Breakwater Bay

by Shelley Noble

  Chapter 28

  Alden’s truck was parked at the back of Gilbert House when Meri arrived at work the next morning. Getting an early start. She guessed things were a go, though she did have a few anxious moments during the night thinking what might have passed between father and daughter after they left her apartment.

  She hurried inside and found Carlyn and Nora in the kitchen. Carlyn poured her a cup of coffee.

  “What a night, huh?” Carlyn asked.

  “Never a dull moment. Thanks for the coffee. Are Alden and Doug already at it?”

  “Yep. The intensity level around here has shot up several points. That’s a match made in heaven.”

  “How about you, Nora? Everything okay?”

  “Yeah, though Dad said I better thank you like crazy for putting up with me.”

  Meri laughed. “Just like I should thank your dad for all those years of putting up with me. It was my pleasure. Though don’t make a habit of it.”

  “I won’t. I’m going to be the perfect child from now on.” She grinned mischievously.

  “Hmmm,” Meri answered, sipping her coffee.

  Carlyn poured herself a cup and sat down. “Nora is going to reorganize my files today. She’s now an official unofficial intern.”

  “What happened to school and homework?”

  Nora lifted her hands and shrugged. “No books, no transcripts, ergo no school.”

  “She’ll learn on the job. Doug said to come find them when you get here.”

  Meri took another sip of coffee and put down her cup. “Save this. I’ll be back.”

  She found Doug and Alden in the front parlor. Doug was gesticulating like a traffic cop, Alden was listening and nodding. He was wearing jeans and an old fisherman’s sweater. And his hair fell over his forehead as he sketched something into a spiral drawing notebook.

  He turned and smiled when Meri came in, and her stomach did a little flip, surprising her. It was just that she was so glad to see him after all the angst of the night before. Though she was always glad to see him, this felt different. She shook it off. She was off-kilter with all the earth-shattering events of the past few weeks. She needed to steady herself. Wait and figure things out later when her life had calmed down. “Everything going okay?”

  “We’re going to set Alden’s equipment up in the dining room. That way he can work on-site so he can have a firsthand look at everything.”

  “You’re going to make the commute every day?” she asked, feeling a little jealous and a little left out, though nothing was stopping her from doing the same.

  “Depends on the state of the house,” Alden said and sketched something in his notebook. He was in creative planning mode, and Meri knew better than to bother him.

  “Well, I’d better get to work.”

  Both men nodded, but they had already turned back to their work.

  Meri got her gear and climbed up to work on her ceiling. She was surprised at how much work she’d actually gotten done. The pattern was visible now, if a little faded, well, a lot faded, and there were still pieces missing. But she had exposed enough now that the painter could easily reconstruct the original.

  The sun coming through the high foyer windows didn’t quite make it to the center of the ceiling but created a soft halo around the place where the chandelier would sit. She wondered if the architect had planned it that way. Or if it was just one of those serendipitous situations that sometimes occur when random elements meet.

  She allowed herself one more minute to imagine the ceiling in all its former glory. shining down on the visitors as they entered the newly restored house.

  Which won’t happen if you don’t get your butt in gear. She opened her tool kit, pulled on her goggles, and got to work. She heard Doug and Alden move out of the room below her and their voices recede down the hall, then she forgot all about them as she concentrated on the work at hand.

  Carlyn stopped Meri for lunch at noon. Alden and Nora had gone out to the peninsula to get the equipment Alden would need.

  “He’s planning to come back and set up this afternoon.” Carlyn clapped her hands together. “It’s really going to happen.”

  “Sure beginning to look that way.”

  “Thanks to you.”

  “Me?”

  “Everett Simmons and your friend Alden. It’s a double whammy. How could we not get funding with the two of them added to the team?”

  They both quickly knocked on the wooden table.

  “Where’s Krosky?” Meri asked. “I hope we haven’t lost him again.”

  “He called. He’ll be back tomorrow.”

  “Wow. He’s a maniac,” Meri said. “Is everybody working on Saturday?

  “No. Doug decided that would be a good time to strip the fireplace in the parlor, so the worst of the fumes would air out by Monday. But when I told Joe that Doug was bringing in someone to help him, Krosky said he wanted to do it and he’d come in special.”

  “What about his orals or whatever he’s doing?”

  Carlyn shrugged. “He didn’t say and I wasn’t about to ask. You guys get so territorial about what you’re doing; I just said thanks, see you then.”

  Meri went back to work, thinking about what Carlyn had said. Thanks to you. She really hadn’t done anything but act selfishly. She had sought Everett Simmons out because she wanted to see firsthand what kind of man he was so she could have some closure. Instead she’d added another important person to her life.

  She’d called Alden because she wanted him nearby, so she could talk him into staying at Corrigan House. She’d been thinking about the project, but mainly she’d been thinking about herself. She couldn’t take any credit if the presentation led to support, but she could take all the blame if they failed.

  Wow, look at it.” Nora stretched to see out of the windshield. “You can actually see the house.”

