The Cottage on Rose Lane

by Hope Ramsay

  “Harry. For goodness’ sake,” Patsy said.

  A frisson of anger curled around Jenna’s core. Where did Harry get off treating her like that? Yes, she’d been dishonest with him, but her dishonesty hadn’t hurt either of them. Her decision to help Jude had definitely hurt him, but she would make full restitution.

  Jude was the last person she wanted to hurt. She’d been honest with him. Maybe not from the start, but early on. Clearly something else was happening here. Like maybe Harry saw the past repeating itself. Like he had Jamie and Theresa tangled up with Jude and herself.

  She tried to swallow back her frustration, but a little of it entered her voice as she finally spoke. “I have lied to both of you. And I apologize, but it was necessary because I doubt that either one of you would have given me the time of day if I’d been honest. Each of you, in your own way, has told me as much.”

  “What are you talking about?” Harry demanded, his face getting red.

  “My name isn’t Jenna Fairchild. It’s Jenna Fossey. I’m your niece. I’m the daughter of that woman, as you put it the other day. The woman you both seem to blame for Jamie’s death. But you know what? She was my mother, and she did a good job of raising me, except that she never told me anything about my father. So I came here looking for him. But I knew I wouldn’t get the information I wanted if I just showed up on your doorstep one day.”

  She turned toward Patsy, whose face had gone as white as Bonney Rose’s mainsail. “At last night’s meeting, you made it clear that you had nothing to say to me. Imagine if I had knocked on your door two weeks ago and told you the truth right then. I would never have seen those photos of Jamie in the kitchen. And up until that moment, I had never seen a photograph of my father in my life. Can you imagine that?”

  “You spied on us? Oh my God, have you been using Jude to get to us?” Harry stood up and pointed a finger at her. “Does he know this?”

  “Of course he does. I told him a week ago, maybe more, when he thought I was working for Santee Resorts. The truth is, I went to the public hearing to get a look at you since I didn’t have any photographs of you either. And you’re part of a family that I’d like to have.

  “And I just discovered something important. Something you both should know. My lawyer found a cache of letters that my father wrote to—”

  “Jamie Bauman was not your father,” Patsy said, standing up and glaring at her, her blue eyes sharp as knives.

  Sitting on the sofa, Jenna suddenly felt small and vulnerable. “But my mother and father—”

  Patsy put up a hand, palm out, to stop Jenna. “Your own mother told us years ago that you are not Jamie’s child. How can you even think that we wouldn’t want a relationship with his baby? If I thought for one moment that you were Jamie’s daughter…” Her voice got wobbly. “But you’re not.”

  “And Robert,” Harry said with a snarl, “was so determined to keep his money out of our hands that he decided to give it to a total stranger and then make doubly certain by limiting your access to it until we were sure to be in our graves.”

  “You know about the trust?”

  “Of course I do. Robert made sure I knew about it when he changed his will just months before he died. He was practically gleeful.”

  “I don’t—”

  “You’re just a pawn in one of Robert’s schemes. The truth is, Robert could have given the money to charity or some worthy cause, but no. My brother was a miserly bastard who blamed me for Jamie’s death. He never forgave me for teaching Jamie how to sail. And this is how he ground my nose in it.” He pointed to the door. “Get out of my house. I swear if you try to buy Jude off or steal him away from this island, I will hunt you down and make your life a living hell.”

  Jude stood on Lilac Lane by the back gate to the Howland House rose garden. It was later than he’d planned because the family had kept him up last night, all of them talking about the new corporation. They’d even started a mission statement, and the family had agreed that the initial board of directors should be made up of people with business experience, which was how Jude ended up as president with Colton as vice president and Annie as treasurer. Cousin Emory, a schoolteacher, got nominated as secretary when he offered to write down everyone’s ideas for the mission statement.

  So it had been a very late night, and Jude was more than a little worried because Jenna hadn’t answered his texts this morning. Maybe she was annoyed because he’d ignored her texts for a couple of days. But really, he’d needed that time to get his head straight.

