The Cottage on Nantucket Page 5

  Tessa wondered how much she’d gotten for it. “What kind of jewelry?” she asked. If she sold it at the farmer’s market, she couldn’t have gotten that much. People sold their homegrown vegetables, handmade soaps, and crocheted potholders at the farmer’s market. Not fine jewelry.

  “Her work was exquisite,” Riggs said, a hint of pride in his voice. It matched the smile on his face. Tessa supposed he could’ve been handsome in his younger days, as he still had a head full of now-silver hair that had once been dark brown. “She polished her own rocks and found her own pearls for each piece. She made bracelets mostly, but some earrings.”

  He fell silent then, and Tessa noticed the sharp look from Bobbie. It softened as she looked at the sisters. “You didn’t eat your sandwich,” she said to Tessa, who’d tried to cover it with an apple core and two empty bags of chips.

  “Oh, I filled up on fruit,” she said with a laugh and a look in Janey’s direction.

  Her sister’s phone rang, and she pulled it from her lap. “It’s my boss,” she said. “I need to take this. Excuse me.” She stood and answered the call, quickly pulling the phone away from her mouth. “Thank you for lunch, Bobbie. Good to see you both.” She smiled as if she really meant it and walked away, her voice wafting back to them on the wind, though Tessa couldn’t make out the words.

  “I should go too,” Tessa said, standing. “Thank you so much for lunch.” She didn’t give a reason why she needed to leave, but she did bend down and help the two of them clean up. After stuffing chip bags into a designated garbage sack and helping Bobbie fold up the blanket, Tessa noticed Riggs had wandered away too.

  “Is he okay?” Tessa asked, and Bobbie looked up at her and then toward her husband.

  “Oh, he’s fine.” The smile she put on her face was false and plastic, and Tessa wondered what she was trying to cover up. “He just loves seeing you girls so much. Reminds him of our daughter, and we don’t get to see her very often.” Her chin shook and her eyes welled with tears.

  Bobbie grabbed Tessa in a hug, which only caused Tessa to experience another round of guilt for trying to get away from them and not eating the tuna fish sandwich. “Thanks for coming to a picnic with a couple of old loonies.” She laughed and released Tessa, who could only smile.

  As Bobbie walked away, Tessa wondered why her stomach wouldn’t settle. She couldn’t see Janey, and she hurried up the beach to the cottage. Once inside, she headed straight into the attic and over to the window.

  “There she is.” Her sister strolled far down the beach, the wind coming off the water pulling at her swimming suit cover-up.

  Tessa hurried to unlock the bottom drawer and pull out the blue binder. Then she sat in the recliner and balanced it on her knees. She checked on Janey’s position, and she was still headed away from the cottage. A couple of other people had come to the beach that day—locals who owned the other cottages on this beachside lane. None of them would bother her.

  She looked down at the binder, took a deep breath, and opened it.

  Chapter Ten

  It’s up to you if you tell Janey or not.

  The words haunted Tessa for a full day before she started to have other thoughts. She’d claimed a flu bug and stayed in her bedroom for most of the day, but she couldn’t confine herself to the fifteen-by-fifteen-foot space for another moment.

  The cottage sat in morning stillness, the sunlight trying to get through the slats in the blinds Janey had drawn over the front windows.

  As the clock had just ticked to eight a.m., Tessa didn’t expect to see her sister for a couple more hours at least. She took her coffee and a piece of toast out to the front porch and settled onto the top step.

  After she’d finished her breakfast, she called Ron.

  “Hey, sweetheart,” her husband said when he connected the call. “How’s the cottage?”

  All of the fears and doubts Tessa had experienced over the state of her marriage dried up. They’d come creeping back in, though, and she needed to start rebuilding the bridge between her and Ron.

  “It’s incredible,” she said. “I’m looking out over the ocean right now.” A smile filled her soul, and she sighed. “The first week of August can’t come fast enough.”

  He chuckled and asked, “How are you getting along with Janey?”

  She glanced over her shoulder, but her sister wasn’t there. She had so much to tell Ron, and she didn’t even know where to start. “Good enough,” she said. “She wants to sell the cottage.”

  “I’m sure she does.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She never has any money,” Ron said gently. “The estate, with the cottage, will be worth a lot more.”

  “Yes,” Tessa said slowly, thinking of the check, the cash, and the binder. “Ron, I want to keep the cottage. I proposed to Janey that we might be able to buy her out.” She went on to tell him about everything she’d found, the story rushing out of her in quick sentences told in a breathy, excited voice.

  Ron said, “Wow, I need a minute,” when she finished.

  She understood that. She’d taken a whole day, and she still didn’t know what to do.

  “What are you feeling?” he asked, something he’d done early in their marriage when she was upset with him. She’d learned over time to tell him how she felt and what she was thinking, and then they could operate from a place of fact. They’d learned to work together.

  “I’m feeling like we don’t really need the money,” she said. “I’d rather have the cottage.” She stood up and went down the steps, her bare feet touching the warm sand on the sidewalk in front of the cottage. “I’m feeling distant from you, and I hate it. I feel like Ryan’s been cutting both of us out of his life for whatever reason, and we need to do something about it.”

