Page 24 of Saltwater Secrets
The woman who entered the kitchen looked worse for wear. It was clear Renée hadn’t washed her face last night, and that she’d spent the majority of the past few hours crying. She wore a big nightdress, a lacy thing from another decade that had obviously belonged to Dorothy (or one of Philip’s mistresses, Hilary thought darkly). Renée stood in a haze in the doorway, eyes on Hilary. And then she said, “I just got off the phone with my mother’s lawyer.”
“Oh?” Hilary pressed her hands to the counter and braced herself.
Why was Dorothy’s daughter updating her on Dorothy’s will?
Renée took a tentative step into the kitchen. Although it was only three in the afternoon, she announced she needed a glass ofwine and rummaged through the fridge to find a bottle of white. Screwing up her face, she poured for herself and sipped. She didn’t offer anything to Hilary and Aria, which was all right with Hilary.
Hilary wasn’t brave enough to ask what was going on.
“I haven’t spoken to my mother in almost thirty years,” Renée said, rapping her glass of wine on the counter with a clatter. “But the lawyer still called me first. Isn’t that wild? I wonder what I’m supposed to make of it. I wonder if I’m supposed to think my mother really loved me. Maybe it was in the instructions the lawyer had. To pretend that my mother and I were still in touch.” She laughed and sipped her wine. “Not that I’m naive enough to think love from a mother really matters. Especially a mother like Dorothy.”
Hilary and Aria eyed one another. They didn’t know what to say.
“There’s a lot to go over in the will,” Renée continued, flaring her nostrils. “I have to go to the lawyer’s office later today. And I have to shower, I guess, before that happens.” She glanced down at her nightdress. “But the important thing you need to know is that my mother amended the will to include you two.” Renée looked at them with a mix of curiosity and annoyance.
Hilary’s heart seized. Dorothy couldn’t have given them money! They barely knew her!
“It isn’t an inheritance,” Renée said, relieving Hilary’s racing mind. “But she wanted you two to finish the jobs you started. Both here in the brownstone and at the estate back home. With the pre-agreed-upon payment structure, until both are completed to your satisfaction. I suppose she trusted you enough not to find work where there isn’t any.”
Hilary couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “She wanted us to finish them? In their entirety?”
Renée nodded. Her eyes were wet. “Nobody is more surprised than me. I mean, she lived in that estate for twenty-five years. Why did she decide the time right before she died was the time to update it? And this place.” Renée gestured vaguely around the brownstone. “She hasn’t been here in years. Nobody has, except for the maid. Not even me. Why now?”
Hilary gaped at Renée, at a loss for words. Renée turned on her heel and walked over to the sofa, where she sat with her wine and stared at the black television screen. Hilary saw much of Dorothy in Renée’s face, especially in the eyes. Thirty years was such a long time not to see someone. If Aria went thirty years without seeing Hilary, Hilary would fall apart.
And then Renée spoke, her voice like a string. “Did she say anything about me?”
Hilary and Aria glanced at one another, panicked. Hilary didn’t know what to say.
“I mean, did she talk about me at all?” Renée asked, putting more power behind her voice.
Hilary walked into the living room and sat across from her. Aria remained in the doorway between the kitchen and living room, her arms folded. It looked like she wanted to leap into Hilary’s car and get out of there. But now that the will said she was supposed to continue her work on the brownstone, did she really want to leave?
“We only worked with your mother for about a week before she passed,” Hilary said gently. “We were only starting to get to know one another. The fact that she died, well. We didn’t see that coming at all.” She swallowed. “Was she sick? Do you know?”
Renée raised her shoulders. Nearly a full minute passed before she asked, “What did she seem like? Before she died.”
Hilary knew she was playing with fire. She didn’t know the dynamic between mother and daughter, save that it had souredat some point, and she didn’t want to say the wrong thing and make Renée feel worse.
“Our conversations mainly encircled the redesign of the estate,” Hilary said. “She was quite easy to work with. She had several ideas and provided me with plenty of inspiration. But she really didn’t talk about herself. She wanted to talk about us, about Aria and me and our lives.”
Aria piped up, maybe because she didn’t want to leave her mother hanging. “I just went through a breakup. A bad one. Your mother was really kind about it. I think that’s why she sent me here to this brownstone. She told me to redesign it. She wanted me to find a fresh start here in the city, away from everything that had happened to me.”
Renée took a long sip from her glass of wine and let out an ironic laugh. “Here? A new start, here? It’s hard for me to fathom that.”
Hilary smarted. “Why do you say that?”
“This was the place my father purchased in the eighties,” Renée said with a strange snarl. “It’s where he brought all of his little mistresses while he was cheating on my mother.”
Hilary’s stomach lurched. “Is that right?”
“You must have heard of my father’s affairs,” Renée said. “Until his death, they were what made him famous, you know. That and his exorbitant wealth. That and the grand mystery of his death.” Renée drank more wine before adding, “Of course, there were numerous mysteries about how he made his money. But I’ve never been smart enough to figure any of that out.”
Hilary remembered what her mother had said about Philip Wagner and his unethical practices. Nobody had minded back then. Would modern culture have looked at him so kindly? She wasn’t sure. She had the sense that cruel and very wealthy men always ruled the day, no matter what year it was.
“I wonder why your mother wanted to fix it up,” Hilary mused, eyeing the interior of the brownstone. “Do you know if she ever spent any time here after your father died?”
Renée shrugged and looked at her fingers. “Like I said, we haven’t spoken. Not since my father passed away.”
