The Cottage on Nantucket Read online

  Chapter Seven

  “This is it?” Janey reached into the safety deposit box and picked up a slim manilla folder the color of the ocean. She looked at the gentleman who’d escorted them into the vault, her eyebrows raised.

  “Whatever is in your box, ma’am.” He looked from her to Tessa. “Would you like to keep the box open? Or would you like to close it?”

  Tessa looked at Janey, and her choice was obvious. “We’ll close it,” Tessa said, reaching into her pocket to extract her key. This box had required two keys—she and Janey had each gotten one in their envelopes from the lawyer.

  Tessa’s stomach writhed, and she knew it wasn’t because she hadn’t eaten enough that day. She hadn’t had enough time to thoroughly go through everything in her envelopes—both of them—before Janey had texted to say she was ready to go.

  Since Tessa didn’t want to call any attention to herself, she’d packed everything up and joined her sister in the lobby. They’d come straight to the bank, as that was obviously what needed to happen next.

  “I can show you to a room to go through things,” the banker said.

  Janey had already flipped open the folder. “No need,” she said, plucking out the single sheet of paper. “It’s the deed to the cottage.” She tucked the official document back into the folder, closed it, and handed the man her key as well. “We’d like to close this, as my sister said. What do we need to do?”

  Everything at the bank took forever, and Tessa found she couldn’t sit still. Thankfully, Janey couldn’t either, and they took turns pacing away from the Vice-President’s desk while he closed the safety deposit box and their mother’s bank account.

  He finally returned while Janey had stepped outside for a moment. Tessa suspected she needed to calm herself with chemicals, and she’d likely smell like sticky, sweet strawberries from her vaping vapor.

  He sat behind the desk and glanced from Tessa to the empty chair. “Is your sister still here?”

  “Yes,” Tessa said, half-rising from her seat. “Should I get her?”

  “No, it’s fine.” He swallowed and pushed a piece of paper toward her. “This is the balance of your mother’s account.” He straightened and picked up another paper. “This is the balance of your account.”

  Tessa looked up from the first check, which bore an amount that started with twelve thousand dollars. That was at least six for her and Janey each, and while that amount of money wasn’t anything to sneeze at, Tessa’s heart wasn’t ricocheting around her chest because of that.

  “Excuse me?” she asked. “My account?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Your mother had opened an account for you many years ago. That’s the balance, and it’s been closed now. It had her name on it too, but I’m assuming the will details what to do.”

  It most certainly did not, but Tessa quickly swiped up the extra check, barely glancing at it, and tucked it in her purse. She rose to her feet, wishing she’d brought in the manilla envelope so she could hide the extra check more easily. “Thank you.” She shook the man’s hand and marched out of the bank.

  Janey stood down at the end of the sidewalk, one hand pressing her phone to her ear and one holding a vape to her mouth. She was partially turned away from Tessa, so Tessa heard, “I understand that, Sunny. I should have some money soon.” She turned her head toward Tessa, who held up the check. “I have to go.”

  Janey hung up and extinguished her vaporizer. “What’s that?” she asked, her eyes hopeful yet cautious.

  “The balance of Mom’s account.” Tessa smiled, though her mind spun. Janey clearly needed money for something. She’d never heard the name Sunny before, and she wondered if she could press. “According to the will, since we’re co-trustees, we should split this right down the middle.”

  Janey took the check, a huge smile forming on her face. “Let’s go eat first. We’ll pay for it from this, then split it.”

  “Sounds perfect.” Tessa managed to smile, because she needed to be alone to truly examine everything she’d received that day.

  After they’d cashed the check and gotten a table at Seaside Manor, after Tessa had spread her bright white napkin on her lap and Janey had ordered her gin and tonic, Tessa looked at her sister. “What are you thinking about the cottage?”

  “We should sell it, of course.”

