Flirting With Pete: A Novel Page 8

  Caroline pressed fingertips to her lips. She didn’t need to speak. Her eyes expressed ample sadness. Finally, she dropped her hand and sighed. “If practicality was all that mattered, you’d put the house on the market, take the money, and run. But you’ve always been obsessed with the man.”

  “Not obsessed.”

  “Fascinated, then. You went into his line of work. You set up shop in his city. You bought a condo ten minutes from his home. Did he ever refer you a client? Did he ever invite you to his place? You set yourself up for failure, and that’s what you got. You failed to get his attention.”

  “But I did get it,” Casey said. “He left me his townhouse.”

  “He certainly did. He didn’t ask if you wanted it, didn’t ask what you’d do with it, just dumped the thing on you. He had no time for you when he was alive, but now that he’s dead, he wants you to clean out his closets.”

  Casey wasn’t thinking about closets. “You have to see the garden, Mom.”

  “I have my own garden.” She did, indeed. No small herb patch for Caroline Ellis. She grew lettuce. She grew green beans, zucchini, and broccoli. She grew tomatoes.

  “This one’s different,” Casey insisted.

  “Oh, sweetie. It’s always different. But that’s not enough. You deserve more.”

  “I’d say,” Casey wagered, “that a three-million-dollar townhouse is something.”

  “Will it give you stability?”

  Casey hung her head. This was another discussion they’d had before. Sighing, she looked up again. “You want me to have a husband and kids, and so do I, but that’s not the issue right now. I didn’t ask for the townhouse, Mom. I was ready to bury the man and move on. Then he left me this thing, and it’s opened a whole new realm of possibilities—and problems.”

  “Really,” Caroline confirmed.

  “I want your help with it.”

  “My advice is to sell. That’s the best I can do.”

  “I want you to see it.”

  Caroline’s eyes held hers. Slowly, she shook her head.

  “It’s a house, Mom—mortar and bricks. Why are you so threatened by it?”

  Raising a hand, Caroline gave Casey a warning look. Don’t you analyze me, it said.

  Casey backed down, but only from sounding like a therapist. As a daughter, she said, “This has nothing to do with love. I love you. You raised me. You sacrificed for me. It’s just that I’ve never known anything at all about him. You won’t talk—”

  “I can’t,” Caroline broke in. “I don’t have anything to say. The man didn’t open up to anyone.”

  “He must have said something… before… after… I mean, you and he…”

  “Slept together? He barely talked.” Caroline shot her a dry look. “Haven’t you ever been attracted to the dark, silent type? Connie wasn’t dark, but he was surely silent. Silence creates a mystery, and that holds appeal. Every woman thinks she’ll be the one to break through. Well, I didn’t. So I failed.”

  “You got me.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “And you know what I mean, too,” Casey insisted, because she was desperate for her mother’s understanding. “You couldn’t break through. Other people couldn’t break through. But I have a chance.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “His house isn’t. Maybe it has stories to tell. Look at it this way. When I have kids, they’ll carry half my genes, which are really your genes and his genes. They’ll know you and love you, and what they don’t see for themselves, I’ll be able to tell them. Wouldn’t it be nice if I have a little to say about him, too?”

  Caroline thought about that for a minute. Then, ever the mother who wanted more for her child than she’d had herself, she smiled. “Promise me the husband comes first?”

  *

  Sitting in the car parked along the Fenway with her mother’s feelings fresh in her mind, Casey put in a call to the realtor who had handled her condo purchase. The line rang on the other end; a recorded voice invited her to leave a message. She took a breath to do it, hesitated, and disconnected the call. How to say that she suddenly owned a townhouse on Beacon Hill and wished to sell it? One didn’t choose tiny condos over townhouses on Beacon Hill. The realtor would think she had lost her mind. An in-person phone call would be better than a message. Casey would try another time. Caroline was right; there was definite merit to the idea of selling the house, investing the money, and leaving Connie behind. It was what he deserved.

