by Dana Pratola
The phone rang again, sending her heart scurrying as she snatched it up. Maybe he’d forgotten something.
“Hello?”
Her father’s voice boomed in her ear. “Where are you?”
Haven sighed and tucked the phone under her chin while she pulled her hair up into an elastic band. “I’m home, Dad, you just called me here.”
“You’re supposed to be here.”
She double-checked the time. “I’m supposed to be there by nine. It’s eight ten.”
“Did you forget it’s Tuesday?”
Haven thumped her head with her fist. It was her day to bring breakfast. “Yes. I’m sorry!”
“Well your brother and I didn’t, we’re starving. Get your tail in gear.”
Mr. Cestone’s call had already unsettled her, but the race from home to the diner and then to the job two towns away, left Haven anxious and out of breath. How could she tell her father she wouldn't be working a full day? Without mentioning Jett Cestone? Her father was ill tempered at best when he hadn’t eaten. She hoped the food would appease him enough to better receive the news.
It was already bound to be a sticky matter once she told him it had to do with her art. The subject always fueled the same argument, initially ignited when she was nine and begged him to enroll her in art classes at the local museum. Art, in Frank Silano’s school of thought, was a hobby, not something to be taken seriously, and not something to squander money on. Definitely not a career.
Her father’s words echoed in her mind. “Frittering your time painting bowls of fruit will get you nowhere. If you’re going to swing a brush you might as well get a day’s wage for it.”
Haven bit her bottom lip. She could tell him she had a dentist appointment. She hit the gas hard, and by the time she parked behind his red van in front of the client’s Tudor style house, she needed to sit a moment and take several calming breaths.
Her brother, Marcus, was already on a ladder cutting in the dining room ceiling with white paint. He descended when she set the bags and cup holder on a tarp-draped table and removed the Styrofoam-encased orders.
“Sorry I’m late.” She offered him a cardboard cup and a shamefaced grin. “Where’s Dad?”
“‘Bout damn time.”
She whirled at the sound of the gruff voice. Her father glared at her as he wiped his hands on a clean yellow rag hanging from his belt loop. Haven held her tongue and handed him his coffee.
“Let’s not make a habit of this,” he said. “I hope my eggs aren’t sweaty. I hate when the inside of the box gets all steamed up.”
A well-built man of fifty-one, Frank Silano, managed to keep trim and youthful despite his dietary habits, due in part to hard work, but mostly to simple genetics. He weighed the same as he had at twenty-five.
With a grumble, he unwrapped a plastic knife/fork combo and dug in. Haven tossed her coat aside and sipped her scalding coffee. Gauging his mood was tricky. He seemed to be in better spirits than expected, but all the same, she would be careful how she handled the subject of taking the afternoon off.
The homeowner, a woman in her forties with a Cleopatra hairstyle and a heavy hand with the perfume bottle, waved goodbye and left through the kitchen door, trusting her room would be moss green and eggshell white by the time she came home from work. Without waiting for the men to finish eating, Haven climbed the ladder and started in where Marcus left off. If she was only putting in half a day she was going to do her share.
“Missed a spot,” Marcus said.
Haven followed his direction and dabbed her brush at a shadow.
“Eggs were sweaty, but the sausage was better than usual. Thanks.” Her father patted her calf and moved off to start rolling paint on the wall.
Now that he was more agreeable, Haven thought it best to get it over with. “Dad, I have an appointment this afternoon, so I’m going to have to leave here around noon, okay?”
He loaded the roller with paint and rolled it back and forth across the shallow end of the pan. “Doctor appointment? What’s wrong?”
“No, it’s nothing.” It would be so much easier if she could lie, but she wasn’t skilled at it and could never outlast the guilt, so always ended up confessing. “It’s personal.” Both men turned. “Someone wants to talk to me about my painting.”
“Why would they call you? I’ll give them a price,” her father said.
