A Month at the Shore (13 page)
Read A Month at the Shore Online
Authors: Antoinette Stockenberg
Aaagh. This is a business meeting, you twit.
"Well, sir," she said with perky irony, "it's good to know that when we finalize our plans for
Shore
Gardens
, we'll be able to seek the funding locally."
"But
... isn't that what we're doing?" Corinne asked, bewildered.
Barclay leaned forward on his leather chair and laid his forearms on the desk. They were solid, muscular. Unnerving. Laura found herself pressing into the soft back cushion of her chair, edging away from his strength.
"Look," he said, "what it boils down to is this. I assume—I know—that Great River has called in your loan. I know that your property has plenty of equity. What I don't know is the amount that you need."
A pause. "Seventy-five thousand," Laura said with sullen iciness.
"Not a problem. You have, what, a week or so to produce it for Great River?"
Laura clenched her teeth. "Yes." God, how she hated this. Hated him. It was the haves versus the have-nots, all over again. Her life in Chepaquit, all over again.
"All right. I'll have an appraiser out there this afternoon. See my assistant Nancy about the paperwork. And
... best of luck to you," he said with a nod that somehow seemed perfunctory.
Had he seen the resentment in her face? Well—good.
"Oh,
thank
you," said Corinne, springing up from her chair. She forgot to slouch, forgot to seem timid or cringing or anything else but happy.
Not Laura. She felt oddly cheated by the entire interview. She had come there expressly to show off her marketing savvy, but he clearly wasn't interested. "But
... what about a business plan?" she said. "I've brought one wi—"
"Corinne says you're a very smart woman. I trust her judgment," he said, letting his glance slip down before coming back up to meet her gaze. Had he stopped at her breasts? She couldn't tell, and she was embarrassed even to have had the question pop into her head.
She was embarrassed, too, to be endorsed by her kid sister when it was supposed to have been the other way around.
"Thank you, in that case," Laura said, completely upended by the swirl of her emotions. "I'm sure you—your bank—will not regret the decision."
"I rarely regret a decision I make," he said, his smile relaxed. He was enjoying himself now.
"Really!" she answered. "I myself would have had second thoughts about that tie."
With a surprised but good-natured laugh, he said, "It was a gift from my niece. She's seven."
Corinne said quickly, "I love the colors!"
He rose and shook Laura's hand again. No lingering grip this time; she barely allowed him to make contact with her.
He accompanied the two sisters to the door. His assistant appeared from another office as if by telepathy to take them under her wing.
They'd made it through the application interview in under ten minutes. It took longer than that to order a
cappuccino
from Starbucks.
p
ter 10
"Two words," Laura droned. "Curb. Appeal."
"I get it, already," Snack moaned as she pushed and prodded him from job to job.
No matter; Laura was relentless. "We could have as much product as Home Depot and Wal-Mart put together," she warned. "If we don't get people to turn into the lot, we don't stand a chance."
"For crissake, Laura—they're turning, they're turning!"
Snack was right. There were almost always a couple of cars parked in front of the main store, which was far more attractive now that they'd put up huge window boxes overflowing with Corinne's famous bright red geraniums. Something about bright red flowers against weathered, silvery shingles simply cried out "Cape Cod" to passing vehicles.
Even the parking lot looked trim and pretty. Snack had filled in and overlaid the potholed area with a truckload of new gravel, and he'd replaced all of the missing stiles of the rustic fence that lined the road. Laura had attacked the fallen roses that lay in a tangle below the fence, trimming away the deadwood and somehow getting the roses to tumble attractively over the stiles again. For her effort, she carried away scratches up and down her arms and legs, but she didn't care. She was on fire with her mission now.
All three of them were on fire. They worked like demons from sunup to sundown and (with the help of the truck's headlights) sometimes beyond. They dug, hammered, painted, fertilized, arranged, primed, deadheaded, sprayed, and watered, watered, watered. Then they showered, collapsed, and the next dawn they started all over again.