  Jude blew out a sigh and told himself that failure wasn’t an option as he opened the gate and strolled into Ashley Scott’s beautiful garden. He filled his lungs with the sweet, subtle scent of brown-eyed Susans and crape myrtle as he strolled up to the cottage’s door and knocked.

  No answer.

  His heart lurched in his chest. She hadn’t been here last night. Had Jenna left the island? Had she gone away?

  No. Maybe she’d gone for a walk. Or down to Bread, Butter, and Beans for breakfast. He sat down in one of the rockers ready to wait as long as it took.

  He knew a moment of supreme relief when Jenna arrived twenty minutes later wearing a pair of blue jeans with holey knees and a bright green Boston Celtics T-shirt. But his relief at seeing her evaporated in an instant when he saw the tears streaming down her face.

  Damn. She’d done it. She’d gone to tell Harry and Patsy the truth, and it hadn’t gone well. Maybe this wasn’t a good time to talk about what had happened yesterday, about the decisions he’d come to. Not just about Barrier Island Charters or the new nonprofit, but about her too.

  Because without her, he might never have had the courage to do what he’d done yesterday. He might never have tried to make a new reality for himself. And the more he thought about the future, the more he saw Jenna being a part of it.

  But this was a very bad omen.

  He stood up and met her on the crushed-shell footpath and pulled her into his arms. “You told Harry and Patsy the truth, didn’t you?” he asked.

  She nodded against his shoulder, gathered the fabric of his T-shirt in her fist, and started to bawl. This was unlike that moment on the day they’d painted the vicarage. Her sobs seemed to come from right down in the depths of her soul.

  While he was standing there, holding Jenna up, Ashley came out of her house and stared at them from across the flower beds for a long moment. Then she nodded her head, turned around, and returned to her house.

  “We should go inside,” he said. “Ashley is watching.”

  Jenna pushed away from him, wiping tears and snot from her cheeks. “It doesn’t matter. By now she’s probably heard from Patsy.”

  “What happened? I thought you—”

  “I’m not Jamie Bauman’s daughter, apparently. I’m probably the daughter of some random guy Mom picked up, which is why she never talked about my father. And you know what? It doesn’t matter if Jamie loved her if she didn’t love him back. Maybe she is responsible for Jamie’s death. Maybe she dumped him for someone else and he was heartbroken.” Her voice grew shaky and thin.

  She jogged up the porch steps and unlocked the cottage. He followed her.

  “Look, give it time. It will—”

  She turned on him. “No. It’s not going to work out. They hate me. Worse than that, really. Harry sees me as an evil person intent on hurting you. And I don’t know…Maybe he’s right. Maybe I’m just bad karma all the way around. And I’m going to have to pay the price in this lifetime for something I did in a previous one.”

  She stalked into the bedroom and picked up a battered backpack, threw it on the bed, and then headed into the bathroom. She returned a moment later with a small toiletry kit that she stuffed into the pack.

  “Are you leaving?” he asked, his heart crumbling like brittle concrete. She was going away. Damn.

  He loved her. He’d come here to say that out loud. To tell her that she’d changed everything, maybe from the first moment he
’d seen her on the dock. But she was going away.

  “I can’t stay,” she said, yanking open one of the bureau drawers, scooping up clothes and jamming them into the backpack.

  “But why?”

  “I can’t, okay? I just can’t. I don’t belong here.”

  “But—”

  “I don’t, Jude.” She turned around, tears streaming from her eyes. “You know, I thought I did. I fooled myself into thinking I did. I believed in synchronicity and interdependence and a whole lot of other BS. But there aren’t any coincidences. Life is just random. And I’m not Jamie’s daughter. There isn’t any great cosmic connection between us. And I don’t want to hurt you. Hell, I probably already have.”

