A Month at the Shore Read online

  Laura plucked it from its innocent neighbors the way she would a thistle from a bed of zinnias.

  She flipped through the file quickly, and then, with a sinking heart, scanned the document that lay at the bottom.

  "Oh, my God," she whispered.

  "What? What is it?" Corinne asked, trying to read over her shoulder. "You're scaring me, Laur."

  Which was the last thing that Laura wanted to do. She tried to seem calm. "Well, if I'm reading this right, Dad took out the equity loan with Great River Finance almost five years ago."

  And then, slipping into fury despite herself, she said, "It seems the good folks at Great River now feel they're entitled to call in the loan. The letter you got has the math right. According to this, full payment really would be due next Wednesday."

  "That's eight days away!"

  "Yes, it is. I guess we'd better move up the date of our big sale," she added in a dismal attempt to seem light.

  "How much? Laura, how much do we have to come up with?"

  "Well ... a decent amount, I'm afraid," she said, her voice breaking a little. "Seventy-five thousand dollars, give or take."

  Tan as she was, Corinne went pale at the number. She sank into the oak chair next to Laura's worn-out swivel one and whispered, "You can't be serious. Not that much. Not that soon. That can't be true. It can't."

  "Maybe I'm wrong. Give me their letter again."

  Corinne handed it over with a trembling hand, and Laura compared loan numbers and reread all the fine print. She shook her head. "Nope. This is the loan, all right, and that's the deal."

  "Oh, my God. We have less than a thousand in cash. That's it."

  "I can't believe Dad would have done something this stupid," Laura said, seething. "Why wouldn't he just have gone to Chepaquit Savings?"

  Her head shot up. "Hold it. Where's the bank file?"

  Corinne pulled a worn folder marked "Chepaquit S." and handed it over. Leafing through the mountain of monthly statements, Laura found what she knew would be there: an application for a line of credit, which was denied, and one for an equity loan—also denied.

  "That son of a bitch!"

  "Who? Dad?"

  "No, not Dad," Laura said irritably. "Tell me again, Rin," she said in a soft and dangerous voice. "What, exactly, did Kendall Barclay say to you when he came by earlier today?"

  "Something about a payment that was due. Well, there's always a payment that's due for something. I didn't think anything about it. But if he was talking about this monster payment, this balloon payment or whatever it is—how would he even know about that?"

  "Excellent question," Laura said, not too weary to pace the room. The bare floorboards squeaked underfoot as she worked through possible scenarios. "Barclay could be in league with this Great River outfit," she muttered. "It could be some kind of a scam."

  "What? You're being paranoid, Laur. Not to mention, I'm sure that would be illegal," her sister argued.

  Laura stopped long enough to say, "All right, maybe he has nothing to do with Great River. But somehow, he knows about this loan being called in. I was right. He wants to be sure you go to him to bail you out, and not someone else. That way, he gets to be the one to foreclose on you."

  "Is that even possible?" asked Corinne, looking bewildered.

  "Of course it is! What he's doing is fishing for foreclosure rights. Incredible. It's incredible!"

  She began pacing again.

  Corinne hugged herself and began rocking gently in her chair. "All I wanted was to grow my flowers and be left in peace. This is so humiliating," she whispered.

  "No it's not," said Laura, rounding on her. "Don't you dare be humiliated! This is Dad's doing, not yours!"

  "But I'm the one who missed those two payments."

  "Yes. All right. And we'll get advice about that."

  "Why don't we ask Kendall Barclay? He should know."

  Laura threw up her hands and said, "Corinne! For God's sake, haven't you heard anything I've said about him?"

  Corinne shook her head. "No, I haven't, I haven't," she admitted, in tears now. "All I know is that we don't have the money."

  "We'll get the damn money," Laura said darkly. "One way or another."

  ****

  With the tractor back in commission, Snack became free for commandeering. Laura snapped him up for some carpentry work: she needed a pyramid of shelves for the store, where she planned to display an enticing arrangement of whatever happened to be in bloom around the nursery.

