Page 1 of Mornings By the Linden Tree
Chapter One
There is one thing that I hold to be sacrosanct, and that thing is Saturday.
Everyone from my law partners to my paralegal Rissa, to my housekeeper Mrs. Polkowski, and to the few men who visit me for long weekends now and again knows this to be a fact. My handful of friends are aware of this quirk of mine as well. So, since everyone of any import knows my three laps around the Common and the Gardens is time set aside for me as a start to my Saturday mental health time, not only to keep in shape but to enter a mindset of purpose for 4.5 miles with no other interferences, the fact a call was coming through and interrupting my running playlist could only be a spam call.
Slowing slightly just outside the entrance to the park on Beacon and Charles, I wiped the sweat from my eyes and moved to the left to allow a passel of children in parochial school uniforms being led by a nun to pass by. When the group of little people enveloped me instead of taking my social cue, I gave the nun a look. She blanched, then herded her socially inept sheep back into a herd.
“Surely it cannot be that hard to keep children together,” I mumbled while jogging in place, the call still vibrating in my left ear.
I tapped the bud to end the call without looking at the number, glanced around the city on a warm April Saturday morning, and wondered if Mrs. Polkowski had dusted the blue bedroom for my guest this evening. Surely she would have. She had worked for me for ten years now and knew me as well as anyone. Probably better than I knew myself, she enjoyed saying. There was undoubtedly some truth to that statement.
I opted to end my run and head home. A short little walk, where I could shower, eat a light breakfast, and place an order for pickup at the closest Whole Foods. I enjoyed cooking when I had a guest over. Percy liked seafood, and I was quite proud of my chowder. As a Bostonian, it was undoubtedly written in a charter and stored in the John Hancock home that all residents of the citymustbe able to create a decent chowder. Mine was more than decent. My chowder was restaurant-worthy because I paid attention to minute details, such as adding just a dash of imported Amontillado dry sherry and using a quick-mixing flour for thickening. Oh, and of course, fresh clams.
I’d stop at the seafood market at the pier, find some quality clams, and then dart to Lemoni’s Wine and Cheese for a bottle or two of their delightful unoaked Chardonnay. Another call rang through. I ended that one as well since I was technically still on running time.
The sidewalks were filling up with people. Tourists, natives, and nuns with rowdy urchins. Boston was gorgeous in spring. To be fair, the city was gorgeous year-round. I’d never once regretted moving here after graduating from Yale with my law degree. Even though my parents had wanted me to stay in Connecticut, my best offer had come from what was then known as Preston, Miller, and Crowe. Martin Crowe knew my fatherwell. Dad had done his knee replacements, and Mom had done Kate Crowe’s breast enhancements. Even with a bit of familial advantage, I’d proven my worth a hundred times over since my first year in the trenches of divorce law. Six years ago, they honored me and made me a partner. My parents had been alive then to see the new sign on our office door changed to Preston, Miller, Crowe, and Barlowe. It had been lovely to have my family here for such a monumental life event. Well, all my family, save my younger sister Aida, who rarely showed up for anything over the past twenty years. Her addiction to whatever drugs she could get a hold of had led her away from us. No matter how hard we all had fought, begged, and wept, she was unreachable.
Thinking of Aida always made me melancholy. We’d both grown up in the same luxurious home in Westport, Connecticut, the lucky adopted children of two incredibly talented medical professionals. Yes, we were teased a bit at our respective boarding schools. She for being a Hispanic child raised by rich White people, and I for being a Black child raised by rich White people. I soared above the taunts by being the smartest student in my class, while Aida let the taunts sink in instead of dusting them off. When I was at Yale studying pre-law, she was off in Nova Scotia with some punk band shooting heroine into her arms. Interventions had never worked, stints in the best rehab facilities in the US and Europe had done nothing. When our parents died two years ago in a car crash, I hired a detective to track her down. She’d been in Wyoming, of all places. When we spoke, she was high as a kite, slurring her words, and uncaring that the people who had given her everything a child could want were lying on a slab in the coroner’s office.
