The Girl I Used to Be: A gripping and emotional page-turner

by Heidi Hostetter

  They spoke through the screen door. “If you’re looking for Kaye, she’s still at the Yacht Club, setting up the art gallery.” He hesitated for just a moment, and when he spoke again his tone was cool. “But you already knew that, didn’t you? So why are you here?”

  “I know that you know who I am, Mr. Bennett, and by now you’ve guessed that I’ve come to Dewberry to sell the house.” His expression hardened and she rushed to finish. “But I have questions—”

  He cut her off. “I’m not interested.”

  So Jill tried again. “I divorced Marc because he’s not a good man.”

  “So you said.”

  Jill straightened; she didn’t know how much time she had before he shut the door and her chance was gone. “I found out that Marc stole from me,” she said. “A woman pretended to be me, signed documents for a mortgage, and left with a fat check. I never saw a dime of it. I took the house because Marc refused to pay the loan. I have no interest in it, beyond selling it.”

  Chase’s expression was unchanged. “If all you want is to sell that house, I can’t help you.”

  “That’s not all I want,” Jill blurted, stretching out her hand to prevent Chase from closing the door. “I don’t know what Marc did to this town, but I have a feeling it was terrible. If it’s in my power to fix it, I will.”

  “Let the girl in, Chase.” Mrs. Ivey suddenly appeared in the background, surprising Jill. “At least let’s hear what she has to say. No harm in that.”

  Chase hesitated but finally pushed the screen door open and allowed Jill to enter. “We’ll go to my office.”

  Jill followed them down the hall to a small room that overlooked the front garden. As they settled in, she couldn’t help but compare Chase’s office to Marc’s. Both were intended for work, but that’s where the similarities ended. Marc’s office was massive, with shelves of reference books bought and forgotten, and glossy pictures of his newest projects lining the walls. It was cold and sterile, designed to gain the upper hand in business. By contrast, Chase Bennett seemed confident of his place in the world and had no need to stake a claim or impress anyone. His office was cluttered with well-thumbed newspapers and business journals stacked on the floor, and the desk was scattered with charts and graphs. Chase may have retired from his work in the city, but his interest in business clearly hadn’t diminished.

  “I wonder if I should record this?” Chase posed and Jill flushed, knowing it was Marc who had made these people so cautious that the mistrust he’d sowed now extended to her.

  “You can if you want to,” Jill replied evenly. “I have nothing to hide.”

  “Let’s not start off as adversaries,” Mrs. Ivey said gently. “We should remember that Ms. DiFiore has come to us willingly and that her ex-husband preferred the shadows.”

  “Fair enough,” Chase agreed, albeit reluctantly. He regarded Jill for a moment before continuing. “Before we answer your questions, I want you to tell us everything you know about that house.”

  “Okay.” Jill nodded as she dropped her gaze. It was a reasonable question, but the answer made her look foolish. But she wanted Chase’s cooperation, so she raised her gaze and began to speak. “I didn’t know about the house until well into our second year of marriage, and only then because we hosted a client party there. Marc preferred to keep his business separate from our personal life.” She paused because he’d done more than that. From the beginning, he’d said that the best way for her to help his company was to “look pretty.” So she did, and for a while that was enough.

  Mrs. Ivey shifted in her chair and the movement brought Jill back to the present.

  “Sorry.” Jill cleared her throat. “During the few times we visited Dewberry Beach to host parties, Marc insisted that I was not to venture into town or speak with anyone other than the clients. He said my job as hostess was here, with him, entertaining his guests.” She sighed. “That was just a couple of years ago but it seems so much longer. There were many things in my marriage that I overlooked, Mr. Bennett, and I’m not proud of it. I lost myself trying to be what Marc wanted, but it turned out that it wasn’t me he wanted. He didn’t even know me.”

  Outside, Jill saw a tangle of kids riding their bikes down the street. It seemed that school had let out for the day and they were on their way home.

  She returned her attention to the room and finished her explanation. “One of the reasons Marc gave for keeping his work separate was his ex-wife, Dianne. He told me that her interference almost cost him his entire business. That she was unbalanced, mentally ill, and abusive to their daughters—”

  Mrs. Ivey gasped.

