Chapter 28
“But Mom, I only want to hang out at their house for an hour. Dad said they seemed nice. He said it was okay if it was okay with you, so . . .”
Amy was with Cressida in the office when Rhiannon had come in, asking permission to spend part of the afternoon at the house of a family she, her father, and her brother had met at the beach. The family had a girl Rhiannon’s age. The girl was learning how to play guitar and had promised to show Rhiannon some chords.
But Cressida was having none of it. “I said no. And that’s final. I don’t trust your father’s judgment. Until I meet these people myself you aren’t to speak to them again, do you hear?”
Rhiannon stamped her foot. “But Mom!”
Amy took an involuntary step backward as Cressida flew from her chair and came around the desk. “Go to your room,” she yelled, grabbing her daughter’s arm in a tight grip and shoving her toward the door. “And don’t come out until I tell you to!”
Rhiannon lowered her eyes as she stumbled past Amy on her way out of the office. Amy’s heart was beating rapidly. Cressida’s reaction had seemed overly harsh. After all, Rhiannon had done nothing but—
“Children cannot be allowed to defy their parents,” Cressida said calmly, resuming her seat. She seemed perfectly composed, as if nothing upsetting had happened.
“Yes,” Amy said nervously, continuing to stand with her hands folded before her. Cressida hadn’t invited her to sit and was now staring intently at her computer screen as if she were alone. Amy glanced around the bright, white room and suddenly realized that every framed photo was of Cressida. No portrait of her husband. No cute shot of the children at Disneyland. No group shot of the family seated around a Christmas tree.
Maybe Cressida felt that family photos might distract her from the important work at hand, Amy thought. Maybe the photos of her accepting an award wearing a designer suit; clothed in a stunning glittery gown; wearing a bikini while lounging on a sailboat were reminders of how much she had achieved by hard work, focus, and determination. Yes, Amy thought. That was probably it.
Suddenly, Cressida looked up from her computer and gave Amy a big smile. “Come and sit down,” she said, gesturing to the chair on the other side of the desk. Amy did. “I want you to know that I will be a mentor to you this summer, Amy. And you will be my protégé. How does that sound?”
“Thank you,” Amy said earnestly. Acquiring a mentor had been the last thing she had expected from this job, but it sounded pretty good. She thought that protégé was spelled with accent marks, and that always made a word seem more important.
“Lesson number one,” Cressida went on. “The secret to my success is that I do what I want. I refuse to sacrifice anything for anyone.” Cressida laughed. “Especially my husband. Remember, Amy, negotiation is for the weak.”
Amy nodded. What Cressida had just said went against everything she had learned from her mother and her grandparents. But she would definitely give Cressida’s lesson some thought. After all, Cressida was the one who had founded Prior Ascendancy, not the Gleesons.
“I have no tolerance,” Cressida went on, “for women who bitch and moan about feeling guilty for spending so much time at the office. I feel absolutely no guilt about being away from my family. That’s what Will is for, to see to the children.” Cressida gave Amy a conspiratorial smile. “Frankly he’s not good for much else.”
Amy smiled back, but in truth she was shocked by the casual way in which Cressida had made the remark. She folded her hands more tightly in her lap, wondering what words of wisdom Cressida would impart next.
“Even in this so-called enlightened day and age,” Cressida said, leaning back in her chair and swiveling slightly, “women are primarily defined by their physical functions. What are we in the eyes of the world but our reproductive organs?”
“I guess I’ve never given it much thought,” Amy admitted.
Suddenly, Cressida leaned forward over the desk. “You have to be aware of these things, Amy,” she said fiercely. “You have to be tough.”
Tough, Amy thought. Maybe Cressida was smart to impose a harsh punishment on her daughter for a minor transgression. Maybe she was grooming Rhiannon for a successful future by practicing “tough love.” Amy had certainly never experienced tough love from her mother or grandparents, but maybe people who wanted to train their children to achieve great things in life used tough love regularly.
