by Barbara Ross
We had no answer for that. Fixing up Windsholme had never been more than a vague desire. I’d assumed that Mom would live in it, and maybe, if it could be properly divided, other members of the family as well. Maybe even Chris and me one day. The idea of treating it like a historical home had never come up.
“How much it will cost?” I asked it too sharply and Mom threw me a look I’d known since my childhood—the look that meant she was annoyed.
“That depends on your answer to my question.” Wyatt was unruffled. “Restoration will cost more than renovation, but there may be more help, like grants, tax breaks, and so on. As for the building, the foundation appears to be sound, but we’ll need a full structural assessment before I can even begin to plan and estimate. That will give us time to have conversations about your hopes and dreams for the house—and for us all to get to know one another.”
We fell silent, each of us lost in our own thoughts. I hoped Mom was beginning to understand the complexity of the task.
Wyatt gave Mom her big smile. “Jacqueline, I would so like to move forward with this work. But it will take time to do the research, do the inspections, and continue these conversations so we can draw up plans and complete estimates.” She took a booklet out of her portfolio. It was printed in sepia tones on heavy vellum. Wyatt opened it to a page in the middle and passed it across to my mother. “This describes my firm’s services. I think what you need is a preliminary study. I’ll leave this with you to review and I’ll call tomorrow.” Wyatt stood and Quentin did as well. “Julia, last night was lovely,” she said, reminding me immediately that I should have been the one to say so, especially since we’d been rushed off the Garbo with no chance to say good-bye.
“It was wonderful.” I found my manners. “You and . . . well . . . you, will have to come out to Morrow Island on Thursday for Family Day, the first day of the clambake.” I wasn’t sure whether to include Geoffrey. Did one invite a famous recluse to go on outings? Once again my manners failed me. I walked them to the door.
Mom was still at the kitchen table when I returned. Wordlessly, she handed me the booklet that described Wyatt’s proposed study. Twenty thousand dollars, and before we even started.
“Isn’t it great?” Mom asked, smiling. “Windsholme is potentially an architectural masterpiece. Of course, I always knew it was. You can tell by looking at it.”
“Potentially,” I emphasized. “And she wants twenty thousand dollars to figure it out.” Three months earlier, before the auction of the Black Widow, a valuable necklace Mom inherited, twenty thousand dollars would have been an unthinkable amount of money.
As I’d hoped, saying the amount out loud threw on my thrifty Yankee mother’s brakes. “What do you think we should do?” she asked, her brow creased.
“At a minimum, we need to meet with other firms before you spend this money. We can’t go with Wyatt because Quentin knows her.”
“I can’t think of a better reason to hire someone,” Mom countered. “Besides, you know her too.”
“I knew her a little bit a long time ago.”
Mom’s eyes flashed. “Why do you dislike Wyatt?” When I didn’t respond, she continued. “Whatever it is, it’s getting in the way of you being objective.”
“You’re the one who’s not being objective.”
We weren’t yelling. Only imminent mortal danger could cause my mother to yell. But we were certainly disagreeing. Vehemently.
“Okay,” Mom said. “Family meeting tonight. You, me, Livvie, Sonny, Chris. Dinner.”
“I hoped to stay on the island. It’s only six days until we open. And Chris plans to work on the Dark Lady.”
“Go out to the island. Get some work done, but be back for dinner.”
Chapter 8
I said good-bye to Mom and went out to the front porch to enjoy the sea breeze and wait for Sonny. Across the street, a nondescript silver sedan pulled into the parking space in front of the Snuggles Inn. Maine State Police Sergeant Tom Flynn got out, walked around to the other side, and opened the passenger door for Genevieve. They both went to the trunk and pulled out two carry-on–sized rolling bags. Genevieve spotted me and waved. I waved back vigorously. She tapped Flynn on the shoulder and pointed at me. He shrugged, gave a quick smile, and turned his back.
“Come over later!” Genevieve called.
They made a striking couple. She was willowy, with glossy, short, black hair and pale, pale skin. He was good-looking enough, with military-short hair and erect posture, and a body that showed off hours spent in the gym.
