Penelope’s fork stopped halfway to her mouth. She stared at Brooke.
Her horror must have shown on her face, for Brooke said, “What? What did you want to see him for?” A thought seemed to jolt through her. “He didn’t get you pregnant, did he?”
Shock rocked Penelope backward on her stool. “No. Ew. No! He’s past eighty!”
“He’s a nasty old man,” Brooke said, “and I wouldn’t put it past him to promise the world to a young woman and then betray her. But I’ve insulted you by insinuating you’d sleep with the old fart. Forgive me.”
“It’s all right.” What an eye-opening revelation of how Joseph Bianchin was viewed in the community.
“I’m bitter about him,” Brooke said. “We’ve had a lot of problems here in Bella Terra and he started them all.”
Penelope sighed. “I know he has a challenging personality.”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“I researched him. He’s a jerk. But I need to talk to him and I really don’t have the funds to sit around here and wait until he—”
“Slinks back into town? Really, I don’t think that will
be very soon.” Brooke studied Penelope and nibbled the bagel, studied and nibbled the bagel. “Did you become an interior designer? Finish the courses and everything?”
“I had a full-ride scholarship to the University of Cincinnati and finished their five-year interior design program. Best studies program in the country.” Maybe Penelope was a little too emphatic, but she had the baggage to justify a little bragging.
“Very cool. My husband and I just bought a house. Our first house. Here in town. It’s an old Victorian built in 1913. It’s thirty-nine hundred square feet in three stories, built on half a city block, really a great house, but it needs work. I’ve been going there every day since we closed on the deal, making sketches and stuff—”
Penelope listened with rising excitement.
“—but I’ve realized that looking through architectural magazines and watching HGTV doesn’t qualify me to redesign this monstrosity. Would you be willing to take a look…?”
Penelope tried very hard not to jump up and down and squeal. Because this wasn’t why she was here, but—what an opportunity!
Instead she concentrated on presenting a reassuring, professional image. “I’ve got my résumé and references on my computer. I can shoot them right to you. I worked in Cincinnati for a design firm—we did office interiors. It was great money, and my husband and I were trying to start a family, so I kept at it, but what I always wanted to do was work with older homes—”
“This was meant to be!” Brooke put her hand on Penelope’s forearm.
Penelope observed the contrast of Brooke’s pale skin
against Penelope’s own warmly tanned flesh, and thought how nice it was to have someone touch her in kindness. It had been so long since Keith had died, since life had been lived in sunshine, since she’d been able to concentrate on the mundane bits that made up the days she imagined she wanted to live.… She was so tired of being melancholy. More than anything in the world, she wanted not to be alone.
“I think you’re right.” Penelope knew she was going to make things worse, but that after that they would be better, easier for Brooke, who she hoped could be a friend, and really, no one needed to know the whole truth. “I know it seems dramatic, but after Keith died, I kept working at my firm for a while, but when I discovered my mother’s cancer had metastasized, I quit my job and returned to Portland to stay with my mom until the end”—she was leaving out a huge, heavy chunk of grief, but who would blame her?—“so I’m unemployed and short on funds. I am glad to have you check my credentials—they’re impeccable, I promise—and you can show me your house, and I hope we can come to an agreement.”
Brooke scribbled an address on half a napkin, then used the other half to wrap up what was left of her bagel and drop it in her purse. “Are you finished eating?”
“Pretty much.” Penelope crunched her last bite of bacon. “How do you eat so little?”
“This was my second breakfast.” Brooke put a five on the counter and waved to the waitress, who waved back and kept pouring coffee.
Outside, she handed Penelope the napkin. “Follow me, and if you get lost, there’s the address. It’s the three-story white Victorian with two huge oaks in the front and an overgrown blackberry thicket on one side.”
“Okay. I’ll meet you there.” This was it. Penelope followed Brooke, determined not to lose her.
This offer of a job is an omen. I am in the right place at the right time. I am doing the right thing.
At last.
Chapter 8
A
mere five blocks later, Brooke turned into an old neighborhood filled with a mixture of grand Victorian homes and small fifties bungalows. She pulled up before one of the largest houses.
