. But it was an observation she refused to share, since she wasn’t helping much herself.

  But, Kate helped in another way. She managed The Bungalows, offering robust contracts that stipulated far-reaching responsibilities of the tenants. But even that was growing tenuous.

  Soon, she’d need a real property manager, someone who could make the bigger repairs that Kate had begun to pay out of pocket years earlier. Mentally, she added that task to her to-do list: find a handyman tenant who would take care of the place better than Clara, who didn’t grow up the same as her older sisters or mother, with the expectation of corralling the troops for a weekend of scraping hard water off of swamp cooler panels.

  Presently, Kate stood on the sidewalk, just inches from a short, white picket fence, the same style Nora had erected at The Bungalows. Beyond the fence glowed a thick, shaggy green lawn, in desperate need of a mow. Bushes and flowers grew wild along the terraces that crisscrossed prettily beneath the front porch. And behind the untamed yard loomed the house. Two stories. Three if one counted the attic. Four, even, if one counted the basement, which Kate always had as a child.

  Back then, growing up and even well after her college years, Kate took great pride in living in that house. She and her sisters pitched in the year their mother decided to paint it a warm, rich red. It took them all summer just to get the front of the first floor coated once. That was when Nora agreed to hire out. A rare occurrence, indeed.

  As the years wore on, Kate became aware of flaws and attributes that weren’t previously apparent.

  The red paint had long begun to peel and, in some places, curl up and chip off.

  The weathered shutters had presented shabby chic potential, but they now threatened to pull away from their hinges. Kate imagined them breaking loose and sailing out to the lake like miniature wooden barges on a waveless sea.

  She unlatched the squat fence gate and stepped across the invisible line that divided Birch Harbor from the old Hannigan family home and its previous inhabitants.

  As Kate neared the house, she noticed one quality that had been nagging her lately—just how close the property was to the harbor. Less than a stone’s throw to Birch Village and the marina.

  Without a doubt, it would sell. It would sell, and Kate and her sisters would get everything in order. Between proceeds from the sale and income from the investment properties, as long as they could agree to split things fairly, Kate saw a future in which she could, for once, have some peace. No worrying about bills. Not her mom’s. Not her own.

  “Get off my lawn!”

  Kate spun on a heel, her face flushing and her pulse tripling in the time it took her to locate the person yelling at her.

  Her eyes bobbed wildly before landing on two women, walking in long strides from up the sidewalk.

  Megan and Amelia.

  The latter waved her arm in a wide half circle. “I said get off my lawn!” she hollered again, her voice deep, disguised. Megan laughed beside her, and Kate smiled at last.

  “You scared me,” she called back. “Sounds like your voice lessons are paying off, though. That’s a good baritone.”

  Amelia recovered from her own laughter. “I haven’t taken voice in years. I gave up any chance of musicals long ago.”

  Kate walked back to the gate and opened it for them, and they gathered together on the lawn, examining the house again.

  Megan sighed. “What has Clara been doing all this time?”

  Defensiveness wrapped around Kate like a blanket, seizing her in paralysis for a moment before she answered honestly, deflated. “The bare minimum. It’s all she can do, really.”

  Amelia and Megan glanced at each other, frowning in tandem. But Kate just shrugged, adding, “We haven’t been here to help.”

  “She could have hired someone. Mom had an income stream, right?”

  “A limited income stream,” Kate answered.

  “What do you mean ‘limited?'” Megan pressed, crossing her arms over her chest. “The Bungalows are fully rented. Clara aside, we should be pulling in good money from three tenants, right?”

  “Yes and no,” Kate admitted. “Three tenants, yes. Two of them are long term people. They signed a contract back in the nineties, if you can believe that. They aren’t paying much, and Mom never raised their rent. The third pays something more reasonable, but it’s still not much. And I have to use some of that income to cover maintenance. Clara dips into whatever is left over to pay electric, gas, and water here.” Kate waved a hand at the house. “And, we pay utilities for the cottage. And taxes on all four properties, the land included.”

  “You mean that farmland out west?” Amelia asked.

  Kate nodded.

  “It’s exactly why we need to be smart about how we handle this. If we play our cards right and make good decisions, we will come out ahead, I promise,” Kate pleaded to her sisters’ impassive faces.

  But they weren’t having it. Megan cleared her throat. “So what about Clara? Why isn’t she here?”

  Chapter 14—Amelia

  Amelia didn’t quite share Megan’s harsh agitation over how well—or how poorly—Clara had kept the place. Amelia understood Clara was just getting by. Each of them, after all, was just getting by. Megan with her divorce. Kate with her widowhood. And she, herself, with her wreck of a life.

  Following Kate and Megan
up to the porch, Amelia took in the place, admiring its stateliness and wondering, selfishly, if they might not make a buck. Something to help cover New York rent. Something to pay for a little Botox. Something, Amelia thought, to help her make more of her life than the depressing audition-rejection-waitressing cycle she’d found herself caught inside of like a hamster in a plastic wheel.

  She watched as Kate pushed the spare key into the heavy brass key plate, turning the tarnished key and the knob below in tandem. But it didn’t budge. She pushed the key farther to the left, then tried the knob again, rattling it. It gave a little, but Kate had to press her shoulder into the door to jostle the wood free. Amelia winced. She hadn’t been back to the house in long enough that she felt like all three of them were trespassing somehow.

  With one quick pop, Kate fell into the foyer, and a thick warmth sucked Amelia and Megan in behind her.

  The air of the house hung still.

  Amelia shut the door behind them by pushing her back against it.

  Just across from the entryway unfurled the wide wooden staircase, rolling up to the second story landing like an architectural centerpiece. Ample floor space spread around it, original hardwood floors tracking back toward the kitchen, right toward the front hall—as their mother called it—and left toward the parlor.

  Amelia took a tentative step into the front hall. Every piece of furniture was covered in heavy white sheets. An outline of a piano and that of a set of sofas confirmed that, actually, nothing much had changed other than a few years’ worth of age settling into the room.

  She turned and joined Megan and Kate, who began their tour in the opposite direction, through the parlor. Similarly, there, the sitting chairs and side tables stood draped. Dust had been slow to collect on top of the fabric, but Megan ran her finger along one cloth and held it up to reveal a gray oval.

  Kate bit her lip. Megan dipped her chin to Amelia.