The Cottage on Nantucket

by Jessie Newton

  The yard also needed a lot of work, and her fingers ached already.

  “Let’s think about how much we want to reinvest into the cottage,” Tessa said as the car pulled up. “Okay?”

  “Okay,” Janey said, following her sister down the front steps to the sidewalk. The cottage could honestly do with a gutting and a complete renovation. New flooring, new cabinets, new appliances, new everything.

  But every penny that went into curtains or carpet for the cottage came out of her bank account. Well, hers and Tessa’s. Janey wanted the cottage to be a nice place to come visit, but the truth was, neither of them lived there. It didn’t need high-end flooring or granite countertops. It just needed to be nice and functional.

  She didn’t say so right now, though, because it was probably going to be something she and Tessa didn’t agree on—again.

  “I’m going to bring Rachel next week,” Janey said. “She talked to her boss and she got the whole week off. She’ll be a big help.”

  “That’s fantastic,” Tessa said brightly, lifting her suitcase into the trunk. Janey handed her bag to the driver, who took care of it for her, and she rounded the car to get to the passenger side.

  “Leaving already?” someone called, and Janey turned toward the sand, shading her eyes to find Riggs there, fishing pole resting against his shoulder.

  “Just for the weekend,” Janey said, putting her sunniest smile on her face. “I promise we’ll be back to take care of the jungle between our place and yours next week.”

  He laughed, and Janey joined him briefly. “Thanks for watching out for us,” she said, lifting her hand in a wave as Riggs came closer. She wasn’t sure what about him rubbed her the wrong way. Maybe the perpetual smile. Maybe that he always seemed to be there—right there—hanging around the cottage.

  Janey closed her eyes against the bright sun, and on the golden background of her eyelids, she saw Riggs in the cottage. He was angry, and he had Mom pressed up against the wall in the kitchen, right next to where the rotary phone hung on the wall. Janey was little—or at least shorter. She had to look up at Mom and Riggs, and when she’d said something to her mother, Riggs had backed off.

  His eyes flashed angrily, but Mom had stepped between him and Janey, and the memory went dark.

  She pulled in a breath and opened her eyes again. The scent of salt and musk and male cologne lodged in her nose, and she focused on Riggs, who now stood only a few feet away, the open passenger door between them.

  He didn’t look angry now, but Janey was just as afraid of him as she’d been as a child. He smiled, and the man had aged about four decades from the vision in her mind, and his wrinkles and gray hair made him seem innocent and grandfathery.

  “Have a good trip,” he said, looking from her up to the cottage. “We’ll keep an eye on the old girl.”

  “Thank you,” Janey murmured, and she slid into the back seat. She closed the door, and the car eased forward to make a U-turn. They went past Riggs, who stood on the side of the road, a tackle box in one hand, and the other holding that fishing pole.

  “Have you ever noticed that he never catches anything?” Tessa asked.

  “Maybe he throws the fish back,” Janey said, her eyes trained out the window. She’d never remembered waking up in the middle of the night and going down the hall to the kitchen in the cottage. She thought about it on the way to the ferry, trying to hang onto the pieces of memory so she could examine them. They blurred and slipped away like smoke, but she thought that memory—and possibly others—were the reason Riggs Friedman just didn’t sit right with her.

  “I’m home,” she called hours later. Her bladder had been unhappy with her for the past half-hour, so she darted into the bathroom while Rachel yelled to her from outside.

  Once relieved, Janey went through the house to the back deck, where Rachel sat with her boyfriend, Travis. “Hey, you two.” She smiled at them, the relief she felt at being home almost more than she could articulate.

  She sank into an available Adirondack chair, sighing all the while. She looked out over the back lawn, noting that it had been cut. “Thanks for doing the yard, Trav.”

  “Yep,” he said, giving her a quick smile.

  Rachel didn’t look up from her phone, and Janey found her ready for work. Her long, sleek, sandy blonde hair fell straight down her back and over her shoulders, partially covering the name tag she’d already pinned to her blue and white polo.

