The House on Harbor Hill Page 3

  He had then returned his attention to the laptop screen and resumed typing, trying to regain the mental thread he had lost.

  Trish had stood silently beside him after that, a looming tower of judgment.

  He hadn’t had to look up to know what expression was on her face, to see how her shoulders sank at his words. An apology had been on the tip of his tongue, but he didn’t offer it. Some stubborn part of him had kept him from uttering those words. Finally, after a minute or two, Trish had left his office, shutting the door quietly behind her.

  Aidan had convinced himself he was so neglectful of Trish because his life had been full of things back then that were all clamoring for his attention. Back then, he had pulled fourteen-hour days at the law firm, where he was trying diligently to make partner. Those slivers of time in between were filled with business lunches and networking over golf and tennis, with sleeping and breathing. He had even started to pop caffeine pills to maintain his rapid pace.

  So, fine, he’d thought that day, staring at his closed office door, I didn’t feel the fucking cashgora sheep like she asked. But what does she think paid for the sheep hanging off that stupid mobile? Does she realize how we got the money for it and that four-thousand-dollar crib and the custom-made curtains and the baby wardrobe that could clothe all the infants in a Brazilian favela?

  They had gotten it through Aidan’s hard work, by him keeping his nose to the grindstone. He had been a provider for his wife and child—unlike his father had been for him and his mom. He hadn’t had time to gush over mobiles and baby crap when work needed to be done.

  But he knew better now; his defensiveness had been a lie, a shoddy excuse for bad behavior. Running his hand over the sheep would have taken all of five seconds, ten tops. Would it have killed him to pause, to slow down for once? Would it have killed him to show his wife that he was just as excited about the new baby as she was?

  Nowadays, Aidan’s free time was abundant. His days were filled with changing blown light bulbs, cleaning gutters, pruning rosebushes, and setting mousetraps—nothing emotionally or mentally taxing. Some days, he would have long stretches of time when he would sit near the shed in Delilah’s backyard, drinking a beer, staring at nothing but the bay in the distance, trying not to drown in tedium.

  Maybe if he had had more time, he could have treated her better. He should have treated her better. He had watched his mother be ignored and taken advantage of her entire life, only to repeat the same thing with his own wife. Trish had just wanted to be seen by him, and yet in the painting that was Aidan’s life, Trish had forever remained in the background, an indistinguishable piece of scenery. He would always regret that.

  Aidan now watched as the movers climbed into their truck. Claudia turned on her car’s engine and pulled out in front of them. She then did two quick beeps of the car horn.

  He forced a smile and waved back to let her know that he saw her. He then bent down, grabbed his garden sheers, and walked back toward the house.

  CHAPTER 4

  My door is always open.

  Just what exactly did it mean?

  It was a question Tracey had been asking herself for the past two days. She did it as she lay awake in bed with the letter from Delilah Grey and the eviction notice on the night table beside her. She considered the question as she served the tables in the dining room of the hotel and resort where she worked, refilling glasses with watered-down iced tea, gathering half-eaten plates of wilted lettuce and shredded carrots. And she thought of it again during her ride home as she ventured a half mile out of her way to drive past the lone house at the end of Harbor Hill Road, where the enigmatic Delilah Grey lived.

  The two-story house was at the highest point in Camden Beach, only a quarter of a mile from a steep cliff that led to unforgiving rocks below and the frothy foam of the Chesapeake Bay. The house—a beach cottage on steroids—was flanked by a series of pine trees and oaks. It had a high-peaked, shingled roof and six dormers. Cheerfully bright geraniums burst from flower boxes along the second-floor windows. Navy blue Adirondack chairs sat on the wraparound porch. A wooden bird feeder dangled from a copper pole in the front yard, facing the circular driveway.

  From a distance, despite its massive size, the house looked serene—maybe even inviting, entreating a passerby to stop inside and share a pitcher of lemonade with its inhabitants.