  First, though, Casey had to explore the place, learn what she could about Connie, satisfy herself that there was nothing else of interest. More immediately, she had to notify her clients of the office change.

  With that in mind, she drove straight to the townhouse. Parking out front, she unlocked the door and let herself in. She had one aberrant thought as she ran down the stairs— that if she stayed here for long, she would have to replace Ruth Unger’s paintings. But she returned to focus as soon as she entered the office, pulled up the client list on her computer, and began making calls. When she opened the doors to the garden, she told herself it was for the sake of letting in the evening air. When she wandered outside between calls, she told herself it was to stretch her legs. As soon as she had finished leaving messages for Monday’s and Tuesday’s clients, though, she shut down the computer, set aside the phone, and gave up any attempt to resist.

  Evening in the garden was special. Mushroom lamps lit the path; floods hidden behind shrubs spread a soft spray on the trees. There were no birds or squirrels now, but the fountain continued to trickle. Low sounds came from neighbors’ windows. Someone was barbecuing— steak, from the smell of it.

  Stretching out on the wood bench under the chestnut, she looked up. More stars were visible than she usually saw in the city. She wondered whether the night was simply that clear, or whether it was the power of suggestion. This garden was a magical place. Closing her eyes, though, brought the real treat. Between the smells of evergreens, of flowers whose names she didn’t know but whose scents she loved, of earth and of grilled steak, and the whisper of the evening breeze through the branches of her trees, she was totally sated.

  It was that visceral something again, she realized. Had she believed in reincarnation, she might have thought she had been a wood nymph once. She felt totally at home in this garden.

  *

  She awoke curled in a ball on her side. It was two in the morning, and she was chilled. Appalled to have fallen asleep there on the bench— and for so long— she went inside to turn off the lights, set the alarm, and go home. It was dark enough on the stairs so that she didn’t have to confront Ruth’s art, but by the time she reached the kitchen, something else had hit her. She chose to call it fatigue.

  Continuing up to the guest bedroom, she undressed, washed up, and put on the pale blue robe that had been hanging in the bathroom with its tie so neatly bowed. It was brand new, never worn. In her drowsy state, she pretended that it had been bought with her in mind and been waiting for her all this time. It was definitely her color.

  Back in the bedroom, she went to close the door because, after all, Connie’s bedroom was right down the hall. Yes, he was dead. She knew that. But something of him remained in that room. Angus the ghost? She thought not. All kidding aside, she didn’t believe in ghosts. But there was definitely a presence there.

  Deciding that she didn’t want to sleep on this floor at all, she went back down two flights to the den. Yes, Connie was here, too, but there was also a coziness. Curling up on the sofa, she covered her feet with the crocheted afghan, arranged a pillow under her head, and went back to sleep.

  *

  She woke up before five with the day’s early light and was immediately disoriented. By the time she realized where she was, she couldn’t have possibly fallen back to sleep. Rising from the sofa, she stood for a minute in the middle of the room trying to decide where to go, what to do, how to feel. Waking up in her father’s home was something she’d never done
in her life. It was abnormal.

  She needed normal. Coffee was normal.

  So she went upstairs to the kitchen and brewed a pot. While she waited for it to finish, she looked out the back window at the garden, but darkness lingered there. Though the eastern sky was growing brighter by the minute, the sun hadn’t risen high enough to spill over onto her side of the hill.

  Filling a moss green mug with coffee, she went back down the stairs, this time going to the office. Her computer was there. Her Rolodex was there. Normally on a Monday morning, once the hour was reasonable, she would be working with those two and the phone, if not arguing with insurance companies on a client’s behalf, then doing time sheets for billing, which was why she never scheduled a client on Monday before ten. Her first one today was at eleven, and she had to return to her condo for clothes and be back here before then. But it was only five. She had plenty of time.

  Warmed by the coffee, she looked around the office for signs of her father. The only things bearing his name were a pair of diplomas on the wall, but they didn’t tell her anything she didn’t already know. There were several original botanical prints, framed simply, but while they were beautiful, the only thing they marked was Connie’s ability to purchase them.

