Ten Beach Road (29 page)

She nodded to Deirdre, then turned to face Chase. Without preamble she said, “I think this should be converted to a pool house.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but she wasn’t ready to hear his objections. “There’s plenty of room to leave a two-car garage facing the drive and commit the rest of the space to a cabana-slash-guest house.”

“Avery, I . . .” He began what was bound to be the same old knee-jerk objection to any idea she raised.

She simply didn’t want to hear it. “Look, before you piss me off completely, why don’t we just walk through the space and discuss it?” Anger, hot and heady, began to pulse in her veins. She would not let him dismiss her.

“Avery, I already . . .”

“Seriously, Chase.” She was tired of sneaking around or arguing for every little thing, tired of being treated like a moron. “I get that you think I’m some little numbskull. I’m completely aware that my role on
Hammer and Nail
didn’t help change that impression. That’s one of the reasons I’m no longer a part of the show.” She could not bring herself to admit that she’d been shoved out before she could even broach regaining her original role. Not to them.

“But . . .”

“But the fact that I’m blonde and female doesn’t mean I don’t have a brain.”

“Amen to that,” Deirdre said.

“You’ve known me a good part of my life and my father treated you like a son. Do you really believe he raised a ninny? Or that I got my architecture degree in a box of Cracker Jack?”

She glared at him, pretty much daring him to say yes, then continued without giving him a chance to answer. “I mean we can spend the summer arguing about every little thing that happens in this house or we can work together and do a better, more efficient job.”

“Well said,” Deirdre said.

The blood pumped in Avery’s veins. She squared off all the way and looked up directly into his eyes. Hating, once again, how completely he towered over her.

“Avery,” he said. “That’s enough.”

But it wasn’t, not nearly. She wasn’t leaving this spot until she’d convinced him that she knew what she was talking about. “I can completely see this space. And it wouldn’t be horribly time intensive or expensive to convert it.”

“Yes,” he began. “Deirdre and I . . .”

She noticed the tape measure in Deirdre’s hand and reached for one end of it, pulling it to the opposite wall. “We could put up a wall right here to separate the two spaces and a row of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the pass.”

Deirdre continued to hold the base of the tape measure as Avery walked her end across the width of the space. “I’d put French doors opening to the pool here.” She gestured to the wall closest to the pool. “It’s a simple structure and I think we go clean lined but not too screamingly contemporary. Maybe a touch of the Mediterranean and a hint of Deco.”

Deirdre smiled. “I’ve never seen a piece of furniture or a decorative piece in that style without thinking of you,” she said. “You fell in love with it when you were, what, five?”

“If you’re thinking of a stroll down memory lane, it’s going to be a pretty brief stroll,” Avery said. She let go of her end of the tape measure taking some satisfaction from the way the length of metal snapped back toward Deirdre, but she kept her focus on Chase. “I’m tired of your condescension and your . . .” She was so agitated she couldn’t even find the words. “It needs to stop.” Her neck craned upward and she crowded him, invading his space. Sort of like a bumblebee buzzing up against the trunk of a redwood.

He cut his gaze to Deirdre, which only incensed Avery further.

“I’m talking to you,” she said. “You could at least show me the courtesy of acting like you’re listening!”

“Avery,” he said. “Stop.”

“Why? So you can insult me again? Call me Vanna? Tell me not to worry my pretty little head about it?”

Deirdre bit back a laugh. But Avery was already in mideruption; she’d get to her later.

If she were taller, she would have snapped a Z in his face with a ton of attitude. She was still searching for something bad enough to call him when he gave her the palm.

“Jesus,” he said. “I’ve been trying to tell you I already decided to convert the space. Deirdre and I were just talking about it.”

Avery blinked and stepped back. She looked at Deirdre. Whom he had willingly consulted.

“Chase’s thoughts on the renovation are almost identical to yours. He just wanted my input on the finishes and furniture,” Deirdre said. “I’m thinking Saltillo tile with a wrought iron and cushion group and a few wood pieces. Definitely Mediterranean with a touch of Deco.”

“What’s wrong, Van?” Chase asked. “Cat got your tongue?”

