The Treasure Man

by Pamela Browning

  “You’ll find out,” said Naomi with great conviction. “You always do.”

  “I’m more or less keeping my distance.” Except for a couple of times, but she wasn’t about to admit that to her sister.

  “Good for you. Are there any other men on the horizon?”

  “Let me remind you that I’m here to work. It’s therapeutic.”

  “Do you require therapy?”

  “Listen, Naomi, let’s not get into that.”

  “I’m sorry. You worked hard taking care of Grandma, and I’m grateful to you for doing more than your share.” Naomi actually did sound contrite.

  “She was a delight the whole time, so I really didn’t mind. I’m glad to have my own life back at last, though.”

  “Except for babysitting my daughter,” Naomi said ruefully.

  “I’ll convince her—somehow—to go back to high school in the fall,” Chloe vowed. “I’ll make her understand that she’d be stupid to do otherwise.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Naomi, I’d better run. Love you.”

  “Love you, too. ’Bye.”

  After they hung up, Chloe sat on her bed for a long time, listening to Tara and Ben chatting on the front porch. Tara was dramatically telling him about her boring life in Farish, and Ben was calmly asking questions, drawing her out and being his low-key self. At the moment, Chloe appreciated his taking time to visit with Tara while she pulled herself together and figured out how to handle the situation.

  When she finally went downstairs to tell Tara that there would be no flouting of the rules, that she’d have to obey and help out around the inn, Chloe felt reasonably optimistic. And she was clear in her own mind that she was doing the right thing by taking charge of Tara for the next couple of months.

  Though—and this was a provocative question—if she were really going to indulge in a fling with Ben, how would she manage do it with an impressionable teenager on the premises?

  Chapter Seven

  Tara, after expressing relief at not being shipped back to Texas, offered Chloe the use of her green nail polish. “It would look great on you,” she insisted.

  Chloe, having abandoned her adventures with avant-garde hair color and having given up on nail polish years ago, expressed misgivings. “You want me to paint my nails with something the color of moldy cheese?” she asked.

  “It’s not the color of mold,” Tara informed her indignantly. “It’s Leapfrog Green.”

  “Okay,” Chloe agreed, figuring that if this was what she had to do in order to build rapport between them, she might as well give in.

  “Awesome,” Tara declared, and proceeded to give Chloe a manicure. She suggested a pedicure, but that was where Chloe drew the line.

  “Sorry, no time. I’ve got to finish a pair of earrings,” she said before fleeing to her workshop. Privately, she had to admit that her newly lacquered nails weren’t half-bad, but having a homegrown manicurist didn’t quite make up for the loss of privacy.

  Ben looked askance when he first saw Chloe wearing green nail polish. “Isn’t this backward? Aren’t you supposed to be the one who influences Tara, not vice versa?”

  “You didn’t know me in my younger days,” she retorted. “I did worse things than paint my fingernails atrocious colors.”

  “I did too know you when you were younger,” Ben replied thoughtfully.

  “Oops, you’re right,” she conceded before rushing off on a false errand. Maybe he did recall some things about her, she decided. Perhaps he hadn’t been so wrapped up in Emily that summer after all. But then, why had he gone and married the woman? Why hadn’t he stuck around and been at the inn a year later, after Chloe had finally developed boobs and mastered the intricacies of applying eyeliner? Oh, well, that was then, and she was having enough trouble handling the present without driving herself crazy with questions that probably had no answers.

  The kitchen became a gathering place for the three of them, Chloe, Ben and Tara, every morning. Chloe and Tara took turns preparing breakfast, which when Chloe did it tended toward cereal with a banana sliced on top. Tara, on the other hand, offered more exotic fare: scrambled eggs with cream cheese and chives; frozen blueberry pancakes; grilled-cheese sandwiches, which weren’t exactly what Chloe considered breakfast fare but were good nevertheless.

  Ben discussed his day’s repair schedule with Chloe while she and Tara ate their morning meal. He sometimes benefited by Tara’s willingness to cook for him, too. She was always willing to toss in another egg or slide another pancake into the toaster on short notice.

