Copper Lake Confidential

by Marilyn Pappano

  He dragged his fingers through it, well aware it would spring back at odd angles. “I was born this way. Sorry.”

  She made a hmph sound, and he picked up his pace. Macy might be having a tough time, but she could handle Louise. That was more than he could say for himself.

  * * *

  Louise looked past Macy to the neatly stacked boxes in the garage, now filling more than half of the three-car bay, and for a moment greed shone in her eyes. The only family treasures decorating her mansion a few blocks over were purchased from other families that had died out or were more in need of cash than sentimental objects. On her rare visits to the house for meetings with Mark, she’d coveted more than a few paintings, art pieces and dishes. Macy was somewhat surprised that she didn’t try to buy some of them cheap. To save you the hassle of appraisals, packing and such.

  “I’ve come to discuss the papers with you. Let’s take this inside. A glass of tea will be nice, to say nothing of air-conditioning.”

  Louise was halfway to the utility room door when Macy spoke. “I’d rather not go inside. My family is working, and I don’t want to disturb them.”

  So used to getting what she wanted, Louise seemed to hover there for a minute, her mind clearly intending to go into the house, her feet seemingly stuck to the concrete. She looked as if she might issue a command anyway, but apparently remembered that she wanted something from Macy. A lot.

  On her ridiculously high heels, she came back to stand in front of Macy. “So. You’ve had a chance to go over the contract and showed it to that Calloway boy. The sooner we get your signature, the sooner we can get to work on saving Fair Winds—”

  “I went out there last week. There’s nothing to save it from. Everything is in excellent shape.”

  Only the glint in Louise’s eyes showed her surprise. “On the surface, perhaps, but a house of that age—”

  Macy could probably count on one hand the number of times she’d interrupted one of Mark’s friends or associates. She did it again. “Louise, I’m not giving the house to you.”

  Splotches of pink appeared in the older woman’s cheeks. “Not to me, of course, but—”

  “Not to you, not to your preservation group, not to anyone at this point. I realize something must be done with it, but it’s not in the top ten of my list of things to deal with right now. Robbie Calloway has made sure that the house has been protected and maintained for the past eighteen months. He’ll continue doing so until I’m ready to deal with it. I’m sure you’re disappointed, but you have to understand that this is Clary’s inheritance. Her legacy. As her mother, I’ve got to consider what’s in her best interests. Now I appreciate your coming out on such a hot afternoon, but I have to get back to work.”

  Without waiting for a response, Macy walked past the woman and into the utility room, closing the door and leaning against it. She wouldn’t put it past Louise to barge in, trying to use sheer will to force Macy into the decision she wanted.

  But there was no shove on the door, no imperious knock. Faintly she heard the thud of the car door, followed by the sound of the engine. Louise was retreating. For the moment.

  “That was one scary woman.” Anne came around the corner with a box cradled against her, and Macy obligingly moved aside and opened the door. While Anne placed it with the other books, Macy closed the garage door. If Louise did come back, or anyone else, for that matter, she could pretend she wasn’t home.

  Macy told her what Louise had wanted.

  “Ballsy woman,” Anne said with a grunt. She stretched her arms over her head. “I’m gonna need a massage before long.”

  “I’ll send you to the best resort in the world when we’re done.”

  “You come, too?”

  Macy opened her mouth to answer, sure, of course, but nothing came out.

  “Aw, you’re gonna be here cuddling up to Dr. Stephen, letting him work out all those kinks.”

  Heat spread from her cheeks all the way down through her body. “Stephen and I—”

  “That has a nice sound to it, doesn’t it? ‘Stephen and I.’ That’s how I knew I was falling in love with Brent, when saying ‘Brent and I’ gave me warm shivers. You know it’s not just you anymore. You’re part of a couple. There’s someone who will notice when you’re sad or happy or late. Someone who will always be there for you, who puts you first. It’s the coolest feeling in the world.”

