She waited a minute before continuing the short distance to his office. He wheeled around to face her as she gently knocked on the door and entered the room.
“Hi,” she said awkwardly. “Any chance we can pick up my car this morning?”
“After lunchtime will be best, the café will be busy with a crowd after the morning church services in town.”
She nodded, accepting that she could do nothing without his assistance. She ached to ask him about the phone call, but that would mean admitting she’d overheard part of his side of the conversation. Tamsyn very much doubted he’d be happy about that. She finished her apple, tossed the core into a small trash bin and then wandered over to the window. In front of it was a large table with a three-dimensional plan of a set of buildings next to a painted lake.
“You’re into development?” she asked, studying the layout of the buildings carefully. They looked similar in design to Finn’s house, making the most of the natural contours and features of the molded land.
“For this, yes.”
He came and stood beside her. Even though he was a good few inches away, she was acutely aware of the heat of his body, of the answering heat of her own. On the pretext of examining the board from a different angle, she moved away.
“What will it be?”
“Well, if I ever get decent road access to the property, it will be a respite center for families with a loved one suffering from mental illness.”
“Why a respite center?”
“Personal reasons.” He swung away from the model and went back to his desk.
“More secrets or is this actually something you can tell me?” Tamsyn pressed. They had time to kill before going to collect her car—he may as well fill it for her since he’d put her in this position.
“I’ve seen from personal experience, the strain it puts on a family to care for another family member undergoing mental health treatment—it’s especially tough on kids. I think it’s important for them to have a safe place to go, to chill out, where the people around them really do understand what it’s like. I’m hoping to build family chalets, as you can see. Each one would be private from the others but still near enough for a sense of community for people. Also, I’d like to see children’s camps run there too—in those buildings on the other side of the complex. Have camp counselors, trained in dealing with the issues that arise for kids with parents or siblings under care, that sort of thing.”
Tamsyn came and sat down opposite Finn’s desk. “It’s an ambitious project. What was that you said about needing road access?”
He pointed to a gray ribbon of road that came down from the hill. “I can create it by rebuilding my driveway as a two-lane road and then going down here from the top of the hill, where the house is. As you can see, to make a decent and safe road, it would have to cut into the contour of the land considerably and would have quite a few twists and turns to it. If I can get access here—” he gestured to a level tract of land that butted up to the lake and then stretched back to the main road “—I can put in a straighter road that will make it easier for everyone—suppliers, contractors, visitors and staff.”
“So what’s holding you back?”
“This piece of land is owned by a trust and, while I’ve tracked the trustee company to a firm of lawyers in Auckland, I haven’t been able to get a response out of them with respect to a partial sale of the land. It would just be an easement, right on the boundary of our two pieces of land and I’m prepared to build the road so they’d have access from every point along here if they so desired. But so far, I’ve heard nothing.”