“You’ll take care of them. You take care of everything,” Aida had mumbled before hanging up.
She was right. I did take care of them. I buried them alone. I sold their home and bought a charming cottage in Nantucketclose to Nobadeer Beach for getaways. What was left of the sale cash I placed into an account for Aida to access on the provision she was clean and sober for a year before she could claim it. I called her last known number, left her a message that she replied to with a tirade about my interference and told me to shove my money up my ass. The last time I checked the account, which was earning interest nicely, she had not touched it.
I bumped into a man walking a yellow lab and quickly apologized.
Every time I thought of Aida, I drifted into a sad place. She had hadsomuch potential. God had truly given her a chance few unwanted kids of color got. We’d both been given a gift. I had chosen to take that bestowment and turn it into a solid life with a career that ensured I would never be in foster care ever again. Aida, on the other side of the coin, frittered away all the love and money our parents had invested in us. To this day, I cannot grasp why she was so dead set on being the polar opposite of the rest of the family. I was not a stupid man. I understood heredity played a part. People were genetically predisposed to addictive tendencies. I knew a history of trauma, mental illness, and witnessing adults using illegal drugs also played a large part in developing addictions.
What I had trouble understanding was why, when a helping hand was offered, a person slapped it away time and again. When my parents officially adopted me, I took advantage of every opportunity their wealth and prestige could get me. I’d been poor and incredibly hungry, and I did not wish to ever go back to that. So I worked as hard as I could and succeeded past evenmyexpectations. Yes, it took dedication to my lofty dreams as well as a strict personal agenda, but I stuck to my plans, never deviating from my schedules and outlines for life. And now I was a wealthy man who would never want for anything ever again. Life was simple if you were regimented and didn’t allow yourdesires to run amok. Why others refused to grasp those easy life guidelines was beyond me.
Walking to my townhouse as my body began to cool, I let my mind wander to what Percy and I would do for entertainment this evening. He was only in town for the weekend for a quick consultation with a new pharmaceutical company for some sort of digital transformation issues. Which was perfect for me. Arrive on Saturday, have a lovely night and some nice sex, a friendly brunch on Sunday, and off he goes. It worked well for both of us.
Perhaps I could round up some tickets to a sporting event. The hockey team was in town, vying for a playoff spot according to the gossip in the office. Then there was baseball, which had just started. Did Percy like sports? I didn’t know. Funny how you could slip your cock into a man, a highly intimate act, and yet not know if said man liked sports. Perhaps that was for the best, though. The less private details you knew about someone, the less likely you were to get hurt when that someone left. And yes, I was well aware that my distancing myself from any potential emotional entanglements stemmed from being left by my mother to fend for myself as a child. I’d spent tens of thousands of dollars on therapy to have a noted psychologist tell me what I already knew. Which was why I no longer went. One didn’t have to be Carl Jung to add two and two to get four. If not sports, then what? I’d read over what was happening in the city while I had breakfast, and then I would decide. Percy enjoyed it when I took the reins.
A cool breeze blew down the street as I neared my dark red brick townhouse. I’d spent a ridiculous amount of money on the Victorian-built beauty, but it was worth every penny. I paid nine million for it years ago, and it was now worth twice that. The lot may be small, but it was prime and outlandishly expensive. Not Manhattan expensive, obviously, but costly enough to ensure theneighbors were in the same upper tax bracket. Hell, I’d handled a few of their divorces, so when I wanted a small backyard addition, they were all quite happy to agree as long as they were invited over on occasion. Divorces with huge billable hours. None of them had blinked at the two-thousand-dollar hourly rate that I, as a partner, charged.
Not that I would say this to their faces, but their rather lengthy court battles had helped me pay for the backyard addition as well as a five-week getaway in Mykonos, a little investment portfolio addition for a new tech company in Silicon Valley, and solar panels for my vacation home in Nantucket. I tried to keep a nice balance with the others on my street. Love thy neighbors but pull down not your hedge as the old adage goes. Our houses were close, but we didn’t have to be.