  Macy didn’t know Anne’s life story, but she did know her sister-in-law’s family wasn’t warm and fuzzy like the Irelands. Parents out of the picture, a brother who died in the war, a sister with more psychiatric diagnoses than an entire team could treat successfully. When she and Brent had met at the resort, she’d been hungry for affection, looking for somewhere to belong. Anne’s family’s loss was Macy’s family’s gain.

  Focusing on Anne’s comment, Macy primly said, “Stephen and I aren’t in love.” Though the words gave her a pang.

  Anne snorted. “News flash, darlin’—you’re well on your way, and I think he’s already there. He adores you, adores your child, likes your family and couldn’t care less about your money. And he’s not Mark. This one’s a keeper.”

  And he had Anamaria’s thumbs-up, too.

  Smiling as broadly as a child at Christmas, Macy made a sweeping gesture toward the door. “Let’s get back to work so you can get to that spa sooner. Be thinking what region you want to go to. France, the Bahamas, the South Pacific.”

  “You know we’re doing this because we love you. We don’t need bribes.”

  “That’s why it’s not a bribe. It’s a thank-you. For everything.” Most especially for loving her. Hell, she’d been a dysfunctional mother locked up in a psych hospital when Anne met her. No one would have blamed her if she’d gone screaming the other way.

  Or Stephen.

  Back in the library, they ran out of small boxes long before they ran out of books. Hands on her hips, Macy surveyed the room. “The rooms are starting to sound empty.” The high ceilings gave a faint echo back at her.

  “Besides the furniture, the lamps and art and the rest of these books, what’s left downstairs?” Brent asked.

  “The kitchen. That’ll take an afternoon. The china cabinets in the dining room. A few things in the powder room and laundry room.” She swallowed. “Mark’s office.”

  “Have you been in there yet?”

  “Once. For a minute.”

  Sympathy flashed through her brother’s brown eyes. “Why don’t you let me start that room? You girls can go shopping or cook dinner or jump in the pool.”

  “Well...” Part of her wanted to say sure, jump right in. But part of her felt as if she should do the work. Next to Mark’s closet, the office was his most personal space in the house. He’d kept photographs there, souvenirs, all his important papers. The room smelled of him; his presence remained strong.

  “I’ll just sort through things, pack it in boxes. Then when you and Clary settle, when you’ve got plenty of time and space, you can go through it yourself.”

  “Okay.” She hoped she hadn’t given in too easily, but truth was, she would be clearing out Mark’s other most personal space: his closet. The clothes he wore. The jewelry that had passed down from his father and grandfathers. The suits he’d worn to church, the tuxedo he’d married her in. Wasn’t that up close and personal enough? “I’ll start in our bedroom.”

  “If you’re both going to keep working,” Anne said, “tell me what you want for dinner. I want to cook in that kitchen at least once.”

  Macy left them to figure that out and began carrying wardrobe boxes upstairs. She planned to donate most of her clothing to Right Track. Some of the more formal clothes wouldn’t be of much use, though maybe they could sell them online. She would offer them first dibs on Mark’s clothes, as well.

  “Clary,” she called when she returned downstairs for a second load of boxes.

  “We’re in here.” She and Scooter were sprawled on one of Miss Willa’s treasures, a p
etit-point sofa that predated the Great War, looking at a book Clary had brought with her from Charleston.

  “AnAnne’s going to the store, so why don’t you and Scooter come upstairs with me while she’s gone?” There was no telling what they could get into given free run of the house with only two adults inside.

  “Okay, Mama.” A smile wreathing her face as if it were the best idea in ages, Clary closed the book and tucked it in the crook of her arm, then spoke to Scooter as if he’d always been hers to command. “Come, Scooter. Upstairs.”

  In the master bedroom she sat on the bed and chattered, mostly to the dog, while Macy taped together a half dozen tall cartons and inserted the metal rods for hanging clothes. She didn’t really tune in until Clary spoke her name. “What, sweetie?” she asked absently.

  “Whose house is this?”

  “It’s ours.”

  “But we don’t live here.”

  “No.”

  “And you’re taking everything out. Why?”

  “Because we’re going to find a new house.”

  “Why don’t we just stay at Grandma’s and Grandpa’s like we been?”

