by Tracy Brogan
“I can’t think of anyone by that name.”
“But she said she lives here, and you said you grew up here. You must know each other.”
“I haven’t lived here in a long time, Ryan. Maybe she moved to the island after I left.”
Gigi set the cup back down, and Emily breathed in the scent. She hoped there was coffee in heaven, because if there wasn’t, she wasn’t going. Then again . . . she might not be invited in anyway.
“No, I’m sure she said she was born on the island.” Ryan was now sounding pretty insistent, as if Emily was the one making a mistake. Her glow over his invitation waned.
“Um, speaking of hidden agendas, did you really call to invite me for coffee, or did you just want to interrogate me about some floozy that your father is . . . keeping company with?” She would have said banging, but since Chloe was sitting right there, Emily went PG-13.
His pause was about a millionth of a second, but just long enough for Emily to realize he had to think about his answer. Which was all the answer she needed.
“What? Yes. I mean, no. Yes, I called to see if you wanted to have coffee, but I admit I was hoping you could help me figure out this girl’s angle. She must be after his money or running some kind of con. My dad told me yesterday that he wants to retire and move here, and they plan to travel all over the world. He’s only known her for four weeks, and she’s less than half his age, so yeah, I’m worried.”
He sounded more annoyed than worried.
“I don’t have any idea who she is, but this isn’t exactly the kind of place someone comes to scam somebody.”
“Maybe it wasn’t something premeditated, but I think this girl met him, saw her chance, and pounced. I think he’s her meal ticket off this island. And if he brings her back to Sacramento and marries her? Well, California is a fifty-fifty state.”
“Meaning that if he marries her, she gets half of his stuff in the inevitable divorce?”
Emily had met enough wealthy people in her life to know that most of them were worried that other people were after their money. Nick’s parents had been those kinds of people, convinced she was just some country mouse after their son’s good name and inheritance. She wasn’t, of course. She was only after his great body. What a mistake that had been.
“Right. And potentially half of our family company. My father is just not himself these days. He’s not thinking clearly. If she is a gold-digging bimbo, I’m afraid he’ll do something he can’t easily undo, like sign over his shares and promise her everything.”
This definitely sounded like Nick’s family. Ryan’s worries might be well-founded, but it still struck a little close to home. Emily had no idea who this woman was or what her intentions were, but Ryan probably needed to cut her some slack until he had more information. Emily turned away from her grandmother, but Gigi scooched her chair closer. She wasn’t even trying to be subtle about eavesdropping now.
“You know, it’s quite possible that she just likes him because she likes him. Does there have to be some big ulterior motive behind it?”
“She’s half his age.”
“True, which is probably something to worry about, but if she’s just interested in his money, she wouldn’t want him to retire, would she?”
“Like I said, she wants to travel. I think it’s his whole lifestyle she’s after.”
Emily stirred a little cream into her coffee. “I don’t know what to tell you, Ryan. I don’t know this Daisy you’re talking about.”
Emily really had enough of her own drama to deal with, both personal and professional. She didn’t need his, and if he’d wanted information, he should have been straight with her instead of inviting her out for a pseudo-date. He needed to take care of his own problems. “I’ll ask around, okay? I’ll see if anyone knows who she is, but in the meantime, I’d say just let him have his fun.”
“Emily? Are you here?” The screen door slammed, and a millisecond later her sister’s sandals squeaked across the linoleum as she halted in the kitchen doorway, looking windblown and rosy-cheeked. Her dark hair was in a high ponytail, and she wore white denim shorts that made her tanned legs look a mile long.
“Hey, I have to run,” Emily said into the phone. “My sister just got here. If you come to the Lilac Festival, I’ll be in the pie tent. Bye.” She disconnected the call and dropped her phone on the kitchen table while simultaneously being enveloped into Lilly’s enthusiastic embrace. Her sister’s arms wrapped around Emily and squeezed her tight before she could even stand up.
“Oh my gosh, I’m so glad you’re here.”