She couldn’t seem to get past the fact that he’d consulted Deirdre and not her. Or that the only reason she’d gotten what she’d wanted was because he’d already decided to do it. Or that he’d called her Van. If she’d been able to reach it, her hands would be wrapped around Chase Hardin’s neck.

“You know,” she said, biting out the words, trying to hold her anger at a controllable level when everything inside her was dying to spew out. “If anyone had bothered to consult me or include me in the conversation, I wouldn’t have just wasted my time and energy trying to convince you to do something you’d already decided to do.”

She turned to leave, but Deirdre put a hand on her shoulder to stop her. “You were dead on, Avery,” Deirdre said. “You know it, I know it, and whether he wants to admit it or not, Chase knows it. Does it really matter who decided first or who consulted whom?”

Avery looked at the mother she’d given up on so long ago and at the man who’d apparently given up on her. “Maybe it shouldn’t,” she said, drawing herself up to her full height, insignificant as it might be. “But I’m tired of the insults. Whatever chip Chase has been carrying around on his shoulder, he needs to get rid of it. Now. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve his disdain, but it’s affecting the job and we don’t have time for that.”

She gave them both a nod and prepared to leave.

“Avery, honey,” Deirdre said, reaching out to her. “Don’t . . .”

“Don’t call me honey,” Avery said, shrugging her off. “We don’t know each other well enough for that.” She paused, considering the woman who’d abandoned her to pursue her own dreams, never caring what she did to her daughter’s. “And FYI, I’m not that wild about Art Deco anymore.” It was a lie, but it was the best she could come up with. “A lot about me has changed since you left us. So don’t go thinking you know the first little thing about me.”

It was the middle of June and the days had grown longer and steadily hotter, the moderate temperatures of May already fading into distant memory. This made their lack of air-conditioning even harder to take. The duct cleaning and rerouting that Chase had scheduled while they waited for new units contributed to the chaos. The only relief from the increasingly oppressive heat was the afternoon rain showers—some of which could be seen moving in off the Gulf and others of which simply sprinkled down without much ado, lasting for ten or fifteen minutes before stopping, like a faucet that had been turned on and then off.

They woke early both by choice and because there were no window coverings to speak of—or doors for that matter. And because there was nothing that even resembled privacy once Chase arrived at seven thirty A.M. and the daily ebb and flow of workmen began.

Maddie would spend today just as she had spent yesterday, bathed in sweat as she sat hunched over a worktable Chase had set up in the empty dining room, polishing the door knobs and hinges that she and Avery had painstakingly removed from each door. The polishing was tedious and never ending, like pretty much every other task she’d tackled so far; but unlike the re-glazing, it required little concentration. Polishing was far too mindless for someone with so many problems on her mind.

It was seven A.M., the air already hot and heavy. Nicole had left for her morning run. Someone was showering in the bathroom—Maddie assumed it was Deirdre, the only one of them who spent any real time on her appearance. There’d been a few bumps and thumps from Avery’s bedroom directly overhead, but nothing that signaled a full awakening.

Maddie set down her scissors and sorted the grocery coupons, slipping them into the alphabetized holder she kept in the minivan. She spread the articles she’d clipped from the paper in front of her: “How to Find Yourself After You’ve Lost Your Job,” “Mind Over It Doesn’t Matter,” “Male Depression and Its Toll on the Family,” “Winning Outcomes and Positive Visualization.” She slipped several in the envelope she’d already addressed to Steve but wasn’t sure why she persisted in these long-distance motivational attempts.

Every day Madeline debated whether she needed to go back to Atlanta and try to light a fire under Steve personally, but it took everything she had to do what needed to be done here. She couldn’t even imagine taking on Steve and Edna, who protected her son’s right to wallow with the same zeal the U.S. military guarded the gold at Fort Knox.

Thinking she might slip by the gatekeeper with an early call, Madeline dialed the house phone. While it rang, she braced herself for whoever might pick up. As luck, or the lack of it, would have it, her mother-in-law answered.

“Hi, Edna,” Maddie said brightly, channeling the article on favorable outcomes. “It’s great to hear your voice.” She tried to project the positive, but suspected she just sounded loud.

