by SUE FINEMAN
“He’ll be gone by the end of the day.”
Al’s mind wandered back to Jenna. Why hadn’t she told him about the check? Why would she hide that little piece of information unless she planned to take legal action?
After Tony took him back to the Plantation, Al drove out to the coast and stopped in a park where he could watch the waves beat against the shore. Each wave washed a tiny part of his spirit out to sea until he felt empty inside.
He’d finally found a woman he could love, and she’d made him feel like a stupid fool. Again. If he’d known the situation before, he might not have bought the inn, but he had, and he didn’t want to lose it. He didn’t want to lose her either, but it felt like he already had.
He thought he’d gotten past the trouble in high school, but there were so many similarities, it all came flooding back. His family didn’t have much money, so he wore hand-me-down clothes from his brothers. The pants were too short, and some of the girls teased him about his high-water pants. But not Jenna. He’d fallen in love with her sweet smile in the ninth grade, but he was too shy to talk with her.
Things seemed better in the tenth grade, or they did at first. Tony and Nick took him out and bought him new clothes, and Angelo had just gotten out of barber college, so he started cutting Al’s hair. Al thought he was looking pretty good in the tenth grade, but in March, the floor caved in under him.
Jenna had started hanging around with Brian and his buddies, a group of four boys and four girls. They were always pulling dirty tricks on someone, and that spring they started in on him. Jenna sidled up close to him at the lockers one day and asked, “Do you want to kiss me?”
Sure he wanted to kiss her, but the hall was filled with kids. Brian and several other people were watching them.
“Brian said you were too chicken to kiss me.”
Al felt his face get hot just remembering. Jenna Madison was the prettiest girl in school, and she wanted to kiss him, but not because she liked him. She wanted to do it because Brian Baxter had dared her.
“Then it’s true,” she’d said. “You’re gay.”
By then everyone was watching, and Al’s face burned with humiliation. Before he could say anything, Brian said, “How ’bout kissing me instead?” He made smacking sounds, and a bunch of people laughed.
The bell rang and as everyone went to class, Brian’s friends pointed at him and laughed. Al felt like he didn’t have a friend left in the world. He skipped PE class that day. He felt like skipping school entirely, but if he did, Ma would have made him feel worse.
He never told anyone in his family what happened, but Angelo’s friend, who had a younger sister in high school, told him about it. Angelo offered to help him beat up Brian Baxter, but Al said he’d handle it himself. But he didn’t know what to do. If he hit Brian, Brian’s friends would jump him, and it would just make things worse. He prayed it would die down and go away, but Brian didn’t let it die down.
And then one morning before English class, Jenna asked him to a party. He declined, and she told everyone it was true. Al Donatelli was gay. From that point on, his high school social life, what there was of it, was dead. Jenna had set him up and made fun of him to please Brian, and it hurt deeply, because he still had a crush on her.
Now he’d let himself love her, and she was doing it to him again. She’d wanted the inn since the day she found out Mattie had sold it to him, and all those hours she’d spent in the attic and the night she’d spent in the inn’s office had been for one purpose. To find proof that the inn was half hers.
Why didn’t she tell him she’d found that proof?
He sat in the car, watching the sun dip below the horizon and sink out of sight. And still he didn’t move. He couldn’t face Jenna tonight, and he didn’t know what to do with all these feelings churning inside him.
He waited until after ten to begin his drive back, and it was after midnight when he arrived at the estate. Jenna was sleeping soundly, so he gathered his things and found himself another room.
And then he went downstairs to the gym.
He needed to hit something.
<>
Jenna woke in the morning and found the closet open. Alessandro’s clothes were gone, and his shaving kit was gone from the bathroom. He’d moved out of the room they’d been sharing. Was he angry about something? Why couldn’t he talk with her about it instead of leaving without saying a word?
