Blueprints: A Novel (39 page)

“Yesterday morning.” At Annie’s dry look, she added, “I know. Not so long ago, but we used to talk all the time.” That was, of course, before the
Gut It!
crisis, but Annie didn’t know about that either. “Most women have nine months to get ready for a baby, plus whatever time they spend thinking about getting pregnant. Even those who adopt think about it beforehand. Jamie had no warning. Overnight, she became a mother. She must have constant questions about dealing with Tad. I want her to call me with those.”

“Her generation goes to the Web.”

“I don’t want Jamie doing that. I want her getting answers from someone who sees the world the way she does.”

“Meaning you, but parenting has changed since we had kids. When my assistant talks about equipment or food or discipline, it’s like another language to me. Jamie speaks that language. She needs current sources.”

Caroline grunted. “That’s what Dean says.” Strong hands worked at the tension in her calves, her heels, her soles, her toes. “I’m trying to give her space, Annie, really I am, but it’s hard. When she was playing tennis, I had to be involved, because Roy wasn’t about to do the driving to practices and all. I was her on-call therapist when she was in college, and we see each other now at work and even more during
Gut It!
tapings. She’s my daughter. I love her.”

“This has nothing to do with love. She needs space to grow.”

The sensible, down-to-earth, intuitive part of Caroline knew that was true. The part that worried continued to worry.

“Sometimes,” Annie went on, “out of sight, out of mind is better.”

“That’s easy for you to say. You have sons. It’s different with boys. Jamie isn’t only my daughter, she’s my friend. And right now, she’s going through the biggest change of her life.”

“If she needs you, she’ll call. In the meantime, she may be wanting to do things her way.”

Caroline thought about Jamie’s broken engagement and now her infatuation with Chip, and sighed. “Dean says that, too. He reasons it all out, and then gets me doing something distracting.”

There were more subtle things going on, too. Being with Dean made her feel good about herself. Not that she had been aware of feeling
bad
, though Claire had given her moments of late. But being with Dean, being sexual for the first time in years, was adding a
glow
to her life. Claire might have told her she was old, but what she did with Dean proved she wasn’t dead yet. It said there was more to come.

Which didn’t mean sex was the be-all and end-all of life.

It absolutely was not.

But it was nice.

“I’m glad you’re with him,” Annie said. “It means you’re finally making a life for yourself beyond Jamie.”

“What if she makes a mistake?” Caroline asked. This was her greatest fear. There were so many potential pitfalls in Jamie’s current path.

“Then she makes a mistake. We all do.”

“What if it’s a big one?”

Gently, confidently, Annie said, “Then you’ll be there to help her pick up the pieces. That’s what mothers do.”

“Dean said that, too. Did you talk with him?”

“I did not, but if he said it, he’s both sexy
and
smart. Speaking of smart—” Her eyes went to the door just as Linda breezed in.

“Oh, good,” the Realtor said with visible relief. “You’re still here. I was hoping to catch you before you left.”

Caroline surveyed the back of the shop. “I think Van is gone.” Van was Linda’s usual pedicurist.

“I’m not here for toes.” Perching sideways on the next pedicure chair, she bent toward Caroline with her elbows on her knees. “This may be nothing, but I just overheard talk at Timmy’s lacrosse game. Two guys were discussing the market, one telling the other that if he wanted a really good house he should wait until the Barths start building on Weymouth land. When I asked him about it, he said he had just met a local Barth and was talking with him. Their kids are playing summer soccer together. On my way here, I called friends from two different brokerages. They hadn’t heard about any deal, but they’ve both been approached in the last week by the Barths asking about available property.”

Caroline felt a twinge of anger. What else to think but that the Barths were taking advantage of Roy’s death to move while the MacAfees were down? She had no trouble losing a few houses to them, but losing the Weymouth acreage was unacceptable. Even beyond what it would say about MacAfee Homes without Roy, it would be a blow to Theo, who had worked hard and long to own Williston and the surrounding MetroWest suburbs, and a blow to Jamie, who had already sketched out dream designs for that land. And
Gut It!
—hadn’t Claire told Jamie she was considering a Barth season? The Barths buying the Weymouth property would ensure that.

