by Nancy Bush
“Ah.” Lucy tried to keep her tone neutral, though it sounded like some kind of sci-fi plot. The kind where a faction, or a fiend, or a government chose to determine the next generation’s makeup. It gave her a small case of the willies.
They fell into awkward silence, and Lucy finally broke it with, “So, I’m going to have a nephew? Evie’ll be thrilled. She’s always wanted John and me to have a baby.”
Layla squinted against a swoosh of rain-filled wind but didn’t respond.
Lucy said, “You know, Kate would do almost anything for a baby.”
“I’ll get her Naomi’s number. She might not want it yet, but maybe later. I don’t know what the problem is exactly, but they seem able to conceive. She just hasn’t been able to carry till term.”
“Maybe that’ll work,” Lucy said, unconvinced. She sympathized with Kate’s plight, but Kate was the kind of person who could resent Layla for trying to help.
“When my baby comes . . .” Layla trailed off, seemed to want to start again, but in the end just shook her head.
“You’re happy about this?” Lucy questioned.
“Oh, for sure. I want him. The baby,” she said. “I’ve already got a name. But I’m pretty sure Neil will want something else. Maybe a family name.”
“What’s Neil’s last name? I don’t think you ever said.”
Layla looked at Lucy and seemed about to answer, but at that moment a Prius with an Uber sign pulled up to the front of the restaurant and she changed the subject back to Stonehenge. “You’ve got to keep Dad from selling, Luce. Jerome Wolfe will tear it down given the chance, so we can’t give him the chance.”
“Okay.”
“Promise?”
“Hey, I’ll do the best I can.”
Lucy climbed into the backseat beside her sister, who seemed to collapse into a blue funk for the rest of the ride.
* * *
The Uber driver pulled away, water running off the back tires as it finished the half circle drive after dropping Lucy off. Pulling out her keys, Lucy ran to the front door, head down against the rain. Normally, she entered through the door from the garage, but as she’d left her car at the restaurant, she pressed a key into the front lock and pushed open the iron-banded wooden door that led into the two-story Tudor she’d called home since her marriage to John Linfield.
“I’m home!” she called, walking down the hall to the kitchen and family room.
“Hi, Mom,” Evie said. She was on the couch, nose deep into her iPad, her white rabbit—which she’d named after Lisa of Gaspard and Lisa, though the jury was out on whether the character was really a rabbit or a dog—sat on the couch beside her today, a sign that Evie was feeling a bit of anxiety. The television was set to HGTV, and Bella looked over at Lucy with a smile on her face. Her hand was just setting down the TV remote, and Lucy suspected the sitter had changed the channel as soon as she’d heard Lucy’s return.
“Hello, Mrs. Linfield,” Bella said. Her lashes were thick with mascara and her eye shadow was mauve and gray.
“Hey, Bella,” she said easily. She wondered what she’d been watching before the channel was changed.
“Evie and I made cupcakes,” she said. “We’ve been talking about surrealism. You know Dali’s The Persistence of Memory?”
Lucy had an immediate vision of Salvador Dalí’s 1930s painting of melting clocks. Ah, yes. Bella and her newfound intellectualism . . . Lucy found herself yearning for a good old cry of “Defense! Defense!”
“When you say ‘we,’ you mean you and Evie?” Lucy asked.
“I showed Evie some of the surrealists we’re studying in my art appreciation class. There are several theories about what the clocks represent. Time, for certain. Its impermanence. Using ‘persistence’ in the title with clocks that are melting appears to be a sarcastic statement, which surrealists of the time often used in their work.”
“That’s really interesting.” She looked at her daughter’s back. “Did you have dinner, Evie?”
“Leftover pizza,” Evie said over her shoulder.
“You okay?”
Evie half-turned so Lucy could see her profile. “Just a lot of homework.”
“Okay.”
Lucy paid Bella, who was eager to move onto other theories and surrealists as she headed out the door. Bella was still educating Lucy as she walked down the block to her own home, which was just around the corner.
