Donna climbed into the car and rolled down the window. “You do know that there’s a special place in hell for little sisters with smart mouths.”
Kelly smiled, put her fingers to her lips, and blew Donna a kiss. “Take care of yourself.”
“You too.”
A thought struck. One she liked a lot. “Why don’t you have Grace work that magic she does with your schedule and come back for a couple of days on your way home?”
“I suppose I could check with the other passengers to see if they would mind dropping me off and then see what the pilot thinks.”
“You don’t have to fly, you could rent a car. Or I could pick you up. It’s not that far.”
The limo started to pull away. Donna signaled the driver to stop. “What’s up, Kelly? Why are you suddenly spooked about being here by yourself?”
Until that moment she hadn’t known she was. “It’s not that,” she lied. “I’ve loved being with you. We need to do this more often.” At least that was the truth.
Donna smiled. “I know.” She signaled the driver it was all right to leave. “We’ll get together with Alexis when you get home and plan something fun for this winter. I’ve been thinking about a skiing trip to Colorado.”
“Alexis doesn’t ski.”
“We’ll teach her,” she called, as the limo pulled away.
“Fat chance,” Kelly said softly. She had her hand in the air for a final wave when she spotted Andrew’s car on the forest road. Instead of going inside, she waited for him.
“I have your key,” she called, as he got out of his car. “If you’ll wait a minute, I’ll get it for you.”
She retrieved the key and met him on the pathway between their houses. “I tried to return it a couple of times yesterday and this morning but couldn’t catch you at home.”
He added the key to a ring with a small, round photograph of a dog on it. “I was in Oakland this weekend.”
“I thought about leaving a note but decided you might not want people to know you weren’t there.”
“You don’t have to worry about things like that around here. Half the time I don’t bother locking the door.” He grinned. “We’ve only had one attempted break-in that I know of. A couple of suspicious characters tried getting into one of the houses through an unlocked bathroom window.”
She liked Andrew Wells. “I take it this ‘break-in’ wasn’t successful?”
“Amateur stuff.”
“Probably kids with nothing better to do.”
“Undoubtedly. By the way, I meant to tell you that if you ever need help with something and I’m not here, Paul Williams lives in the house a couple of doors down with the green shutters.”
“Thanks, but I’m sure I’ll be okay.”
As if he’d read her mind, he added, “He’s a great kid and loves being asked, so don’t hesitate because you think you might be imposing.”
She’d been on her own long enough to know how to take care of most problems or how to find someone who could. Still, it was good to know the neighbors here looked out for each other. “There is one thing.”
“Yes?”
“The yard. Am I supposed to take care of it or does someone come in?” She’d discovered a lawn mower and edger in the garage and wouldn’t mind doing the work. While growing up she’d loved taking care of the corner of their property where her father had planted her mother’s favorite flowers. The living tribute to the woman he’d lost in a car accident the year after Kelly was born was the closest thing Harold Anderson had to a hobby. Whenever Kelly felt the need to be alone with him, she helped him with the garden.
“There’s a service that comes in on Wednesdays and the watering is automatic.”
“Oh.”
Picking up on her disappointment, Andrew added, “But I know Julia wouldn’t mind if you had the urge to get your hands dirty and did something with the planters on the back deck. The oenothera and phlox are years past their prime.”
“Julia?” Kelly remembered seeing a corporate name on the rental agreement and had assumed the house belonged to an agency.
“She and her husband, Eric, own the house.”
“As an investment?” She was curious because she’d looked into buying a condo at Lake Tahoe near one of the ski resorts. The tax rules were specific on investment property. The owner had two weeks a year for personal use and slightly more time for upkeep. She knew the beach house was only rented during the summer and found it hard to believe that it stood empty most of the rest of the year.
“Julia and Eric lived here for a year after they were married, then moved back East to be near his kids. They thought about selling but weren’t ready to let the place go. Too many memories, I guess. The house has a long tradition of summer renters. Julia liked the idea of that happening again. If it doesn’t work, she’ll probably sell.”
“If beachfront property here is anything like it is in San Diego, they’re sitting on a gold mine. I can understand why she would want to see a return on her investment.”
“It’s more complicated than that.” He started to explain, stopped, and said, “You want to come in for a drink? I think there’s some iced tea left, and I know there’s wine.”
She hesitated, not knowing if the offer was as spontaneous as it sounded or a result of Donna’s clumsy matchmaking attempt. She didn’t want to spend the next month correcting a wrong impression. “I’m expecting a call from my boyfriend.” She hated the term “boyfriend.” It sounded so high school, but she didn’t know what else to call Ray. They weren’t engaged, he wasn’t a significant other, he wasn’t even her roommate.
“Another time then.”
His lack of reaction to her having a boyfriend encouraged her. “He said I shouldn’t expect him home from the baseball game for another hour yet. And I’d love to hear more about the house. I have a feeling if those walls could talk, they could tell some amazing stories.”
He smiled. “I don’t know about the first eighty-five years, but the last ten have given me some of the best friends I’ve ever had.”