  That was it for accolades. A visitor to the office would never know that the man who had lived and worked here had been an icon in his field, that he had received innumerable honors in the course of his career, or that he had been published many times over. Scanning the shelves of books, she couldn’t find any of his— and she would have recognized them on sight. She owned every last one.

  She did spot several of the same reference books that she owned. They were de rigueur for a therapist’s office— precisely the thing, she realized, that a father would pass to a son or daughter entering his field. Setting her mug on the desk, she took down one of the books and opened it, fancying that she might find an inscription, To Casey, from your father, with my love and best wishes for a successful career. She would have been satisfied even without the love part. But the flyleaf was bare.

  She tried a second book and found a second bare flyleaf. Same with a third.

  Disappointed, she studied the shelves of books. Those most readily accessible from the desk were more focused on psychoanalysis than the ones Casey preferred. In a fit of pique, she pulled off the loftiest of the bunch and exiled them to distant slots. Handful by handful, she did the same with the rest until two prime shelves were completely purged. Then she searched the boxes stacked in the hall until she found her own favorite books. In no time, she had them in the place of honor, neatly arranged.

  The reorganization made the shelves look warmer, she decided. Encouraged, she turned her attention to the desk. It was an oversized mahogany affair with three drawers down each side and a shallow pencil drawer in the middle. The chair was leather, large also, with a high back. She sat in it, testing, first forward and back, then left and right. Swiveling left again, she opened the top drawer on that side and found pads of lined yellow paper. The second drawer held a stapler and staples, boxes of lead pencils and red pencils, boxes of paper clips, a microcassette recorder, and a packet of tapes.

  She held the recorder in her hand much as he must have done, and turned it on, hoping to hear his voice, but the tape was blank.

  Replacing it, she closed the drawer and opened the bottom one. The metal brackets said that it had once held hanging files. It was empty now, but wouldn’t be for long. In no time, she filled it with files of her own. She did the same with the bottom right drawer. The drawer above it held Connie’s stationery, both a formal letterhead with the Harvard insignia that he was entitled to use as a member of the faculty, and his personal stationery. The latter was ivory with black block letters. CORNELIUS B. UNGER.

  She had no idea what the B stood for. She had asked a number of people over the years, but no one else knew, either.

  Stationery offered a golden opportunity. Had Casey been in Connie’s shoes, leaving her home and its contents to a child she’d never known, she would have left a note here.

  Both piles were neatly arranged, but neither of the top sheets had the slightest markings on them.

  Disheartened, she closed that drawer, opened the one above it, and found half a dozen small mesh boxes. One held elastic bands, another erasers, a third Post-it pads. The rest brimmed with Callard & Bowser butterscotch candy.

  The candies gave Casey a start. She loved butterscotch candies— had been a chain eater in grad school, so much so that she had cracked several molars because of her habit of biting rather than sucking. So she wasn’t very good at proper candy eating either, but Connie couldn’t have known that. She might have imagined he had filled the little boxes with her in mind, if, given all else, it hadn’t been improbable.

  She reached for a candy, thought twice, pulled her hand back.

  Closing that drawer, she opened the shallow center one. Half a dozen Bic pens lay in a slim pen tray— and that did her heart good. She hated Bic pens, never ever used them. The pen she used was a Mont Blanc. It had been a gift from her mother.

  Feeling redeemed, comforted to think she had thwarted Connie in this one thing, at least, she opened the drawer farther. Behind the pen tray lay a wooden ruler, and behind that a manila envelope.

  When she pulled it out, her pulse quickened. A “C” was scrawled on the front, definitely by his hand. C was for Cornelius, but she didn’t know why he would have put his own initial on the front. C was also for Casey.

  Heart pounding, she unfolded the clasp, opened the envelope, and pulled out a wad of typed papers that were held together by a binder clip. Flirting with Pete, she read front and center, and beneath it, in smaller letters, A Journal.