Edna’s hello was very small.

“I’d like to talk to Steve,” Maddie said. “Please put him on.”

“He’s still sleeping,” Edna said. “I’ll tell him you called when he gets up.”

Edna’s voice was low. Maddie pictured her standing guard in front of the master bedroom door or, possibly, the family room couch. “Or maybe you should try again later.”

The articles on the table stared up at her accusingly. “No!” Maddie replied quickly before Edna could hang up. “Maybe you should shake his shoulder until he wakes up.”

Edna gasped with indignation. “Well, I never!”

“But you should,” Maddie said, tired to death of the pretense that Steve was just resting, when in fact he was hiding. “You’re his mother and you need to tell him it’s time to get up and start getting it back together.”

“Hmmmph!” Edna said. “Why don’t you come back here and tell him that yourself? Unless you’re too busy vacationing at that beach house.”

The injustice of it made Maddie’s eyes sting. Her heart felt too large for her chest. She reached for one of the articles she’d clipped with its
Every important journey begins with that first step
intro and crumpled it into a ball.

“Edna?” Maddie said. “Put him on. Now.”

“I told you, he’s asleep, Melinda!” her mother-in-law replied then thumped down the phone.

Maddie’s tears dried in mid-blink. The hurt, which had lain so heavy, went hot and liquid. She barely recognized the anger coursing through her; it was an emotion she rarely allowed herself. Quickly she hit the speed dial for Andrew’s cell phone. “Hmmm?” Her son’s voice, that misleadingly adult baritone, sounded thick with sleep.

“Andrew, it’s me. Mom.”

There was a long yawn and the rustle of sheets. “Um-hmmm?”

“I need to know what’s going on there. Are you making progress on Grandma’s house?”

Another yawn. The creak of the bed. “I’m sleeping.” He yawned again. “Can you call back later?”

His words grew softer and the phone farther from his mouth.

“Andrew!” she shouted. “Don’t you dare hang up!”

Unlike his grandmother, he listened. “Why can’t we talk later? I . . .”

“Because I need to talk now. And you need to hear me,” Maddie said, her anger building. She was down here fighting to save their lone asset, the one thing that might keep their collective heads above water, and none of them could be bothered to support her, let alone help.

“You call Mrs. Richmond and get the referrals for subcontractors and ask her to pull those comparables on Grandma’s house. And you do it today.” She drew a deep breath, trying to calm down, but her whole body quivered with hurt and anger.

“As soon as the house is ready for the Realtor to list, I want you and Dad to come down and help us finish here.”

“Dad’s not going anywhere. Not if it means getting off the couch.”

Maddie flinched at the disgust and disappointment in her son’s voice, but there could be no more sugarcoating or evading the reality of their situation. She could not be in this alone. “Andrew,” she said. “Carry your cell phone to your dad and tell him I need to talk to him.”

“He won’t talk. He hardly even moves.” His tone remained sullen with a hint of whine, and she had no idea whether he simply didn’t want to get out of bed or couldn’t face seeing his father that way.

“He doesn’t have to talk at the moment,” Maddie said. “I’m going to do the talking. He just has to listen.” She clung to her anger; if she let the wave of helplessness swamp her, they were lost. “Hurry up, Andrew. This won’t take long.”

She held on while he did as she asked. She could hear the sounds of home melding with the sounds of Bella Flora: Chase and Robby’s trucks pulling up out front. The whine of a wave runner motor out in the pass. Upstairs, the bathroom door slammed. The scramble of feet and a shout of irritation followed. If Robby didn’t get another bathroom up and running soon, blood would be drawn. The only question was whose.

“Mom, he says he can’t talk right now. Grandma says . . .”

“Andrew,” she said, hating that her son had to be put in this position. “Put the phone up to your father’s ear so he can hear me.”

“Here, Dad,” Andrew said. An unintelligible murmur from Steve followed. And then she heard him breathing.

Maddie hung on to her resolve. Steve didn’t need any more pity, and he certainly didn’t need even one more second of enabling. “Steve,” she said clearly and forcefully. “We can’t afford for you to lie around feeling sorry for yourself anymore.”