She turned to Chloe. “Oh. My. Gosh. Will you look at you? You’re gorgeous!” She hugged her niece until Chloe squeaked.
“Hi, Aunt Lilly. How are you?” Chloe asked breathlessly.
“I’m famished.” She plopped down into the chair next to Emily and grabbed a waffle, taking a bite from one corner. “So sorry about missing dinner last night on your first day back. I had a thing.”
Lilly’s hair was the same dark shade as Brooke’s but without the curl, and her smile was nearly constant.
Gigi got up from her chair to pull another coffee mug from the cabinet. “You had a thing? Does that thing have a name? And a tallywacker?”
Lilly blushed. “It’s not what you think, Gigi. There’s no guy. I know everyone thinks there’s a guy, but there’s no guy.”
“Uh-huh.” Gigi’s tone echoed her disbelief. “Myrna Delroy said you were late to work twice this week and acting very strangely. And Dmitri Krushnic said he was out checking his bees a few evenings ago and could have sworn he saw you walking toward the old lighthouse with some fella.”
Lilly rolled her eyes as she accepted the cup of coffee from Gigi’s outstretched hand. “Yes, you nosy old coot. I was walking to the lighthouse a few nights ago. With Percy O’Keefe. Only we weren’t walking together on purpose. He saw me and insisted on tagging along. You know how he is.”
“You think Dmitri wouldn’t have recognized Percy O’Keefe?” Gigi was a pit bull on the prowl.
“What I think is that it was dusk and Dmitri can’t see shit through that stupid beekeeping hat he always wears. I could have been walking with a yeti and he wouldn’t have been able to tell. Everyone on this island just needs to chill and stop trying to create a romance for me.”
“Good to know that the gossip mill is still going strong,” Emily said, squeezing her sister’s arm in solidarity. She’d been on the receiving end of that often enough.
“The gossip mill is alive and well, and no thanks to this one.” Lilly nodded at Gigi, but her smile was sweet and her tone teasing. “Why don’t you get married again, Gigi? Then you won’t have so much time on your hands to make up stories about me.”
“Oh, you know I’m always looking. I’ve still got room for one more on that mantel.”
“Mantel?” Chloe asked.
Emily and her sister turned in unison to gaze at the mantel above Gigi’s green-tiled fireplace where three distinctive urns sat. Each one held a husband. And while three dead husbands all for one woman might have aroused some suspicion, the manner in which each man met his untimely death clearly exonerated Gigi of anything except exceedingly bad luck. Not as bad as the luck of those dead husbands, but bad nonetheless.
Gigi put a hand over her heart. “Yes, that’s where I keep them, the dears.”
Chloe’s eyes went round as she stared. “There’s a dead guy in each of those vases? How did they die?”
“Well, your great-grandfather died when he insisted on proving that lightning can strike twice. Turns out he was right.”
It was wrong to chuckle at the misfortune of others, but Emily had heard these stories enough times to find them funny.
“Husband number two, Conroy Harper, was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, flying his kite on the beach when a Porta-John blew off the bluffs at Hawkeye Point. Landed right on him. He never saw it coming.” She shook her head.
“A shitty way to die
,” Lilly murmured into her coffee cup.
“And the third?” Chloe asked, as if not certain any of this was true.
“Ah, that was my Bert. He never could resist a dare, but even he should have known better than to eat a taco from Cinco de Mayo on ocho de Mayo. His sombrero is still on the wall down at the Adobe Tavern, but I’m pretty sure they don’t serve tacos anymore.”
“Please tell me you are making this up,” Chloe said, waffle in hand.
“Hand on the Bible. It’s all true.”
Emily nodded, and Chloe set the waffle down.
“Maybe you should get a very large life insurance policy on the next husband,” Lilly suggested, slurping her coffee loudly. “You know, before he makes an ash of himself.”
“Very funny, but don’t think I haven’t thought of it. It’s an unpredictable way to score more rental properties, but I do seem to be good at burying men. Plus, I haven’t had a husband in a while. At my age, pickings are getting a little slim. I’ve got my eye on a few gents, though. Just waiting for their wives to move along.” She flicked her hands over the table as if shooing away a fly. The sisters giggled while Chloe looked at them as if they were quite, quite inappropriate.
