“We have less than twenty minutes to pray and then we’re out of here,” Ivan said. “Who wants to start?”
Chapter Thirteen
As far as Brinley could tell, the bathroom floor in the house looked fine. She had inspected it, poked at it, taken photographs on her iPhone, spoken to the installers, and eaten enough doughnuts to warrant multiple laps around St. Simon’s Island.
She knew that “everything is fine” wasn’t what Dad wanted to hear. He wanted to hear that somehow the tiles were uneven, the installers had messed up, and general contractor Tobias Vega had failed to deliver. In other words, Dad wanted affirmation that he was needed at Brooks Renovations and that the company couldn’t continue without his imposing, in-your-face presence.
Tobias, all six feet and two inches of him, was leaning against the marble vanity, amused. “Papa sent his princess to check up on the minions.”
“So make this easy for me, Toby.” Brinley placed her hands on her hip. The low-rise jeans now had dust marks on them. She was glad she’d worn boots because she could’ve stubbed her toes in the gutted house had she been in sandals. She knew better than to wear open-toe shoes at renovation sites.
“Tell me something that I can take to Dad.” It’d better be something good. Brinley had overslept and arrived forty-five minutes late. For some reason Tobias had arrived early by fifteen minutes. They had pulled in at the same time, both surprised to see each other at 6:45 a.m.
“I saved him seven or eight thousand dollars on the kitchen cabinets by refinishing the surface, but I bet he doesn’t care about that.” Tobias’s hair was still wet from his shower. And it was forty-eight degrees outside.
“You know Dad is a hands-on guy, Toby.”
Tobias nodded. “Do me a favor, Brinley. Please don’t call me Toby anymore. It’s Tobias from here on out.”
“Why?”
“Toby was me when we were little kids.”
“But you’ve been Toby to me since the day you built me a chicken coop.” Brinley laughed. “Dill would never let you forget it.”
“Considering you had no chickens. How’s Dill, by the way?”
“Workaholic.” Brinley reached for another Krispy Kreme. “Same old, same old.”
“You might want to cut back on that or I’ll have to give you some work to do here to work off that sugar from your system.”
“What? Are you my big brother now?” Brinley almost had the box when Tobias yanked it away. He handed it to his workers. “Get it out of here before she puts on more weight.”
More weight? “I’m going to let that roll off my shoulder.”
Tobias adjusted his tool belt. “When we were kids we could eat anything we wanted. Not anymore.”
“So you’re my nutritionist now? My adopted brother and my nutritionist?”
“Don’t you see? Lots of people care about you.”
Too much sometimes.
“Now, about this floor. Tell your dad it’s perfect. Tell him not to worry. He needs to get better, and then he can come here and run the show. Meanwhile, he paid me to do this and I’ll try to do my best.”
“So I came here for nothing?” Brinley sighed.
“You want a tip for delivering the doughnuts, is that it?” Tobias’s cell rang and he took the call.
Brinley wandered off to the other parts of the house. Upstairs, the view was gorgeous. The panoramic window frames were in, but the glass hadn’t been installed. If it had been up to her, she’d want the wall replaced with French doors to make the entire floor an indoor-outdoor room. She wondered how many bedrooms this house had. If this were her house, she’d be happy with three bedrooms.
She walked out onto the balcony. Beyond the construction equipment and workers coming and going below was a stretch of the usual sea oats, protected dunes that laced the coastline. A small boardwalk—it needed to be restrained—led over the dunes to the fine sand. The tide had receded. Sandpipers were running back and forth on the sand at the ocean’s edge.
Above them an occasional brown pelican or two glided in the wind. Brinley remembered her childhood days when flocks of pelicans flew by her window. Endangered, the brown pelicans had to make a comeback soon or they’d be extinct.
It was a little over 7:20 a.m. when the sun rose over the Atlantic. With picture-perfect puffy clouds in the morning sky, the sun was in brilliant hues of orange and yellow and blue and white. Brinley took photos of the sunrise on her iPhone and sent them to Dillon and copies to Mom and Dad.
