The Cottage Next Door (3 page)

Chapter Four

T
HE DE
LI
M
ICHAEL
took Diana to had customers snaking out the door and lining the sidewalk. “Popular place,” she said.

She expected him to keep going to find somewhere less crowded, but he drove his Prius around the block twice, patiently waiting for a parking space to open.

“It’s one of the few places the locals don’t abandon when the tourists arrive,” he said. “Which means you either put up with the crowds or settle for second best.”

“That’s impressive.” She leaned forward to get a better look into an alley they were passing.

Spotting a car with its backup lights on, Michael stopped and signaled to the driver of the truck behind him to go around. The driver flipped them off as he passed.

Diana was dumbfounded when Michael laughed and waved, casually dismissing something the guys her age back home would have taken as a challenge. “Is that some Santa Cruz thing, turning the other cheek?”

He seemed truly surprised by her question. “He’s an outlander. I try to make allowances for them.”

“How can you tell he’s—­what did you call him?”

“Outlander. It’s something my brother and I came up with when we were kids. You’ll understand when you’ve been here awhile. The only thing that upsets the ­people who live here is seeing someone trashing the place.” He gave her a teasing smile. “Then look out. That little old lady who invites strangers in for tea and cookies can turn on a dime.”

“You’re one of those ­people, I take it?” Her friends had warned her about California and its left-­of-­center population, insisting she would never fit in and would be home by Christmas. What they didn’t know was how desperate she was to make this work. She was twenty-­nine years old, with a string of failed relationships and not one decent job offer in Topeka. She needed
something
to work.

“I think it’s more that I’m the son of a preacher man.”

Really? Diana was sure Cheryl hadn’t mentioned that in addition to his painting, Peter was a minister. At least not to her. She glanced at him, tossing off an easy smile. “Back home they were the kids who always got into trouble.”

“Probably because they didn’t have someone like my mother taking care of them. She could make a boot camp drill sergeant look like a Girl Scout leader.”

The car they’d been waiting for jockeyed free of the tight parking space. The driver smiled and waved as she drove by. “She would be a local,” Diana guessed, playing along.

“Who also happens to be a friend.” They approached the restaurant, but instead of going to the back of the line, he put his hand on her shoulder and guided her inside to the handwritten menu hanging on the wall behind the counter. The woman taking orders at the cash register looked up, spotted Michael, and gave him a huge grin.

“Hey, Michael, where you been?” she called. “The pastrami’s just the way you like it, nice and lean.”

“Thanks, Naomi.” He pointed to Diana. “I brought you a new customer—­all the way from Kansas.”

“Welcome,” she called to Diana as she added an order to a wire that traveled the length of the prep area. “I hope we don’t disappoint you. California is a long way to come for a deli sandwich, especially with New York so close.”

“Michael told me the delis in New York can’t hold a candle to yours.”

Naomi put her fingers to her lips and blew them a kiss.

“Nice one,” Michael said, leaning into Diana so she could hear him without shouting. “Now comes the hard part.”

It took almost ten minutes to settle on what had been her first choice, corned beef on rye and an enormous Kosher dill pickle. After doing some quick calorie calculating, and telling herself she would settle for an undressed wedge salad for dinner, she added a root beer milkshake. She’d lost twenty pounds in the too-­sick-­to-­her-­stomach-­to-­eat diet that came with having her world fall apart, and it wasn’t something she wanted to go through again just to fit into her new wardrobe.

Rather than go back outside and wait in line to place their order, Michael took out his phone and called it in. “It’s something Naomi does for her regulars. There are a ­couple of workers in the back who take care of all the phone orders, so depending on how many ­people called in before us, we should be on our way in half the time.”

Fifteen minutes later they were out the door and on their way to West Cliff Drive to see if they could snag a bench on the walkway to eat their lunch and watch the surfers.

“I
DIDN’T EXPECT
there would be an ocean smell,” Diana said, tilting her cup to gather the last drops of milkshake before putting it into the bag they’d used for their empty wrappers. “It’s not exactly fishy, it’s more salty, but it’s something else, too.”

