Or maybe he needed an accountant like Brinley had said.
Okay. I admit it now. I’m no good with this.
But maybe if he could borrow some money—
No, wait.
Brinley had alluded to him that he shouldn’t borrow anymore money.
Aarrgh. But what does she know about poverty?
Her words from earlier this month came back to him. She’d called him Mozart. Not the prodigy Mozart, but the thirty-something has-been on the throes of death scribbling scraps of music manuscripts to pay for mediocre medicine to keep him alive for another day. Yeah, that one who died anyway and was buried in a pauper’s grave. That musician.
Nope. Not gonna be like that.
I’ll prove you wrong, Brin.
Ivan nearly ran down the stairs to his basement studio. Using his right hand that still worked, he snapped open the lid to his violin from high school. Gingerly, he unwrapped his left wrist splint. He flexed his fingers slowly, then a bit more forcefully. The pain was still there.
Lord, help me.
He adjusted the tuning pegs on the violin with his right hand. Found the bow.
He turned his left wrist upward for his fingers to reach the strings. A bit of pain there, but he could bear it. But before his fingers could reach full supination, a searing pain stung his wrist and shot up his forearm. He yelped and nearly dropped the violin.
He knew then.
It was over.
Chapter Fifty-Six
“What’s wrong with men?” Brinley tapped the top of the interior door panel where her right arm rested. Outside the pickup it was blustery. She could see the choppy waves as they passed by Massengale Park on Ocean Boulevard. They were dropping off some equipment at another one of Tobias Vega’s job sites before heading to the Village.
“Is that a question, or are you exclaiming?” Tobias didn’t look at her from the driver’s seat.
“Don’t know. Both, I guess.” Brinley listened to the blinker.
Simple quadruple time signature. Blink, blink, blink, blink.
Must everything remind her of Ivan?
“I shouldn’t answer the question, don’t you think?”
“Toby, you can be objective,” Brinley said. “Ask me about women. I’ll tell you.” Uh, maybe. We’re all different.
“You can’t tell me beans about why my girlfriend left me.” He parked the truck.
“Sure can. Two words: your mom.”
Tobias laughed. “You might be onto something.”
“No offense. I love your mom. But if your girlfriend can’t cook better than your mom, it’s over.”
“So I need to date a chef.”
“That’s all there is to it, Toby. Problem solved. I’ll send you the bill.” Brinley stayed in the truck. She watched Tobias call out to a couple of his construction guys from the two-story Victorian with tarp on its roof. They came over and hauled off the pressure washer from the truck bed.
Tobias climbed back into the pickup and backed it out of the driveway. “I don’t know this guy you’re referring to, but I can tell you, if he’s anything like I am, it’s going to be hard not to be able to work, especially doing what you love. You know what I mean?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Take my dad, for example. He’s been a plumber forever. Now he’s retired and he still thinks he’s in charge.”
“He’s still in charge. Your little brother needs too much on-the-job training.” Brinley remembered that episode when Felipe refused to send someone to fix a toilet and almost lost that job at Yun’s house.
Yun’s house.
“Say, Toby? Could we—uh, could we go down a couple of streets? I want to drive by Yun’s house one more time. To say goodbye, you know?”
“Sure thing. My dad’s cut up about Yun’s passing.”
“Lots of people are. I’m one of them. I enjoyed having tea with her.” Someday I’ll see Yun again and we can have another cup of tea.
“Dad thought they had something going.”
“She was so stunning he froze at the door.”
“Really?”
“You know what your dad said to Yun? ‘If you’d just show me the offending commode, I will resolve the issue for you.’”
“That sounds like something he’d say. He’s quite a character. That’s why Mom married him.” Toby turned pensive. “I wish—never mind.”
“You wish your parents never broke up.”
“The divorce was bad on my brothers and me, but I think it took a toll on my parents too.”
“My brother Dill has been through that. One time too many.”
“It’s a silly game, I think. Dad still comes over to Mom’s house when we have birthdays and such because nobody cooks like Mom and he knows it.”
“I’ll pray for your parents.” Brinley meant it.
“Pray? You’re sounding religious, Brin.”
They slowed down behind some traffic.
“It’s not religion, Toby. It’s a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.”
“God. Jesus. Religion. Case closed.”
“Got to believe in something, Toby.”
“Myself. I believe in myself. I am my own god.”
“Your choice.”
“Yep. My choice.” Toby slowed down. “Tell me where to go.”
“Beyond those trees—”
Brinley gasped. In front of Yun’s house was a For Sale sign. In the yard were boxes, full trash bags, old lamp shades, broken shoe racks, and general garbage waiting to be picked up.
“Pull up, Toby.” On her iPhone now, she called her real estate agent. She got out of the truck as Tobias parked, all the time talking on the phone. “Foreclosed? Do you have a courthouse date? Uh-huh. Find out if there are other bids. Call me back pronto.”
In Georgia, a foreclosure meant the McMillans had missed three months of house payments. It could be a quick sale if the lender wanted to get rid of it.
