I always knew the serious, composed woman working beside me each day was only one iteration of Andy Asani, and along the way, getting past her poised veneer turned into another one of my missions. It also seriously threatened my mental health.
"That's exactly what I had in mind."
Just book the padded cell for me now.
We were in an odd lull with many of our projects, and Friday was miraculously free from site visits that would put us side-by-side in the car all day. It was no surprise to find Andy seated at the drafting table when I arrived, her long legs tangled around the stool like dark, sexy vines.
We exchanged silent pleasantries, and I knew enough about Andy's concentration to know she needed quiet. I admired her preference to go all in when she was designing on paper, shutting everything else out and allowing her instincts to guide her. It was tempting to offer constructive criticism while she worked but my obsession was too deep, and I couldn't focus on the lines without wanting to touch her.
And kiss her.
And breathe in her scent.
And feel her body against mine.
I stayed away, promising myself I would get my Andy fix over the weekend, and as usual, email beckoned. An hour passed before putting a sizable dent in my inbox. Andy was lost in her focus, and didn't notice when Matt's chime sounded on my phone.
Matt: Widow, incoming.
Matt: She's locked and loaded.
Matt: Bunker down.
Glancing up, I saw Shannon's hair flashing in the doorframe. "You haven't been to Wellesley."
Shannon stormed into my office, slamming the door behind her. Andy roused from her headspace but kept her eyes on the table. Though I knew she heard most everything, Andy excelled at seeming to ignore the endless stream of visitors into my office.
"Good morning, Shannon. It's nice to see you too," I replied.
"If you're not going out to Wellesley today, I'm going," Shannon said. "But I've looked at your calendar, and you have time. I'm scheduled to meet with our accountants to make sure everyone gets paid on time. Would you rather I do that, or go to Wellesley?"
"Fine." I closed my laptop and tucked it into my messenger bag. "I'll go."
"Take Andy. I don't want you going alone in case there is a pack of pit bulls, or something."
"Right. Better for us both to be attacked by the pit bulls." Andy looked up, our eyes met, and I shrugged.
"I hear pit bulls can be quite friendly," she offered, shrugging in return. "All depends on the upbringing. My mentor at Cornell, Charlotte, used to foster pit bulls and none of them killed her. A few attacks, maybe, but she's alive."
Andy delivered with the sardonic banter. Every time. Her dry wit ran to the bone. It came through in our lunchtime chats and long discussion of all things architectural at the bar, and her social media posts commenting on pop culture, politics, and mundane things offered a covert glimpse.
"Exactly. These would be the worst pit bulls imaginable."
"No," Shannon replied, drawing the word out. "You can go in, fight off the pit bulls, and Andy can call 911 from the car if you lose a leg. Andy, we'd like to keep. You, we can do without." She pointed her finger at me. "Do it today, and don't think you can be all disgruntled later and skip the party."
Shit. The party.
"Fine," I repeated. "Anything else, Shannon?"
She crossed her arms over her chest, her lips pursed as if she was holding back on the stinging commentary.
Lifting her chin in challenge, she replied, "Yes. A plan for a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar rehab with milestones, materials, and approved subcontractors."
She exited, the door slamming behind her. I hated fighting with my best friend, and though Shannon and I never carried an argument for more than a couple of days, I knew she was capable of completely shutting me out if I pushed the wrong way at the wrong time. If her years-long feud with Erin was any indication, Shannon was ruthless when it came to holding grudges.
The thirty-minute drive was quiet while Andy flipped through her notebook and I tried to remember my last visit to Eastern Pond Road. It was probably around the time Angus kicked Erin out, and that was seven or eight years ago, maybe more, and it wasn't a pleasant visit.
The memory of him leaning out her bedroom window, tossing books and clothes to the lawn while raging about our mother screwing every man in town and winding up pregnant was hard to forget. Erin sobbed on the porch steps while he screamed unimaginably horrible things about our sweet little mother, the mother she didn't know long enough to remember. Forever the peacemaker, Matt eventually convinced Angus to leave Erin's room, enticing him with a fresh bottle of scotch and the promise that Erin was leaving.
