She paused on the top step. The two carpenters who’d been working in the rebuilt ensuite bathroom came out into the hall to stand behind her. One of them said, “I’d leave ‘em to it, Miz Reagan. Let Marty sort the little punk - uh, your cousin - out.”
Grace took his advice. Marty had ten years, four inches and fifty pounds on Winston. Grace and the carpenters waited at the top of the stairs until they heard the slurping sounds of a wet vac start up. They didn’t need to see Winston working to know who’d won the stalemate. The carpenters hi-fived each other and Grace laughed out loud.
The satisfaction of seeing the arrogant Winston put in his place vanished the next morning when Grace learned Marty was gone, replaced by a younger man who spent the next three days asking everyone for help as he got up to speed on the project. After that, most of the Cutter crew avoided Winston. Only the three youngest, boys just out of high school, still treated him as a co-worker. The older workers and tradesmen watched him with unsmiling faces.
After a week of tension, Grace asked Bryce to move Winston to another project, or at least out of the house. “He upsets everyone but his posse,” she explained.
Bryce gave her a sharp look. “What posse?”
“You know the three guys who hang around him, Devon, Rick and I don’t think I ever heard the other kid’s name.”
“Joey Pecolini,” Bryce supplied. “I can move Winston if you insist, but it will slow things down. I don’t have another gopher to put on this job, and the guys constantly need things picked up from the suppliers. And he’s good at stripping wallpaper. God knows we need someone on that.”
“So put him on the landscape crew when he isn’t running errands. Let him irritate those guys for a while and I’ll strip wallpaper.”
Grace regretted the offer immediately. Later, as she sponged soapy water on purple paisley wallpaper, she blamed Winston, who’d given her a huge grin as he headed out to join the crew working to remove the last of the rubble from the swimming pool and the cracked surface of the tennis court. Winston was outside on a perfect autumn day and she was inside, breathing through a triple-filter mask and wondering if she had enough antihistamine with her to ward off the inevitable allergy-induced migraine. Somehow, she groused to herself, he’d won again.
The accidents didn’t stop when Winston left the house, they only followed him outside.
Work slowed when tools were misplaced. A bucket load of concrete chunks released three feet short of the dump truck bed required a half-day to clean up. A healthy oak tree uprooted instead of its dead neighbor left a gaping hole in the only undamaged area of the backyard. After his bruised knee, Winston never suffered as much as a splinter from his carelessness, a fact which seemed to irritate everyone more than the damage he caused. Winston was Teflon, and it was damned annoying.
“He has to go.” Grace put her foot down the afternoon of the oak tree incident.
“Okay,” Bryce said, amicably. “Can you tell Niki and Stark? I promised both of them I’d give the boy a chance. They’re so afraid he’ll go back to using if he doesn’t have a steady job with mandatory drug testing. I hate to disappoint them.”
His smile, those dimples and a reluctance to get into another family fight won out over her good sense. Winston started back on the dining room wallpaper the next day. Grace told herself she was happy not to have to spend her days in paisley hell, but she knew it was not going to end well.
The ‘accidents’ continued, but they were minor. The boys, as Grace thought of Winston and the three younger workers, had to be kept separated. At breaks, or when no one was watching, they would erupt into horseplay until either bellows of laughter or anger caught a supervisor’s attention.
A trip to Ocean City for a solitary Thanksgiving restored some of her equanimity and gave her time to think. The following Monday, when she walked in to find them taking an unscheduled smoke and beer break in the kitchen, she was ready to handle the Winnie problem once and for all.
“He has to go,” she told Bryce. “Him and his friends. All four of them.”
Bryce claimed bad reception on his cell and she had to keep raising her voice. She didn’t care who heard her as she stalked around the side garden and shouted into her phone. If gossip could get to Stark and Connie before she did, so much the better.
“They were smoking around dirty work rags soaked with God knows what. They know there’s to be no smoking in the house at all! And alcohol! Isn’t Winston supposed to be doing AA? Aren’t they violating some license or law?”