  Tessa bristled at the semi-condescending tone, as well as the last two words. Of course. As if any other course of action would be ludicrous. She didn’t normally disagree with her sister verbally, though they did live two very different lives, and the way Tessa chose to live likely commented on exactly how she disagreed with her sister.

  She would never date a married man, for example, and Janey had done that at least once.

  “I’d like to keep it,” Tessa said.

  Janey’s eyes widened. “Why? You always complain about how much work it is to maintain.”

  Tessa shrugged, because she had said such things in the past. “I don’t know.” She looked out over the water. Here in the curve of the island, it lapped at the shore instead of washing over the sand. “I don’t want to let it go.” She reached for her water as the waitress set down Janey’s drink.

  The conversation paused while they ordered their lobster rolls and frites, and Janey put in another order for a Bloody Mary this time.

  “I’d buy you out,” Tessa said, wishing she had a glass of alcohol to hide behind. At the same time, she thought that perhaps it was time to stop hiding altogether. Hiding from what she really wanted. Hiding from her sister, her son, and her husband.

  At some point, she was going to have to face them all and do what was best for her. She honestly wasn’t sure when she’d last done that.

  “We don’t even know how much the cottage is worth,” Janey said with a frown.

  “That’s easy,” Tessa said. “We call a realtor. You’d have to do that to sell anyway.”

  Janey folded her arms and leaned back in her chair. “I just think it would all be easiest if we just sold everything and split everything right down the middle.”

  “Why does it matter if I buy you out? You’d still get half of the profit.”

  “Does Mom own the house?”

  “You have the deed in your purse. I’m assuming she does, yes.”

  “You’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy me out then.” She cocked one eyebrow. “You and Ron have that much money?”

  Tessa kept her expression even, as she honestly wasn’t sure how much she and Ron held in their accounts. He managed all of that, and Tessa always had enough to pay the bills and buy groceries. “I’ll have to talk to him, of course.”

  Janey sighed and looked out over the bay too. “I need the money, Tess.” A hint of embarrassment rode on her words, and she wouldn’t look at Tessa.

  She thought of the extra check in her purse and swallowed. “I’m sorry, Janey.” Her sister had often struggled to make ends meet. She’d had her car repossessed four or five years ago, and it was only in the past twelve or fourteen months that she’d gotten a new one.

  She’d asked Tessa and Ron to sign on the new car loan if she needed them to, but she’d been able to get it on her own. Tessa’s heart went out to her sister, but she knew she couldn’t save her. She also knew she didn’t want to bend to her sister’s will and sell the cottage just because she needed the money. She’d get the same amount whether they sold it to someone else or Tessa bought out her half of it.

  “I just want this done, so I can go back to my regular life,” Janey said.

  “I’m so sorry our mother died and inconvenienced you.” Tessa regretted the words the moment they left her mouth. But, poisoned as they were, they were also the truth. Janey hadn’t done anything to clean up the estate, go over the will, or move either of them toward a final solution.

  Tessa had cleaned out the apartment in New York City. Tessa had gone to the other banks by herself. Tessa had met with the city lawyers handling her mother’s estate.


  Janey snapped her attention back to Tessa, who shook her head. “Never mind. Forget I said anything. Let me talk to Ron and figure out how much the cottage is worth, and then I can decide.”

  “Fine,” Janey said, and thankfully, the shrimp rolls arrived—along with Janey’s second drink—and Tessa allowed herself to get distracted with the food.

  At least for a few minutes. The desk, the keys, the check, and the envelope meant only for her never truly left her mind, despite the delicious lobster and crispy, buttery fries she consumed.

  Chapter Eight

  That night, an hour after Janey had downed her second glass of wine and gone to bed, Tessa snuck up the steps to the second floor, the plain white envelope clutched in her hand. Every board creaked, and she tiptoed over to the recliner in front of the windows.

  She looked out over the dark water, the tips of the waves barely catching the moonlight and throwing it back into the sky. The sand, usually beige, was a frosty color, and everything seemed still and serene.

