Jenna
Tension: mental or emotional strain
“That was incredible.” Greg lowered his head and kissed her.
“It was.” Jenna slid her arms round his neck. Did incredible sex increase your chances of conceiving? Please let them have made a baby.
Greg stroked her back. “Give me five minutes to recover and we’ll do it again.”
She was tempted, and not just because she wanted to get pregnant. “We don’t have time.”
He rolled over, taking her with him. “We don’t need long.”
“It’s going to take a couple of hours.”
“We could make it a quickie this time.”
“I’m talking about getting ready for dinner. My family is coming over. Had you forgotten?”
“Strangely enough the last thing I’m thinking about when you’re naked and writhing underneath me is your mother.”
Jenna grinned. “Good to know.” She glanced at the clock and shrieked with horror. “Is that really the time?” She sprang out of bed so fast she knocked Greg in the jaw. “We need to get going.”
He sat up, rubbing his jaw. “Why? Your mother is coming to dinner, that’s all.”
“All? Greg, my mother is coming to dinner.” And my sister, she thought, whose house in London looked like something from a designer magazine.
“I don’t have time for a shower.” She pulled on her clothes, hopping round the room like a circus performer. “Get up, Greg. Why are you smiling?”
“Because I love your hair like that.”
“Like what?” She glanced in the mirror. “I look like I just got out of bed after having wild sex.”
“That’s my favorite hairstyle.”
Jenna grabbed a hairbrush but in the end gave up and scooped her hair into a ponytail. “Get dressed. I need help with the living room.”
“What’s wrong with the living room?”
Muttering protests, he pulled on jeans and a fresh shirt and followed her. “I get that your mother is coming to dinner. What I don’t get is why that necessitates a complete house makeover.” He watched as Jenna tugged cushions from a bag and ripped off the price tags. “Are those new cushions?”
“They are.”
Her sister always had cushions and they never looked as if someone had sprawled all over them, marking children’s work while drinking wine at the end of a long day.
“I hate cushions. Cushions were invented to give men something to throw across the room.”
“They were invented to make the house look cozy and comfortable. Dressed is the word I saw used in a fancy house magazine.”
“That explains it. I like my houses the way I like my women—undressed.”
Jenna dropped to her knees so she could check under the sofa. “Don’t ever say things like that in public. It makes you sound—”
“How does it make me sound?”
“I don’t know—” Jenna sat up and strands of hair tumbled over her face, half obscuring her vision “—unreconstructed.” She shoved her hair back, wishing it was smooth like her sister’s.
“Me Tarzan. You Jenna.” Greg gave her a suggestive smile. “And if you want me to behave like a modern man, don’t throw yourself at my feet, woman.”
“I’m not at your feet. I’m looking for my thong. Remember that night we had sex on the sofa?”
“No.” Greg was deadpan. “No recollection.”
She hauled herself upright and flung a cushion at his head.
He caught it one-handed. “Thank you for proving my point. Cushions are for throwing. They’re the soft furnishing equivalent of a stress ball. And of course I remember your thong. I was the one who removed it.”
“And now I can’t find it.” She stuffed her hand down the back of the sofa cushions. “If my mother finds that thong, my life is over.”
“If she finds that thong it shows you have a life. A sex life. And I thought you were getting along better with your mother.”
“I am, but I’m not at the stage where I want to discuss my sex life. Do you have a paintbrush?”
Greg blinked. “Before I answer that I have to ask what you want to do with it. My mind is working overtime.”
“There’s a mark on the kitchen wall where I tripped carrying that glass of wine.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “So use a cloth to clean it off.”
“I tried that! It stained the wall.”
“Let me get this straight—your mother is coming to dinner and you want me to repaint the house. You don’t think you might be taking this whole thing a little too seriously? Anyway, you’re the one who does the painting in this family.”
Jenna arranged the cushions the way she’d seen Lauren do it, but somehow her house still lacked the “put together” air that her sister seemed to achieve effortlessly. Maybe she had to accept she wasn’t a very “put together” sort of person. “When did my mother and sister last come to us for dinner?”
“I don’t remember.” Greg shook his head as she threw another cushion onto the sofa.