Penelope parked behind her, turned off the motor, stepped out onto the sidewalk, and studied the project with slowly rising excitement.
From the top of the tall, narrow cupola to the place where the foundation sank its sturdy concrete footings into the brown dirt, the home was a jumble of classic styles, with irregular, steeply sloping roofs, a round turret on the left front, a wraparound porch with turned posts and a pediment above the steps, and massive double doors with cut-glass panels at the sides and above.
This Victorian was a noble monument to bygone days. Yet the wide swath of wood shingles that circled the second story showed signs of rot, the decorative
porch railing sagged, and plywood covered an upstairs window.
“Isn’t she a beauty?” Penelope murmured in awe.
“Yes!” Brooke turned and hugged her. “I knew you’d see it, too! The bones are there. All we have to do is a face-lift to the outside, maybe some Botox to stop the rot, some filler to smooth out the wrinkles—”
Penelope laughed. “You’ve given this a lot of thought.”
“My mother-in-law is a movie star, and right now she’s practicing for her first Broadway role. She’s growing old gracefully… with the aid of her dearest plastic surgeon.” Brooke gestured to the porch. “My mother suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, and one of my husband’s great-aunts is in a wheelchair, so on the side of the porch, we have to construct a handicapped ramp.”
“That’s always a wise idea, and with the right design, it’ll fit right in.” As they walked up the steps, Penelope’s fingers itched for a sketch pad.
“Come inside. Don’t worry about falling through the porch. It’s not original construction. About fifty years ago, someone replaced the boards and they’re still in pretty good shape.” Brooke waved a hand at the peeling paint. “At least, structurally speaking.” Pulling a keyless fob from her purse, she clicked it. She typed in a code on the keypad beside the door. Only then did she turn the knob. At Penelope’s raised eyebrows, she said, “My husband’s in security. As soon as we closed on the house, and before he would let me set foot inside, he replaced all the locks with electronic sensors. It’s not traditional, but it’s reliable, and like I said, lately we’ve had a few problems in Bella Terra.”
“Must be some impressive problems.”
“Oh, yeah.” Brooke sounded disgusted.
Penelope meant to inquire further, but as they stepped into the two-story entry hall, the prospect of working on this project took her breath away.
A few broken pieces of furniture remained scattered throughout the visible rooms, but for the most part, the place was, as Brooke had said, stripped down to its bones.
Yet what glorious bones those were.
The solid wood floor swept into the parlor at the left and the grand room on the right, toward the curving sweep of the staircase and into the shadows beyond. The plaster walls met the wainscoting of the ceiling, and at each corner a carved wooden ribbon held a spray of plaster flowers. A mirror, mottled with age, decorated the wall over a broken, listing entry table. The crystal chandelier hung in front of the transom window atop the door.
Brooke flipped the switch; the massive chandelier lit, but half of the thirty candle-shaped bulbs were burned out. Cobwebs and dust obscured the rest of the illumination, leaving the entry still in shadow.
Yet Penelope could see what had put that hopeful expression on Brooke’s face. “The house faces west, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“And as the sun sets, the rays strike the prisms and rainbows dance up the stairs?”
“Yes!” Brooke beamed.
“When it’s cleaned, it will be magnificent.” Penelope tossed her soft leather purse into the corner of the entry, knelt, and ran her hand over the floor, scratched and worn, yet glowing with ambers and with a distinctive grain pattern she thought she recognized. “Is this heart pine?” She had to ask. It was so rare, she’d seen it used only once before, in a historical mansion in Virginia.
Brooke leaned against the doorframe, tense with excitement. “They told us that’s what it is, but I don’t know what that means.”
“It means that it is cut from the heart of first-growth pine trees that stood before the first settlers arrived on these shores, trees so old and so large that their straight-grained heartwood could be used for flooring. Even if there were such trees now, they’d be preserved, and rightfully not cut for such vanities as heart pine flooring.” In theory, Penelope mourned the trees that gave their lives for such a frivolous vanity, but that had happened long before she was born. And to have a chance to work with such beauty…
“Now I know what it means. It means we scored big-time,” Brooke said.
