The Long Way Home (6 page)

Then again, maybe not.

Clay, who’d lived in St. Dennis his entire life, surely knew, but he was a friend and he’d never brought it up. Wade was a little younger, and hadn’t really spent much time here—except summers—until he was in his teens, so he might not have heard. Funny, Cam thought, the things that are so monumental to you, the ones that you carry around inside you and think are always on everyone else’s mind, really aren’t a regular topic of conversation among other people. He knew, though wasn’t sure he totally believed, that if his family’s circumstances ever came up at all, it was in passing, and was either precipitated or followed by the words “… and yet Cam and his sister have turned out so well …”

Cam let go a breath he didn’t realize he was holding.

Of course, Jesse wouldn’t have known. And of course, Lynley’s New York lawyers would have been the front line, since surely efforts would have had to be made to keep the house out of the mess Lynley’s husband had made. He hadn’t followed the story all that closely—not much time these days to sit and read newspaper articles on issues that didn’t directly affect him, given his busy contracting business. He had little interest in the Internet aside from searching for materials for a job now and then, and rarely watched television, preferring to spend his spare hours winding down by building furniture—tables, mostly—from old barn boards. The reports of the Chapman scandal had held only a passing interest to him. Had Lynley still been alive when it broke, he would have paid much closer attention. There had been references to
Clifford Chapman’s late wife, of course, but her connection to St. Dennis was rarely mentioned. So with her gone, Cam had merely shaken his head and turned to the sports page.

“But I was going to call you,” Jesse was saying, “to ask if you’d pay a visit to the new owner and maybe help her figure out what needs to be done. I know she doesn’t have a lot of money to invest in the place and she’s planning on doing as much of the work as she can herself, but there will be things that should be checked out or repaired or whatever that she might not be aware of.”

Cam nodded. He’d been taking care of the property for years, long before Jesse arrived in St. Dennis. From the time he was eight or nine years old, the Cavanaughs paid him to help out around the yard, weeding the flower beds and assisting with the spring planting of the vegetable garden. Later, as a teenager, he’d cut the lawn with the old push mower that Mr. Cavanaugh had kept in a shed in the backyard. After her husband died and Miss Lilly was alone in the house, Cam stopped by every week to do whatever needed being done. As she aged, he found himself doing more and more for her, not that he ever minded one minute he’d spent helping her out. Then she passed away, and Lynley inherited the property, but he kept up with the yard and the flower beds that Miss Lilly had taken such pride in. Even after Lynley died, his stewardship continued, not because anyone had asked him to, but because he felt he owed it to Miss Lilly to keep an eye on things in return for all she’d done for him. But that, he reminded himself, was between him and Miss Lilly.

“Sure. I’ll stop over this afternoon, see what’s what.”

“Maybe given your interest in the property, you can come to a deal about the eventual sale. You know, maybe give her a hand here and there, in exchange for a slightly lower sale price. Who knows?” Jesse stood. “The idea might appeal to her, especially since she isn’t prepared to sink a fortune into the place. Of course, if she did, she’d be able to command a pretty steep price. St. Dennis real estate has more than held its own. And sitting right there on the Bay, we both know that place will be worth a nice chunk of change after it’s fixed up.”

“No argument there.” Cam opened the door and stepped into the hall.

Jesse glanced at his watch. “You have time to grab some lunch? It’s one o’clock already.”

“Sure. How ’bout I meet you down at the Crab Claw for a burger?”

“They do have great burgers, but it’s on the highway and I walked to work today.” Jesse leaned against the doorjamb. “Unless I can hop a ride with you, but that means you’d have to drive me back.”

“Sure. I have to come back into town to file for a permit for a kitchen remodel I’m doing over on Parson Middleton Road.”

Jesse told Mrs. Finneran he’d be gone for about an hour and asked if he could bring her something from the Crab Claw.

“No, thank you, Jesse. I already had a sandwich.” She waved from her desk. “Don’t be such a stranger, Cameron.”