Caroline had never been anywhere near as competitive as Roy and Jamie, but she felt a personal drive now.

“Well then,” she told Linda with new determination, “we need to shop aggressively ourselves, and if that means playing dirty, so be it. We can start with the local connection. Weymouth roots run deep in Williston soil. So do MacAfee roots. Barth roots do not.”

“My understanding is that only one of Mildred Weymouth’s three sons is still in Massachusetts.”

“John,” Caroline confirmed, “in Boston. I never knew him personally.” She turned. “Annie? You grew up with them, didn’t you?”

“That was years ago, and we weren’t exactly close.”

“Why not?”

“I was beneath them,” Annie said, and while another person would have heard upset in that high voice of hers, Caroline knew better. Annie was fiercely proud of her roots. “My dad cut grass for a living,” she said with her chin up. “He didn’t speak English well, just drove around town with a cigar in his mouth and a mower in the bed of his truck. Needless to say, he never cut Weymouth grass, though, in fairness, neither did any other locals. The Weymouths had a full-time gardener on staff. Clearly, those days are gone. From what I hear, most of the trust money has been spent, hence their need to sell the estate. That land is their only remaining asset.”

“So they’ll want top dollar,” Linda warned, “which is why we can’t risk driving the price even higher by getting into a bidding war with the Barths.”

“What’s their idea of top dollar?” Caroline asked.

The Realtor speculated. “Thirty acres of prime wooded land, with twenty-six of those acres able to support a new build to sell at a million, plus or minus? That’s allowing two acres for a rec area and two for the manor house, which needs work but has good bones. The manor could be fixed up and sold as a single for two million, or broken into four condos selling for five hundred each. You do the math. The Weymouths will.”

“And the Barths,” Caroline murmured. “Bottom line for us to buy?”

“I’d guess a million for the house and three for the remaining land.”

Four million to buy, with turnaround potential approaching twenty-eight million? Granted, building costs would be high on high-end houses, which these would be. Still, Caroline had lived long enough in the right circles to know a good profit margin when she heard it. She would have to talk with MacAfee Homes’ banker and with Theo, of course, but, totally aside from the political advantage of developing the Weymouth property, she couldn’t see them ignoring the money.

“That’s assuming the Barths don’t bid,” Linda warned. “Right now, I don’t see any other competition, but that could change once word gets out that the property is on the market. Inventory is low in all of MetroWest. Interested parties may appear out of the blue.”

“Then we’ll act quickly,” Caroline vowed. “That means making the Weymouths an offer they can’t refuse. How high do we have to go for that?”

“I’m not sure. Let me do a comp study. The key will be getting the brothers in a room with you and making a presentation. Do you have plans you can show them?”

Caroline thought of Jamie, who was off doing whatever she was doing with Chip Kobik and certainly not home designing for a project that had been hypothetical until now. What sketches she had were rough. That said, Caroline knew Jamie could embellish them. She would pull all-nighters if necessary. She wanted the project as much as Caroline did.

“We’ll have plans,” Caroline assured Linda and turned to Annie. “Do we assume we’ll be dealing with John, since he’s the one who’s here?”

“I wouldn’t. The three of them don’t get along. One won’t trust the other to make the final decision.”

“Where are they now?”

“The oldest, Ralph, is a turnaround specialist in San Francisco. He buys companies, builds them, sells them. He keeps insisting that one of his companies will develop the land, though he’s strictly West Coast and hasn’t been able to get an operation going anywhere near here. The middle brother is Grant. He’s an impoverished artist.”

“Needs money.”

“Big-time. And our local yokel, John, is a hotshot plastic surgeon.”

Caroline knew that. His name consistently appeared on the Best of Boston lists, more often associated with Botox than with surgery.

“He rakes it in,” Annie went on, “but spends it as soon as he makes it. He keeps telling the brothers that he wants the estate for himself. I heard something about his wanting to run a clinic out of the house, which the town would never zone for, but John hasn’t given up on the idea. My guess is that Herschel Oakes is key. He’s the family lawyer, more likely the family referee. I’d start with him.”

