Ex’s and Oh’s (13 page)

“You
really looked him in the eye and said that?”

“Yes, word for word,” Caroline said.

While Caroline and Elaine spoke, church bells sounded in the distance.

“You told him it isn’t his child?”

“Yes. I told him it isn’t his child.” Caroline hadn’t intended to bring up the incident. In fact, she hadn’t planned to see the girls today. As expected, the movers had been late. By the time she left Chicago, everyone else seemed to be trying to leave, too. She hadn’t gotten back to Harbor Woods until the wee hours of the morning. After sleeping for a few hours, she’d showered and dressed and come here to try to decide how to best use the space.

The details regarding how Elaine, Tori, Nell and Pattie had found her were still slightly sketchy, but when Caroline had heard the old-fashioned bell jangle over the door of her new office and discovered them standing on
the other side of it, she decided to give them a quick tour, then bow out to visit Karl. Somewhere between the reception area and the offices she would use as her private suite, the entire sordid tale came tumbling out. Caroline couldn’t blame any of them for looking skeptical.

“You lied?” Nell asked.

“I told him what he wanted to hear,” Caroline said. “He knows it was a bold-faced lie.”

“He does?” This time it was Tori who couldn’t seem to close her gaping mouth.

Caroline sat on the edge of Karl’s old desk. Resting her palms on the smooth surface on either side of her legs, she said, “Steven has an uncanny ability to sniff out the smallest loophole, untruth, white lie or fabrication. It’s one of the qualities that makes him so good at what he does. It’s a reputation he relishes, and he’s earned it, along with a great deal of money for his clients, which in turn, has made him a very wealthy man, and one of the most sought after litigation consultants in Chicago.”

“So he knew you were lying,” Tori said.

“Yes.”

“You’re sure.”

“Absolutely,” Caroline said quite simply.

“How can you know for sure?” Elaine asked, curious now.

“I’ve seen him in action in court and out of it. He knows. And he knows I know he knows.”

“This is scaring me,” Tori said. “Because that made sense to me.”

“And he just walked away, relieved of all monetary obligation and moral responsibility,” Nell whispered.

Caroline nodded again.

“Good riddance,” Elaine insisted, the expression on her narrow face earnest and sincere.

The other three all murmured some form of agreement. Caroline wasn’t accustomed to such loyalty, but she was learning to accept it, and appreciate it.

During the long drive from Chicago, she’d thought about that confrontation with Steven. She
had
told him what he’d wanted to hear, and in doing so, in a sense it became true. This child was hers, and hers alone. Her baby hadn’t been conceived to break up a family, but to make one. A family of two.

“In a way, you’re lucky,” Elaine said. “If you never marry, you’ll never have to worry about getting a divorce. Divorce is hell.”

Nell and Tori seconded that.

“When will you be ready to see clients?” Elaine asked.

Caroline looked around the old suite of offices. The place was dull and dusty. The tin ceilings were original, the
moldings and window casings wide. Each office was fitted with a door that contained etched glass intended to guard clients’ privacy. Caroline could easily picture Karl seeing clients here, but she planned to make a few updates in order to bring it into the current century.

“I’ll hang my shingle as soon as I receive the paperwork from the Michigan State Bar Association. I expect to hear within the month. Why?”

“I confronted Justin.”

“Oh, Elaine,” Nell said.

“How?” Tori asked.

“When?” Pattie said.

“And you waited until now to tell us?” Nell implored.

“It happened just last night. He denied it, until I showed him my little Polaroids.”

“Oh, honey,” Nell sympathized, her eyes pools of appeal in her pretty round face. “What did he say?”

“He doesn’t want a divorce.”

“He doesn’t?” Pattie said.

“He assured me she isn’t someone he would ever leave me for. It seems she isn’t marriage material. As if that was some big compliment to me. Apparently he wants us both.”

“Of course he does,” Tori said derisively. “A dutiful wife and a piece on the side. What slimeball wouldn’t want that?”

“Elaine?” This time it was Caroline who spoke. “The question is, what do you want?”

“She can have him,” Elaine said quietly. “All of him. I want you to find a loophole in that prenup. I want him to know how it feels to get royally screwed.”

“Atta girl,” Pattie cut in.

