Trolls in the Hamptons (18 page)

B
EFORE WE LEFT FOR GRANDMA'S, Mom handed me one of those tiny oriental embroidered pouches. “Right after the heart attack your father said I should give you this, for luck.”

But he was the one facing life-threatening surgery or more heart attacks. He needed a rabbit's foot way more than I did.

“Take it. You know what crazy notions that man gets. If I didn't give it to you and you got a splinter or a bee bite, he'd blame it on me.”

I unsnapped the pouch and poured a gold chain out onto my palm. At the end was a long narrow pendant, a thin gold strip with a deep incised knot design, maybe Celtic. A round diamond dangled from the bottom. Certainly not a rabbit's foot!

“But it's your wedding ring, isn't it, flattened out? I recognize the design. And the diamond must be from your engagement ring. How can you part with them?”

“Well, I parted with your father, didn't I? I loved the rings, though. I thought if I made both of them into a necklace I'd wear it, but it never felt right. I don't blame the jeweler, who did everything I asked her to.”

“It's beautiful,” I said, holding it toward the hall lamp so the diamond caught the light.

“But it felt wrong on me, as if I'd stolen something I wasn't entitled to. For once the old fool and I agreed on something, that you should have it. I was going to wait, but if it makes him feel better knowing you have it now . . . ”

She let her voice fade away, without saying what we were both thinking, that a man's last wishes carried extra weight. She cleared her throat lest I get the impression that she cared one way or the other about Dad's chances. I knew she did, or she wouldn't be rushing off to Florida. I felt the lump in my own throat, too, which I tried to hide by turning the pendant over to see the inscription.

“There's a lot of history in that piece, handed down from generation to generation in his family. There's writing on the back of what was the ring, but it's so worn with age no one can read what it says anymore. Sarah, my jeweler friend, took it to a science lab to hold it under their microscopes, but she couldn't decipher it, either.”

I could barely make out some marks. I would have assumed they were from the artisan, or the carat weight. “I thought Dad had it inscribed.”

“No, the writing was already there. He always said it was an ancient prayer, supposed to bring luck.”

I didn't know how lucky a wedding ring was if the marriage didn't succeed, but an heirloom was an heirloom, and just holding it made me feel better about Dad's operation. I hugged my mother after she fastened it around my neck.

I liked how it felt against my skin, and how it made me feel, as if I were cradled in my father's love. I might be thirty-something, but he was still my dad, and he thought of me when he might be facing eternity.

Mom loved me, too. She touched the pendant, then kissed my cheek and said, “May it keep you safe and happy. Wear it in love and peace and luck, baby girl. And maybe someday you'll be blessed with a perfect daughter, just as I am.”

“Perfect, Mom?”

She sniffed, this time maybe to hold back a tear. “She'll be my granddaughter, won't she?”

I'd pick strawberries until my back broke from bending over, just for this one moment. And I would eat hardly any of them, to keep Grandma happy. I was warm, loved, protected. Nothing could bother me now.

Until we went across the dirt road to dinner at the big house.

 

I'd expected a perfectly cooked and well-seasoned vegetarian meal, on Grandma's pottery dishes.

I'd expected to sit down with a destitute migrant worker, or a con man, one I might have to protect my silly relatives from.

I had not expected to see my grandmother all spiffed up. A beaded barrette held her long silver hair in a ponytail, instead of flying loose as usual. Her denim dress didn't have a single grass stain or compost smear, and her shoes were canvas slip-ons, not the high rubber galoshes she always wore to protect against ticks and chiggers and poison ivy. I thought I spotted a touch of blush on her sun-weathered cheeks, and a trace of liner over her blue eyes. I did not suppose for an instant that the old woman was doing the pretty for me.

So it wasn't Mom the new handyman was trying to impress, or vice versa, but Grandma Eve. Mom was still in her ragged dog-walking shorts, and all she'd done to get ready for dinner was wash her hands, while Grandma set out the porcelain plates and the stemmed goblets. So the old girl still had a spark. Good for her, I thought. But only if the hired man was good enough for her.

He was not.

He was not Sean McBride either.

His Irish accent was as fake as Grandma Eve's tofu meatballs.

His denim work shirt was brand new. His—

“It's right pleased I am to meet you, Miss Willow. Your granny's been singing your praises all day.” He held his hand out. I did not take it.

No one called Eve Garland “granny.”

She did not sing, and she did not like me.

His hand had a blister, from holding an unfamiliar rake.

“That's not your name,” was the first thing that came out of my mouth, although I was thinking far worse. “And you are no farmer.”

He turned to my grandmother and smiled. “And canny, just like you said the wee lass is. Looks out for her kin, too, just as she ought.” He turned back to me. “Tcha, but that is my name, lass. Sean Louis Johnson McBride. You can call me Lou if a touch of the auld sod offends you.” My mother and grandmother both gasped at my discourtesy to a guest. I did not care. The auld sod was fine. The old fraud could go to hell.

Lou the Lout stayed right where he was, smiling. I wanted to leave, to curse, to hide. The man still scared me, no matter what anyone said. I should have known he'd show up at Paumanok Harbor—he said he would—but at my family's table?

He was going on: “And born on a farm in the old country, I was. My da was an artist, the starving kind when he couldn't find a bit of work painting houses, so we lived with my granfer. Sheep and chickens and potatoes, just like I saw growing in the fields on my way out here. Who'd of thought of potatoes in the Hamptons? Vineyards for sure, money trees, maybe, but potatoes? Anyway, I helped tend my granny's kitchen garden, a'course. It wasn't nearly the size of Miss Eve's, naturally, just a few rows fenced in against the goats, but I've picked many a bean and pulled a lot of carrots. Dirt is dirt, no matter which side of the pond it sits.”