  She planned to launch the display with red Siberian iris and blue forget-me-nots and miniature roses of pink and white, and a sampling of whatever impatiens were farthest along, and some Asiatic lilies that she'd noticed were beginning to open—all with little signs of where in the nursery to go for more.

  "I'll put the flowering lemon tree in the middle, so that its fragrance drifts over the customers as they head for the register," she told her brother.

  "When exactly do you want these shelves?" Snack said with a typically wry look. "Yesterday, or the day before?"

  Happily oblivious to his whining by now, Laura added, "And after that, can you make me a small display for the end of the counter? I'll put some scented geraniums there with a 'Pinch Me' sign tucked in each pot. Customers may not take home the hundred-dollar lemon tree, but they'll certainly pick up a four-dollar lemon-scented geranium."

  Snack wasn't interested in the psychology of marketing. "What about these walls? I thought you wanted 'em whitewashed," he said, more and more sulky as the morning went on.

  "Yes, do that first so that I can put the seed rack against the wall, and rehang the small hand tools. It won't take you long."

  "Uh-huh."

  "I'll come back and help just as soon as I'm done calling the paper and the printer about the ads for Founders Week. Oh, and Rin and I are going to dash out to T.J. Maxx at lunch, so you're on your own then. Okay, let's get moving," she said, handing him one of the paint rollers she'd picked up in town. "We've got a lot to do before the big sale."

  She spun her lanky brother around to face the drab beige wall that she'd cleared. "Walls. Shelves. Little shelves. And then, if you're good and have finished all of your chores," she teased, "I'll give you your after-supper list."

  He turned slowly back around, his eyes narrowed under a scowl of genuine wonder. "You're nuttier than Corinne, you know that? Why are we doing this? The wrecking ball's gonna knock down these walls whether they're whitewashed or beige, you know that."

  It was just as she'd predicted. Corinne's impulsive promise to reinstate them as partners in the family business no matter what happened—that silly, rash promise of hers practically guaranteed that Snack would merely go through the motions until the month was up. He might just as well have been doing time in a Tijuana jail.

  What could she do? How could she goad him?

  "You're a bum, Snack," she said with a perky, cheerful air. "How do you like that? You are a bum."

  His cheeks flushed, but he returned her look with one just as ironic. "This is news?"

  Deflated, she sighed and said, "Come on—you're better than that. Somewhere deep down, some part of you is better than that."

  "Now that would be news," he quipped.

  "You really can be irritating," she snapped, all patience gone again. "If you think for one minute that I'm going to let Corinne do something so stupid as to hand over—"

  She cut short her diatribe because two women—actual, paying customers—came in pulling one of the nursery's rusted little red wagons, filled with coral-pink geraniums.

  "These are twice as big as the ones I've seen in the discount stores for the same price," one of them said happily. "So healthy!"

  Laura beamed and said, "Love makes all the difference."

  The geraniums were in fact the best buy in the nursery. Laura took her place behind the register—since Melissa was late—and rang up the purchase, talking up the Founders Week sale which was fast approaching.

&nbs
p; "We're going to have how-to seminars, and tea and cookies—oh, and a clown to make balloons for the kids," she added out of the blue.

  She glanced at her brother, who was spreading a drop-cloth on the floor, and made a mental note to ask him what he knew about balloon-making, and how he felt about wearing a rubber nose.

  "And everything will be twenty-five percent off except select trees and perennials. It's a grand reopening for us. We have a huge inventory of stock on order," she boasted as the women carried their trays of geraniums out the door.

  Laura hurried back to the office in the house to make her calls, aware that the part about the huge inventory, like the part about the clown, wasn't quite a done deal.

  Corinne had told Laura of a small place in rural Rhode Island that sold annuals and perennials at ridiculously low prices. The plan was to drive there, load up—hopefully at a volume discount—and then mark up the amounts when they returned to their much more visible stretch of New England.

  The idea wasn't to make a killing, but to present a picture of plenty. If that didn't work, if the customers still didn't come, well, then they were screwed. It wasn't much more complicated than that. Everything was hanging on the Founders Week sale.