“Drop that agreement off at my summerhouse,” Caroline said. “I can start working on it before I’m officially open for business.”

Caroline’s cell phone rang. After fishing the small device out of her purse, she placed it to her ear. She recognized Shane’s voice.

“Are you back?”

“I got in late last night.”

“It’s about Karl, Caroline.”

Foreboding crept over her. For one blinding instant, she wished she hadn’t taken the call. “Is he—”

“Yes,” he said. “He’s gone.”

“When?” she whispered.

“I just received the call. When he didn’t come to breakfast, they went looking for him. Evidently he died in his sleep.”

“Where are you?” she asked Shane.

“On my boat.”

“I’ll be right there.”

Hanging up, desolation swept over her. She’d known this was coming. And yet she wasn’t prepared. The doctor had given Karl another two months. It had only been two weeks. It was too soon. There was so much Karl hadn’t told her, so much she couldn’t tell him.

A hot tear rolled down her cheek. “I have to go.”

“What’s wrong?”

“He died.”

“Who, honey?” Nell asked gently.

“My grandfather.”

She picked up her purse by rote, and somehow managed to follow her friends out the door. After locking up, she started for her car.

Behind her, she heard Elaine say, “I thought her grandfather died months ago.”

Caroline was too far away to hear the rest. Pointing her car toward the marina, she felt an unsettling sense of déjà vu.

Half the county turned out for Karl’s funeral service. Cars were lined up on both sides of the lane, stretching all the way from the No Trespassing sign at the gate of the lighthouse property to the county road.

The private gravel lane had been scraped, the dust laid by a rain shower overnight. Karl Peterson had requested to be cremated, and he’d wanted a quiet service, and as little
fuss as possible, but R. J. Clark was the county commissioner, and he and Karl went way back, and while R.J. couldn’t take credit for the rain, by God, he’d said, scraping the lane was the least the county could do.

Karl’s wasn’t a typical funeral. There had been no three-day mourning period for the cantankerous old attorney. “When the time comes, get it over with,” he’d told Shane the year he’d turned eighty.

So, the day after Shane had called to tell Caroline the sad news, she found herself sitting with hundreds of other people in makeshift rows of folding chairs that had been set up on the lawn near the lighthouse. There had been no formal viewing, although she and Shane had gone to his room at the manor one last time to say goodbye before he’d been taken to be cremated. The money most people spent on a casket and all the trimmings had been donated discreetly to a safe house for battered women. Of course, it was brought up at the service this afternoon.

Caroline had expected Shane to give the eulogy. After all, it was Shane whom Karl had trusted with his final wishes, and with his care in his final months. But Shane didn’t speak, and she realized he preferred it that way.

She saw him in the distance. He stood to one side near the front with three men she didn’t recognize. He wore a dark suit, white shirt and a tie. If she wasn’t mistaken, he
was wearing socks. She couldn’t bring herself to smile. She couldn’t bring herself to cry, either. She remembered how long it had taken her to finally break down after her grandfather’s funeral three months ago.

Karl Peterson’s funeral was as different from Henry O’Shaughnessy’s as it could be. One had been held in a church and had been attended by judges and businessmen and some of the wealthiest people in Chicago, the other on the grounds of the beloved lighthouse where two young men had once dreamed. Karl had wanted a simple ending. Caroline was of the opinion that there was no easy way to say goodbye.

It was almost too beautiful a day for such a sad event. Waves lapped the shore lazily, and sailboats with bright orange sails glided in and out of view. There were no flowers. Again, charitable donations were accepted and encouraged instead. Although he’d made Karl’s wishes clear regarding a simple service, Shane had been outvoted. It seemed people needed to give Karl a good send-off.

As Caroline listened to the stories they told about the man who had been such an integral part of Harbor Woods for so long, she didn’t see how Karl could mind. He’d been well liked and highly respected, although at times he had been a thorn in some people’s sides. Many of the people gathered here this afternoon would probably honestly miss
him. She wondered where they’d all been these past nine months while he’d been living at Woodland Country Manor. As far as she knew, few of them had visited Karl then. But such was the way of people.

Other than Shane and the two nurses who’d cared for Karl, the only person Caroline recognized was Tori. She hadn’t seen her until the sheriff finished saying a few words. Tori’s hair looked gorgeous against her black sheath. Caroline almost smiled to herself, because only Tori Young could look so stunning at a funeral.

