Leaves (3 page)

Corrina turned as the door opened. A guy in his late twenties entered, looking around before settling his eyes on her.

“Hi, I'm wondering if you could help me.”

“I'll do my best.”

“I remember reading in
Connecticut
magazine a few years ago that there was a fife-and-drum museum in this town. I spent all day yesterday looking for it and I couldn't find it. Is it gone?”

“It's actually a couple of towns over in Ivoryton.”

“Are you sure?”

“It's kind of my job to be sure.”

The guy smiled. “Right, I guess it would be.”

Corrina slid a map across the counter and took out a pen. “Here, I'll show you how to get there.”

A few minutes later, he was on his way, armed with three brochures for places of interest related to the American Revolution as well as the title of Corrina's favorite history of the war. As he left, a woman in two-hundred-dollar jeans and a Versace sweatshirt entered with her Brooks-Brothers-casual husband trailing behind her.

“Can you tell me where I can get a facial around here?” the woman said.

A facial? Your valet couldn't make the trip?
“There's a world-class spa in Old Saybrook that I'm sure has everything you're looking for.”

The woman nodded. “And someplace quaint and New England-y for lunch.”

Corrina knew exactly whom she was dealing with here. This couple had made the two-and-a-half hour drive from the Upper East Side to “get away” for a few days, dusting themselves with preconceived notions of these environs, but not willing to stray too far from their creature comforts. The restaurant recommendation was easy. There were any number of places in town that could provide precisely the experience they looked for. The local equivalent of a chain restaurant.

As they left, the husband pulled out his cell phone and glared at it. “Is there anyplace around here where the reception doesn't suck?” he said angrily.

“Sorry, sir. The Town Council has repeatedly fought the construction of a microwave tower in Oldham.”

He shook his head and turned toward his wife. “Someone should tell these people what century we're in.” The woman shrugged as they exited.

“You're welcome,” Corrina said once the door was closed. It wasn't that she'd never heard the complaint before – dozens of times from Gardner, in fact – but she was just so much less willing to hear it from someone who didn't have the faintest notion why the Town Council might take that position.

The next fifteen minutes were surprisingly quiet, and Corrina pulled out her notebook and started compiling lists. Since Tyler left the dinner last night before they got all the details down, she was going to have to call him. She wasn't particularly fond of talking to him these days, and he also seemed so easily distracted that he could very well screw things up. She could of course get the decorations herself if she had to, but she didn't want him to drop it on her at the last minute.

When the door opened again, Corrina quickly closed the notebook, realizing it wasn't necessary when she looked up to see Etta Hawkins. Etta had been living in Oldham since she was a toddler and was one of her mother's closest friends.

“Hey, Etta.”

“Hello, dear. How's the day treating you so far?”

“Just fine, I think. We've had a bunch of people here already this morning.”

Etta took her hand and patted it softly. “It's good that they're keeping you on your toes.”

Corrina smiled. Corrina had called this woman “Aunt Etta” until she was a teenager, and she was still tempted to do so at times. “It's nice to see you.”

“And you too, dear, always. The reason I stopped by is that some of us were speculating yesterday and I figured I'd go straight to the source for the answer. Are you planning to hold the Halloween party again this year?”

For the past thirty years, the Sugar Maple Inn took no reservations for lodging on Halloween, instead opening its doors to the entire town for a huge celebration of the day, a holiday both Bethany and Joseph Gold had taken special pleasure in. The party had become one of the town's highlights of the season and was discussed with anticipation by the locals as early as August every year. With her mother's death and the pending sale of the inn, the common assumption around town had been that the tradition had ended. But Corrina wasn't ready for that, and in an increasingly rare showing of equanimity among her siblings, they'd all agreed to throw one more bash.

“Yes, we are. In fact, I was just drawing up a list of things to do for it when you came in.”