The girls were up, so she took them to the bathroom and got them dressed before she showered. Cara had a visit to the museum scheduled for this morning, and Tamara and the kids were going with them. Jenna thought Alessandro would be going along, but now she didn’t know if he was or not.
Alessandro didn’t come down for breakfast. If they weren’t leaving in twenty minutes, she’d go look for him. Or maybe not. If he wanted to be found, he would have slept with her last night instead of sneaking out of the room they’d shared.
The girls were excited about going out today. Sophie had been there before, but Katie had never been to a museum. Jenna hadn’t been to more than two or three herself, and she was curious. Cara’s grandfather had been a collector, and Tamara had explained that all the art from the house had been moved to the museum and replaced with copies. Jenna couldn’t tell the difference. She would have been satisfied with the copies.
They took the limo, with Johnny’s stroller in the trunk. Cara cautioned all three little ones about being on their best behavior in the museum.
The building housing the museum was a work of art. It was built around a courtyard filled with sculptures and lush plants. A huge glass dome crowned the courtyard, only Jenna was sure it wasn’t really glass. Not in earthquake country.
Jenna knew little about art, but she had to admit that some of the pieces were breathtakingly beautiful. She especially liked the more traditional pieces.
Cara pointed to one painting. “That was my mother’s favorite.” A minute later, she point out another one. “This one used to hang in my grandfather’s library.”
Malcolm Moore greeted them and pointed out the new acquisitions that Cara hadn’t yet seen. It was an interesting place, but Jenna couldn’t get her mind off Alessandro. Something was wrong, but what?
While the others were busy, Jenna found a quiet corner and called Alessandro’s cell phone number. He answered on the first ring. “Alessandro, do you want to tell me what’s wrong, or am I supposed to guess?”
“Gerry called yesterday. Why didn’t you tell me about the check on your parents’ account? Didn’t you think it was important enough to mention?”
She heard rage beneath the surface in his voice. “I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d react like this.”
“The inn is mine. If you’re hanging around expecting a share, you can forget it.”
Stung by his bitterness, she disconnected. Did he really think that little of her? As soon as they got home, she was moving out. Let him think she’d fight him for the inn. Let him think she didn’t love him. It didn’t matter, because she was finished with him.
She heard the kids chattering and Cara talking to her, but she turned away. A second later, Cara’s arm came around her shoulders. “Whatever it is, it couldn’t be that bad.”
“Alessandro hates me.”
“I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding.”
“As soon as we get back to Gig Harbor, I have to find another place to live.”
Cara rubbed her shoulder. “I can help you with that.”
“Haven’t you helped me enough?”
Turning Jenna to face her, Cara said, “If you’re talking about the job, that was you helping me.”
Jenna pulled a tissue from her purse to wipe her eyes and nose, and the tour continued. She hung back from the others, still hurting from Alessandro’s anger. Every painting she saw had his face, every sculpture had his shape, and when she closed her eyes, she saw his brown eyes dark with longing, something she’d probably never see again.
She’d
waited too long to tell him about the check, and now she’d lost him.
<>
Mattie sold her car to the son of one of the nurses with the understanding that he’d take her to the inn whenever she wanted to go. He was just a kid, not more than eighteen or nineteen. His mother drove the two of them to the inn, so the boy could pick up the car.
There was a new gate across the driveway, but it was open, and there was a car parked in front of the inn. A woman came out, the mother of the young man who’d bought the inn. She walked right up to the car. “Mattie, what are you doing here?”
“I sold my car, and we came to get it.”
Mattie got out and showed the kid how to release the latch on the garage door. The lock had broken years ago. The kid lifted the door and Mattie saw Jenna’s car parked beside her old Plymouth.
There was a garage door opener thing on Jenna’s dashboard. It must open the gate, because they’d never put an automatic opener on the garage door. Jenna’s car window was down, so she took the gadget while the kid and his mother inspected the engine of her Plymouth. She slipped it into her pocket. If they thought they could lock her out, they’d better think again. If this thing didn’t open the gate, there were other ways to get in, paths through the trees and out to the road. She’d lived here for ninety years, and she knew them all.