  Flirting with Pete. A Journal.

  Casey flipped through the papers under the top one. They were double-spaced, full sheets, each one numbered. She returned to the first.

  Flirting with Pete. A Journal.

  C was for Casey. The same something that told her that was true drove her on.

  Removing the binder, she laid the papers on the desk, turned the cover sheet aside, and began to read.

  Chapter Five

  Little Falls

  The Friday morning fog was so thick that Jenny Clyde couldn’t see much more than a smear of scrub grass to her right, a swath of rutted road to her left, and the scuffed rubber tips of her own worn sneakers taking her steadily on into town. Drifting left, she saw less grass than road. Left a little more, and the grass disappeared.

  Holding steady in the middle of the road, she focused straight ahead, blotting out all but the mottled gray of the tar and the hovering white mist. Fog was a late summer staple in Little Falls. Wedged in a gully between two high peaks, the town got caught in the war between warm days and cool nights. Jenny had always imagined clouds caught in that war just hit the slopes, slid down to the bottom, and lay there helpless and spent.

  Not that she minded the fog. It let her pretend that the town was protective, forgiving, and kind. It buffered her from the cold hard facts of her life.

  A car approached, a muted hum at first, then a gargle that grew more distinct the closer it came. Jenny didn’t budge from the middle of the road. The gargle became a rough sputter. She walked on. It came louder and nearer… louder and nearer… louder and nearer… louder and nearer…

  At the very last minute, she trotted out of harm’s way.

  Tugging her baseball cap lower, she tucked in her chin, slipped her hands in her jeans pockets, and did her best to shrink from sight. But Merle Little saw her. He saw her at much the same spot most every day, as he drove home for mid-morning coffee with his wife.

  “Keep out of the road, MaryBeth Clyde!” he bellowed through the car window, seconds before he was swallowed back up by the fog.

  Jenny raised her head. “Hey, Mr. Little,” she might have said had he slowed, “how are you today?”

  “Fair to middlin’,” old Merle might have answered had he been a more
compassionate sort, “and you, Jenny? My, but you’re looking pretty today.”

  She might have smiled sweetly or blushed. She might have even thanked him for the compliment and pretended it was earned. She certainly would have waved when he drove off, because that was the friendly thing to do to someone you had known all your life— someone whose family had founded the town— someone who lived right on your very own street, even if he resented that fact and wished it were otherwise.

  She walked on. The Booths’ mongrels barked, though she couldn’t see them through the fog. Nor could she see the rusted hinge on the Johnsons’ front gate up ahead, or the flowers blooming in the Farinas’ yard, but she knew those things were there. She could hear the first and smell the last.

  “Shhhhh,” she might have warned whatever children she’d had. “Keep your voices low. Old man Farina has a temper. It won’t do any good to rile him up.”

  “But he can’t come after us, Mama,” one of the children might have pointed out, “he can’t walk.”

  “He can so,” another might have argued. “He has canes. He hit Joey Battle with one, even after Deputy Dan told him not to do it. How come he did that, Mama, after Deputy Dan said no?”

  Because some people are bad, Jenny might have answered if she’d had children, and all the while she would have been hugging the baby to her hip— a sweet, silk-haired powdery little girl, so warm, so clingy with the love and need Jenny craved that Jenny would have been hard put to set her down for so much as a nap. Some people don’t care what’s the law and what isn’t. Some people don’t listen to Deputy Dan, not to one word.

  The fog shifted to give a glimpse of September-green birch leaves and peeling white bark. In another two weeks, those leaves would turn yellow. By then, Jenny mused, she might be gone.

  As the fog closed in again, she imagined a different town beyond it. She imagined something like New York City, with tall buildings, long avenues, and no one knowing where she’d come from, who she’d been, or what she’d done, and if not New York, then someplace in Wyoming, with the kind of wide-open spaces that went on and on and on. She could get lost there, too. First, though, she had to escape Little Falls.