Fireside (5 page)

She took down a gray hooded sweatshirt with the camp logo, left over from her seventeenth summer, and put it on. The oversized shirt hung down to midthigh. The soft fabric warmed her, evoking secret memories of that distant time. She hadn’t known it back then, but that had been the summer that had defined the direction her life would take. She shut her eyes, thinking about how intense everything had seemed that summer, how everything had mattered so much. She had been filled with idealism, picturing a fabuous life for herself. A life she thought she’d had—until last night.

The gabled window offered a view of the mountains beyond the town. As a little girl visiting her grandparents, she used to curl up in the window seat and gaze outside, imagining that her future life lay somewhere beyond the horizon. As indeed it had, for a while. Now, as her mother pointed out, she’d come full circle.

Her evening gown fell to the floor in an expensive shimmer of sequins and silk. The strapless bra had been engineered for performance, not comfort, and she peeled it off with a sigh of relief. She had nothing on her bottom half. With a gown as clingy as the one she’d worn last night, a girl had to go commando.

“Are the towels in the linen closet?” she called to her mother.

“That’s right, dear.” Her mother said something else, but the drum of running water drowned it out.

Kim walked down the hall toward the linen closet.

A strange man in a trench coat stood there, staring straight at her. He was older, with iron-gray hair and a tough-guy demeanor—and he had absolutely no business being in her mother’s house.

Panic rolled up her spine, culminating in a scream. At the same moment, she clutched the sweatshirt tighter around her and desperately stretched the hem downward.

“Aw, jeez, hey, didn’t mean to startle you,” the man said.

Kim tried not to hyperventilate. “Stay back,” she said in a quiet, she hoped calming voice. Mom, she thought. She had to keep him away from her mother. Kim usually had mace or pepper spray on her, but of course last night, her purse-size aerosol had been confiscated by the TSA. “The valuables are downstairs,” she said. “Take whatever you want. Just…leave.” She gestured at the stairs, keenly aware that every movement gave him a peep show.

The intruder turned out his hands, palms up. “You must be Kimberly,” he said. “Penny talks about you all the time.”

Penny?
The housebreaker had a nickname for her mother?

Kim’s heart constricted when her mother came out into the hall, an expectant look on her face. “I thought I heard voices out here—Oh.”

“If you lay a hand on either of us,” Kim warned, “I’ll hurt you, I swear, I will.” She did know self-defense, though she didn’t relish the idea of performing the moves nearly naked.

Her mother gave a laugh. “Dear, this is Mr. Carminucci.”

“Dino,” he said. “Call me Dino.”

He smiled, which made him resemble that Italian crooner, Tony Somebody. Bennett. Tony Bennett. Kim felt so disoriented she could barely say a word. Caught up in the surreal moment, she offered a halfhearted smile while trying to make sense of his presence here, in the second-story hallway of her mother’s house. He really did look a lot like Tony Bennett, right down to the warm brown eyes and iron-gray waves of hair. He was gazing at Kim’s mother as though he might burst into song at any moment.
Penny.
No one called her mother Penny.

“Dino is one of our guests,” her mother said easily. “You’ll meet everyone else at dinner.”

Guests? Everyone else? Kim didn’t bother hiding her confusion. “Um, it was nice to meet you, but…” She let her voice trail off and gestured vaguely toward her room. She thought about the sign on the car. Suspicion reared up in her.

“Kimberly just arrived for a nice stay,” her mother explained to the stranger. “She came in from L.A. on the redeye.”

“Then I imagine you must be ready for a rest, Kimberley. See you later, ladies.” Whistling lightly, he headed for the stairs.

Kim grabbed her mother’s hand and pulled her back into the bedroom. “We need to talk.”

Penelope’s smile was tinged with irony. “Indeed, we do. I’ve thought the same thing for the past, oh, fifteen years.”

Ouch. Well, maybe now they would finally get the chance.

“I drew you a nice warm bubble bath,” Penelope continued. “We can have our talk while you bathe.”

Kim was too tired to do anything but surrender. Within minutes, she was in the adjoining bathroom in the deep, claw-footed tub, surrounded by a froth of lavender-scented bubbles. It felt so comforting that her eyes filled with tears. She quickly blinked them away.

