What She Inherits

by Diane V. Mulligan

  Chapter 41

  St. Nabor Island, South Carolina

  When Angela got back to Grace’s after lunch, the first thing she did was see if there were any answers to her messages. It was as Randy had said: She stopped watching Facebook for a couple hours, and the responses started rolling in. Several people commented on her post about Ryan, writing comments about what a good guy he had been, gone too soon, rest in peace, and so on.

  Then she opened her private messages and saw that she had four: One from Helen Ellis Jenson, one from somebody name Lindsay Wilcox, and one from Nicole and another from Molly.

  She had ignored every call, text, and Email from Nicole and Molly for a week. She couldn’t deal with them telling her she was acting irrationally, that she needed to calm down and think things through, but she couldn’t avoid them forever.

  She opened Molly’s message first. It was brief:

  Where are you? Why aren’t you answering your phone? Please call me.

  Angela hated the thought of Molly worrying about her, and yet she needed to put her own needs first for now. Molly didn’t understand what she was going through, and that was okay, but Angela needed to distance herself until she could sort things out. She deleted the message.

  Nicole’s message was similar:

  Please let’s talk. I’m always here for you. XO

  Instead of feeling sad or guilty at Nicole’s words, Angela only felt annoyed. If Nicole and Molly were really always there for her, they wouldn’t have tried to talk her out of her belief that her mother’s ghost was trying to communicate with her. They should have tried to understand.

  She was too nervous to read Helen’s reply, so she clicked the other message instead.

  Hi Angela,

  I saw your post about Ryan. When I saw your post and profile picture, I knew right away you had to be his baby. I didn’t know your parents well. We weren’t friends. That said, everyone knew when CJ got pregnant. And then, when she was getting close to her due date, after Ryan’s death, she disappeared. I don’t think anyone heard from her at all after that. I guess kids today would say she ghosted us. I always hoped she took her baby away and raised her Gilmore Girls style in some adorable little town somewhere where she could start fresh and be a great mom and also her daughter’s best friend. It’s possible that I watch too much TV. Anyway, I hadn’t thought about her in a long time, and then a couple of months ago I ran into her when I was on vacation. She didn’t recognize me, but I’ve always had a thing for faces, and I remembered her right away. She was working at a place called the Beach Plum Café on Devil’s Back Island, Maine, but maybe you already know that?

  Even though we weren’t friends, as a I said, I always liked your parents. I hope you find what you’re looking for.

  Lindsay Wilcox

  Angela stared at the screen for a long time, deliberating whether or not she should look up the Beach Plum Café. After a few moments of indecision, she opened Helen’s message instead.

  Dear Angela,

  You have no idea how much I’ve hoped and prayed that one day you would reach out to me. I knew Richard would never go against Deborah’s wishes. That’s the kind of husband he was. But the day he disappeared from our family, taking you with him, it broke my heart. All these years, I have held out hope that one day he would see that it had been wrong to run away like that, and that he would come back. And now here you are, writing to me, and I see that my prayers have finally been answered. I fear I must infer from your note that your mother has passed on. I will not pretend she and I were friends, but for your sake, and for Richard’s, I am sorry. Does my brother know that you have contacted me? I tried to reach out to your parents many times in the early years after they left, but they never responded. It would bring me so much joy to have my brother in my life again. Please call me as soon as you can.

  Love,

  Your Aunt Helen

  Angela looked at the phone number at the bottom of the message. She couldn’t believe it had been so easy to find her long lost family. She couldn’t believe her parents had kept such massive secrets from her and she had never even guessed that the secrets existed, let alone the nature of all they were hiding.

  With shaking fingers, she dialed. A woman answered on the third ring and introduced herself as Helen Jenson.

  “This is Angela, your niece,” Angela said. On the other end, the woman burst into tears.

  Angela confirmed Helen’s inference about her mother’s death and broke the news about her father’s illness. Helen had had enough time since getting Angela’s message to develop high hopes for seeing her brother again, and Angela felt terrible as she dashed those hopes. She waited while Helen absorbed this news, and then she took a deep breath and explained to Helen how she had learned about her parents’ lies. She left out the ghosts and stuck to documents in her mother’s desk and safe deposit box as an explanation—no need to have two long-lost aunts fretting over her mental state.

  “I’ve met my mother’s sister, Marilyn, and I was wondering if you could maybe tell me your side of things, why they did what they did,” she asked.

  Like Marilyn, Helen said that the whole family had been shocked to learn that Ryan’s girlfriend was pregnant, but they liked the girl, and anyone could see that the kids were in love. With Deborah and Richard’s help, they thought the kids could raise the baby. It wasn’t ideal, but they planned to get married once they turned eighteen, and at least they had a support system. After Ryan’s death, when Deb decided to adopt the baby, everyone agreed that that made sense, but, Helen said, she was worried about CJ, who had been kicked out by her own mother and who had now lost Ryan, too. Deb never told her in-laws about her plan to raise the baby as her own, though. They hadn’t learned about that until after, after Deb and Rich were gone and no one could find them. They sought out Deb’s family, and Marilyn confessed Deb’s plan. That was it. The only difference between Helen’s story and Marilyn’s was Helen’s obvious loathing of Deb and her insistence that Deb had cajoled Richard into going along with such a duplicitous scheme.

