“Kane hired him that quickly?”
“Cullen Kane is Bert’s new boyfriend. That’s who Bert’s been sneaking around with all these weeks now. And that’s how Cullen found out my landlady died. Bert ‘just happened to mention’ to Kane that Bernice Bradley had died, and that Sylvia Bradley was refusing to fix my air-conditioning.”
“Bert was spying on you for Cullen Kane? I thought the guy was practically your best friend.”
“I thought so too,” Cara said sadly. “Bert was probably planning to quit and go to work for Cullen all along. And he didn’t even have the decency to feel guilty about betraying me. He just sat at that stupid desk wearing that stupid Cullen Kane T-shirt, smirking at me. He even had the nerve to ask me if I wanted a bottle of Perrier, or some champagne!”
“Did you let him have it?”
“I did. And then I went barreling to the back room to let his boss have it too.”
“I’d like to have heard that.”
“No you wouldn’t have. You would have been ashamed of me. I’m such a spineless jellyfish. I ended up groveling at his feet—begging him to give me a new lease and let me stay in my building.”
“I’m guessing you weren’t successful?”
Cara nodded. “Big mistake. Kane was actually enjoying himself, telling me all about his big plans to gut the place and put on a new roof and all new systems, and then raise the rent—which he said he knew I could never afford. Finally, I flat-out asked him why he was so determined to destroy me. And he just looked at me—like I was nothing. And he said what every megalomaniac says these days when they do something unconscionable. ‘It’s nothing personal. It’s just business.’”
“Bastard,” Jack said. “So, what now?”
It was noisy in the restaurant, the tables were close together, so close she could hear snatches of conversation from all directions. A woman, her voice slow and syrupy: “I told Mama you have to be firm with these people. Otherwise they walk all over you, but you know Mama.” A man’s deep voice: “You can’t get there direct from Savannah. We’ll lay over in Atlanta and get into Kansas City after five on Monday.”
Cara heard her own voice, too. It sounded tinny and somehow disembodied. “I’ve got to leave my building. Two weeks. That’s all the time I have before I have to get out. Two weeks. To pack up and find a new shop and a new apartment.”
All day long, she’d managed to push that reality to the back of her mind. She’d busied herself with the tedium of what had to get done, ordering flowers and answering emails and feeding Poppy, and dozens of other little things. But the enormity of what she was facing was gaining strength and velocity. And as she thought about it now, it felt like a huge boulder, inescapable, careering down a mountain, threatening to crush her under its weight.
She hadn’t realized she was crying until she felt the big sloppy tears sliding down her cheek. And then she was full-out sobbing, sitting in the middle of a crowded restaurant, bawling like a baby.
“Oh, God,” she said, choking back the tears. The voices around her quieted, and she knew people were staring. She crushed the linen napkin to her face, wishing she could crawl under the table.
“Heeyyyy.” Jack scooted his chair beside hers. He put his arm around her shoulder. Her chest heaved, and she couldn’t catch her breath. He put a glass of water in her hand. “Drink this.”
She managed a sip. “I’m … so … sorry.…” The words were wobbly.
The waiter came with their meals, crispy flounder for him, shrimp bisque for her. He stood—statuelike, unsure of the proper thing to do in such a situation.
“Could you box that up for us?” Jack said quietly. “And bring the check?” Of course Jack Finnerty would know exactly what to do.
* * *
Despite Cara’s feeble protests, he called a cab, and five minutes later he’d unlocked the door to the shop, and they were upstairs, and he’d sat her down on the sofa. While he went out to the garden to check on Shaz and Poppy, she went into the bathroom to try to pull herself together.
She was a mess. Her face was blotchy, her nose was red and running, and there were mascara trails down both cheeks. She washed her face and combed her hair and put on some lip gloss.
Jack was waiting in the living room with a glass of wine. She took a sip, and then another.
“Better?” he asked.