  One day when Tara had been there about a week, Ben and Chloe were discussing the usual when Tara interrupted.

  “I don’t see why I can’t drink coffee,” Tara said. “You two do.”

  “Wait until you go away to college and crave the caffeine jolt so you can stay awake late at night studying,” Chloe told her playfully.

  “I’m not going to college,” Tara said. “I hate to study.”

  “So did I,” Chloe pointed out. “Until I changed my major to art.”

  Tara, refusing to be placated, dumped ice cubes from the freezer into her empty orange juice glass and proceeded to chew on them.

  Ben spared the girl a pained look. “Tara—” he began.

  Chloe interrupted. “Tara, honey, Ben doesn’t like to hear anyone chomping on ice.”

  Tara spit the ice into the glass. “Sorry,” she muttered.

  “It’s one of my pet peeves,” Ben said. “Like when people run their fingers down a chalkboard.”

  Tara blinked at him. “I hate that, too,” she said.

  “We all have our foibles,” Ben said comfortably. He turned his attention to Chloe. “We should get a garbage can with a tighter lid. I chased away another possum last night.”

  Now that no one was paying attention to her, Tara seemed determined to descend into a sulk. Meanwhile, Chloe wondered where Ben had been until midnight the night before. She and Tara had sat up playing Monopoly until eleven, and although she’d listened for the sound of Ben’s Jeep tires crunching the shell-rock driveway, he’d never shown up. She’d intended to ask him to join them, and she’d delayed bringing out the chips and guacamole until really late in case he wanted a snack.

  “All right,” Chloe said, barring these thoughts from her mind. “Put a garbage can on the list. Tara and I will go to the hardware store and get it along with the other things you requested. Number ten nails, assorted grades of sandpaper and what else?”

  “A gallon of white primer.”

  “Ben, are you really going to take me metal detecting with you?” Tara asked, transparently eager to change the subject back to something concerning her. “Do you think we’ll find anything?”

  “Maybe.” Ben stirred his coffee and reached for a piece of leftover toast.

  “Chloe, can we stop at the treasure museum?” Tara asked.

  “Sure,” Chloe said. In all her visits to Sanluca, she’d never been inside.

  “I’m going to drive us into town today,” Tara bragged to Ben. “Chloe said I could.”

  “Great,” replied Ben.

  “Not until you change into some shorts that are more decent,” Chloe piped up.

  “These are fine,” Tara replied indignantly. “They’re halfway to my knees.”

  And show more skin south of your navel than we need to see, Chloe thought. “What are they—a pair of your dad’s boxer shorts?” she asked, forcing back a grin. She’d often attempted to escape from the house in strange getups in her teenage years.

  “Yes, but—”

  “If you want to go out with me, you’ll have to find something more appropriate. How about those jeans I saw in your closet?”

  “It’s too hot for jeans,” Tara argued.

  As he placed his cup in the dishwasher, Ben’s knee accidentally brushed Chloe’s. A glance at Tara reassured her that the girl hadn’t noticed, but nevertheless, Chloe edged in the opposite direction. Ben retreated to the oth
er end of the room and began scribbling in a spiral notebook that he used to keep track of his work.

  Tara stood up and stalked from the room. After a couple of minutes, she returned, wearing shorts with a drawstring waist. “How’s this?” she asked.

  “Wonderful,” Chloe said, relieved.

  Tara started to clear the breakfast things off the table, her previous mood forgotten. “I met some kids on the beach yesterday. Jill lives down the road in Stuart’s Point. I like her. She’s been to Europe. The guys are Aaron, Greg and Sam. The other girls might be Marla and Judy, or maybe it’s Marta and Julie. I watched them surf.”

  “I’ll be working on the windows again today,” Ben interjected. “Anything else you want me to do, Chloe?”

  She thought, Kiss me, then wondered where that had come from. “Um, no.” A tension headache began to build behind her eyes, and she tried to remember when she had last slept with a man. Last year. No, this year, when she became interested in a man that she’d met at a friend’s wedding, a recent transplant from Kansas. He turned out to be another rescue project, and she’d dropped him almost immediately. He’d stopped by every night for dinner with her and her grandmother, watching their TV afterward until he felt asleep snoring on the couch. Chloe, after a few inquiries around town, found out that he was separated and his wife had kicked him out of the house.

