The Cottage on Rose Lane

by Hope Ramsay

  When she reached the corner of Harbor Drive and Tulip Lane, she had to stop and study Harry and Patsy’s house. The wind hissed through the palmettos, giving testament to the forces in the universe that sometimes went unseen. She couldn’t move, despite the push of the wind as she studied Independence, moldering away on its cinder blocks.

  Why had her father named his boat Independence?

  She would never know. Although the name suggested so many possible reasons.

  She ought to tell Harry and Patsy the truth.

  And then she should go.

  She crossed the street and was about to walk up the path when the door opened and Patsy stepped out onto the porch, wearing a pair of white cropped pants and a boat-necked blue-and-white-striped sweater. Her helmet of blond-gray hair seemed impervious to the wind.

  She waved. “Hey,” she said. “I know all about Jude’s daddy. I’ve got some sweet tea and cookies. You can wait with me.”

  Jenna set her feet on the path, and a moment later, she stood on Patsy’s porch gazing into a pair of sympathetic blue eyes. “It’s always hard when the men go out to rescue someone and leave us behind.”

  “How do you know that I—”

  “Honey, Harry and I can see the harbor from this porch. We watched you and Jude out there this morning, practicing with the spinnaker. Jude’s orange Jolly Roger makes Bonney Rose easy to spot. Y’all were doing really nice out there for a while, given the way the wind filled in during the morning. Harry told me that you never sailed before Jude started teaching you.”

  She shook her head, and Patsy’s smile widened. “Come on in.” She opened the door.

  Jenna didn’t know what she had expected out of Patsy’s house. Something formal. And dark. And heavy. Like the interiors of her grandfather’s mansion on the Hudson.

  No, check that. The Big Monstrosity, as she liked to call it, belonged to her now. And Milo even expected her to live there. He was dreaming. The first chance she got, that mausoleum was going on the market at a rock-bottom price.

  But Patsy’s house wasn’t anything like Robert Bauman’s home. Sailors lived in this house. It was floor-to-ceiling nautical, with lots of stripes and anchors and ropes and a model sailboat on the mantel in the living room. It had a cozy-cottage vibe with photos on the end tables in silver frames. She wanted to stop and pick them up to see if any were of her father, but Patsy ushered her back to the kitchen.

  “Have a seat.” Patsy waved toward a banquet breakfast nook with an old-fashioned red Formica tabletop. “I’m afraid my chocolate chip cookies come from the bakery. I don’t have any skills in the kitchen like Ashley does.” She set a plate of cookies in front of Jenna along with a pitcher of tea. “It’s sweet. I’m warning you. If you want some without sugar, I can get some instant.”

  “No. It’s fine.” Jenna had given up trying to drink iced tea without sugar. Besides, her year-long travels had taught her the inherent wisdom of doing as the Romans do.

  She poured herself a glass of tea and wondered what to do next. The urge to confess came over her. But when she opened her mouth, fear took hold, and she didn’t say one word about herself. Instead she said, “Harry cares about Jude, doesn’t he?”

  “He does.” Patsy refreshed her own glass of tea and cast her gaze out the back window, where the wind seemed to have worked itself into a fever pitch. “Jude became a stand-in for someone we lost a long time ago.”

  Jenna dropped her gaze to study the ice in her glass. She didn’t dare look up at Patsy. She might give too much away. “Oh?” she asked as neutrally as possible.

  Patsy sighed. “Unfortunately, my husband and I were never able to have children. So we poured our affections onto our nephew, Jamie. He was a beautiful boy. That’s him right there.”

  Patsy pointed to a group of black-and-white photos in simple black frames hung on the wall near the window.

  “May I look?”

  “Of course.”

  With her heart pounding, Jenna stood up and studied the photos on the wall. They were all of the same boy at different ages. Jamie in a bathing suit. Jamie asleep in a hammock. Jamie sailing a small boat, the wind in his hair. It was funny. All of Jamie’s trophies sat in a bookcase in the foyer of the Big Monstrosity on the Hudson. But there wasn’t one photo of Jamie to be found in the house. She knew, because she’d searched for them.