Emily knew Gigi had loved each of her husbands for their own unique attributes, but the Callaghan pragmatism wouldn’t let her dwell on losing them or feel sorry for herself. Irish, you know. Self-pity was about the biggest sin you could commit. It was a lesson Emily had clung to during the roughest days of her marriage and the even rougher days of her divorce. Feeling sorry for oneself didn’t get the bills paid. It didn’t feed your kids, and it didn’t improve your situation. Action and movement was the only thing that did that, and so, like any good Callaghan, Emily had just kept moving forward. Maybe without much direction or without much strategy, but still . . . forward.
That’s sort of what she was doing now, too. Taking it one day at a time. Once she was finished with renovating Gigi’s cottage on the island, and once Jewel had sold the disaster house back in Texas, Emily would have some decisions to make. Assuming they got their asking price on that money pit, Emily could pay off her current debts and hopefully have some left over to buy another flip. If not, well, she’d have to find a regular job. Maybe go back to being a secretary at the construction company. That’s where she’d met Jewel in the first place. But she’d figure that out later. She could only handle one catastrophe at a time, and her catastrophe du jour was Gigi’s cottage.
“Oh goodness, look at the time,” Gigi said, glancing down at a thirty-year-old Timex wristwatch. “Chloe, we should hurry up and get dressed if we want to go watch the parade. We can’t go in our pajamas. You do want to see the parade, don’t you?”
“Of course I do,” Chloe answered, hopping up from her seat, the dismay of dead husbands disappearing. Emily smiled, thinking that just yesterday Chloe might have scoffed at the idea of a parade, but it appeared she was already starting to sink into the charming atmosphere of Trillium Bay.
“Mom, you’re coming to the parade, aren’t you?”
“Absolutely. That’s why I’m already dressed for the day, so you guys had better hurry up and change.”
“So catch me up on everything,” Lilly said to Emily after Gigi and Chloe had left.
“Catch you up? Let’s see.” Emily started counting off with her fingers. “I’m still living with Jewel, we’re still flipping houses, I spend all my extra time driving Chloe around to all her after-school activities, I’m not dating anyone, and . . . yeah, that’s it. You’re all caught up.”
“Oh, there must be more going on than that?”
Emily shook her head. “No, not really.” She wished she could confide in Lilly about all the sleepless nights she’d spent worrying about finances and bankruptcy and the disaster house in San Antonio, but this wasn’t the time. Lilly might not be able to keep it a secret. It was bad enough depending on Gigi to keep her lips buttoned up. “So catch me up on you. What’s new with you?”
Lilly shrugged and stood up, moving toward the coffeepot. “Oh, you know. Same old, same old. Nothing much ever changes on this island. Did you know Reed is here?”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Mm. Did Brooke tell you she’s thinking about running for mayor?”
Watching her, Emily got the distinct impression her sister was trying to divert the topic of conversation off of herself. Normally Lilly was full of stories about her latest adventures, and even if they were not particularly adventuresome, the way she described everything made it sound fun. Now she seemed a little evasive. There must be a guy.
“Yes, she told me about running for mayor. Why does Gigi think you’re hiding a man?”
“Because this island is full of nosy old busybodies with nothing better to do than to speculate about who’s doing it with who.”
“Yeah, so . . . who are you doing it with?”
Lilly’s eyes skirted to the doorway that Gigi and Chloe had just exited through. “No one. There’s no guy.”
“Liar. She’s gone now. You can tell me. You know I can keep a secret.”
Lilly plucked a nonexistent piece of lint from the front of her shirt, stalling for time, no doubt, and avoiding eye contact. Although Emily’s relationship with Brooke was often cautious and a little complicated, Emily’s connection to Lilly had always been comfortable and easy, but something was different. Something had changed. Maybe Lilly had learned to keep some secrets after all.