“I’ll handle it, Grace. Reception is breaking up, but I’m on my way.”
His placating tone hit her last nerve. “I am paying an hourly rate for work and I have four boys playing in my house. I want them gone. Now.”
Static answered her. She ended the call not caring if he was still on the other end of the line. She stopped pacing at the edge of the rear lawn and stared into the decimated woods behind the house. Shaking off her surface emotion, she tried to look at the situation from a detached view. Something was going on that she wasn’t seeing. Her attraction to Bryce and her obsession with Delaney House and her mother’s past were clouding her assessment of the conflict churning through the work crew.
The trees that remained on the Delaney property had seen decades of life in all its vagaries. They’d sheltered human banality and secrets of love and murder. They had hidden a grave. Grace studied them for a long time but learned nothing at all.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Did you really fire Winnie?”
Grace was halfway up the staircase at the Victory Manor Inn, on her way to a hot bath and a glass of wine, when the kitchen door flew open to the hall below, startling her. Grabbing the banister to regain her balance, she turned to face Niki, who now stood at the foot of the stairs, hands on her hips.
“Can we not do this?” Grace asked. “I’m exhausted and I need to clean up. I’ll tell you all about it later, okay?”
“Sure.” Niki’s voice was steady. “You go ahead and take your bath and I’ll tell my mother it’s all a mistake and Winnie can go back to work tomorrow to the only job he’s been able to land in the past year. How does that sound?”
Grace groaned and sat down on the steps. “Try to see it from my point of view. I don’t have a choice here. Winston has caused all kinds of problems. He’s careless, won’t listen, causes accidents, and the rest of the crew are either resentful or joining him in goofing off. I found three of them in the kitchen with him drinking beer and smoking.”
“You fired him for taking a break?”
“Taking a break? They were drinking alcohol when they were supposed to be working! All of them are off the job. Do you realize how much I was paying them to party in the kitchen? Two of them are roofers, for God’s sake. I’d prefer them sober when they’re thirty feet in the air.”
“So fire the damned roofers. Winnie can drink a beer and still scrape wallpaper.”
“Fire the others but not the ringleader?”
“Yes.” Niki’s mulish expression would have been comical if she hadn’t been so angry. “Winnie’s your family. The others aren’t. Fire them if you want to, but you are taking Winnie back. Mom and Dad are in a rage and I won’t have a minute’s peace until Winnie’s working again. You owe me.”
Grace felt her grip on her own anger slipping with each passing minute. If the words crowding her throat came out, there would be no going back. And if she cut ties with Niki, she’d be working in a vacuum as far as the Delaneys were concerned.
Niki wasn’t finished. “You came to us; we didn’t kidnap you. You turned everything upside down and I still welcomed you. Whether you like us or not, the four of us are the only family you have. It’s bad enough you keep poking around in the past and all the old stuff that drives Dad crazy, but you don’t even try to act like a part of the family. I didn’t say anything when you skipped out on Thanksgiving, but firing Winnie is too much. I’ve stuck by you, now it’s your turn.”
> Not trusting herself to speak, Grace climbed the rest of the steps to the second floor. As she reached the door of her room, she heard Niki say, “I’ll call Dad and let him know Winnie should be at work tomorrow.”
Grace closed the door behind her and turned the lock.
The next morning, Grace told Bryce to make the third floor into a self-contained apartment and to make the project a priority. She also told him to keep Winston out of the house.
“He could work on the basement,” Bryce said. “We need to have a couple of the rooms cleaned out and scrubbed down before we install the new-”
“Out. Of. The. House.” Grace struggled not to add, I wouldn’t be in this mess if you hadn’t hired him.