She nodded, afraid if she tried to speak the tears would start anew. He sat down on the sofa beside her, and gathered her into his arms. She pressed her face into his starched shirtfront, he rested his chin on the top of her hair.
“It’s gonna be okay,” he said.
The phone in his pocket buzzed. He swore softly and ignored it, but five minutes later, it buzzed again.
Jack shifted onto his left hip, took out the phone, and looked at the text.
“Dammit, Zoey,” he muttered.
Cara looked up. He held out the phone so he could read the message.
Battery dead. No way to get to motel. Found unlocked window. Bring me some pizza?
“I never leave windows unlocked over there. I’m sure she broke one so she could get back in the house,” Jack said.
“You should go home and check on her,” Cara said, hoping he wouldn’t.
He was already typing, and held up the phone again, so she could read his response.
Call a cab. Get out of my house and get your own pizza.
“You sure have a way with the ladies,” Cara said.
“Zoey ain’t no lady.”
* * *
After a while, Jack heated up their dinners, and was surprised to find she was actually hungry. They drank another glass of wine and rinsed out the dinner dishes.
“Will you stay here tonight?” Cara asked, drying the glasses and putting them back on the shelf where she’d so carefully arranged them on moving day two years ago.
“Do you want me to?”
Cara grasped his shirtfront, pulled him to her, and whispered in his ear. “There’s a time and a place for everything, remember?”
“I”ll bring in the dogs,” Jack said.
“Better text Zoey and tell her not to wait up,” Cara teased. She really was feeling a little better.
48
As soon as he pulled up to the house with the peeling pea-green paint on East Forty-Fourth Street Tuesday morning, Jack Finnerty felt the old familiar sensation of dread seep into his pores. He hadn’t been to this house in more than twenty-five years, but not much had changed. The grass was still bone-dry, because the old lady was too cheap to turn on a sprinkler. The shrubbery near the house still needed trimming and the concrete sidewalk was still cracked and potholed. The one thing that surprised him was how small it looked now.
But then, the last time he’d been here he’d been what, ten years old? He’d pedal slowly over here every Wednesday after school let out at Charles Ellis School on nearby Washington Avenue, lean the bike against the kickstand, and reluctantly drag himself up this same sidewalk, with the white envelope and the five-dollar bill tucked in his pants pocket.
He rang the doorbell, and felt his stomach muscles suck in, out of some decades-old force of habit. If he’d had a shirttail he would have tucked it in, and removed his ball cap, too.
The heavy front door, still painted that same mud brown, was open, and as he looked through the screen door, he could have sworn he saw that same ghostly-gray moth-eaten Siamese cat of his childhood flit from beneath the marble-top console table in the entry hall.
A moment later, Sylvia Bradley was peering out at him through the screen. She wore a flowered print blouse and baggy blue polyester slacks, and her ever-present old-school Keds. Like the house, she looked smaller now, too. And he was startled to see that she walked with a cane.
“Jack Finnerty?” Her voice was fluty, and overly loud.
“Yes ma’am,” he said.
“Well, come on in then,” she said, unlatching the hook.
* * *
The house was stifling,
but in his memory, it had always been stifling. She plied him with a Dixie cup of warm Hawaiian Punch, and he was certain it came from the same can she’d opened twenty-five years ago, and that it had been sitting on her kitchen counter all this time. Sylvia motioned for him to sit down in the parlor, on an excruciatingly stiff tufted red velvet sofa. He pointed at the upright piano on the opposite wall, with its books of sheet music propped above the keyboard, and the metronome sitting on top.
“Do you still give lessons?”
“Unfortunately no.” She held up her right hand, it’s knobby joints red and swollen. “Arthritis.”
“That’s too bad,” Jack said. “You must miss your students.”
“Not really,” Sylvia Bradley said. “Children today don’t want to study piano. They want to play ‘keyboard’ and be in rock bands.”
“I suppose so.”
“You don’t play piano anymore, do you?”
“Uh, no ma’am.”