  Macy checked the pockets of a suit coat on the rack, then transferred it to the carton. “Because grown-up mamas don’t usually live with their own mamas and daddies.”

  “Can we get a house by Scooter’s?”

  Five days ago, two days ago, it had been easier to give an unconditional no to that question. Now... Was Stephen right? Was it only the Howard family that she hated about Copper Lake? It wasn’t a bad town. She knew and respected a lot of people here. Of course, there were plenty she didn’t like—Louise and her cronies came to mind—but that would be true anywhere. She liked the idea of Clary going to school with kids whose families she knew. The weather couldn’t be better nine months out of the year, and she was a Southern girl. She knew how to stay cool those other three months.

  The downside to Copper Lake: people knew everything about her.

  The upside, Stephen would say, was that people knew everything. There’d be no worrying about when or how to tell her secrets. And she knew small towns: another scandal would come along, another sensational story that would push her and Clary’s return to the back burner, and before long people would forget that they’d ever left.

  And the big upside to Copper Lake: Stephen.

  “I don’t know exactly where we’ll get a house, babe.”

  Clary stroked Scooter’s fuzzy head. “Well, if I can’t live with Grandma and Grandpa, I wanna get a house by Scooter.” A tiny pause. “Did I live in this house, too?”

  “Yes, when you were little.”

  “Where did I sleep?”

  Macy placed another garment in the carton, then faced her daughter. “You want to see your old room?”

  Clary bounded off the bed. “Yes!” Scooter looked a little miffed at losing his pillow but stretched out and closed his eyes again.

  Macy took her hand and led her down the hall to the first door on the right. She turned on the lights and stepped back to let her daughter enter first. It was painted in primary colors, red, yellow, blue, with an alphabet theme. Macy had thought it busy and overstimulating, but Mark had sided with the designer he’d hired.

  Clary stood in the center of the room and turned a slow circle, as if she’d found herself in the spotlight of a circus arena. When she faced Macy again, she giggled. “It’s a baby room, Mama! Look, it’s got a baby bed!”

  “Well, you were still pretty much a baby then.” The crib, with each side a different color, was designed to convert into a single bed, but they hadn’t made the change yet. At eighteen months, Clary had been a climber.

  “Stuffed bears. Diapers! Binkies!” She shook her head with good-natured dismay. “Wow. I’m glad I don’t have to sleep in here now. It’s like all the colors in the world spilled.”

  Macy felt some small satisfaction that her daughter shared her opinion. So much for Mark’s high-dollar designer.

  Clary poked around in the toy box, looked at the clothes in the closet and shook her head over the board books, then wandered back into the hall. “What’s that room?” she asked. “And that one?”

  “Guest rooms. For when we had company.”

  “And that one?”

  “Bathroom.” Though the two guest rooms had their own baths, the children were supposed to share. Macy pointed to the next door. “Closet.”

  And Clary pointed out the nearest one, its door open. “Is that another baby room? Did you have another baby, Mama?”

  Her chest tight, Macy scooped up her daughter and held her tightly enough to feel secure, not enough to make her squirm. “No, honey. I—I fixed the room in case, but...it didn’t happen.”

  Clary laid her hands on Macy’s cheeks and stared deep into her eyes. “I’d like to have a little sister like Gloriana. Or a brother like Will only not so bossy. Or maybe a puppy. Yeah, I think I want a puppy. Like Scooter, only littler, since Scooter is really a dog, and a puppy is a little baby dog. When we find a new house, can I have a puppy, Mama?”

  Dear God, she loved her daughter. All the shock, all the loss, and still her little girl could make her hopeful. She was such a miracle.

  After spinning her in a circle, Macy smooched her belly. “You bet you can have a puppy, sweetie. Maybe even two.”

  Chapter 11

  Macy awoke before dawn Monday, her heart fluttering, her skin damp with perspiration, her stomach twisted in knots. It took her a long time to open her eyes and gaze around the room. Clary was sprawled across her half of the bed and then some. The closet and hall doors were closed, the hall one locked. The door to her bathroom stood open, a dim light on inside. The air was still and didn’t smell of anything it shouldn’t. The house was quiet.