“Look, there might be a guy,” she whispered. “But he’s not from around here, and it’s all really new, so I don’t want to jinx it by saying too much. You know how things go around here. I don’t want Dad catching wind of it until I’ve had a chance to tell him myself. You know how he is.”
Emily gave a little snort. “Yes, I know how he is, but if Gigi and Dmitri are already suspicious, you can be pretty certain that a whole bunch of other people are, too. You don’t think Dad already knows?”
“Oh, I’m sure of it. Dad definitely doesn’t know yet.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because he’s still speaking to me.”
“Mom,” Chloe shouted out from the top of the stairs. “I can’t find any of my underwear. Please tell me you packed my underwear!”
Emily very much wanted to continue this conversation with her sister, but it would have to wait. She couldn’t have Chloe going to the parade commando.
“You and I are going to talk about this later,” she said, wagging a finger in front of Lilly’s nose.
“Sure. Sure.” Lilly giggled and pushed away Emily’s hand. “In the meantime, go find that poor kid some underwear.”
Chapter 8
The sky was robin’s-egg blue with just a few wispy clouds playing a slow game of tag as Emily, Chloe, Gigi, and Lilly made their trek down Anishinaabe Trail toward Main Street. Squirrels chattered from the branches of the mammoth old oak trees lining the path, and ragtime music floated up from the outdoor stage at Trillium Park. It was a perfect day for the Lilac Festival, but then again, it always was. It was in the bylaws of the island board of tourism that the second weekend in June must always be sunny, dry, and pleasant. Today was no exception.
Chloe kept a running commentary, snapping selfies every few seconds and telling Lilly all about her life back in San Antonio and how the mean girls at school often teased her, calling her giraffe because of her height and long legs. Emily knew about these girls, and they were mean. She’d made more than one phone call to a mean girl’s mom, but unfortunately, mean girls often get that way because they learn it at home. Emily had alienated an entire posse of mothers from her own neighborhood just for trying to stand up for her own kid. That kind of thing would never have flown on Wenniway Island. If one mom called another mom around here, somebody’s kid was going to get punished.
“Don’t let them get to you, sweetie,” Lilly said. “They’re just jealous because you’re so pretty. I was in the pageant world, you know, and nothing brings out the worst i
n a person like jealousy.”
Chloe skipped ahead a few steps and turned around to face them while walking backward, her red flip-flops slapping against the pavement. “Mom told me you were in a beauty pageant once. That sounds amazing. Was it fun?”
Lilly’s smile was momentarily wistful. “A few parts of it were fun, but overall, I wasn’t really cut out for it, plus the costumes and stuff were expensive. A bunch of people on the island chipped in so I could complete in the Miss Michigan Teen Starcatcher Pageant down in Lansing. That was pretty much a disaster.”
“Why was it a disaster?” Chloe spun once more and fell back into step between Emily and Lilly.
“Wardrobe malfunction.”
“What?”
Emily bit back a smile and turned her face so Lilly wouldn’t notice.
“That’s a bit of an understatement,” Gigi said.
Emily knew this story, and Gigi was right. Wardrobe malfunction? It really was more of an epic wardrobe clusterfuck so grand in scale it was probably the sort of horror story pageant mothers told their little girls around the campfire just to scare them into compliance.
Chloe had been a baby at the time, and in spite of Nick’s complaints, Emily splurged on an airline ticket from San Antonio to Lansing, taking back-to-back red-eyes so she wouldn’t have to pay for a motel, and so she wouldn’t be away a moment longer than necessary, but it was worth it just to be there.
Lilly had held up just fine during the swimsuit portion, managing to walk across a slippery stage in four-inch heels while keeping her face frozen in a Joker-esque smile, but during the evening gown segment, she’d accidentally stepped on the hem of her sparkly dress. Her sparkly strapless dress. She tripped gloriously and fell with a flourish, sliding toward the front of the stage like she was making a play for home plate. And when she sat up . . . her sparkly strapless dress didn’t. She popped right out of it. And there were her two big boobs, right up in the judges’ faces.