  My door is always open, Tracey thought again as her minivan slowed almost to a stop while she gazed out the window at the house on the top of the hill. The driver of the Ford Explorer behind her beeped his horn, and she snapped out of her reverie and floored the accelerator. The house on Harbor Hill became smaller and smaller in her rearview mirror and then finally disappeared from view.

  Those five words continued to haunt her.

  My door is always open . . .

  My door is always open . . .

  My door is always open . . .

  They became a puzzle, a complicated mathematical equation she had yet to solve. With the children in tow, Tracey drove her beat-up minivan not back to Harbor Hill, but to downtown Camden Beach and the Chesapeake Cupcakery to finally solve it.

  * * *

  Though there were several shops along the boardwalk, the Chesapeake Cupcakery was located farther down, along a series of upscale stores on the first floor of a dual-use, eleven-story residential condo and commercial complex near the bay that had opened in Camden Beach two years ago, before Tracey had arrived. The complex was all concrete, stucco, and glass, with palm trees and hibiscus plants in giant clay pots flanking each entrance and garish five-foot-tall sculptures of dolphins, starfish, and whales along brick pavers.

  Tracey had heard that several of Camden Beach’s longtime residents had protested the building of the complex. It would block the views of residents who owned houses along the waterfront, they’d complained. It wasn’t in keeping with the character—architecturally or aesthetically—of the sleepy beach community with its Cape Cods and ramblers built around town in the 1960s and some as far back as the dawn of the twentieth century. It was just god-awful ugly.

  Ultimately, the business community ended up silencing the naysayers. They pacified them with wicker baskets full of coupons for free massages left on porch steps, with comped parking at the new parking garage within the complex. Even Jessica Cho, the owner of Chesapeake Cupcakery, had handed out cupcakes and free coffee the first week she’d opened her shop.

  “No one alive can say no to my red velvet cupcakes,” Jessica later boasted.

  There were still mutterings of displeasure in town about the “monstrosity along the waterfront.” The discontented wrote the occasional op-ed piece in the local paper or ranted during zoning meetings. But they were murmurs, not shouts. Tracey, who was relatively new to town, got the sense that these blowups happened often in Camden Beach. It was part of the ongoing war between the new and the old. The residents who had lived in town for decades resented the encroachment of the newcomers—those who moved in from D.C. and renovated old, staid houses into the beach version of McMansions, raising property values and clogging the sleepy roadways with their SUVs and luxury sedans. Camden Beach was a town in flux and under an almost palpable tension you could feel as soon as you drove across the border.

  Many of the shops in the complex were meant to appeal to the wealthier newcomers. Tracey walked past the Lilly Pulitzer store, where mannequins stood in the window with colorful sundresses and bikinis, permanently waving and smiling at each passerby. She then walked by a wine and cheese bistro where classical music seeped out of the opened doorway. She gazed at the window display, at the bottles of sauvignon blanc and pinot noir stacked in an artful arrangement on open wooden crates.

  Paul would love a place like this, she thought absently.

  Her husband, Paul, was a bit of a wine connoisseur, keeping a collection of his favorite cabernets and merlots in a custom-made wine fridge she had joked glowed blue like an alien spaceship.

  Tracey now thought back to
that wine fridge. She remembered the last time she had gotten a bottle out of it, the last time she had been allowed to remove a bottle from it.

  Paul had sent her downstairs to fetch one of the bottles. She had been distracted, talking on the phone with some telemarketer, when she suddenly heard Maggie’s infant cries upstairs. She’d rushed to the first floor to answer her daughter, tripped, fell, and dropped a bottle of Buoncristiani Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley 2010. As the telemarketer continued to drone, Tracey had watched the bottle roll down the steps before it had shattered on the floor below. The red wine had exploded like a paintball on impact and seeped into the Afghan rug.

  Tracey had lowered her phone from her ear, closed her eyes, and said a silent prayer Paul hadn’t heard the bottle shatter. Maybe he had been in some other part of the house when it had happened. But when she’d opened her eyes and seen him standing at the top of the staircase, she’d realized her prayers hadn’t been answered. She had felt the blow of reprisal even before Paul charged down the steps and slapped her across the face, knocking the phone out of her hand and sending it ricocheting against the stairway wall.