  “Do you have friends there, dear? Do you have people to help you through this hard time?” Helen asked, as the conversation seemed to be winding down.

  Angela assured her that she did.

  “Do you think, maybe, you would like to meet us someday?”

  As angry as she’d been at Marilyn, she had no hesitation in her response that she would absolutely like to meet her father’s family sometime soon.

  After she hung up the phone, and before she could talk herself out of it, Angela looked up the Beach Plum Café, Devil’s Back Island, Maine. The café did not appear to have its own website, but it was listed on the island’s tourism website, with a picture of a charming little cottage and the café hours: May 1 - Columbus Day, Monday-Thursday, 7AM to 4PM; Weekends, 7AM to 7PM; Mid-October - April, Thursday-Sunday, 8AM to 3PM. She glanced at the clock. The café was open right now. She could call and maybe talk to her birth mother this very minute.

  She punched the number into her phone, and then, before she could hit dial, she chickened out. She wasn’t ready yet. She needed a strategy. She needed to think this through. Her stomach rumbled. She needed a meal and a good night’s rest. And then she would make the call. She needed to hear CJ’s side of the story.

  Chapter 42

  Devil’s Back Island, Maine

  Brett wasn’t a blanket-stealer like Jason. In fact, he was a perfect gentleman even in sleep. He didn’t hog the bed or insist on keeping their limbs entwined or encroach on Casey’s pillow. Waking up beside him felt like the easiest, most natural thing in the world.

  For the past four nights, he’d stayed with her instead of in his hotel room. They both knew he was going to have to leave eventually. He had a life in California—a life he planned to walk away from, it was true—but a life nonetheless. A job, a condo, a car, friends. And what if when he got back there to the perpetual sunny summer of LA, he realized that he didn’t want to abandon his
whole world? Because now that she had let him into her life, she wanted him to stay.

  “That’s a pretty serious face for this early in the morning,” he said, rolling onto his side and studying her. His black eyes had faded to an ugly greenish yellow, and the swelling of his nose had gone down. He sounded normal again.

  “I didn’t realize you were awake,” Casey said, giving him a smile.

  “What do you think about taking the day off today?” he asked, taking hold of a lock of her hair and twirling it around his finger.

  On the one hand, Casey thought it was pointless to open the café at all. On the other hand, she had to make the most of her final days at the Beach Plum Café.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “I want to go up to Weldon. I want to show you something.”

  “Can you show me tomorrow?” she asked.

  “It’s kind of time sensitive.”

  “Because you’re leaving?”

  He furrowed his brow and then said, “No. I mean, sort of. I’m planning to fly out Wednesday, but that’s not why I want to show you this today.”

  “You’re leaving on Wednesday?” Casey asked. It was Saturday. Wednesday would be here in the blink of an eye.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he said, leaning down and kissing her.

  She wanted to believe him, but in case he never came back, she decided she’d better go with him.

  They took Rosetta’s motor boat to the marina up the bay where she kept a pickup truck, and in a nod to chivalry, Brett drove. Casey always liked Weldon. It was a cute little town with an old-fashioned Main Street lined with shops and restaurants. Brett parked in front of a vacant storefront, got out, and opened the door for Casey. He led her up to the door of the storefront, and a woman opened it to let them in.

  “What is this?” Casey asked, standing in the dusty, empty space. The floor was battered old black and white linoleum, the walls a hideous, too-bright, blue. The ceiling was intricate pressed tin, although someone had painted it neon green.

  “It’s the perfect place for your new café,” Brett said, turning a circle with his arms out like Julie Andrews at the end of The Sound of Music.

  “I’m Lisa,” the woman said, holding out her hand to Casey.

  “Brett, what is going on?” Casey asked, not shaking Lisa’s hand.

  “Well, while you were working yesterday, I was scouting locations for you. It’s kind of my thing. It’s what I’m good at.” He sounded very proud of himself.

  “Lisa, could you leave us alone for a minute,” Casey asked.

  Lisa took her polite perma-smile and stepped back out onto the sidewalk.

  “What’s wrong?” Brett asked.

  “What are you doing? I didn’t ask you to do this.” This, Casey thought, was exactly the problem with men like Brett, men who had their lives together and thought rationally about financial security and the future. They thought women like her needed tending and fixing.

  “I know you didn’t, but you said it yourself—the café can’t stay in business on the island without the hotel.”

  “I can’t buy this place, or rent it, or whatever. I have no money. Look at this place. It’s a dump. Does it even have a kitchen?”

  “It does,” Brett said.

  “Yeah, well there’s no way I can afford it. I might as well start applying for barista jobs in Portland because there’s no way—”

  “You said your mom left you some money.”

  Casey kept forgetting about that. The idea that there was a whole pile of money sitting in an account somewhere waiting for her was hard to incorporate into her world view. She looked around the room again and then shrugged. “I’m sure it’s not enough.”

  “How much do you have?”