  A figure jogged along the beach, a headlamp attached to the person’s forehead, and Tessa marveled that someone would be out at this hour, exercising. Of course, she didn’t do any sort of formal exercise if she didn’t have to, and running was completely foreign to her.

  When she was sure Janey wasn’t going to come upstairs and investigate any footsteps she may have heard, Tessa stood and went carefully up the dark, narrow staircase to the attic. Her lungs labored with the effort to move silently and slowly, and her heart pounded in the back of her throat, choking her.

  In her second envelope, the one Sean Masterson had given only to her, she’d found a second key. It had been taped to a piece of paper with writing in her mother’s hand. For the desk upstairs. Open it alone.

  There had been no other notes. No letters of love and forgiveness. No instructions for what to do with the contents of the drawers in this desk. The key and single sheet of paper had been folded into a piece of cardstock to make the contents feel flat, and Tessa now took out the other item she’d put there while Janey had showered that evening.

  The second check, which was in the amount of twenty-eight thousand dollars and some change.

  Just for her.

  She frowned at it. How did Mom only have twelve thousand in her main account, but Tessa had more than double that? Where had this money come from?

  And more importantly, why didn’t Janey have a check or an account like this?

  The key fell from the envelope, landing on the bare wood floor with a clatter. Tessa slapped her palm over it so it wouldn’t skitter anywhere, and she sucked in breath after breath, listening.

  For what, she honestly didn’t know.

  “Calm down,” she whispered to herself. “There’s not going to be a body in this desk drawer.”

  She knew that, and it wasn’t bodies she was worried about. Something thick coated her throat, because she felt like Mom was cutting Janey out of specific things, and there had to be a reason why. Tessa had been hypothesizing all afternoon, but sometimes even her worst fears didn’t come close to the truth.

  On the top drawer, she inserted the silver key into the silver lock, and it turned easily. She pulled in a breath, held it, and pulled open the drawer.

  A cash box sat there, a gray item no wider than her small laptop and no thicker than a loaf of bread. With shaking hands, she removed it from the drawer and set it on the floor. Her forty-five-year-old knees didn’t like this position, but she didn’t correct it.

  She unclasped the latch on the cash box and lifted the lid, almost flinching away even as she peered inside, lest any locusts come soaring out.

  The air took on the scent of dust…and money.

  The cash box held bills in all denominations up to the hundred-dollar bill, each laid out neatly from smallest to largest, from left to right.

  Ones, fives, tens, twenties, fifties, hundreds.

  She lifted the bill holder to check beneath it, as she’d volunteered many times for the PTA fundraisers and knew checks and coins were usually stored beneath the plastic insert. Nothing in the bottom of the cash box had her breath releasing from her lungs.

  There were no coins in any of the slots for them, and Tessa picked up the stack of hundred-dollar bills. It had a decent weight and heft, which only made her heartbeat start to sprint again.

  “Where did Mom get all this money?”

  Dad had died twenty years ago. Yes, Tessa and Janey had been adults by then, and Mom had gotten a good life insurance settlement. But was it this much? Enough for her to live on for two decades, and have forty thousand dollars in a bank here on Nantucket? She’d had that much in her bank accounts in the city too.

  Plus that apartment overlooking Central Park.

  Nothing made sense. Mom had never worked a paying job, and the dollars and cents weren’t lining up in Tessa’s head.

  “You don’t know how much the life insurance was,” she told herself as she closed the cash box. How was she supposed to hide this? She thought about stuffing her pajama pockets with some bills now and coming back for more later.

  At the same time, Janey had said at dinner that she needed to get back to Jersey for a day or two, and then she was flying to Dallas for a business meeting. She wouldn’t be in the cottage for much longer, and Tessa could easily move the money then.

  Guilt ripped through her, especially when she remembered Janey’s conversation outside the bank with someone named Sunny, and her admission at dinner that she needed the money. Would this cash alleviate some problems for her?

