The Will

by Kristen Ashley

  Andy Collins!

  It was amazing. He sat and talked with me all during lunch. And he said he’d see me there tomorrow!

  Now, you know, I’m not going to settle for anything but the best. My man is going to be strong and tall and handsome and smart and protective and fierce, so very FIERCE, and wonderful and he’s going to adore me. Then he’s going to let me talk him into moving to Maine and living at Lavender House and having three babies (two girls, one boy, the boy the oldest, of course, so he can look after his sisters) and I’m going to garden and tend the lavender and cook at the Aga and he’s going to be, I don’t know, a fisherman or whatever.

  I’m not sure Andy’s up to all that, although he’s strong and tall (he’s on the football team!) and very cute.

  I wish I could show you his picture.

  Of course, Dad says I can’t date until I’m seventeen which is bizarre and mean because most of my friends started dating at fifteen (just not car dates) and I’m already sixteen (and have my own driver’s license, for goodness sakes!) and I’ve already had to say no to two boys! It was a disaster! I hated it! And everyone thinks I’m a big priss, which is terrible!

  But neither of them were Andy, the cutest boy in school!

  I’ll write again tomorrow and let you know if he sits with me at lunch.

  I wish you were talking to Dad. Maybe you could talk him into not only letting me come to Lavender House this summer but also allowing me to go out on a date with Andy (if he asks and just in case you didn’t get it, I hope he asks!!!!!!!!!).

  OK. Well, I should go. I have homework to do (Algebra. Blech. Mr. Powell is such a bore!). I just wanted you to know that. Now, I have to go steal a couple of stamps from Dad’s desk. One for this and one for the letter I hope to write you tomorrow that tells you Andy sat with me again.

  I love you. I hope you’re doing good. I miss you.

  Start to talk to Dad again. Please? I missed Lavender House last summer.

  But mostly, I missed you.

  All my love, forever and completely,

  Josie

  Jake set the letters aside and looked out the window at the sea knowing that Andy sat with her again the next day.

  And he knew Andy did more.

  He beat her, lamb.

  He closed his eyes as Lydie’s words hit his brain but that didn’t stop them from coming.

  She wanted to go out with that boy so badly, she snuck out. She did it for over a year. When she got home one night, he’d found out and he beat her, lamb. Her father beat her so badly, she was in the hospital for a week.

  Jake opened his eyes and took another drag from the bottle.

  He beat her, lamb.

  He drew in breath.

  Beat her so badly, she was in the hospital for a week.

  He stared out the window, not seeing anything.

  My man is going to be strong and tall and handsome and smart and protective and fierce, so very FIERCE, and wonderful and he’s going to adore me.

  That he could do.

  He would need to be very gentle and understanding, patient and kind, thoughtful, softhearted, and yes, maybe dashing and refined, definitely intelligent and successful.

  That he couldn’t.

  Jake took another pull from his beer.

  He beat her, lamb.

  He felt his jaw get tight even as his fingers gripped the beer hard to stop himself from throwing it. If he did, he’d have to clean that shit up and it might wake the kids.

  Instead, he put the letters back in their envelopes, got up and took his beer with him as he moved back to the desk. He put Josie’s letters that Lydie had given him back together and tied them with the ribbon.

  Then he opened the drawer and was about to toss the pile in when he saw it at the bottom.

  He set the letters on top of the desk, reached into the drawer and pulled out the frame.

  It was of Josie.

  She was on a beach. Her skin was tan. The breeze blowing so much at her long blonde hair, she had her hand lifted in it, pulling it away and holding it at her crown, but tendrils were captured by the lens arrested in flying around her face. Her other hand was resting on her hip. She was standing, smiling into the distance, a scarf blowing back from her neck, sunglasses on her eyes, her sundress plastered against her tall, slim but curvy body.

  That shit for brains photographer boss of hers took that picture, gave it to Lydie and Lydie had given it to Jake.