Seated on a vanity stool nearby, her mother regarded her fondly. “It’s nice to have you home, Kimberly.”

“If it’s so nice to have me home, why haven’t you invited me to visit since Grandma’s funeral?” That had been two summers ago, Kim realized. It had been a time of terrible loss for Penelope, the loss of her mother coming so soon after her husband’s death.

“I always thought you’d prefer meeting in the city, or having me come out to Los Angeles. I imagined you’d find Avalon terribly boring compared to life in the big city.”

“Mom.”

“And, all right, I didn’t think you’d be supportive of my enterprise.”

“Your enterprise. The ‘guests,’ you mean.”

“Well, yes.”

“How many people are you talking about, Mom?”

“Currently, I have three visitors. Dino owns the pizza parlor in town, and he’s in the process of remodeling his home, so he’s staying temporarily. Mr. Bagwell normally goes south for the winter, but this year, he’s staying in Avalon and needed a place to live. Then there’s Daphne McDaniel—oh, she’s just delightful. I can’t wait for you to meet her. And there’s room for more. We just finished refurbishing the third-floor suite. I hope to find a guest for that one very soon.”

“Mom, what’s going on? Why do you have a bunch of strangers living here? Were you that lonely? I wish you’d said something—”

“They’re not strangers. They’re guests. Paying guests. And believe me, they are no substitute for my daughter.”

“You should’ve said something to me.” She winced with guilt as she thought of the visits with her mother in the aftermath of her father’s death. They had rendezvoused in Southern California, Manhattan, Florida. It had never occurred to Kimberly that her mother wanted her to come here. To come home.

“My life has changed a lot since your father passed away,” her mother explained.

Kim thought of Dino Carminucci. “I’d say so, Mom.”

“I obtained a business license and started this right after Labor Day.”

“This…?”

“My enterprise. Fairfield House.”

Kim’s head felt light. She wasn’t sure it was from the hot water, exhaustion or sheer confusion. “I had a long night, Mom, so forgive me if I’m a bit slow on the uptake. Are you saying you’ve turned this place into a boardinghouse?”

“Indeed, I have.” She spoke as casually as she might have about getting her nails done. “And actually, it’s in keeping with family tradition. My great-grandfather, Jerome Fairfield, built this place with the fortune he made in textiles. At the time, it was the grandest mansion in town. Then, like so many others, he lost everything in the crash of ’29 and never quite recovered. He and his wife took in boarders. It was the only way to keep the house out of the hands of his creditors.”

Kim had never heard that bit of family history before.

“So truly,” Penelope concluded, “you could say it’s in my blood.”

Kim was speechless, taking in the news the way she would if her mother had said, “I’ve taken up bungee jumping.” Or, “I’ve become a nudist.”

When she found her voice, Kim asked, “And you were going to tell me this…when?”

“To be honest, I’ve been putting it off as long as possible. I knew you wouldn’t be pleased.”

“There’s an understatement. Taking in strangers, Mom? For money? Are you crazy?”

Her mother stood up and placed a stack of fresh towels on the vanity stool. “Say what you will, Kimberly, but I’m not the one wearing an evening gown and spike heels on a cross-country flight.”

“This is not crazy,” Kim said defensively. “This is a crisis, Mom. My own personal crisis.”

Her mother smiled. “Then you came to the right place.”

“So this boardinghouse—it’s a home for people in crisis?”

“Not by designation, no. People in transition, though. They seem to find their way here, to Fairfield House.” She spoke with a curious pride.

Kimberly studied her mother’s mild, sweet face as though regarding a stranger. Did she even know this woman anymore? Had she ever? Penelope Fairfield van Dorn had been born and raised in Avalon, and was a card-carrying member of the town’s old guard—the elite upper class, her roots going back to the days when the Roosevelts and Vanderbilts used to keep summer places in the mountains. Yet while most people grew more stuffy and more pretentious as they aged, widowhood had the opposite effect on Kim’s mother. Kim’s father had never liked this little Catskills village, even though it was his wife’s hometown. Daddy had always preferred the city, pulsing with the noise of commerce. But Mom claimed her heart had never left here, and she seemed happy enough to live in the house where she’d grown up. Even as a child, Kim had observed that her mother used to be happy here in a way that eluded her in the big city. This was the only place she’d seemed truly relaxed and at ease.