  “What’s wrong?” Jill glanced at Chase. “What did I say?”

  “Nothing I hadn’t expected,” he replied. “Please continue.”

  “I’m sure she’s not like that. I didn’t question it, though I should have. The truth is that I didn’t question anything Marc told me because I was stupid enough to believe I had to earn his love and that obedience would do it.” She held Chase’s gaze, hoping he would see that she spoke the truth, even though it made her look childish. “I don’t know anything about the house or what Marc did to get it, but I want you to know that I wasn’t part of it. All I want to do is sell it and move on.”

  “But you are part of it,” Chase declared, even as Mrs. Ivey reached for his arm. “If your only goal is to sell the house, without caring how it came to be, how is that any different from what Marc did?”

  Jill sat, too stunned to speak. After everything she’d told him, he was still comparing her to Marc. They weren’t the same at all.

  “Did you hear a word I said?” Jill’s voice rose in disbelief. “I’m a victim here too. Can’t you see that? I can think of a million places I’d rather be than here, owning a house everyone hates. I hear you guys have a petition and someone named Nancy is already talking about using it to block the sale,” she accused, her anger propelling her forward. “But you seem to have forgotten: the building permits on that house were approved, which means the construction is legal. The house is legal. The time for you guys to get all up in arms about how much you hate it was back then. Not now.”

  Jill’s chest heaved and her outburst was met with silence. She looked away, embarrassed for having lost her temper but justified with her point. She had come here to try to make things better and they were refusing to see her side.

  This was the last time she’d try.

  As she collected her things, she heard the heat register click on and felt a soft whoosh of warm air on her face.

  Outside, a car drove past the house and Jill noticed that the afternoon light had faded. She felt her chance to make things right slipping away too.

  She rose from her chair. “I apologize for losing my temper. My aunt Sarah would have been horrified to hear me speak that way to you. Before I go, I want you to know that the reason I left Marc is because he had an affair. The house you call The Monstrosity is where he lived with his mistress. That’s why I hate it.”

  She moved toward the door, but Mrs. Ivey stopped her. “Just one moment please.”

  Mrs. Ivey turned to Chase and squeezed his arm. “We need to tell her. She needs to know.”

  “I had no idea you wouldn’t know.” Chase lifted his gaze to meet Jill. “And for that I apologize. Please sit.”

  As Jill reluctantly reclaimed her chair, Chase crossed the room to switch on a lamp, bathing the room in a warm yellow. On his way back, he drew the front curtains closed and Jill wondered if that was purposeful. So the neighbors wouldn’t see this meeting, see Chase consorting with the enemy.

  “Eight years ago this town faced the worst natural disaster any of us could imagine.” Chase settled behind his desk with some difficulty. “Hurricane Sandy wasn’t supposed to be a hurricane at all, did you know that? It was a ‘tropical depression’ and was located so far out to sea that it hardly bore mention on weather reports. Storms like that spring up by the dozen as the weather changes in the fall. But when
it began to gather strength, people in its path paid attention. The winds picked up and the sky darkened, even as weathermen reported that Sandy had indeed changed course, but still there was no need for concern—it was still miles from shore. They said that even if the edge of the storm grazed the coast, the most that shore towns could expect would be a few days of heavy rain, nothing more. And we believed them.”

  Chase drew a ragged breath. When he continued, his tone had changed. He seemed detached, as if the only way he could tell this story was to remove himself from it. “As the storm gathered strength, it was upgraded twice. Even when meteorologists finally classified it as a hurricane and named it Sandy, they told us not to worry. They said it would continue up the coast, safely offshore. But they were wrong. When the storm made landfall, just above Atlantic City, no one was ready. By the time they issued the order to evacuate, it was too late. And the winds were relentless. Hurricane Sandy pounded the coast of New Jersey for almost four days, and when it was over, the landscape of the entire shore had changed.”

  Chase paused. The silence was thick, broken only by the hallway clock chiming the hour.