“Look what you’re missing, bro. When are you coming home for Christmas?”
She stood there for the longest time. She didn’t hear Tobias come up to her until he spoke. “The view will sell the house.”
“Any idea what the listing price will be?”
“At least a million. It has an acre lot.” He put both hands on the balustrades. “A few blocks away a three-story with a crow’s nest went for three million earlier this year. And no yard space. Bidding war and all that.”
Really.
“Will you show me the rest of the house?” Brinley asked.
“Sure. Maybe you’ll find more good things to report to your dad. Anything to appease the boss.”
That isn’t why I want to see what else is in this house.
There were two other large bedrooms on the second floor, each with their own baths. The colors were all off-white or cream, island style. If she were to take over the project, she’d want more blues.
When they went back downstairs, Brinley saw the kitchen again. It looked bigger a second time. Spacious. A chef’s kitchen. The open floor plan was exactly what she liked. The breakfast nook was another indoor-outdoor room leading to a porch where the boardwalk began.
Brinley thought she could cycle from the bicycle shed across the boardwalk and down to the beach. The packed sand of St. Simon’s Island, especially this side of the northern beach, was perfect for cycling.
Just then a cat crossed the backyard and jumped on the railings of the boardwalk where it was highest over the dunes.
I could get a cat and —
Tobias stepped into her view. “No.”
“What?”
“No, Brinley. You’re not taking over this project. If you do, I’ll quit.”
“I didn’t say a word.”
“Exactly. I can see that look on your face. The last time you took over from your dad it was a nightmare to make all the changes you wanted. You and I don’t work well together. We bite each other’s heads off. We’re night and day. Good and evil—”
“Don’t overreact, Toby.” Brinley gently punched his arm.
“Tobias.”
“Last time I was in Europe. I’m here now. I can see this through in person.”
“And you’re here for how long?”
“A few more weeks.”
“Not enough time. I’m taking Christmas week off.” Tobias paused. “I don’t know which is worse, working with your dad or with you. I think with you because you’ll bring that interior designer from h—”
“I was just asking questions.”
“That’s how nightmares begin. Questions. Now go home. Tell your dad I’ll call him tomorrow.” Tobias turned and walked away.
“I’ll check in tomorrow,” Brinley said.
“No need. We’re fine.” He didn’t even look back. He lifted his arm above his head and waved her off.
Chapter Fourteen
Brinley’s plan to go back to bed was dashed when she arrived home to a dissonance of voices coming from the sunroom. Mom and Dad were at it again over Zoe’s elopement and pregnancy.
Brinley had parked the Bugatti in the three-car garage of the main house, where she always parked when she was in town. But now she wondered if the garage door opening and closing had alerted her parents to her being home.
She closed the door to the garage quietly, took off her Keen boots, and tiptoed down the hallway to staccato pitches and fits and repeated emphases of the words “your daughter” and
“reckless.”
Somehow the daughter committing the crime was always the other’s offspring and the daughter getting the accolades was one’s own.
“Brin, get in here!”
Mom.
Brinley hadn’t even reached the double doors to the sunroom that she must pass to get to the stairs up to the library, where she had hoped to catch a few more hours of sleep. She counted to eleven, maybe twelve, and braced herself. Really, she didn’t want to be dragged into Zoe’s affairs and her parents knew it. Ironically, her neutrality had caused her to be summoned many times to arbitrate disputes in the family.
Slowly, she dragged herself to the sunroom. Her parents were sitting adjacent to each other in a couple of armchairs facing her. Behind them a row of windows separated them from the brown bushes in the yard lining up like tumbleweeds. They had been cut down some time in the fall, but left to sit through the winter. Somewhere out there the distant surf peppered the quiet morning under the sun now midway up the sky.
“If it’s about Zoe, keep me out of it.” Standing under the tall doorframe, she looked helpless with nowhere to hide.