A month was a very short time.
****
Laura and Corinne were trying to decide what to do about the toolshed. It was hardly worth fixing, a ramshackle affair with holes in the roof, and an even worse eyesore than the main greenhouse with its broken and missing panes.
"Do we have time before the grand reopening sale to bulldoze the shed?" asked Corinne. She deferred to Laura for virtually every decision now, a practice from which Laura was soon going to have to wean her.
"I do hate the sight of it," Laura confessed.
"We all do."
Laura knew what her sister was thinking: it was to the toolshed that Snack had been taken for a whipping whenever he'd get into trouble, no matter how harmless.
To the shed for a whipping. How quaint it sounded.
Except that after the last beating, the worst beating, Snack had run away. He hadn't come back after that except in times of illness or of death, and he hadn't even come back for one of those.
Standing with Corinne in front of the shed, Laura could still hear her own hysterical crying as she'd pounded on its door that night, screaming for her father inside to stop. To this day, she had no idea what Snack's offense had been, other than coming home late on that particular night; he never afterward would talk about it.
The memory was still so vivid. She was there again, in her pajamas again, shivering and screaming in the fog under a pale, watery moon. So futile, so pointless. Her father couldn't possibly have heard her; Snack had been howling too loudly for that.
She remembered racing back to the house to call the police, only to realize that their only phone had been torn from the wall. Her mother—well, her mother. What could she have done? Shy, timid, and cowed, Alice Shore had been beaten by her own father; she'd considered it a blessing that her husband mostly spared their two daughters and aimed the roughest punishment at their son.
"We'd have to empty out all of the tools and equipment first," Laura said softly.
"Yeah. And then where would we put everything?"
It would be a time-consuming project. Founders Week was about to kick off, and with it, the future of Shore Gardens.
And they still hadn't done anything about the mountainous compost pile.
"Let's just pretend the shed isn't there for now," Laura said with a shrug, and together they turned their back on it.
Corinne went on her way, and Laura went to work arranging an outdoor display of flowering thymes on a carefully spontaneous pile of flat rocks. At the last minute, she decided to add some creeping rosemary to the display; she was hauling a cartload of it from one of the greenhouses when she saw Kendall Barclay coming her way.
Oh, great. Now what?
If he was there to take back his money, he was fresh out of luck. They'd handed it over to Great River Finance.
He smiled and waved. Anyone would have thought they were friends.
She
felt as if they were friends, seeing that smile, seeing that wave. He was wearing the usual—khakis and blazer—but his tie this time was sober and banklike. She hated it.
"I've been wandering around, looking for you," he said as he drew near.
"Looks like you've found me," she answered, instinctively cautious. Her cheeks felt suddenly warm and her hands, as usual, were covered in dirt. She put on her gardener's gloves, not only to hide her chipped and broken nails but because it was something to do.
"So. What can I do you for?" she asked lightly as she began emptying the big-wheeled cart of its pots of rosemary. "You're not here about the loan, I hope?"
"In a way," he said, and immediately her heart plunged. "I wanted to know how it went with Great River," he went on.
"God, you scared me," she confessed with a far too nervous laugh. "I thought you wanted your money back."
Now why did she have to tell him that?
He took a pot of rosemary out of the cart and passed it over to her. In his hand, the plant looked impossibly small, a rip-off at two ninety-nine.
"
Thanks," she said as she took it from him, "but, really, I've got it under control."
He didn't take offense at the rebuff, but seemed content to watch her work.
She didn't want him watching her. Something about his nearness had set her nerve ends humming, and it was impossible to focus on which rosemaries looked best where. She dumped several pots on the stones and began moving them around haphazardly, like a flim-flam artist working a shell game on a street in New York.
With a glance at him over her shoulder, she said, "I want to thank you again for putting our loan application on the fast track. We were thrilled to be out of the clutches of Great River Finance. Corinne said she felt as if she'd been tied to the railroad tracks, and you came along just in time and saved her."