  After a moment, Mrs. Ivey picked up the thread, her voice soft. “We were in shock, many of us, watching live coverage on the news. We witnessed our town and landmarks that had been part of the fabric of our lives for decades destroyed in the time it takes to draw breath. For a long time, we weren’t allowed back, and only then for an hour at a time. Some people didn’t come back at all. The destruction was too much for them.”

  “We can’t blame them,” Chase added, his expression grim. “The damage was unimaginable. The pictures on television were horrific but it was worse in person.” He paused to rub his face with his palms. “Houses that had been part of this town’s landscape for more than a hundred years were reduced to rubble. People lost homes and businesses in the most horrific way. Things they’d spent a lifetime on, they left one day and returned to nothing.”

  “That was when Dianne came down,” Mrs. Ivey added.

  “Dianne?” Jill asked. “Do you mean Marc’s first wife? Why would she come here?”

  “She came to help of course.” Mrs. Ivey looked momentarily startled that Jill would ask. “Dianne had lived in Dewberry Beach her whole life. She was one of my favorite students, in fact. Loved reading. Loved to write. Her father, Peter Muscadine, had been elected to the planning commission just a few months before the storm.”

  “Wait,” Jill interrupted. “Peter Muscadine is Dianne’s father? Isn’t the planning commissioner the one who would have issued Marc’s permits?”

  In all the years she’d been married to Marc, Jill hadn’t known that his connection to Dewberry Beach had been through Dianne. He’d never mentioned it. Jill had assumed he’d selected this town by chance, because land was available and developing it made good business sense. It seemed there was quite a bit about Marc that she didn’t know.

  “That’s right, he was.” Mrs. Ivey’s expression was fierce. “But it gets worse. After the hurricane, Dianne had lost contact with her father. She was frantic, but the State Patrol wouldn’t let her into town to look for him, wouldn’t allow her past the roadblock. She’d married by then, you see, and had moved away so the address on her driver’s license wasn’t local. She couldn’t get within forty miles of here, no matter how hard she tried.”

  “What do you mean, ‘reach her father’?” Jill asked. “Even if he wasn’t evacuated right away, he must have reported to a shelter sometime later? Or at the very least had a cell phone? Couldn’t he have telephoned Dianne to let her know he was safe?”

  “You can’t imagine what it was like.” Mrs. Ivey shook her head. “Cell towers were down. Electricity grids were blown. Even the water was off because the pumping stations were flooded with sea water. Nothing worked.”

  Jill dropped her gaze. She’d heard about Hurricane Sandy of course; everyone on the East Coast had. But she hadn’t lived through it and couldn’t grasp how horrific it really was.

  It occurred to her that a hurricane didn’t explain the town’s anger toward Marc, or their hatred of the house he’d built. He had nothing to do with the storm. She returned her attention to them and found Mrs. Ivey looking at her expectantly, as if she were waiting for Jill to draw some sort of conclusion. But Jill didn’t understand.

  “What did Marc do?” she asked finally. “How is he a part of this?”

  Chase went on, his expression hard. “When Dianne was finally allowed in, Marc drove in with her. I found that strange because he’d never expressed the slightest interest in Dewberry Beach before, but I was willing to give him a chance. At the time, Marc had just taken over his father’s company and he was eager to make a name for himself, show the world that he was just as good as Frank Goodman.”

  Jill shifted uneasily in her chair.

  “But while Dianne shoveled muck and sifted through debris left by the hurricane, Marc tracked down property owners,” Chase said. “He introduced himself as Dianne’s husband and told everyone how much he and Dianne had always loved Dewberry Beach—”

  “A town he’d never been to before the hurricane,” Mrs. Ivey interrupted. “Dianne had always come without him.”

  Chase nodded. “Marc told everyone that his new company was flush with cash and what better use for it than rebuilding an iconic New Jersey shore town?” He twisted in his chair, his movements jerky and edged with anger. “I should have known then, should have stopped him.”

