Your New Best Friend

by Jayne Denker

  "I have to choose?"

  He lets out the agonized sigh of a long-suffering martyr and jerks his chin at the interior as he goes back to sweeping. "Beebs can help you out."

  The line is fairly long, but everyone in the restaurant at this time of day is on his or her way to somewhere else, getting their coffee and pastries to go, so by the time Conn's deputy barista hands over our orders, the place is mostly empty. I gesture to the wingback chairs.

  Miss Beige seems hesitant to sit in the seat I scared her out of yesterday, but I pointedly take the other one, so she finally settles in. When Conn comes back inside, I tilt my head toward my coffee companion. See? Making friends! He rolls his eyes, and his casually dismissive wave labels me as irresistibly incorrigible. I can work with irresistibly incorrigible. I'd add adorable to it, but it's enough for now.

  Amends made all the way around. Good.

  I turn to the woman opposite me. First order of business: name. I can't keep thinking of her as Miss Beige.

  "I'm Melanie Abbott, by the way."

  "Hannah Clement."

  "It's nice to meet you." I give her yet another encouraging smile, determined to put her at ease, but she's still fidgeting, breaking crumbly pieces off her vanilla almond scone. I try again. "You're not from around here, are you? I mean, Abbott's Bay isn't all that big. I can always spot a newcomer. Are you here for the summer?"

  And all of a sudden Hannah's eyes are brimming with tears again. What the…?

  I put my coffee cup on the small table between the chairs before I drop it. "Did I say something—?"

  "No, no." She fumbles around in her bag for a tissue, finds one, and dabs under her eyes. "I'm sorry. It's just…I'm going through…something."

  "I'd never have guessed."

  She puffs out a wry laugh and wipes at her tears more vigorously. "I'm sorry," she says again.

  "Honey? Stop apologizing." She looks up at me, startled. "If you're going through something, then own it. Let me guess: you…broke up with your boyfriend, and you're hiding from the world for the summer, licking your wounds, regrouping, reassessing."

  My apparent accuracy startles her enough that she stops crying. "S-sort of," she stammers.

  "Which part did I get wrong? Boyfriend? Hiding out for the summer? Reassessing?"

  "Well…"

  Her chirping cell phone interrupts, and she scrambles for it immediately. The ex? A broken engagement, even? Hannah looks like a textbook example of a woman who's had the rug pulled out from under her—she's even kind of dust bunny/lint-y, if you know what I mean, like everything in her life exploded around her and she's still walking around in a daze, trying to figure out what happened.

  "Sorry, I—" She blushes a little at my silent reprimand delivered by raised eyebrow. "I need to take this."

  Deciding to give her some space, I drain my cup and go back to the counter for a refill, where Conn's filling some large carafes with different blends to last the rest of the morning.

  "How's it going over there?" he asks while he works. "Making a new friend?"

  "Please."

  "What's the problem?"

  Leaning in, I whisper, "She's kind of weird."

  Conn gives me a loaded look, communicating something to do with a pot and a kettle.

  "I refuse to be judged by a guy in a leather vest."

  "What's wrong with my vest?" He looks down, fingering the edging by the buttonholes lovingly.

  "Are you kidding? You look like you skipped out on your shift at the Salem pirate museum."

  "Talk about judgy."

  "Hey, fashion says a lot. She's all beige, and I'm getting the distinct impression she's the same on the inside."

  "You've talked to her for all of five minutes. Why don't you go back over there and find out more about her before you write her off?" At my skeptical look, he adds, "You were the one who said I need to make bartender-type conversation."

  "I didn't mean psychoanalyze me. Just…coffee me. It's all you're allowed to do."

  "Yeah, yeah…" he mutters, pulling my cup toward him.

  I glance over my shoulder. Hannah is still on the phone, and she seems more agitated than ever. I drink my second cup at the bar and venture back over.