“I want the place to look good.”
Greg sighed. “This is crazy. This is our home. Don’t you love our home?”
“Of course.” And she did. It was theirs. A comfortable nest they’d built over the years, packed with things they’d chosen together. “But Lauren is an interior designer. She told me her house was like her showroom.”
“You’re a first-grade teacher.” Greg picked up one of the paintings a child in her class had made for her. “Your home is your showroom, too, but we’re showing different things.”
She snatched it from him and tucked it in with the magazines. “We don’t even have kids, and our home is covered in kids’ drawings.”
“I like it. We could stick some of these paintings over the stain in the kitchen.”
“Or you could paint the wall. There’s still time.”
He pulled her against him and kissed her. “I am not painting the wall.”
“If my mother notices it, I’m blaming you.”
“I’ll tell her you strolled into the kitchen wearing your thong and I walked into the wall.” But his gaze was gentle. “Your mom has a lot on her mind right now. She’s confessed to her daughters that she has no money and that her marriage was miserable. I think she’s going to have more important things to think about than the state of the cushions on our sofa or a mark on the paintwork. Lauren, too.”
“Lauren has barely answered her phone for the past few days. It keeps going to voice mail, and when she calls me back she always seems to be anxious to keep it short. She and Mack had a big fight. Lauren yelled, and was upset about that. I’m worried about her. I hope Mom’s confession didn’t tip her over the edge. It was a bit of a shock.”
“I’m sure. You both found out your dad had affairs. That’s a lot to adjust to.”
Jenna felt her cheeks heat. “Actually that wasn’t the part that was a shock. We already knew about that. At least, we knew about one of them.” She felt him still and then he eased her away from him.
“What are you talking about?”
“We knew about Dad.”
“What? How?”
There wasn’t much point in keeping it a secret now, was there? “Lauren and I saw him—”
“With a woman?” He released her suddenly and dragged his hand through his hair. “When?”
“Years ago. Mom was away. We went to the Sail Loft and he was there—with her.” And even now, so many years later, she could picture it as if it had happened the day before. The two of them had peered through the window, shocked and disbelieving.
“Who was it?”
“I don’t know. We didn’t see her face. Just—well, you don’t need the detail.” She didn’t want to think about the detail.
Greg said nothing for a full minute. “How old were you?”
“Eight.” She saw a muscle flicker in his jaw.
“You saw your father screwing another woman when you were eight years old and you never told me?”
“I never told anyone.”
“I’m not anyone, Jenna.”
“I know, and you have no idea how much I wanted to tell you, but we had to keep it a secret. We knew that if anyone found out, we wouldn’t be a family anymore. They would have split up and it would have been like Meredith.” At least, that’s what she’d believed at the time, but now she wasn’t sure. What if they’d got that part wrong?
Greg ran his hand over his face. “This is a huge thing, Jenna.”
“That’s why we didn’t tell Mom. We didn’t know what to do. I guess we hoped it was a one-off. Turned out it wasn’t, but we had no way of knowing that.”
“I’m not talking about the affair. I’m talking about the fact that in all these years together, you never once mentioned it to me.”
Her heart started to pound. Damn Lauren and her sudden revelations. “Everyone has things they don’t like to talk about, Greg.”
“Not you. You’re an open book, or so I thought.”
“Are you saying there isn’t a single thing in your past you haven’t told me?”
“You were there for almost all of my past. You witnessed it firsthand.” He looked shell-shocked. “Our lives have been tangled together for as long as I can remember, which is why I don’t understand why you wouldn’t have mentioned it. I didn’t think we had secrets, and now I discover that you’ve had a massive secret for a long time.”
Her palms grew clammy. “Please don’t make a big deal out of this.”
“It’s a big deal, Jenna.”
“It isn’t! It—”
“It’s a big deal to me.” His voice had thickened. “A very big deal. You didn’t trust me enough to tell me.”
She stared at him, helpless. A few minutes ago they’d been locked together naked and intimate and now it was like looking at a stranger. “Don’t be mad. I can’t believe you’re reacting like this. It was a million years ago. Why do you even care?”
