Part 3
For a second, I could only look at the water dripping from the spout onto my shoe.
“Are you offering me the job?”
“I am. Could you start Monday?”
“Yes,” I said, too quickly, and laughed at myself. “Yes, Monday works.”
“Good. I’ll send the details. Bring your questions. We’ll put the kettle on.”
I wrote down the time he gave me on the back of an envelope, then called Denise before I could talk myself into waiting until evening.
She made enough noise over the news that I had to hold the phone away from my ear.
Monday became the beginning of a routine I came to trust. I woke around six-thirty to birds in the hedge, walked to the bakery for coffee and something warm, and reached the studio by crossing the old bridge over the narrow river.
There were five of us, including Grant. My colleagues showed me where the sample books lived, which suppliers answered promptly, and which local phrases meant that a contractor was about to say no. They were generous about my questions and even more generous when I brought food to share.
Grant gave me room to work on Beacon House. He wanted the old building to feel cared for rather than dressed up for photographs, and he trusted me to decide how to get there.
I spent hours considering proportions, finishes, and the places where a guest would naturally put a coat or a glass. My attention stayed with the drawings because the work deserved it, not because I was forcing myself to forget something.
On weekends, I rode my bicycle along the river, searched antique stalls for useful pieces, and learned how much could go wrong when a novice pruned a rosebush. The garden recovered from my mistakes. So did I.
I began sleeping through the night. I laughed at things before checking whether anybody else approved of them. When I cooked, leftovers were an advantage rather than evidence that I had failed to anticipate Nolan’s appetite.
One Friday, about a week before the wedding, Denise called by video. I was working at the table beside the garden window, with tile samples spread around my laptop.
She leaned closer to her screen.
“Look at your face.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing. That’s what’s so strange. You look rested.”
“I’ve discovered sleep. It’s very fashionable up here.”
She laughed, and we talked about her children, her work, and a neighbor who kept borrowing tools without returning them. Then her expression grew careful.
“Next Saturday,” she began.
“I know.”
“I just want to make sure you’re not planning to sit alone thinking about it.”
I lifted two tile samples toward the camera.
“Next Saturday, I need to decide whether the hotel bathrooms want this gray or this warmer one. I’m also visiting a ceramics workshop. There may be a heated discussion about glaze.”
“Claire.”
“I’m all right, Denise. Really. They can have their day. I have work I like and roses that apparently expect to be fed.”
She studied me, then let out a long breath.
“Fine. I believe you. Pick the warmer tile.”
“I haven’t even shown you the whole palette.”
“I have excellent instincts.”
On the wedding afternoon, I was finishing the watering when her name appeared again. I wiped my hands on my gardening apron and answered.
Denise was at home in loose clothes, but music and voices came through behind her.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Safely away from that wedding. My husband’s there.” She turned the camera toward a tablet propped against a bowl. “He’s been sending me pictures, and now he’s showing me some of the reception.”
A shaky view of a ballroom filled my phone. There were flowers banked around the doors, musicians seated at one end, and guests moving between tables under an enormous chandelier.
“You should see what they’ve spent,” Denise said. “A carpet all the way from the entrance, flowers brought in from somewhere expensive, and enough musicians to fill a concert hall. My husband says there isn’t a plain surface left in the room.”
“How are they?”
She found a photograph and held it toward the camera. Brooke wore a heavily beaded gown and a small jeweled tiara. One hand rested prominently against her stomach.
“They’re telling people the dress cost tens of thousands. And she keeps doing that with her hand, just in case somebody hasn’t heard the news.”
“She’s certainly enjoying the attention,” I said.
“Nolan’s worse. Light suit, shining shoes, walking around as if the entire event is a tribute to him. Apparently, he’s making sure everyone knows he’s going to be a father.”
I could imagine it without difficulty. Nolan had always liked an audience for anything he considered proof of success.
On the tablet, someone passed close to Denise’s husband, briefly covering the view with a sleeve. I looked beyond my own screen to the bed of late roses near the fence.
“What are you making for dinner?” I asked.
Denise blinked.
“Are you serious? I have a live report from the most ridiculous wedding in Philadelphia, and you want to discuss my refrigerator?”