“I bet you want Jordan and Rhiannon to work for you one day,” Amy said, not quite sure why she did.
Cressida laughed and sat back again. “God, no! I want them to excel in a career, but the last thing I want is for either of them to work for me. No, if I do my job properly, those two will have established professional lives entirely independent of me.”
Amy thought of all the local families she knew where children had followed their parents into the family business. There were the Gascoynes, for one; three generations of the family were currently running the fishing enterprise and the restaurant. And there was Noah, helping out at his uncle’s clam shack, and there were lots of other examples, too.
“Come with me,” Cressida said suddenly, getting up from her chair. “I have something for you.”
Amy followed Cressida into a small room next to the master suite. She had not been in the room before. Along three of the walls stood the kind of racks you might see in a department store; each rack was laden with clothing. Cressida went to one of the racks and pulled out a cream-colored blouse on a wooden hanger. Of course there would be no padding on Cressida’s hangers.
“Here,” Cressida said, thrusting the blouse at Amy. “You can have this. I have no use for it anymore.”
Amy took the blouse. It was unmistakably silk, the really high-quality kind. It was also a size 6, way too small for Amy. “Thank you,” she said earnestly. Now she had even more incentive for losing those five or ten pounds Cressida had suggested she lose.
“Remember everything I told you today, Amy,” Cressida said, fixing Amy with her penetrating eyes, “and you’ll go far in life.”
Silently, Amy followed Cressida out of the room. No one had ever told her that she would go far in life. In fact, Amy doubted that anyone had ever believed that she could go far in life. She felt grateful and proud at that moment. She had a mentor. Who else in Yorktide had one of those?
Chapter 29
Leda was putting out coffee and a plate of bite-sized cranberry scones when Vera popped by the studio in her usual way.
“Expecting a guest?” she asked.
“A potential client,” Leda told her. “Her name is Margot Lakes.”
“I could leave,” Vera suggested.
“No, stay. Any word on the bank robber?”
Vera shuddered. “My lawyer tells me I’m totally in the clear, and that’s all I need to know.”
“This is one of the reasons I stay single,” Leda said, arranging the sugar bowl and the creamer next to the press pot of hot coffee. “It’s far less risky. No more men for me.”
Vera frowned. “Surely you haven’t written off all men because of that one louse?”
“Of course not,” Leda said, but not without the consciousness of lying. “Anyway, they were both louses, the husband and the wife, and maybe she was worse, allowing the seduction of a young, innocent girl under her own roof. I shudder when I think of how she’s raised her own daughter.”
“I know plenty of artists, and the vast majority of them are totally decent people. What a crock, I’m an artist so I can treat people like dirt.”
“I know. It’s hard to imagine anyone really buying into that nonsense.”
“Other men have been good to you since then,” Vera pointed out. “Charlie, for one. You told me so. And your father and Phil. Why do you continue to allow that creep who could be dead now for all we know determine your life?”
“He doesn’t determine my life,” Leda argued. “It’s just that there are some experiences you can’t entirely get over.
”
“Maybe so. Ooops, there’s the bell. I’ll get it.”
Vera dashed off and returned to the studio a moment later with Leda’s potential client. Margot Lakes was new to the area and had purchased a condo in downtown Portsmouth for which she wanted a few wall hangings and comfy throws. She had heard about Leda’s custom work through a woman who regularly shopped at Wainscoting and Windowseats.
Leda stepped forward and offered her hand. Margot looked to be in her midforties. She was tall and slim with an air of easy sophistication that was impressive without being intimidating. She was dressed in a perfectly fitted dove gray pantsuit and wore a silk scarf around her neck. Her jewelry was structural and silver.
Leda and Margot spent a productive hour going through samples of various materials and poring over images collected from home decorating magazines. Vera looked on from a comfortable chair, munching scones and drinking coffee. It wasn’t lost on Leda that Margot snuck more than one interested look Vera’s way and that when she did, Vera turned her head.