Dirt? He wanted dirt? I reached behind me for one of Grandma's African violet plants. Before I could toss it at his head, my mother said, “Why don't you go fetch the salad, Willy?”

Grandma tried to cover the obvious awkwardness by naming the fifteen kinds of lettuce she'd gathered this afternoon. “I am sorry the tomatoes aren't fresh or local,” she said, but I knew she was apologizing for what she considered my outrageous conduct, if not my very existence.

I did not say anything else during the meal. The last thing I wanted to do was get my mother worried before she left for Florida, or get Grandma involved in
Troll Gate
, which was what I was calling my new book so far.

We had strawberry shortcake for dessert. Lou acted like it was ambrosia from the gods, only this time I didn't think he was acting. Grandma's fresh-picked strawberries were the sweetest anywhere; she made the shortcake from scratch; the cream for whipping came from the dairy near Sag Harbor. I had two helpings. Lou had three. Grandma smiled.

My grandmother loved to feed people, and who wouldn't be pleased to see her cooking so appreciated? But I didn't trust the old bird. I'd always suspected her of putting extra stuff in her cooking, stuff that could change the mood of a gathering. She kept an old-fashioned still room that was always locked, but I knew it was filled with weird ingredients, dried plants and bottled liquids that were most likely illegal in forty-nine states, if anyone ever heard of them. How else had she kept my parents from killing each other all those years?

Right now, Mom wasn't checking her watch every few minutes, or fretting about what time she should leave for the airport in the morning. And I wasn't so angry anymore that Lou had invaded my private circle, or ruined my earlier contentment. In fact, I appreciated what a good guest he was, telling stories of his family or listening to Grandma's plans for her summer crops, and carrying plates back to the kitchen. He even volunteered to drive Mom to the airport.

She refused the offer, but asked if he'd drive me back to Rosehill tonight, so she could finish her packing and explain to Napoleon that he was not being abandoned.

“I'll remind him he's in charge of guarding the house. It's a big responsibility, but I'll tell him I have confidence he can do it.”

No one commented on my mother's plans for the dog conversation. My grandmother and I were too used to the insanity, and Lou must have heard worse at his job at the Department of Unexplained Events. He just nodded and said he'd bring the car around whenever I was ready to leave.

I told Mom to tell Ippy I'd be over in the morning to give him a run and change his papers. “Tell him I'll bring a treat if he promises not to do his kamikaze routine.”

I didn't have a lot of hope of saving my ankles, but Mom said she'd remind him I was his family now. Then while Grandma packed up the last of the shortcake for me to take to Rosehill—she did have an ounce of affection for me, after all—Mom pulled me aside.

She gave one of her censorious sniffs and told me to behave myself with Sean.

“You mean Lou.”

“I mean your grandmother's friend.”

“He's her employee.”

“She likes him. Don't scare him away. I don't want to think of her in that big old house by herself. I've tried to get her to hire a live-in, but she refuses to have anyone else touch her collections or work in her kitchen.”

“She's not feeble,” I protested, feeling guilty I hadn't done much to help recently, leaving it all to my mother.

“Of course she's not feeble. I swear she has more energy than I do. But she's not a youngster anymore, either. Neither is Sean, so they can help each other.”

My mother was a devoted, maybe fanatic, match-maker, but Grandma with a thug like Lou? “I don't like him.”

Mom wrinkled her nose this time. “You don't like any man. That's why—”

“Bye, Mom. Give my love to Dad. Safe trip. Call when you land. Remember not to eat anything on the plane.”

She sniffed again.

“And you might consider seeing a specialist about that nasal drip while you're busy with all his doctors.”

“Nasal drip? I don't have any such thing,” she said. “You always were one for letting your imagination run wild.”

Yeah, I guess I did.

Like wondering if Lou was going to kill me once I got in the car and we drove away from Garland Drive.

L
OU DID NOT ASK DIRECTIONS, which meant he knew the way because he'd been to Rosehill before, which meant the place was bugged, wiretapped, and surveilled by cameras from every angle.

Which was pretty much what I expected, though none of it was going to make me feel any safer.

He was a decent driver, better than my mother. Fafhrd would have been a better driver than my mother, but Lou kept checking the grass verges on the roads for deer—or an ambush.

I couldn't let myself forget he was a secret agent, a man trained in weapons, prepared for violence. In the dark, with no streetlights and little traffic on these desolate back roads, anything could happen. Including losing a passenger.

“If you're going to murder me, I think you should do it after my mother gets back, so the dogs and Grandma won't be alone. And my father's heart will be stronger, to handle the news.”

The car almost swerved off the narrow road when he spun around to stare at me. He looked angry enough, almost demonic in the glow from the dashboard light, to shoot me right now. “You really are crazy, aren't you?”

“Maybe, but I am being logical.”

“Logical? Willy, I am trying to keep you safe. That's my job.”

“No, you are trying to keep the world safe.
That
is your mission. Preserving my life is only incidental. And you know what an impossibility it is if you checked out Rosehill. Gardeners, pool service men, and house cleaners are in and out of there every day. Then there are these dark, deserted roads I'll be using to travel back and forth to check on the dogs and my grandmother.”

He got the car in the right lane again, but slower, with the brights on. “So we'll send for more men. You have a panic button in the Escalade. I installed it myself. And a GPS, if anyone tries to highjack you. The entry gates are wired, and we changed the passcode so you have to check the camera to let anyone in. If we're going to all that trouble, why the hell do you think we'd, uh, get rid of you?”