A Small-Town Reunion. Terry Mclaughlin
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And Tess’s love of the social events and shopping Charlie detested—not to mention her fondness for organizing her friends’ personal business—had made her the logical choice for Charlie’s maid of honor.
“Jack threatened to arrange for a flock of doves and a dance orchestra,” Tess said. “That got her minimalist rear in gear.”
“Even his threats are romantic,” Addie said with a dreamy sigh. “He really loves her, doesn’t he?”
“Poor guy.” Tess grinned. “I remember threatening him with thumbscrews when he first blew into town. Turns out getting engaged to Charlie was worse than any torture I could have dreamed up.”
Addie slid onto one of the work stools behind her long reception counter. “They’re going to be very happy together.”
“Yeah, they deserve each other, all right. And don’t get your feathers ruffled,” Tess added when she caught Addie’s frown. “I mean that in the nicest possible way.”
Tess dropped her empty cup in the giant bin as she headed toward the door. “Better swing by my office before I head out to check up on Quinn and give him his midmorning kiss.”
“That’s so sweet.” Addie’s smile was wide and guileless. “He deserves you, too.”
Tess paused, her hand on the doorknob and her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Sometimes I think that syrupy sweet exterior of yours is a fiendishly clever disguise. Beneath all that fluffy gold hair, those big blue eyes and those angelic dimples lurks the heart of a serial insulter.”
“You know I always try to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings.”
“Like I said,” Tess added as she headed out the door, “fiendishly clever.”
Addie watched her friend climb into her bright red roadster and speed off toward the waterfront. Tess had Quinn; Charlie had Jack. Currently, Addie had Mick O’Shaughnessy, a baseball-playing carpenter on Quinn’s construction crew—though she wasn’t quite sure what to do with him. Their relationship seemed to be skidding from romantic to platonic.
Addie also had bridesmaid duties to perform and bills to pay. She switched on her aging disk player, popped in a CD of Motown classics and reached for her sketches for a new set of window ornaments.
Five minutes later, the sun had burned through the morning fog to fire summer light into every corner of the shop, and a honeymooning couple had wandered in to admire a hummingbird and rose done in filmy opalescent and clear textured glasses. She excused herself when her desk phone rang.
“A Slice of Light, Addie Sutton speaking.”
“Hello, Addie.”
She stiffened. It had been several years since she’d heard Geneva Chandler’s voice on the phone. “Good morning, Mrs. Chandler.”
“Must we be so formal?” Geneva, Tessa’s grandmother and the wealthiest woman in Carnelian Cove, had once employed Addie’s mother as housekeeper. Addie had lived most of her childhood at Chandler House, playing quietly in a corner of the enormous kitchen or tucked up in her attic bedroom.
Or romping in Tess’s suite, when her friend had come north to visit. Tess had grown up in San Francisco, but she’d spent school holidays and long summers in Carnelian Cove. Geneva had often claimed the two of them were a matched set, like night and day.
“Formal?” Addie twirled a strand of hair around a finger so tightly her knuckle turned white. “No, I don’t suppose so. What can I do for you, Geneva?”
“Two of my windows were damaged last night during the quake. I’d like you to come out today and see about repairing them for me.”
“Which ones?”
“Two of the set over the entry stair landing. You know the group.”
“Yes, I do.”
Addie had spent dozens of hours nestled in one corner of that landing, her picture books propped on her bony knees and her toes digging into the thick, richly patterned carpet, while rainbows flooded through the glass to drench her in color. She’d studied the intricate webbing of lead, had observed the infinite effects created by sunlight as it played through the waves and streaks and bevels. She’d told herself stories to bring the patterns and pictures to life as they’d painted her skin in jeweled tones and pastels.
Those windows had been her secret, silent joy. They’d kept her company and given shape to her dreams—and now two of them had been broken. It was as though pieces of her childhood had been chipped and fractured.
“Can you come?” asked Geneva. “This morning, if possible. I’d like to get an expert opinion on how to proceed with the repairs. And, of course, I’d like you to make those repairs for me, Addie.”
“Yes, I’ll come.” Of course she would. Her special, magic windows needed her skills.
And Addie had always known there’d come a day she’d be forced to deal with the Chandlers.
HALF AN HOUR BEFORE she’d agreed to meet Geneva at Chandler House, Addie stared at the mirror hanging above her bathroom’s wall-mounted sink and tugged her fingers through her long, curling hair. It was a simple matter of basic grooming and good manners, she reasoned as she twisted together a few tendrils and caught them up with two tiny, spangled shooting-star clips. Looking put together on the outside would help her feel put together on the inside—even if the butterfly horde in her stomach was flapping hard enough to propel a space shuttle into orbit.
She wasn’t trying to impress Geneva, she told herself as she slipped thin gold hoops through her ears. Even if she’d wanted to, it was impossible to impress a woman who had more power than anyone else in town. The Chandlers had made their fortune in the timber industry and then earned several more through marriages to heiresses and investments in a number of Carnelian Cove businesses. There were few citizens of Carnelian Cove who hadn’t benefited, directly or indirectly, from the family’s employment opportunities or charity projects.
Addie smoothed a hand over her powder-blue short-sleeved shirt and stared at the toes peeking through the ends of her sandals, wondering if another layer of lotion would pass for a pedicure, and then decided her canvas deck shoes were more appropriate for the visit.
Her old truck sputtered and shuddered as she backed out of her alley parking spot, and its idle seemed rougher than usual as she waited to pull on to Main Street. Time for another tune-up, she thought with a sigh—and where was she going to find the cash for that?
From her bill for the repair on Geneva’s windows, she realized. She’d ask for a deposit and use some of the funds to replace her broken supplies. Chances were she’d need those supplies to make the repairs, anyway.
Sunlight pierced the shadows beneath the bluff’s redwood grove and flashed across the windshield as her truck groaned and complained about the climb up the winding road. She passed the crooked, scarred rhododendron that Tess at sixteen had swiped with her new roadster and remembered the way she’d screamed as the shredded purple blooms exploded in their faces. There was the turn to Danny Silva’s house—the infamous scene of the poolside party where Addie had lost her bathing suit top after a clumsy dive.
And there, near the top of the bluff, was the entrance to the Chandler estate. It seemed days rather than years since she’d driven through these tall, wide, iron gates. Nothing had changed—the flowers and ferns spilling over the edges of fat stone urns, the lawn flowing like an emerald river from the slate-edged porches of the shingle-style house, the dramatic backdrop of tall trees and black cliffs.
No, she thought again as she tickled her clutch through a downshift—there was one thing here that had changed. She had changed. She was no longer the daughter of the housekeeper; she was an independent businesswoman here on a job.
She slowed as she neared a fork in the drive. One paved path led to the front of the house, swinging past the grand front porch before it curved beneath a porte cochere