“No, Dad, it’s a personal project. It’s about my work. My art.”
He cocked his head and set the roller in the pan. “A personal project? And who’s the someone? A boyfriend?”
Haven came down off the ladder. “No. Just…I don’t know him really. I know of him.” Her hands were clammy now. Great.
Marcus stepped up, acting as buffer, and gave her a lead. “So, he wants you to paint a portrait or something….”
“I’m not sure,” she answered. “I’m going to meet with him to find out.”
This was bad.
“Where?” her father asked.
And getting worse.
“At his home.”
“Are you nuts? You can’t go to a strange man’s house!”
“I am. Going, I mean.” Haven set her hands on her hips, preparing to square off. This was important to her and with her brother on her side she felt more confident.
“I hate to take Dad’s side, but he has a point.” Marcus winced when she aimed betrayed eyes on him.
Haven flung her arms up then slapped them to her sides. “You two treat me like I’m eleven!” she scolded her brother, then turned on her father. “But I’ve been an adult for some time. So I’ll do my share of the work, but I’m leaving at noon.”
“Then we’re going with you,” her father said.
“No, you’re not.”
Her gaze clashed with his in a battle of wills. She was grown and he didn’t have to like it, but he’d have to accept it. And if she wanted to fritter her time away dabbing pictures on a square of canvas he would deal with that, too.
“How do you know he isn’t some kind of a nut?” her father demanded.
“Where does he live?” Marcus asked.
Because she didn’t have answers, she huffed and stomped across the room. “I can take care of myself.”
“You didn’t answer the question.” Marcus’ blue eyes narrowed.
“Look, he called me and said his grandmother bought one of my paintings—”
“His grandmother. And you buy that?”
“And,” she stressed, plodding through her brother’s interruption, “he wants to discuss having me do a piece for her seventieth birthday.” She hoped she hadn’t told them too much already.
“And because it’s your art work you’re all gung ho,” her father said.
Haven’s ears burned with rage and humiliation. “There you go….”
Her father raised a staying hand before she could walk away. “If this was about painting a kitchen or putting up dry wall would you be going to a stranger’s house, alone?”
“Yes, I’ve gone to clients’ homes alone.”
“But it’s never sneaky. We always know where and when.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that.” Fury sparked when she saw the triumphant gleam in her father’s eyes, but she wouldn’t let anger break her when she was doing her best to prove she was responsible. Lifting her head, she met his gaze, unwavering. “But I’m going because it’s important to me.”
She turned away, threw her shoulders back and got to work.
“Don’t expect a full day’s pay,” he father grumbled, picking up the roller stick.
Her father’s readiness to let the subject drop so easily made Haven leery, especially since it was one of his favorites to squabble over. She would never understand why he couldn’t support his children in their dreams. Okay, Marcus’ dream to trek off to Oregon and become a lumberjack had been less than brilliant, but he’d been eighteen, and weren’t those teen years made for making stupid, senseless mistakes? It would have been a b
etter experience without his father’s constant assurance of failure, and coming home to face the I-told-you-so’s hadn’t been easy for Marcus either.
But this wasn’t the same thing. Her art was her passion, the one thing she’d wanted to do her whole life, and if it came to it, she believed it was her calling. Why couldn’t her father be pleased that she had found a direction for her life that would make her happy, even if it wasn’t his idea of a suitable occupation? Then again, why should she be surprised? He hadn’t supported his wife in her artistic aspirations either.
Since that thought always stirred old resentments, Haven tried to think of other things as she moved around the room, loading her brush and drawing green over dusty rose. Her stomach unclenched one notch at a time, knowing the heated situation could flare again at any moment.
Her father muttered on and off for the better part of an hour while she and Marcus ignored him, determined not to provide an excuse for him to vent his frustration. But when Marcus toppled a paint can and sent Frank into a tirade, Haven could do nothing more than give her brother an apologetic look. Even though he would have to go to the store to replace the can, and rent a carpet cleaner to scrub out the paint that had seeped through the tarp to the oatmeal carpet beneath, they both knew it wasn’t the real reason for their father’s anger.