For once he wasn’t smiling. “Excuse me for being human.” He strode away from her to the kitchen and slammed the door.
Jenna flinched.
She’d never seen him like this. If they ever had a disagreement, he was rational and calm. She’d never seen him withdraw from her.
What she’d said had upset him, she knew that, but she’d spent her life trying to forget having seen her father that day. Surely Greg could understand that?
She opened the kitchen door tentatively. “Greg—”
“I’m cooking.”
Rejection: to rebuff a person.
She bit her lip. “I could help.”
“I don’t need help.”
“But—” The sound of the doorbell interrupted her and Jenna wanted to scream with frustration.
Talk about bad timing. Maybe she should have canceled on them. She could have claimed some vile sickness. But then she wouldn’t have been able to check on Lauren.
With a last look at Greg’s rigid shoulders, she went to answer the door.
“Something smells wonderful.” Lauren was carrying a large portfolio case. “You’re such a wonderful cook.”
“Thanks.” Jenna was relieved that at least her sister seemed buoyant. That was one less thing to worry about. “What’s in the case?”
“The result of my light bulb moment. I’ll show you in a moment.” Lauren slipped off her coat with that elegance of movement that characterized everything she did.
“Is it the reason you’ve been difficult to get hold of the last few days?”
“I’ve been busy, that’s true. Where’s Greg?”
“He’s in the kitchen.” Jenna hoped her smile didn’t look as fake as it felt. It probably wouldn’t fool her sister, but hopefully it would work for her mother.
Nancy stepped inside after Lauren. After a moment’s hesitation she reached out and hugged Jenna, too. “It’s kind of you to invite us over, especially when you’ve been working all day.”
Enveloped by warmth, Jenna closed her eyes, glad she hadn’t canceled the evening.
Then she eased away and saw that her mother looked tired, defeated, and she stopped thinking about her own problems.
She’d never seen her mother anything other than fully in control, but it was as if letting out her confession had severed a string that had been holding everything together.
“Can I take your coat, Mom?” And now when she looked at the gray coat she realized that the reason her mother hadn’t replaced it was because she hadn’t been able to afford a new one.
How could she have missed so much?
She’d been upset that her mother hadn’t known the big things about her, but she hadn’t known the big things about her mother.
Mack was hovering behind them.
“Hi, honey. How’s it all going?”
“Great.” She sounded unusually subdued and Jenna gave her a tight hug, surprised when Mack hugged her back, almost clinging.
She knew her niece had been having trouble at school and Lauren had called her, racked with guilt, to tell her how she’d “lost it” with Mack a few days earlier.
Privately Jenna had been a little relieved to hear Lauren had exploded. Her sister’s almost unnatural level of control had been starting to worry her and in her opinion Mack had been pushing boundaries a little too far.
“Come on in. I made all your favorite things to eat.”
“This room is looking cozy, Jenna,” her mother said, and Lauren nodded.
“It’s so you.”
“Messy, you mean?”
“Comfortable.” Lauren glanced around. “A house should feel lived-in and loved. With yours I immediately want to kick off my shoes and lounge on the sofa with a book.”
Jenna was about to reply when Greg appeared from the kitchen, his emotions carefully concealed beneath charm and warmth.
She tried to catch his eye, but he wasn’t looking at her.
He poured everyone a drink and after an exchange of small talk, they moved to the table.
Jenna served the soup, along with crusty bread rolls flavored with sea salt and rosemary that she’d baked herself. All she wanted to do was be alone with Greg to talk, but there was no chance of that.
“Did I ever tell you my book group loved your cakes?” Nancy reached for one of the rolls. “They were gone in a moment. Everyone was talking about them.”
“I’m glad. And I forgot to mention that I bumped into Sheila. She told me you’d been to visit Kaley in hospital and given her one of your coloring books and pens. That was kind of you.”
Nancy gave a short laugh. “I have boxes of them gathering dust.”
Lauren picked up her spoon. “You have a lot of things gathering dust in that house, Mom.”
“As my grandmother said, you never know when a thing might become useful. I’m not good at throwing things away.”