  It looked like a shot from the ‘50’s of some Italian bombshell. Italian because Josie looked sophisticated. Exotic. Glamorous. Classy. So much of all those, she couldn’t be American but something foreign, unknown, unobtainable.

  Impossible.

  So I’m going to go sit with her while he spends a few hours in the office.

  Jake didn’t take his eyes from the picture even as he belted back more beer.

  And trust me, you have a fabulous figure. You’ve made two mentions of losing weight and you’ve barely been here an hour. Cease doing that. It’s ridiculous. And if someone tells you differently, simply inform them of that ridiculousness.

  He smiled at the picture.

  He beat her, lamb.

  His smile died.

  Fuck, that shit for brains photographer boss of hers had all that for fucking years.

  Years.

  And she still sat beside her grandmother’s casket alone.

  So yes, to answer your question, I’m keeping the house.

  She was keeping the house.

  That meant they might get to keep her.

  Jake just needed to see to making that happen.

  He put the picture back in the drawer and returned the letters there. He closed it. He locked it. He slugged back the last of his beer, turned out the lights, went to his bedroom, undressed and hit the sack.

  It was late and he needed some sleep.

  Because tomorrow morning, for breakfast, he was meeting Josie.

  Chapter Seven

  Winded

  My high-heeled boots thudded on the boardwalk as the heavy breeze blew my Alexander McQueen scarf behind me.

  I spied Jake at the window to The Shack through my sunglasses that I was wearing even though the day was cold, gray and threatening rain.

  I was lamenting my choice of the McQueen scarf. It was cream with hot pink skulls on it (one that was of his signature design) but it wasn’t exactly warm.

  Still, it was fabulous and fabulous required sacrifice. I knew that from years of practicing fabulous.

  Or trying to.

  As if he sensed my approach, Jake turned, his non-sunglassed eyes did an obvious head to toe and his unfortunately attractive lips spread into a wide smile that exposed equally unfortunately attractive teeth.

  He moved my way as I got close and I heard him call to the window, “Just yell when they’re done, Tom.”

  “You got it!” was called back by the invisible Tom.

  I stopped where Jake stopped, at the end of The Shack where there was a tall table with a variety of things on it.

  “Good morning, Jake,” I greeted.

  “Mornin’, Slick,” he greeted back, still smiling big.

  But I blinked.

  Slick.

  I finally understood his use of the word “slick.”

  Good God.

  He’d given me a nickname.

  And it was Slick!

  I opened my mouth to protest this but he stuck a hand toward me and I saw he had two white paper cups.

  “Coffee,” he pointed out the obvious.

  Forced by politeness to express gratitude rather than express aversion to my nickname, I took it and said, “Thank you.”

  “Shit’s here to put in it,” he motioned to the table. He then put his coffee on it and pulled off the white lid.

  I eyed my selections and noted with no small amount of horror that they had powered creamer and no sweetener.

  “Thought Fellini was dead,” Jake noted bizarrely, pouring a long stream of s
ugar from a silver-topped glass container into his coffee.

  “I beg your pardon?” I asked.

  He kept pouring for a bit then put the sugar down and turned to me. “Babe, you look like you’re walkin’ on the set of a Fellini movie.”

  I blinked at him again before I asked, “You’ve seen a Fellini film?”

  And he smiled big again. “No, but that doesn’t mean you don’t look like a broad from one of those old art house movies where the babes are all sex kitten bombshells dressed real good, wearing sunglasses with scarves flyin’ all over the place.”

  I stared at him thinking this might be a compliment.

  A very nice one.

  Or, a very nice one Jake Spear style.

  “Scarves, I’ll add, that don’t do shit when it’s fifty degrees but the wind chill makes it feel like forty,” he went on.

  I kept staring at him.

  “Josie? You awake?” he asked when this went on for some time.

  “You use too much sugar in your coffee,” I blurted.

  “Yeah,” he said, going back to his coffee that he was now stirring. “You’re not the first woman to tell me that.”

  I found that interesting.

