Senseless Acts of Beauty (4 page)

She’d found her runaway daughter.

S
o,” Riley said, screwing up her courage as she strode through the swinging doors to face her mother, “have you set a date for Olivia’s baby shower? I told her she could have it here in the lodge if she wanted.”

“Your sister decided to host it at the Adirondack Inn instead.” Her mother dismissed the subject with a wave of her hand. “What’s with Theresa Hendrick?”

Riley crossed to the sink where the day’s dishes awaited washing, pretending that the news about her sister’s decision didn’t pinch. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t be obtuse, Riley. That thrice-arrested classmate of yours just waltzed through the doors of Camp Kwenback. No one has laid eyes on her since she skipped town over a dozen years ago.”

“Do you blame her for leaving Pine Lake?”

“That’s not the point.”

Riley shoved the faucet on, feeling a kick of loyalty. The whole town loved to gossip about the dysfunctional Hendricks—the husband who ran off with his daughter’s own English teacher, abandoning his twelve-year-old daughter as well as an alcoholic wife. While Tess was at Camp Kwenback, it had taken weeks for Riley to gain Theresa’s confidence enough for Theresa to lower the walls she’d erected and let some of the truth slip through. Riley respected those confidences, just as she respected those boundaries.

Riley had a few of her own.

“So,” her mother persisted, tilting her head so her blunt-cut hair swung against her shoulders, “Theresa must have said something about why she’s here?”

“She told you that she’s here to visit her mother.”

“After leaving that poor woman to fend for herself all those years ago? No, I don’t believe that for a minute—”

“Then I can only assume she’s here for vacation.” Riley picked up a sponge and ran it around the inside of a mug. “A little R and R.”

“If Theresa Hendrick was looking for rest and relaxation, I can’t imagine she’d seek it in Pine Lake.” Her mother set her coffee aside and pulled out a drawer to grab a dishtowel. “Officer Rodriguez was so furious when she left that I wouldn’t be surprised to discover there was still a warrant or two out for her arrest.”

“Really, Mom?”

“Maybe that’s why she cut her hair short and dyed it blond. Maybe she really doesn’t want to be recognized.”

“Better alert the FBI.”

“Did you see the muscles in those arms?” Her mother wiped a mug dry with efficient, absent swipes. “You don’t get that kind of definition daintily perspiring in a gym.”

“I think she looks fabulous.” Nicked and scratched and battered a bit, but still in one piece. Eyes like Sadie’s, in an odd way. Like they couldn’t shake last night’s horror movie out of their minds. “And frankly, Mom, it’s none of our business what she’s doing here.”

“All right, then.” Her mother pulled a cabinet door open and clanked the dry cups inside. “If gossiping about the notorious Theresa Hendrick is off the table, then let’s talk about other business.”

A prickle of dread spidered down her spine. Riley told herself it wasn’t possible that her mother knew she was harboring a runaway who was now sleeping in Room 6.

“You’ll remember that I warned you,” her mother said, “that the Pine Lake Credit Union would pass on your loan application.”

Ah. So General Cross had heard the news. Riley could only assume that her mother had heard it while she lunched with the mayor’s wife, or enjoyed a round of golf with the bank manager, or while gossiping at a planning meeting for the next charity event for the Daughters of Pine Lake.

“I remember the warning.” Riley slipped a grilling pan on the dish rack. “But Ernie is the manager of the credit union—not you. Good proposals can change minds.”

“Good business
ideas
change minds.” Her mother wandered to the industrial range to nest a frying pan with the others in the lower drawer. “Ernie knows Camp Kwenback. He’s a businessman who’s not going to be swayed by nostalgia. I was just trying to save you some professional embarrassment. But as usual, Riley Cross plows forward.” She straightened up from the range and then tapped a manicured fingernail against a new cabinet knob. “Red knobs? Really?”

Riley ignored her. These lacquered knobs had been in the sale bin at Ray’s General Store, and Riley thought they’d be an inexpensive way to freshen up the place. Unfortunately, once she’d installed them, they just seemed to point out how scratched the maple cabinets were, how dull the countertops, how blackened the grout in the backsplash.

“So,” Riley said, “did Ernie’s wife give you any particular reason as to why they rejected my proposal?”

“Just the usual.”

“That Ernie is still as miserly as Grandpa always insisted he was?”

“Your grandfather also let guests stay free for a summer week if he liked them. Your grandfather spent most of his last ten years entertaining a hefty proportion of his guests gratis, every week from June to September.”

Riley ran a sponge along the edge of a butter knife. “If you die with your bank accounts empty, then you planned well.”

“His quote, and the very reason you’re in this fix.” Her mother returned to the sink and picked up another dish. “If he’d left the camp to any of the rest of his twenty-six heirs, we’d have had this place sold to the highest bidder and the proceeds generating interest in tax-deferred college savings accounts for the grandkids.”

Riley realized she was holding the sponge so tightly she was squeezing all the soap out of it. “Are we really going to do this again?”

“I just don’t understand why you continue to ignore common sense. You’ve seen the way this place has declined. Your grandparents resisted every step as we set up a website and tried to move into the twenty-first century. They just kept entertaining their old friends and letting the place fall to pieces.”

“Because the credit union wouldn’t give them a loan, either.”

“Because your grandparents didn’t understand that the camp needed a complete overhaul if it was going to survive.” Her mother frowned at an origami bird sitting on the windowsill. “Have you at least called that last developer whose number I gave you?”

Riley felt around the bottom of the sink, seeking more silverware.