THEY SETTLED ON COFFEE AND DRANK IT, SITting on teak chairs on Andrew’s flagstone patio, facing the setting sun. “I can’t believe anyone could get used to living in a place like this,” Kelly said. “But I wonder if that’s true.”
“After all the years I’ve lived here, the first thing I do when I get up in the morning is look out the window. The only thing better would be to have someone looking out there with me.”
“Anyone in particular?” Kelly asked carefully.
“Well, this is embarrassing. I was thinking out loud. Yes, there is someone in particular.”
“The weekend in Oakland?”
“That’s her.”
Relieved, Kelly settled back in her chair and changed the subject. “You were going to tell me about my house,” she prompted.
Andrew gave her a brief history, beginning with the couple who’d sold the place to Julia’s first husband, Ken Huntington. “When Joe and Maggie died a couple of years ago, no one could remember a time when they weren’t here. They were married sixty-five years and still lit up when they were with each other. I can’t look at the house without picturing them there.”
“Sixty-five years … that’s amazing. It’s hard to imagine that kind of relationship.” Although she knew without question that her mother and father had loved each other that way. Unbidden thoughts of Ray intruded. Was she the love of his life? Was he hers?
“They were going through a rough time financially when they sold the place to Ken. As part of the deal, he insisted the summer months were theirs for as long as he owned the house.” Andrew chuckled. “Somehow they got it in their heads that Ken was stretched pretty thin financially, too, so they rented the house two of the three summer months and gave him the money.”
“I take it Ken was doing okay?”
“Does the name Huntington mean anything to you?”
“Of course.” She shook her head in amazement at the
poignancy of the misunderstanding. “That’s a great story. Did Joe and Maggie ever find out that Ken was one of the world’s richest men?”
“I’m sure they did, but they never stopped giving him the rent money, and he never made them feel foolish by refusing.”
“How did Eric come into the picture?”
“He met Julia while I was off sailing, a year after Ken died. He was taking care of this place for me.”
“It’s easy to see why the same people would come back year after year. I’ve fallen in love with Julia and Eric’s house and I’ve only been here two days.”
“She’ll like hearing that.”
“I take it she was the gardener?”
“It started with Maggie. At first Julia kept it up just to please her, but then eventually she developed a real passion for flowers and plants and turned the yard into the English garden that it is today. Eric told me that Julia had the outside of their new house landscaped before she bought the first piece of furniture for the inside.”
“I see your personal preference runs more toward simplicity.” Nasturtiums were everywhere, circling the house and lining the walkways, their round, bright green leaves and orange and yellow blossoms the only landscaping.
“It’s more that I don’t like yard work, and nasturtiums pretty much take care of themselves. I work with plants all day, I’d rather not do it at home, too.”
“You do landscaping?”
“I have a wholesale nursery.”
Ray’s father was in the nursery business in Santa Barbara. “Plants or cut flowers?”
“Mostly plants, but we do some seasonal cut flowers, too.”
“Orchids?”
Surprised, he smiled. “How’d you guess?”
“A friend who’s in the business once told me that, with the exception of orchids, most commercial growers either sell plants or flowers, not both.” Kelly reached for the insulated carafe and poured them both another cup of coffee.
Andrew had started to add cream and sugar to his coffee when he was distracted by a sound on the other side of the railing. He went to investigate. Finding nothing, he explained, “There’s a stray cat in the neighborhood that I’ve been trying to get to trust me. As terrified as it is with strangers and the way it bolts in front of cars, I don’t think it’s been an outside cat. I have a feeling there might be a collar under all that fur.”
“If it’s the gray-and-tan one that looks like it’s part lynx, I saw him sleeping in the chair on my deck yesterday morning. I scared him when I opened the door. He took off, and I haven’t seen him since.”
Andrew doctored his coffee, then sat down again. “What brought you here for a vacation?”
“I’m taking a class at the university.”
“Work or pleasure?”
“Definitely not pleasure. Environmental ethics is pretty dry stuff.”
“And you’re doing this because?”
“We’re opening a new division at my law office.”
“For or against?” he asked.
The question wasn’t unexpected. Few people were neutral on environmental issues. Either you sided with evil corporate empires or valiant crusaders. “I like to think I’m against extremism and for reason.”
“So you’re here to check out the enemy.”
She automatically went on the defensive. “I’m here to learn from a man who is a professional witness for environmental causes.”
“Meaning he’s someone who is paid to testify during court cases?”
“Yes.” She had to stop taking these kinds of questions personally. She was supposed to be neutral about such things. Passion clouded judgment and lost cases.
“Aren’t all expert witnesses paid?”
“Most of them,” she acknowledged.
“So by calling him a professional witness you’re not denigrating him.”
Neither his voice nor demeanor appeared judgmental, but the statement was enough to let her know she’d crossed some invisible line. “Donna told me you and Matt know each other.”
“We go back a few years.”
She liked loyalty in a friend. “If he’s as good a teacher as he is a witness, it should be an interesting four weeks.”