“Exactly, because this wood is known for its resilience, and once you have it sanded and refinished, it will last you and your children and your grandchildren.” Penelope watched as Brooke passed a betraying hand over her belly. “I haven’t seen the whole house yet, but if the rest of it has these kinds of accoutrements… restoration will bring it back to magnificence.”
“I know!” Alive with eagerness, Brooke stepped away from the door and slammed it shut.
Standing, Penelope asked, “Where shall we start?”
Two trips to the drugstore and a food delivery later, the two women sat on the bottom step in the entry, picking the toppings off the remains of a large cheese-and-pesto pizza.
As the day progressed, Brooke seemed to have recovered her appetite.
Penelope propped her brand-new grid-paper pad on
her knees and sketched her ideas for the remodel of the main floor. “We’ve got the kitchen at the back of the house—it’s going to have to be gutted. There’s a good-size pantry and a large porch we can incorporate into the house as a breakfast nook. We’ve got the dining room between the kitchen and the parlor. Now, I’m pretty sure this is a load-bearing wall”—she pointed at the wall that divided the parlor from the dining room—“which means it supports the structure of the second floor. We can’t remove it without consulting an engineer to design a load-bearing substitute.”
“But it can be done?” Brooke asked.
“With enough money, anything can be done.”
“My husband’s rich.”
Penelope had already figured that out. “Cool.”
“Yes, it’s one of the traits I like about him.” Brooke smiled. “Also, he wants a home with me. This time he’s determined that everything is going to work between us. Plus he negotiated a really good deal on this place and gave me an outrageous budget to get it into shape as soon as possible.”
Envy tasted bitter on Penelope’s tongue, but if anyone deserved happiness, it was this woman, so generous, so kind to an almost-total stranger. “So he’s not only rich, he’s got the right priorities.”
“I will love him forever.” The words were dramatic, but so simply spoken Penelope suffered a pang in the region of her heart.
She struggled with loneliness, with the prospect of long days to fill and no one with whom to share her trials and her triumphs. She would work, of course, and make friends, but to never speak with her mother again, to
never go home to the one man who loved her, to never hold her child in her arms…
Maybe it wasn’t envy she tasted. Maybe it was sorrow.
Tears pressed against the backs of her eyes. She picked up her water and drank, trying to wet her suddenly dry mouth; then in a flurry of activity, she came to her feet and strode into the parlor. It was even dimmer in here than in the entry, an echoing room that needed a fringed Persian carpet on the floor, a Queen Anne sofa artfully angled with a large easy chair on the side, and a fire burning in the hand-carved rose marble fireplace that dominated the room. She kept her voice hearty and forceful. “Yes, I think this would make a lovely room for entertaining. We’ll break through to the dining room, then create a supporting arch, or even possibly install a pocket door so you could feed your guests, then leave the dirty dishes and close off the dining room—”
She must not have been convincing, for Brooke rose to her feet and in a gentle voice said, “Penelope…”
An overload of emotion rolled over Penelope—months after her mother’s death, fifteen months since the phone call about Keith, it still sometimes happened—and she knew she hadn’t fooled anyone. Not Brooke. And not herself. She took a quivering breath, held out her hand in a stop gesture.
No sympathy
, she meant.
Brooke nodded, understanding without words.
And Penelope knew she’d found more than a job. She’d found a friend.
Thank God. This was surely the first sign that she had moved on beyond the tangle of pain and sorrow. Now, at last, she could successfully rebuild her life.
As she struggled to subdue her unruly sentiments, the front door lock made a clicking sound.
Both women turned to look.
Two men, tall and broad shouldered, stood silhouetted and unrecognizable through the cut glass.
The knob turned. The double doors swung wide.
Brooke’s face lit up, and she cried with rapturous pleasure, “Rafe!”
A distant memory stirred in Penelope’s brain, an ominous rumble of trouble.
Rafe? A Rare name. A distinctive name. She’d heard it years before.…
All day, Brooke had never said her husband’s name. Why? what was she hiding?
The men stepped into the foyer, both handsome, dark haired, obviously brothers.
Brooke looked between them and Penelope and deflated like a balloon. Her whisper sounded loud in the silence. “Oh, no.”