  So why was her skin crawling, her hands starting to tremble?

  The panic attacks started this way: a sense of overwhelming anxiety in those first moments of awakening, when she wasn’t fully alert, when she was vulnerable to doubts and fears. On a good day, this was as far as it went. She’d drag herself from bed, take her medication and get busy, and before long the discomfort was gone.

  On a bad day, it escalated. Sometimes she couldn’t sit still. Sometimes she couldn’t leave the house. Some days she cried until exhaustion set in. All those days she couldn’t bear to let her Clary see her.

  But it hadn’t happened in so long. Months, since the doctor had adjusted her medication. She’d taken it faithfully. She’d stayed active. Now she’d had the something’s-wrong warning twice in two days.

  And she wasn’t giving in to it. Throwing back the covers, she went into the bathroom, brushed her teeth and dressed in cropped pants and a button-down shirt. She applied makeup, spritzed on perfume, then opened the pill bottle hidden in a drawer and shook out a single tablet. After a moment, she let a second one slide out. The doctor had told her it was okay to double up for a day or two if she felt the need, and this morning she did.

  She washed down one tablet with a cup of tap water then stared at the other one. Something seemed different about it. It was white, round, incised with letters and numbers, as always. It just seemed...lighter? Heavier? Smaller?

  Grimly she washed it down, too. When she started worrying about the precise dimensions of her medication, she was definitely in the early stages of an anxiety attack. And she wasn’t giving in, remember?

  The first of the appraisers Lydia Kennedy had recommended was scheduled to arrive at 9:00 a.m. Macy got in a few hours’ work before waking Clary, fixing breakfast and getting Brent and Anne started on finishing up the family room.

  When the doorbell rang, instead of the stuffy older man Macy had expected, the woman was about her own age, blond hair in a ponytail and wearing a suit that would have been the height of propriety if it’d had an additional six inches or so on the skirt. After introducing herself as Rebekah Johnston, she followed Macy into the living room and stopped short.

  Macy saw the room as she always had�
�filled with old things and far too uncomfortable for friendly visits. Rebekah, apparently, saw treasures. She walked around the room, reverently touched a few pieces and made notes in the folder she’d brought along. When she was done, she crossed the hall into the library, her gaze sweeping over the remaining books. “I know a collector—”

  “We’re donating the books to the local library. He can contact them.”

  After giving her an odd look, Rebekah examined the chairs, the tables and the rug, then made a few more notes before moving down the hall to the dining room. It was another room Macy tended to avoid when possible. The table was huge, seating sixteen, and the matching china cabinets at each end were filled with china, crystal and sterling. “You’ll be keeping the family china.”

  Macy looked at the dishes: delicate in color and design, with an elaborate H centered on every piece, the letters decorated with vines and leaves. She tried to imagine using them, her and Clary sitting down to a meal, passing a platter to Stephen, letting Scooter lick a dessert plate clean, and didn’t know whether to wince or laugh. “No, I won’t.”

  Surprise flashed across the blonde’s face. “You understand these dishes are well over two hundred years old. Augustus Howard had them commissioned before he began construction of Fair Winds. He brought them to the U.S. on his own ship, transported them up the river to Augusta and ensured their safe arrival here. They’ve never left the Howard family, not so much as one plate. Even the breakage has been minimal.”

  “I’m not a china sort of person.” And not a Howard, either. As Stephen had pointed out last night, she and Clary were the only Howards left in Copper Lake, and that could be easily changed. She wasn’t responsible for maintaining the legacy.

  Rebekah looked as if she didn’t know what to say, then a round of giggles from the family room reminded her. “What about your daughter? Shouldn’t you preserve at least a portion of this for her?”

  “Clary’s not a china sort of person, either. She’s three. She prefers dishes with cartoon characters on them.”

  “But—”

  “This is only about half of the service, Rebekah. My mother-in-law has service for twenty-five, and service for another twenty-five is at Fair Winds, where it will likely stay. If Clary feels a need to possess some of it when she’s grown, she can have that.”