  "Why can't you…I know, but…" I shouldn't be listening, I know, but I can't help it. She sounds so upset. "I need…I understand. I do. But isn't it your job to…?" Muffled talk drifts from her phone. "Okay. Okay, I get it."

  When Hannah notices me picking up my things, I say softly, "I have to go."

  "Thank you for the coffee," she whispers back, teary again.

  "Are you okay? Is that the boyfriend?"

  She shakes her head. "It's…" Then her attention is captured by the person on the phone. "I understand your point," she says. "I don't happen to like it."

  I'm impressed with that little bit of fire there. Happy that she seems to be more contentious and less soppy, I leave the coffeehouse and walk to work, only a little bit late.

  CHAPTER THREE

  "Abbott! Get in here!"

  That familiar bellow doesn't make me move any faster. Sauntering through the office, I nod at one of my fellow agents, the birdlike, skittish Laura, who's flinching at every shout from the inner office and flapping at me frantically, urging me to obey my summons. At the risk of giving her a heart attack, I stop by my desk first, drop my bags, and turn on my computer. I catch a baleful glare from another agent, gorgon Maude, but I'm used to it. She hates me just because I'm…well, me. Because I have the mixed privilege/curse of calling the boss…

  "Daddy. Good morning," I say cheerfully when I lean in his office doorway a minute or two later.

  "You're late."

  "You know I'm always working, even when I'm not in the office."

  "Close the door."

  "Charles, are you firing me?"

  My father is standing behind his desk. He hardly ever sits. Hitching up his pants over his slight potbelly and smoothing down his silver hair, he mutters distractedly, "Funny. Anybody ever tell you you're funny? Come here a second."

  Oh God, not this again. I sigh and round the desk. He's tipping his neck at a weird angle and pulling down his shirt collar at the back.

  "See that?"

  "What am I looking at?" I'm up on my toes and squinting, even though I know I'm not going to actually see anything.

  "Does it look strange to you?"

  "What, an elderly man—"

  "Watch it."

  "A mature man asking his daughter to diagnose some strange mark on his neck?"

  "So you do see it!"

  I don't, actually. "All I see is a mole that's been there as far back as I can remember."

  "It feels lumpy now. Does it look lumpy? Does it look different?"

  I poke at it halfheartedly. The tiny, pale thing looks absolutely no different, and feels no different, than it ever has. "It's fine, Dad. I swear."

  "I don't like it."

  "You're not dying. But if it bothers you so much, call your doctor."

  "That quack."

  "She is not a quack," I say patiently. "And you're going to have to see her eventually."

  Dr. Graeling is a highly skilled professional with a degree from Columbia. However, she's also new in town and pretty young. Add in the fact that she took over the practice from Roger, my dad's golfing buddy who retired and moved to Key West, and my father's firmly in the NMWMB camp: Not Messing With My Body.

  "I'm not letting some…child…poke at my body and give me candy pills for some life-threatening illness. I'm not having it."

  "You're a pain in my neck, Daddy."

  "Like this tumor!"

  At the risk of sounding way too Schwarzenegger-like, I sigh, "It's not a tumor, and you're not dying, but you are driving me nuts. Now, did you just call me in here to conduct a spot check on your nonexistent moles?"

  "Of course not. It's that time of year. Gotta get cracking."

  I groan and drop into the chair in front of his desk. "
Come on, Charles—"

  "We've only got a few months till the election."

  "You're the incumbent."

  "Even so."

  "And you're running unopposed."

  "Makes no difference. I still want this town to know who I am."

  "They do know who you are. Your name is on the Welcome to sign and the Now leaving, come again sign and almost every sign in between. If they don't know who you are after you've been an assemblyman for four—"

  "Six."

  "Six years, then there's no hope for them."

  "We have to schedule some appearances."

  I sigh heavily. My dad doesn't take no for an answer. No need to wonder where I get the trait. "Why me?"

  "Because. You're my girl."