By now Caroline wasn’t surprised to see her friend squeeze in next to Shane. She said something to him, and he tilted his head, positioning his ear close to her mouth in order to hear. Caroline didn’t believe for a minute that Tori hated her former husband. Whatever was wrong between them stemmed from something other than hatred.

As far as Caroline could tell, Nell, Elaine and Pattie weren’t there. But of course they wouldn’t be. They lived and worked in Charlevoix, and they didn’t know that Karl Peterson had been Caroline’s grandfather. Although she’d spoken to them briefly last night, she’d decided not to share that information, saying simply that her loss was on her mother’s side and that Caroline hadn’t known him well.

She half expected Tori to put it together. Actually, she wished she would.

There had been a lovely write-up in this morning’s newspaper. The headline had read Saying Goodbye To One Of Our Own. The article took up most of the front page.

Shane had asked Caroline if she wanted to be listed in the obituary. After thinking about it, she’d told him no, for her relationship to Karl wasn’t common knowledge. It didn’t sadden her that nobody else knew. It saddened her that Karl hadn’t.

She sighed. She’d been doing that a lot these past few days.

The service ended, and everyone stood. The sheriff was shaking Shane’s hand. Caroline didn’t see Tori anywhere.

While many of the mourners congregated into small groups, Caroline slipped away, alone.

Caroline didn’t go to Tori’s for girl’s night on Thursday evening. Evidently Tori was feuding with Andy and Shane, and Pattie’s daughter had swimmer’s ear, whatever that was. Nell and Elaine had decided to see a movie. They’d kindly invited Caroline along. She’d declined.

When she heard the knock on her door at half-past nine, she half expected it to be them. She couldn’t see whoever was on her front stoop from her kitchen window, but she could see the driveway, and she knew of only one person in Harbor Woods who drove an old silver Shelby Mustang.

“Hi,” she said, opening the door to Shane.

“Hi.”

It had been nearly a week since Karl died. She’d stopped by the marina a few days ago to say hello. Shane’s phone had barely stopped ringing long enough to return her greeting. Now that there was no reason to go to the nursing home, they didn’t run into each other. Perhaps she could have taken up the search for Anna’s diary, but it seemed like a moot point now. Anna was gone. Henry was gone. And Karl was gone. What difference would the diary make now?

“Would you like to come in?” she asked.

“I can’t.”

“Is something wrong?”

A look of discomfort crossed his face. “I just had a hell of a fight with Vickie. After that, I got into it with Andy. Some of the people who rent slips got together and filed a complaint against another boat owner. I had to talk to the guy. Let’s just say he wasn’t happy. Three reamings in one day is a lot to take, even for me.”

Standing in the doorway on a quiet summer night, listening to Shane complain, she was struck by how good it was to see him. “You’ve had a bad day,” she said. “You stopped by, but you don’t want to come in.”

“I thought I’d take my boat out. It seems only fitting that you should come.”

“Fitting, how?”

“He was your grandfather, Caroline.”

Understanding dawned. Karl’s final request was to have his ashes scattered across the night waters of Lake Michigan. Shane was about to honor that request. It was all Caroline could do to squeeze one word past the lump in her throat. “When?”

“What are you doing right now? Karl loved summer nights. The sky is clear. And the moon will be up by the time we get out there.”

“Do I need to bring anything?”

“I have everything we’ll need, Caroline.”

“If it gets too cool for you,” Shane said when they were a few hundred yards from shore, “I can close up the cabin.”

“No,” Caroline said, peering through the open windows. “I like it.”

It was fifteen degrees cooler on Lake Michigan than on land, and the breeze felt good on her face. She wore a life jacket, navy slacks and canvas shoes that were comfortable and perfect for boating. The wind was fast undoing her hair, which she’d fastened in a clip at her nape.

Shane operated the cruiser with the finesse of someone who knew his way around boats and the water. He wore his regular attire of faded blue jeans and sandals. They
hadn’t spoken about what he planned to do, but she’d seen him place an urn in a compartment for safekeeping. She remembered all the publicity the Kennedys had received when they’d wanted to spread the ashes of their loved ones over the ocean off the Cape. They’d been granted special permission. Of course, they were the Kennedys.