Beach Winds (22 page)

This time, Juli saw her and waved. They spoke briefly after the service. The pastor made a point of
finding her after the service and speaking with her. She’d made some mental notes thinking all of this could contribute to her conversational monologue on the next visit to Will.

A week had passed since she
’d run into Brian at the rehab. They’d had a delightful day, until his sharp words to his sister ruined it. She hadn’t seen him since. Not even a telephone call. The top of the paint cans had accumulated a thin layer of dust.

She
’d stood by those cans and considered popping the tops herself and wielding a paintbrush.

Nope. Before she did that, she
’d hire another painter. But it wasn’t time for that yet.

Her Sunday afternoon visit with Will was brief. He
wasn’t there. Janet wasn’t around either. Frannie sat for a while, waiting and counting ceiling tiles. She noticed the framed photos she’d brought were turned toward his bed so that he could see them with his head on the pillow. A little glow warmed her at having thought to bring them. That had been a good thing to do. Finally, she gathered up her bag and coat. She found an aide and asked about her uncle. The woman said Janet had taken him out for the afternoon.

That sounded positive. She wished she
’d known. She might have liked to go along.

She went back to
Captain’s Walk
and packed her duffel bag.

****

The next morning, Monday, Frannie headed back to Raleigh.

Laurel had called during the past week.
She was going to Savannah to spend a few days with an old friend. The timing was close to perfect from Frannie’s perspective. She could stay at the house and not have to deal with Laurel. She intended to search the house in case any clues remained, however unlikely, but first she had a date at the official records office.

She submitted the paperwork and paid her fee
and then sat to wait.

“
Ma’am?”

Frannie walked up and held out her hand. She felt like she was crossing a threshold. This was becoming an important year in her life, maybe the most important, and this was
likely to be one of the pivotal moments that formed a part of it.

“
Thank you.”

It wasn
’t pivotal. This certificate had the same details as the one she’d seen, so it hadn’t been doctored. It left her feeling bereft. Irrationally bereft because it only meant that there was another explanation, and she would find it.

She looked up, aware that others were waiting, but she had to ask.
“Would I be able to tell if this document wasn’t the original? I mean, for instance, if the certificate was reissued as a result of an adoption?”

“
Those records are sealed.”

“
But it’s about me? How can they be sealed?” She knew that’s how it was done, but from her perspective it seemed unfair and required some kind of protest. When the clerk gave her printed information and suggested she should consult an attorney, she thought of Andrew Lloyd.

Frannie drove to the house. When she arrived, she hit the garage door opener. It was empty. Good. She pulled in. She hadn
’t used the garage in ages. There was room for two cars, but she left the space to Laurel. It was understood the garage was Laurel’s territory.

It truth it was
Frannie’s territory. All hers.

Her dad had left a lot of money to Laurel, but most of his estate was left in trust to her and the trust had ended when she turned twenty-five
, By then she was back home, living with Laurel. Those brief years on her own, after she’d graduated from college, had been grim. She’d had a bad breakup with her fiancé—to put it mildly—and lost her job in the resulting emotional chaos.

Even after several years of therapy, some
baggage was difficult to excise. Her excess baggage had kept her tied to home and Laurel in a way that was unhealthy, even aside from any fault on Laurel’s part. Just as Brian’s came between him and his sister.

She went straight to the tea cabinet, pulled out the canister of her favorite evening tea and turned the
water on to heat. The water was the right temp, one hundred and ninety-five degrees, in less than a minute. Five minutes to steep and voila, she held her face over the steaming cup and absorbed only good feelings. A brief meditation. Something to focus on when you didn’t want to think about anything else.

She pulled the cookie tin down and slipped a few shortbread cookies onto a small plate. Since Laurel wasn
’t home, she’d take her tea and cookies in the TV room. The comfy room—the one with Dad’s saggy sofa and the TV.

The old
sofa was gone, along with the scarred TV cabinet. The television, a huge, flat-screen flashy looking piece of electronics, was now situated in a mahogany cabinet that stretched nearly the length of one wall.

Furniture. Just furniture. And yet, in the same way that the garage was considered Laurel
’s territory, this had been hers.

The saggy, shaggy sofa was now a
sleek black leather couch with armrests all along it like individual seats. It curved. Had Laurel created a media/entertainment room? The coffee table was gone. Where was she supposed to set her cookie plate and tea?

The big picture window at the end of the room had new drapes
—black ones. No doubt they were for blocking the daylight. They’d also block the view of the crepe myrtles and Carolina pines, the best feature of this room.

Frannie sat on the floor, on the new white carpet. She tried to recapture the mood, but anger kept surging in like a tide. She wrapped her arms around her legs and hugged her knees, rocking back and forth. The tea spilled. It soaked into the nap of the rug, staining it light brown. She threw the cookie plate. It hit the cabinet, but landed unhurt, bouncing on the thick, ugly carpet. Anger, raw,
burned her eyes. It was anger so deep she wished Laurel were there and was equally glad she wasn’t because some actions you couldn’t come back from, no matter how well-deserved.

Finally
, she left the teacup, plate and cookies where they lay. There was no solution for this trespass. Everything that mattered was gone.