  Oh, not fair, playing the "dearest daughter" card this early in our semi-yearly tussle over his political ambitions and my role in them. At least the town's election season tends to be shorter than most, and we've navigated it so frequently that his campaign practically runs itself. This year should be no different from two years ago: I make a few calls, I schedule some appearances, I get his butt on a Fourth of July parade float, and bam, he's back in office.

  "Besides," he adds, with the winning smile that's gotten him elected to three terms already, "you do this so well."

  I sigh again, stand up, and head for the door. "I've got work to do."

  "I knew you'd do it for your old dad."

  "I mean houses to sell, places to rent. You know—the moneymakers?"

  "Buyers and renters will always be there. The campaign season is now!"

  "But I have bills to pay. Since you're still aboveground, I can't tap my inheritance just yet."

  "Cruel girl."

  "Love you, Daddy."

  I'm not making an excuse to leave his office—I do have work to do. I'm a damn good real estate agent, and I never coast because my father owns the place, no matter what Maude thinks. Although I'm a little behind on my commissions, my slump won't last long. The summer season's about to start—if you listen closely, you can hear the Porsches and Audis in the distance, revving their engines, waiting for the signal to invade our gorgeous North Shore town.

  Abbott's Bay really is beautiful, and I'm not just saying that because the place bears my family's name. It has oceanfront, bayside, fishing, farmland, shopping, the arts, and a picturesque historic town center that's crazy-popular with the tourists. The super-wealthy think nothing of dropping obscene amounts of money to get a little piece of heaven for the entire summer, and I'm the perfect agent to find them the perfect place.

  When the summer people come calling, it's a frenzied rush for a while, and then, once everyone who's in need of a dwelling for the season gets four walls and a roof, things slow way down. Giving me plenty of time to work on my father's campaign. Of course I will, because no matter how much I gripe about it, he's still my dad.

  Right now though, I need more clients. As if on cue, someone enters the office. Maude's head snaps up at the sound of the door opening, but she's going to be denied this prospective client, not only because I need one, but because of who, exactly, just walked in.

  "Hannah!" I exclaim, charging the length of the office before Maude's even out of her chair. "What brings you here?"

  As usual Hannah gets her deer-in-the-headlights look and shrinks back a little as she glances from me to Laura to Maude, becomes alarmed at Maude's feral we-got-a-live-one look (she really needs to tone that down), and looks back to me. It's obvious she sees me as the least offensive choice, if not the least predatory.

  "Well," she says softly, "I'm looking for a place in Abbott's Bay."

  "You are? Why didn't you say so earlier?" I put my arm around her to lead her toward my desk.

  "I didn't know you were a real estate agent. The nice man at the coffeehouse told me you could help."

  "Conn?" As I get Hannah settled in my guest chair and move my phone aside, I notice there's a text from him: Incoming. Sending you a client. BE NICE! "He's right—I can find you the perfect place. Now, what are we talking? Purchase? Rental? A few weeks? All summer? Longer?"

  Hannah's expression starts to show little flickers of her recurring panic. "I'm…not sure."

  "Oh?" I've had plenty of indecisive clients, but their indecision tends to run more along the lines of oceanfront or bayside, number of bedrooms, whether they need a place that comes with a gardener and housekeeper/cook, and what's more important: walk-in closets or deluge showerheads or maybe they should hold out till they find a place with both. I don't understand why she doesn't know what she needs for the foreseeable future, but I can talk her through it. "Okay," I say slowly. "Tell me what's going on in your life, and we'll figure it out together."

  * * *

  "…I just don't know what to do. What do you think?"

  You know the saying "opening the floodgates"? I thought I understood what it meant, and I even thought I'd experienced it many times. That was before I asked Hannah what's going on in her life.

  Yikes.

  The bad news: girl's had a lot of drama recently—so much that it made my head spin—and it's amazing she's still standing. The good news: she's actually an okay person. Nice. I think she's best experienced in small doses, mind, yet she's still here an hour later, staring at me with an earnest look on her face, as though I've got the answers to all her problems but I'm holding out on her.