  “But—”

  “Look, I’m like walking bad juju, or whatever your root doctors would call it. I have a huge karma cloud hanging over me. I’m like a reverse Midas. Even my acts of kindness blow up on me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m the reason Reel Therapy ended up underwater. I thought I would do something nice for you, so I paid for an ad in the Last Gasp of Summer edition of the Harbor Times that’s been distributed to every merchant and B and B on the island. That’s why your business has been picking up.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t you see? You would never have gotten that midweek charter without the advertising. And look what happened because of that. And, you know, it’s worse than that. I paid for Ashley’s roof repair, and she hates the fact that someone gave her charity, so she’s moving away when everyone wants to find a way to help her stay.

  “I’m a disaster, Jude. Like the Flying Dutchman or whatever.” She continued to throw clothes into her backpack. “But it’s okay, because I fixed it with the towing service.”

  “You fixed what with the towing service?”

  “I paid for Reel Therapy’s salvage. Yesterday morning. It’s all taken care of. It was the least I could do.”

  “You did what?”

  “I told you. I had to. It was my fault.”

  “No, it was my daddy’s fault. What is it with you? Are you so rich you think the rest of us can’t manage? And what’s this about advertising?” he asked.

  She stopped throwing things and turned to face him. “I paid for some advertising for you.”

  “But…why?”

  “Because I wanted to invest in you.”

  “Invest? Is that all?” Disappointment precipitated like lead in his gut. She just wanted to invest in him? Damn. He wanted so much more from her.

  She wiped more tears away from her cheeks. “No. Yes. It’s complicated. Maybe you should ask your brother. It was because of something he said, and I should have known better than to listen to a Christian sermon. I’m not Christian, so what do I know? Anyway, I’m profoundly sorry for messing up your life. For meddling. For thinking I had any capacity to do any good for anyone.”

  She turned back toward her pack and started zipping it up. “You know,” she said, “it’s almost ironic. Little Jackie Scott told me that my riches were ill gotten, and that ill-gotten riches were a curse. I think that little boy and his ghost are right.”

  She hoisted the pack onto her shoulders and brushed past Jude. He followed her all the way to the parking lot, where she tossed her pack into her rental car, a nondescript Hyundai. “I’m sorry,” she said as she slammed the trunk and then yanked open the driver’s door. “I need to leave. It’s better this way.” She got into the car and shut the door.

  He wanted to stop her, but he was pissed off. And besides, it all became clear like mist lifting from the bay on a summer’s morning. Jenna Bauman or Fairchild, or whatever her damn name was, would never be anything more than a tourist.

  Milo called about the time Jenna hit Route 17 South heading for Charleston. She thought about letting his call go to voice mail but decided that, one way or another, she needed to talk to him. So she pressed the phone button on the Hyundai’s steering wheel.

  “Hello, Jenna,” Milo said in his infernally calm British tones. “I just saw the e-mail you sent last night about the B and B. I thought you wanted to start an investment equity firm. What’s this about the B and B?”

  “Nothing. Forget it, okay? I’m finished trying to do good in the world.”

  “Oh dear, what’s happened?”

  “Why did Robert Bauman make me his heir?” she asked.

  “That’s an odd question coming from his granddaughter.”

  “How do you know I’m his granddaughter?”

  “Because he told me you were.”

  “But you never did a DNA test, did you?”

  “What on earth has gotten into you, Jenna?”

  “The truth. I don’t think I’m Jamie Bauman’s daughter.”

  Silence. Milo was so good at it. It hung between them for a long moment as traffic slowed to a creep. “I’m assuming Patsy or Harry told you this,” he said.

  “Good guess. Did you know they would tell me the truth? Is that why you sent me to Jonquil Island?”

  More silence before he said, “I have always operated on the belief that you are Robert Bauman’s sole heir. I have no reason to doubt his assertion. If you like, I can do some more research on this issue.”

  “Don’t bother. I don’t care. I’ve never cared. And I want to give all my money to Harry and Patsy. Can you make that happen?”

  Another long silence.

  “Can you?” she almost screamed at Robert Bauman’s lawyer.