“I’ve never taken one of his courses, but we’ve had more than a few ‘lively’ discussions over beers. Something tells me you might be in for a surprise or two.”
“Glad to hear it. I like surprises.” That was better. At least she sounded professional–the kind of lawyer who shook hands with the opposing council after losing a tough trial and walked away without a crushing sense of defeat. Law was like a game, sometimes you won, sometimes you lost, but you never–at least not at her firm–became personally involved.
Kelly stayed another hour, the time passing so quickly she was stunned when she saw that it was almost ten. Remembering Ray had promised to call at nine, she thanked Andrew for the coffee and company and rushed home.
Ray didn’t answer his phone. She tried his cell number, then his pager, but he didn’t respond to either. Hoping he was in the shower and not purposely ignoring her, she waited fifteen minutes and tried again, with the same results. She made two more attempts before she gave up and left a breezy message on his machine that she was sorry she’d missed him and would call again in the morning. By then he would have a story to cover his absence, and she would go along with it because it was easier than confronting him with his childishness.
His behavior was understandable, if annoying. He was an only child who’d been doted on by a mother with too little to do and a father who saw in his son a second chance to live the life he’d been denied by his own father.
Kelly had no doubt Ray eventually would grow out of his desire to be the center of attention. He needed time, and she needed patience. She just had to keep reminding herself that Ray’s good qualities more than balanced his bad and that if she held out for a perfect relationship, she would live her life alone. She wasn’t like her mother or Maggie, but neither were millions of other women. Real soul mates were about as easy to come by as fifty-carat diamonds.
Wide-awake, she turned on the television and clicked through a dozen channels before giving up and turning it off again. She glanced around the room and thought about the women who’d lived here. She wondered if Julia had chosen the furniture and curtains and colors out of preference or if there had been a nod to Maggie’s influence. They weren’t anything she would have picked, but they seemed to suit her in a way she never would have anticipated.
To celebrate passing the bar, she’d redecorated her apartment in an expensive retro fifties style that had seemed wonderfully clever and funky at the time, but now seemed dated. If Ray weren’t so adamant about liking the look, or if she had some real idea what she wanted in its place, she would sell everything and start over.
The fact that she felt more a sense of home here than she did in her apartment might be the prod that she needed. She liked being somewhere she could kick off her shoes and curl up on the sofa and not worry what it was doing to the symmetry of the cushions. The drapes could be opened and closed without adjusting pleats, and nothing was finished to a high gloss that showcased dust.
She loved that someone had thought to put binoculars in every room that faced the ocean and that the bookshelves in the living room held everything from a rock collection to children’s literature to popular fiction. There were restaurant menus from Aptos, Capitola, Soquel, Watsonville, Santa Cruz, Monterey, Pacific Grove, and Carmel in a kitchen drawer. All had handwritten reviews that ranged from a simple “yum” to “heartburn likely, but worth it if you’re adventuresome” to “not to be missed” to “try the grocery-store deli first.” There were ordinary shells in a basket on the coffee table and expensive hand-loomed rugs in the bedrooms.
The only photograph in the house was in an ornate pewter frame on the mantel over the stone fireplace. She’d picked it up a half dozen times to stare at the couple standing outside in the garden under the rose arbor.
The condition of the photograph, the clothes the people were wearing, and the car parked in the driveway led her to believe it had been taken sometime in the late forties or early fifties.
The man had looked directly at the camera, making a connection she could feel through the years that separated them. He had his arm around the woman, and his smile was a beacon of happiness he plainly wanted the world to see. The woman had her arm around the man’s waist. She was gazing up at him, her joy so complete and intimate that being a witness almost seemed an invasion of her privacy.
Kelly had planned to ask Andrew about the couple when she saw him again–who they were, why theirs was the only picture in the house, and what had happened to them. Now she knew. They were Joe and Maggie.
Settling deeper into the sofa, she picked up Landry’s book and turned to the first chapter. She’d barely made it through the opening paragraph when the phone rang. Happier than she wanted to be that Ray had given in and called her, she reached for the phone. “I was worried about you,” she said in lieu of hello.
“Why?” Donna asked. And then, “Oh, I get it. You thought I was Ray.”
She could deny the assumption, and Donna would let her get away with it, but they would both know it was a lie. “I missed his call earlier and left a message for him to call back.” Donna hesitated long enough that Kelly could almost hear the wheels turning.
“Oh? And what were you doing that made you forget he was supposed to call?”
“Did I say I forgot?”
“Same difference,” she said.
“If you must know, I was out on the deck having a cup of coffee.”
“Your deck or Andrew’s?”
Kelly didn’t stand a chance. Donna was too good. “Andrew’s. We were talking about Matt Landry and his girlfriend.”
“Matt’s girlfriend or Andrew’s?”
“Andrew’s.”
“Damn.” Half a heartbeat later, “Did he happen to say whether Landry was seeing anyone?”
Kelly laughed. “This can’t be why you called. You should be in bed by now.”
“I need some legal advice.”
Kelly groaned. “Please tell me you’re not in trouble again.”
Another Summer Page 7
