“Welcome,” she called to Diana as she added an order to a wire that traveled the length of the prep area. “I hope we don’t disappoint you. California is a long way to come for a deli sandwich, especially with New York so close.”
“Michael told me the delis in New York can’t hold a candle to yours.”
Naomi put her fingers to her lips and blew them a kiss.
“Nice one,” Michael said, leaning into Diana so she could hear him without shouting. “Now comes the hard part.”
It took almost ten minutes to settle on what had been her first choice, corned beef on rye and an enormous Kosher dill pickle. After doing some quick calorie calculating, and telling herself she would settle for an undressed wedge salad for dinner, she added a root beer milkshake. She’d lost twenty pounds in the too-sick-to-her-stomach-to-eat diet that came with having her world fall apart, and it wasn’t something she wanted to go through again just to fit into her new wardrobe.
Rather than go back outside and wait in line to place their order, Michael took out his phone and called it in. “It’s something Naomi does for her regulars. There are a couple of workers in the back who take care of all the phone orders, so depending on how many people called in before us, we should be on our way in half the time.”
Fifteen minutes later they were out the door and on their way to West Cliff Drive to see if they could snag a bench on the walkway to eat their lunch and watch the surfers.
“I DIDN’T EXPECT there would be an ocean smell,” Diana said, tilting her cup to gather the last drops of milkshake before putting it into the bag they’d used for their empty wrappers. “It’s not exactly fishy, it’s more salty, but it’s something else, too.”
Michael shrugged. “I’ve never given it any real thought. All I know is that when I’ve been away, I like the way it smells when I come home.” He made a grab for a napkin that was about to take flight. “What’s Topeka like?”
“I don’t know . . . like any other city, I guess. It’s when you get out in the country that things are different. Everything there is tied to the seasons—turned earth in the spring and harvesting the wheat in late summer. I think I’ll miss the growing season most of all. I was sure there couldn’t be anything more beautiful than the wind sweeping across a wheat field, but that was before I saw the ocean.”
“I have no idea where they grow wheat around here, but the Salinas Valley is only a few miles away. You can get an entire salad there, from fancy lettuce to mushrooms and tomatoes. Plus, there’s artichokes and Brussels sprouts.”
“Oh, yum.”
He laughed. “Sounds like you’ll be skipping the farmers’ markets around here. If you want to see something beautiful grown in greenhouses, there’s always Andrew’s orchids.”
“He promised to give me a full tour when they get back from Botswana.” Diana twisted sideways to face Michael, bringing one leg up to tuck under the other. “Have you always lived here?”
“The answer to that has a lot of Penny Dreadful elements to it. Are you sure you want to hear it?”
“Penny Dreadful—how fun. I haven’t heard that term since my freshman lit class.” A breeze caught the strand of her curly shoulder-length hair that refused to stay tucked behind her ear, and whipped it across her face. Impatient with the battle, she gave up and reached into her purse for an elastic band, finger combing the mass into a ponytail.
“I’ll give you the abbreviated version or we’d be here the rest of the day, and you’d be making up places you had to be.” He leaned back and put his hands behind his head. “My family first rented the house that Jeremy’s working on when I was a kid. We’d stay there one month every summer. For a long time I thought one of Dad’s parishioners owned it and cut us a deal, but it was my mom who’d found it through a friend of hers. She loves the ocean more than almost anyone else I know. And she was happier here than she ever was at home.”
“Almost?” It seemed a strange qualifier.
“Shiloh tops the list. After she’s been cooped up in the hospital, you can see a physical change come over her when she returns home again. Unlike most people, she really likes it when there are clouds or storms or fog. That’s the only time she doesn’t have to protect herself from the sun.”
“Is she in the hospital a lot?”
“She has a particularly bad form of lupus that hasn’t left her a lot of time in remission. Depending on where it manifests itself in her body, she could be in the hospital more than out.”
He took his phone out of his pocket and looked at it on the off chance he’d missed the text from Peter setting up their phone call about what to do with Diana. The nine-hour time difference made connecting difficult, but this was something that couldn’t be put off, especially now that she’d shown up a whole week early. The longer they waited to tell Diana that she might not have a job after all, the harder it would be.
“Am I keeping you from something?” Diana asked.
“Sorry—I’m expecting a call.” He shoved the phone back in his pocket. “Where were we?”
“You were telling me about Shiloh coming home from the hospital.”
One day, if Diana stuck around after what they were going to do to her, he would introduce her to Shiloh. He had a feeling they were alike in a lot of ways and that they’d slip into a friendship as easily as Jeremy joined complex miter joints. “I’m sorry. I forgot you didn’t know her.”
“So you stayed at the beach house every summer,” she offered instead of pursuing information about Shiloh.
“Over the years we got to know most of the people who lived in the cove. One was Peter Wylie. It wasn’t until I was in high school and saw something he’d painted hanging in my girlfriend’s house that I discovered he wasn’t just a local artist who sold pictures to tourists—he was world-famous.”