  “Where are we going, Mommy?” Caleb now asked, skipping in front of her.

  “It’s a . . . a surprise,” she answered distractedly, turning away from the window display, shuddering at the memory, and feeling the ghostly burn of her husband’s year-old slap on her cheek.

  After passing a few more shops, they arrived at the glass door of Chesapeake Cupcakery. Tracey eased the stroller back so Caleb could step forward and hold it open for her and Maggie.

  He liked to do things like that. He said it made him feel like a grown-up.

  “I’m a gentleman, Mommy!” he would say with a smile, revealing one of his missing front teeth. He said it as if he was proclaiming that he was a magician or a superhero.

  But today Caleb didn’t hold the door open for her. He let the door slam closed along the side of her stroller, making Tracey yelp as she veered to the left to keep it from falling onto Maggie’s extended legs. Instead, it landed on Tracey’s elbow, making her wince.

  “Caleb!” she shouted.

  He ignored her, raced inside the shop, and beelined to the sales counter, where Jessica stood, assembling a platter of oversized cupcakes decorated with candied sailboats and life preserver rings.

  “Can I have a cupcake?” he shouted before leapfrogging onto one of the old-fashioned, 1950s style swivel stools.

  Jessica pushed a lock of dark hair out of her eyes with fingertips that were purple from some cupcake ingredient, likely fresh berries. “I don’t know. Did you ask your mom?”

  Caleb spun around on the chair to face Tracey, who was still struggling to get through the shop door. “Can I, Mommy? Can I have a cupcake?” He kicked his sandaled feet back and forth, leaning forward eagerly.

  “No!” she barked before finally arriving inside and letting the door fall shut behind her.

  “But Moooommy,” Caleb whined. “Just one cupcake! I promise that I—”

  “I said no, Caleb! You let the door fall on Maggie and me. What you did was . . . was rude! It was selfish. It wasn’t right! I’m not going to reward you for that!”

  Jessica flinched. Caleb lowered his head. His bottom lip poked out and his blond locks—which were long overdue for a haircut—hung limply into his eyes.

  Tracey realized she was being harsh, that her words may have had more venom than she intended, but she was forever vigilant with Caleb. She didn’t want him to turn out like his father—cruel and thoughtless, violent and vindictive. And Caleb looked so much like his dad. The older he got, the more his baby fat melted away, like butter on a warm bun. Tracey could see it in his face even now with his head hanging down—the features of the man he would one day become. She could see Paul’s high cheekbones and his stubborn chin, his cool blue eyes and Roman nose. It was the ghost of a monster superimposed over the face of a six-year-old boy.

  “So,” Tracey said, painting on a smile, “how goes business, Jess?”

  Jessica glanced uneasily between mother and son before returning Tracey’s smile.

  “Uh, pretty good lately. Better than you’d think, considering how everyone keeps saying gourmet cupcakes are so passé.” She added the last cupcake to the platter. “At least I should be able to pay my parents back the money they loaned me by the end of year.”

  “Really? You’ll be able to pay them back already?” Tracey asked as she leaned down to unbuckle Maggie’s straps. The toddler shoved herself out of her stroller and made her way with an unsteady gait toward her brother. “That’s great, Jess!”

  “Yeah, I know. Maybe I can finally afford to expand . . . bring in extra staff. Maybe I can finally hire you so you don’t have to work at that tacky place anymore. Tell them to go choke on their fried clams.”

  “You’re sweet,” Tracey said, laughing softly.

  She didn’t have the heart to tell Jessica that the end of the year may be too late for her . . . that she was getting kicked out of her home by next month and might no longer be able to afford to live in Camden Beach at all. Instead, she changed the subject.

  “I bet your parents will be so proud of you, paying them back so soon.”

  Jessica waved away her compliment and walked behind the counter, where an array of cupcakes, mini cakes, and pastries were on display in the eight-foot glass case. She tightened the strings of the apron around her waist. “Not really. I became a baker when they thought I was going to become a doctor or a software engineer working in Silicon Valley. I may as well have become a ventriloquist!”

