His eyebrows rose, and, I realized he was surprised. Did he want me to say no?
“Great. I’ll pick you up Saturday about seven.” He downed the rest of his coffee and set down the mug, standing to head to the door.
“You’re sure?” I couldn’t resist the impulse to tease him.
“I’m sure. Be ready.”
***
I was standing in the foyer, peeking through the sheers. I’d bought a new dress with my tutoring money. The night was warm, and its off-shoulder cotton felt comfy. I had to admit I was surprised when Brice pulled up to the curb. I noticed with some humor that he had no idea I was watching and adjusted his collar and ran his hand through his black hair as he came up to the door. His hand came up to knock, but I jerked the door open, letting him know I’d been watching. He caught my eye, and we exchanged one of those rare, knowing moments. I loved it.
His car was an older model, blue Chevrolet four-door, and while it was nice enough, somehow it didn’t fit him. He picked up on my curiosity. “It’s my uncle’s car,” he said without preamble.
I nodded, expecting him to go on, but he didn’t. There was a curious vibe between us. We had an uncanny way of reading one another’s thoughts. I’d always been on the sensitive side, but this was the first time I’d been around anyone who might have the same thing. I thought he might be aware of it, too.
The restaurant in South Haven was very trendy, and while I wasn’t old enough to drink, I did get a few virgin cocktails and felt very grown up. Brice was a gentleman, and while he was drinking, he didn’t do it to excess. I kept track. His friend introduced me to new people, and I was having a pretty good time. It almost made up for not going to the prom. These people were grown-ups, and I was flattered they seemed to include me.
We left about eleven, and Brice took a meandering route along the lakeshore home. At one point, he pulled off onto a two-track that disappeared into some trees. Is he actually going to try to take me parking? He pulled to one side and turned off the car. It was dark, not even a streetlight glow to see where he was headed. I felt his arm slide behind me and his mouth found mine. He was a good kisser, and I felt myself melting into him.
Brice’s hand began exploring, and I pushed him away. “Brice, I don’t want to do this.”
“Oh, come on. You sure? You taste so sweet.”
I moved his arm from behind me and placed his hand on the wheel. “Take me home and keep to your side of the car. Don’t forget; I’m not eighteen yet.”
He froze and what little alcohol that had dulled his senses cleared long enough for him to absorb what I was saying. “I’ll back off for now, but once you’re an adult, look out, little lady.”
“I think I’ll have some say in that, Brice. But come back and see me when I grow up.”
Chapter 1
Mina
My parents named me for my Great-Aunt Wilhelmina who had thoughtfully emigrated to the States some sixty years earlier from England. She’d been an imposing woman, although I barely remembered our one-time meeting when I was very young. I remembered an enormous bosom and straight, iron-gray hair was that carefully pinned into a flawless bun above the nape of her neck. She spoke in a staccato pattern, and generally, it came out as an order. Luckily, my personality came from my father’s contribution to family and eventually, they agreed my name was too heavy for a little girl to carry around, so, they shortened it to Mina. I think that evolved more because I refused to spell out the whole name, which gives you a clue as to one aspect of the personality I inherited.
I met Marcy Davidson in the third grade. It was at the time of my life when I discovered I could have a personality of my own and Marcy and I played that to the hilt. I came up with the spontaneous ideas, and she was my generally willing cohort in crime. Sometimes, not so willing, though.
She had a brother four years her senior. That was Brice, and he was unremarkable at the time, except when he chose to pester us by turning the garden hose on us as we sat down to a tea party, or to set loose a harmless hog-nosed snake he’d brought back from his woodland adventures. As was typical at that time, we both hated him, and I believe he returned the sentiment. At that point in our lives, big brothers were little more than another layer of bossy supervision, and one that couldn’t be trusted. Despite his best efforts, however, we survived.
