Heroes Are My Weakness(124)
“Not so precious that you weren’t willing to throw it away. And now you want Theo and me to stay quiet so I can get my cottage back.”
The smeared red lipstick made her complexion ashen. “No. We’ll make sure you get it back, regardless. We’re just asking you to . . .”
“To behave better than you did.”
Barbara’s shoulders sagged. “That’s right. Better than all of us did.”
Annie could only be a hard-ass for so long. She’d made her decision the moment Lisa’s two little red-haired girls had raced into their grandmother’s living room and flung themselves at her. “Call off your lawyer,” she said. “The cottage is yours.”
Barbara gaped at her. “You don’t mean that.”
“I mean it.” She couldn’t come back here. If she held on to the cottage, it would only be for spite. “The cottage belongs to the island. I don’t. It’s yours. Free and clear. Do what you want with it.”
“But . . .”
Annie didn’t wait to hear any more. She wrapped her coat tighter around her and jumped to the dock.
A man was scraping a boat hull. The fishermen floated their boats onto Christmas Beach at high tide, did their repairs, then pushed them back in the water when the tide ebbed. Island life was stripped down like that—dependent on tides and weather, on fish and the whims of nature. She wandered through town, feeling as empty and disconnected as the solitary lobster trap leaning against Tildy’s shuttered gift shop.
Her cell rang in her pocket. It was the dealer at the resale shop. She leaned against a weathered sign that advertised chowder and lobster rolls and listened, but what he told her was so incomprehensible, she had to make him repeat it twice.
“It’s true,” he said. “The money is outrageous, but the buyer is some kind of collector, and the mermaid chair is one of a kind.”
“For good reason!” she exclaimed. “It’s ugly.”
“Fortunately, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
Just like that, she had the money to wipe out most of her debt. With one phone call, she’d been given a fresh start.
THE CAR FERRY WAS DUE the next afternoon—Annie’s forty-fourth day on the island. She had to dash out to Harp House in the morning and pick up the things she’d left with Jaycie—her puppets, the rest of her clothes, Mariah’s scarves. After seven nights sleeping on the lobster boat, she was more than ready to live on dry land. She wished that dry land weren’t a couch in the back of Coffee, Coffee, but it wouldn’t be for long. One of her dog-walking clients wanted her to house-sit while he was in Europe.
A notice on the community bulletin board announced a town meeting that night. Since the issue of the cottage was bound to come up, she wanted to attend, but she needed to make sure Theo wouldn’t be there, so she waited until the meeting had started before she went inside.
Lisa caught sight of her and gestured toward the empty chair at her side. The seven island trustees sat at a long folding table at the end of the room. Barbara looked no better than she had the last time they’d been together: her blond hairdo still deflated, her makeup nonexistent. The other grandmothers were scattered around the room, some sitting together, others with their husbands. Not a single one made eye contact with Annie.
The business of the meeting unfolded: the budget, wharf repairs, how to get rid of the island’s growing supply of dead trucks. There was speculation about the day’s unusually warm weather and the storm that was supposed to accompany it. Nothing about the cottage.
The meeting was beginning to wind down when Barbara stood. “Before we end, I have some news.”
She looked smaller without her thick mascara and rouged cheeks. She leaned against the folding table, as if she needed the support. “I know all of you are going to be happy to learn that—” She cleared her throat. “Annie Hewitt has given Moonraker Cottage to the island.”
The room buzzed. Chairs squeaked as everyone turned to look at her. “Annie, did you really?” Lisa asked.
“You never mentioned anything about this,” Barbara’s husband said to her from the first row.
A trustee at the opposite end of the table spoke up. “We just learned about it ourselves, Booker.”
Barbara waited for the commotion to settle down before she went on. “Thanks to Annie’s generosity, we’ll be able to turn the cottage into our new school.”
The buzz started again, along with some applause and a whistle. A man Annie didn’t know reached around to clap her on the shoulder.
“During the summer, we can rent it out and add the income to the school budget,” Barbara said.