Erin cried herself to sleep on Shannon's bed that night. Matt, Shannon, and I figured out how we'd collectively care for a teenager while struggling to get the business off the ground.
Stopping at the rusty wrought iron gates, I leaned over the steering wheel, taking in the rambling expanse of land.
"We're looking for dogs?"
"It's a mystery," I murmured, and rolled down the window to enter the access code. The gates moaned and creaked when they swung wide, and I bit back a groan as I drove up the winding driveway.
"Oh my God," Andy whispered when I pulled to a stop in front of the house. "That's an 1880s Arts and Crafts. These are incredible."
A quick scan of the property told me Angus kept a landscaper on the payroll, and part of the chimney looked new. Of course. It was all about the façade. Appearances were the only things that truly mattered to Angus.
I was more than a little relieved angry dogs were not descending upon us. That, of course, left rusty nails, burned baby pictures, and bottle caps, but I could handle those. It was the energy radiating off the property, the lingering sadness speaking volumes about the sorrows the house knew, that I wasn't prepared to handle.
"I love this style," she breathed, running her hand over the stone wall surrounding the front porch. "This is a rehab? Do we have any other information?"
The scent of lemon cleaning products slammed into me when I stepped through the front door. Andy was busy caressing the bench carved into the side of the staircase, and didn't notice me wander through the sparsely furnished living room and dining room.
For a house receiving only basic maintenance over the past two decades, it wasn't in bad shape. Trees growing through the windows and raccoons nesting in the pantry were my worst case, yet likely, scenario. We could thank the housekeeper for not only finding Angus after his stroke but also keeping the flora and fauna at bay.
Staring out the family room windows at the blue slate patio, garden, and pool, I searched for good memories. They were there, in the far back, and most of them were tainted with the knowledge my mother would die before my eleventh birthday and Angus was a miserable bastard who would ruin everything good and pure that we knew.
"I walked every room and captured some rough dimensions," Andy announced as she approached the wall of windows. I stared at her, startled that my thoughts led me far enough astray for Andy to study the entire house. Examining six thousand square feet over three floors plus a basement meant I spent more than an hour in my own head. "This place is incredible. Lots of dated energy systems but—"
"Any evidence of water damage?" I interrupted. "Or animals?"
"No water, no woodland creatures. I checked all the crawl spaces."
"Good," I murmured. "What are you thinking? Walk me through your plan. Start with fundamentals and then go through preservation."
She paused, her brow furrowed as she paged through her notebook. "I'm thinking a lot of things. This place has amazing bones, but…what's the story? Is this a client property or an investment property? It's almost completely empty, but it looks like someone still lives here."
"It's a little of both," I replied.
"Hm. Well…I'd start with energy systems, then deal with exterior—"
"Actually, no. I don't want to hear this." Turning,
I retreated to the library, my fingers skating along the built-in bookcase until I found the lever. Pressing down, the structure glided away from the wall, revealing a narrow set of stairs. The wine cellar held a few dusty bottles and a small colony of spider webs, and the best look at the foundation.
A flashlight landed in my palm before I could ask, and I scanned the foundation for cracks and leaks. "Thank you. Budget of two-fifty, focus on shoring up the structure and systems as needed. Turn it green. Draw it up and get started. Keep me out of it unless you hit a wall. And do not mention anything about this to Sam."
"Hm."
I squatted to study a dark corner while Andy walked through the hidden rooms. I wanted to find a major foundation issue, anything that would give me the green light to level the property, sell the land, and never come here again.
"Patrick?" she called. When I found her, she was inside a small root cellar, and her focus was on the door where our ages and heights were recorded each year on our birthdays. "Where are we?"