  He looked at me, down to the table then at me again and asked, “You gonna set up your coffee?”

  I hid my distaste as I looked at what was on offer to “set up my coffee” then I looked back at him and shook my head.

  I usually took a splash of skim milk and a sweetener.

  That morning, I’d drink it black.

  “Right, let’s sit down,” Jake said and tossed his stirrer in the (filthy and encrusted with a variety of things, not all of them coffee) little white bin provided on the table.

  He then started moving to the mélange of unappealing white plastic chairs with their equally unappealing white steel (liberally dusted with rust) tables that likely saw cleaning only through the salty air and sea breeze.

  “Sit down?” I asked Jake’s back, following him. “Outside?”

  He selected a table (there was a wide selection seeing as no one was there) and turned to me. “You got a problem with outside?”

  “Not normally. Al fresco dining is usually quite lovely. But not when the wind chill factor is forty.”

  “Al fresco dining,” he repeated.

  “Dining outside,” I explained and this got another smile.

  “Know what it is, Slick,” he stated. I opened my mouth to share how I felt about this nickname but he returned to his earlier subject before I could say a word. “You need a decent scarf.”

  “This is a decent scarf,” I retorted. “It’s Alexander McQueen.”

  “Maybe so but I’m not sure Alexander whoever’s been to Maine.”

  I wasn’t either. Alas, he nor his genius was with us any longer so if he hadn’t, that would now be impossible.

  This conversation was ridiculous and he wasn’t moving so I decided to seat myself. As I did, I longed for some antiseptic wipes (about a hundred of them, for the chair and the table). Since I didn’t have any, I settled in a chair and sipped the coffee.

  After I did that, I stared at the cup mostly because I was surprised that it was robust and flavorful.

  “Tom doesn’t fuck around with coffee,” Jake murmured and I turned my eyes to him.

  “It appears this is so.”

  He smiled at me again.

  I gingerly set my coffee on the table and equally gingerly shrugged my handbag off my shoulder to join it.

  “Your mornin’ been good?” he asked quietly.

  I picked up my coffee and looked at him. “Thus far.”

  “When do you go to your friends’ place?”

  “After this,” I said before taking a sip.

  His head cocked slightly to the side. “You sure you’re up for that? That’s a lot, what with all you’re already dealin’ with.”

  He was right.

  Even so.

  “Mr. Weaver needs a break.”

  “He may need one, Josie, but I think he’d get it if you weren’t up to giving it to him.”

  “I offered,” I pointed out. “I can’t renege now.”

  He said nothing but watched me even as he took a sip from his coffee.

  When our silence lasted for some time, I shared, “I like your children.”

  “Yeah, they liked you too.”

  I felt my brows rise for I found this surprising.

  Ethan liked me, I knew. I couldn’t miss that, what with the hugs and the like.

  Amber, I wasn’t certain.

  So I asked, “Even Amber?”

  “Amber likes boys, makeup, shoes, clothes and boys is worth a repeat since she likes them so much. You’re all about three of those so I figure she’ll put up with you. What she doesn’t like is schoolwork, her dad, her mom, helpin’ out around the house and pumping gas into her car. I know that last one since I’ve had to go get her five times when she’s run out of gas and she’s had her license for two months.”

  “Oh dear,” I murmured.

  “That’s about it,” he agreed.

  Wishing to make him feel better, I asked, “Isn’t it normal for a girl her age not to like those things, including her parents?”

  “Maybe,” he replied then continued, “But she doesn’t like me because I’m precisely what you said I am. A dad, a protective one and one who knows what that Noah kid has on his mind when he asks her to a concert in Boston which would mean they gotta spend the night in Boston. And I’m strict about that shit and her gettin’ decent grades because my girl’s smart as fuck and she could do something with her brain, so she should. And she doesn’t like her mother because she’s about gettin’ laid, the more often the better, the younger the guy she lets in there the better. The bitch hit mid-life crisis early, shot right to cougar and Amber’s not big on her mom bein’ competition for boyfriends.”