  She turned and looked at the bright blue cottage, her husband strangely giving her another moment. Sometimes he tried to tell her stories, and sometimes he let her talk. Tessa had learned it all had to do with how his week in the city had gone. If he felt like he was getting enough air time, getting listened to, in his office, he let her talk.

  If he felt like he was being overlooked or his legal advice ignored, he talked over her.

  “I’m feeling like I should tell Janey what I’ve found and let her see all of it.” Her stomach twisted at the thought, because she didn’t think Janey would react well to any of the things Tessa had received or found in the past couple of days.

  “You need to do what you feel is right,” Ron said. “I’ll support you, Tess.”

  “Thanks,” she murmured.

  “We are a little distant,” he admitted. “It’s my fault. I’ll be there in a few weeks though, and let me call Ryan and see what I can find out. Sometimes he tells me things he doesn’t want to tell you.”

  That was true, no matter how much Tessa wished it wasn’t. She’d told her son he could always tell her anything, but she’d been the task-master and the disciplinarian for him growing up, and he simply didn’t tell her everything.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I love you, Ron.”

  “I love you too, sweetheart.” He wore a smile in his voice. “Let me know how it goes with Janey.”

  “I will.” She ended the call and turned around to face the water again. She couldn’t quite see the edge of it because the sand swelled just across the street, but the smudge of water sat on the horizon.

  “Good morning,” Riggs called, and Tessa turned toward him. A fishing pole rested against his shoulder and a tackle box dangled from his hand.

  “Morning,” she called back to him, then watched him go along the path that led over the swell and down to the water. She wasn’t sure if he ever caught anything. One summer, she and her cousins had tried to bait crawfish with raw bacon along the shore, and they’d only caught three.

  She faced the cottage again and climbed the steps. She could see over the swell here, and she noted that Riggs wasn’t on the path anymore. Where he’d gone, she couldn’t say, as she
didn’t see him at all. Puzzled, but pushing him from her mind, she went back inside the cottage.

  She set a pot of coffee to brew, and then she went into her bedroom to collect the key and the binder she’d gotten in New York. A trip upstairs retrieved the rest of the items, and Tessa laid them all out on the kitchen table.

  Her fingers shook as she balanced the check made out only to her against the salt and pepper shakers that never left the table. She blinked, and she could see the letters inside the blue binder.

  It’s up to you if you tell Janey or not.

  That had been the first line of the letter that sat on the first page inside the new binder.

  It had been the last line too.

  Tessa hated bearing this burden, and she’d thought long and hard about what she’d want if the tables were turned.

  She’d want the truth.

  Janey was her sister, and Tessa owed her the truth.

  “What’s all this?”

  Tessa flinched and looked up to find Janey examining the items on the table. She reached out and picked up the check Tessa had just taken precious moments to balance. “What is this?” she asked again, her eyes wide and filled with wonder and fear now.

  “We should sit down,” Tessa said, her voice sounding very frog-like. She did, glad when Janey pulled out a chair and did the same.

  “Mom had an account in my name,” she said. “That was the balance from it.” She nodded to the check. “I got an extra envelope from Sean Masterson too, and it had a key in it.” She tapped the silver key, which lay next to the white envelope. “It opened the desk drawer upstairs.”

  Janey put the check down on the table and folded her arms. She didn’t look mad or afraid or upset, and the lack of emotion unsettled Tessa.

  “She said I could choose to tell you or not, and I’m choosing to tell you.”

  “Tell me what, exactly?” Janey asked, her voice a bit acidic.

  “It’s easier if you just read it yourself.” Tessa nudged the blue binder toward her. “I just want you to remember that you’re my sister, and I love you.”

  Janey hesitated in her reach toward the binder. Her eyes softened, and she hadn’t put any makeup on that morning. Tessa could see the true version of her sister, and she was kind and loving and Tessa’s best friend.

  “I love you too.” Janey gave her a small smile and reached for the binder. “Am I going to freak out at what I find in here?”

  “I guess we’ll see.” Tessa swallowed, inhaled, and held the air in her lungs as Janey opened the front flap of the new, blue binder.

  Chapter Eleven

  Janey opened the binder, but she pressed her eyes closed. She carried a huge weight on her shoulders and in her mind, and sometimes she felt like she could only move her arms. Flail would actually be a better word for how much progress she’d made in the past couple of years.

  In a moment of time, she could think about a dozen things. The emails she needed to respond to. Her boss who expected her to call with her date of return this morning. The texts from Sean Masterson. The ones from her boyfriend in Jersey—one of them anyway. The three buckets in the house that caught any water that leaked through the roof. The payment due dates for a dozen different accounts. The airplane ticket in her cart she hadn’t finished buying yet.

  She couldn’t, because she didn’t have the money in her account. She needed the dates too.

  Janey opened her eyes, a sense of sheer fury licking at her insides. She didn’t have time to spend on Nantucket. She didn’t want to be here, and as she looked down at this second binder, all it held for her was an astronomical amount of time.

  At least it held half as many sheets of paper as the first one Tessa had gone through. Janey had let her do everything with the estate and the accounts, because she seemed to want to, and she had much more time than Janey did.