Chuckling, he said, "Your sister has a vivid imagination."
"Not as vivid as mine—believe me," Laura said, straightening up from her work and looking him in the eye.
It would have been extremely satisfying to say flat out,
I know what you're after, buster: our land. As far as I'm concerned, you're
Great
River
all over again, but in a good-looking suit.
With a boring tie. "I think I liked the hot-air balloon one better," she said, nodding at his chest before she took up several pots from her cart.
"The hot—? Ah. Hey, that's easy enough." With practiced ease, he undid the knot and stuffed the tie in his pocket. It was probably silk, probably Saks, but what did he care? There were more where that one came from.
She tried to match his offhand manner. "I wonder what you'd do," she said dryly, "if I said I didn't like the cut of your pants."
He blinked. Paused. Smiled. And actually said, "Try me.
"
Why was she provoking him? It was insane. "Can we talk about something other than your money and your clothes?"
Apparently chastened, he took it down a peg. "You've made amazing progress here. The nursery looks great. Your display is looking nice," he said genially, pointing to her work in progress. "Even I want to buy some, and I don't know what the hell they are."
"Thyme. Rosemary."
"Oh. Herbs. Like parsley, right?" he offered in a display of knowledge.
"Impressive, but I'm afraid you don't get the job," she said. Still, there was a smile in her voice that she was sure he could hear.
He startled her by taking out a handkerchief from his
hip
pocket and lifting the square to her face. The temptation for her was to step back from his outstretched hand,
but the greater temptation was to let him do what he was going to do: wipe her cheek.
"You have a smudge," he said gravely.
"Only one?"
"It's a big one; there isn't room for two," he said, rubbing gently.
Great. A dirty face to go with her dirty hands. She said with a defensive sigh, "You know what? I'm working. Gardening is dirty work—clean work, but dirty, too, if you understand what I mean." She went back to her task, as if she were on the clock.
He shoved the hanky back in his pocket, then said, "You're used to sitting in front of a computer all day; this must be a real shock to your system."
"You forget that I was born and raised here."
He shrugged. "I guess I thought you'd left it all behind."
"I did—for more than one reason," she said pointedly. Before he could
request that she
list them all, she added, "But I'm enjoying myself. Really. Everyone's happiest in a garden; it goes without saying."
"Except that this is a nursery. Ratchet any pleasure up high enough, it can turn into pain."
"Very profound," she said, not necessarily in sarcasm.
"Laura."
She turned. He gave her a look that made her frown and then—for whatever reason—blush. There was just something about the look.
But he said innocently enough, "Corinne tells me that in addition to all of your other talents, you have a gift for landscaping. Is that in the works—a career change?"
"Hardly," she said, balking at the suggestion. "I'm not planning to stay here any longer than a month."
No need to hide that any longer.
His eyebrows shot up. "That's not what your sister says."
Laura sighed and said, "My sister is wrong. She wishes and she hopes, but the reality is that I have a career as a
software consultant in Portland, on the other side of the country."
"But can't consultants consult anywhere? Couldn't one consult
... for example, here?"
"It helps if there are customers available. With all due respect to Chepaquit, there is no 'here' here."
"Mm," he said with a reluctant nod. "Still, it's a nice place to live. Clean air, great light, warm water, inspiring views, and all the sand you could ever want for a backyard sandbox."
Laura smiled politely. "Except for the water temperature, I have all that in Portland, Oregon."
