The Cottage Next Door (7 page)

He picked up another shell and tossed it toward the first. “Forget I said that. None of this involves you or is your problem.”

“It’s helpful to know what I’m walking into. Is there anything I can do to make the transition easier? Would it help if I came in a ­couple of days early and let Hester go over the accounts with me?”

He felt like the guy who’d painted himself into a corner with slow-­drying varnish.

“I’m not sure anything would help at this point,” he said. “Leaving was Hester’s idea, not Peter’s.”

“It’s a lot easier to leave because you want to instead of going into your boss’s office expecting a raise and walking out unemployed.” She shifted so that she was sitting on the sand beside him, her back to the log.

“Is that what happened to you?”

“I thought you knew what happened.” For awhile, between her mother and father, her brothers and sisters, the firefighters who’d watched her grandmother’s house burn to the ground, and most of all Howard, she’d been convinced there were enough sources that the gossip had reached Outer Mongolia.

“By the time the story got to me it had gone through so many tellings, the only thing I paid attention to was that a really good bookkeeper needed a job, and Peter needed a really good bookkeeper. Serendipity.”

“I love that word.”

“Bookkeeper?”

She playfully punched him on his arm, hitting muscle that was rock hard. It was nice having a guy like Michael as a new friend, someone who either didn’t know or didn’t care how deeply she’d humiliated herself, and how profound the consequences had been. She didn’t want to go there anymore than she wanted to tell Michael something that would make him doubt Peter’s decision to hire her.

Still . . .

Chapter Nine

D
IANA
BROUGHT UP
her legs and wrapped her arms around them, careful not to disturb the delicate shells in her pocket. Staring at the ocean with the realization that what she could see was only a tiny fraction of what was out there helped put what had happened to her into perspective. She was one person in a world of seven billion. Her story was insignificant compared to that of a woman who had to battle crocodiles every day to get drinking water for her family.

She took a deep breath and began.

“The day after I graduated from the University of Kansas, I went to work for WKB Industries in their accounting division. Back then it was one of the hottest companies on the Dow Jones, and I was convinced they were a great fit for the way I imagined my career going—­two years to get myself established in a job, night school to study for my CPA license, steadily accruing benefits, Florida vacations in the winter; all in all, a solid upper middle class life. WKB was known for promoting from within, which meant that with normal attrition, there would be an opportunity for me to move up as soon as I was licensed.”

She paused and watched the waves, thinking how boring her life must sound to someone like Michael. But it was what it was. Trying to make it sound better or more glamorous would make as much sense as Donald Trump’s comb-­over. “I saw myself retiring from WKB. I’d have a nice income from the stock-­sharing program and I’d finally be able to travel.

“I was twenty-­two at the time. Can you imagine? How does anyone that age actually plan to spend a lifetime behind a desk, when there are so many places to go and see in a world filled with all those billions of ­people? That’s my sister. It isn’t me.” More out of nervousness than need, with only a light breeze coming off the ocean, Diana reached up to twist her hair into a coil and lay it across her shoulder.

“It isn’t me, either,” he said. “I’ve been lucky to have backpacked through Europe and New Zealand, but I’ve never seen the Great Wall or the Barrier Reef or the Ganges River.” He twisted to face her. “Did you know there’s a river dolphin that lives in the Ganges? It’s endangered and will likely disappear in a ­couple of decades. I want a chance to see one before they’re gone. Maybe even try to do something to save them.”

“I don’t know if I could do that,” she said. “It breaks my heart just thinking about it.”

He smiled, purposely lightening the mood. “You could always visit one of the temples while I’m out on the river.”

“I could do that,” she said, playing along.

“Back to your story,” he prompted.

“Are you sure you really want to hear this?”

“Positive. It’s a mandatory part of the employment package.”

Everything he said, every look he gave her, every smile that lit up his eyes, made her like him more. Yet, past experience told her that there had to be a downside. Every man she’d ever gone out with had a downside.

“I’d been working at WKB for seven years, when my boss told me he had something important that he wanted to talk to me about. He had his secretary set up an appointment for ten o’clock on a Friday morning.

“That should have been the first clue that I wasn’t being given a promotion. Friday is the day they fire ­people at WKB, but never in the morning, always the afternoon, which lulled me into a fantasy of my own making. The Friday thing is such a cliché, but like all clichés, based in fact. Fire a person late in the day, send someone to watch them clean out their desk, then quietly and quickly escort them out of the building. It’s an incredibly effective way to get rid of ­people, practiced by all kinds of businesses, big and small.”