  The words on the page blurred, and Janey looked up as she took another breath. “Maybe you can just tell me what it says.”

  She’d had plenty of experience with hiding away how she felt. No one ever got to see her upset or angry. Clients thought she was a barrel of fun all the time. Her boss got pure professionalism. Her boyfriends got a flirty, laughing woman who’d kiss them on the first date and go home with them by the third. Janey knew exactly what to show to precisely who, at the perfect time.

  Sometimes she stood in front of the mirror in her messy bathroom and wondered who she really was. The bad girl who wore leather and rode motorcycles with her club? The professional woman who knew fashion and makeup and always closed the deal? The carefree woman who wore shorts that were too short and tank tops that showed off her arms so she could get free drinks and dance the night away?

  “Mom explains it,” Tessa said. “Just read it.” She stood up and paced into the kitchen, where she poured herself another cup of coffee. Her younger sister sounded frustrated with her, and Janey wasn’t surprised by that. Tessa never said anything, but Janey knew her late start to the day irritated Tessa, as did a handful of other things.

  Janey looked at the first page in the binder.

  My dear Tessa,

  It’s up to you if you tell Janey or not.

  I want to put that first, because it’s the most important thing. I’ll probably repeat it a couple of times.

  By now, you’ve visited Sean Masterson and gotten the key to the desk drawer. You’ve most likely been to the bank and received an extra check, from a bank account I put in your name only. Now you’ve found the binder.

  I’m sure you’re confused and probably a little scared. I hope this letter will address the first concern, and I hope all the documents contained herein will ease your fears.

  I’ve taken certain steps to protect my assets from those who would like to take them from you. I didn’t put these items into the trust, because they can challenge that, which I’m sure they have already. If they haven’t, they will.

  Janey paused and looked up. “Who’s ‘they’?”

  “I don’t know,” Tessa said, and that contradicted what Mom had said about the letter explaining all the confusing things.

  “Has someone challenged the trust?”

  “Not that I’m aware of,” she said. “Though we do have the ninety days to go through it and come to an agreement. Perhaps they will after that?” Tessa shook her head and faced Janey. She wore a pair of shorts that went all the way to her knee and an untucked blouse in a mustardy yellow that no one had worn for at least seven years.

  Janey actually wondered what it would take to get her sister to loosen up. She knew she had money. Why didn’t she buy clothes from this year? There were so many simple things she could do to…what, exactly? Janey asked herself.

  Tessa was happy, and that was all that mattered. She didn’t need to wear the newest fashions to meet a new man. She didn’t go to bars and clubs looking for Mr. Right. She already had him, and no one at the Easton Public Library cared if she wore an off-trend color.

  “Can’t people challenge an individual will too?” Janey asked.

  Tessa’s husband was a lawyer, and she just assumed Tessa would know.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Then the whole letter only added to Janey’s confusion. She glanced at the check, her heartbeat cartwheeling through her chest at the numbers on it. Twenty-eight thousand dollars. More than double what Mom had left for the two of them to split.

  Janey’s tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. Everything was so dry, and she felt like she’d put a handful of chalk in her mouth and tried to gargle with it.

  Her vision blurred again, but she squinted at the letter.

  I’ve created an addendum for my will for these specific assets, as that way, the legal ability of others to contest it are lessened. There has not been a will for these items before, and if no one else is named, they generally can’t contest legally.

  It’s up to you if you tell Janey or not. She will have some decisions to make regarding what she tells you as well.

 
; My hope is that you two will work together on the will and trust. I know the two of you haven’t always been close, nor have you always seen eye-to-eye. I remember distinctly the day you said that you sometimes don’t even feel related to her.

  She has weaknesses and strengths, just like every other human being does. Just like you and I, Tess.

  But you can decide what you’d like to do. The money from your account is yours, or you can split it with her. The assets in this will are yours, and you will need to decide what to do with them. All of the documents needed to transfer ownership or power are here as well, should you decide to include your sister in the decisions you need to make.

  I will tell her the same thing, and hopefully this can be a bonding experience for the two of you. Something that will bring you closer together and remind you that you two do belong to each other, despite your differences.

  That’s all. The listed assets in this will are on the next page.

  I love you, Tessa Marie. You were my baby, and I’m proud of the woman you’ve become.

  Remember, it’s up to you if you tell Janey or not.

  Love, Mom

  * * *

  Janey’s eyes burned with tears. She wanted a letter that contained her mother’s spirit and voice, telling her she loved her and was proud of her. Her chest pinched that she didn’t have something like this, though her eyes did dart up and catch a few other lines.

  I will tell her the same thing and She will have some decisions to make regarding what she tells you as well.

  Janey had plenty of secrets, sure, but none of them were related to her mother’s estate or assets.

  She turned the page and saw a very short list of assets, but the first one made her eyes bulge and a squeak come out of her mouth.

  Chapter Twelve

  “The Hotel Benjamin?” Janey practically yelled. She swung her head wildly toward Tessa, who leaned against the counter in front of the sink, her arms folded. She barely saw her before spinning back to the binder.