Sheesh.
“How’s homework?” Lucy asked Evie, closing the door after Bella and walking back to the family room.
“All done.” Evie finally looked up and gave her a bright smile. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
“Yes, well, good.” Lucy smiled back. She picked up the remote and pushed the “Last” button. The program defaulted to network news.
Huh.
She texted John to let him know she was home as Evie asked, “Did you want to know what Bella was watching?”
Lucy looked up and at the TV again. “It wasn’t this?”
“No, she was watching On Demand. Something with a lot of f-words. She told me to close my ears.”
“Wonderful,” Lucy said.
“It’s not like I haven’t heard it before.”
“Okay. Let’s not tell your father.” She was already wondering if he knew her father’s plans to shutter the store and whether either of them still possessed a job.
“I won’t tell John if you don’t,” Evie said.
Evie had never been able to call her stepfather “Dad,” even though John had encouraged her to in the beginning. Lucy had hoped for the same thing, a bit selfishly perhaps, because she was tired of explaining the circumstances of Evie’s birth, a one-night stand with a guy she’d met in college. That guy had never called her again, and though, when she’d learned of her pregnancy, she’d initially tried to make contact, he’d been long gone.
She’d determined at that moment to raise the child alone, much to the disgust of her father, who’d held it against her ever since, even though he’d grudgingly allowed Evie to worm her way into his heart. Abbott had also let Kate’s daughter from her first marriage, Daphne, do the same, so it was no great accomplishment. Not that Daphne wasn’t a nice kid. She was. It was just that Abbott seemed extraordinarily interested in anything to do with his son, far less so with either of his two daughters.
“Can I go home with Daphne tomorrow after school?” Evie asked. “She invited me.”
“Does Kate know?” Lucy didn’t see how that was still on the table.
“Yeah.”
Her daughter’s voice held enough of a note of uncertainty to make Lucy give her the evil eye. “You sure?”
“Daphne said it was.”
“If it’s okay with Kate, I guess it’s okay.”
“Can you text her?”
Lucy wanted to demur, but her daughter’s face was so full of hope that she sent a quick text to Kate, saying Daphne had asked Evie to come over after school the next day, but if it wasn’t on Kate’s radar, no big deal.
“Has Dad called?” Lucy asked as she sent the text. Maybe Evie wouldn’t call John Dad, but it was second nature to Lucy.
“Uh-uh. But Grandma did.”
Lucy looked over in surprise. Layla’s and her mother, Sandra, had divorced Abbott when he’d taken up with Lyle’s, whom he’d married and then subsequently divorced as well. Both ex-wives had forged new lives for themselves, marrying new husbands and moving out of state. Lucy and Layla’s mom now lived in California, Lyle’s in Ohio. Neither of them had enjoyed their marriage to Lyle Abbott Crissman III, and their maternal instincts apparently had been smothered by his overbearing attitude as they weren’t close to their children either.
“Did you talk to her?”
“She said she was thinking of coming to visit.”
“Wow.” Lucy scrolled through her call list and punched in her mother’s number. When she reached her, Sandra said, “Oh, darling, we were trying to come through your way on our tri
p to Europe, but now I don’t think it’s going to work out. If I could’ve reached you and gotten assurances you would be there, I would have made plans. But you’re never home.”
“Mom, I’m going to get rid of the landline. Then you’ll have to call me on my cell.” This was a battle Lucy waged every time she spoke with her mother, who simply refused to call any other number for reasons that escaped Lucy.
“But I usually get you at home,” her mother protested.
“No. You don’t. You call, and I call you back on my cell.”
“Let’s not fight.”
“I’m not fighting, I’m just . . . trying to change your behavior.”
“You make me sound like I’m a problem.” Her voice moved away from the phone, as if she were pulling away.
“You’re not a problem, Mom. You’re just ... our communication could be better.”