Flynn turned toward the gingerbread-covered front porch of the Snuggles, put his arm around Genevieve’s shoulders, and steered her gently away from me and up the front walk. I couldn’t blame him. He was desperately in love with Genevieve and he hadn’t seen her in the months she’d been on the Garbo.
Sonny pulled into the driveway in his giant pickup. “You ready, your highness?”
“Coming.”
Mom charged out the front door and straight down the steps. She stuck her face in the driver’s side window, not an easy task because the truck was big and she was small. “Sonny, I’m glad to catch you. Come to dinner tonight.”
Sonny drew back. “I don’t know. Livvie and I were out at the concert last night.”
“Come anyway. Family meeting. I want to talk this Windsholme plan through.”
My mother was rarely abrupt, never rude. As a rule, she didn’t order people around, and never Sonny. His face shifted and he leaned toward her. “Okay. I’ll call Livvie.”
“See you at six. Julia, call Chris.”
I nodded my agreement and climbed up into the truck. Strictly speaking, Chris wasn’t a member of the family, despite spending Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter with us, at my invitation. He never talked about his own family. He’d bought his cabin from his parents when they’d moved to Florida. He had an older sister in San Diego. That’s all I knew. No one came to visit him and he never visited them, even when he’d gone to the Keys in February to help a buddy move a boat. Pressed, all he would say was, “There’s a reason we live as far apart as we can.”
I worried, early on, that my messy family life would repel him. We all worked together and were in and out of each other’s homes, lives, and finances in ways it might be hard for other people to understand. Instead, my family seemed to be part of what attracted Chris to me, like he missed family life, just not his family. In any case, I knew why Mom wanted him at the meeting tonight. He’d been an early and consistent proponent of fixing up Windsholme. He was on her side.
Sonny drove the short distance to the town pier, carefully wending his way through streets crowded with more seasonal residents and tourists every day. On the pier, we each took time to make the promised phone calls about the dinner before we left the harbor and cell range. Then Sonny climbed out of his seat and went to the back of the pickup. “You ready?”
I looked into the bed and sighed. It was filled with boxes of liquor to stock the bar at the clambake. Lots of heavy lifting ahead.
Sonny and I moved the boxes to our Boston Whaler and then I waited while he drove the truck to Mom’s driveway and walked back. Parking on the pier was for loading and unloading only. We were silent on the trip out to the island. Once we passed the mouth of the harbor, we wordlessly shrugged into windbreakers. Despite the bright sun, the wind coming across the Gulf of Maine was biting.
Sonny steered the boat into the dock on Morrow Island and I tied it up. I pointed to our cargo. “Let’s put the booze in the little house and lock it.”
“Is that really necessary?”
I hesitated. Locking the alcohol in the house by the dock overnight would add many extra steps of fetching and hauling. My brother-in-law had been out late at a concert, then had gotten up at 4:00 AM to work on his dad’s lobster boat. If I’d been able to stay on the island for the night, I wouldn’t have thought twice. But the clambake bar, housed in the sprawling building that included the main dining p
avilion, gift shop, and kitchen, was hard to secure. Busman’s Harbor High’s forty-nine seniors had already graduated, and the rest of the school would be out in a few days. It was careless to leave a mountain of alcohol unattended. “I think it is necessary. I’ll get the wheelbarrow.”
When we were done, Sonny took the Whaler to retrieve the first load of hardwood he’d use to fuel the clambake fire, another backbreaking job. I offered to go along, but he waved me off.
I cleared branches and debris from the walking paths, the leavings of the island’s lonely winter. When we were up and running, guests arrived forty-five minutes before the clambake meal was served and were encouraged to enjoy Morrow Island. They spread out, many playing volleyball or boccie on the courts we’d laid out on Windsholme’s former great lawn. Others gathered around the roaring clambake fire. There was always a good crowd watching Sonny and his crew cook the meal. Some people climbed the steep stairs to look over the ugly orange hazard fence at Windsholme and then walked through the woods to the two-room playhouse that was a replica of the mansion. The hardiest guests hiked up over the hill all the way to the little beach on the other side of the island.