  Maybe not everything. There was the matter of the money they owed Great River. Laura could easily come up with the cash to pay Corinne's missed installments, but she didn't have seventy-five thousand dollars just lying around in a desk drawer.

  Which is where banker Barclay came in. Laura's plan was a simple one: dress for success, pitch him a basic business proposal, and accept the loan he was bound to offer them.

  All they had to do after that was to keep up with their monthly payments to Chepaquit Savings. No tricks, no scams, and the only balloons she wanted to see were the ones that Snack was going to be shaping for the children at the Founders Week Sale.

  Because Shore Gardens was not going to fail. Period.

  ****

  "I have no idea when your plan went from being dumb to being brilliant," Laura said, flipping quickly through the dress suits at T.J. Maxx in the outlet mall, "but here I am, determined to make it work."

  "Because you like a challenge." Corinne held up a little black number, simplicity itself. "What do you think? Or do you like lapels on your jackets?"

  "It lacks something. Besides lapels."

  "Sex appeal?"

  "There you go."

  Corinne hung it back up and they returned to the hunt. The fact was, Laura wasn't sure what image she wanted to project, standing in front of Kendall Barclay.

  Sylvia would know what to wear. She'd know exactly how to play Ken Barclay.

  The thought came and went. Laura had none of Sylvia's fashion confidence, but she knew what image she did not want to project: one of an ill-dressed, ill-bred, ill-mannered Shore.

  She laid a power-red suit with a short jacket and a shorter skirt across her basket, then added several more.

  In the dressing room, the first one she tried on was the red. She came out and modeled it for her sister, walking on tiptoe to fake high heels.

  "You look bossy in it."

  "Not boss? Just bossy?"

  "Mm-hmm."

  That wasn't the look. Laura went back inside the tiny booth and changed into a bright coral silk outfit with a form-fitting jacket, then returned for Corinne's assessment.

  "Yikes. All that's missing is a pink flamingo draped around your neck."

  Back she went, and emerged quickly, this time in gray.

  "You have gray. If you want to wear gray, just wear the gray you have."

  All that was left in her meager haul was a pale yellow dress with a short jacket in a tone-on-tone floral, as pretty as could be. Laura had been saving it for last.

  Corinne shook her head. "You look pasty in it. Buy it anyway, though. It'll look good on you eventually, after you've worked outside some more and got some color."

  Laura scowled and said, "You know, for someone who spends her days in coveralls, you seem pretty damn opinionated."

  Her sister laughed breezily—she wasn't the one about to go on stage—and said, "What about this? It was hanging on the return rack."

  She held up a simple challis dress in pale blue and overlaid in a pattern of equally pale green fronds. A line of covered buttons ran from the scoop neck to a point above the knees, pretty and sexy and modest and sophisticated all at the same time.

  Laura felt her heart do the little ka-thump that women's hearts do when they find what they've been looking for all along but just haven't realized it.

  Five minutes later, they were headed for the checkout line with the blue dress and the yellow dress and a pair of better jeans for working in, and Laura was embarrassed when she handed over her Visa card because her fingernails still had dirt under them.

  They were in such a rush. There was so much to do.

  "Plus, we don't dare leave Snack unsupervised," she said, throwing their pickup into gear and tearing out of the lot.

  "Snack? Forget Snack! What about the new hire?" said a giggling Corinne, still high from the hunt. "Melissa's on the register all by herself, handling our money as we speak."

  "You know, I don't know how that girl manages to make change. I think she counts the studs in her ears."

  Laughing, Corinne pointed to the Dunkin' Donuts that anchored one end of the strip mall. "Do we have time to stop for a Coolatta?" asked Corinne. "Please please? I love their strawberry."

  "Yes. No. Yes! No. No, really, Rin. Look at that line of cars. And it's not even Memorial Day yet. Where are all these tourists coming from?"

  "Don't think of them as tourists," Corinne said. "Think of them as potential customers."

  "You wish. I do worry about your customer base," Laura admitted. "Let's face it, the bulk of your business will have to be from locals. And we know what the locals think of us."