She had emptied the cart of her load of pots and was simply standing there, mystified by his chattiness. "Well, sir, I envy you your banker's hours, but around here, we don't stop until the sun goes down, and usually not then. So thank you again for moving along so smartly on the—"
"Damn it, Laura, look
... I wanted to ask you
... to see you
... to do something with—"
Exasperated, he tried another tack. "Things got complicated once the loan request became a reality. I felt it was best to wait until after the approval process was over. Now it is. And so—"
She couldn't suppress an incredulous snort. "You're asking me
...
out
? Oh, that wouldn't be the best idea. Really. I've already said that I'll be leaving the Cape soon—"
"Oh, sure, well, naturally. But uh-h
..." he said, clearing his throat
. "What I was trying to find out was: would you have time in your schedule to look over my property and give me a few landscaping tips? The front lawn is a dead-grass disaster, and the backyard is basically an all-you-can-eat buffet for deer and rabbits. I need advice, and fast."
"Oh!"
"I'd pay you, of course," he added.
"You'd—oh."
"I don't know how anything ever grew anywhere on the property; my mother must have stood guard with a broom," he said with a pained chuckle. "But she's moved to a condo in Boston, and since I've taken over the family homestead, I haven't been able to convince her to come back once a week and beat up the deer."
His eyebrows went up over a hopeful smile, and then drifted back down again in resignation. He sighed. "No, I can see how flat-out you are here. I understand."
A
tour de force
of diplomacy, Laura thought. And an expert application of guilt.
It didn't seem possible that she could be mortified in his presence in so many different ways. Surely by now she should have exhausted the possibilities. Confused and thoroughly humbled by her own presumptuousness—she assumed he was going to ask her
out
!
—she said, "I could steal an hour or two after work, if you like. Say, tomorrow? No charge," she added breezily.
"Oh, but I would have to insist."
"No, I would have to insist," she said, scraping together what crumbs of dignity she could. "I'll be there at six-thirty tomorrow night, if that's all right with you."
"That's perfect. I'll come for you."
"Not necessary, thanks," she said, lifting her cart by its bale. "I'm sure I can find you."
God, what a fool she'd been. Ask her out!
He was about to intercept her, but the sound of Snack's voice raised in anger had them both turning in the direction of the compost pile.
They saw Gabe sitting on the tractor, and Snack looking determined to knock him off.
"Now what?" Laura moaned, and without bothering to excuse herself, she rushed over to defuse the situation. Snack was working hard and staying sober, but he tended to get cranky by afternoon, probably because he was working hard and staying sober.
She got there in time to hear her brother say angrily, "Gabe, I said get off. Get off the damn tractor.
Now."
"What're you, nuts? What's the matter with you?" Gabe looked dumbfounded, but he wasn't moving. "Your sister asked me a week ago to move the compost pile, and I'm moving the compost pile. You have a problem with that, talk to her, not me," he said, pointing over Snack's shoulder at Laura.
He started the tractor up and began dipping the blade into the side of the black hill of decayed, rich soil.
The action infuriated Snack; he grabbed Gabe by his belt and literally yanked him part of the way out of the ancient tractor's iron seat. With a surprised oath, Gabe resisted and managed to keep himself upright, then suddenly reversed himself and jumped down to the ground on his own, ready for battle. Laura rushed at her brother, and from somewhere, Kendall Barclay jumped between Gabe and Snack.
"Gabe, get a grip," Kendall warned, pushing him back. "
Let
it go,
man;
let it
go."
Laura was having more trouble than that in subduing her brother. For the first time in her life, she realized that he was bigger, stronger, and more volatile than a baby brother by rights should be. She wouldn't be able to control him at all, if he weren't willing to be controlled.
This time, he was willing. He whipped his arm out of her clutches, but he settled for nothing more violent than a fierce glare at their neighbor and councilman.
"If anyone's moving that pile, it's going to be me," he growled. "Now get the hell out."
Gabe exchanged looks with Laura and then with Barclay. He hunched his shoulders and threw out his hands, like a merchant who's made his best offer. "Fine with me. I've got other things to do, believe me."
He tucked the side of his shirt back into his jeans and shook his head at Snack like a disappointed parent. "You don't even bother to vote, do you?" he said in quiet reproach, and then he left with Barclay, who was doing his best to escort him out quietly.
Laura was furious. "Snack, you
idiot.