Michael shrugged. “I’ve never given it any real thought. All I know is that when I’ve been away, I like the way it smells when I come home.” He made a grab for a napkin that was about to take flight. “What’s Topeka like?”

“I don’t know . . . like any other city, I guess. It’s when you get out in the country that things are different. Everything there is tied to the seasons—­turned earth in the spring and harvesting the wheat in late summer. I think I’ll miss the growing season most of all. I was sure there couldn’t be anything more beautiful than the wind sweeping across a wheat field, but that was before I saw the ocean.”

“I have no idea where they grow wheat around here, but the Salinas Valley is only a few miles away. You can get an entire salad there, from fancy lettuce to mushrooms and tomatoes. Plus, there’s artichokes and Brussels sprouts.”

“Oh, yum.”

He laughed. “Sounds like you’ll be skipping the farmers’ markets around here. If you want to see something beautiful grown in greenhouses, there’s always Andrew’s orchids.”

“He promised to give me a full tour when they get back from Botswana.” Diana twisted sideways to face Michael, bringing one leg up to tuck under the other. “Have you always lived here?”

“
The answer to that has a lot of
Penny Dreadful
elements to it. Are you sure you want to hear it?”

“
Penny Dreadful
—­how fun. I haven’t heard that term since my freshman lit class.” A breeze caught the strand of her curly shoulder-­length hair that refused to stay tucked behind her ear, and whipped it across her face. Impatient with the battle, she gave up and reached into her purse for an elastic band, finger combing the mass into a ponytail.

“I’ll give you the abbreviated version or we’d be here the rest of the day, and you’d be making up places you had to be.” He leaned back and put his hands behind his head. “My family first rented the house that Jeremy’s working on when I was a kid. We’d stay there one month every summer. For a long time I thought one of Dad’s parishioners owned it and cut us a deal, but it was my mom who’d found it through a friend of hers. She loves the ocean more than almost anyone else I know. And she was happier here than she ever was at home.”

“Almost?” It seemed a strange qualifier.

“Shiloh tops the list. After she’s been cooped up in the hospital, you can see a physical change come over her when she returns home again. Unlike most ­people, she really likes it when there are clouds or storms or fog. That’s the only time she doesn’t have to protect herself from the sun.”

“Is she in the hospital a lot?”

“She has a particularly bad form of lupus that hasn’t left her a lot of time in remission. Depending on where it manifests itself in her body, she could be in the hospital more than out.”

He took his phone out of his pocket and looked at it on the off chance he’d missed the text from Peter setting up their phone call about what to do with Diana. The nine-­hour time difference made connecting difficult, but this was something that couldn’t be put off, especially now that she’d shown up a whole week early. The longer they waited to tell Diana that she might not have a job after all, the harder it would be.

“Am I keeping you from something?” Diana asked.

“Sorry—­I’m expecting a call.” He shoved the phone back in his pocket. “Where were we?”

“You were telling me about Shiloh coming home from the hospital.”

One day, if Diana stuck around after what they were going to do to her, he would introduce her to Shiloh. He had a feeling they were alike in a lot of ways and that they’d slip into a friendship as easily as Jeremy joined complex miter joints. “I’m sorry. I forgot you didn’t know her.”

“So you stayed at the beach house every summer,” she offered instead of pursuing information about Shiloh.

“Over the years we got to know most of the ­people who lived in the cove. One was Peter Wylie. It wasn’t until I was in high school and saw something he’d painted hanging in my girlfriend’s house that I discovered he wasn’t just a local artist who sold pictures to tourists—­he was world-­famous.”

“I’m confused. I thought Peter Wylie was your father. When you said you were the son of a preacher, I just assumed he gave up his church to become an artist.”

Michael laughed. “He’s my mother’s second husband, and about as far away from being a preacher as you can get. I wasn’t kidding when I said this gets complicated.”