I walked with a rake in one hand and a broom in the other. When I reached the beach, I stood still for a moment and stared at Quentin’s black marble and glass house rising out of the rocks on the other side of the channel. His sleek, carbon-fiber sailboat, the Flittermouse, bobbed at its dock, but his antique woody wasn’t in the driveway. Where was he? What was his relationship to Wyatt? I had no doubt they were acquaintances, but I’d never known Quentin to have friends, at least not in the classic sense. The challenge of getting to know him had been frustrating. I wanted to be his friend.
I went back up the hill and stood, staring at the ugly hazard fence and Windsholme’s boarded-up facade behind it. The silhouette of the mansion was one of the enduring images of my life. I tried to imagine the space empty, the view from where I stood over the cliffs to the sea. Once Windsholme was gone, would we forget it quickly, as if it had never been? Or would it always be with us, a ghostly outline never coming into focus?
Mom was taken with Wyatt. My mother was shy and New England–reserved. She didn’t usually make judgments about people so quickly. Was it something about Wyatt, or was it simply her potential to give my mother what she wanted, a giant piece of her childhood preserved? Rebuilding Windsholme would have to take place in good weather. It would be disruptive to the clambake business, so I’d have to work closely with whoever was in charge. Could I stomach months, maybe years, of Wyatt Jayne?
The years fell away and I was my teenage self, shy and uncertain again. Wyatt and her friends were hanging out in our dorm room, something they did nearly every evening before dinner. They ignored me and I tried my best to ignore them, bending over my homework at my narrow desk.
“Ms. Davis is the best,” Melissa cooed. “I went to her for help with my essay and she couldn’t have been nicer.”
Most often, they complained about our teachers, who were, according to Wyatt and her friends, irritating, vague, and boring. They had bad breath, bad hair, and bad posture. But they all loved our English teacher, Ms. Davis. I loved her too.
“We should do something for her,” Wyatt said.
“We could give her candy,” Lainey suggested.
“Too fattening.” Wyatt had a point. Ms. Davis was young and slender. She, her husband, and their toddler daughter lived in an apartment in one of the boys’ dorms.
“Apples?” Lainey tried again. “We could pick them at the orchard down the road.”
Wyatt shot that down too. “She gets all her meals in the dining hall.”
“Offer to babysit for her kid so she and her husband could have a date night,” I suggested.
Wyatt looked at me with interest. “More like that. But I want to spend time with Ms. Davis.”
“Invite her to a nice lunch at the inn,” I said. “That way, she gets a break and there’s plenty of time for conversation.”
“That’s it!” Wyatt cried, looking at me with new, much more impressed eyes. “What a good idea. We’ll all take her to lunch.”
Sonny lumbered up beside me, causing me to jump as my mind jerked back to the present. “Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to scare you. I’m back.”
“So I see.” Sonny stared at the boarded-up facade of Windsholme. “What do you think we should do about it?” I asked him.
He used a freckled forearm to wipe his freckled brow. “I wasn’t aware there was a ‘we’ involved. Your mother’s house, your mother’s money, right?”
“She’s called a family meeting. She must want our opinions.” I told him what Wyatt had said that morning. He whistled when I mentioned the amount for the study.
He shifted onto his back foot, his big barrel chest a wall beside me. “Can you really imagine people coming to the island to tour the house?”
I hesitated. “I can, I guess. We’d have to furnish it appropriately. Maybe we could all wear costumes and pretend we were living in 1892.”
“I’d rather be shot.”
I laughed. I didn’t doubt it. “I know. I’m teasing. Let’s not do that. What do you really think?”
“To the extent it’s my business, I’d much rather pay off what we owe Quentin, invest in the clambake, and put the rest away for a rainy day.”
“And Windsholme?”
“Tear it down.”
“I agree.” That’s what I wanted too, though I thought of it always as “not rebuilding.” The phrase “tear it down” had such bald brutality and finality, it stabbed me in the heart. I took a deep breath, pushing the pain away. I had to be practical because Mom wouldn’t be. “Let’s get going. We have Family Day coming up fast.”