“You take care, Miz Finneran.” Cam waved back. The drive to the restaurant took five minutes, during
which time the two men discussed next Sunday’s football games and the statistics relevant to each team. Cam was still extolling the merits of one of his favorite running backs as he pulled into the busy parking lot at the Crab Claw. A car was about to pull out at the end of the row, and Cam waited patiently while the driver strapped into his seat belt and prepared to back out.

“This guy made a first down damned near every time he touched the ball, so you’d think that someone would have figured out how to shut him down, and besides …”

Just then a woman walked out of the restaurant swinging what looked like a take-out bag. Of average height, she was lean in black leggings and a slouchy green sweatshirt and walked with an easy grace. A bright green scarf held back chestnut-brown hair, and her oversize glasses covered a good deal of her face. He wondered if the parts that were hidden looked as good as the parts he could see.

Cam momentarily lost his train of thought.

“Cam.” Jesse tapped him on the arm.

Cam turned to Jesse, who wore an expression of amusement as he pointed at the now-empty parking space.

Cameron pulled into the space.

“What?” he asked Jesse. “What are you smirking about?”

“That woman, the woman you were just all but drooling over …?”

“What about her? You know her?”

“That, my friend, was Ellie Ryder.”

Cam swung around in his seat to take another look,
but the woman had already disappeared into what looked like a fairly new Mercedes sedan.

He turned back to Jesse. “I was under the impression that she wasn’t flush with cash. That’s no cheapie compact she’s driving. I’m guessing that sucker’s worth eighty, ninety thousand if it’s worth a penny.”

Jesse merely shrugged and got out of the car. Cam got out, too, and watched the big sedan exit the lot and head for the light. Once it made the left toward St. Dennis, he turned and followed Jesse into the restaurant. Right now he needed a fat burger and a cold drink. He’d catch up with Miss Ellie Ryder later.

F
OR
the fourth day in a row, Ellie headed toward the narrow beach when she needed a little bit of a break. She passed over the dune carefully so as to not disturb the sea grass that grew there and any little living thing that might be hidden beneath it.

The beach itself was an oddity to her, as beaches went. It was narrow and pebbly, unlike the beaches she’d sunned herself on in her old life, beaches that had miles of soft sugar-white sand with nary a stone in sight. Here, a large rock stood at the edge of the dune, and she’d taken to sitting on it with a mug of tea or coffee in the afternoons. The waves here were so gentle as they lapped at the shore, and the sunlight so soft, she almost wished she hadn’t given up painting years ago. Of course, she wasn’t sure she could replicate that pale light. It took on the most beautiful golden glow as it shimmered on the water.

Yesterday she walked along the shoreline until she came across the remains of what might have been a lighthouse. How tall had it been? When had it been built and what had happened to it?

The slamming of a car door shook her from her
mental wanderings. Ellie stood and looked up Bay View Road and was surprised to see a pickup truck parked at the end of her driveway. She jogged back to the house and arrived just as a tall blond man was about to ring her doorbell.

“May I help you?” she called from the foot of the drive.

He turned, his hands on his hips. “I’m Cameron O’Connor.”

“And …?”

“And Jesse Enright asked me to stop by.” The man frowned. “I thought he’d told you.”

“You’re the handyman?” she asked.

His smile revealed a row of very white teeth. “Yeah. I’m the handyman.”

“I’m Ellie Ryder, the new owner. Jesse said maybe you could give me a few pointers about things that need to be done to the house.”

“Sure. How much work are you planning on doing here?”

“I haven’t decided.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I guess I need to see what the place needs most and what I can afford.”

“Well, how ’bout we take a look around the outside, then move inside to see what’s what?”

“That sounds like a plan.” Ellie met him halfway to the walk. “Things don’t look too bad out here.” She gestured to the front porch. “Well, except for the sag on the end there. Might need a little help with that. But the shutters look secure and in decent condition.”

“You might want to think about paint out here for … well, for pretty much everything. The porch,
the shutters, the front door. Give it a little more curb appeal if you’re planning on selling the place.”

“I am going to sell it.” She paused. “What exactly did Jesse tell you?”

“Just that you purchased the house from Lynley Sebastian’s estate and you’d be looking to sell.”