Caroline agreed, though reluctantly. She knew Herschel Oakes, had actually dated him once after her divorce. Once was enough. The man had been thoroughly self-absorbed. There was zero chemistry then and would be zero now, but if she could play on the local connection to make an inroad to that land, she would.

Time was, Theo would have done it, and after him Roy. Her own experience had taught her that a male might be more successful talking business with a male, but she didn’t want to involve Brad.

Dean would help. But he wasn’t a MacAfee.

Jamie could do it. But she was both female and young, two strikes against her, and she was a designer, not a salesperson. Not that Caroline was an expert in sales either, and she certainly didn’t have management experience. But who else was there?

The buck stops here
.

How often had she thought that when she was raising Jamie, and Roy dropped the ball on one parenting event or the other?

Time didn’t change certain things. Or maybe it did. She was fifty-six. If she could corral the cachet that came with age—the brains, the poise, the guts—she might be able to play the MacAfee champion as she couldn’t have done even ten years before.

She wanted the Weymouth project—wanted it for Jamie, for Theo, for MacAfee Homes. She wanted it for
Gut it!
And she wanted it for herself. The carpenter in her dreamed of creating some of the effects Jamie had put in her sketches. Add the challenge of winning at her age—of showing
all
of them what she could do?

In light of recent events, that was suddenly very important to her.

*   *   *

Caroline actually hesitated before calling Jamie. It was Saturday evening. If she didn’t have plans with Chip and the boys, she would have called Caroline, wouldn’t she have? And Annie’s warning was fresh in her mind’s ear.
She may be wanting to do things her way
.

But that was personal.

This was business.

Hesitation overridden, she thumbed in the call on her way home from the nail shop. When it went to voice mail, she said, “Hey, baby, sorry to bother you, but something’s just come up. Linda Marshall has the distinct impression that the Barths are working behind the scenes to ink a deal on the Weymouth land before we even have a chance to bid. If we want to beat them to it, we have to act fast. I can coordinate everything except design plans. They’re yours. Give me a call?”

Waiting for the callback, she held the phone palmed against the wheel during the drive home, and though that took barely five minutes, she was impatient. As soon as she pulled into the driveway, she sent a text.

Just left voice mail. Let me know you got it. Kinda urgent.

Fifteen minutes passed. Her phone was balanced on the rim of the sink as she stepped out of the shower when a reply finally came.

This is happening right now?

So Jamie wasn’t pleased with the timing. Well, hell, neither was she.
We have to arrange a meeting with the Weymouths for early this week,
she typed back.
Where do your plans stand?

Long minutes passed. Caroline had a helmet on her head and was about to climb on the Harley behind Dean when she felt a vibration against her thigh. Pulling out the phone, she read,
They’re just sketches.

How long before they can be more?
she typed back. She didn’t want to pressure Jamie, but she needed something of presentation quality.

The answer came more quickly this time, actually while they were on the road, and though Caroline was anxious to read it, she wasn’t yet comfortable enough on the bike to take one of her arms from Dean’s. The minute he parked at the restaurant, though, she accessed it.

Wednesday, maybe?

Any chance of Tuesday? The Barths are breathing down our necks.

I’ll try.

twenty-three

Sunday dawned warm and heavily overcast, but not even the occasional drizzle could dampen Jamie’s spirits. She refused to think of the promise she had made Caroline and the juggling she would have to do to be ready for a Tuesday presentation,
refused
to think about how much she wanted that project and feared losing it.

Today was her wedding day. Even the brief text exchange was foggy now, seeming to dissipate along with the mist. By the time they hit the New Hampshire line, the sky held patches of clear, and the sun was positively beaming on the small Colonial inn by the time they pulled up.

As omens went, it was a good one. Jamie vividly recalled the rain on the night her father had died, and suspected thunderstorms would shake her for the rest of her life. But sun, here, now? She chose to believe Roy was smiling, knowing with a heavenly wisdom that her marriage to Chip was right.