by Lucy Hepburn
Stepping out onto Main Street, Will decided that New Brunswick even smelled the same. All those childhood weekends he’d spent up here at his grandfather’s house, playing in the woods, riding his bike, listening as his grandpa read to him in the evenings—fun stuff, cool stuff, weird stuff, funny stuff. He’d done a lot of growing up around here and, despite wanting to keep this visit as brief and businesslike as possible, he fought down a poignant tug of nostalgia. Everything was different now, that was for sure.
It had been only four weeks since Sloane Thompson, Will’s grandfather, was buried in the tiny cemetery next to their local church. Suddenly it seemed like years ago. And now, thanks to Will’s father being so predictably out of reach, he had a duty to perform, and it made his heart very heavy indeed.
Will had arrived at the gate of his grandfather’s house, and he gazed up at the familiar old place, allowing the memories to flood back in.
“Mr. Thompson?”
“Whoa!”
“Sorry, did I startle you? You seemed to be miles away!” A woman stood in front of him and stretched out her hand. “I’m from the realtor’s office.”
He’d assumed he’d have some time on his own to wander around before meeting up with the representative from the realtor who was going to be putting the house on the market. But here she was, a half hour early. She was around fifty years old, smartly dressed, and radiating approachable warmth. He shook her hand.
“Please, call me Will.”
“And I’m Laura,” she smiled. “I am sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.” For some reason, Will had assumed that the realtor would be young and brash, out of touch with the poignant purpose of the trip. The smart, friendly woman in front of him was a pleasant surprise. “You’re early,” he said. Her manner had caught him off guard and his statement came out like a question.
“I understood that you were looking to conduct this solemn procedure as swiftly as possible,” she said gently, practically reading his mind. “I didn’t want to be late. Is your father coming today?”
“I’m afraid not. He’s…well, we decided it would better if I were to meet you alone today.”
Carl Thompson, Will’s dad, only lived around the corner. He and Will, as joint executors of Sloane Thompson’s estate, found that they were to be on the receiving end of a great deal of paperwork. Will’s grandfather had had numerous business interests, and they all needed to be wound up. Whereas Carl had shunned the corporate world to become a rather reclusive—and, for Will, infuriating—poet. It was as though Sloane Thompson’s business gene had skipped a generation and landed on his grandson.
“That’s a pity…but I thought it might be the case,” Laura said slowly as they began to walk up the drive toward the house. “My daughter says he can get very absorbed in his creativity.”
“Your daughter?” Will looked at her, confused.
“My daughter works for your father. She’s his personal assistant.”
“Oh?” Will was temporarily flummoxed. First because he had forgotten that his father even had a personal assistant, and second because as usual, it baffled him that any woman in her right mind would take on the job of trying to organize a man like Carl Thompson. Especially a woman with such a nice, sensible mom.
“Are you a poet too, Mr. Thomp—er, Will?”
“Me?” Will laughed. “Hardly! I run my own business—I’m afraid I don’t have much time for poetry…” he tailed off, then tried to steer the conversation into calmer waters—his views on poetry and poets could wait for another day. “So, your daughter…how long has she been working for Dad?”
“Oh, a while.” Laura waved her hand dismissively. “But she’s spoken for, if that’s what you were about to ask!”
It wasn’t.
“My other daughter, on the other hand, she’s in business too—”
“Excuse me.” Will coughed in embarrassment as the Dolly Parton ringtone cut in. He pulled it from his pocket and tried to find a ‘mute’ button, but the task was way out of his technology league. “I’ll ignore that.”
“Cute ringtone,” Laura said.
“It’s not mine, it’s…never mind, long story. You were saying?”
Will was good at letting people talk. It was why so many big businesses trusted him with their personnel needs. Usually he was a good listener, too, but today he was distracted. The driveway of his grandparents’ house held vivid memories for him, and today the thick overhanging branches were heavy with fresh-smelling new growth. Laura was describing her single daughter to him, sounding amusingly earnest as she did so.
“…thoroughly reliable—do you know, she came top of her year in college? But she never turned into one of those geeky career girls…well, maybe just a little, but she’s not one of those backstabbing, do-anything-to-get-ahead kind of people, you know? She’s very beautiful, too, and…”
Will, on autopilot, nodded, only half listening. He’d never allowed himself to be set up with strangers in the past, and he wasn’t about to start now.
He’d learned to ride a bike on this drive. There! The tree stump where he’d hit his head when he fell off after becoming too confident too quickly.
And then…the house came into view. Rambling, slightly shabby, but just as he’d remembered it. The welcoming porch, peeling blue paint, tall windows that caught every morsel of light despite the surrounding trees…
Another call on the girl’s phone. Will jumped.
But it wasn’t her. Some guy’s name on the screen. Then another call from a Daisy-Bell’s Floristry Emporium. He didn’t pick that one up either. Nor did he answer the four texts that pinged in over the next few minutes. This was one busy lady! One marked ‘urgent’ from someone called Sis—could that be her? No, surely the owner of the phone would phone rather than text?
“Mr. Thompson?” Laura’s voice was gentle. “I can see you’re a busy man.”