  Chloe hadn’t been mightily attracted to him, however, as she was to Ben. He even now made her tremble by merely glancing at her in that secretly covetous way that got around any misgivings she might have had.

  “Let’s get going, Tara,” she said briskly. She tossed her the car keys, and Tara let out a delighted shriek.

  “See you later, Ben,” Tara said as she jumped up and slammed out the back door.

  This left Ben and Chloe staring at each other across the kitchen table.

  “See you later,” he said softly, his meaning entirely different from Tara’s. Chloe didn’t reply. She merely followed Tara out the door, knowing that something was bound to happen between her and Ben sooner or later. She hoped it would be sooner.

  “SO WE WENT to the treasure museum, and they’re looking for student volunteers,” Tara said to Ben that night. “I signed up. Kids work in the gift shop, relieve the cashier, run errands, things like that.”

  “Good for you,” Ben said easily. He had knocked on the back door with the intention of reporting that he was finished repairing the porch railing. Tara had insisted he come in and eat chicken salad with them. She’d prepared it herself, arranging it with fruit slices on crystal plates, and was obviously proud of her cooking skills. He liked Tara; she was exuberant and cheerful, and she eased the almost constant sexual tension between Chloe and him.

  They were sitting in the library, and Chloe, on a narrow love seat, was sorting jewelry findings into small boxes. Ben was perusing the shelves for a book to read, thinking that it might help him get through the lonely nights when he wasn’t at one of his meetings or hanging out at the Sand Bar.

  A knock sounded on the door, and Chloe went to answer it. She expected it to be Zephyr, who—she had learned from experience—might show up any time of the day or night. But it turned out to be the tall boy called Aaron, his friend Greg, and Jill, the girl with whom Tara had struck up a friendship on the beach.

  “Is Tara here?” asked Greg.

  Tara came to see who it was. “Greg! And Aaron, and Jill! Y’all, this is my aunt, Chloe Timberlake.” She gestured over her shoulder, where Ben offered a genial wave. “And that’s Ben. Remember, I told you about him, the treasure-hunting guy?”

  Chloe held the door open and the three teenagers trooped inside. The boys shook hands with Ben, and a moment of awkwardness ensued.

  “Chloe, would it be okay if the four of us sat out on the porch?” Tara seemed thrilled to have visitors, but clearly she didn’t want to subject them to the stiff scrutiny of adults.

  “Of course,” Chloe said. “I’ll bring cold drinks. Does everyone like iced tea?”

  This met with nods all around, and as the young people followed Tara out onto the porch, Chloe headed for the kitchen.

  Ben ambled in and began to refill empty ice trays. “Nice kids,” he said.

  “I’m glad Tara’s making friends,” she replied.

  “I’ve met Jill’s parents, Lorena and Barry Pettus. It was years ago.”

  “Tara took an instant liking to Jill.” She loaded four glasses of tea onto a tray and carried them out to the front porch.

  “Thanks,” Tara said with a bright smile, and the other kids thanked her, too. Greg was sitting beside Tara, and Chloe wondered briefly if he’d be considered a hottie. Jill was pretty, with glossy dark hair and brightly animated expressions. It was Aaron who didn’t seem to fit into the group. He seemed older than the others and slightly aloof.

  Chloe went back inside and continued to the kitchen, where Ben was closing the refrigerator door. “Could I talk you into helping me chaperone?” she asked. The truth was that she didn’t feel she could go to bed and leave the four young people to themselves; she wanted to make sure the visitors went home at a decent hour.

  “I wouldn’t mind staying,” Ben said, perking up as if she’d thrown him a lifeline. “I’ll help you sort those jewelry things if you like.”

  They went back into the library, where Chloe had a partial view of the front porch. Tara and her new friends were talking loudly and laughing, their talk punctuated by slang that Chloe didn’t recognize.