“Not to mention heartless.”

“Thanks to my own naiveté, it turned out to be particularly cold in my case.” She smiled again, surprising herself. It was the first time she’d been able to look at what happened without feeling utterly humiliated.

“I’d used the money I had tucked away for a down payment on a new car to buy a dynamite knockoff Stella McCartney suit and a pair of Manolo Blahnik heels. It was the best thing that came out of that day. And one of the few things from that time that I still own.”

“Did you bring them with you?”

“I brought everything I own with me. It took me less than an hour to pack, and I had enough room left in the trunk of my car to bring Cheryl the dishes my mother promised to send her when my grandmother died.”

“Sorry—­but that’s a little hard for me to imagine. I don’t have sisters, but I have a mother.”

“Wait for the rest, you’ll understand.” Not wanting to see the look on his face when she told him what she’d done, she stretched out her legs in front of her and leaned back her head to focus on the blanket of stars filling the sky. “It turned out I wasn’t the only one being fired that day. The company had decided to outsource my entire department. I was invited to apply for a job with the accounting company they’d hired. Of course it would mean I had to relocate to Louisiana and that I’d be hired at entry-­level wages with minimum benefits. But what the hell, a job is a job.”

“I assume you told them what they could do with their offer?”

“Oh, trust me. I thought of some brilliant comebacks, but not until I was in the car headed home. All I could do when it happened was hold myself together. I knew that if I started crying, I wouldn’t be able to stop. And if I started screaming, they’d have me hauled off.” She smiled. “And if I started throwing things the way I wanted to, I’d never get another job. This was the guy I had to go to for a reference letter, which he not so subtly reminded me in the same breath he used to fire me.”

“Sounds like it was all carefully planned.”

“The human resources department at WKB is top-­notch. I have no doubt they had every possibility covered.”

He surprised her then by reaching for her hand. This was different than the other times he’d held her hand. Now it was purposefully comforting, the kind of gesture that came with the intimacy of a real friendship. She’d been wrapped in bear hugs that were less familiar than the way Michael touched her.

“Their loss is our gain. Although I have to admit I don’t think any of us knew you were an actual CPA. You’re way overqualified for this job.”

She shook off his comment. “There’s more that’s less impressive. I’d promised Howard, the guy who’d sworn his undying love when he gave me a flashy engagement ring at Christmas—­which, apropos of nothing, turned out to be a one-­and-­a-­half carat CZ, not a diamond—­that I’d call him as soon as I got out of the meeting so he knew what kind of plans to make for our big celebration. The bigger the promotion, the more expensive the champagne. I had imagined a bottle of Bollinger.

“I decided to wait until I got home to break the news to Howard, knowing he’d be almost as disappointed as I was. At the time, he was between jobs—­a chronic condition—­so I knew he would be there. All I cared about at that point was having a shoulder to cry on.”

Michael grimaced. “I have a feeling I know where this is headed.”

“I’ve thought about it a lot, and I’m convinced seeing him in bed with another woman wouldn’t have been as bad if it hadn’t been my best friend. There’s something particularly ugly about losing your lover and your best friend at the same time.”

“What did you do?”

“As soon as I got over the initial shock, I threw my purse at Barbara. She screamed, of course, which I found strangely satisfying. I grabbed whatever I could put my hands on and fired away. It wasn’t until I threw the antique lace pillow that my mother had given me that everything went downhill in a big way. The pillow hit one of the scented candles Howard liked to have burn when he made love, and it was like it had been soaked in gasoline. It exploded and shot pieces of burning lace everywhere.” She frowned. “I meant to ask one of the firefighters why that happened, but never did.

“Howard panicked and started snatching everything that was on fire and tossing it off the bed. What happened next was inevitable. The bits and pieces of fire were like matches put to every piece of flammable material in the room. The curtains lasted less than ten seconds, Barbara’s clothes on the back of the rocker didn’t so much burn as melt. The drips fell on the rug. It smoldered and sent out a black plume of smoke before it burst into flames.

“I realized there was nothing we could do except get out of there and call the fire department. Howard had canceled the landline to save money, and my phone was in my purse, and my purse was still on the bed next to Barbara. I made a dive for the bed. Barbara thought I was going to attack her and grabbed me around the waist. She kept screaming over and over again how sorry she was, as if my forgiving her would put out the fire.