“It’s not about Zoe,” Dad said. “We’re turning all this over to the lawyers. What did Toby say?”
“I was going to tell you later after you two finished fighting.” Brinley stifled a laugh. “He’s fine. The floors are fine. The entire house is gorgeous. If I were living here, that’s the kind of house I would live in.”
“Seriously?” Dad asked.
“I mean what’s not to like? The second floor master has a balcony that overlooks the ocean, the living room opens up to a covered porch that connects to a boardwalk taking you to the beach. It’s a nice retreat.”
“Make me an offer, Brinley Brin.”
“What?”
“Make me an offer before I list it. I don’t want a bidding war.”
Brinley put down her boots next to the armchair closest to her, poured herself some Kona coffee from the carafe on the antique butler tray table, and sat down thinking about that house.
“Let me call my agent,” Brinley said. “Do some comps.”
“Good answer.”
“Well, I don’t want to pay you more than the house is worth.” Brinley sipped more coffee.
“That’s my girl.”
Brinley watched Dad and Mom look at each other and then back at her.
“You tell her,” Dad said to Mom.
“Tell me what, Mom?” Brinley asked. “You’re pregnant too?”
Dad spewed coffee out his mouth.
“Ned! Don’t be melodramatic.” Mom nudged him. “Well, we’re going to Paris for a week and then we’ll be back Christmas Eve.”
“Didn’t you just go to Paris last month?”
“Yes, but we’re going to help Zoe settle into her new house and shop for the baby.”
“The baby? Zoe’s baby? Don’t they have stores in the United States?”
Mom waved her off as if Brinley was being silly. “This is our first grandchild.”
“When do you leave?” Brinley asked.
“Tonight as soon as Gene fuels up.”
Tonight.
“There’s more,” Dad said.
“Okay. What?”
“Cara’s out of town next week to visit her family in Arkansas.”
“And?”
“So you’ll have to keep an eye on Aunt Ella.”
“No way, Dad. Call her caregiver. Have her come down here.” Why me? Haven’t I done enough?
“She gets the holidays off. It’s in the contract.”
“I’ve got things to do.”
Mom smiled. “Take Aunt Ella with you. She’ll enjoy it.”
What about me?
“One more thing.” Dad shifted in his seat.
Brinley groaned.
“I have a fundraising event next week I need you to attend in my place.”
“I can’t take Aunt Ella with me.”
“You’ll figure out something, Brinley Brin.”
Take care of it, Brinley Brin.
“Monday night at The Cloister,” Dad continued. “You could even walk there.”
“You know I’ll drive.”
“It’s the annual Oglethorpe Charity Dinner.”
“I remember that one.”
“You’ll like this. Two violins are going to be auctioned off. One Guarneri and the other… Guess.”
“A Strad.”
“Got your attention.” Dad nodded. “The proceeds will benefit the Sea Islands Preservation Society. Do you still have your colonial garb?”
“Sure do, but the question is whether I can still fit into it.” The silk dress was patterned after something that her colonial ancestor, Rosemary Larkin Brooks, would’ve worn to her wedding in 1734.
Could have. Nobody knew what she had worn, really.
Brinley had it made the year before when she began attending the Oglethorpe Charity Dinner. Dad would’ve gone as General Oglethorpe, but that was already reserved for a paid interpreter. Instead, Dad went as Jeremiah Brooks, that rice planter who’d gone to Savannah to help Oglethorpe cultivate the land and who’d fallen in love with the indentured servant his cousin had died freeing.
It was a long story and someday Brinley would write a book about everything that happened and how Jeremiah Brooks had married Rosemary Larkin and how Jeremiah’s mother’s 1698 Stradivarius had come to be handed down from generation to generation until Grandpa Brooks’s generation.
And now, hundreds of years later, they were closer than ever to getting it back. Brinley had been waiting patiently as Helen Hu remained in Vienna to coordinate with Interpol and the FBI interrogating the art thief. Brinley had instructed Helen to do whatever she could to get the Strad back. If she had to sell some of her other violins, she would.