  I gasped loudly at this shocking news.

  Jake repeated, “That’s about it,” when I did.

  “Is she, well…Ethan’s—?”

  He shook his head. “Conner and Amber have the same mom. Married a woman in between, thankfully didn’t get her knocked up seein’ as that lasted three months. Ethan’s got a different mom. That lasted three years. She lives in Raleigh now with her new man and she’s all about shovin’ her nose up his ass and that means treatin’ his kids like gold and forgettin’ she made one of her own.”

  “Oh no,” I whispered, not liking the sound of that at all.

  He muttered, “Yep. I can pick ‘em,” and took another sip of coffee.

  I took one too thinking, poor Ethan.

  And poor Amber.

  “Yo! Jake! Food’s up!” I heard yelled through the wind and I looked back at The Shack to see two Styrofoam containers sitting on the ledge outside the window but Tom was still hidden in the murky shadows of the diminutive ramshackle structure.

  “Be back,” Jake said, got up and went to get our food.

  He came back and set mine in front of me. This included a see-through plastic wrapped parcel that held a napkin and plastic cutlery.

  “Crab, cream cheese and green onion omelet,” Jake declared.

  I couldn’t believe it but that actually sounded delicious.

  Tentatively, I opened the container.

  It looked delicious too and the aroma wafting up smelled divine.

  I set my coffee aside, grabbed my plastic wrapped parcel and asked, “How long were you together with Conner and Amber’s mom?’

  “Seven years,” he answered. “She lives local and I wish she’d move to Raleigh too.” He paused then finished on a mutter, “Or maybe Bangladesh.”

  I turned my eyes to him and smiled at his joke.

  Then I looked back down to my omelet and thus missed his eyes changing before they dropped to my mouth.

  “You, um…said that Amber charges money to look after Ethan and that Gran would watch him after school.” I forked into my omelet and brought it to my mouth as I looked bac
k at him. “While I’m in Magdalene, I can help out if you need someone to watch him.”

  “Brings us full circle, Slick,” he stated and before I could get into the “Slick” business, he continued, “You thought more on your plans?”

  Actually, I had, over a glass of wine consumed staring at the dark sea from the window seat of the light room last night.

  Therefore, I shared them with him.

  “I think I’ve decided to stay for a bit. Take a kind of sabbatical. I can do a lot of what I do for Henry from here, given a phone and Internet, the second Gran doesn’t have but it’s easy enough to get access. So I won’t get bored. But after losing Gran, I’d like to feel”—I searched for a word and found it—“settled for a while.”

  I took my bite and he was right. It didn’t knock me on my behind but it was shockingly delicious. It wasn’t just crab, cream cheese and green onion. There was a subtle hint of garlic as well, the pepper was clearly freshly ground and the crab was succulent.

  Superb.

  “That’s a good idea, Josie.” I heard Jake say and I lifted my eyes to him to see him studying me intently. “Slow down a bit. Deal with Lydie passin’.” He grinned. “Hang with us, people who loved her like you did.”

  After years of a jets-set lifestyle that was interesting and fulfilling, that still sounded marvelous.

  That said, there were things to discuss, things to know.

  And I set about doing that.

  I dug back into my omelet and said before taking another bite, “I’d like to understand that better, Jake.”

  “Understand what better?”

  I chewed, swallowed and looked to him again. “How you came to know Gran so well.”

  “We don’t got the time to get into that before you gotta be at the Weavers.”

  That sounded like a stall tactic and I opened my mouth but he lifted a hand.

  “Tell you it all, honey. All of it. But seriously, it might not be a long story but it might bring up questions and I’d like to have the time and focus to answer them.”

  That was thoughtful, nice and I had a feeling he was right. I would have a lot of questions and I’d like him to have the time and focus to answer them. So I nodded and took another bite.

  “Owe you dinner, take you out, give it all to you.” I heard him say as I munched.