  "I know what they think of me. And I can guess what they think about Snack. But I don't know why they'd have a problem with you, Laur. Don't forget: you're a celebrity."

  "Ah, yes," said Laura dryly, driving resolutely past the Coolatta store. "But let's get back to you. You didn't kill anyone; Uncle Norbert did. You didn't blow up bridges all over town by picking fights; Dad did."

  "Maybe Dad became defensive because of the way people looked at him after Uncle Norbert."

  "Whatever," said Laura, unconvinced. "The fact remains that you are a businesswoman, the same as Kendall Barclay is a businessman. You deserve just as much respect."

  "Oh, I don't know about that—"

  "Listen to me. You have more worth in your little finger than Kendall Barclay and his family put together!"

  "Why do you say that?" Corinne asked. She sounded uneasy, as she always did, at that particular tone in her sister's voice. "What do you have against Kendall Barclay?"

  "He's an arrogant snob," Laura said flatly. She couldn't help herself.

  "He's always been nice to me when I've run into him."

  Corinne still had no idea. Humiliated beyond measure by the way she'd been handled by so many at the edge of the woods, Laura had never said a word about it to anyone, not even her sister. And now it was too late. Even Corinne might advise her just to grow up and move on.

  What a fool she'd been to keep her silence so sacred, so long.

  Corinne said pensively, "Do you honestly think that we can turn the nursery around?"

  "Hey. Gardening is the number one hobby in this country. There's no reason why you can't get a bigger piece of that pie."

  Corinne smiled and after a moment said seriously, "I haven't really thanked you for coming East, Laur. I know what a sacrifice you're making for me. Canceling your trip to Hawaii ... delaying your next consulting job ... putting up with Snack! I'll never forget this."

  "It isn't anything. Stop."

  Corinne was cradling the T.J. Maxx bag in her arms. She opened the bag and peeked inside, fingering the soft fabric lovingly. "You're going to be such a knockout in this. He'll have to le
nd us the money."

  "He'll lend us the money, all right," Laura said as the rolling land of the nursery hove into view. "The trick for us will be to pay it back."

  Chapter 8

  Laura dumped her T.J. Maxx bag on a kitchen chair and then noticed the clean casserole dish still sitting on the counter.

  "Oh, shoot; we forgot to return that thing to Miss Widdich, and she wanted it right back."

  Snack, splattered with whitewash, was searching the fridge for something cold, but he was out of beer again. "Where's Corinne?"

  "I dropped her off at the shop; she's keeping an eye on Melissa."

  "Want me to run that dish over for you?"

  If he did that, Laura would lose him for hours: Miss Widdich was neighbor to a bar and grill.

  "That's all right, I'll do it," Laura said quickly. "You're a mess, and I still have decent clothes on. How's your beer supply?" she asked as a concession. "Want me to pick something up?"

  He flashed her a genuinely friendly grin. "Hey, yeah; thanks, Laur. I'm almost done with the whitewash and about to start on your shelves," he offered, eager to give her something in return.

  "Great."

  God, I've become an enabler, she thought on her way out the door, but she shrugged off the guilt. Better to be an enabler than a slave driver with no slave.

  She drove in a hurry to Miss Widdich's house, aware that she was wasting precious minutes of another fine day, the kind of day that made people have spendthrift thoughts about their gardens. In fact, she had seen four cars parked in the front lot, a record so far. Presumably some of the locals had heard that the Shore clan had got back together and were curious to see what new mischief they were up to.

  Good. Let them talk. As far as Laura was concerned, it was free advertising, as opposed to the full-page ad she was taking in the Chatham Herald. That was costing an arm and a leg.

  Just past Pete's Bar and Grill was the overgrown and now almost hidden turnoff to Miss Widdich's house, set at the back of a wooded drive. Maya Widdich had always been a reclusive woman, and the house's location was a perfect fit.

  Laura had only been there three or four times in her life, all of them deliveries for the nursery. When she was young and impressionable, the winding drive had seemed spooky and fraught with peril, especially during her first delivery one particularly foggy evening, which she later realized was a summer solstice.