I glanced at Erin's name, and the short increments marking her height. It stopped after her second birthday, and I immediately remembered her bobbling around as a chubby baby, wailing for mama every single night for months after my mother died. We took turns holding her, walking her, singing to her, making bottles. None of it worked. Eventually, she started falling asleep with Shannon and refused to get into bed unless Shannon was right there with her.
My stomach twisted. I didn't want to think about the past. The lost childhoods. Angus's drunkenness and gambling and rage. I didn't want the memories of Sam's hysterical screams when the paramedics tore him off my mother's lifeless body. I didn't want to remember making the call to 911 or how long it took me to wash away all that blood.
The first towel soaked all the way through until I couldn't see any white, just red, so much red. Then the second. Then the third. I piled six towels in the bathtub that night.
It stained the wood and spilled into the crevices between the planks. Smaller puddles marked the path from the bed to the bathroom, and to the place where she collapsed. Handprints lined the sink and walls.
The bleach burned my eyes but I didn't know what else to use in my quest to put things back in order. My mother would have scrubbed on her hands and knees until it was clean, and she wouldn't have wanted people seeing her blood spilled all over the bedroom. She was proud and private, with her stiff Irish upper lip, and that wasn't what she would have wanted.
Blood covered my clothes, my arms, and my legs. My aunts Mae and Carole were busy making arrangements. That's what they called it, as if my mother was planning a trip to Fort Lauderdale.
They stayed away from the bedroom. They knew what happened in there but they didn't want to see it. No one saw me in my mother's bathroom, surrounded by her oatmeal soaps and flowery perfume, with her blood all around me.
I should have checked on my brothers and sisters but I knew they were safe in the nursery with Shannon. She knew what to do. She always did.
The water was too hot but I didn't feel it, not really. I focused on the pink water sluicing off my body. In the shower, it looked harmless.
The stained bedding and towels went into thick black garbage bags, along with my clothes. It was late when I brought the bags to the latticed enclosure behind the garage, probably after midnight. No one noticed me or the oversized bags.
When I closed the lid on the dented metal barrel, I sat in the dirt and cried. The panic, horror, pain, confusion—they took over for the first time since finding Mom on the floor. They won, and I cried it all out. Hiccupping, hyperventilating, and eventually vomiting, I left it all in the shed.
That was the last time I cried, if we ignore the incident where I ran a jigsaw across my thigh. I left my childhood in those barrels with the bloodied towels.
I found an oval rug in the den and moved it into the bedroom, covering the planks discolored from blood and bleach. No one asked where it came from or why it was there. They never asked where the bedding went, or who cleaned the blood. But the reminder was always right there. Everyone knew and no one wanted to talk about it. It was easier that way.
Shannon took care of my brothers and sisters, and I took care of everything else. And that hadn't changed in over two decades.
Andy's hand passing vigorously between my shoulder blades jerked me out of my memories and I turned to face her. Her eyes crinkled in concern, and she didn't stop rubbing my shoulders. "Patrick?"
And this is why I don't come here, I reminded myself. This is why I can't live in the past.
Exhaling, I stared at the door. "I grew up here."
She was doing it on purpose, and of that, I could be certain.
She was trying to kill me, and damned near succeeding.
Why else would Andy wear jeans resembling a second skin, a long, slim black v-neck sweater, and knee-high boots straight out of Catwoman's closet? And that hair. God help me, that hair. It was always the same style, with an abundance of thick raven curls tumbling over her shoulders and midway down her back, but it hit me like a fist to the gut. Something about that hair begged to be pulled, then written into fables.
"Is there something preventing you from interacting with all humans, or just me in particular?" Sam asked.
I glanced at him before refocusing my attention over his shoulder to where Andy leaned next to Shannon's dining room table. She was talking with Tom, offering bright smiles and nodding eagerly, and he seemed to be describing something she found fascinating. Probably his willingness to grow a wiry beard and go to music festivals.