“Well, I’m sorry I can’t come. It was nice talking to Evie. I can hardly believe she’s nine. Before you know it, she’ll be a teenager. I remember when you were that age, and you and Layla came to visit and you wanted a Shetland pony more than anything and Layla drew you a blue one on a piece of construction paper and you had a fit. . . .” Her mother waxed rhapsodic on the one memory she seemed to have of her girls; she couldn’t recall their high school years very well, or anything before. A few moments later, she found a reason to get off the phone, and Lucy was left with the same feeling she always had after speaking with her mother: I will never be that way with my daughter.
“You want some popcorn?” Lucy asked determinedly. She had a bit of a headache now that her martinis had worn off.
“Did Aunt Kate get back to you?” Evie dropped the iPad and came into the kitchen, where Lucy was pulling out the popper.
She checked her phone and read from Kate: It’s fine. Hardly a ringing endorsement, but Lucy hadn’t really expected anything else.
“Looks like you can go.”
“Yay!” Evie said, delighted.
They made the popcorn together, and Lucy realized her jaw was set and she forcibly relaxed it so she could enjoy the snack. She sat beside her daughter on the couch and blindly watched the rest of the news as Evie chatted about the events of the day—she’d made a new friend who wanted Evie to come to her birthday party that weekend—and wondered vaguely why John hadn’t answered her text.
She was just about to text again when her phone trilled. She glanced at the screen.
I’ll be late.
No explanation why, and she realized she was almost relieved. She didn’t want to talk to him about her family and the business and Kate or any of it. If he hadn’t heard from Kate yet, well, then, it would be up to her to give him the news about Crissman & Wolfe, which she didn’t want to do.
She felt depressed and poked around her feelings to figure out exactly what was bothering her. Well, the store, for sure. Crissman & Wolfe was once a big deal in Portland, and her father was still living off the afterglow. And Stonehenge. Like Layla, she didn’t want her father and brother to sell it for any price.
How would her great-grandfather, Criss, feel about that if he were still alive? Not good, she suspected, although by all accounts the man had been a true son of a bitch. A financier who had entered the retail business with Herbert Wolfe, a man with an eye toward development, Lyle Abbott Crissman had founded one of the premier Portland mercantiles of the time. He and Herbert had run in elite circles and married accordingly, both to well-respected women from good families. Criss had showered Lucy’s great-grandmother, Edwina, with gems and furs, and had taken her to all the important social events in the first years of their marriage. He gilded the appointments of the interior of their house in the west hills until it looked like a harem, according to family lore and the records of the time. But he was a man who grew bored easily, and he apparently grew very bored of his wife, whom he began denigrating in front of society friends at every opportunity, once even striking her. There was a story of him backhanding her, causing her to trip over an ivory elephant-shaped footstool in the front parlor and crack her head on the marble floor. Apparently, she never was quite the same after that. She kept taking off the now-valued multimillion-dollar diamond ring he’d given her, leaving it lying around the house where anyone could steal it. One of the servants tried once, but the ring was recovered. Sometime later, that maid’s body was found floating in the Columbia River. Everyone swore she’d slipped from the footbridge that ran along the edge of Stonehenge’s property, where the Crissmans summered, tumbled down the cliff, and into the river to her death. Criss told the authorities the poor woman had been beating the dust from one of the tiger skin rugs that adorned his den, the skins being gifts from admirers, big game hunters who apparently wanted to curry favor with the financier, and the maid had simply lost her footing and fallen to her death. A sad tale, but bad things happen ... or so the story went.
Sometime after that incident, Edwina disappeared, along with a lot of her jewelry. Criss was beside himself, bellowing and raging, firing all the staff members, who pretty much ran for their lives, as far away from Portland as they could get, terrified of Criss’s possible retribution.
Criss’s son, Junior, was about ten at the time of his mother’s disappearance. Of all the Crissmans, he’d been the quiet one, made more so without motherly protection. Criss hadn’t been much of a parent and was a skinflint with his money. He died of a heart attack when Junior was about forty, and that was when the spending began between Junior and Abbott, who was about twenty at the time. Lucy’s grandfather and father dismantled all Criss’s copious wealth, selling, spending, and losing ... in an apparently stunningly short amount of time.