“I’m confused. I thought Peter Wylie was your father. When you said you were the son of a preacher, I just assumed he gave up his church to become an artist.”
Michael laughed. “He’s my mother’s second husband, and about as far away from being a preacher as you can get. I wasn’t kidding when I said this gets complicated.”
Diana was reluctant to admit that she’d never heard of Peter Wylie until Cheryl called and said there was a bookkeeping job opening at his galleries, and would she like to move to California to work for him? Peter scheduled a Skype interview from the Italian villa he had rented in Italy that left her excited and hopeful.
They settled on the wage and benefit package, and she was hired. Just like that, she was working again. It felt good. No, it felt wonderful. Someone wanted her.
She’d texted him several times with questions, and despite a killer itinerary filled with meet and greet sessions at galleries scattered throughout seven countries, he always got back to her within a day.
She liked Peter and wished she could continue learning the business from him, instead of Michael. He’d been easy to talk to and up-front about the fact that one of his galleries—the one that specialized in prints and lithographs—was in financial trouble and might have to be closed. Her first responsibility would be to look for ways to stem the bleeding, and if that couldn’t be done, then to figure out the best way to close the doors with as little consequence to their employees, vendors, and the neighborhood as possible.
The idea that she would be using skills she’d learned in her forensic accounting classes excited her. Up to now her entire career had centered on standard accounting practices, and there were times she seriously doubted she’d make it to retirement without finding a way to clear the cobwebs from her mind. She couldn’t wait to get started on the Santa Cruz gallery’s books. Especially since, according to Peter, the Carmel gallery was in good shape, requiring little more than standard bookkeeping.
“I like complicated,” she said.
“Without going int
o a lot of boring detail—”
But she loved detail. You had to be a detail person to be a bookkeeper. She smiled. “You’re not boring me. With all the baggage I’ve been carrying lately, it’s refreshing to hear about someone else’s.”
Michael no longer questioned why he was telling her intimate details of his life. It was his screwed up way to show her that what was about to happen had nothing to do with her, that he and Peter were responsible.
“My dad was going through a midlife crisis and decided he and my mother needed to spend some time apart. That morphed into him deciding he wanted a divorce, which made it a little tricky to convince the congregation that he was still the good guy. He knew what kind of gossip was making the rounds about my mother, but he did nothing to protect her. Instead, he acted like the wounded party and accepted all the cakes and casseroles and offers to do laundry that came with the tea and sympathy. Then he woke up one morning and decided God didn’t want him to get a divorce after all.”
“And in the meantime your mother had moved on with her life.” The scenario was one she’d pictured for herself in a hundred different ways. Instead, her ego was still bleeding. She was tired of all the bandaging it required, but couldn’t seem to move on.
“Not quite. She landed feet first into her own set of complications. It turned out that Peter had been in love with my mother from the first day he met her. When he found out that she and my father were getting a divorce, he figured it was now or never and finally told her how he felt.”
“Wow,” she said. “And?”
“She’d never thought of him that way. Actually, she’d always believed he was single because he was gay.”
“You’re kidding.” But before he could say anything, she added, “No, it makes perfect sense. Where I grew up it’s not possible for a preacher’s wife to have a close male friend any other way. Peter had to be gay. At least in her mind.”
Michael shifted positions, leaning forward and putting his elbows on his knees. “But he wasn’t.”
“You didn’t like Peter back then, I take it?” she said carefully. In high school several of her friends’ parents had gotten divorced, and every one of them wound up blaming the new spouse, logic be damned.
“I liked him a lot actually. But it took a while before we became friends.” He looked at Diana and smiled. “Real friends, not the lip service kind. I just regret how screwed up my dad’s life has been since he decided to drag my mother through his midlife crisis. He didn’t take it well when she refused to come back for more.
“Eventually the deacons gently suggested he find another place to spread God’s word. He surprised us all when he accepted an offer from a small church in Montana. I don’t think he paid attention to the ‘small’ part in the letter, only the part about how long they’d gone without guidance and how much they needed him. Turned out the majority of the membership considered attending services on Christmas and Easter was all God expected or wanted from them. He gets by on the kindness of the women who bring him food from their gardens and eggs from their chickens, and the rancher who tithes with a side of beef every year.”
“And your mother? Is she happy?”
“Deliriously—her word, not mine.” He turned to look at Diana. “She says she found her soul mate.”
“Ouch. That must have been hard for your dad to hear.” With all the pain that came with a breakup, none was as sharp or deep as seeing an ex-partner truly happy. “Did you still see him a lot after he moved?”
He sat up straight again, reaching for their garbage bag and folding the top. “About as often as his congregation—Christmas and Easter. He wants me to move to Montana, but I’m a Californian, through and through. I can’t imagine what I’d do living back there.”
“I was so sure when I was growing up that I would get out of Kansas as soon as I could. I’ve had a case of wanderlust from the day I read my first Ranger Rick magazine at the dentist’s office.”
He looked at her with new interest. “Where have you lived?”
