Page 59 of Drawing Home
Kyle laughed. “Looks can be deceiving. This boat’s a beauty. Trust me.”
“Whatever, Kyle. I really don’t care.”
“Come check out the galley.”
“I’ll pass.”
“Why not have a look? You can take sadistic pleasure in the job I have ahead of me.”
She actually was curious about what kind of mess this Manhattan carpetbagger had gotten himself into. It would be good fodder for a few laughs with Sean and Alexis over drinks.
Emma followed him down a short ladder. She thought of her father, his love of old boats and his treasured long afternoons fishing. Oh, how she’d dreaded the days her father went out on the boat because she knew what would be for dinner that night: Fluke. Or flounder. Or whatever he caught. The appeal of fresh-caught fish was completely lost on her until later in life.
“She’ll appreciate the food more if she sees how much work goes into it,” her mother had told her father.
The next week, Emma was out on her dad’s boat. He taught her how to bait a hook, and he stood behind her with his strong arms helping to steady her line. She never forgot the thrill of feeling her first tug on the other end and the excitement of her father reeling in her catch. But when the fish was on board, flopping helplessly on the hook, she burst into tears. Her father promptly removed the hook and threw it back into the water.
“Will it be okay?” she asked, sobbing. He assured her that it would. And when her father told her something would be okay, she always believed him.
Kyle’s cabin was in even worse shape than the deck. The wood was largely eroded, wires snaked out of the side boards, and the floor was missing planks. Rolls of paper towels and industrial tape were scattered underfoot.
“I see that look on your face,” Kyle said. “But you’d be surprised what a little varnish and paint will do.”
“This is way beyond anything you can accomplish with a paintbrush,” she said. And yet the raw condition of the old boat reminded her of Jack’s stories of the hotel’s state of disrepair when he first took ownership, and his hard work had paid off: The American Hotel was now the gem of Main Street.
Kyle shook his head. “So little faith. I’m going to redo the galley and the head and put some cabinets in here so it’s fit to live aboard.”
“Yeah, good luck with all that.” She climbed up the ladder and at the top, she turned around to add, “Just keep the noise down, okay?”
She was halfway back to the pool when the grinding sound of Kyle’s electric sander started up again.
Penny stepped out of the pool and wrapped herself in one of Mr. Wyatt’s plush towels. Everything he had was nice. Everything seemed new. It was like being in one of those rich people’s houses on an E! television show.
Except rich people usually didn’t have a bunch of strangers squatting in their mansion. What was with the old lady and Kyle? That’s how she thought of them: the Old Lady and Kyle. Just two more adults to make things complicated and annoying on top of her mother and Angus. When she told her dad about the Old Lady, he seemed really surprised and asked a lot of questions she didn’t know the answers to, like whether her mother had a lawyer. “No way,” Penny said. “Do you think Mom would ever pay for a lawyer?”
She wanted her dad to see the house. And she wanted Mindy and Robin to see it too. She still felt bad about how things had gone down that day at the beach and needed a way to get back on track with them.
Her mother’s tote bag rested next to her abandoned lounge chair. Penny glanced up at the house, then quickly rummaged through the bag to find her mom’s iPhone. She glanced around one more time, and when she was certain she was alone, she snapped photos of the pool and the house and the view of the bay. She grabbed her own beach bag, took out her crappy Motorola (that her mother had never bothered taking away after all), and found Mindy’s and Robin’s numbers. She sent them a series of photos showing off her new house.DNR to this number—not my phone,she warned. Then she erased the threads and put her mom’s phone back.
She couldn’t understand why her mother was so strict about things like screen time. It was the only way to communicate. It was hard enough to keep up with her friends without being in tech jail.
Walking back to the pool, she had the thought that maybe she hadn’t put the phone back. So she turned around and went back to check. And she checked again. And again.
“Penny—what are you doing in my bag?” her mother said.
Busted!“Looking for sunblock,” Penny said.
She didn’t know who was a tougher warden, her mother or her own mind.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Bea’s lawyer returned her call just as she was settling into a chair at the Salon Xavier on Bay Street for her weekly blowout. What a relief it had been to find a temporary stand-in for her beloved John Barrett Salon.
She cupped her hand around her phone and said quietly, “Richard, I can’t say too much because I don’t have privacy at the moment. But you got my message?”
“I did. An interesting development. And to answer your question, yes—this does give you the standing to contest the most recent will. But it doesn’t overturn it, you understand.”
“I know, I know. Obviously, it’s eighteen years old. But you said as long as I was the beneficiary of a prior will—”