  “About two-hundred thousand,” she said, looking at the filthy floor and scraping at a wad of something or other with her shoe. She wondered what her checking account balance was. Probably more than she thought. She never spent money on anything.

  “That’s enough to get you started, if you manage your finances right.”

  She wondered if he was right. It sounded like an impossibly huge sum of money to her personally, but in business terms it sounded like nothing.

  “Yeah, well, I doubt I’m any better at managing money than Rosetta is, seeing as she’s the closest thing to a mentor I’ve got.”

  “What if I was your business partner?” Brett asked, closing the distance between them and taking both of her hands in his. “What if we go in on it 50-50? I have savings, too. We can renovate it ourselves, and you can be in charge of the cooking and I can run the business side of things.” His enthusiasm had returned. He was excited and happy and hopeful. It was enough to make Casey crack a smile.

  “Do you know anything about running a restaurant?” she asked.

  “I know a lot about business.”

  “And you’re handy with tools and paint and DIY projects?”

  “There’s only one way to find out.”

  “This might be the worst idea you ever had,” Casey said.

  ***

  The fact that Rosetta seemed to think it was a good idea for Casey and Brett to go into business together gave Casey pause. For tons of reasons, it was a really bad idea. She sat there, listing them for Rosetta—

  1. It’s a bad idea to go into business with the person you’re sleeping with.

  2. Their relationship was ridiculously new and therefore precarious.

  3. Brett had no experience running a restaurant.

  4. Restaurants are incredibly risky and most of them fail.

  5. She’d have to take the money from her mother, which went against her vow to herself to never have any dealing with her mother again...

  “Let me stop you right there,” Rosetta said. “Your mother is dead. You aren’t dealing with her. Be like Mother Theresa. Dirty money is washed clean when put to good use.”

  “Really? Mother Theresa?”

  Rosetta shrugged.

  “What about the whole sleeping together thing?”

  Rosetta made a disapproving face, but then she said, “Who was my business partner when I started this place?”

  “Phil, but you were married. You already had been married for years,” Casey said. She couldn’t believe Rosetta was defending Brett’s insane idea and using her own life experience to back it up. Rosetta should have been talking her out of this.

  “And what? We weren’t sleeping together?” Rosetta asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Here’s what I know: When you reach a certain age, it’s easy to know if you’ve found the right person for you. When you’re a kid, you have to take your time because you know you’re going to do a lot of growing and changing and that might tear you apart. But you’re not a kid, he’s not a kid. You both know what you want. Who cares if you hardly know each other? Hell, if you eloped tomorrow, I’d only throw you a party.”

  That was crazy talk. Rosetta was clearly going senile saying things like that. But the part about them not being kids anymore, that was true.

  “I’m looking into one of those retirement communities. My sister-in-law thinks there are spaces available at hers,” Rosetta said, changing the subject.

  “But that’s in Florida,” Casey said.

  “They tell me it’s a great place to retire. Bentley would like the warm climate.” She reached down and gave the dog a pat. “I’m too old to keep living out here. I need to be someplace where if I have an emergency I can actually get to a hospital.”

  “You’re perfectly healthy,” Casey said. Rosetta liked to play the old lady card when it suited her, and then to act indignant any time anyone treated her like an old lady.

  “I’m also 78 years old. If I have a stroke, I’ll be brain dead before the paramedics ever get here.”

  “Okay. Right. So I’m going into business with a man I’ve only known for a couple weeks and who I’m now sleeping with, and you’re moving to Florida.
Good talk,” Casey said, pushing back her chair.

  “What’s the worst thing that could happen if you open a café with him?” Rosetta asked.

  “It might tank.”

  “And then?”

  “I’d be broke.”

  “And then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Would you be any worse off than you are right now?” Rosetta asked.

  “I might get my heart broken, too,” Casey said after a minute.

  “Your heart is already broken. Everyone’s heart is broken by the time they’re—how old are you now? Thirty-six?”

  “Thirty-seven.”

  “Right. Well, there you have it.”

  ***

  Rosetta tried to tell Casey about what she’d found online when she looked for the Ellises. She tried over and over, but every time, Casey cut her off and refused to let her speak. She’d even gone so far as to clamp her hands over her ears and shout “lalala” at the top of her lungs.

  Rosetta considered contacting the girl herself, but then she came to her senses. She didn’t generally have a problem meddling when she thought she might be helpful, but even she could see that contacting Casey’s daughter would be a step too far. As Casey had pointed out, there was no way to know if the girl knew of her adoption or not, and there were too many variables in how she might react.

  Still, it pained her to know that the girl was out there, her great-great niece, and she’d never know her. But Rosetta knew when to call it quits. She had other battles to fight, anyway.

  After encouraging Casey to move forward with Brett’s crazy scheme—and it was crazy; the two of them hardly knew each other, but what else was there for Casey to do?—she set out for her appointment in Portland with her lawyer. She had to think of her own future, too. She had to accept that Casey was a grownup who could (and would have to) take care of herself. Rosetta the fairy godmother could do no more magic for her. Now she could only be her doddering old auntie.