“Howard picked up his pants and tried beating the flames which, of course, fanned them and made the fire spread even faster.

“I’ve read stories about ­people who have gone through traumatic events and how every second seemed like a minute, but I never really understood what that meant until it happened to me. Every detail of those few minutes is etched in my memory.”

Michael looked at Diana and gave her a wry smile. “You don’t have to say another word. I’m willing to yield the most embarrassing moment contest to you. If you don’t want to relive it again, I’ll—­”

But, surprisingly, she did. This was the first time she’d been able to talk about what happened with any sense of irony. “You might as well know it all.”

He let go of her hand and put his arm across her shoulders, bringing her close into his side. “Okay—­I’m all yours.”

“We wound up outside,” Diana said, continuing. “Me covered in soot and looking like a wild woman, Barbara wrapped in a blanket she’d grabbed off the sofa, Howard completely naked. Barbara and I started going door to door looking for someone to call 911. Howard tried to save his truck but couldn’t get it out of the garage before the fire reached that side of the house. I tried flagging down a passing car. It slowed down, then the driver spotted Howard coming down the street covering himself with a branch from the boxwood hedge, and took off.

“We finally found a kid coming home from school. I scared the crap out of him when I grabbed his bike and demanded his phone. It turned out someone had spotted the smoke and the fire department was already on the way. Even so, all they could do when they got there was keep the houses on either side of mine from catching fire.

“I lost everything, all my grandmother’s antique furniture, my yearbooks, my mother’s wedding dress, the Christmas ornaments passed down through four generations . . . everything. Worst of all, I lost my grandmother’s house. She was born in that house. Her father built it all by himself. He pounded every nail and put in every window and laid every brick.”

“That’s the kind of thing insurance can’t cover.”

“Having insurance cover
anything
would have helped. But, stupidly, paying the homeowner’s insurance was a responsibility I let Howard assume when he insisted he wanted to pay his fair share. Of course that was when he was still employed. Afterward, he assured me he had enough savings to cover his portion of the bills until he landed a new job. He even made a point of telling me he would let me know if he needed help.

“If I’d financed the house when I bought it from my grandmother’s estate instead of using my savings and a loan from my parents, there would have been a mortgage company to come after me to remind me to pay the insurance. But noooo, I had to show all my sisters and brothers how responsible I was.”

“I can see why you felt you needed to start over someplace else.”

“Sorry you asked?” She almost moved deeper into his side when it hit her who he was, and why it was a particularly stupid idea.

“Sorry you told me?” Sensing the change, Michael stood and put out his hand to help her up.

“No.” To her surprise, she really wasn’t.

Chapter Ten

T
HE NEXT DAY
Michael went to work at the Carmel gallery and Diana went shopping. She’d bought a few summer skirts and blouses and shorts before she left Kansas, but she still needed work clothes and the Stella McCartney suit didn’t count. She started at the Capitola Mall and then decided it would be more fun to try the smaller independent stores scattered throughout the overlapping towns that surrounded Santa Cruz.

She needed time and a lot of sales and careful shopping to rebuild her wardrobe. In Kansas she’d gotten by on clothes from her sisters, one slightly smaller, one slightly larger. It was nice to be trying on things that actually fit again.

Six hours after she’d begun, minus a half hour for lunch at a sidewalk cafe where she ate an avocado and sprouts sandwich, drank organic passion fruit iced tea, and thought about Michael’s reaction to her story, she had five mix-­and-­match outfits that she could put together to make ten. And she was out less than three hundred dollars. Not bad considering only four items had come from the sale rack.

Synergy Organic Clothing was her favorite new store, although she loved the funkiness of Bunny’s and Kurios. Pacific Trading Company made her feel like a native, and had clothes that fit so well it was as if they’d been especially made for her. Now all she needed was to find a great shoe store. She loved sandals almost as much as she did brightly colored tee shirts and short skirts.

Her severance had gone to pay off the loan from her parents. She’d used her retirement to tear down and haul away what was left of her house. The lot she couldn’t sell, despite needing the money. Even her mother had told her hanging on to a plot of land without anything on it didn’t make sense. But it was all she had left.