“I will be, but of course, I want to maximize what I can get. So I want to do whatever I can to increase the value of the house without bankrupting myself.”

He turned and eyed her car in the driveway. She knew what he was thinking: why not sell that big old Benz and buy something a little smaller, less expensive, more economical? Which was exactly what she would do, if the car belonged to her; however, that was none of his or anyone else’s business. Besides, if she sold the house tomorrow and left St. Dennis—which, thanks to her mother’s will, she could not do—where would she go? She felt she’d relied on Carly’s friendship long enough. If she stayed here and worked through the winter, she could put the house up for sale in the spring. Six months would take her to May, and by then she would have had more time to figure out her next move. Right now she was completely at odds with no clear goal, no destination.

And of course, the house would have greater value if put on the market in the spring, when people were more likely to be looking for a place on the Bay.

“You might need a new roof,” Cam was saying as they looked up at the front of the house.

“It’s not leaking,” she hastened to tell him. “It’s rained twice since I’ve been here and it hasn’t leaked at all. I looked everywhere, even in the attic. The roof isn’t leaking.”

“Looks like it’s at the end of its life span, though.”

“There’s nothing in the budget for a roof.” She moved on around the side of the house with him. “That’s not on the gotta-do-to-sell-the-place list.”

“You will want to clean out those gutters, though, maybe have the downspout replaced.” He pointed up toward the roof. “The gutter’s filled with leaves and the water will just spill over instead of going down the downspout when it rains. Which it can’t do anyway because the downspout’s separated from the gutters. See here?” He pointed to the place where the two pieces disconnected and moved the downspout slightly. “I’m guessing all of the gutters are in the same condition.”

He walked around to the back of the house and she followed.

Cameron grabbed the back-porch railing and wiggled it. “This is an accident waiting to happen. The top rail is loose and could give out if anyone leans too hard on it. Plus there are some rotting floorboards there on the deck, and a few steps are a little weak.” He looked at her somewhat apologetically. “I meant to come back and replace that railing and it completely slipped my mind.”

“You were the one who raked the leaves. You filled the bird feeders and stacked wood near the back door.”

He nodded.

“Jesse said he was keeping an eye on the place. I thought he meant he was doing it himself. I guess he meant you were. Was the estate paying you?”

“No.” Cameron appeared slightly insulted.

“Good Samaritan?”

“I knew Lilly Cavanaugh, a woman who used to live here. She was a very kind, sweet lady and she loved this house and her gardens. I figured the least I could do for her was keep up her place on the outside until someone decided to do something with it. She left the house to a niece who unfortunately never got to live here before she died.” He paused. “You must know that the niece was Lynley Sebastian, since you bought the house from her estate.”

Ellie nodded. “Did you ever meet her? Lynley Sebastian?”

“Sure. She spent some time here.”

“Really? What was she like?” Ellie’s heart skipped a beat.

“She was nice. Beautiful, even when she was sick.”

“Wait.” Ellie grabbed his arm. “She came here when she was sick?”

Cam nodded. “Not as much as she did before she got sick, but yeah. Why?”

“Just … curious, that’s all.” Ellie sought to recover. “I mean, you always saw her in magazines and on the society pages, but I don’t remember seeing pictures of her when she was sick.”

“Well, she came here, whether or not anyone was around to photograph her. I guess she didn’t publicize her comings and goings.”

Ellie tried to remember her mother leaving their home to go anywhere when she was being treated for the cancer that eventually took her life. Of course, Ellie was away at school much of the time, but still, would she have known if Lynley went away for a few days?

“Did she drive here on her own? How long did she
stay?” The questions were out of her mouth before she could stop them.

Cam looked at her curiously. “She had a driver. He’d drop her off and she’d stay for … I don’t really know how long. What’s the difference?”

“She was a famous person and she owned the house I live in. It’s just natural to be curious.”

“I guess.”

Cameron walked past her to the center of the yard. “The entire house needs a new paint job.” He turned to his right. “Now, the carriage house needs more than just paint. It needs some hefty repairs.”