Jenna had learned not to question her great-grandmother’s wisdom, particularly as she was no longer around to defend herself. She’d died before Lauren was born, leaving responsibility for the house, its contents and the entire Stewart heritage with Nancy.
“I think you might need to learn.” Lauren put her spoon down and pulled a sheaf of papers from her bag. “Take a look.”
Jenna was confused. “A look at what?”
“When I was driving round the other day, I noticed one of those huge beach houses for rent. It gave me an idea,” Lauren said. “I want to know what you think.”
Nancy raised her eyebrows. “Since when did we work at the dinner table?”
“Since we had a family crisis. If this works out the way I hope it will, we’re going to need to use every minute of every day.” Lauren opened the file, pulled out a spreadsheet covered in numbers and slid it across the table. “I’ve talked to a few people in town and run the numbers.”
Jenna looked at the spreadsheets and floor plans. “You’ve been busy.” She picked up the sheets closest to her. Each room in The Captain’s House was carefully mapped out by hand on graph paper. “Can’t you do this on a computer?”
“Yes, but I prefer the old-fashioned way.”
It must have taken hours, but that was good, wasn’t it? Finally her sister had a focus and a purpose.
Jenna glanced at Greg, but he was silent.
She was surprised no one had sensed the tension between them. Or maybe no one thought to look.
Jenna took a closer look at one of the sheets of paper. “What is that long line?”
“This is the garden room, and the line is the window.” Lauren turned the paper round. “You can see door openings, and how that’s going to work with the space.”
Jenna had never considered how a door opened when she’d planned her decoration. “And those small squares?”
“Side tables. This room has the best views in the house. People are going to want to sit there with drinks.”
“People?”
Lauren drew in a breath. “That’s the part I wanted to talk about. Look at this, Mom.” She handed the spreadsheet to her mother, but Nancy barely glanced at it.
“I appreciate all you’re doing, but I can’t afford to keep the house, Lauren.”
“You can if you rent.”
Nancy looked at the paper in front of her. “How would renting help? We still wouldn’t be living in the place.”
“But it would belong to you. You’d own it.” Lauren leaned across and circled a number. “Look at that. It’s what we could get for a long summer rental, providing we target the luxury market.”
Jenna thought about the rattling windows and the drafts in the winter. She thought about the peeling paint and the way the downstairs bathroom coughed out water as if it were dying. She thought about the possessions her ancestors had accumulated over the years.
“Are you sure we’d be at the luxury end? Maybe we should aim a little lower.”
Lauren shook her head. “That wouldn’t bring in enough money. The house needs work, that’s true, but the position is unbeatable. That’s our real advantage over other properties. That and the history of the place. We need to use that history to our advantage.”
“Just because people are interested in history,” Jenna said, “doesn’t mean they want to be living in the middle of it. Hot and cold running water is a must.”
Nancy straightened. “Scott refitted two of the bathrooms upstairs.”
“If you’re renting out the whole house, all the bathrooms need to work.”
Lauren scrawled call plumber on the top of another piece of paper. “The whole house needs work, but much of it is decorative. We have ten bedrooms—”
“Nine,” Jenna said, eyeing her mother. “Dad’s hobby room is crammed with things. Model boats, his golf clubs and all those trophies he won. No one would want to sleep in there.”
Nancy finished her soup. “He wouldn’t ever let me in the room even to dust.”
“It must be like something from Great Expectations,” Mack said, “covered in cobwebs.”
It was the first thing she’d said since they’d sat down and Jenna saw Lauren give her a warm smile.
“I bet you’re right.”
Greg stood up and cleared the plates.
Jenna watched as he disappeared into the kitchen. She desperately wanted to follow him, but she knew their problems were going to have to wait until later. “I suppose we could lock that door.”
Lauren tapped her pen on the table. “Let’s worry about that later. We have three months to turn The Captain’s House into luxury accommodation that people will be prepared to pay good money to rent.”
“Three months isn’t very long,” Nancy said. “Is that possible?”
