The Home They Built

by Shannon Stacey

  “Anna, it’s Duncan.” He still didn’t seem to understand how caller ID worked on cell phones. “I received a rather disturbing call from Mike yesterday. Apparently, neither you nor Eryn answered your phones, so he decided to loop me in.”

  She froze, one foot on the bottom porch step and one foot on the walkway. “Disturbing how?”

  “As I understand it, the young cameraman—Cody, I believe his name is—was out on the town and spent some time with a young local woman. She told him quite the tale about the Bayview Inn.”

  Even though she was standing in bright morning sunshine, Anna shivered. She felt compelled to move further from the house in question, and she ended up leaning against their car.

  Maybe she could save it. If the local woman had been drinking and Cody had been drinking, and then it passed through Mike, she couldn’t be sure what Duncan actually knew.

  “Do you care to share the tale she told?”

  “That Tess Weaver falsified documents to apply to Relic Rehab and has coerced the residents of the town into corroborating her story.”

  Well, he knew everything he needed to know, then. She needed to be very, very careful about what she said next. No matter what he said, she wanted to neither confirm nor deny. But he didn’t even give her a chance to respond.

  “We’re not really sure how you let this happen, Anna. We were able to confirm the history of the Bayview Inn is nothing but a fiction created by the Weaver family with just a cursory examination.”

  The censure in his tone grated over her nerves like sandpaper, but the underlying fear for Tess was stronger than her fear of being admonished by disappointed bosses.

  “So maybe Tess Weaver exaggerated the Bayview Inn’s historical significance,” Anna admitted, since she didn’t really have a choice. The Bayview Inn wasn’t even an inn. “But you’ve seen at least some of the footage. Our audience isn’t going to care about some fudging of the building’s history, because the Weavers are one of the most entertaining families we’ve ever had on the show. I think it’ll have the highest ratings of any episode we’ve done to date. The segments we’ve flagged for promo trailers are gold.”

  “There are also rumors that you’re involved in a...personal relationship with the property owner’s grandson?”

  Her muscles tensed as cold seemed to spread throughout her body. “I don’t think that’s any of your business, Duncan.”

  “It is if you conspired with your boyfriend to defraud the network on behalf of his grandmother.”

  She was so stunned by that allegation she couldn’t even speak for a few seconds. And when she did, her voice was shaking with rage. “You have got to be kidding me, Duncan. That’s utterly ridiculous and you know it.”

  “Unfortunately, I have no way of knowing what the truth is, but it’s obvious that malfeasance has taken place. You’re to cease filming immediately. Pack it up and go home while we figure out what to do, both with you and with Tess Weaver.”

  “The house isn’t finished. We can’t just leave it like this.”

  “You can and you will. That contract was fraudulent and we won’t spend another dollar on that property. The crew is on their way to the house to pack up any remaining equipment and if you don’t comply, you’ll be finding your own ride back to Connecticut because they’re leaving.”

  And then he ended the call before she could say another word.

  She stared at the phone in her hands for a few seconds, trying to gather her frantic thoughts and sort them into some kind of order. But her life had just spun into chaos and she’d taken everybody else with her.

  Maybe she should text Eryn and have her come outside. The two of them together might be able to come up with a way to mitigate the worst of the damage. There had to be a way to protect Tess. And her crew.

  Tears threatened to blur her vision, but she closed her eyes and forced them back. She could fall apart later. Right now she had work to do. But when she opened her eyes so she could send a text message to Eryn, movement caught her attention and she looked toward the house.

  And saw Finn crossing the lawn toward her.

  * * *

  Something was wrong. Finn had felt it in the air even before Anna left the house to take a telephone call. His mom had refused to accompany them this morning. She claimed Grizz needed some calm time at home, but he was pretty sure she just needed a break. And the crew hadn’t shown up yet. He might have thought they were on some other production task, except Anna and Eryn were obviously waiting for them.

  Then she’d gotten the call and disappeared. When he’d caught sight of her through a window, she’d looked upset. Calm, but definitely distressed about something. Even though he knew it wasn’t his business, he found himself gravitating toward the door.

  He’d admitted to himself that he was in love with her. Of course he was going to be concerned when she was upset. And when the call ended and she looked as if she was about to cry, he went outside and started across the lawn toward her.

  But when she saw him coming and he watched her chest heave as her breath caught, his steps slowed.

  She looked like a woman who had to tell him something he wasn’t going to like hearing, and she really didn’t want to.

  “Bad news?” he asked softly when he reached her. When she nodded, he put his hand on her shoulder, hoping to comfort her. But her eyes welled up with tears and she dropped her head. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No,” she said. She sniffed and breathed in deeply through her nose before exhaling slowly. “But I have to.”

  “It’s not your family, is it?”

  She shook her head. “No, it’s...”

  She let the sentence die away, and then waved her phone toward the house. And when she stood up straight, making his hand fall away from her shoulder, “Anna, whatever it is you’re trying to figure out how to say? Just say it.”

  She pressed her lips together for a few seconds and then gave a single shake of her head. “I got a call from the network. It’s over, Finn.”