Brinley knew that if she had to bid for it, she would. She didn’t care how much it would cost. She almost always won bids.
But at a high price.
Look what happened when I bought the Schoenberg Strad.
Brinley went up the front porch. She rang the doorbell. Nobody answered. She peered through a window. The entire floor was bare.
Ivan had lost Yun’s house.
* * *
“Let me get this straight.” Tobias frowned as he looked up and down the building facade. “You want this entire warehouse gutted and then nothing?”
Brinley knew it looked bad. Dirty and grimy with age. Abandoned. Broken windows patched up. No one had dared to touch it with a hundred-foot pole.
“Right. Fix any structural or foundation problems.” Brinley stepped on the cracked cement driveway to get to her general contractor. Right there in front of them the entire bottom part of the brick exterior wall was covered with graffiti. Nice street art if the building hadn’t been devalued by vandalism. One block down from Mallery Street and the landscape had surely changed.
“If you let this building sit too long, you’re going to lose money.” There was strain in Tobias’s voice.
“Patience, friend. There’re no bids. You get the rest of it.”
“I’m not worried about that. I have plenty of work to do around town. I’m thinking about you, Brinley. You’re buying up this entire block. It could be a royal flop.”
“You’ll still get paid.”
Tobias raised his palm. “Don’t look at me as your GC right now. Look at me as an old friend. If this entire project fails, you’re going to lose a lot of money.”
“I hear you, Toby.”
“You mentioned something the other day I didn’t catch on to until now when we’re standing here looking at this space with all its acoustics.”
“I said a lot of things.”
“You said that this warehouse could be a centrally located music studio. A music studio for whom?”
Brinley didn’t want to say.
“Don�
�t get your hopes too high up, sister. Sometimes people move on and they never come back.”
“I’m going to rent out this warehouse and Yun’s house—if I get it—one way or another. If things don’t work out, I’ll flip the properties,” Brinley decided. “You know me, Toby. You know I’m not attached to a building, only the history of it.”
“For what it’s worth, I’ve said my piece.” Tobias rolled his eyes. “I think you should raze this warehouse and rebuild.”
“Then it won’t be old, Toby.”
“We can keep a few of these old bricks. Whatever we can salvage.”
“No. I want the warehouse the way they had it a hundred or more years ago. If you have to reinforce it to keep the exterior bricks, do it. For that matter, I want this entire block preserved, if at all possible.”
“Anything you want, Brinley. It’s your money. As long as I don’t have to work with Meg. Find another designer, Brinley.”
“You like Meg. You guys work so well together.” Brinley walked around the building.
Tobias was right beside her. “Haha. Did you know she tore up my favorite flannel shirt in your new house when we hung the chandelier?”
“I don’t want to know. I’m glad my house is done now.” Brinley headed for the other building next door, the one that Dad had agreed to invest in. She took a few photos on her iPhone.
“Have you thought of a name yet for this development?”
“Pelican Road after that street out front.”
“You’re going to name this multimillion-dollar investment after a bird?”
“Better Pelican than Crow.”
“Good point. Pelican.” Tobias seemed to be mulling it over. “I’m liking it more and more. You sure you don’t want to go inside?”
“Not until they reinforce everything with steel.”
“You’re afraid the building will collapse on you.”
“The inspectors said everything is fine.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have bought this place, Brinley. Tell me you didn’t buy this building on a whim and then work everything around it.”
“The house I’m living in now, I knew I wanted it the day I saw it. You remember?”
“Yeah. That morning you binged on doughnuts.”
“Uh-huh. Insult me, why don’t you?” Brinley snapped a few more photos before she looked back at the warehouse again.
Tobias might be right. It would probably be cheaper to tear down this building—and the entire block—and start over.
Start over.
Was that what she had to do now without Ivan?
“You still don’t take long to make decisions, do you?” Tobias asked.
“If I know what I want.”
“And if you know how to get it.”
“Well, the difference now is that I pray about it first before I decide.”
“What does your God say about moving on?” Tobias unlocked his truck doors.
Brinley climbed into the work truck. “Huh?”
“When to move on from the past. What does your God say about that?”
“I don’t know, but He knows I like old things.”
“Sister, this is awake-up call. Sometimes old things don’t like you.”
Chapter Fifty-Seven
“I know you don’t want to be here.”
Ivan listened to his sister, Willow, say those words and watched her dish out some sort of shrimp fried rice onto his plate. It didn’t look too great, but considering the circumstances, Ivan could eat anything.
He also knew that free dinner came with a price.
In many ways, Willow reminded him of Grandma Yun, who had never missed an opportunity to get down to business.
“I know you don’t want me here, either,” Ivan said. “I’m sorry I’m imposing on you.”
“It’s not that, Ivan.” She scraped the bottom of the pan.
Ivan sat down at the folding table in the kitchen that was even smaller than Grandma’s on St. Simon’s Island. Willow’s little rented house in DeKalb was only minutes from Emory, where she went to music school to get her master’s degree. To supplement her scholarship and student loans, she taught piano when she wasn’t in class and on weekends.