Winston seemed happy with his new routine. But despite the fact he was often off on errands for Bryce, on the first day he still found time to drop a paint can from a second-floor scaffolding, missing a worker on the ground below by scant inches and ruining half a day’s work. The next day he was assigned to the help strip old paint off shutters and actually made progress until he flicked a cigarette stub near a pile of rags soaked in solvent. The resulting fire was small and quickly contained, but an ugly area of scorched grass and two ruined 19th century shutters were hard to ignore. Bryce promised to have replicas made and moved Winston to the front yard to hand-dig ancient bricks out of the sunken and pitted walkways.
“Do you think he can do that without destroying them?” Grace asked as she and Bryce watched Winston through the curved windows of the front hall. “I want those bricks re-laid in the new walkways, you know.”
Bryce’s answer was to slip an arm around her and kiss her gently on the cheek. “It will be fine. I promise.”
For those few minutes, even with alarm bells ringing and the certain knowledge she was making a mistake, she was happy in his arms.
“Let me take you to dinner tonight,” he said as he released her. “We can celebrate Winnie’s new brick-digging job. And we can celebrate your move to Delaney House where you’ll have some privacy.”
She wanted to say yes, meant to say yes. ‘I can’t’ came out instead. “I’ve got a lot to do tonight and I’m not sure this,” she waved a hand between them, “is a good idea.”
His smile widened, which caused his eyes to twinkle and his dimples to deepen. “You are so wrong,” he said and reached for her again.
From somewhere outside came the sound of breaking glass, but neither of them heard a thing.
Grace decided to tell Niki straight out that she was moving to Delaney House, but when she entered the kitchen of the Victory Manor Inn, she could see the timing was wrong. Every surface held dirty bowls, plates and utensils, and Niki’s face looked like a thundercloud.
“This is a bad time. I’ll come back later.”
But escape wasn’t an option.
Niki said, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, come in. I’m just screwing up one recipe after another in my pathetic attempt to be a chef and make a living. Screw it.” She threw the spoon she held into the sink.
Tears sprang up in Niki’s eyes, and it was all Grace could do not to turn and run. She was tired and preoccupied, but mostly she didn’t want to let go of the glow from her afternoon with Bryce. Certainly not for another of Niki’s tantrums.
“Dad sold Gran’s pearls.”
Clearly, Grace was supposed to know what this meant. She said nothing, hoping Niki would elaborate, but the dam behind Niki’s big blue eyes burst and tears poured down her face.
Grace hesitated, unsure what was expected of her. After a moment she moved to Niki’s side, only to be rewarded with a shove that knocked her off balance. Catching the back of a chair, she regained her footing and yelled, “What is wrong with you?”
“Me? What’s wrong with you? You had everything and it wasn’t enough! You had to take the house and now there isn’t enough money. Dad sold Gran’s pearls. He said it would only be the ring, but he sold the pearls, too.” Niki grabbed a tea towel and scrubbed it across her face.
Grace tried to work out what Niki was saying. Stark needed money? He’d gotten a significant chunk with the payout of his inheritance, but she didn’t think reminding Niki of that would help.
“I bought the house from your grandmother, Niki,” she said in a low tone. “Your father wouldn’t have gotten a bigger share if someone else had bought it.”
Niki threw the dishtowel after the spoon and knocked a coffee cup into the sink, shattering it. “Your grandmother! She’s yours, too! And don’t you dare act as if you don’t know what I’m talking about. Cyrus cut the price of the house so you could buy it.”
“Where are you getting this nonsense?” Grace felt her cheeks redden. “Cyrus didn’t know I was the buyer. Neither he nor Emma knew. She insisted it not go to a family member, and you know all of this. The only reason I got the house is because she didn’t know, they didn’t know I was the buyer.”
“Oh, please.” Niki’s tone was heavy with sarcasm. “Cyrus always does exactly what he wants and Gran always let him. After sending money to you all those years, she still divided what little she had left between Dad and Julia, instead of giving Dad his fair share. He told me all about it.”
“When?”
“This morning.” Niki leaned forward aggressively. The tears were gone, but the fight was still there.
Grace felt sick.