Before Margot left she placed an order and made a second appointment to consider a custom bedspread with matching pillow shams.
“Well, looks like you’ve got a new client for life,” Vera commented when Leda returned to the studio after seeing Margot off.
“Let’s hope so.” Leda looked closely at her friend. “Margot seemed to take to you, but you seemed oblivious.”
“I was not oblivious,” Vera admitted. “But that way lies madness. I told you I’m going to be celibate for the rest of my life. I’m done getting involved with loonies.”
“How do you know if she’s a loony? She seemed eminently sane to me.”
“If she’s interested in me,” Vera said firmly, “she’s crackers. Well, I gotta go. Thanks for the snack.”
When Vera had gone, Leda cleared away the coffee things and considered. What if she could somehow prove to Vera that Margot Lakes was sane and normal and perfectly safe for her to date? It wouldn’t be difficult to ask around discreetly. Margot said she was new to the area, but that didn’t mean people hadn’t heard stories or formed opinions. Leda had never acted as a matchmaker before, but how hard could it be to nudge two nice people toward each other? Probably not hard at all.
Chapter 30
“Why is this crap always littering up the house!” Eddie Franklin wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “This place is disgusting!” He reached for the book sitting on the little end table, grabbed a thick chunk of pages, and tore them from the binding. Roughly he threw the pages into the air. Slowly, they fluttered to the worn rug, to the seat of the old armchair, to the top of the scarred coffee table.
“That book belongs to the library!” Hayley cried.
Eddie snorted. “Spending your time with your nose in a book when you should be out working for the good of your father. You’re a waste.”
Nora, standing stock-still in the corner, shot Hayley a wide-eyed look, as if, Hayley thought, begging her not to further antagonize the man.
“Clean that mess up,” Eddie Franklin commanded. “What’s this world coming to when a man can’t even come home to a clean house after a hard day’s work?”
“You’ve never done a hard day’s work in your life,” Hayley muttered. Her father, already clomping toward the kitchen, hadn’t heard her comment. If he had, he would not have let it go unremarked.
Hayley’s mother hurried over and knelt to gather the scattered pages.
“Mom. Let me.” Hayley reached down, took her mother’s elbow, and helped her to her feet.
“I’ll go and . . .” Nora’s words trailed off as she followed her husband into the kitchen.
With shaking hands Hayley gathered the pages, badly torn along one edge. She wondered how she would explain the destruction to the staff at the Yorktide Library. And then she realized that she wouldn’t need to say a word. Everybody knew her as Eddie Franklin’s daughter. Everybody would assume that he was in some way the author of the crime. It might at least be more face-saving if she blamed herself.
Hayley stacked the last torn page with the others and retrieved what was left of the book itself from where it lay under the coffee table. No, she thought. No one who knew how highly she regarded books would ever believe she had been so careless. If asked she would tell the bald truth, that her father had destroyed the book in one of his rages. She would accept the financial consequences. And she would promise that in the future she would keep materials borrowed from the library hidden from Eddie Franklin.
Hayley went to her bedroom and closed the door. She sat on the edge of the narrow bed and put her head in her hands. Maybe her father was right, she thought. Maybe she was a waste. How crude, wearing a mud mask while on the job. She wondered if Ethan Whitby would rat her out to his father or his stepmother, and while she hadn’t actually done anything wrong, still, she wouldn’t want Marisa Whitby to think she didn’t take her work seriously. She didn’t want to lose a job that paid well, a job that allowed her to function in a clean and pleasant environment, a job that . . . a job that reminded her all too clearly of what she would never, ever have.
Chapter 31
Though Vera was well-off by many people’s standards, she lived modestly in a bungalow that had been built in the 1940s. The first floor comprised a small living room, a kitchen, and a bathroom. A narrow hall led to a deck at the back of the house. On the second floor was Vera’s bedroom, across the hall from which was her home office. Amy thought the most impressive part of Vera’s home was her garden. It was such a peaceful, shaded place, like something out of a fairy tale. Except without goblins.