“Yes. I need to talk to the planning people and all the necessary officials to make sure we can rent the house out, but I’ve been doing some thinking and drawn up some plans—” Lauren reached down and opened the portfolio she’d been carrying. “Structurally the place is sound thanks to Scott’s work over the winter. We can’t change the space, so it’s about making sure that the decoration makes the most of it. We are going to enhance all the best things about the house, and reflect the coastal position. I’ve had some ideas.”
She put a stack of mood boards in the middle of the table.
“This takes me back to our childhood when you redecorated my bedroom.” Jenna picked up one of the boards. It was covered in images and fabric swatches. She immediately recognized the layout of the master bedroom suite, but not the style. “I love this. But won’t it cost a fortune?”
“No. I intend to do all of it myself.”
“All of it? We need new sofas in the living room.”
“We can’t afford that. We’ll reupholster the old ones. I can do that.”
Jenna looked at her. “You know how to upholster a sofa?”
“I know a lot of things. I’ve just never had the chance to do them before.” Lauren handed the board across to her mother, who studied it for a moment.
“I love this.” Nancy reached into her bag for her glasses and took a closer look. “The colors are light and fresh. You have a good eye.”
“We’d need to refit a couple of the bedrooms. We need more closet space, maybe some bookshelves. And I have some ideas for the kitchen that shouldn’t cost a fortune. And I intend to turn one of the downstairs rooms into a media room.” Lauren picked up her phone and showed them some photos.
Nancy flicked through. “I don’t have the funds for anything this elaborate.”
“I’ve looked at the costs and I think we can make it work.” Lauren’s cheeks were flushed. “I’ve become something of an expert on managing money lately. I had a baptism of fire. Providing we can rent the place for the whole summer season, we can make a profit. Enough for you to live on in the winter, although I have ideas for that, too. And what I have in mind isn’t going to cost that much. But it would require you to go to work with your paintbrush.”
Jenna wondered if that plan was really about cost saving, or whether her sister was trying to get their mother to paint again.
“Where are we going to find someone to rent it? Are we going to list it with someone on the island? Won’t we need a website?”
Lauren retrieved her phone. “Yes, and that’s one of the things I can’t do myself.”
“I could do it,” Mack said. “I could build a website if you tell me what you want it to do.”
Jenna could almost feel her sister’s mood lift.
“That would be great. Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’ll figure it out.” Mack toyed with the bread on her plate. “Maybe I’ll join the Coding Club at school. Someone there would probably be able to help me.”
Lauren nodded. “That sounds great. Thank you.”
“It’s probably suicide, but everyone’s got to die, right?” She flushed. “Sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean to say that.”
“It’s okay.” Lauren stretched out her hand and squeezed Mack’s. “I don’t want you to feel you have to watch what you say.”
Jenna wished she’d watched what she said.
She glanced toward the kitchen, wondered why Greg was taking so long. “If this works and you rent it out for the summer, you still won’t have anywhere to live.”
Lauren let go of Mack’s hand. “There is somewhere, but I don’t know how you’re going to feel about it.”
Nancy sat up straighter. “Go on.”
“The Sail Loft.” Lauren passed another mood board across the table. “We could live there.”
Jenna was relieved she didn’t have food in her mouth at that moment because she would have choked.
The Sail Loft?
Lauren met her gaze and then looked away again. Color streaked across her cheeks, but her chin angled in a way that told Jenna she wasn’t going to be dissuaded.
“There are only two bedrooms.” Jenna tried logic first.
“Yes, but the master is huge. I’ve thought about the space and it would be easy to build a partition and divide the room into two, temporarily at least. It would be small, but I think it would work.”
Jenna wondered why she felt sick. It wasn’t as if she was going to be the one living there.
“Why not use the top floor?”
“Because it’s Mom’s studio. She needs it for when she starts painting again.”
She was making an assumption, Jenna thought. “When” not “if.”
Nancy frowned. “I haven’t been there since your father died.” Her voice sounded strange. “The place could be flooded for all I know.”
Jenna knew her mother hadn’t painted, but she hadn’t known that she’d stayed away from the Sail Loft.
“I wish you’d told me. I could have supported you.”
“You’re supporting me now.”
“Yes.” And it would mean she’d have to go back to the Sail Loft. She’d have to walk up that path and look through that window.