  Every muscle in his body tensed. “What’s over?”

  “Cody hooked up with a local and they had a few drinks and she told him there is no Bayview Inn—that it was all a scheme that Tess had cooked up and she was making everybody in town lie. He told Mike and when Mike couldn’t reach Eryn or me—because Eryn was on the phone with her wife and I was with you—he called the producer asking how we should proceed instead of waiting to talk to me first.”

  “And how are you supposed to proceed?”

  Dread built up inside of him when he saw the defeat in her eyes. “They want us to shut it down and go home, and let them figure it out from there.”

  Let the lawyers figure it out from there, he thought. They were going to go after Gram and there was nothing they could do because she’d sent that application with the fake supporting documents. And she’d signed the contract.

  “You’re just going to leave it unfinished like this?” he asked.

  “He was also told it was going around town that you and I are an item, and they’re concerned I was complicit. He accused me of conspiring with you to defraud the network on Tess’s behalf.”

  “He what?” Anger clouded Finn’s mind. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “It doesn’t look ridiculous from behind their desks in New York.” She blew out a breath. “I don’t want to go, but I have to, and you had to know this was a possibility since you obviously knew your grandmother wasn’t running an inn. I have to talk to them to see what can be salvaged.”

  “When you say you have to see what can be salvaged, you mean your career?” He heard the words coming out of his mouth and he knew he sounded angry, but he didn’t feel it. He felt cold. Numb.

  “I might lose my career, yes, and I’d rather not. But I also want to see what I can do to protect Tess.”

  When she si
ghed and looked down at her phone again, one thought poked through the numbness. “You don’t seem angry.”

  Her head snapped up. “What?”

  “You seem... I don’t know. Resigned? You’re not angry with Gram. You didn’t even ask me if it was true. You knew this was a possibility.”

  That sparked a little anger in her eyes. “Come on, Finn. You can fake the oral history of a building all you want, but businesses leave footprints. And not just a few pieces of paper that smell like Earl Grey, but filings with the Secretary of State’s office. Inspections. Certificates of Occupancy. Literally any mention on the internet that predates her application.”

  “You knew the whole time?”

  “Of course I knew.” She blew out a breath and shook her head. “No, at first I didn’t know Tess was making it all up, but I knew it didn’t look legit on the surface and I chose not to go digging too deeply.”

  Anger was building in Finn’s gut, but he did his best to keep his tone neutral, even if it was a bit flat. She’d known he was lying to her the entire time, and he felt like a fool. “You knew and you chose to ignore the truth of it.”

  “When I saw the name of the town, I felt like it was...a sign, I guess. It was time to start getting answers to some of the questions I had instead of just dwelling on them. Coming to Blackberry Bay to rehab the Bayview Inn meant I could try to learn about my mother without just showing up and asking questions about her. I didn’t have to tell anybody.”

  He heard her words, but while his rational mind was trying to make sense of them, the angry part of him latched on to the bottom line. “You knew. You put my grandmother in this position because you needed a flimsy excuse to find your mother? You could have stopped this before it went this far? Before she got in this deep?”

  Surprise flared in her eyes, followed by dismay and maybe even a little anger. “I did not put your grandmother in any position. Tess knew full well what she was doing and there’s nobody to blame for her situation but herself.”

  “But you could have stopped it. You could have passed over her application and chosen another property and we wouldn’t have had to play this ridiculous game for the last two months. A game my grandmother is going to pay dearly for losing, I might add.”

  “You can try to paint me as the bad guy here all you want, Finn, but it doesn’t change the fact your grandmother knew what she was doing. Joel and Alice knew what they were doing. You knew what you were doing. Your entire family was complicit in this.” She pointed at him. “She lied. You lied. All I did was not expose those lies.”

  Even if there was some defense he could offer, he wasn’t sure he could get the words out because the pain was pushing up through the anger now.

  He’d fallen for this woman—he loved her—and here they were. Secrets revealed. Lies exposed. This was the end and his heart was breaking, but he needed to focus on Gram right now.

  “She defrauded your network. But so did you. Knowingly. And she’s the one who’s going to pay for it. Your career might take a hit, but she’s going to lose everything.” He shook his head, as if he could deny they were spiraling into the worst-case scenario. “It’s over. I have to...it’s done.”

  “Finn, don’t...” She stopped, her eyes pleading with him to understand. “Let’s talk this through. We can figure something out.”

  “You already told me you have to shut down and go home, so there’s not much to figure out.” He swallowed past the lump in his throat, forcing himself to get the rest of the words out. “Get your people here so you can get you and your stuff out of my grandmother’s house.”

  She closed her eyes as her head dropped again, and he made himself turn and walk away so he couldn’t give in to the surprisingly strong temptation to pull her into his arms and hold her until they both felt better. It was over, and it had to be a clean break or he wasn’t sure how he’d let her go.

  Getting on his bike and doing ninety miles an hour in any direction out of Blackberry Bay was his next choice, but he couldn’t do that, either. No matter how much it hurt, he had to be here for Gram. He would be the one to tell her it had all fallen apart.