“Didn’t I say? This isn’t my phone. You don’t think I’d have Nine to Five as my ringtone, would you?”
“I would never presume to judge!” Laura laughed.
Laura unlocked the door and together they walked into the eerie stillness of his grandfather’s house. Even though the furnishings had mostly been removed, it still felt crushingly like his second home.
“Do you need me to help measure up for the sale?” Will asked when he could trust himself to speak.
“Gracious, no! I wouldn’t dream of it!” Laura assured him. “My office handled all of that before you got here. I simply need to double check with you about the fixtures, most of which I understand are to remain in the property after the sale is completed, and then I need to get you to sign the contracts co-authorizing the sale. After that—oh!” It was Laura’s turn for her phone to ring. A nice sensible ringtone. “Excuse me please, I’m going to have to get this. Why don’t you take your time looking around?” Laura walked away to discreetly take her call.
Will was quite pleased to be seeing it again by himself. He tried to soak up the essence of the house, knowing that it may be for the last time. Specks of dust were suspended in the air, caught by dazzling shafts of sunlight that slanted through the half-closed blinds. It was quiet as a tomb. The wooden staircase, the homely kitchen…He felt his grandfather’s loss so keenly that the absence was more like a presence. He took a couple of deep breaths.
He walked from room to room. He was checking Laura’s list of which items were to remain and which he would be taking away. An old oak mirror, laundry cupboards, carpets: all an aching reminder of his grandfather and of his own childhood. By the time he had completed his lap of the house, Will was wrung out. He was glad to see Laura’s kind face when he got back to the entrance hall.
“How was it?” she asked.
“This all looks correct,” he said, waving her list in the air.
“That’s not what I meant,” she said. “How was it seeing your grandfather’s house without him being here?”
“Oh!” Wow, this woman was smart. Was his pain that obvious? “It’s a bit weird, but I’m okay.” He brushed it off by getting back to business. “What would you like me to sign?” He forced his voice to sound as normal as possible.
Laura bit her lip. “Well, I have the contract in my bag, but I’m afraid there’s a problem with it.”
“What sort of problem?” Neither of them bothered to even comment as the girl’s phone rang for the umpteenth time. Exasperated, Will flicked a glance at the screen. Some hotel. Well, he saw no reason to pick up right now—all these calls could go to voicemail, he presumed, and the girl could deal with them later. Instead he shoved the phone deep into his pocket and looked at the contract, which Laura was holding out to him. “You’re going to have to help me here; my speed-reading isn’t what it was.”
“It’s not the contract,” Laura sighed. “It’s the signature. Your father’s signature.”
Will looked at the bottom of the page. There, on the dotted line beside the typewritten name Carl Thompson, his father, using firm, copperplate strokes, had written ‘Ronald Reagan.’
Un-be-lievable.
Will raked his hands through his hair in exasperation. “I’m so sorry, Laura. My father likes to—how can I put it?—live life on his own terms,” he said, through gritted teeth. “But I thought he could at least be depended on for something as important as this. I can only apologize.”
“No need,” Laura whispered, as though picking up on his distress. “No need at all. Listen, would you like me to go and talk to your father? I can see that you’re finding this hard.”
“Oh, would you?” For a moment, Will was tempted. But then he shook his head. “Actually, thanks, but no thanks. I think this is something I’d better meet head-on.”
Laura smiled and touched his arm. “Okay, well, I’ll leave you to it. I hope you have a good discussion with him. If you don’t mind me saying: parents can be trouble, but you only ever get the one set!”
“Thank you,” Will replied, wondering whether or not to tell Laura that he’d only ever had the benefit of way less than half a set of parents his whole life. He decided not. She didn’t need to hear about his cargo load of baggage.
After saying his goodbyes to Laura, Will stomped off down the road toward his father’s home, fuming, with the contracts tucked under his arm. Typical! The man is an idiot! How could he make a fool of them all like this? Lord knows he’d always been difficult, but now making him schlep all the way out to New Brunswick rather than stepping up to the plate and handling the realtor himself—this beat everything! It wasn’t as though she was an ogre either. She was a nice woman, and her daughter worked for him! Surely that should have made it easy. But no…nothing could be easy when it came to his dad.
What sort of person signed ‘Ronald Reagan’ on a document, apart from Ronald Reagan himself? A selfish, attention-seeking one who inhabited another planet and didn’t care about consequences, that’s who.
Maybe it would have saved a lot of trouble if he’d taken Laura up on her offer to deal with his dad. On the train up here, he’d resolved not to bother visiting his father at all—why should he? He’d never made time for him when he was growing up; why not show him that a little of the old man had rubbed off on his son?
But he’d said he’d do it himself, so now he had to follow through. As he pounded furiously along the sidewalk toward his father’s house, his mind was running over what to say and, more importantly, how to say it. He wanted to shout, and yell, and take him by the shoulders and shake him. God knows the man needed shaking. But, rationally, he knew from his years in the people business that corporal punishment was counterproductive. Somehow, he’d have to calm himself and meet his father, adult to adult. Somehow, he’d have to treat this like one of his mediation meetings.