I left for college during my eighteenth summer. Marcy wanted to come with me, but the local community college seemed a better fit for her. So, she took up a career in medical billing and me, well, I wanted to be a teacher. Six years later, I got my wish when I was hired by the Bretherton Bay Public School system to teach the fourth grade. That allowed me to move back to Bretherton Bay where Marcy and I picked up our friendship again as if it had never been interrupted.
Marcy had gained another friend in my absence—Judith Peters. Jude was a stylist who specialized in dead people. As each of the town’s citizens died, St. Jude, as we called her, was summoned and the recently departed was given probably the best make-over of their life. She was pale and quiet in that gothic way. She was often the anchor we needed to stay out of trouble.
Trouble met me when I rolled out of bed that morning. I had a summer job as a lifeguard for Bretherton Bay’s beach on Lake Michigan. He came in the small, but freckled persona known as Lukey Danvers.
I stood up, my whistle screeching from my mouth as I waved him in. “Lukey! Get back inside the swimming area. You know you can’t go out past the buoys!”
Lukey waved, grinning and stayed where he was. I took a quick look around and once reassured that no one was drowning, started down the ladder from the elevated lifeguard stand. I got as far as sinking my feet into the hot sand when Lukey grinned again and popped inside the buoyed ropes. I gritted my teeth and kept moving toward the water, refusing to let him play his game of cat and mouse. His eyes grew large, and he came closer to the shore. “Sorry, Miss Stewart!” he called out. “I didn’t know I was outside the buoys.” Lukey was charted to be in my class in the fall, and he needed to learn how to toe the line—now.
“Out of the water, Lukey,” I waved him toward the beach. He looked to his mother for help, but she was deep in conversation with the new owner of Murray’s Pizza, Mike Scalia. Her hat brim sat at an alluring angle, and her very divorcé legs were crossed at the knee. She couldn’t have cared less about Lukey. I waved the boy out one last time, and he pouted as he headed for shore.
I climbed the ladder to the lookout, and with Lukey out of the water, the job soon grew boring. The heat of the sun was making me sleepy and I was having second thoughts about taking a job that gave me little freedom and no relief from the glare that reflected off the sand. The idea of a killer tan had been wonderful—until my tube of sunscreen turned out to be empty.
My cell rang. I didn’t recognize the number but answered. “Hello?”
“Hello there, Mina,” said a vaguely familiar voice that I couldn’t place.
“Hello? Who’s this?”
“I’m down here… look down to the sand just about ten feet to your right. You see me?”
I looked down to see a man in sunglasses waving at me. “I see you are waving, but I can’t place you.”
“It’s David… David Bretherton,” he reminded me, waiting, no doubt, for me to break into a smile of pure joy. I was far less enthusiastic.
“Hello, David, how can I help you?”
His family had founded the town generations before and were easily the wealthiest people we had. The family had a reputation of being very controlling, having their hands in everything political happening in town. David and I had gone to school together, although he was a few years older than me.
“Come on down and visit for a while?” he invited.
I shook my head at him as he sat, pale and burning on the hot sand below. I was enjoying my vantage. “Sorry, can’t. I’m on duty.” I had to toe the line. His family was very influential in town, and I could lose my summer job as well as my teaching job if I wasn’
t suitably deferential. They had a way of getting whatever they wanted and making anyone who opposed them miserable.
“Then I’ll come up!” He pushed himself to his feet and headed toward the ladder.
“No! That is, sorry, David, but no one is allowed up here except lifeguard staff.”
“I know how to swim,” he argued.
“I’m sure, but this is my job, and I’m responsible.” That was probably a foreign concept to him, so I tried another tack. “It’s great to see you again, but we’ll have to catch up another time when I’m off duty,” I added, and that seemed to appease him.
“I’ll be in touch,” he said into his phone, waving up at me again, and I wondered how he’d gotten my number. What was the matter with me? He was a Bretherton. He could find out anything he wanted to know. As soon as he hung up, I blocked his number. Oh, did I? Shame on me!