  “What time do you have to work?” Janey asked.

  “Three,” Rachel said, looking up.

  “Oh, so you have to leave really soon.”

  “Yeah, five or ten minutes.” Rachel smiled at her, and Janey could see so much of herself—and Mom—in her daughter. “I got all the mail. There’s a huge stack on the desk in the kitchen.”

  Janey smiled and closed her eyes. “Thanks, hon.” She just needed a few minutes. A quick catnap. Once Rachel went to work, Janey would call Milford and tell him she wanted to be exclusive. She wasn’t sure what his reaction would be, but she felt good about it. All she could do was hope and pray he would too.

  “Tell her about that weird courier letter,” Travis said, and that got Janey to open her eyes. She looked at Travis, the young man good-looking and so good to Rachel. They’d dated in high school too, and their relationship had simply continued afterward. He had dark hair and eyes, and couldn’t seem to eat enough to put on a single pound. He worked for his dad at their family-owned deli, and Janey had benefitted from more than one Italian sub he’d brought to the house after one of his shifts.

  “Weird courier letter?” Janey asked.

  “Oh, right.” Rachel stood up, her long legs clad in a pair of jeans that barely held any blue at all. “Let me get it. Some guy dropped it off a few days ago. I had to sign for it, but he was mad it wasn’t you.” Her voice went with her as she stepped inside, and Janey sat up in the Adirondack chair, which was quite the feat.

  Rachel returned with a slim envelope that didn’t look nefarious in any way. Janey’s heart seemed to know better, and it started to knock against her ribs. “It’s from The Hotel Benjamin.” Rachel look at Janey, her eyebrows up. “Did you stay there or something? It kind of looks like a check.”

  “The Hotel Benjamin?” Janey stood up and took the envelope. It did have a see-through window where her address sat, and it indeed did look like a check. She wasn’t sure if she should tell Rachel she had stayed there a few nights ago or act like she hadn’t.

  Thankfully, her phone rang, and Milford’s name sat on the screen. She smiled, lifted the device, and said, “Thanks, honey. I have to take this.”

  She took the envelope with her as she hurried inside. She swiped on the call from Milford and said, “Hey, baby.”

  “Hey yourself,” he said. “Did you make it home okay?”

  “Yes.” Janey stepped into her bedroom and closed the door, her eyes trained on the return address on the envelope. “I wish you were in town. How much longer will you be in Toronto?”

  “Assignment finished early,” he said. “I’m at the airport. I’ll be back tonight. That’s why I’m calling. Wanted to take you to dinner.”

  Warmth filled Janey, and she tore her eyes from the envelope to say, “Yes, that sounds amazing.”

  “Great.” Milford chuckled. “I’ve missed you, Janey.”

  “I’ve missed you too, Ford.”

  “Hey, they’re calling my flight. I’ll swing by around six?”

  “Sure.” Before she knew it, the call ended, and her attention went right back to the envelope. “Just open it,” she coached herself. She slipped her fingers under the flap.

  “’Bye, Mom!” Rachel called. “We’re leaving.”

  Janey’s fingers ripped right through the envelope as she flinched. She hurried to open the door and call, “’Bye! See you later.”

  She closed the door again and turned back to the envelope. It was open now, the edges along the top jagged and craggly, like the rocks along the clif
fs of the Point.

  She took a deep breath and pulled out the single sheet of paper.

  My dearest Janey, her mother wrote.

  Janey’s eyes couldn’t scan fast enough. She read the very short letter in only a matter of seconds, her brain misfiring on the words.

  They were English, but they didn’t make sense.

  She looked up as she let the letter drop.

  A scream came from her mouth, followed quickly by a wrenching sob. Crying freely now, she slid down the door and curled her knees to her chest, the black letters on the page burning behind her closed eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Tessa turned the corner and headed toward her house, finding Ron’s SUV in the driveway. Her heartbeat went up and then down, and she wasn’t sure if she was happy her husband was home or not.