If she was careful she could cover the deposit on an apartment, feed herself, and pay her incidental bills until she started getting regular paychecks.

Things were looking up.

Tonight Michael was taking her to the boardwalk. Not her favorite form of entertainment, but one he insisted she had to experience to be considered a true Santa Cruz resident. To push his point, he tried to convince her there was a city ordinance that said anyone residing in Santa Cruz had three months to visit the boardwalk. After that, they would be banished to one of the neighboring towns.

She’d grown up attending rodeos and county fairs and traveling carnivals, flatland versions of the advertising she’d seen for the rides and games at the Santa Cruz boardwalk. Her best memory of the State Fair in Hutchinson was her brother giving her a ten-­foot long stuffed toy snake he’d won tossing baseballs. Her worst was throwing up a combination of hot dog, cotton candy, deep fried ice cream, and red velvet funnel cake at the top of the Ferris wheel.

Luckily, ten year olds are forgiven almost anything, and that happened to be the one truly cute year she’d had as a child. Her mother and father came to her rescue after being called over the loud speaker, grounding her brothers for a month as soon as they learned how much junk food they’d fed her. Once they were home, the month morphed into a stern lecture. Both brothers were on the football team and between homework, practice, and games, were never home long enough to be grounded.

Spotting a sporting goods store in a shopping center next to Highway 1, Diana pulled in to pick up a map of the area’s running trails. The number was mind-­boggling, the topography even more so, including everything from oceanside to deep forest to hillsides to flat tracks.

She took time to wander through the store and was fleetingly tempted by a pair of rainbow-­splashed running shoes that cost almost as much as she’d spent on the clothes. A lime-­green skort and a royal blue tank top caught her eye, but they too were left behind.

It seemed a lifetime ago when she looked back at how casually she’d spent money when she had it, especially on clothes. Howard had the largest closet, located in one of the back bedrooms, but the three she’d claimed provided twice the space. One, the smallest, was devoted entirely to shoes and bags.

She missed her old running shoes.

She missed her favorite hairbrush.

She missed her grandmother’s afghan, the fishing pole her father had made and given her on her twelfth birthday, the ceramic cat with its right paw raised, that represented good fortune and money, that her brother had brought her from Japan.

Most of all she missed the dishes and embroidered towels and fragile baby clothes that had been handed down from one generation of women in her family to the next for a century and a half. If she’d had the insurance money she could have rebuilt the house and replaced the furniture and appliances, but nothing could replace the mourning locket worn by her great-­grandmother’s great-­grandmother, who’d lost her husband and only son in the Civil War.

She had to stop doing this to herself
.

Okay, so she’d lost a houseful of memories that she’d imagined one day passing on to her own daughter. They were things, not ­people. No one had died. No one had been hurt. She could make new memories.

D
I
ANA PUT HER
new clothes in the closet and dresser that Cheryl had emptied for her. She changed into maroon shorts and an orange and yellow striped tank top. The next half hour she spent on the back deck answering emails and texts and returning her mother’s phone call. Her duty to friends and family accomplished, she tried to decide whether she wanted to be lazy and stay on the deck, soaking up the sun, or try out the closest running trail. Feeling herself leaning toward the lazy side, she changed into running clothes, strapped on her water bottles, and headed next door to borrow Coconut. She met Jeremy as he was leaving.

“Bad timing?” she asked.

“What’s up?” he said, answering as if he been so lost in his own thoughts he hadn’t heard her question.

“I wanted to see if Coconut was available.”

“Sorry—­she stayed home with Shiloh today.” He opened the truck door and climbed inside. “Check back day after tomorrow. They should both be here by then.”

“I’ll do that.” She moved toward the road.

He backed out of the driveway and caught up to her, rolling down the passenger window and leaning across the seat. “I don’t know how much Michael has told you about Shiloh, but if she’s at the house when you come by, she’ll try to convince you there’s nothing wrong with her. She might even try to talk you into letting her go with you and Coconut.” He ran his hand over his face in a gesture of profound fatigue. “She can’t.”

Diana leaned against the door. “Would you rather I didn’t come by at all?”

“No, she worries that Coconut doesn’t get enough exercise.” He sat up and put both hands on the steering wheel, then stiffened them in a forced stretch, a bone-­deep weariness marking the gesture. “I know it’s a strange thing for a twelve year old to be concerned about, but Shiloh isn’t like other kids her age. She was excited about your offer and would know that I talked to you if you didn’t come by.”