We could've really used his help. Not to mention, he's on the town council, and who in his right mind wants to piss off a councilman?
Not
to mention, Corinne is going to be crushed when she hears about this. I swear to God, if you've fouled things up between Gabe and her—"
"Fouled what up? There's nothing to foul. What're you talking about?"
"Oh, forget it. Why wouldn't you let him move the compost? What were you thinking?"
He got that evasive look that Laura knew so well and that more properly belonged on the face of a teenager—but Snack was thirty-one years old.
Thirty-one, and what a mess.
"I didn't like the way he just walked in and took over," Snack said at last. "Like he's John Wayne or something, here to save the ranch. If we're going to do this, we're going to do it ourselves."
"Fine. We'll leave the compost pile right where it is. It's been an eyesore for thirty years; it can stay there another thirty, ah
reckon,"
she said, mocking his John Wayne comparison.
"I'll move it myself," Snack promised grimly. "I'll start tonight—after you go to bed and leave me the hell alone."
****
That night, a weary Laura lay on her lumpy single bed.
She'd been
in Chepaquit
two weeks. It felt like two years. The long hours were getting to them all. Gabe and Snack in a near fistfight? They'd all grown up together, for heaven's sake!
She thought of her sister, bursting into tears after Laura was forced to explain why Kendall had been seen escorting Gabe off the property.
Rinnie ha
s
a thing for Gabe
; I'm
sure of it now
.
And
as for
Kendall Barclay—what was
that
all about? Why would a bank president take such a personal interest in them
all
?
Easy
.
Because the personal interest was in their highly desirable property.
Still
... Laura had dated her share of men; she knew the signs of one coming on to her. It certainly
seemed
as if he were coming on to her.
Or not.
Obviously she'd
misread his intentions. All he'd wanted was a little advice. For which he apparently was willing to pay. How kind of him to throw her that bone.
I'll give him an hour
, she decided. Not a minute more.
But it still seemed
... somehow it seemed
... as if he'd been coming on to her. And the amazing thing was, she wanted that to be true. And it wasn't. Which she found as disappointing as it was annoying.
But! The good news was that she must be over
Max; why else go second-
guessing about whether Kendall Barclay, ooh, ooh, liked her or not? How pathetic. She was thinking like a thirteen-year-old. If it weren't so sad, she'd confess all of it to Corinne.
No, not Corinne. Corinne wouldn't understand. Right now, the person Laura most wanted to confide in was not Corinne, not one of her friends or neighbors back in Portland, but Sylvia Mendan—Sylvia, wise beyond her years, who knew everything there was to know about the male sex. She knew it as a teen; God only knew how much wiser she must be now.
Sylvia.
Where was she now? Married? Divorced? Kids? It was impossible to imagine her as being anything but a stunningly beautiful, superbly confident young woman. She would always and forever be eighteen, and Laura would always and forever be a novice at her feet.
****
An hour later, Laura was awakened by the sound of low voices from the front porch below.
It was Corinne, having a conversation with Gabe, and they both sounded on c
ompletely friendly terms. Half-
asleep, Laura let out a huge sigh of relief—and then, intrigued by the thought that the two could be carrying on an intimate conversation so late at night, she did a bad thing and crept over to the open window to eavesdrop.
Silly her; she should have known better. Her sister was much too considerate to speak in anything above a whisper. Still, it was obvious that she sounded very happy, and that was very good.
Gabe Wellerton's voice carried more clearly than Corinne's, and Laura was able to hear enough to know that he was sorry for the ruckus he'd caused earlier.
"Snack and I
..." Something something, "oil and water
... Snack's got major, major problems
... your father... good kid
... working
... listen to him go
... ever sleep?"
And in the distance, not far from the shed where he had been beaten by their enraged father one terrifying night, Snack worked the tractor, burrowing, lifting, and filling the rusted dump truck that stood silently by, ready to move the compost someplace more discreet.