  “I won’t hear it.” Mrs. Ivey reached for his arm and squeezed. “Don’t you dare blame yourself. Dianne believed him—we all did. Everyone was taken in.” She glanced at Jill. “Before we knew what was happening, two of this town’s oldest residents sold their property to him for a fraction of what it was worth.”

  “Sell? Why would they sell?” Jill asked. “He was a contractor. If he wanted to help, why didn’t he offer to rebuild their homes?”

  “Because there wasn’t anything to rebuild. Nothing on either of those lots except splintered wood,” Mrs. Ivey explained. “Everything—a family’s entire life—had been sucked into the sea in the receding tide.”

  “I don’t understand,” Jill said.

  Chase leaned forward. “He took advantage of them, don’t you see? When Marc went to see them, he leaned heavily on Dianne’s reputation as a lifelong resident. They believed his offer was fair, and when he promised to build a cottage on their property, they believed that too. Even if they couldn’t live in it themselves, they wanted that for Dewberry Beach.”

  “But he lied,” Jill breathed, suddenly understanding how Marc could afford not one but two oceanfront properties in one of New Jersey’s most affluent shore towns.

  “He lied.” Chase’s voice was a sigh.

  “Marva was my best friend. Kaye’s too,” Mrs. Ivey added. “I’ve known her for fifty years and I’ll never forget the look on her face when she was told her life had been dragged back to the sea. Everything she owned, all her memories were gone—her grandmother’s clock, her wedding china, all her photographs. Even her grandchildren’s plastic beach toys from the shed in the backyard. The hurricane stripped everything from her, and it was heartbreaking. But what that man did to her was far worse because he did it on purpose.”

  “I’m sorry but I still don’t understand. For Marc to build anything on that land, it would have to be permitted. And it was,” Jill said as she ran her fingers through her hair. “He filed blueprints. Surely anyone who looked could see that he was lying to them.”

  “Remember that Dianne’s father, Peter Muscadine, was the planning commissioner?” Chase said. “In a town as small as Dewberry, Peter wasn’t just on the planning commission, he was the planning commission. As you’ve guessed, he approved the permits without seeing them.”

  “He was part of this?”

  “No, no. Absolutely not.” Mrs. Ivey shook her head firmly. “Peter Muscadine was one of the best men I’ve ever known. He didn’t have it in him to lie, and he loved
this town. He was a simple man, truth be told. He would give you the shirt off his back if he thought it would help you, and that’s where Marc saw his opening.”

  “You have to understand that in Dewberry, we take people at their word, trust what they say. It’s a bit old-fashioned, I agree, but it’s one of the things that makes this place great. So when Marc lied, all Peter saw was his daughter’s husband, giving his word.”

  Jill sagged against the back of her chair. Peter Muscadine’s trust would have been just the opportunity Marc needed.

  Chase rose to snap on a little space heater by the door. “But Peter was just the first step. In normal times, Marc’s deception would have been noticed. But these weren’t normal times.” The space heater whirred to life. “The bureaucracy that followed the hurricane was almost as bad as the storm. Insurance adjusters came to town, noted the damage, and refused to pay. Policies meant to protect from flood damage suddenly didn’t apply, even with six feet of water lapping at the foundation. And the effort just to clear the roads, restore power and water was staggering. It was easy to hide in the shadows of that, and he did.”

  Jill felt a lump twist in her stomach. This was exactly the type of “advantage” Marc lived for.

  “After he filed the plans, Marc amended them. And Peter approved the changes without reviewing the paperwork.”

  “Peter had other things on his mind,” Mrs. Ivey added. “We all did.”

  Even as Chase nodded, Jill could tell that he’d always blame himself for what Marc did. For not seeing it.

  Chase fell silent and Mrs. Ivey continued. “Even after we suspected what Marc was planning, there was little we could do to stop him. We tried talking to him, but it was useless. He is a greedy man,” Mrs. Ivey sighed. “In the end, Peter accepted the blame for everything because that’s the kind of man he was. He was summoned in front of the town council for a formal investigation—it was humiliating. He resigned that very afternoon. Within a week he’d sold his house and left the town he’d lived in all his life. A town he loved with all his heart.”