“He came to tell me he needed money,” Niki went on. “I was supposed to get Gran’s diamond engagement ring and her pearls. She told me they were mine. She didn’t put them in the will, but she gave them to Dad to keep for me. He sold the diamond right after she died. He said he had bills to pay and he had to do it. Today, he told me he sold the pearls. I didn’t know why he and Gran were always fighting about money, but now I do. It was because she was sending everything to you. And when you wanted the house, you got that, too. Cyrus saw to that. Cyrus makes sure you get everything you want!”
Shock kept the thoughts that were racing through Grace’s mind from connecting. “Why?” was all she could manage. “Why would he do that?”
“Dad says I should ask you that very question, but you know what? I don’t care. I want my life back. I want you to leave.”
Grace stripped and cleaned her room, packed the BMW and drove to the Egret Inn. She spent a miserable night alternately crying and going over everything she wished she said to Niki. To all the Delaneys. How dare they make her the villain in their dysfunctional family?
The next morning, she checked out and drove into Easton. At Target she picked up a sleeping bag, blankets, towels and pillows. At Lowe’s she bought a dorm-sized refrigerator, microwave, and a small teacart to hold it all. By late afternoon, she was settled in on the third floor and rolling creamy white primer on her new bathroom walls. She’d been away for more than three decades, but Grace was once again living in Delaney House.
Chapter Thirty
To Grace’s amazement, she slept well in the old nursery at Delaney House.
The third-floor suite smelled fresh and was clean in a bare wood and new drywall kind of way. Total exhaustion helped. Her shopping spree, hauling everything up two flights of stairs and a late evening of painting paid off in a dreamless sleep. When she woke, she could hear the workers arriving and light streamed through the windows. She’d made it through her first night.
Using the best pieces of furniture from the second floor, she furnished the largest room as a sitting area and kitchenette. The adjoining room was her bedroom, and the small room under the eaves served as storage. Each day she added something new to her little home. The third floor began to feel like an oasis on top of a beehive of construction activity.
From the first morning, life seemed to speed up. She had no time to worry or second-guess herself. Work on Delaney House consumed her during the day and Bryce filled most of the evenings, taking her to dinner and once to an auction where she bought a period chandelier for the dining room. These dates ended earlier than she would have liked, but Grace knew she had
only herself to blame. She’d expressed concerns about a relationship and Bryce was respecting her wishes, a novel concept for her after David’s high maintenance behavior. Each time Bryce gave her a gentle kiss and left, shutting the door on her growing interest, she found herself more attracted to him.
In the first week of her residence at Delaney House, her emotions went from fairly miserable to nearly happy. When Niki showed up on Saturday morning with a basket of food and an apology, Grace was wary, but eventually had to admit she wasn’t mad at her cousin anymore.
“I shouldn’t be surprised, but wow!” Niki said as she turned slowly taking in the sitting room’s soft yellow walls, refinished pine floors and the leather cushioned Stickley love seat and matching chairs. “I don’t remember a fireplace being up here,” she said as she ran a hand along the narrow marble mantle.
“It’s a coal stove, so it’s only ornamental now, but I like the way it looks. The whole house was beautiful at one time,” Grace tried to sound casual.
“I sure don’t remember it that way,” Niki said as she moved around the room looking at the furnishings. “All this stuff was on the second floor under the junk?”
Grace wondered if a scouting mission was the purpose of Niki’s sudden need to reconcile. She said, “The bigger pieces, yes. I had to buy a new mattress, appliances and some odds and ends.”
Niki turned away and stood in front of the sitting room window with its view of surrounding rooftops and the steeple of Christ Church. After a moment, she said, “All my life, since I can remember, anyway, Gran was difficult and this place was creepy. Winnie can make up all kinds of crap and maybe Gran did tell him things she didn’t tell me, or maybe he listened to Dad’s rants about her, back when Dad would talk to us about any of it. But I blocked out everything I could because it’s scary when you’re a kid and everyone is always mad.”
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