  Tracey’s grin disappeared. “You don’t really mean that. They can see how well you’re doing . . . how hard you’re working!”

  “Please,” Jessica chuckled. “I’m a huge disappointment to them. They constantly compare me to my sister, Amy—the pediatric surgeon who’s married to a nice Korean guy and has two kids.”

  “I’m sorry, Jess.”

  Jessica shrugged. “Sometimes parents can be hard on their kids.” She glanced meaningfully at Caleb, whose eyes were still downcast. He was ignoring Maggie, who was slapping his shins and leaning her chin against his knee, slobbering onto the khaki fabric of his shorts.

  Tracey chewed the inside of her cheek.

  “I mean it’s heartbreaking how some people can put unrealistic standards on their children, isn’t it?” Jessica continued with raised brows.

  The shop fell silent. Tracey longed to tell Jessica why she was being so harsh with Caleb, why she’d said what she said, but there were still parts of her past she had yet to divulge to her friend—to anyone. Jessica thought she was just a poor, single mom of two trying to make do on a waitress’s salary. She didn’t know who or what Tracey was running from.

  Rather than try to explain the rationalization behind her behavior, to dredge up her past, it was easier just to offer Caleb an olive branch to prove she wasn’t a fire-breathing dragon of a mother.

  “Look, honey,” she began, turning to Caleb, “maybe . . . maybe you can have a cupcake later before we leave, if you behave yourself.”

  Grudgingly, Caleb raised his eyes.

  “And I’ll throw in a one-of-a-kind smoothie too, Caleb . . . if you’re good!” Jessica quickly added before grabbing a roll of paper towels and a bottle of Windex. She then wrinkled her nose at Tracey. “What brings you guys here anyway? I thought you said you were cutting down on trips to downtown Camden.”

  Tracey had said that. Coming to the shops along the complex meant too much of a hit to her wallet, and her funds were meager to begin with, but today she’d made an exception.

  “I needed to ask you something.” Tracey set her purse on one of the stools. She stuck her hand inside and pulled out the yellow envelop, the one she’d found taped to her front door three days ago. She removed the letter and handed it to Jessica. “First, read this.”

  Jessica frowned as she reached for the letter. She unfolded it and read it. When she finished reading, she
handed the letter back to Tracey, chuckling. “Oh, man! So you’re the next one on her list?”

  Now Tracey was the one who was frowning. “What do you mean?”

  “Delilah is always handing out those letters! She gives them to women who are down on their luck. Some even come to her with a sob story or tale of woe. She’s been doing it for decades, from what I’ve heard.”

  “So she didn’t ask you for my address? She didn’t get it from you?”

  “No!” Jessica furiously shook her head. “I would never do anything like that!”

  “So where did she get it from?”

  “Who knows! I guess Delilah has her ways. Like I said, she’s been doing this for decades. She leaves these mystery letters with people and invites them to live in her house. Free room and board, I think. Like she’s the friggin’ Make a Wish Foundation.”

  “Really?” Tracey gazed down at the letter again. “She lets them live with her for free?”

  Maybe this was what Tracey needed; it would help save her little family. The letter from Delilah Grey was the parachute tossed to her just as fate pushed her out of the airplane and she hurled to the earth below.

  Jessica, who had been busying herself with wiping down the display counter, abruptly stilled. “You aren’t seriously considering taking her up on her offer, are you?”

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “Why? Because she’s obviously crazy, Tracey! You don’t want to live with a nut like that, let alone owe her something!”

  “Why do you think she’s crazy?”

  “Because she lets random people live with her—homeless people, prostitutes, and crackheads! No sane person would do that!”

  “Maybe she’s just . . . I don’t know . . . kindhearted.”

  “There’s a difference between being kindhearted and being nutty—or stupid!”

  “That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?”

  “You call it harsh; I call it honest. Besides, there are . . . well. . . other things about her that I’d be wary of.”