The kid started the car and backed it out of the garage. The nurse pulled the door down and thanked Mattie for selling her son the car. “He’s been saving his money for such a long time, and now that he’s out of high school, he needs a car so he can find a job.”
“I’d like to check on my cats before we leave.”
“Take all the time you need, Mattie.”
Mattie walked to the laundry room door at the back of the inn. It wasn’t locked. The cats had food and water and a clean litter box, so someone was taking care of them. Callie was there and Midnight. Albert had his face in the food dish, as usual. She’d never seen a cat eat as much as that one. Bandit was stretched out on top of the dryer washing his face. Coco was probably hiding, and George had disappeared weeks before Mattie left for the nursing home.
Callie rubbed against her legs. “My sweet baby,” Mattie crooned.
The young man’s mother came in and asked if she wanted a cup of tea before she left, reminding Mattie that she no longer lived here.
But that would change. And soon.
“I just wanted to see my cats,” said Mattie. “Is Jenna still in California?”
“Yes, but I expect her back in a day or two.”
“Would you ask her to call me? I want to know who’s going to pay for all the new clothes she sent me.”
“Of course.”
“Okay then.” Mattie walked out the door and toward the car she’d come in. The lock on the laundry room door snapped behind her, and she realized the woman had locked her out of her own home. One of these days, she’d be living here again, and nobody would ever lock her out again.
<>
When Jenna and Cara arrived at the house with the kids, Mr. Pettibone, Cara’s butler, told her that Al had left the house and he would not be returning to Washington with them. “He said he would find his own transportation back to Gig Harbor.”
Cara gave Jenna a questioning look, and Jenna felt like all the air had left her body. He didn’t even want to ride in the same airplane.
They flew back to Gig Harbor that afternoon, without Alessandro. Katie wanted to know where ’Sandro was, and Jenna told her he had to leave on business. She hated to lie to Katie, but she couldn’t tell her the truth, that her beloved ’Sandro didn’t want them around anymore.
Cara’s driver let Jenna and Katie off at the gate to the inn. They walked around the gate and down the drive to the house. As she carried her suitcase down the hill, memories assaulted Jenna. This was the last place she’d lived with her parents, the place where Uncle Charlie helped her through her depression, the place where Mattie berated her and made her feel like less than nothing. The place she’d fallen in love with Alessandro.
It was time to leave the inn for good, but she couldn’t leave Gig Harbor. Cara had convinced her not to leave her job, and Jenna couldn’t take Katie away from Grandma and Sophie.
She unlocked the door, made Katie a snack, checked on the cats, and then went upstairs to pack. She wanted to be gone before Alessandro came back even if it meant staying in a hotel.
While Katie napped, Jenna carried box after box out to the garage until there was nothing left of theirs in the inn but clothes and Katie’s favorite toys. She carried a suitcase downstairs and found Sophia standing at the bottom of the steps. “Jenna, Cara said you needed a place to stay, and I’d like to offer my house.”
“I can’t stay with you, Sophia.” Alessandro would resent it.
“I don’t know what my son did to you, but he should be ashamed of himself.”
“He didn’t do anything. I did. I didn’t tell him something important, and now he thinks I hid it on purpose.”
“You’ll work it out. In the meantime, you’re coming home with me. Bring some of Katie’s kitty friends.”
Jenna didn’t move. “I can’t live with you, Sophia. Alessandro is upset and he needs you, but he won’t go there if he knows I’m there.”
“Nonsense.”
Sophia wouldn’t listen. She rolled a suitcase outside and put it in her trunk and came back for another one. Before Katie woke up from her nap, they had Sophia’s car loaded and the rest of their things piled on the porch. Jenna brought her car around and packed it. Katie wouldn’t go without Callie, so she stuffed the little kitty in her kennel and brought enough food and litter to take care of her needs for the next few days. Alessandro would have to take care of the others.