  I am now well acquainted with the following Hannah Clement-related information:

  —She decided to come to Abbott's Bay because she has some hazy memory of vacationing here when she was little. Apparently it's a fond memory, even if she can't recall specific details.

  —She has come into a bit of money but for a heartbreaking reason—she recently lost her mother. Her father died when she was a teenager, so now she's an orphan, she says, because even if you're twenty-six, you're still an orphan when both your parents are dead. I can't really argue.

  —She recently broke up with her boyfriend. I wanted to high-five myself for guessing it early on, but she was so upset I sat on my hands instead. I'm not really sure who broke up with whom or why, because whatever she said was garbled by strangled hiccupping sobs. I'll get the details later.

  —She has decided to take the summer to "find herself," whatever that means. She admitted she doesn't quite know what it entails either. So she wasn't being coy—she really has no idea how long she's staying.

  All I wanted to know was what type of property she's interested in.

  "So? What should I do?"

  Hannah is asking me for life advice? When we just met? Crazy. Plus she told me the stressed phone conversations I witnessed yesterday and this morning weren't with her ex but her therapist. She shouldn't need me to dispense some heavy dose of wisdom. Then again, she did express a certain amount of…unhappiness with her chosen professional. I believe she called her a "waste of money," which surprised me. It was the first time I've seen her get really irate, besides the time she snapped at the woman on the phone.

  "Do?" I stammer. "Do about what?"

  "Everything! I need to get my head on straight, don't I?" she asks, then answers her own question. "I do."

  "Okay, hold on. I'm a real estate agent," I say slowly and clearly, making sure she's paying attention. "I can help you find a darling rental that'll be the perfect home base for you to conduct your soul searching. I might even be able to find you something right on the beach…er, maybe beach access. But I'll get you close to the water so you can take long walks by the ocean, watch the sunrise, whatever you need to, um, get your head on straight, like you said. After that, it's all up to you."

  "But—"

  My text alert pings, and I lunge for my phone. "I'm sorry, honey. I have to take care of this," I say after I read my message. "How about if we meet up later, and I can show you some houses? Sound good?"

  She agrees, and I hustle her out of the office with the suggestion that she visit the cute boutiques nearby. I give her a minute to get down th
e block and around the corner then head out of the town center, down the beach road.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  "What's going on? What do you need?"

  "What are you doing here?" Conn asks, baffled, as I let myself into his house and close the door behind me.

  "You texted me."

  "I asked if we could meet sometime. I didn't say right now."

  "No time like the present."

  "Uh-huh. How did you know I was home?"

  As if I don't know his schedule. "The breakfast crowd has died down, the lunch rush hasn't started, and because it's Wednesday, you're here to give Harvey his every-other-day potassium supplements with his second breakfast. Obviously." I toss my purse and my portfolio onto the couch and look around. "I see things haven't changed around here. Pity."

  "I know," he says. "You've been telling me that for years."

  "It's been true for years. And what's that smell?"

  "There is no smell, and you know it. I clean."

  He's right. There is no smell. But it stinks in here all the same—of wasted potential. A property worth millions, and he's bringing down the value by keeping the shag carpeting, the cheesy plywood paneling, and that nasty-ass plaid couch. The marketer in me is weeping salty tears of frustration. "Do you realize how great this house could look with a little bit of updating?"

  "It was good enough for my parents."

  "This was all new when they moved in. In 1978. Now it's not even retro kitsch trendy. It's just tired. And way, way too plaid. Oh, the things I would do to this place…"

  Crossing to me and leaning in like he's got the best secret in the world, he says, "Well, maybe now's your chance."

  "What do you mean?" I squint at him suspiciously. He's way too close. Not that it's a bad thing. Conn Garvey is a six-foot-two hunk of he-man whose looks can knock women over at twenty paces. He's always had that effect. Not on me, you understand, but others. Lots and lots of others. Still, I can appreciate his attractiveness in a detached way, the same way I can admire a painting in a museum without wanting to run off with it and hang it in my living room.