It was, however, the reason for her growing edginess. The delay would keep her here longer than planned, which meant she would have no time to shower and change before meeting with Jett Cestone.
CHAPTER 2
Jett’s car was waiting for her when she pulled up to her house. She wondered fleetingly how he had gotten her address, and her unlisted home phone number. With a quick acknowledgement to the driver, she sprinted upstairs to get the paintings she was bringing, and hurried back to find him holding the car door open.
The driver, a wiry man clad entirely in black, with rough, acne-scarred skin, and black eyes, nodded indifferently as she moved past him and climbed inside. But she didn’t miss the quick flick of those eyes taking in her appearance, or the snide quirk of his lips. She was glad to be separated from him by the smoky glass partition.
With the exception of her mother’s funeral, Haven had never ridden in a limo. She felt more uncomfortable now. Then, at least, she’d been dressed for the occasion. In spite of the cold punch of wind, she lowered the limousine window halfway in hopes of airing some of the paint fumes from her clothes. She took a small compact mirror from her purse, and with its limited view, searched for any paint that may have found its way into her hair despite having kept it pulled back in a ponytail and tucked under a baseball cap most of the day. Satisfied it was paint free, she left the cap on the seat.
In contrast to the brown, withered ground, the sky looked as though it belonged above a tropical island. Billowing white clouds sailed by in a sea of impossible blue, like grand vessels on their way to far-away lands. Birds chirped and soared without regard for the looming winter.
Once the car turned off route 287, she could only guess where they were going. Her father’s painting business often took her up this way, so she was familiar with the general area, but not well enough to recognize the towns by sight. She remembered painting a guesthouse around here some time ago. It was larger than the house she was renting.
Almost every home she passed was enclosed by a fence or wall. Those with an unobstructed view were framed by extensive lawns that would boast plush green grass and brilliant flora in the warmer months. More than a few of them had animal enclosures housing horses, donkeys, or goats. As the miles rolled by, the homes and professionally groomed property began to ebb as thick woods of pine, maple and birch reestablished themselves as the primary inhabitants of rural New Jersey.
When she hadn’t seen a driveway or intersection in five minutes, Haven considered tapping on the partition and asking the driver exactly where they were, but found the idea of speaking to him more troubling than traveling in circles.
Nerves impelled her to the verge of biting her nails, when the driver entered a stretch of rough, stony road that took them up, and up. The road looped around a mountain of endless browns, unalleviated but for the blue of the sky and patches of white from last night’s dusting of snow. Even with no leaves, the thick growth of trees afforded few glimpses of what lay beyond—more brown.
She scarcely noted the stone pillar marking the beginning of the paved drive, or the gnarled elms lining it. Her gaze was fixed on the structure that came into view. Its size and color, and the fact that it was constructed of stone, brought the word castle to mind. While it didn’t have a moat, it did have a semicircle courtyard where she could easily picture knights and horses jousting or gearing up for battle. The closer she got, the more impressive it was.
In the distance to the right stood a number of outbuildings, each painted in muted gray to match the castle stones. A greenhouse the size of a small supermarket was bordered by uniformly spaced boxwoods. Behind it were stables that Haven estimated could house twenty or thirty horses. A man came out of a third building she presumed was the groundskeeper’s shed, tossed a large white sack and a shovel into the back of a white pick-up and drove off.
Two narrow tracks branched off the arch of the semicircle and around to the sides of the house, but the limo pulled up to the front. Seconds later the driver opened her door and held out his hand, helping her to the base of three broad, squat steps. These were made from a different stone, and she noted, the foundation stones from something else altogether. They rose up five or six feet above the ground and had a duskier hue that fired glints of green back at the mid-day sun. They looked more like gems than mere rocks.