And if she had that Strad back, she would soon find out how Air sounded on it in Ivan McMillan’s hands.
Why am I thinking of him?
“Cara can work with you on your costume if you need the hem taken out.” Mom finished her coffee. “By the way, who put your suitcase and clothes in my new library?”
“Aunt Ella has my room, so I slept in the library last night. I’ll go to the guest cottage tonight.”
“We can move Ella there anytime,” Mom said.
“Or maybe I can have Dillon’s room.”
“Good idea, Brin. Cara has the key.”
“Good to know.” Brinley looked around. “Speaking of whom, where’s Aunt Ella?”
“Cara’s taken her to see Dr. Endecott. Maybe he’ll find out what’s going on with her. Wandering around like that, scaring the neighbors.” Mom poured more cream into her coffee cup. Then two cubes of sugar. “Good thing whatever it was happened last night and that Dr. Endecott has a cancellation today. He’s leaving tomorrow for Vail, as you know he does every December. He’ll be gone until after Christmas.”
Brinley slid her feet into her Keen boots. “Thank you for the coffee. I’m going to pack up my things and vacate your library, Mom.”
“Don’t forget to call Pace if you want the house before we list it.”
“Right. What’s his number?” Brinley jotted it down on her iPad and made a note to herself to call her real estate agent before the end of the day. “When does it go on the market?”
“First week of January, I hope.”
“Dad.”
“What?”
“You can’t make Toby work through Christmas and the New Year.”
“Have a soft spot for him, don’t you?”
“Only as a brother. He’s got his family. And it’s Christmas.”
“Tell you what, Brinley Brin. Make me an offer I can’t refuse. Then you can finish the house whenever you want.”
Chapter Fifteen
Brinley was picking up her evening gown and packing up her suitcase in Mom’s library when her widowed sister-in-law messaged her an apology. She couldn’t make lunch. Again. This was the umpteenth time Riley Brooks had canceled.<
br />
Every time Brinley was in town she tried to get together with Riley because she and her two kids were the closest connection she had left with her older brother, Parker, who had died in a drowning accident about five years before.
Brinley messaged back a quick “no problem,” but she didn’t like it. Riley had been cooped up in her sprawling estate on Sea Island for a long time now. She and Parker had used to go to church but she didn’t anymore. The last Brinley had heard, the kids still went but only if someone else gave them a ride back and forth. Brinley didn’t know how to help Riley get out of her unhealthy and protracted grieving period.
Perhaps she could ask Yun McMillan this afternoon when she had tea at her house. Perhaps she had some sort of sagacious wisdom for her about matters of life and death. She’d find out.
Brinley rolled the suitcase toward the door and turned off the light on her way out. The hallway was quiet. Twenty years ago it wasn’t. As a precocious six-year-old child she had tried to keep up with her older brothers Dillon and Parker as they played cowboys up and down this very hallway back in the days when the floor was then new parquet and running on it made a lot of noise. Considering that Brinley was cattle while her older brothers were cowboys, she did a lot of running if she didn’t want to be lassoed.
Today, the floor was a darker tone of hickory wood. So many layers of history there.
She left her suitcase and the pile of evening gown outside Dillon’s door and then headed for the elevator rather than the stairs because the former went downstairs to the hallway outside the gourmet chef’s kitchen.
She headed for the refrigerator. Cara always had food there. Brinley was foraging for said food in the double-wide Sub-Zero when she heard the sound of clogs getting louder in the French country kitchen.
She spun around. She was right. It was Cara. She was wearing what looked like Mom’s old pink lambs-wool sweater. Mom usually cleared her wardrobe once a year, and Cara and her teenage daughters got first dibs.
“My sweet Brinley!” Cara opened up her arms and waited for Brinley to hug her. “I didn’t see you last night after the party since I had to leave early.”
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