“Good. You were a terrible student. One of the worst I ever had. I never understood why your poor mother insisted you should try to learn.”
Jack laughed. He thought it was probably the only time he had ever laughed in this house. “It was my dad’s idea. He thought everybody should learn to appreciate music.”
“Appreciate it, yes. Play it, no. What was your little brother’s name?”
“Ryan.”
She nodded. “That’s right. He was a ginger, as I recall. Nice boy. Totally tone deaf, of course. And your baby sister. Maureen?”
“Meghan. I think by the time she came along, Dad gave up on piano. Meghan took ballet, instead.” Jack cleared his throat. “I was sorry to hear about your mother.”
“Thank you. You know, she was nearly ninety-one, and still cooked for both of us and did all the grocery shopping. I took her car keys away a year ago, but she was still sharp as a tack right up until that last stroke.”
Sharp as a tack, Jack thought, and mean as a snake, that would describe Bernice Bradley. And her daughter.
“You said you had a business matter to discuss with me?” Sylvia said, regarding him through glasses with lenses so thick and convex they gave her the look of a giant insect. “What type of business are you in these days, Jack?”
“I’m a contractor. Specializing in historic restoration. Ryan and I are business partners.”
She looked at him with distaste. “I have contractors leaving flyers and business cards in my mailbox every week. As though I would hire somebody who has to resort to passing out flyers to get work.”
“Um … that’s not really why I wanted to talk to you. Actually, I came here today to ask you about a piece of property you own downtown.”
Suddenly the room got very quiet, and the ticking from the grandfather clock in the corner seemed synchronized with his own pulse-beat.
“Mother and I own quite a few properties downtown. My father worked for the C&S Bank, you know, but he believed in buying real estate, not stocks and bonds.”
“Smart man,” Jack said. “I’m probably not anywhere near as smart as your father, or as successful, but I believe in buying real estate too. Especially in this last economic downturn, Ryan and I found that we were able to pick up some distressed properties for a pretty modest investment.”
“I don’t own any distressed properties,” the old lady shot back.
“Oh, no, no ma’am. I didn’t mean to insinuate that,” he said quickly. “Not at all. The thing is, I’ve always admired that three-story building you own on West Jones Street. I like the retail mix on the ground floor, with the residential above it. And of course, that’s one of the most desirable streets in the historic district.”
“How do you happen to know I own that building?” Sylvia asked. “Are you one of those scam artists who hang around the courthouse records room, looking to make a quick killing?”
“Not at all. I only know about it because I got a call from a man named Cullen Kane—a florist here in town. Somebody gave him my name, and he called me up and asked me to take a look at West Jones Street. To give him estimates to do some work on the building. And he mentioned that he was buying it from you.”
“That’s right,” she said cautiously. “We close on the thirtieth. Mother and I always kept our properties up, but, well, tenants these days are so demanding, especially the young woman who’s renting the space right now. She’s another florist, you know, but every week she had a new complaint. Mr. Kane called me up out of the blue, asked me what I wanted for the building, and I thought, Mother is gone. Why not? I named a price, and he countered, then I countered, and we agreed to it.”
“Just like that?” Jack asked.
“He sent me a beautiful orchid plant,” Sylvia confided. “And he has lovely manners, for a homosexual, I mean.”
Jack almost choked on his Hawaiian Punch. “Miss Sylvia, would it be nosy of me to ask how much he offered you for the building?”
She told him, and he nearly choked again. Sylvia Bradley might be old, but she’d managed to squeeze top dollar out of Cullen Kane.
He put his Dixie cup carefully down on the marble-top coffee table. “I wish I’d known you were going to sell that building, Miss Sylvia. Because I would have been able to offer you more than what Cullen Kane did.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jack said.
“How much more?”
He did some quick, painful calculations and named his price.
She sighed loudly. “I wish I had known you were interested, Jack. It would have been nice to sell it to one of my former pupils. I think Mother would have liked that. She always used to say she liked those Finnerty boys.”