  They’d had some good conversations while she’d been in Nantucket, but sometimes integrating Ron back into her life for just a couple of days took so much work. She told herself they had plenty to talk about right now, and Ron would likely be exhausted from another week in the city.

  She pulled into the driveway beside his car and got out, making sure she grabbed her library ID and purse. She didn’t like to leave anything in the car, because then she couldn’t find it when she needed it. Just inside the front door sat a small table, and it had two drawers on the front of it. Her keys and library badge went in one of them, and her purse went on the hook beside the garage door.

  Tessa had a system and a routine for everything, and they brought her comfort in times when not much else made sense. “Ron?” she called, but he didn’t answer. She found his briefcase on the desk in the office, and she went down the hall to the kitchen.

  A vase of red roses sat there, as did a box of cronuts from her favorite bakery in New York City. Tessa smiled and reached for the velvety petals on the roses. She leaned over and inhaled their sweet fragrance, plenty of guilt stinging her stomach for not being thrilled to see Ron’s car in the driveway.

  She left the kitchen and went down the hall to the master suite, the sound of the shower meeting her ears as soon as she entered the room. “Ron,” she said again.

  “In the shower,” he called. “I got a coffee on the way home, and then spilled it all down the front of me.”

  “Oh, no.” Tessa went into the bathroom and inhaled the scent of his masculine body wash. “Should I order some dinner?”

  “I already did,” he said from behind the frosted glass in their shower. “I was craving The Boar’s Head pulled pork. Or maybe their mermaid salad.”

  Tessa leaned against the countertop and smiled. “Definitely the salad.”

  “How was the library?”

  “The library,” she said, because it was boring. She’d shelved books and logged a few dozen new titles they’d gotten in while she’d been gone. Sometimes she had to work the check-out counter if they got busy, but today had been an easy Friday evening, and she’d stayed in the back to get caught up on the most important things she’d missed.

  “I’ll go put together a cocktail,” she said, pushing away from the counter and then leaving the bathroom. She couldn’t help the way her thoughts moved to Janey and the cottage on Nantucket.

  The checks had cleared her bank without issue. Janey had learned a lot in the city, but she’d returned to the island several days later than Tessa had thought she would. She’d honestly thought her sister wouldn’t return to Nantucket at all.

  She hadn’t wanted to keep the cottage when she’d left, but her tune had changed in the days she’d been gone. She also had another check, had been to the bank and the hotel in New York City, and she’d done all of that without talking to or asking Tessa about it at all.

  Classic Janey, Tessa thought now as she had a couple of days ago.

  Then, to top it off, Janey had suggested they take a few days back in their real lives before they came back to Nantucket to continue work on the cottage. They’d managed to go through almost everything inside, but the outside of the house and the yard needed a lot of work.

  She got out ice cubes and gin, pulled some tonic water from the fridge, and quartered a lime. She put it all together in the tumbler and shook it up before pouring two drinks. She downed hers and poured herself another, the alcohol already moving through her, igniting her mind.

  Janey had definitely been up to something more than catching up on her work when she’d left, and while she’d told Tessa a lot of information, she still had secrets.

  Foolishness rushed through Tessa, because she’d told Janey everything. She’d been revealing her whole hand her whole life, and she hated that she hadn’t learned better by now.

  “Thanks, sweetheart,” Ron said, stepping to her side and interrupting her thoughts. She pressed into his kiss against her cheek and enjoyed the heft and warmth of his hand on her waist.

  “Thanks for the roses,” she said. “They’re beautiful.” Her husband had brought her flowers every weekend for the first six months of his new job. She could admit that it had made his transition to working in the city and only being home on the weekends easier. Thinking about it now, she felt silly for thinking tulips and carnations could make up for living alone five days each week.

  “And the cronuts,” she said. “I’m not even going to need anything else tonight.” Just sweets and gin. With those two things, she could easily stop thinking about everything she needed to do come Monday morning, and the fact that she’d be leaving again on Tuesday.