“You
are
,” Etta said with almost childlike pleasure. “I'm so glad. We all wanted it to happen just one more time. To say goodbye properly, you know? I'm sure the new owners mean well, but a corporation? It just won't be the same no matter what they do.”

Corrina cast her eyes downward. “The party is important to all of us.”

Etta reached for her hand, squeezing it tightly this time. “It's still hard for me to believe that Bethie is gone. Such a cruel disease. She would have wanted you to do this.”

“I think so, too.”

Etta held her hand for several moments longer, neither saying a word. Then Etta brightened, gave Corrina's hand one more tap, and turned toward the door.

“I have to go call Joanne and Martha. They're going to be so pleased.” Etta stopped and looked at Corrina, beaming. “I need to start thinking about my costume!”

Corrina chuckled to herself as Etta left. Then she got back to her list. If she needed any further inspiration to make this party as special as her parents had always made it, her mother's old friend had managed to provide precisely that.

We're not really going to have the parking conve
r
sation again, are we?
Maxwell Gold thought as the meeting stretched into its second hour. In the eighteen months since he'd been elected president of the Oldham Chamber of Commerce – not to mention the six years he'd been an active member of the board before that – the subject had arisen at every single meeting. Surely others in the room understood the futility of it and even the irony. But that didn't prevent the conversation from happening.

“You saw the results of the study,” Charles Holley, the owner of The Grill Room, said. “The shop owners on Hickory Avenue are losing hundreds of thousands of dollars a year because visitors can't find adequate parking during the peak season.”

“There were some serious problems with that study,” said Susannah Melvoin, owner of Oldham Printing.

“It's easy to minimize the problem if you offer your customers pickup and delivery, Susannah,” Will Champion, owner of Paperworks, the local stationery store, said. “It's a little harder for Carl or Darlene or most of the rest of us around the room to do that.”

“My shop is entirely dependent on foot traffic,” Maria Muldaur, owner of Fruits of the Kiln said. “If people can't park, they can't walk around. And if they can't walk around, they can't come into my shop.”

Maxwell could have predicted the next several exchanges. He noticed Mike Mills, Publisher of the
Oldham Post
, shaking his head and doodling on the pad in front of him. Clearly, he too understood how ridiculous this debate was.

“We can't just make more space on Hickory.”

“Yes we can. The town buys Imaginary Friend, razes it, and turns it into a municipal lot.”

“Imaginary Friend sits inside a historical building that is more than three hundred years old.”

“And three hundred years ago, the town didn't have a parking problem!”

“A municipal lot right on Hickory Avenue would be an eyesore. Should we commission a study to determine what would happen to our businesses if the town got ugly?”

It was obviously time for Maxwell to step in. He kept hoping debates such as these would occasionally lead to productive conversation, but they almost never did, and this one was going nowhere. He raised a hand to draw everyone's attention. “Listen, I know this is an important issue and I also know – as do the rest of you – that if there was an easy solution we would have come with it years ago. We're running late here. If the board will authorize it, I'll hire the Bittan Group to prepare a white paper offering alternatives.”

The motion was raised and approved. Maxwell would call Roy Bittan this afternoon and the paper would be delivered within three months – which wouldn't prevent the same debate from happening next month, but might at least shorten it a little. Maxwell stood up and went for another cup of coffee while the others filed out of the conference room.

Mike Mills came up, taking half a cranberry muffin. “No matter how many times I hear that song, it still gets my toes tapping,” he said.

Maxwell smiled. He'd met Mike when the man was a copyeditor for the paper and Maxwell interned there for a semester while a junior in high school. Even when Maxwell lived in Manhattan and worked on Wall Street, they'd stayed in touch.

“There were nine times today – I counted them – when I knew what someone was going to say before they said it,” Maxwell said wearily.

“And still the meeting ran over by fifteen minutes.”

“I need to make some changes to the way we do things here.”