  She had to swallow back the tears. “He’s quite handsome. Where is he now?”

  Patsy shook her head. “He died when he was only twenty-two.”

  “Oh.” Jenna sat down again.

  “I’m sorry. I’m being maudlin. I guess this emergency with Charlie St. Pierre has brought back a few bad memories. Jamie died out on the bay.”

  Patsy’s choice of words sent something shivering down Jenna’s backbone. Had Louella Pender gotten her suicide theory from Patsy?

  Patsy continued. “The Coast Guard called it an accident.”

  “And you think it was something else?” Jenna asked, her heart slamming against her ribs.

  Patsy shook her head. “I don’t know. I just can’t shake this feeling that it wasn’t an accident. That he…” She let go of a long breath. “He was a beautiful soul, my Jamie. But he was not strong enough for this world.”

  The hairs on the back of Jenna’s neck rose.

  Patsy took a drink of her tea and continued unprompted. “He got himself involved with a tourist girl who was all wrong for him. He needed someone who understood his ups and downs. And believe me, his ups could be way up, and his downs could be deep. He was on meds, of course. But this girl…she convinced him that the medications were wrong for him. We were all so afraid that she was trying to trap him into a marriage. I’m sure you’ve heard the gossip by now. My nephew was Robert Bauman’s son. You know, the iWear Inc. CEO. So Jamie was wealthy, or he would have been wealthy once he came into his trust fund—”

  Jenna stopped breathing. This picture Patsy painted of her mother was all wrong. Mom would never have told anyone to stop taking their meds. She’d worked so hard to earn a master’s degree in social work and had spent her time working with children in need of special services. Mom would move heaven and earth to help families get the medications they needed for their loved ones.

  And Mom would never try to trap anyone into a marriage. Mom wasn’t a huge fan of marriage; she felt that every woman needed to be self-reliant. That independence for women could come only when women quit tying themselves down to unfaithful men. This explained why Mom had never married and had never been terribly interested in dating.

  Jenna’s eyes filled with tears. She wanted to get right into Patsy’s face and defend her mother. But she didn’t dare.

  Patsy leaned forward and patted Jenna’s hand. “Honey, don’t cry. It all happened such a long time ago. Sometimes I let my sorrow get the best of me. The important thing is that in a special way, Jude took Jamie’s place. For Harry, at least.

  “And anyone can see that you and Jude have made friends. Still, you know, Harry and I worry about him. He’s got a sensitive streak like our Jamie did. And people come and go on this island, but Jude belongs here.”

  “I know that,” Jenna said a little defensively. “I just found out that he’s descended from one of Captain Teel’s crew.”

  Patsy nodded. “Henri St. Pierre. And, of course, you know about that petition of his to have the master zoning plan revised since you attended the town council meetings. A man that tied to the land isn’t about to move someplace else.”

  What the heck? Was Patsy trying to tell her to leave Jude alone? Was she suggesting that Jenna would never fit in here? Or worse yet, was she drawing some comparison between Jenna and her mother, the woman Patsy clearly blamed for Jamie’s death?

  She wiped the tears from her cheeks, more angry now than sad.

  Patsy hopped up from her seat, crossed the room, and ducked into a doorway leading who knew where. She returned a moment later with a tissue in hand.

  “Here, honey. You l
ook as if you need this.”

  Jenna wiped the tears from her eyes, feeling more confused than ever. Patsy seemed like a nice woman, but she hated Mom. And she was warning Jenna to stay away from Jude. Maybe the idea of revealing herself to this woman was a bad one. Maybe she didn’t have a place here and never would.

  Just before she got up to go, Patsy’s cell phone rang.

  “Oh, thank goodness, it’s Harry.” She accepted the call and let him know that Jenna was there waiting with her. Then she put the call on speaker.

  “No one got hurt, thank goodness,” Harry said, “but they were all pretty much in the drink with their PFDs when we got there. Reel Therapy is lying on her side in about six feet of water. That fool Charlie forgot to top off the gas when he left, and they ended up being pushed onto the jetty when the engine died.”