  Alden saw it, naked in the sunlight. Broken shingles, crumbling chimney, warts and all. He pulled into the drive and parked the truck in between a landscaping trailer and a local house painting van.

  Nora jumped out and ran ahead. Alden moved more slowly, past a huge Pod storage container that was filled with all the run-down furniture in the house. He should tell them to throw it away. He slowed as he reached the entrance where the old rose beds had been freshly tilled, ready to hold new rosebushes, or some other plant, something easier to grow, so they would survive long enough to sell the house before they wilted and died. He stepped onto the flagstone walk, half afraid of seeing the changes inside.

  He found Nora standing right inside the entry hall staring into the living area. The furniture had been moved out. A painter’s tarp covered the wood floors. And the walls were . . . white.

  Alden blinked; so that’s what the room looked like. It had always been dark ever since he could remember. Jennifer hadn’t been interested in doing any redecorating. He should have guessed then she wouldn’t last.

  Actually, he did guess it; he just ignored it. Because except for the fights, he loved living there with his children, watching them grow up within view of the sea and letting them run wild in the summer, just like Meri before them.

  He thought he could make it until they went off to college, but when the affairs and the bills from Jennifer’s “weekends away” started coming in, he knew he had to put a stop to it. And he’d lost his children because he had mistakenly believed they would be better off with her.

  So they wouldn’t grow up with a father who loved them but didn’t know how to show it. Who was gruff when he should have been understanding. Who didn’t know how to show love. Who’d married a woman who couldn’t stick out the Rhode Island winters or the isolation.

  Like father, like son.

  He stepped beside his daughter.

  “They’ve changed everything,” she said.

  He thought she sounded like she might cry. He should have left her in Newport. Waited until it was finished and looked as close to a magazine as it would ever get. Bu
t he’d wanted her company, wanted her to know she would always have him.

  “Well, it’s very white,” he agreed.

  “But where’s all our stuff?”

  “I imagine the bedrooms upstairs are the same; the rest is probably in that storage unit out by the drive.”

  “They better not have moved my clothes.” She made a mad dash for the stairs and took them two at a time.

  If that was all she was worried about, he could breathe easier. But he didn’t. He was hit by a wave of melancholy so strong that he staggered beneath its force. He went out to the sunroom. He’d left strict orders for nothing in this room to be touched.

  They hadn’t been in here, but he could see the workers sitting out on the lawn, taking a break, chatting or lying on the grass.

  He turned away, not wanting to think about what he would do once Corrigan House was gone. What was he doing? Shouldn’t he keep it for his children? Did they even want it? It couldn’t sit idle for another decade or so waiting for them to take over. It would fall into total disrepair.

  Alden began gathering up art supplies and paper and put them in a big cardboard box he found in the hallway. Then he went into the dining room where his computer monitors were set up for special graphics work. He unplugged the equipment he thought he might use and carried it to the truck.

  It took four trips and a lot of foam padding to get it all in the back of the truck. He began to rue selling the Volvo. If Nora was going to live here—He stopped. He hadn’t really thought about the future, just taken it for granted that he would register her at Tiverton High where he and Meri had gone.

  He supposed they could move to town, get a nice apartment, even a house. They’d still be close enough to Therese to visit and be nearby if she needed help.

  Or they could just stay here in a white-roomed dilapidated mansion. Two souls rambling through wide corridors and oddly shaped rooms. That was no way for a girl to grow up.

  It had been good enough for you. But that was because Gran and Laura and Meri had lived next door.

  He went out to the sunroom to take the last box of supplies out, but stopped, mesmerized by the view. He’d miss that for sure. Miss the fun times. He could almost hear his children’s laughter as they ran up the path from the beach.

  “Remember when you and Meri used to take Lucas and me down to the beach and we’d look for sea glass?”

  Nora stood beside him. He hadn’t heard her come into the room.

  “You mean me and your mother.”

  Nora shook her head. “She never went down there. She only swam at the club. You and Meri took us down and taught us how to swim. I remember it was so cold but we didn’t want to get out.”

  “I’d forgotten that,” he said, and smiled at the memory.

  “Is that why you want to sell the house? Because Meri is marrying Peter?”

  “What? Where did you get such an idea?”

  Nora shrugged. Searched his face as if she was looking for a different answer.

  An answer that not even Alden knew the answer to.

  “It’s just too much house for me. We can visit, or even buy a smaller place somewhere close by. I just don’t want to live here anymore.”

  “Why?”

  “I just told you.”

  She gave him that look she used when she was calling his bluff.

  And it worried him. “Is that why you ran away? Because you thought I would be lonely without Meri here?”

  She shook her head. “I know you’ll be lonely, but that’s not why I ran away. It’s not even totally because it was so awful there. It’s just . . . I don’t know . . . I don’t feel right anywhere but here.”

  Usually when Meri worked, she got totally involved, but she spent the next few hours listening for the sound of Alden’s truck. Then when he finally returned, she was acutely aware of him walking around below her, making sketches, taking measurements. She tried to ignore him. The last time her mind wandered she’d ended up with stitches. They couldn’t afford any more accidents now.