“Yeah, good luck with that. Listen, I have a great tidbit for you.” Mike looked toward the door, which caused Maxwell to look in the same direction. If Mike was checking to make sure the coast was clear, he had something intriguing to say. “It looks like our paper is about to sweep the mayor into a little scandal.”

Maxwell looked into Mike's eyes skeptically. Mike was clearly having fun with this. He'd been critical of the mayor since the politician had been nothing more than a local attorney. “Scandal?”

“The Water Line zoning might have taken a few shortcuts through Mayor Bruce's office.”

Maxwell laughed. “You've got to be kidding me.”

Mike held up a hand. “Now these are just allegations, mind you.” His eyes twinkled when he said it. “But the
Post
feels confident enough in its sources to go to press with it tomorrow morning.”

“Do you have a statement from Bruce?”

“He has until midnight tonight to return our calls. I'm guessing he won't.”

Maxwell shook his head. “This is incredible.”

“You're not really surprised, are you?”

“That Bruce might be involved in something shady? No. I'm just surprised he was careless enough to get caught. I mean, no offense, Mike, but you don't exactly have Woodward and Bernstein on your staff.”

“I won't convey that comment to our reporters. They'd be devastated.”

“Do you think anything is going to come of this?”

“You mean criminal charges? Unlikely. Bruce knows the law too well. He'll figure out a way around it. The allegations will still be there, though. Not the best thing for a reelection campaign.”

“Jeez, you're right. He's up for reelection next year. I didn't even think about that.”

Mike patted Maxwell on the shoulder. “Gotta think about these things.” He walked toward the door, grabbing another half of a muffin on the way. “I need to get to the paper. You'll keep this under your hat until tomorrow, right?”

“Yeah, of course.”

Maxwell speared a piece of cantaloupe before leaving the room. Stuff like this didn't happen in town very often. Mike would get front page news out of it for weeks.

When she finally opened her eyes and looked at the clock on Doug's nightstand, Maria saw it was five minutes after ten. Fifteen minutes later than yesterday.
If I keep this up, I'll be skipping lunch in a couple of weeks.
She stretched, rolled over, and slowly raised herself out of bed. She thought she remembered Doug kissing her goodbye before the sun came up. That might have been yesterday, though.

What do we think
, she wondered as she sat on the edge of the bed,
shower, brush teeth, breakfast? Breakfast, shower, brush teeth? Skip it all until a half hour before Doug comes home?
Maria made what could easily turn out to be the biggest decision of her day and headed toward the bathroom for the shower, brushing her teeth while the water heated up.

In the five weeks since Olivia had gone off to Brown University, Maria found herself utterly unmotivated for the first time she could remember. The initial few days, she was just sad at the thought that her daughter was grown and gone from the house. Then there was the day right after that when the realization she had nothing on the agenda seemed kind of liberating. Then a day of “taking time for herself” evolved into another day of the same, followed by yet another.

That this came on the heels of the most intense nine months of her life almost certainly added to her sense of displacement. All winter and spring she'd spent at least part of every day with her mother at the hospital and then at the hospice, talking to her even when Mom could no longer reply. Then the summer was spent letting Olivia go ever so slowly – drives into Manhattan or up into the mountains, excessive amounts of shopping, clam shacks and homemade pasta, movie marathons of Disney princesses, hunks-through-the-ages, and everything Susan Sarandon ever did – leading up to that last frantic week preparing for the trip to Providence. She and Doug cried most of the way back to Oldham and drank two bottles of wine that night over bad Italian takeout. In the morning, though, Doug had a stimulating, distracting job in Hartford to return to and she had decisions to make about whether to eat before showering. She had only recently turned forty, was years away from being able to expect grandchildren – “Mom, I'm not sure I'll ever want kids” was something Olivia had said far too often – and didn't have anything approaching a plan for what to do with the next phase of her life.

She toweled off, got dressed and booted up the computer while she waited for the coffee to brew. She looked out the window and noticed it was a gorgeous day.