Jenna looked for the gate opener on the dashboard and the seat and the floor, but it wasn’t there. “You’ll have to close the gate, Sophia. I can’t find my opener.”
They both searched the car and the garage, but the opener was gone.
<>
After Al was sure that Cara’s plane had left, he returned to the estate. He’d brought his laptop with him, and he could just as easily work from here for a few days. He set it up in the library, but his heart ached with missing Jenna, and he couldn’t concentrate. Maybe it was time to take a vacation. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken time off, but vacations were no fun alone, and he’d never felt more alone than he did at that moment.
Why did she have to hide the truth from him? How long did he have before she hired an attorney, or had she already hired one? He should have let Jenna move back to Seattle instead of asking her to stay at the inn. He’d known all along that she was the wrong woman for him, and he’d let himself love her anyway.
<>
Jenna left most of her boxes in the garage at the inn and settled into Sophia’s house with Katie. She called Brian and told him that they’d moved. He hadn’t missed them, so she didn’t mention that they’d been gone. Brian was always single-minded when he had a new girlfriend, and it looked like his relationship with Gabriella was still hot and heavy.
She didn’t waste any time in retrieving the bank information from Gerry. Jenna didn’t stop to chat, since she was still irritated about him telling Alessandro about the check. She’d told him she’d tell Alessandro herself, and she would have told him when the time was right. Now it was too late. Too late to tell him herself and then explain that she wasn’t going to try to get the inn away from him. Too late to tell him she loved him and wouldn’t ever do anything to hurt him.
Too late.
As soon as she got back to Sophia’s house, she opened the envelope and examined the canceled checks. Gerry had requested copies of everything that had been written for over ten thousand dollars.
The biggest check was for half-ownership in the inn, but there were several other big ones. The fifty-thousand dollar check to Charlie was written a year before her parents died. That same year, there were two checks written to Annie Finnegan
. One was for twenty-five thousand dollars, and the other for ten thousand. The notation on the bottom was for Tom. Then there was the check to Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle for a hundred thousand. There was an account number at the bottom, but she couldn’t read it. The hospital probably wouldn’t give her any information anyway.
Was Tom the boy in the picture? The only Tom that Jenna knew was a boy in college with a deep voice and a shy smile who charmed every girl on campus. It couldn’t possibly be the same one.
Who was Annie Finnegan? Jenna had an old laptop, so she hooked it up and looked up Annie Finnegan on the Internet. There were several people by that name listed, so she narrowed her search to Washington state. There was only one listing, and it had a 509 area code. Jenna retrieved Charlie’s wallet and dug through until she found the paper with the phone number written on it.
It was a match.
<>
Al drove back to Tony’s building site and hung around for most of the day watching the men tear out the work they’d done in the past few days. Time was money, and they’d wasted a lot of it, but it couldn’t be helped. One mistake like this was like pushing down one domino. It triggered another one to fall, and another, and another, until there were a bunch of them down. In this case, a door moved half a foot to the left and another moved half a foot to the right left no room for a dresser on that wall. The closet door had been moved on the opposite wall, leaving no room for a king-size bed. The buyers could squeeze a queen-size bed in, but just barely. It didn’t make sense to build a bedroom with no place to put furniture, yet that was what that jerk had done.
By the end of the day, the mistakes had been corrected, but they’d eaten some of the profit from two houses. At least the foreman was gone. Tony would have to act as his own foreman on this job until he found a man he could trust. Finding good employees was always a challenge. That was one reason Nick hired family when he could. Some of the other employees didn’t like it, but that was tough. Al could trust his brothers and cousin to build the plans as he drew them.
Al had dinner with Tony and his family and then drove back to Cara’s house. He tried to get a flight out of San Francisco for the next day, but there was nothing available, and Cara’s plane was back in Gig Harbor.