  When she quit for the day, she stopped by the dining room. The door that opened onto the second parlor had been sealed by a plastic sheet, to keep dust and shavings off the equipment. She went around back where a small hallway led from the kitchen to a service entrance.

  The door was shut but not sealed off. Doug was careful not to let particles back this far. She peeked in but there was nothing there. Now where would he be working? Not upstairs; those rooms were in terrible shape. She walked through the house, opening doors to storerooms, and rooms that had once had uses but were now converted to closets and a television room to judge from the pair of rabbit ears that lay on the dusty floor.

  Meri didn’t usually come back to this section of the house. It had been shut up since she’d been working there, and she assumed it was used for storage. Just seeing it was enough to give the most stalwart restorer second thoughts. But she kept going until she saw a light at the end of a narrow hall.

  She followed it to Alden. The room was pretty sparse except for a jumble of tables covered by several computer monitors and printers of various sizes. Alden was bent over his drafting table. A large flat-screen computer monitor sat at his right and his eyes shifted back and forth between the two.

  She knew better than to interrupt him, so she stood in the doorway until he finally looked up.

  “How long have you been standing there?”

  “Not long. How’s it going?”

  “Slowly.” He straightened up, put his hands behind his head and stretched. “What time is it?”

  “Just about six.”

  “Carlyn and Nora went for pizza. Some place around here, I forgot the name. She said to meet them there.”

  “Are you ready to quit?”

  “I’ll work until they get back.” Already his eyes were drifting back to his work.

  “You’re not going to eat?”

  “I’ll get something later. You go on. Tell Carlyn not to forget to come back and lock up.”

  “Carlyn would never forget. She’s the house mother of all house mothers. Can I take a peek?”

  “Sure; it’s not exactly my usual work.”

  She came to stand behind his chair. A large piece of gridded drafting paper was tacked to the work table. A triangular scale ruler lay across the bottom corner, and other drafting instruments were lined up in a trough to the side. Several mechanical pencils stuck out of a mustard jar. A partial pattern had been hand drawn to scale and when she compared it to the slide on the screen, she knew it was her ceiling.

  “Those aren’t the true colors,” she said, leaning over his shoulder to get a better look.

  “No. I have no idea what the true colors are yet. I’ll expect you to tell me. This is just to delineate the separate patterns without driving me blind.

  “Capisce?” He turned to look at her, and his hair brushed her cheek.

  She moved away; blind panic held her tongue.

  “Meri?”

  “Uh.” What was she doing? She pulled herself together. “We have old photos of the original. It’s faded but from the common tints of the era we can analyze the remaining paint and come to a pretty exact match. But it takes time.”

  He was smiling at her. Amused. She wasn’t amused. Something was going on with her that shouldn’t be. She took several steps back.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. Just tired, I guess.”

  “Why don’t you meet the girls for dinner and make it an early night?”

  Because I’d rather stay with you. “I think I will. Good night.”

  “G’night.” He went back to his drawing.

  She fled and didn’t stop until she was sitting in her car.

  What the hell was happening to her? It had been a few crazy weeks, but this was the craziest thing yet.

  It must be all the things that had happened in the last month—finding out she was adopted, meeting Everett Simmons, Peter moving across the country instead o
f giving her an engagement ring. And now when he was gone, she was having a definitely physical reaction to Alden of all people.

  It was so embarrassing. No, humiliating. Peter had been gone less than a month and she’d almost hit on her oldest friend. How could she? After all he’d done for her, been to her. Maybe that was what it was. He was safe. He was never safe; he always challenged her. He was a known quantity. Not known at all. So what was it?

  She really needed to talk to Peter before she did something stupid.

  She didn’t stop by the pizza place but went straight home and called Los Angeles. The call went to voice mail. Of course it was still working hours there. She left a message to call her. Waited until eleven o’clock. Eight o’clock in L.A. Surely he was finished by now.

  If your girlfriend called you from across the country, wouldn’t you call her back as soon as you could? Alden always did. Damn. She hadn’t meant to think about him. But he did call. He never put her off. And even when he was about to make a serious change in his life, he dropped everything to come running back to help her.

  Because that’s what friends did, she told herself. But isn’t that what your future husband should do?

  She paced the length of her living space. A half hour went by. Still no call. At midnight, she called again.

  “Is everything all right? I’d like to hear from you.” She hung up. Had she sounded bitchy? She was feeling a little bitchy. But what if he’d had an accident or something? Someone would have called her.

  Meri finally went to bed. When her cell rang at four A.M., her first thought was that something had happened to Gran.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, babe. What’s up?”

  “Peter?”

  “Yeah. I’ve been crazy busy. It’s major out here. You’re gonna love it.”

  Was he drunk?

  “I thought you had an interview at Yale next week.”

  “Oh yeah. I’ll be there on Friday. See you then?”

  “I have a fund-raiser on Friday. Saturday?”

  “Sure. Have to make it morning. I have that interview at one. Then I have to run in to New York to meet with some guys that do work for our firm.”