Just then, the girl’s phone rang again. Tempted to ignore it, Will kept walking. He’d reached his father’s front door. The old sign was still there: Please Go Away. It was safe to say that his father didn’t like interruptions.
He didn’t know what to do next. Absently, to buy a few moments of time, he pulled the phone from his pocket and hit the green ‘answer’ button.
“Um, are you Will? With my phone? I’m Christy…”
It was her! Will’s heart did a little skip as he remembered her cute face, the lively eyes, the intense expression on her face when she talked, and he realized he’d been looking forward to talking to her.
But he suspected his father had seen him approach and he imagined him frowning down at him through the window. “Hi,” he said, and the word came out more briskly than he intended.
He’d have to wrap up this call as fast as he could in order to face his dad.
Shame.
Chapter Three
CHRISTY
10:00 a.m.
Newark International Airport – on schedule.
Airports are meant to be the most romantic places on earth, Christy thought ruefully. Exhausted, she leaned against the low metal bar that separated the people stumbling and blinking through the arrivals gate from the loved ones who waited for them. She watched their heartwarming embraces.
Or no, come to think of it, perhaps railway platforms had the edge in terms of old-fashioned romance. But this morning’s experience, where she’d bid an unexpected and highly unromantic farewell to her phone, would put her off that notion for life.
Holding up the little placard with ‘Antonio’ written on it, she forced her face into a welcoming smile that hopefully didn’t make her look like a deranged escapee from a mental institution. This was not her idea of a well-executed assignment. She didn’t know if the people streaming out were from Italy or Istanbul, and from her vantage point she couldn’t see an arrivals board to give her more information.
This was awful. Although she was looking forward to meeting her future brother-in-law, if she’d had any say in the matter they’d have made email contact beforehand, and she’d have thoroughly checked his flight number and also set aside enough time to make sure she looked halfway presentable before taking her place among the happy relatives.
Somewhere in the terminal building, she knew there would probably be a cellular phone shop. It wouldn’t take long to find one, dive in, and snap up a cheap pay-as-you-go handset to tide her over. But she was terrified she’d miss Antonio, so she fought down the urge. It was hard. She’d never neglected clients for this length of time. Mrs. Fischer would go nuts. And she’d been expecting calls from suppliers, hotels, florists…it was all hideous.
She rubbed her forehead in exasperation. Her headache, while bearable, was not helping one bit.
“You okay?”
The man standing on her right, wearing a light blue tour operator’s blazer, white shirt, and tie, was looking at her with sympathy in his eyes. Tall, heavyset, with salt-and-pepper hair, he must have been somewhere in his fifties. Christy forced a smile.
“Oh, you know. I’ve had better days. Thanks.” She turned her attention back to the arriving passengers. The flood of people was slowing to a trickle.
“What happened?” he asked, and oddly enough, when Christy looked at him again, she saw that he cared about the response.
“Well,” she said, hesitating for a second before deciding that, yes, she had a moment to fill the man in on her awful morning. “I just left my phone on the train. All because of the Bluetooth message I received. And now Bluetooth guy has my phone…I hope. And I can’t go off to call him in case I miss the person I’m supposed to be meeting. And I don’t even know what the person looks like.” The man looked confused. Christy, realizing she must sound less than normal, explained: “He’s my sister’s fiancé and my sister is, if you’ll pardon the bluntness, an airhead…oh!”
The man had fished in his blazer pocket, produced a cell phone, and was holding it out to her.
“Here,” he smiled. “Borrow this. I’ve got three. One for work, one for calling my son and da
ughter, and this spare for emergencies. Which is exactly what this seems to be.”
Christy could hardly believe her ears. “Oh…y…you’re very kind, but I couldn’t possibly…”
He raised his eyebrows. He had a nice face, and his eyes were twinkling in amusement.
“Or could I?” Gratefully she took the phone. “Thank you so much! I’ll be as quick as I can, and of course, I’ll pay for the calls.”
“Happy to help, ma’am. You hold onto it until you get your old phone. You can give that one back to me any time. I work here,” he said, pointing at the ground beneath his feet. Then he smiled again and handed her his card. She scanned it quickly. It told her that he was Roger Grace, an executive tour organizer based at the airport. It also gave an address, a couple of phone numbers, and email and web addresses.
Christy was torn between wanting to flat-out refuse the stranger’s offer and her overwhelming desire to be in touch with the world again. She stared at the phone. It would certainly help until she got her own one back…if she ever got it back. “Mr. Grace, I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Call me Roger, please. And you already did,” he reminded her.
“I will definitely return this to you just as soon as possible,” she went on.
“I know that,” he said and smiled at her. Then he spotted the family he was scheduled to meet and waved them over. “Goodbye, Miss—er…”
“Christy,” she replied, “my name is Christy.”
“Goodbye, Christy, and good luck with your day,” said Roger, her cell phone savior, before he disappeared with his clients.
Frantically, like an addict who’d been starved of their fix, she tapped out her cell number, only to exclaim in exasperation when she got no reception. She prayed that this Will person was going through a tunnel or something, fighting down thoughts that he may be the type of person who’d use it to call all his friends in China, or thrown it into the river, or stripped it and sold it for parts.