And finally, Kim came to understand why the house of her girlhood was so important to Mom and why keeping it meant everything to her.

Kim found jeans, a T-shirt and a pair of thick socks lying on the bed beside the sweatshirt. Her old—ancient—clothes were not too small for her, but the fit was different. Not quite comfortable. The clothes, however, were the least of her problems.

She towel-dried her hair, reapplied her makeup and, after checking out the hallway to make sure the coast was clear, headed downstairs to the kitchen, which was blessedly warm. She took a seat and curled her hands around a thick china mug of her mother’s hot chocolate.

The kitchen gleamed with a coat of tomato-red paint, the trim a garish shade of yellow. Kim watched her mother wiping down the stove and sink, and dark thoughts crossed her mind—clinical depression, early-onset Alzheimer’s, a rare form of dementia…

“Mom—”

“It was the only way I could see to keep the house,” her mother said, replying to the question even before it was voiced.

“I thought you owned the house free and clear after Grandma died.”

“I did. I do. But then I needed money, so I agreed to an ill-considered equity loan. I’m afraid it was a rather bad decision on my part.”

It felt strange, talking with her mother about finances. Kim’s father used to handle the money exclusively, and she and Penelope never heard a word about it. “How bad?” Kim asked. “Are you saying you can’t afford to live here without taking in boarders?”

“I’m saying I can’t afford to live at all without doing something,” her mother said, her voice quiet and resigned.

“This is crazy, Mom. What happened? We had everything. Dad earned a ton of money.” Kim studied her mother’s face, wondering why she suddenly felt like a stranger. “Didn’t he?”

Penelope paused, set down her cloth and took a seat at the table. “Kimberly, perhaps I was wrong to keep this from you, but I didn’t want you to fret about it. I knew you’d worry if I explained my new circumstances.”

“Worry?” Kim said. “You think?”

“No need to be sarcastic, dear. We’ve both kept our secrets.”

“I’m sorry. What part of ‘my boyfriend gave me a black eye’ is the secret part?”

“Oh, Kimberly. I’m the one who should be sorry.”

“Just level with me, Mom. I’m a big girl. I can take it.”

“Well, the truth is, your father left behind a great deal of debt.”

That simply didn’t compute. They hadn’t lived like a family in debt.

“I don’t get it,” Kim said.

Her mother smiled, but without amusement. “I had some notion of preserving your memory of your father, but I suppose that was naive of me.”

“I don’t understand. Did he have some secret life you only discovered after he was gone?”

Penelope folded her hands on the table. “In fact, he did, in a way. When he was alive, he never said a word about his debts. I had no idea and to this day, I still don’t quite understand. He invested in a number of hedge funds that were called in, and had to mortgage and remortgage all our property. It’s not that I didn’t love your father,” she said. “I did. Very much. We enjoyed life and I had no idea how much we were living beyond our means. Sometimes I think that’s what killed your father. The stress of it. The strain of pretending.”

“I never knew.” Kim shut her eyes, trying to conjure a picture of her father, always so distinguished and reserved. The two of them had always had a turbulent relationship. This only made him seem more distant, as though she’d never even known him at all.

“In settling his affairs, it all came to light,” said her mother. “I’ve had to take measures in order to cover his liabilities. I had to…liquidate some things.”

The quaver in her voice caused Kim to feel a clutch of apprehension. “What things, Mom?”

“Well…everything.”

Everything. That was inconceivable. They had a home in Manhattan and a weekend place on Long Island and a condo in Boca Raton. There was an extensive stock portfolio. Wasn’t there?

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“That was what I asked the lawyer and the probate judge. There was a subprime second mortgage on the apartment, about to balloon to twelve percent. The house in Montauk and the condo in Largo were in foreclosure. Our equities and savings were nonexistent. I own this house free and clear, because my parents left it to me, but that’s the extent of it.”

“Mom, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.” She felt betrayed now by two men she’d trusted, two men she thought she knew.

“Nor did I.”

“Are you sure? While Dad was alive, you had no idea?”

Her mother’s smile was tinged with bitterness. “None. I feel so foolish for keeping myself in the dark about our finances.”

“You weren’t foolish, Mom,” Kim said. “You had every reason to trust him. But…are you sure taking in boarders is the answer?”