Her dad and she had spent a lot of time on what they called the saggy, shaggy sofa.
They’d turn on movies or football, but it was more a backdrop as they talked about stuff, life, and more stuff, whatever. Up until she was sixteen.

She carried her bag up the stairs.

Fifteen years gone. She’d let a lot of things ride longer than she should have.

It was time to see her attorney. She had corrections to make
in her future. And Laurel wasn’t going to be happy about it. Not one bit.

****

He asked, “Have you thought this through?”

She answered,
“Dad trusted you. Can I?”

Mr. Lloyd leaned back in his chair.
“I’m glad to see you, too.”

“
Maybe that’s rude, but I want to be sure you represent me and not my…mother. Laurel. You were my father’s attorney, so I presume you represented Laurel, too.”

“
Your mother isn’t my client. I haven’t had any contact with her since the trust reverted to you. How long ago? Almost six years? Is there a problem?”

“
I need advice about separating my business affairs from Laurel’s.”

“
Laurel? Your mother?”

“
Adoptive mother.”

A nearly imperceptible pause. He said,
“Are you at odds?”

“
I should be leading a separate, independent life. My father’s house was left to me. We, Laurel and I, continued to reside there after he died, but now, years later, she still lives there. Legally, how would I go about getting her out of the house?”

He frowned and rubbed his forehead.
“But you aren’t at odds?” When she didn’t respond, he asked, “Have you spoken to her about this?”

“
No, I want to find out how best to proceed before giving her warning. I know she won’t like it and will try to talk me out of it, or fight me.”

“
Pardon me if I ask again. Are you at odds? After so many years, I imagine Mrs. Denman considers herself at home.” He sat back and his face cleared. “Are you thinking of selling the house?”

She was aghast.
“My father’s house? Not a chance.”

His manner became business-like.
“If you have specific issues regarding her living there, you should discuss those with her. If you simply want her out, and don’t have any concerns regarding the future of the relationship, then give her notice. If she resists, it will require additional legal actions. Consider this—if nothing has changed since you reached twenty-five, you are the sole owner, but this would still be thought of as the
family home
, and you and she have lived there as mother and daughter for three decades or thereabouts. It might not be seen as unreasonable that she would expect to continue residing there.”

“
She changed things.” She blurted it out.

He waited.

“I’ve never interfered with her and the decisions she made about the management of the house, even though I have carried the financial obligations for it, but there were some mutual understandings. She knew there were things I didn’t want changed, and she is now changing them.” She stopped short of blurting out that the evil Laurel had replaced an old sofa and TV stand.

It sounded petty. She sounded petty in front of this grave, thoughtful man who
’d been her father’s friend and advisor.

Her father
’s friend.

“
You knew she wasn’t my natural mother. You’ve known all along.”

He nodded so barely, the movement was nearly imperceptible.

“What can you tell me about my father’s first wife, Frances?”

He breathed softly, evenly.
“I can’t think of any reason not to discuss this with you. Your father made no prohibitions regarding it, neither to me as his friend or as his attorney. He believed it would be easier for Laurel, and you, to leave Frances out of it. She was gone and unlikely to return. You were so young, he felt it would be best for all. They lived in the eastern part of the state at that time. He moved here for a fresh start, that’s what he told me.” He leaned back in his chair.

“
I met Edward about the time he and Frances began having trouble. I never met her. You may not know that Frances ran away more than once, and took you with her. Edward was frantic. He came to me as a friend and asked about options for obtaining sole custody of you. I referred him to a friend from law school whose specialty was in family law, but then all that was put on hold when Edward and Frances reconciled.”

“
Reconciled?”

“
Briefly. I don’t know how sincere it was on the part of Frances. I suspected she was attempting to forestall the custody battle. After a few weeks she left again, but this time she was gone for many months, and disappeared more successfully. Edward hired someone to find her and when he did, he took you home with him. He and Frances divorced and he never saw her again.”

“
But she came back.”

“
Not to my knowledge.”

“
Laurel said she came to the house when I was about six or seven, asking for my father. Laurel turned her away, saying she would give Dad the message to contact her, but she never did. I’m sure of it. Laurel never told him.”

He grimaced but it passed quickly and he shrugged.
“Did Laurel do the right thing? Maybe not, but then again her motives might not have been ill-intentioned, and they were understandable. She might have been trying to protect you and your family from hurt.”

“
I want to find out what happened to Frances. I want to know who she was, or is, and who her, my, people are. My birth certificate doesn’t help.”

He nodded.
“Because of the adoption.” He leaned back in his chair. “We can go the legal route to unseal the records, but that’s the hard way with no guarantee of success. Ask Laurel. She’s bound to have information.”

“
I did.”

“
Ask her again. I wish I had her last name, but I don’t. If I knew it, I don’t recall, but it wouldn’t be that difficult to find the marriage record. If your mother won’t help, and you aren’t sure about doing it yourself, hire a private detective.” He leaned forward with his elbows on the desk. “Regarding the other issue—putting Laurel out of the house. If you are determined, then I urge you to discuss it with her. It may take longer to move her out, but the other way would likely end any hope of a relationship between you two and be very costly. It would also be public and neither of you need that.”

Frannie sighed. N
o good options. She asked, “Can you recommend a good private investigator? Someone I can trust?”

“
I can do that.”