Page 93 of Drawing Home
“Cheryl?”
“I’m a little early,” Cheryl Meister said brightly, marching into the house and unabashedly examining every corner. “But I was just dying to take a peek in here.”
Early? What was she talking about? And then it hit her: the auction committee meeting.
Minutes later, the doorbell rang again. Diane Knight brushed past Emma, looking for a place to plug in her MacBook and asking for an iced tea.
What was she going to do? She was completely unprepared to host a dozen people for lunch. There was no food in the house except what she needed to make Penny’s grilled cheese—that was about it. She didn’t have so much as a bottle of sparkling water to offer the members of the group as they descended on Windsong wearing their Lululemon best and chattering about last night’s dinner party.
“I’ll be right back,” Emma said, ushering everyone into the living room while she retreated into the kitchen to catch her breath.
She opened and closed the refrigerator as if that would make a tray of crudités and tea sandwiches magically appear. Did anyone deliver all the way out on Actors Colony Road? She did a quick search on her phone for options and came up with only pizza. That would not fly with the art-auction ladies.
“What, pray tell, is going on in the living room? It looks like the cast ofReal Housewives of God Knows Wherejust invaded,” Bea said, sweeping into the room wearing a crisp blouse and pale blue linen pants. Her straw hat sported a navy-blue ribbon with ducks on it.
Because Emma didn’t have enough to deal with. “That’s an auction committee. For the cinema fund-raiser? I don’t know if you’ve heard about that. But they’re having an art auction and—”
“Oh, yes. I spoke to Cheryl Meister on the phone about making a donation.”
“You did?”
“I’ll go introduce myself since you somehow failed to mention to me that we were hosting a meeting this afternoon.”
We?
And then, for the first time since Bea had waltzed up to the front desk and demanded a room, Emma was thankful for her existence. “Bea, this is the thing—I totally forgot they were coming today. I have nothing here—no food, nothing to drink. I haven’t given one thought to this auction since I left Cheryl’s house after the last meeting.”
“Why didn’t you say something? Emma, this iswhat I do. You should have come to me in the first place!”
This woman was trying to snatch a house away from her daughter; what reasonable person would enlist that woman’s help in planning a party? But clearly, all normal boundaries were gone from her life.
“Okay, well, if you can help, that would be great. I need to get food here somehow and no one will deliver out here last minute. I should have picked up something from Schiavoni’s this morning.”
“Anyone will do anything for the right price. I’ll have lunch here in no time.” And she did. She also delighted the ladies with her appearance at the meeting. Cheryl introduced her as “a living legend” in the art world.
“My parents were big collectors,” Diane said, fawning over her. “I visited your gallery when I was a teenager. What a thrill. I’ll never forget it.”
Seating arrangements. Catering options. Tickets. Bea had opinions about all of it, and the ladies of the auction committee ate them up faster than the remoulade crab cakes and baby kale salad delivered from Cavaniola’s. Watching her in action, Emma saw for the first time the dynamo who had built an art dynasty, not just a crazy old woman battling her over a house. And it dawned on her that surely, Henry Wyatt must have known this woman would not take Penny’s inheritance of his estate lightly. As someone who’d seen Bea Winstead operate for decades, he had probably known she would show up in town.
And Emma wondered, as she had that very first day she learned about the house, what exactly Henry Wyatt had been thinking.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Penny usually loved the Fourth of July, but this year it felt different. Her mother seemed really down—and that wasn’t negative thinking, it was a fact. Still, in an effort to prevent herself from going into a death spiral of worry, she pulled out a pad of hot-pink Post-it notes and tried to think of something for her positivity board.
She came up blank. All she could think about was the conversation she’d had last night with her mother when, just before going to sleep, she finally got up the nerve to ask what was bothering her.
Her mother didn’t seem surprised by the question. She sat on the edge of Penny’s bed and furrowed her brow in the way she did when she was maybe not telling Penny the absolute truth. The way she had years ago when Penny asked why she never saw her grandparents, and Emma explained that the Mapsons were “very busy people.” Penny later figured out this meant that her dad’s parents just weren’t all that interested in seeing her.
So when she saw that expression on her mom’s face. she knew she was in for a nonanswer.
“Your father and I are just trying to work something out,” she said.
“Like what?”
“Like…how much time you spend with him.”
“Oh.” She didn’t know what she’d expected, but this wasn’t it. “Do you mind that I spend time with him? I mean, he’s not around that much.”