Sonny grunted. “At least we aren’t starting the season with an effing wedding for your friends this year.”
I looked at my bear of a brother-in-law. He and I had fought all through the previous clambake season, starting with my idea to hold more private events, including a wedding for a New York City acquaintance. That’s when I’d first invested in Windsholme, decorating and rewiring two rooms to serve as a staging area and dressing room for the bridal party. That small decision had led inexorably to the fire that had damaged the mansion to the point where we were considering tearing it down.
Sonny had viewed me coming home to run the clambake business as a slap in his face, a statement about his failure. To some extent it had been, though the banking crisis, recession, and seasons of lousy weather hadn’t helped. As I tried to rescue the business he’d taken every change I made as a personal affront.
But about the future of Windsholme—we were on the same side. What would that be like?
Chapter 9
Eight of us sat around the formal dining room table—Mom at the head; Chris, me, and Livvie on one side; Sonny, Page, and Vanessa on the other. Baby Jack dozed peacefully in his car seat at the far end of the table, occasionally rubbing his tiny nose. The rest of us still avoided my dad’s seat when there was room elsewhere.
Sonny and I had stayed on Morrow as long as we could, cutting it close. When we’d entered Mom’s house I’d inhaled deeply. The smell of Livvie’s go-to, hurry-up meal, Beer-Can Chicken, filled the room. Livvie and Chris were bent over the stove, conferring about the potatoes.
Chris and I didn’t have time to strategize. He’d given me a quick peck on the cheek as I’d dashed for a shower. I assumed we’d come out on different sides when my mother started the discussion about what to do with Windsholme, and the chips would fall where they might.
The children’s presence at the table guaranteed the conversation wouldn’t take place during dinner, so we were free to enjoy the meal. My mother was a terrible cook. I was the only person I knew who never pined for her mother’s cooking. Livvie, on the other hand, was wonderful. Her Beer-Can Chicken was full of flavor and fell off the bone. And the roasted potatoes . . . I closed my eyes, shutting down my other senses so I could fully apprecia
te their taste and perfect texture. I was glad the Windsholme discussion had to wait. I didn’t want it to interfere with our enjoyment of the meal.
I’d raised an eyebrow at Livvie after I’d come through the back door and spotted Vanessa helping Page set the table. “Her mother took a double at Crowley’s again today,” Livvie explained. “Mom’s helping out, having the girls sleep over again tonight.”
It didn’t surprise me that Vanessa’s mother had grabbed another shift. Most people in Busman’s Harbor crammed as much income as they could into the short months of the season. Crowley’s was Busman’s Harbor’s busiest, most touristy bar. On a Friday in June, working two shifts would be exhausting. It also didn’t surprise me that my quiet, formal, yet big-hearted mother was pitching in to support a relative stranger.
At the table, we chatted about our days. It was an easy conversation filled with tasks accomplished and plans for the summer. Once the clambake opened, we wouldn’t have dinner at this table for the rest of the season. The meal we served on Morrow Island, in the lull after the lunch guests left and before the dinner guests arrived, was called the family meal, but it included all our employees, our extended summer family. It was one of my favorite times of the day, but it wasn’t this.
Several times during the meal, I caught Chris staring at Vanessa, his green eyes seeking hers, like animals that recognize a fellow member of their species. It wasn’t the time or the place to ask him about it.
After dinner, the girls excused themselves to play on the front porch. “Strawberry shortcake in a little while,” Livvie told them. “I’ll call you.” The grown-ups stayed at the dining room table, lingering over coffee.
“As you all know, I’m facing a decision about what to do with Windsholme,” my mother began after we’d settled. She told the others pretty accurately what Wyatt had said—I had to admit, not tilting it one way or the other. “As I see it, my options are to restore it as a historical site, renovate it so some or all of us can live in it during the summer, or tear it down. I don’t think there’s an option to leave it as is. It’s an eyesore and will become increasingly dangerous. It’s my decision, but I want your thoughts. I can’t promise to go along with whatever you suggest, but I do promise to listen.”