  When Tessa looked at it, all she saw was more obstacles. More deception and half-truths.

  She removed the key from the top drawer and slid it into the lock on the bottom one. It twisted just as easily as the first, and Tessa felt stronger as she opened the second drawer.

  She straightened up on her knees to see down inside the drawer, and a gasp flew out of her mouth.

  A dark blue binder lay there.

  She reached for it even as her brain screamed at her. This binder bore a layer of dust that Tessa’s fingers left prints in as she gripped it and lifted it out of the drawer. It didn’t weigh nearly as much as the one Tessa already had in her possession, and she set it on her knees and stared at it.

  Something nagged at her, and she jerked her head up.

  She’d heard something downstairs. Her pulse crashed in her ears, but she tilted her head to the side, listening.

  A moment later, she heard the noise again. Janey was up and in the kitchen, most likely.

  Panic streamed through Tessa. She couldn’t be caught up here, examining the contents of the now-open drawers. She hurried to replace the binder in the drawer, and she put the cash box on top of it.

  She slid the bottom drawer closed as quietly as she could, cursing when it scraped and squealed. She relocked it and got to her feet, her mind racing.

  At her feet lay the white envelope with the check resting on it.

  Swearing again, she bent and picked them up, reopened the bottom drawer and slid them through the smallest crack.

  “The top drawer,” she muttered, making sure it was locked too. She slipped the key in her pajama pants pocket, a new thought paralyzing her.

  Had she closed her bedroom door? Or would Janey know she wasn’t in her room should she happen to look inside?

  Chapter Nine

  Bobbie Friedman had obviously spent many days on the beach, her skin weathered and tan and wrinkled. She’d invited the sisters to have a picnic on the sand with her and her husband, and Tessa had been so out of it from her midnight romp in the attic that she hadn’t been able to come up with a reason why she and Janey couldn’t attend.

  “How long will you girls be here?” Bobbie asked, opening a picnic basket complete with the red and white checkered cloth.

  Tessa met Janey’s eye. Today she wore a black swimming suit cover up that made her look like a queen, plenty of dark eye makeup she’d hidden behind her oversized sunglasses, and a
smile.

  “Until things are settled,” Janey said evasively, and that was news to Tessa.

  “Have you decided to sell the cottage?” Riggs asked, his green eyes bright with hope. He exchanged a glance with his wife. “If you do, we’d like to be the ones to buy it. We’ll give you the market value for it.”

  “It’s just so close to our property,” Bobbie explained further. “We’d love to have it for our kids and grandkids. If you’re going to sell.”

  For some reason, Tessa didn’t want to sell the cottage to Bobbie and Riggs, though she knew they’d take good care of it.

  “We haven’t decided what to do with the cottage,” she said, her voice firm and final. Thankfully, Janey remained quiet as she took a sandwich from Bobbie. She gave her a smile and unzipped the bag.

  The unmistakable scent of tuna fish came from the bag, and Tessa almost gagged. She’d grown up on tuna fish sandwiches, because it was cheap, and Mom hadn’t been the greatest cook. She certainly didn’t eat it as an adult, but Janey took a bite without complaint. She watched the waves out in the ocean, leaving Tessa to carry the conversation with Bobbie and Riggs.

  She did, deftly avoiding eating any of her sandwich by consuming a lot of fruit and potato chips instead. She watched Bobbie watch Riggs, and she watched Riggs watch Janey.

  No one seemed to be paying any attention to her at all, though the three of them continued to talk about the happenings on Nantucket that summer, and the farmer’s market the sisters might want to attend the following day.

  “Your mother used to sell her jewelry there,” Riggs said, and that brought Janey’s attention from the water.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her first contribution to the conversation. “Mom sold jewelry at the farmer’s market?” She looked at Tessa, who had the same question. “When?”

  “All the time,” Riggs said, not meeting his wife’s eyes. “All summer long, every time she came.”