  “I’m so glad everyone is safe,” Patsy said.

  “It’s going to take a while before we get back.” Harry’s voice stalled for a moment before he continued. “Jude is pretty upset, Jenna. I’m not entirely sure he wants to see you right at the moment. It might be best if you go on back to the cottage.”

  Okay. Message received. The universe had come to her rescue before she’d told the truth. Clearly this was not the moment to tell Patsy and Harry that Theresa Fossey was her mother. And maybe this karmic explosion was a message telling her to leave Jonquil Island and never come back.

  Patsy ended the call. “Looks like it’s going to be a long evening. You can stay if you—”

  “No,” Jenna interrupted. She could see the writing on the wall, and she needed to get out of this house before she said something she could never take back. She stood up. “It’s fine. I understand. Thank you for the cookies and iced tea. And the company while we waited for news. It’s about to storm again. I should get going.”

  She retraced her footsteps through the house, her heart pounding and her head aching. She turned around once she reached the door. “Please tell Jude I’m sorry about the boat.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Jenna stripped off her soaked clothes and took a long, hot bath in the cottage’s free-standing tub while she fought tumbling emotions that ranged between sadness and fury. Had Mom lied to her? Or had Patsy? Or was this an example of the Rashomon effect, where every witness to an event had a different story, all of them equally true?

  Had Mom convinced Dad to go off his medications? That didn’t sound like Mom.

  Had Mom tried to trap Dad into a marriage? No way Jenna believed that.

  Jenna had no reason to believe Patsy about those things, but she couldn’t imagine Patsy lying about them either. Maybe there was no right and wrong here, just differences in perception, or maybe a misunderstanding that never got discussed because Jamie Bauman died unexpectedly.

  The thought made her chest tighten until it became impossible to take any deep, calming breaths. She needed more than deep breathing. She needed—no, she wanted—the truth.

  Fighting tears, she climbed out of the tub and dressed in her soft, warm sweats, and then she called Milo.

  “Jenna, what a coincidence. I was about to call you. I just noticed that you wrote a sizable check on your account. What are you up to?”

  Milo was dependable and predictable. He complained when she didn’t spend her allowance, and he noticed every time she wrote a larger-than-normal check. In short, he was nosy. But it was still a comfort to hear his British accent over the phone. If anyone could suss out the truth, it was Milo.

  “If you must know, I’m making ill-advised investments in love,” she said. “And so far one of them has backfired spectacularly.”

  “Good heavens. Love? Have you fallen in love?”

  Had she? Maybe. But she wasn’t about to admit that to Milo. “I was using ‘love’ in the ‘love thy neighbor’ context,” she replied.

  “Oh. You gave money away to charity, didn’t you? I’ve told you before that charitable giving needs to be carefully managed. There are tax implications and—”

  “Yes. I know. And repercussions. I got it, Milo. The repercussions of one of my acts of kindness—a few hundred dollars in advertising for a friend’s business—has resulted in significant damage. I basically sank a fishing boat.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “I did. And I need to make amends for that blunder, and quite frankly, I don’t care about my taxes.”

  Silence hissed on the telephone line for a moment before he said, “So, I take it you were calling for advice on how to clean up this unintended consequence of your ill-advised investments in brotherly love?”

  “No, actually not. But we’ll have to talk about that sometime, I guess.”

  “Oh? Then I’m assuming you’re calling about that request you made the other day, for more information about your father’s death.”

  Jenna curled up in the king-sized bed and pulled the quilt over her. She stared through the Bahama shutters at the rain, which was coming down in buckets. She should be with Jude right now, making sure he was safe and dry, not obsessing about how her father died or whether her mother contributed to a suicide. But somehow she needed to settle the past before she could move into the future. “Have you found something?” she asked.

  “Well, I haven’t discovered anything new about his death. But I have run across a cache of letters Jamie wrote to his father during his years at Harvard. These letters were quite painful for your grandfather, evidently. After Jamie died, Robert asked Brian, my predecessor, to have the letters shredded. But Brian felt that your grandfather might regret that decision. So he wrote a memo to the file and then purposefully misfiled the letters as general correspondence. They turned up when I asked my associate to look at everything Brian handled for your grandfather.