This was news to Jack. As far as he knew, Bernice Bradley hated all little boys, especially if they were named Jack or Ryan Finnerty. He’d once made the mistake of leaving his bicycle lying down in the driveway during a piano lesson, and Bernice had run right over it in her dark blue Pontiac.
“I guess you have a legally binding contract with Kane? No way to get out of it?”
Sylvia pursed her lips. “I could tell him I’d changed my mind and decided not to sell.”
“He might make trouble for you,” Jack warned. “From what I hear, Cullen Kane is a pretty astute businessman. He usually gets what he sets out to buy.”
“Maybe not this time,” Sylvia said. “My father taught me more about buying and selling real estate than either of you two will ever know. You leave him to me.”
Jack’s face lit up. “So we have a deal? For the price I named?”
“All cash?” Sylvia asked. “It will make things simpler.”
Now Jack understood that foreboding feeling he’d experienced coming up Sylvia Bradley’s front steps. He’d been a lamb led to slaughter.
“All cash,” he said. He held out his arm and helped her to her feet, and as she was showing him to the door, she stopped suddenly.
“There is one other thing,” she said. “A little leak in the roof over my back mud porch. My laundry room. I’m sure a reputable contractor could take care of that in no time.”
Half an hour later, he slid behind the steering wheel of his truck and looked down at the dark dress pants he’d worn especially for this meeting. They were covered with fine gray cat hair. As he pulled away from the curb, he saw Sylvia Bradley, silhouetted in the doorway. Cullen Kane had gotten off easy with a potted orchid. As for Jack, he and a helper would be returning that afternoon to tear down the termite-infested mud porch and rebuild it. Gratis.
Materials alone would probably cost a couple thousand, but all he could think about was the look on Cara’s face tomorrow when he would tell her what he’d done.
49
“You did what?” Cara had been about to take a bite of her sandwich, but instead she put it down on her paper plate and picked up the sheaf of papers he’d just presented with a flourish.
The look on her face was not anything like what he’d pictured. Her jaw tightened and her eyes narrowed as she
skimmed the sales contract for West Jones Street. Her face paled when she got to the page with the sales price.
“Is this some kind of joke?” she demanded. “Because if it is, I don’t get the punch line.”
“It’s no joke. I bought it. Sylvia Bradley was my piano teacher when I was a kid. I went to see her yesterday morning, and I bought this building. For you.”
Cara stabbed at the contract with her fingertip. “You paid twice what it’s worth! Are you crazy? Where would you get that kind of money?”
Now Jack put down his own sandwich. He was confused. Where was the jumping up and down? Where were the screams of joy and wild kisses of gratitude he’d been anticipating for the past two days?
* * *
Earlier that day, Jack and a helper arrived at Forty-fourth Street at dawn. They carted Sylvia’s ancient rusted Kenmore washer and dryer down the crumbling driveway and into the back of Jack’s truck for the trip to the dump. It took only a couple hours to tear down Sylvia Bradley’s mud porch. He was shocked that it hadn’t just fallen off of its own accord.
Even with a cane, the old lady was pretty spry, and she stood in the weedy backyard, in her flower-print blouse and old-school Keds, and supervised as they tossed the rotted timbers into the Dumpster he’d rented.
Late Wednesday morning, after she could see the yellow pine skeleton of her new porch, Sylvia finally called him into the kitchen, offered him a paper cup of warm Hawaiian Punch and the sales contract for West Jones Street.
He reached into the pocket of his cargo shorts and brought out a white envelope with the cashier’s check for the earnest money inside, just as he’d offered those five-dollar envelopes from his mother every Wednesday the year he was ten. As he handed this one over to Sylvia Bradley, he halfway expected her to ask him if he’d been practicing his finger exercises.
She ripped open the envelope and studied the check, running a swollen forefinger over the embossed bank logo.
“How did you leave things with Cullen Kane?” he asked, signing the contract with a flourish.
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