Chapter 2
Brice
“Damn, but you’ve been keeping yourself scarce!” Todd’s words were accusing, but his attitude genial.
“Did you show up to give me jabs, or talk old times?” I prodded him. I reached over the pub table and held out my hand. “It’s good to see you, Todd.”
“And you, ol’ buddy,” he responded, shaking my hand. “So, what have you been up to?”
The waiter brought us baskets with fries and two famed Shull Brothers Burgers. Seared at 700 degrees and turned only once, a sublime combination of secret spices flavored the meat, locked in at the initial flame. He set down two mugs of the house craft beer and disappeared. Shull Brothers was no burger joint, but a conclave in which the powerful met and transacted business.
Todd picked up his napkin and tucked it into the neckline of his shirt, anticipating the juices he knew would flow once he bit into the fabled burger.
“You hungry?” I asked, amused as Todd’s attention focused on the pleasure before him.
“Better believe it.” He bit down, closed his eyes as he savored the taste and let the juices stream down his chin, stopping them with the napkin just before they dropped onto his light blue Polo shirt. Two more bites followed by a healthy swig of the beer and then he sat back to let the food settle. “So, what have you been up to?”
“Is that really what you’re asking?” I chose to be the observer.
“Actually, there isn’t a lot for me to ask. I mean, let’s look at who you are.”
“What do you mean?” I had a sense he was here to make a point.
“Okay, let’s begin with the fact that you’re brilliant. What did you do, finish your bachelor’s in three years and med school in another three?”
“So…?”
“Then we sat in that lousy bar and threw in our last two dollars for a damned lottery ticket, and what did you do? Won almost a billion dollars? The luck of the draw? C’mon, Brice, face it. You’ve got the golden touch, my boy. Now, here you are, a smart, wealthy, good-looking doctor. Where do you go from here?”
“What makes me think you’re going to tell me?” I took another bite and sat back, waiting for Todd to pitch me. The burger was delicious, but I drew the line at three bites. A nearby table where a woman in a business suit was delicately picking through a salad drew my eyes. The salad looked good, and I wished I’d chosen likewise. I was thinking like a doctor.
Todd was at the top of the crescendo, wiping his mouth with the napkin and pulling it from his neck. He cleared his throat and out came the pitch. “How would you like to be part owner of a residential construction company?”
Bang! There it was. I knew it was coming and even though Todd was probably my best friend, it still stung. He was the only person on the planet, except the IRS and the people at the lottery commission, oh yes, and my lawyer, who knew about the win. Todd and I had each bought a ticket, and it could have just as easily been him who won. The tickets were side by side. But, it wasn’t Todd, it was me, and maybe he was right about my having a little better luck than average, but it was my potential of which I was most proud.
“What do you know about the construction of anything?” I mocked him a little. After all, I couldn’t give in that easily. It would take the thrill of the kill out of asking me, and Todd was all about challenges.
“More than you might think. But, that doesn’t matter because we hire the knowledge.”
“We?”
“Well, sure. Who did you think was going to be your partner?”
I chuckled. “I see what I’m putting in. What are you contributing?”
“Hey, Brice, don’t give me shit, okay? Yeah, you put in the money, and I put in the work. It’s an equitable arrangement.”
“And just how much will this equity cost me?”
“Less than what you think. A little office, a little equipment, some startup capital for salaries and with my salesmanship, we’ll be rolling in it in no time.”
My eyebrows raised at that.
“Okay,” he jumped in to argue with my expression, “so you’re already rolling in it, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t an upside in this for you.”
“Upside? More to take up all the free time I have?” I motioned to the waiter to bring me another beer. It was definitely a two-beer conversation.
“Hey, since you came into your luck, we’ll call it, you’ve been talking about helping people. So, I got to thinking about your idea. Let’s start here, right here in Bretherton, building low cost, but a little more comfortable housing for seniors, right on the lakeshore? We’ll learn the ropes and then move on from there. What do you say?”