  “This really makes me feel old,” she confided to Ben after they’d divided the jewelry findings into boxes and put them away. “I have no idea what they’re saying to one another. Really.”

  “Me, neither,” he told her with a chuckle.

  “My sister says that there’s nothing like having a couple of teenagers around to keep you feeling young, but she’s wrong.”

  “There’s something to be said for it,” Ben said reflectively, and his tone caused her to aim a sharp look in his direction.

  At that point, the visitors prepared to leave. Amid all the goodbyes, Ben’s expression took on a somberness that seemed out of place. Chloe didn’t have a chance to ponder this because Tara soon came bouncing inside, her face alight with pleasure.

  “Isn’t it sweet that they all came to see me, Chloe? Greg has the prettiest hazel eyes, don’t you think? Jill told me she’s in love with Aaron, and she’s only seventeen. Greg asked me to go to the movies with him some night. Would that be okay?”

  Realizing that Tara didn’t really expect answers to all her questions, Chloe tried anyway. “Yes, yes and maybe, after I get to know Greg better.”

  “Greg wants to volunteer at the treasure museum, too. Jill says she’s trying to find a paying job, but there aren’t any. I’m going to bed now, Chloe. Can I use your phone to call Mom?”

  “Sure, but make sure you give it back to me so I can charge the battery. Good night, Tara. Sweet dreams.”

  Tara went running upstairs, and Chloe rolled her eyes. “So much energy.”

  Ben laughed. “More than I have, that’s for sure. By the way, how did your visit with Patrice go? I never had a chance to ask.”

  “Very well. She’s planning to sell my things at astronomical prices. Any news on when your job might come through?”

  “No clue.”

  Chloe stretched elaborately. “Well, I guess I’d better go upstairs and grab the phone from Tara. I’d like to chat with Naomi and reassure her that everything is okay.”

  Ben’s attention flicked toward the stairwell, where Tara’s voice rose and fell behind her closed door. “I don’t think you’ll have any trouble with Tara this summer.”

  “I hope not,” Chloe said fervently.

  “Has she mentioned that she’s interested in diving? She’s welcome to attend some of my scuba classes if you wouldn’t mind.”

  “I’ll ask Naomi. I doubt that she’ll object.”

  “Well, then, good night,” Ben said.

  “See y
ou tomorrow,” she replied. He watched her as she mounted the stairs.

  It was clear to her, and probably to him as well, that if anything were going to happen between them, they would have to choose their time carefully. If anything were going to happen. Just in case, she’d refilled her prescription for birth control pills. She’d let it expire when her skin cleared up. Now she might need the pills for an entirely different reason.

  SHE HAD WRITTEN on this date sixteen years ago.

  Dear Trees, I saw Gold on the beach today, just the two of us! He didn’t notice me at first. He was walking along and staring down at the sand as if he was a million miles away. I had gone to look for the Turtle Lady but couldn’t find her. Wind wanted to invite her to eat dinner with us. Well, anyway, I was trying to find a good piece of driftwood for a crafts project (I want to drill some holes in it and stick air plants in, cause the Turtle Lady said she has some growing right on the oak tree at her house). And there was Gold! He was wearing nothing but a bathing suit and his bare chest. Well, you know what I mean. It’s really hairy, not like the boys at school. I said, “Ben?” (I had to use his real name when I spoke to him since he doesn’t know he’s Gold.)

  He said, “Huh?” Then he looked at me. Really studied me up and down. I was so embarrassed because I was wearing Ocean’s old bikini, the one that’s too small for both of us. (Mine wasn’t dry from swimming that morning and I’d hung it out to dry.) He looked at me the way a man looks at a woman, you know? As if I was something he liked seeing.

  I wanted to kiss him then and there. But he just smiled in a sort of unfocused way. He called me Carrots and kept walking.

  I know what happens between a man and a woman. I want it to happen to me sometime. But when I look at Gold and he looks at me, I want it to happen right now.

  This has to be the most fantastic summer of my life. Aren’t you glad I’m telling you all about it?

  Love,

  Fire (Chloe D. Timberlake, who is passionately in love with Gold)