“If I go slow, could she walk the trails? Or the beach?”

“Right now she needs her strength for . . . other things.”

“What if Michael came with us?” she asked carefully. “Shiloh and I could sit on the log and watch Michael and Coconut chase waves.” When he didn’t answer right away, she added, “My father is always telling me that ‘no’ is a perfectly good answer. My idea was only a suggestion. I won’t—­”

“Yes,” he said instead, warming to the idea. “She’d like that. She’s crazy about Michael. I have a feeling she’s going to be crazy about you, too.”

The compliment surprised and pleased her. “I’m going to see him in a ­couple of hours. He insisted anyone moving to Santa Cruz had to get to the boardwalk as soon as possible.” Why did she feel as if she had to explain the reasoning behind her and Michael doing something together? “I’ll ask if he’s free to come over day after tomorrow when he gets off work.”

“Have him call first. There’s no sense in wasting a trip if Shiloh isn’t feeling well.” A slow grin formed. “Never mind. I don’t think he would consider any trip this direction a waste.”

For the second time in less than a minute, he’d surprised her. This time she blushed. “He’s just being nice.”

Jeremy laughed as he shifted the truck from neutral to reverse. “No one who’s lived here more than a ­couple of years goes to the boardwalk voluntarily. Unless they’re hooked on the gelato.”

“You mean ice cream?”

“Have a scoop of the vanilla bean while you’re there, and then let me know if you still think it’s just ice cream.”

T
HE FIRST THING
Diana did when she returned from her run was go inside to look for her phone. Thankfully, it was on the dresser and not somewhere along the trail. In the hour and a half she’d been gone, she’d received six voice messages and fifteen texts. She skimmed the voice mail numbers, stopping to listen to one from Michael. He’d called to cancel their night at the boardwalk, saying something had come up that he had to take care of, and asking if she was available the next night.

Until that moment she hadn’t known how much she’d been looking forward to doing something dumb and fun . . . and to seeing him again. Determined to ignore the disappointment, she returned his call, reaching his voice mail. The message she left was too forced to come across as lighthearted as she’d intended.

“Hmmm . . . I love the ‘available’ part. As it so happens, I am free the next night.” And every night after that, she could have added, but he already knew that. “Give me a call if you have to cancel again. It’s okay. Really.”
Too much
. “See you tomorrow. Bye.”

Instead of returning the other calls and texts, Diana dropped her phone on the kitchen table and poured a glass of wine. She wandered from room to room, winding up on the enclosed back porch where she sat on the edge of a Mission style chair and looked around the oddly decorated room.

The walls were covered in an art deco wallpaper that looked as if it had been there since 1930. The floor looked original, too, not the factory oak that was in the rest of the house. Here there were expansion spaces to allow the boards to respond to the environment.

Something about being there drew her gently into another world, one of stories told in a whisper too soft to make out the words. This mysterious world enveloped her in an aura of peace and love so subtle that she doubted what she felt was real. How many lovers had kissed in this room? How many had made promises to each other that they knew they wouldn’t keep? How many tears had been shed over those broken promises?

She got up and went to the window. An empty bird feeder hung from a hook on the eave, a sad looking finch sat on the tray. Waiting. Diana imagined him wondering what he had done that had made the food go away and brought such a dramatic change to his life.

Damn it
. She wanted her life back. She wanted to be the person she used to be, the one who rebounded from being dumped by guys because she believed with all her heart that true love was out there waiting for her.

She didn’t want to wait another year and a half before she took a chance again. So what if she still couldn’t trust her instincts about men and met someone new and had her heart broken a third or fourth or fifth time? She would survive.

Raising her wineglass to toast herself, she saw that her hand was shaking and her vision had become blurry with tears.

She gave herself the moment, indulging in the sorrow that she’d learned came with healing. What she missed as she wiped her eyes was the sun clearing a cloud and sending a brilliant ray of light through the window. For just a moment, the ray landed on a tiny piece of sea glass.

Diana caught a flash of blue light out of the corner of her eye. She put it off to a prism created when sunlight hit glass. Easily explained. Certainly nothing magical or mysterious to mark a life-­altering moment.

Overcome with a sudden sense of purpose, she took her half-­full glass back to the kitchen, grabbed her purse and keys, and headed to the grocery store to buy birdseed.