Because of Audrey. Mary Sullivan

TWO

      AUDREY’S HEADY PERFUME followed Gray out the door, trailing him like a scarf that wrapped itself around his shoulders with comforting hands. Nuts.

      Nothing about Audrey said comfort. Words that came to mind were sexy and strange and disconcerting, but comforting? Never.

      The black eyeliner slanting up at the corners of her violet eyes made them exotic. In the middle of her pure, clear-skinned face, the effect was violently erotic.

      Unnerved to feel anything good about the woman, he ordered himself to snap out of it.

      She had the power to hurt his family, and he wouldn’t stand for it.

      Babies. Gray laughed. She’d called her plants her “babies.” Nutbar. Defeating this woman was going to be a piece of cake.

      At least in grilling Audrey, he’d calmed down enough to see his father without confrontation.

      Gray drove to his parents’ home. At thirty-six, he shouldn’t be living with his mom and dad, but they were getting on in age, and he felt better being around in case something happened to one of them.

      Set apart from town on its private cul-de-sac, the gray stone house with the white trim and black lacquered front door spoke of well-bred money, of discreet, respectful living.

      He’d had a good upbringing. So why was he screwed up these days? Why so neurotic?

      The garage door was open and Dad was inside. Good. There were things that needed to be said.

      “Dad?” he called.

      Dad had his head buried inside a deep box. “Aha!” He stood, triumph and a childlike joy lighting his face. “Here they are.”

      “We need to talk—”

      “Remember these?” He held an old snorkel set of Gray’s in his hands, the rubber of the ancient flippers dry and cracked.

      “Yes, I remember. I must have been nine or ten when you bought them for me.” He didn’t have time for this. They had issues to settle. Huge issues.

      Dad wore an old cardigan, ratty around the edges from years of use. White hair curled over the collar of the sweater. Disgraceful. Dad used to be particular about his grooming.

      “What happened to you, Dad? Something’s changed.” The words were out of his mouth before good manners could stop them, a sign of how bad Gray’s nerves were. Dad’s aging, the slow crumbling of a once-powerful man, affected Gray, left him sad and a little lost. Left him somehow smaller, at a time when he was already vulnerable with residual grief. Marnie was dead.

      Stop. Concentrate on the here and now, on business.

      “I turned eighty last year.” For all of Gray’s recent worries about Dad’s state of mind, especially given the shaky business dealings lately, Dad had understood his question perfectly.

      Gray waited for more explanation. When it didn’t come, he prompted, “And...?”

      “And you try turning eighty and looking back on your life and realizing how much time you spent indoors in a stuffy old office when you could have been out doing things.” He pulled out a plastic oar belonging to an old dinghy that had been relegated to the dump years ago. “Look!” His chuckle held a strange glee that Gray had never heard before, not sinister, just, again, childlike.

      Gray couldn’t get past his surprise. Dad had regrets? “But...”

      “But what?”

      “But you loved the business.”

      “Past tense. I’m tired. I want to enjoy what’s left of my life. I want peace.”

      How had Gray missed Dad’s transformation from a savvy businessman to a reluctant one? Gray had tried to visit as often as possible, but given that he’d taken after his father with twelve-hour days and a demanding, if loved, girlfriend, it had been hard. Obviously, he hadn’t come home often enough.

      “You’re here now,” Dad asserted. “You take care of the business.”

      Speaking of which...

      “Did you sell a piece of land to Audrey Stone in the winter?”

      “Jeff Stone’s daughter?” Dad looked up from the box he was still rummaging through. A fine fuzz of white stubble dusted his unshaven chin. Dad shaved every day. Apparently not today.

      The gray eyes that Gray had inherited still seemed sharp, but his glance shifted away from Gray’s. What was he hiding? Over and over, Gray had had to find out things about the company from Hilary or the accountant. While Dad seemed to welcome Gray into the business, he also stonewalled him at too many turns. Something strange was up with his father.

      He said he was tired. He said you take care of the business. His actions spoke a different language. Dad couldn’t let go of the reins.

      “Yes,” Dad replied. “I sold land to Audrey. Why?”

      “It’s in the heart of the land I want to sell to Farm-Green Industries.”

      “Hmm. Too bad.”

      Dad had become a master of understatement. Gray gritted his teeth. “Why did you sell?”

      “Jeff is sick.”

      “What does that have to do with the land?”

      “His daughter needs to take care of him.”

      Gray bore the frustration of dealing with Dad like this, but only barely. Conversation was like pulling freaking teeth out of his head one by one. Without anesthetic. Where was the man who used to be open about everything?

      “Dad, what does that have to do with our land?”

      “She needed a place to grow plants and flowers for her floral shop. She needs to support herself and help her father. We stopped using those greenhouses years ago. Shame to see them go to waste.”

      “But we’ve spent months hammering out this deal with Farm-Green. They aren’t going to take it with a huge hunk of land missing from the middle.”

      “I never wanted to sell to them anyway. When they first started sniffing around two or three years ago, I told you that.”

      God, give me strength. “We’ve gone over this a hundred times. You need to look at the big picture. Look outside of Accord. The economy isn’t what it used to be. The whole country is suffering. The lumberyard isn’t bringing in a fraction of the money it used to. We need that money to pay your employees.” Let alone take care of all of the other dubious decisions Dad had made lately.

      “So, find a different solution. Something else that will work. If one thing doesn’t, find another.”

      “There won’t be another company who’ll pay what Farm-Green was willing to so quickly. It could take a year to find someone else who’s interested, and then months more of negotiations. I’m turning myself inside out to come up with creative solutions to our problems.”

      Dad shrugged. “When one door closes, another opens.”

      One of Dad’s empty pronouncements. He thought they were nuggets of wisdom. Not even close. New-age gobbledygook.

      “Did you at least get a good price?” Gray wouldn’t put it past his father to give the land away for sentiment’s sake.

      Judging by Dad’s annoyed frown, he’d asked the wrong question. “Of course I did. I spent sixty years working as a successful businessman.”

      Yes, Gray knew that, but Dad had lost his grip on reality. He was eighty years old and changing, reverting to childhood, or something. He should have retired twenty years ago, but what would he have done instead? Retirement would probably have killed him, but in the past months that Gray had been home, he’d finally had to accept that Dad needed to step away from the business altogether before he sent the whole thing down the drain. Dad was still too sharp