Was it any wonder she had reservations about Abbott’s decision to shutter the store?
Chapter Four
Lucy popped open a can of club soda, pouring it over ice. It was depressing losing the department store. She supposed she should also be depressed about her grandfather and father’s profligate spending, but she’d never really considered her great-grandfather’s money as hers . . . although it would have been nice to have the family still possess the fabulous jewels, supposedly worth a fortune in the 1920s and undoubtedly stratospherically valuable in today’s market, that Criss had bought for his bride and Edwina took with her when she left.
She was telling herself it didn’t matter—families’ wealth and prestige rose and fell through generations—when she heard John’s car enter the garage. She was standing by the sink, holding her glass of club soda, when he entered the kitchen.
His expression was stiff as he asked, “More drinking?”
His tone got under Lucy’s skin. When had it started that everything he said and did annoyed her? “I just can’t seem to stop,” she told him. “Maybe you should check me in to a rehab facility.”
He eyed her carefully. “What’s wrong?”
So, Kate hadn’t given him the word about the store. Neither had Abbott. Of course.
She looked her husband over. He was lean and tall and wore his brown hair, now slightly silvered, short and clipped close around his ears. He wore a dress shirt and slacks but no coat and tie, the semicasual look that had slowly developed over the past few years at Crissman & Wolfe. He possessed a strong jaw and deep-set hazel eyes and would be considered handsome by most people’s standards. If he was unbending and slightly humorless, she’d accepted that when she married him. He was a good man, and she’d been looking for a good man, someone who would take on responsibility, not shirk it.
So why are you so dissatisfied?
She said, “I think we’re both out of a job. Dad is shuttering Crissman and Wolfe except for online sales. That’s why Kate asked Layla and me to the Pembroke Inn. To let us know.”
“I haven’t heard anything about it.” His tone suggested therefore it wasn’t true.
“That’s what Kate told us. And they’re selling Stonehenge, too.”
He smiled faintly. “I can’t believe that.”
“She
said Jerome Wolfe’s made an offer.”
That connected. John’s head snapped back as if she’d slapped him. “You’re kidding. What for? A boutique hotel? Not on those grounds.”
“Some modern development probably.” A wave of sadness swept over her. This was the root of her depression. Not the loss of the business and even their jobs. Stonehenge.
“I think Kate’s getting ahead of herself,” John said dismissively.
“Man, I wish you were right.”
“Abbott would have said something about it,” he said stubbornly. John was a great one for sticking to his own narrative, digging in his heels when someone told him something he didn’t want to hear.
“Kate didn’t want to tell us about Stonehenge. That just came out.”
“Maybe Wolfe’s made an offer, but it hasn’t been accepted yet.”
“Yeah, well . . .” She waved a hand at him. She didn’t really want to talk about it anymore.
He whipped out his cell phone. “I’m calling Abbott.”
“Good. I was planning to do that myself, but I wanted to talk to you first.”
“We’re not out of our jobs.”
“Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but . . .” The writing’s on the wall.
She fell into silence, waiting for John to connect, but she could tell his call went to her father’s voice mail. Her husband’s lips tightened, and the line deepened between his brows. She watched his thumbs press the tiny keys as he texted a message and said, “If he doesn’t call me back within the hour, we’re going to his house.”
“I’ll tell Evie.”
He lifted his head. “Oh, wait. Maybe I should go by myself. I don’t want Evie to overhear anything until we know what’s going on. You should probably stay with her.”
“He’s my father, and I work for him, too.”
“This whole thing isn’t going to be a problem. You just heard Kate’s wish list. It’s not the truth. Kate’s wanted to run Abbott’s businesses for a long time, and this is her bid to do it. Luckily, Abbott’s got her number.”