In the two hours since her arrival at Shannon's apartment, she spent all of her time close enough for me to see her yet far enough away that I couldn't eavesdrop. She also spent her time talking with every unattached guy at the party, starting with Nick, who seemed to have substantially more time outside the operating room these days, a few lawyer friends of Shannon's, a skinny marathon friend of Matt's, and now Tom.
It was fucking excruciating.
"All humans," I said, gulping the Newcastle in my hand.
"Right," Sam murmured. "That is splendid news, Patrick. I'm not sure where you get the idea that it's appropriate to be an asshole to people. Running around the office like an angry bear isn't kosher. If possible, I'd recommend you pry your head from your ass this weekend. This is getting old."
Sam stepped away and joined a conversation about an upcoming trip to Arizona to see some spring training games, and I continued my covert study of Andy.
I was tired from a week of sleepless nights, wrung out from the morning at Wellesley, and teetering on the edge of sanity after watching a handful of guys hit on Andy, but I wasn't leaving until she was. If she decided to leave with one of them, I wanted to see it.
Shannon edged next to me on the window seat and wordlessly watched the party. I knew she was reaching out for a truce, and she was waiting for me to make the first peace offering.
That was how it worked: one of us fucked up, the other spent an irrational amount of time pissed off about it, and then we talked around the original fuck-up. The Walshes weren't especially familiar with the words "I'm sorry."
"Wellesley was in good shape," I started, receiving a quick nod from Shannon. "No dogs, either, but let's get real. Andy probably would have whipped them into shape within five minutes while I hid in the backseat. She's working on the proposal."
"I like her a lot. She's good for you, really good. She's good for us," Shannon said, her eyes still focused on her guests. "Is there anything left?"
Tilting my beer back, I drank it down in slow sips. She already knew the answer; she was hoping to hear something different. "No. Some furniture. His closet. Everything else…"
"Yeah," she sighed, swallowing loudly. "Let's not bring that up to anyone else for the time being. Or maybe we don't say anything at all, and they figure it out."
I knew she wanted a thread of redemption for Angus. As much as I wanted it too, redemption never interested Angus, and it
never mattered to him that he destroyed our history when he purged the house. With the exception of a few closely guarded snapshots, there were no pictures of us as kids and no evidence of my mother.
Minutes passed before Shannon turned to look at me. "Okay, so now that the heavy shit is out of the way, what the hell happened to you this week? Marisa? Office space? Monday's meeting? Do you actually doubt my investment strategy, or are you a massive dickhead?"
"Massive dickhead." I studied Andy's movements as she spoke to Tom, following her precise gestures and eager nods that encouraged him to continue speaking. He was definitely growing a beard for her, and chances were high that he'd be Instragramming photos of oddly shaped radishes at Whole Foods by Monday.
"I'd rather not hire another assistant, considering the past five have walked out claiming PTSD. I mean, seriously, dude. I don't have time for that shit. Do you think I sit around all day looking for combat-tested personal assistants?"
"I know, I know," I sighed. Andy was sipping a mixed drink, and the desire to find out what it was and hear all about the factors leading to that decision struck me. "Maybe I don't need an assistant. Andy's running a lot of projects now. I need someone to handle my calls and calendar. And manage my expenses."
"Maybe Tom can—"
"No," I interrupted. By my watch, Tom had five minutes before I was firing him and his beard. "I…I think Tom's busy enough with you. Maybe Theresa can help."
"Sure," Shannon said. "She handled Angus, after all, and Matt's a field of daisies in comparison. But you have to know—she doesn't take any shit."
"Yeah, that's because she knows what she's doing. She wouldn't have let that copier jam for four days, and she wouldn't have let me try to take it apart. She's the only reason Angus wasn't a homeless bum."
"All right," Shannon said, indicating the conversation was over. "I'll handle it Monday. But if anyone else walks out because you're a massive dickhead, I cannot be held accountable for my reactions, and my reactions will involve taking off my shoes and beating you with them."
The Walsh Brothers Page 37