“Todd, answer a question for me. What happened to your job at the investment firm?”
At least he had the grace to flush. “Was the wrong fit for me.”
That had been the story of his life. That said, Todd was like a brother to me, and he was right, I did want to do something to improve lives and why not in my hometown? I stuck out my hand. “Let’s see if this fits a little better,” I said as he reached out and shook it.
“No shit?”
I nodded. “No shit. Now, get the numbers together and email them to me. I’ll look them over, but right now, I have to get to work.”
“Work? I didn’t know you’d already opened a practice here.”
“Haven’t. I’m on staff at Bretherton Bay General, in the ER.”
“Wow! All that drama? You like that?”
I stood up, throwing a bill onto the table to cover the check and laid my napkin next to the plate. “You said it yourself. I like helping people,” I said, and he nodded as the double entendre sank in.
“Thanks, Brice.”
“Don’t mention it. And, while we’re on the subject, I mean that. Don’t mention to anyone that I’m your partner; you got that? I’ll work with you through my business manager, Pete Conner.”
“You never told anyone?”
“Nope. Just you and I might tell Marcy, but that’s it.”
“I get it. No sweat. I’ll get those numbers together and over to you.”
I saluted him and left the restaurant, relieved to leave behind the heavy odors of beef and grease. I craved the clean, light air on the lake and decided right then and there to build a combination clinic with some personal quarters in the middle of whatever senior development Todd came up with on the shore. I’d be accessible, and the surroundings would be therapeutic. Maybe Todd was taking one of my ideas seriously, for once.
Chapter 3
Mina
I was feeling a little out of sorts. It had been a long and very hot day and I hadn’t slept well the night before. Even though my little cottage had a window air-conditioner, it could use better insulation to keep the cool in and the heat out.
I was the proud owner of what used to be Aunt Wilhelmina’s summer cottage. It was a tidy, but very small, two-bedroom, year-round home that sat on a bluff overlooking the lake. It had the fabled white-picket fence and rose arbor, but it was barely big enough for just me. I wanted to marry and someday have children, but it was certain we wouldn’t be li
ving in Rose Arbor, as the cottage was named.
It was the beginning of tourist season, and even with the breezes off the lake, the forecasters predicted highs in the upper 90s. The tourists loved it, but me, not so much. Granted, I would take the 90s over a frigid day with a stiff wind. But then again, maybe it was more about my mood and less about the weather.
I was looking forward to an evening at home, a pint of chocolate chip ice cream and an old movie. Since Rose Arbor sat on the water side of the dune, the cellular reception was exceedingly poor. That was the good news. It meant that I got fewer calls in the evening hours. The bad news was that I often was cut off from the world unless I climbed into my little red Focus and drove around to the other side of the dune.
My cell began buzzing. Before I could get to it, it stopped. I waited for voicemail or even the caller ID, but there was none. I decided to ignore it and headed for the freezer to pull out the ice cream. Naturally, that’s when the phone buzzed again and naturally; I didn’t get to it again. Then I knew I was in a mess. I would lie awake all night wondering who it was who was trying to reach me. It was critical that I get within range quickly so the caller would not give up and go away. Grabbing my keys, I ran out to my car, started it quickly and threw it into gear. The tourists littered the roadway with rented bicycles, pointing and gawking at the lake, so it was difficult to navigate around to the far side of the dune. I managed it and pulled into someone’s driveway, the No Trespassing sign clearly visible. During the tourist season, residents went into hibernation, much like movie stars hide from the paparazzi. Sure enough, my phone buzzed a third time, but this time I caught it.
“Hello?”
“Mina? Is that you?”
I bit my tongue and managed not to point out that since I lived alone, there was no one else who could be answering my phone. “Yes.” I waited. It had better be good.
“This is David.”
“David?” My mind was racing, mentally tallying all the David’s I knew. Then I remembered. It was David Brotherton, the short-statured head of local society. I thought I’d blocked him? “Oh, yes, how are you?”
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