Diana was reluctant to admit that she’d never heard of Peter Wylie until Cheryl called and said there was a bookkeeping job opening at his galleries, and would she like to move to California to work for him? Peter scheduled a Skype interview from the Italian villa he had rented in Italy that left her excited and hopeful.

They settled on the wage and benefit package, and she was hired. Just like that, she was working again. It felt good. No, it felt wonderful. Someone wanted her.

She’d texted him several times with questions, and despite a killer itinerary filled with meet and greet sessions at galleries scattered throughout seven countries, he always got back to her within a day.

She liked Peter and wished she could continue learning the business from him, instead of Michael. He’d been easy to talk to and up-­front about the fact that one of his galleries—­the one that specialized in prints and lithographs—­was in financial trouble and might have to be closed. Her first responsibility would be to look for ways to stem the bleeding, and if that couldn’t be done, then to figure out the best way to close the doors with as little consequence to their employees, vendors, and the neighborhood as possible.

The idea that she would be using skills she’d learned in her forensic accounting classes excited her. Up to now her entire career had centered on standard accounting practices, and there were times she seriously doubted she’d make it to retirement without finding a way to clear the cobwebs from her mind. She couldn’t wait to get started on the Santa Cruz gallery’s books. Especially since, according to Peter, the Carmel gallery was in good shape, requiring little more than standard bookkeeping.

“I like complicated,” she said.

“Without going into a lot of boring detail—­”

But she loved detail. You had to be a detail person to be a bookkeeper. She smiled. “You’re not boring me. With all the baggage I’ve been carrying lately, it’s refreshing to hear about someone else’s.”

Michael no longer questioned why he was telling her intimate details of his life. It was his screwed up way to show her that what was about to happen had nothing to do with her, that he and Peter were responsible.

“My dad was going through a midlife crisis and decided he and my mother needed to spend some time apart. That morphed into him deciding he wanted a divorce, which made it a little tricky to convince the congregation that he was still the good guy. He knew what kind of gossip was making the rounds about my mother, but he did nothing to protect her. Instead, he acted like the wounded party and accepted all the cakes and casseroles and offers to do laundry that came with the tea and sympathy. Then he woke up one morning and decided God didn’t want him to get a divorce after all.”

“And in the meantime your mother had moved on with her life.” The scenario was one she’d pictured for herself in a hundred different ways. Instead, her ego was still bleeding. She was tired of all the bandaging it required, but couldn’t seem to move on.

“Not quite. She landed feet first into her own set of complications. It turned out that Peter had been in love with my mother from the first day he met her. When he found out that she and my father were getting a divorce, he figured it was now or never and finally told her how he felt.”

“Wow,” she said. “And?”

“She’d never thought of him that way. Actually, she’d always believed he was single because he was gay.”

“You’re kidding.” But before he could say anything, she added, “No, it makes perfect sense. Where I grew up it’s not possible for a preacher’s wife to have a close male friend any other way. Peter had to be gay. At least in her mind.”

Michael shifted positions, leaning forward and putting his elbows on his knees. “But he wasn’t.”

“You didn’t like Peter back then, I take it?” she said carefully. In high school several of her friends’ parents had gotten divorced, and every one of them wound up blaming the new spouse, logic be damned.

“I liked him a lot actually. But it took a while before we became friends.” He looked at Diana and smiled. “Real friends, not the lip ser­vice kind. I just regret how screwed up my dad’s life has been since he decided to drag my mother through his midlife crisis. He didn’t take it well when she refused to come back for more.

“Eventually the deacons gently suggested he find another place to spread God’s word. He surprised us all when he accepted an offer from a small church in Montana. I don’t think he paid attention to the ‘small’ part in the letter, only the part about how long they’d gone without guidance and how much they needed him. Turned out the majority of the membership considered attending ser­vices on Christmas and Easter was all God expected or wanted from them. He gets by on the kindness of the women who bring him food from their gardens and eggs from their chickens, and the rancher who tithes with a side of beef every year.”

“And your mother? Is she happy?”

“Deliriously—­her word, not mine.” He turned to look at Diana. “She says she found her soul mate.”