Haven moved to retrieve the paintings from the back seat, but was prevented by a touch at her elbow.
“Please, allow me,” the driver said, with what Haven recognized as an Italian accent.
“Thank you,” she said when he emerged with the paintings and stood at her side.
He was waiting for her, but she was still awestruck by the sheer enormity of the house. At the top of the steps, four soaring pillars stood sentinel. Haven tipped her head back to see to the tops, where each was adorned with ornate carvings depicting knights with swords and damsels with scarves flowing from cone shaped headdresses. It really was a castle!
She looked down at herself in contrast; the pauper arriving at the gate. Her old work clothes were speckled with, and smelling of Spackle dust and latex paint. Her coat was in worse shape. The left pocket hung from two sides and the right sleeve cuff was ripped open where she’d snagged it on a nail. She shrugged off the coat, tossing it in the back seat before shuffling forward. Freezing would be better than being embarrassed.
Worse than being embarrassed, was being nervous. Her body was rigid, her hands trembling. She was a foot from the massive front door, braced with iron at the top, center and bottom as she’d expect a castle door to be, when it opened, revealing a tall, sharp featured woman.
“Welcome, Haven, I’m Mrs. Burke.” A hint of a Scottish burr colored her voice. She was thin, sixty-ish with unnatural black hair in a side part and pulled back into an obedient ponytail. Her blue eyes were sharp like a bird’s, and though the greeting was cordial, it rang of the dutiful efficiency Mr. Cestone no doubt required of all his employees.
Haven didn’t know whether to offer her hand or curtsy. She did neither and walked through the high, carved archway. If she’d had time to change into suitable clothes, her heels would have announced her arrival with smart clicks on the stone tile floor. Instead, the soundlessness of her splattered work shoes made her feel like an intruder, skulking around a home where she had no business being.
Mrs. Burke swept her eyes over Haven. “Come from work, I see.”
Though Haven detected none of the condescension she had from the driver, she nonetheless smoothed the front of her shirt.
“Busy, busy, I know how it is.” Mrs. Burke’s wink and a smile went a long way toward putting Haven at ease. “Matter of fact, I’m in th
e middle of something myself. Come this way.”
The driver came in, but instead of following the women, he carried Haven’s paintings up the broad staircase without a word.
“Esposito is a good man,” Mrs. Burke said when Haven turned to look at him. “But a bit lacking in social skills.”
Haven tried not to worry over the destination of her work as she followed Mrs. Burke down the lengthy corridor. Finished in dark wood wainscoting and ivory silk wallpaper, the passage contained two rooms on either side. She peeked into each one they passed, doing her best not to look like a countrified bumpkin who’d never seen the marriage of wealth and exquisite taste. But then she hadn’t, not on this scale.
In what Haven thought must be a ballroom, a chandelier the size of a Volkswagen dangled above a floor of red wood inlaid with spectacular patterns. Two smaller chandeliers hung on each side of it. Across the hall she saw rich Mediterranean blue drapes pulled shut, thick faded rugs and a grand piano with sheet music at the ready. Of course, a house this size would have a music room.
Her mouth fell open when she caught sight of a sculpture she had recently seen on the History channel. The bronze horse had once belonged to George Washington and was worth more than two million dollars, yet there it sat on a side table, like any other knick-knack. In the dining room, a table that could easily accommodate fifty people had Haven pulling up short before she could gasp.
Mrs. Burke stopped in front of the last room on the right, the only unopened door in the passageway. “This is the library. You may wait in here. Master will be right with you.” She opened the double doors and stood back.
Haven raised her eyebrows. Master? “Thank you.”
The corridor’s stone floor yielded to gleaming wood and Haven’s sneakers gave an abrupt squeak as she entered. Self-conscious, she wished she could leave, or hide herself, but the doors were already closed leaving her no alternative but to step further into the room. She sighed in pure appreciation.