My home, built in 1864 by famed architects Milford Potter and Alexander Mallory, was a 7680 square foot three-story (if you counted the small attic which the realtor did even though you could only store a few boxes in it) four bedroom, four bath terrace home with five fireplaces and it suited me well. It was narrow, yes, but immaculate. The floors were honey oak, the walls ivory with ornate moldings and some of the most beautiful plasterwork I’d ever seen. I’d brought in Penny Smythe of Smythe Hohoe Decorating in San Diego to decorate, and she had outfitted the place to perfection.
Entertaining was done out back in the summer on a small but tastefully decorated area with flower boxes and a teak table for six under a lovely Douglas fir ramada that my neighbors envied. Tonight it would be quite chilly, but we could, if Percy wished, light the round gas fire pit as we watch the stars come out. Percy was quite knowledgeable about astronomy and had even asked me to take a trip to Norway to stargaze with him, which I declined due to work as well as the fact that traveling together sounded like something boyfriends would do. If I wished to visitNorway, I would. On my own. But the invitation had been lovely, and he’d not taken offense when I’d declined. That was one thing I liked about Percival. His aloofness and indifference sat well with me, for I was cut from the same apathetic cloth.
I paused to let traffic flow and heard a large cow moo float up from behind me. With my home right in front of me, save for the street but unable to dart over, I glanced back to see a rather large crowd of adults with children ranging from babes in strollers to school-aged children. A blond man with a guitar was frogging about under a massive linden tree, singing about Old MacDonald and his farm animals. I noted that the nun and her wild charges were part of the crowd. Whywasa nun out with kids on a Saturday morning? Perhaps they were orphans. No, that was nonsensical. There were no orphanages anymore. Children with no family were dumped into foster care, not workhouses. I looked back, found a break, and left the mooing fans behind.
Crossing the street quickly, I ran a keen eye over my copper Lexus LC hybrid parked along the curb. I hated the fact we had no charging stations on our street and had petitioned the city to start installing them ASAP, but knowing how the city worked, it would be years. Thankfully, there were a few over on Charles Street, but I generally used the ones in front of our law offices in the financial district during the week. I stared at the dark green door of my home and saw Mrs. Polkowski in her bright yellow spring coat struggling with the lock. It did tend to stick when rain was on the way. I jogged up, mindful of my sweaty running clothes and unpleasant man smell, and slipped in around the plump fifty-eight-year-old.
“Let me,” I said, and got a nod of a bright red head. “The woodwork swells when the barometric pressure drops.” I levered my shoulder into the heavy door, turned the key, and then gave a heave. The lock clicked, and the door glided open. “After you,milady,” I announced with a courtly bow that did not go well with my sticky tank top and leggings.
“Mr. Polkowski said his knee was bothering him this morning, so, between the door and his joints, rain is a sure bet,” she said, her accent as thick and hearty as the chowder I planned on creating this afternoon. We entered the foyer, removed our shoes on the woven mat, and placed them in the slim closet beside the front door. Mrs. Polkowski shrugged out of her coat, hung it on a hanger, and closed the door softly. “Now, I know you have a gentleman caller tonight, so I’ll be dusting the south guest room and freshening the bedding. Would you like me to place some of the little purple soaps you brought back from Paris in the soap dishes in the guest bath?”
“That would be lovely. I’ll be showering now, then eating. Would you make sure the vacuuming is done once I’m gone?”
“Yes, sir, I will do that. I know you don’t like the dust in the air around your food. How long will Mr. Percival be staying this time?” She looked up at me, her round face perfectly calm, but I knew her mind was whirling. My housekeeper did not care for my gentlemen callers, and not because she disliked us being gay, but because she felt that people coming and going but never staying for long seemed more like a boarding house and less like a home. She was not one to mince her words.
“Just tonight,” I informed her. Her pug nose wrinkled. “Which is more than long enough.”
“If you’re running a no-tell motel,” she replied as she tied a white apron around her rather thick waist. I chuckled to myself. “Wouldn’t hurt you to find a man who wants to linger.”
“But I don’twishfor them to linger,” I explained with a smile for the little woman with the big personality.