  “Tell me how things went on Nantucket,” Ron said, and Tessa started into the story.

  Ron interrupted constantly, and that only set Tessa’s teeth on edge. After the third or fourth time, with plenty of story left to tell, she just said, “And yeah. We needed a break from the island.”

  He was difficult to converse with when he interrupted like that, and Tessa tried to be patient with him. He’d likely felt obsolete at work this week, and this was how it manifested itself on the weekend.

  “You mean from each other,” Ron said.

  Tessa shrugged, because he wasn’t wrong. She loved Janey, and sometimes when she was with her, Janey felt like the only safe place in Tessa’s life. Other times, she wondered how they could possibly be related.

  She hadn’t gotten to the second will or the four additional assets, and she poured herself a glass of wine while Ron went to get the door when the bell rang. She gulped it while he thanked the delivery driver for coming, and she poured another measure before he returned.

  He said nothing about the drink, and if he’d known it was her fourth, he might have.

  “My mom left me more assets,” she said as he started unbagging the food. “Just me, Ron. She left Janey out of the addendum, but she said I could tell her what I wanted.”

  Ron looked up at her, surprise in his dark eyes. “Really? What did you do?”

  “I told her.”

  Ron shook his head, which meant Tessa had done the wrong thing. Annoyance sang through her, and she swirled her wine and took a sip.

  “And?” he prompted.

  “We did some investigating, and we found out Mom was married to Dennis. He left her everything—these four new assets which are pretty major—and his kids aren’t very happy about it. That’s why she left them to only me. To protect the assets.”

  Ron scooped meat and mashed potatoes onto a plate for himself and rounded the counter to sit at the bar. Tessa thought about saying something about how he could’ve dished her some food too, but she bit back the words.

  She didn’t want to eat anyway. She just wanted to have another glass of wine and go to bed. If she didn’t do that, she’d drink the whole bottle and wake up with a massive headache in the morning.

  “What assets?” Ron asked.

  Tessa told him, and he actually stopped eating, his eyes widened. “Tess,” he said. “You should’ve called me before you told Janey. A hotel in downtown New York City? Why share that with her?”

  “Because she’s my sister,�
�� Tessa said with a hint of snap in her voice. “Mom left everything else to us fifty-fifty.”

  “Not this, though.” He shook his head, and he didn’t have to vocalize his opinion on Janey for Tessa to know it.

  “She only did it so Dennis’s kids wouldn’t be able to get the assets.” She stepped over to the desk and picked up the packet of papers Janey had given her. “She kept a bunch of records as ‘evidence’ so when his children challenge us, they won’t win.” She set it in front of Ron and picked up the spoon to put some mashed potatoes on a plate for herself.

  “Can you help me go through it?” she asked.

  He pulled the pages out of the envelope, a heavy look in his eyes. “You should’ve said you had this.”

  “I just did.” Tessa glared at him, but Ron didn’t look up. If he said “you should’ve” one more time, though, Tessa might do something she’d seriously regret later.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “So there’s nothing else we need to do?” Tessa asked, standing at the window that showed her the entirety of her front yard. Ron had left for the city over an hour ago, after a weekend of reviewing the documents in the ratty envelope Janey had produced. He’d declared them “nearly useless,” in a court of law, and Tessa had gritted her teeth and tucked the whole packet in the filing cabinet in the office.

  Mom had obviously thought the documents would help, and Tessa wasn’t going to dismiss them just because Ron said she should.

  She felt a weight on her shoulders that hadn’t been there before, because Dennis Martin’s children would come after her for the assets, and she realized Janey had gotten off the hook again.

  “Nothing,” Marcus Hall, their mother’s lawyer, said. “If you and Janey are in agreement about the cottage, then we can transfer the title into both of your names. After that, how you two split things—care of the cottage, who pays the electric bill, all of that—is up to the two of you.”