  “I’m having him scan them right now, and he’ll be sending you an e-mail with a PDF. You’ll want to read all of them.”

  “Oh.” Her voice came out in a whisper. Now, after all these years, her father’s voice was within her grasp. “Thank you, Milo. You have no idea how much—”

  “Well, before you thank me, I should tell you that the letters are mostly about your father’s health. He was not well. I’m afraid he was—”

  “Clinically depressed?”

  “Bipolar, actually. But how did you learn that?”

  “I had a long conversation with Patsy today. She told me that my mother was the one who convinced Jamie to go off his medications. She blames Mom for Jamie’s death.”

  “Oh. Interesting. But not true. I’m fairly certain he went off his medications entirely on his own.”

  “He did?”

  “Read the letters, my dear. They will shed light on that issue. Now, tell me about this good deed that has gone wrong. How expensive is this going to be?”

  “Not very, I suspect. The cost of towing and refitting a fishing boat.” She blew out a long, mournful sigh. “You know, Milo, I’ve been thinking about my future.”

  “Always a good thing to do.”

  “And it occurred to me that I’ve always worked for someone else. And that’s why I lost my job a year ago. I thought I was secure, but my life was really in someone else’s hands.”

  “Not now.”

  “That’s not true. My life is in your hands, Milo. The only difference is that you can’t fire me, and I can’t fire you.”

  “That is true. The situation creates a certain amount of security for both of us, doesn’t it?”

  She snorted a laugh. “True. But you have things to do. I have nothing to do. And I need something in my life. And the other day I was working on my résumé and I realized I didn’t want to work for anyone else but myself. I want to put all that stuff I learned at Harvard into practice. I want to fail a few times.”

  “You want to fail? For heaven’s sake, why?”

  “Because failure is the best teacher. And unlike almost everyone else in the world, I have a cushion for all of my failures. But, you know, Jude doesn’t have a cushion like that.”

 
“Jude?” Milo’s tone changed audibly. He was curious.

  “I sank Jude’s boat. And I’m pretty sure he can’t afford to have it salvaged.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  Did he? Really? “Anyway, so I have this idea.”

  “Do tell.” His voice sounded amused.

  “I made a mistake doing a good deed for Jude because I thought it would improve my karma. Obviously that was wrong, especially because I did it to improve my karma. That’s like daring the universe to screw it up, you know?”

  “Um, not really. Karma is a concept I have difficulty with.”

  “That’s okay. After this disaster, it’s occurred to me that it would have been better to simply invest in the man’s business instead of doing a kindness for him. And you know what? If I could have just a tiny part of Grandfather’s capital to work with, I could use it to create an equity capital firm specializing in small businesses. And I could do a lot of good even though I wouldn’t be giving my capital away. I’d just be investing it. You know, like that Bible story.”

  “Bible story? Good Lord, have you actually gone to church?”

  She chuckled, her chest easing. “I have. But only to meet Patsy and Harry. On Sunday, the minister gave this sermon about investing. It made an impression.”

  “Obviously. But you are aware that the return on small-business investments will be insignificant.”

  She rolled her neck, easing the tension away. “I don’t need to strike it rich, Milo,” she said in her calmest voice. “I’m already richer than anyone has any right to be. And this would be a way to avoid the tax and karmic consequences of simply giving the money away.”

  He laughed.

  “And you might be surprised. I might make money. And if I do, I’m going to invest all the profits into a worthy nonprofit or something.”

  “So, is this what you want to do for the rest of your life?”

  She closed her eyes. Was it? For the last two weeks she’d been seeing the signs everywhere. Like coincidence or synchronicity. Annie’s Kitchen, which needed a bigger dining room. Daffy Down Dilly, which needed a better merchandise assortment and reduced price points. Charlotte and Daisy’s baskets, which required the endangered sweetgrass. Ashley’s historic house, which needed a restoration. And, of course, Jude, who needed financing for that sailboat he’d been talking about. But Jude had bigger problems than that now. Reel Therapy had been sunk.