Vera, Amy, and her mother were on the deck. Vera was manning the charcoal grill, on which she was preparing corn on the cob and burgers. For dessert there were brownies, but Amy had resolved not to have any. And she would skip a toasted bun with her burger. Corn was starchy enough. Cressida would probably skip the corn as well, but Amy knew her own powers of self-denial weren’t half as strong as those of her mentor.
“The roses are stunning this year,” Leda said. “What’s that one over there?”
“That’s Constance Spry,” Vera explained. “Perfect for a cottage-style garden, which as you know is what I go for.”
“Cressida thinks Floribunda roses are the best,” Amy announced. She didn’t know what a Floribunda rose was, exactly, but she hadn’t felt comfortable admitting her ignorance to Cressida.
“What does she mean by the best?” her mother asked.
“Just, you know, better than everything else.”
“Better than other types of roses,” Vera asked, “or better than any other flower?”
Amy felt flustered. “I don’t know exactly.”
Vera brought the platter of burgers and buns to the table. “I always thought that in the matter of flowers it came down to personal taste. But that’s just me.”
Amy took the smallest burger and removed it from its bun.
“What’s wrong?” Vera asked.
“Nothing’s wrong. I’m just limiting my carbs.”
Vera shuddered. “The thought terrifies me.”
“Me too.” Leda Latimer reached for her burger and the jar of mustard.
“I bought a new vacuum today,” Vera announced. “How exciting is that? It’s a Bissell.”
“According to Cressida,” Amy said, “Bissell vacuums are totally unreliable. You should have bought a Dyson.”
“And her reasons for this judgment are what?” Vera inquired.
Amy pretended she didn’t hear the question and using her fork put a piece of burger in her mouth. Cressida’s pronouncements, all of which were stated in such a sure and definitive way, made asking for an explanation somehow impossible. At least impossible for Amy. She wondered if Will ever argued with his wife’s opinions or contradicted her when she got a fact wrong, and she must sometimes get a fact wrong. Everybody did now and then. But maybe Cressida was an exception. In any case, she was an awesome mentor. And she believed tha
t her protégé had the potential to go far.
“Rats. I got mustard on my pants. Be right back.” Amy’s mother hurried into the house.
“It’s funny,” Vera said when she was gone, “but just last night I was thinking about my first job out of college. I was an admin at a law firm in my hometown, and my boss was from hell. She had these horrible mood swings and treated most of the other admins with contempt, but for some reason she liked me.”
Amy made no comment. She had finished her burger, the smallest ear of corn, and a teaspoon of coleslaw but was still hungry.
“After a while I began to feel as if she was preying on me,” Vera went on. “She hated that I had a life of my own. She threw a major fit one day when I told her I couldn’t join her for lunch because I had a doctor’s appointment. And that was it. I quit that very day.”
Amy looked away from the plate of brownies she had been studying and frowned. “Why are you telling me this?”
“No reason,” Vera said, eyes wide. “The memory just popped into my head is all.”
“That’s not why,” Amy said. “You and Mom both think there’s something wrong about my relationship with Cressida. I can feel it.”
“Not wrong necessarily,” Vera corrected. “Though we do question how Cressida is treating you.”
“She’s treating me fine,” Amy shot back. “I make good money and she gives me extras like, well, the other day she gave me a silk blouse. It’s a little too small for me, but I should be able to fit into it by the end of the summer.”
“But you’re not doing the job you were hired to do,” Vera pointed out. “You were hired to be a nanny to her children, not to be, well, whatever it is you are to Cressida.”
“A protégé,” Amy said. “Cressida said she’s my mentor this summer. Anyway, it’s not as if the kids are being ignored. Their father is with them all the time.”
“Mentor?” Vera frowned. “She hired you under false pretenses. That’s deception.”
Amy stared at the brownies again. It didn’t feel as if Cressida was deceiving her. How could a successful woman mentoring a younger woman be wrong? Every young person needed an older and more experienced person to believe in her.
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