“Everywhere—” she laughed. “In my mind, that is. In reality, this is the first time I’ve been to a state that doesn’t border Kansas.”
“That’s a start.”
“How many states have you been in?”
“Twenty-seven. It’s not as impressive as it sounds. I have relatives on the east coast, where you can hit five states in a day. Most of the rest came from a trip I took with my brother a few years back.”
“I’m wondering whether I have it in me to stay away from everything I’ve known and everyone I love.” She realized the minute it was out that she’d made a mistake. Giving Michael the impression she had doubts about whether or not she would stay in California wasn’t the way to instill confidence in Peter’s decision to hire her.
“I don’t mean that the way it sounds. It’s just that Topeka has over a hundred thousand people, but block by block, church by church, neighborhood by neighborhood, it’s like living in a small town. One where everyone looks out for each other. I’m going to miss that.”
“California has absorbed too many cultures to be known for anything but diversity. There are communities out here that are like Topeka. But there are some that encourage independence and have people who spend an entire lifetime living next door to someone they never meet.”
“I would go nuts living in a neighborhood like that.” She put her hands on her knees and stood, taking the bag from Michael and heading toward the garbage can.
It was obvious she’d planned to come back, but Michael followed her, deciding it was a good time to leave.
They moved to the curb and waited for traffic to clear. “Is the gallery near here?”
He pointed north. “A couple of blocks that way.”
“Would you mind driving by on the way back? I’d love to see it.” Before she took the job, she did an Internet search for Peter Wylie’s work, and was relieved to discover she liked it. She couldn’t imagine spending five days a week surrounded by the works of a Jackson Pollock wannabe.
When he didn’t answer right away, she remembered seeing him check his watch earlier. “Sorry—I forgot you were expecting a call. I don’t have anything to do this afternoon. I can come back later.”
Taking her to the gallery when it was possible she would never work there seemed downright mean. Of course he could be wrong about how all of this was going to end. Hell, he could be wrong about everything.
He absently touched her arm, forming a connection as they crossed the street. He was only a couple of days away from becoming the world’s biggest jerk, or close to it. When that happened, she was going to wish she’d never heard of California, or Santa Cruz, or Peter Wylie Galleries. The least he could do was give her a couple of good memories before the bubble burst.
He opened her door and moved around the car. “There’s not much to see. It won’t take long.”
Chapter Five
THE PICTURES OF the gallery didn’t do it justice. The building was a block from the ocean, but easily accessible to those drawn off the beaten path by the lure of a historic home constructed to look like a lighthouse. She could see why the gallery would appeal to anyone looking for an out-of-the-ordinary souvenir of their trip to Santa Cruz. Instead of the typical hats and tee shirts and seashell frames she’d seen yesterday in the shop next to the grocery store, they could have a limited edition print of a painting by the area’s premier artist.
The body of the building was painted a Carolina blue, the shutters a medium grey, the trim an off-white. The shingles that covered the tower sported a darker weathered gray, the optic section at the very top of the tower was a circle of green-tinted glass panes. A narrow walkway with a sturdy metal railing surrounded the lookout.
Diana tried to take it all in from where they’d parked at the back of the building, but had to move to the front to see eve
rything.
A ten-foot-wide section of grass ran the length of the building, with flowerbeds tucked against the house and behind the white picket fence. A classically simple sign hung over the gate—Peter Wylie Gallery.
“Nice,” Diana said, her tone carrying more appreciation than the word.
“You should have seen this place when my mother found it. She was the only one who could see its potential. Even Peter called it a money pit in the making, and he thinks my mom is the most brilliant person he knows.”
“What happened?”
“Jeremy.”
“Beach house Jeremy?”
“The same. It took him almost a year but he turned what everyone considered a teardown into a place listed in all the tours of Santa Cruz.”
“Can’t ask for better advertising.”
“They hoped the lithographs and limited edition prints would work well in this market— they just didn’t have any idea how well.”
“And then it all fell apart this past year?” she asked, repeating what Peter had told her.
“More like a year and a half,” he said.
“And you have no idea why?” If she weren’t days away from a job where it would be up to her to look for an answer, she never would have asked the question.
“We’re working on it.” His tone made it clear he didn’t want to talk about it anymore.
At his abrupt answer, the follow-up questions she’d wanted to ask stuck in her throat.
Michael dug out his keys, and opened the front door. Diana followed him inside and waited while he disengaged the alarm. To the right, in what had once been a bedroom in the converted house, was a small office with puzzlingly old computer equipment. Three tall file cabinets sat side by side on the back wall, pre-cloud storage relics. Diana subscribed to copying and storing on redundant cloud systems, followed by the use of a good crosscut shredding company after the legal limit had been reached on disposable audit documents. She had a strong suspicion there were records that went back twenty years or more that were mixed in with important current information, all vulnerable to flood and fire and theft. Warning bells went off, their tolling louder than the Vatican on Easter morning.
The Cottage Next Door Page 3