“I’m putting a chicken in the oven. Grant and the others are coming over. I’m trying to decide whether I have time to do potatoes too.”
“You invited people over tonight?”
“Yes. We’ve been wanting an evening without everybody staring at drawings.”
Her indignation dissolved into laughter.
“Well, don’t burn dinner on their account. I’ll let you go. If anything interesting happens, you know I’m not capable of keeping it to myself.”
“I know that very well.”
I put the phone on the kitchen counter, washed my hands, and chopped herbs from the little bed outside the door. I had expected some difficult moment during that day, perhaps an ache that caught me while I was doing something ordinary.
Instead, I was concerned about oven space.
My colleagues arrived with wine and dessert. We ate at the table with the windows open, and despite our intentions, the hotel came into the conversation. Someone suggested a better way to light the corridor. Grant asked me to explain the shelving I had drawn for the lobby, then told the others what the client had said about it.
Nobody interrupted me to finish the explanation. Nobody made a joke about how much trouble I took over small things.
After they left, I washed the plates and went to bed pleased with the evening. I assumed Denise’s report had been the whole of the wedding’s intrusion into my day.
The next morning, my coffee was barely made when she called again.
“Please tell me you’re not broadcasting the honeymoon,” I said.
“Sit down.”
“I’m getting my coffee.”
“Take it with you. Sit.”
Her voice had the bright, breathless quality she got when she had a story too large to tell in order.
I pulled a chair onto the balcony.
“All right. What happened?”
“My husband gave me the rest of the wedding report this morning. Claire, you will never guess who was there.”
“I’m not going to try.”
“Uncle Vernon.”
I nearly spilled the coffee.
“Vernon? My grandmother’s Vernon?”
“The very one.”
We had called him Uncle Vernon since I was small, though he wasn’t a relation. He and my grandmother had been friends for decades. He had a laugh that carried through walls and an absolute inability to recognize when a story should remain private.
“What was he doing at Nolan’s wedding? He barely knows Nolan.”
“Apparently, he did a business deal with Nolan’s father years ago. They stayed friendly. He’d just come back from visiting his son in Maine and was in the area.”
I pressed my cup between both hands.
“I saw him at the market last week.”
“Yes, you did. And apparently, everyone at his table knows all about it now.”
I remembered Vernon calling my name between the produce stalls. We had talked for several minutes. I had invited him to see the house, but he was on his way to catch a flight and couldn’t stay.
Denise continued before I could say anything.
“He’d had plenty to drink by the end of the reception. Your uncle was telling the table about visiting his son, and then he started on Alderhaven.” She deepened her voice in an unmistakable imitation. “‘Ran into my old friend’s granddaughter there. Claire Whitaker. Lovely young woman. Sharp as anything. She’s got her grandmother’s place now, and you ought to see how she’s settled in.’”
I closed my eyes briefly.
“He’s never been quiet,” I said.
“Quiet? My husband could hear him two tables away. He was telling everyone about your stone house and the garden and how good you looked. Nolan and Brooke were right beside the next table, thanking people for coming.”
Of course they were.
“Then Vernon started talking about your work. He said your boss thinks you’re wonderful, that you’re doing the hotel, that you’re as capable as your grandmother ever was.”
Nolan had spent years treating my work as something I did between taking care of the important parts of his life. The thought of him having to stand still and hear that was almost enough to make me smile.
Almost.
“Someone asked whether the studio paid you well,” Denise said. “That’s when Vernon waved it off.”
She paused long enough that I knew I wouldn’t like whatever came next.
“He said your salary was just for ordinary expenses. He said your grandmother hadn’t only left you a house. She’d left you several million dollars.”
I put my cup down on the balcony floor.
“He said that in front of everybody?”
“At full volume.”
The money was real. So was the fact that I had never told anyone its amount. I didn’t know whether my grandmother had confided in Vernon or whether he had learned through the estate. Either way, I had never imagined him announcing it beside Nolan’s wedding cake.
“Claire,” Denise said, “my husband was watching Nolan when he heard it. He went so pale that somebody reached toward him, thinking he might be ill. Brooke stopped smiling. Her mouth just hung open…”
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