  He cleared his throat. “No. I can’t. As a matter of fact, your grandfather anticipated this. You can’t give away any of your inheritance. I’m explicitly required to make sure of that.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Something inside her deflated. “Is that why you’re always lecturing me about charity?”

  “Yes and no. You can give away as much of your allowance as you’d like. But the capital can’t be given away. And for the record, your charitable giving does have important tax consequences that you regularly fail to consider.”

  “Would the equity capital firm I talked about yesterday qualify as charity?”

  Milo Stracham actually laughed. “I’m sure your grandfather would call it charity, but no. That would be a business venture in my definition, since you’d be charging interest or, more likely, asking for a share of each business you invest in.”

  “Robert Bauman isn’t my grandfather.”

  Milo gave a long sigh. “Well, if you like I could cut off your monthly allowance.”

  “What happens to the money if I walk away from it?”

  “The firm will invest it wisely. And when you’re forty-five, you’ll have to make a decision about it.”

  “And what if I die before I’m forty-five?”

  “Then it goes to your heirs. And if you have none, then all of it gets rolled over to the Bauman Foundation for the Study of Blindness, which, as you know, was originally endowed by your grandfather. So you’ll either have to wait until you’re forty-five or die. I hope you don’t die, Jenna. I’ve become rather fond of you.”

  “I can’t give it to the foundation now?”

  “No, you cannot. As I said, your grandfather anticipated your antipathy.”

  “I don’t understand why he did this to me.”

  “I believe he thought he was giving you something of value. And giving you enough time to come to terms with it.”

  “It’s a curse. It’s never going to bring me happiness.”

  “Jenna, in my experience, money rarely does. Perhaps that’s why he put it in trust for you.”

  “Ha. Good try, Milo. But I don’t believe you. If Robert understood that, why didn’t he reach out to me when he was alive? He knew I existed. Why did he deny a relationship with me? He must have known that I’m not Jamie’s child. He did it to hurt Harry and Patsy, didn’t he?”

  “There was a rift between Robert and his brother, no question about it. But I don’t think that motivated him when it came to you and the money. Jen
na, what happened?”

  “It’s not important. I’m on my way to Charleston. I’m going to get on the first plane back to Boston.”

  “Boston? Not New York?”

  “Boston is my home,” she said, her throat thickening. “Was my home.”

  “Is it still?” Milo asked as if he could read her mind. Knowing Milo, he probably could.

  “It’s where I was born.”

  “Why not come to New York? You can stay at the house on the Hudson, and we can talk through this equity capital firm you were thinking about.”

  The idea of spending an evening at some stodgy restaurant with Milo appealed to her even if the idea of staying at her grandfather’s monstrous house did not. When she thought about it, Milo was the only family she had. And he wasn’t even family. He was paid to look after her.

  There wasn’t anyone in Jenna’s life like Jude’s aunts Charlotte and Daisy or his cousin Annie. Or even a group of friends like Ashley’s Piece Makers. Or Jude’s Buccaneer sailors. She was alone. How had she let that happen?

  “Jenna, my dear,” Milo said in a gentle voice, “it’s clear that I should never have insisted that you go to Jonquil Island. This is my fault. I thought perhaps if you went there and met your aunt and uncle, the family rift could be healed. I’m a stupid romantic, I suppose. I truly hoped that you would find some connections there.”

  “Well, I haven’t. They hate me. They hate my mother, whom they blame for Jamie’s death. And who knows. They might be justified in that. What if Mom cheated on him and broke his heart and he went out in that boat, intent on…?” She couldn’t say the words.

  “I’m sorry,” Milo said. “Won’t you think about coming to New York?”

  “No. And I’m no longer interested in that equity capital idea. In fact, I might just go back to India.”

  “Oh, that’s a shame. I liked that idea. I was looking forward to seeing your business plan.”

  “Well, too bad. I’ll call you when I get to Charleston and decide whether I’m going back to Boston or heading to India. Oh, and you know what? Stop the allowance. I don’t want any of this money. Captain Bill was right. It’s cursed.”