Willow had gotten a roommate to sublet the second room in the house. That cut her rent in half. But it had left Ivan nowhere to sleep except on the futon in the living room. He had felt uncomfortable all week long with two women walking around him in bath towels.
He had to get out of here.
But where could he go?
He was bankrupt.
Penniless.
Homeless.
He had sold his violin to someone Willow knew for two thousand dollars. That was all he had to live on, possibly for the rest of the year. Willow had taken pity on him and had not made him pay for his food and lodging at her house, but he knew she was stretching her own finances. He didn’t want her to get into debt on account of him.
Willow sat down across from Ivan. The table was small.
Ivan scooted back in his chair, and bumped it against the side of the refrigerator. “Sorry.”
Willow asked Ivan to say a blessing for their food. Ivan didn’t feel thankful at all. He made his prayer quick and short and practically meaningless. His heart wasn’t in it. It wasn’t that he was mad at God, but—
Well, was he mad at God?
Shouldn’t he be mad at himself?
“None of this would’ve happened if Grandpa Otto hadn’t taken out a second mortgage, and Grandma broke her hip and I had to take out third mortgage, and Brin hadn’t bought me a Strad that caused me to get beaten up and end up with a broken wrist.”
“Listen to what you just said.”
“What?” Ivan raised an eyebrow.
“You just blamed everyone else but yourself.”
“I’m just a victim of—”
“Uh-huh.”
Ivan cringed. “I see what you mean. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t dishonor our grandparents’ memories.”
“Tell me more about this Brin.” Willow seemed amused.
“Brinley Brooks. She is—was—my girlfriend. Well, sort of. We only went out for about a month and a half. So maybe I shouldn’t say girlfriend.”
“Was she at the funeral?”
Ivan nodded. I should have held her by my side throughout the funeral. She cried alone.
“I think I saw her.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter now. But for a couple of months it seemed we had known each other all our lives and were meant to be together.”
“How long have you known her?”
“I’ve seen her at various SISO events on and off for about a year before we started going out. We would say hello and no more. She had always been with someone.” Ivan himself was dating Emmeline at that time. “We met up again in December when she came alone to her sister’s birthday party.”
“Something happened?”
“We clicked over Bach.” Ivan regretted it now. He should’ve had more self-control.
“Clicked?”
“We were clearly attracted to each other.” Ivan recalled that Thursday night when he had almost kissed Brinley when he walked her home. “Love came later.”
“How much later?”
Ivan shrugged. “She kept coming over to have tea with Grandma and it just happened.”
“What just happened?”
Walks. Talks. Kisses. Hugs. More kisses.
“I wrote her a song. She didn’t—doesn’t—know it’s for her.”
“That serious, huh? Does she know that if you wrote her a song you’re in too deep? You didn’t write a song for Gemma.”
“Gemma? She’s ancient history, Will.”
“Six or seven years ago. Not too long.”
Gemma was Ivan’s last serious girlfriend. Anyone he had dated between Gemma and Brinley hadn’t been serious prospects. Not even Emmeline.
“Brin—Brinley is—was—different.”
“I’m sorry.” Willow d
rank water.
“Sorry? For what?”
“Your tenses, Ivan. You can’t decide if she’s in the past or still in the present. You can’t decide if you should call her Brin or Brinley.”
“I guess she’s Brinley now. Only her close family members call her Brin.” Ivan ate silently. Then: “I love her, Will.”
“Have you told her?”
“I can’t.”
“Because?”
“I can’t afford to love her.” He knew Willow was studying him, thinking about what to tell him. She’d always been like that. Maybe she had something to say he should hear. He waited.
“Is she high maintenance?” Willow asked. “Help me understand who this woman is.”
“She’s an heiress. Billions to her name.” Ivan got up and cleared the table. He loaded the dishwasher with his right hand. Thank God for dishwashers.
“Oh, I see. To her, a five-million-dollar Strad is pocket change. Something like that?”
“Five-point-four.”
“Even worse.”
“Well, she has at least several Strads she inherited from her grandfather. So yes, stuff like that doesn’t matter to her, I don’t think.”
“What matters to her?”
“People, I think, even before she was saved. More so after. She kept doing things for Grandma and me, buying us stuff, taking care of things. I’m thinking they were all primarily for me. She seemed genuinely happy to be with me and do all that stuff for us.”
“Why didn’t she pay off the house then if she kept pouring money on you?”
Ivan stopped what he was doing. “If I hadn’t broken up with her, she might have.”
“You’re a fool, big brother.”
“I’m not a beggar.”
“You could’ve saved Grandma’s house from being foreclosed on.”
“I don’t like handouts.”
“What are you doing now?”
“I told you I sold my last violin. I could help with groceries and such.”
Willow got up, hugged her brother. “No need. I wasn’t trying to be mean. I was only trying to help you think through this.”
“I appreciate that, Will. But truth be told, I don’t want Brinley’s money.” Ivan grimaced. “I want to be my own man, you know. But I can’t afford her. I can’t even get a job with my injury now, let alone marry and feed a family.”
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