“And I couldn’t have told you without telling you everything else.” Nancy sent a glance in Mack’s direction.
“Anything you have to say, you can say in front of Mack,” Lauren said.
Nancy looked unconvinced. “I’m not sure if I think it’s appropriate to—”
“Mom—” Lauren’s tone was sharp “—we’ve all tried the approach where we keep things to ourselves to protect each other, and where has that gotten us? From now on everything is out in the open and we’ll deal with it together.”
Jenna knew Lauren was still getting calls from London about Ed’s estate. Each time she’d come away several shades paler.
She knew her sister had been hoping Ed had some money put aside that she didn’t know about, but so far there had been no good news.
Nancy glanced between them. “You have no idea how much I wish you’d told me you knew about your father.”
“We only saw him that one time,” Lauren said. “We had no idea he did it more than once.”
Once had been enough, Jenna thought. “Could we get rid of the honeysuckle? I can’t stand honeysuckle.”
Her mother gave her a steady look. “I’ve been thinking of doing it for a while. It’s invasive and competes with native plants. It will be the first thing to go.”
“Wait a minute—” Mack stared. “Gramps had an affair and you saw him?” Her expression was so comical it even made Jenna smile.
“At the time I thought adults only did it to have babies. For a while I was worried I was going to get a baby sister.” It was the first time she’d ever joked about it and it might have felt like a step forward if Greg hadn’t chosen that moment to walk back into the room with the main course.
He was the only one who didn’t join in the awkward laughter.
The look on his face made Jenna uneasy. Greg was the master of his emotions but right now he didn’t seem to be doing so well.
Mack shuddered and Nancy shook her head.
“It’s a wonder the two of you weren’t put off sex for life. I hate to think of you girls in that position. Of course if Jenna had been a little less adventurous, instead of always leading you into trouble—” Nancy’s gaze shifted to Jenna and Lauren stood up to help serve the casserole.
“It wasn’t Jenna, it was me.”
Nancy looked confused. “You were by her side whatever she did, Lauren. I knew I could trust you never to leave her, however adventurous she was.”
“She wasn’t,” Lauren said. “I was the adventurous one.”
It seems so long ago, Jenna thought. She hadn’t seen that side of her sister for a long time. Not since she’d left home.
From the moment she’d moved to London, Lauren had been transformed.
It was as if she’d been determined to stamp out her former wild self.
“You reinvented yourself,” she said and Lauren handed her a plate.
“I guess my last adventure was getting pregnant, and that scared me. It’s pretty sobering to realize you’re in charge of another life.”
“Wait—” Nancy’s voice was faint. “I always thought it was Jenna. I thought you were protecting her.”
Lauren shook her head. “The times we went skinny dipping at night, when we jumped off the Jaws Bridge, when we crept to your studio the night we saw Dad—all me. I was the ringleader. And I didn’t protect her, she protected me.”
“My nerves were continually shredded,” Jenna confessed.
Mack was staring at her mother. “You went skinny dipping? Like, no clothes?”
“Yes.”
“And you jumped off the Jaws Bridge? You always tell me not to do that!”
“Which makes me a raging hypocrite, I know. My only excuse is that I have firsthand knowledge of how much trouble teenagers can get themselves into. There’s a part of your brain that doesn’t make great decisions.”
“Yeah,” Mack muttered, “I think I already found that part.”
Nancy looked stunned. “I can’t believe I got it so wrong.”
“I wasn’t exactly a saint,” Jenna said. “I was pretty accident-prone. The paint incident really was me.”
“And the goat,” Lauren said.
Jenna frowned. “The goat was you. You felt sorry for it. You thought it should be liberated from that post where it was tethered all day.”
Mack choked. “The story about the sisters and the goat is true? I thought it was made-up?”
“I thought it was made-up, too.” Nancy shook her head. “I can’t believe I didn’t know this about my own daughter.”
“Mothers never know everything about their daughters,” Mack said kindly. “Don’t beat yourself up, Grams. And there are some things you’re better off not knowing.”
Was that true?
Jenna glanced at Greg, but he wasn’t looking at her.
She had a feeling he didn’t agree.