  * * *

  Anna moved through the massive house room by room, ostensibly looking for anything left behind, but she was really saying goodbye.

  She’d fallen in love with this beautiful fake inn. She gave a little piece of her heart to every historical building she worked on, but this one was different. She’d developed a relationship with the old Victorian that existed outside of the family and outside of the show. Not seeing it finished was going to haunt her for a long time.

  And the people, she thought. Tess. Joel and Alice. Fierce little Grizz. She cared for all of them so much she wasn’t sure she would be able to say goodbye even if they gave her the chance.

  Finn. She hadn’t expected to fall in love in Blackberry Bay.

  She clenched her hands into fists, her fingernails digging into her palms, to distract herself from the tears that wanted to fall. When she finally allowed herself to cry over losing what she’d found with Finn, she was going to cry hard and she was going to cry for a long time. This was neither the time nor the place.

  When she heard footsteps approaching behind her, she tensed, but the disappointment crushed the hope almost immediately. They were far too light to be Finn’s footsteps.

  She turned and was surprised to see Tess coming toward her. A very spry Tess, actually, who was standing tall and wearing shorts and a white T-shirt with a glittery pink flamingo on it. The large polyester housedress she’d been wearing dangled from her hand.

  “These things are hot as Hades,” Tess said, holding it up. “I am never wearing one again, no matter how old I get to be.”

  Anna wasn’t sure what to say. She’d been worried about Tess since Finn had gone in to break the news to her, and was hoping to see her before she left. Apparently she was finally seeing the real Tess Weaver.

  “I’m sorry,” they both said at the same time, and Tess laughed.

  “Don’t you be sorry,” Tess said. “I dragged everybody into this, and to be honest, I never thought it would go this far. When I got accepted, I decided to take it a little further and then I just... I really hate when Alice is right.”

  “I won’t tell her you said so.”

  Tess smiled for a moment, and then her eyes grew serious. “I want you to know one thing, honey, because it’s been weighing on me. I had no idea you were Christy Nash’s daughter when I sent in my application. It’s one thing to manipulate what seemed at the time like a faceless corporation with deep pockets, but I would never have used that family connection to try to lure you here. I didn’t know until I saw you in person, here at the house.”

  “That hadn’t even occurred to me,” Anna assured her, touching Tess’s hand.

  She turned her hand over to clasp Anna’s. “Not yet, but you might have wondered eventually and now you know.”

  “Honestly, I cheated a little to get here. Production was going to pass over your property, but I insisted without telling them the real reason why.”

  “Oh, I knew why you were here as soon as you walked in the door. It’s funny, but I didn’t catch the resemblance when I watched some episodes of the show trying to get a feel for what you’d like.” Tess frowned. “That sounds awful. I am sorry I dragged you into this.”

  “I just told you I went out of my way to get myself into this.”

  Squeezing Anna’s hand, she shook her head. “Eventually you would have ended up here anyway, looking for Christy, but I got involved and now you’re in trouble at work and you and my grandson are at odds.”

  The mention of Finn made Anna’s heart ache so badly she might have rubbed the spot on her chest if Tess wasn’t holding her hand. At odds was such a mild way of putting the current, disastrous state of their relationship. “And your house isn’t done.”

 
“Don’t you worry about me. It’s close enough to done so Joel and Finn can finish it up. Brady will help, and probably some of their friends.”

  It felt as if the giant elephant in the room squeezed in between them, creating a wall of silence. Maybe the guys in Tess’s life could handle finishing the work, but neither Anna nor Tess knew yet what the network suits were going to do. According to the contract Tess had signed, they could go after her for all the money they’d sunk into production so far, and when you added up the costs for Anna, Eryn and the crew, then threw in the supplies, the campground fees and all the other expenses they incurred, it would be enough to financially devastate her. She’d probably lose the house she’d done all this in an effort to save.

  “I can practically hear the wheels turning in your head,” Tess said, and then she gave a harsh chuckle. “I try not to worry about a bridge until it’s time to cross it.”

  “Tess, it’s a really big bridge.”

  “Never came to a bridge I couldn’t get across one way or another. The thing you need to focus on is going back and doing whatever you have to do to save your show and don’t even worry about me.”

  Of course that was what she should do, but it wasn’t going to happen. “I don’t think I can do that, Tess.”

  “I got myself into this. I got myself and my family and even you into this and I’m telling you I’ll be okay, no matter what. Hell, the worst-case scenario is that I move in with Joel and Alice, and that’s not that bad.”

  Anna was pretty sure Tess’s daughter-in-law would disagree, and Alice and Tess living under the same roof would have Joel pitching a tent in the backyard just to get some peace, but she kept that opinion to herself. “I’m going to do whatever I can, Tess.”

  “Anna?” Eryn called from the other room.

  “I guess I should let you go,” Tess said. “I’m supposed to be waiting in the garden for you to leave, but I wanted to say goodbye to you.”

  “Listen, the storage pods are paid through next month, and I’ll keep tabs on that, no matter what happens with my bosses. I wish I could do more, but—”