“I wonder about this every day, Riley. Why on earth would you leave a perfectly fabulous job in one of the swankiest hotels in New York City to come here and brush spiders out of the corners of log cabins with a broom?”

“Ordering five-hundred-count Egyptian cotton sheets for a fancy city hotel didn’t fulfill my need to commune with nature.”

“According to Declan,” her mother said, waving toward the origami bird on the windowsill, “you did plenty of communing with nature running around with that odd bird-watching group in Central Park.”

Riley’s throat tightened at the sound of her husband’s name. “They were the Uptown Birders, Mother. Every year they added valuable information to a worldwide database about the migratory habits of many North American species.”

Her mother didn’t respond. Her mother didn’t need to respond because her silence said that Riley should have spent those hours with Declan in their overpriced apartment rather than with a bunch of hipster retirees peering through binoculars. Her silence suggested that had Riley paid as much attention to her marriage as she had to summer bird breeding behavior then she wouldn’t be here, separated, alone.

Riley plunged an arm into the hot, soapy water and pulled out the rubber stopper. She wished she could encapsulate why her marriage went wrong and be able to turn it around and toss it at her mother like a made-for-TV sound bite. Declan didn’t beat her or cheat on her or abuse her, the only reasons her mother could ever imagine for why Riley would leave a man who oozed such rough charm with his Irish accent and longshoreman’s shoulders. Why would she abandon a fashionable apartment on the Upper West Side and a middle-management job at the Aston Hotel that paid her a healthy salary? For the first couple of months after she’d left him, her mother had been sympathetic, patiently awaiting some clarification. A hundred times Riley had been tempted to launch into the explanation, but then she’d look into her mother’s eyes and wonder why her mother couldn’t just accept Riley’s need to raise high, thick walls around that subject.

Just this once.

Then her mother did what Riley dreaded the most. General Cross released a long, weary sigh, murmuring, “Oh, Riley,” and at the sound of that tone of voice, Riley’s back tightened like a boat rope straining in a storm. General Cross was about to launch the second phase of her attack. The first phase was always a good strafing with emotional napalm; the second a calmer and more reasoned approach that left her and her siblings feeling like they were trying to punch shadows.

Her mother balled the wet dishtowel in her hands, closing her eyes as if summoning the strength of angels. “Why do we always argue like this?”

“Because you don’t trust me to make good decisions?”

“You were like this from the moment you were born. A stubborn little redhead always shooting off in the wrong direction. And with five siblings older than you, it was easier at the time for me to give you your head. That was my weakness for loving you so much.”

Riley braced her hands on the edge of the sink and watched the water swirl down the drain. She knew her mother loved her—had
chosen
her by adoption—thus making her special, different from her mother’s five naturally born children, filling out the family to the six kids her mother had always wanted.

But when her mother spoke like this, it gave Riley flashbacks to grammar and middle school. In those days her mother would stand over her as she tried to get Riley to organize her backpack, as her mom quizzed her on what homework was due, as her mother called herself Riley’s secretary in an attempt to make up for whatever common sense and organizational skills Riley just hadn’t been born with.

More and more Riley felt like a cowbird that had been deposited in the nest of a family of phoebes. Big and ungainly as an egg, needing more care as a hatchling, and, in adulthood, gobbling up the family business that all the other nestlings had expected to share.

“Honestly,” her mother said on a sigh, “had I known what Bud and Mary had in mind, I’d have talked them out of it. They probably thought they were giving you a great gift, but the truth is that they left you an albatross. But with this latest debacle with the credit union, I’m beginning to understand.” Her mother gazed out the window over the back lawn, wrinkling her tiny nose as if she smelled the mildew of old dreams. “As I’ve stood helpless and watched you ignore good advice, spending what I suspect is your life savings to fix the roof on this building and renovate the bedrooms, all done—yes, I know—as a labor of love, I suddenly realized that for Bud and Mary, you were the perfect choice.”

Riley followed her mother’s gaze to the back lawn but what she saw in her mind’s eye was her grandparents setting the picnic tables end-to-end, friends coming off the porch to join them, using their wineglasses to anchor the tablecloths as a summer breeze fluttered off the lake. She saw her grandmother in a simple cotton dress bringing bowls of fresh corn and heaping green salads while Grandpa turned barbecue ribs on the grill, laughing while drinking root beer. Then they’d all sit, Grandma with her long, salt-and-pepper hair piled up off her neck and Grandpa with his rubber marsh boots, their guests digging in with abandon, and conversation flowing as the fireflies started to blink and the kids leaped off the bench to chase them around the green, green lawn.

And then the scene morphed before her eyes to one weekend last summer, when her high school friends had returned home for a mini-reunion. Riley had offered up the camp because she had the room to house them all, if not in the finest of conditions, and she wanted to throw one last party before she sold it to a developer a cousin had recommended. It was a lovely weekend, with Sydney cooking in this kitchen, Lu and Nicole setting the table, Claire slicing tomatoes, and Jenna tossing the salad. Jin kept up an endless monologue while Maya looked on in bemusement. They’d eaten out on the lawn just as her grandparents had, laughing and crying and talking until the wee hours of the morning. That weekend she realized what her grandparents had
really
wanted.

No sooner had the last of her friends departed before she’d cratered the development deal, hired renovators, gotten in contact with old customers, and started working on the business plan that she’d spent the last six months presenting to banks.

But there was this thing about decisions, Riley had come to know. You think the hardest part is making one—taking the wavering temperature of your heart, weighing the pros and cons, choosing an option—but you’d be wrong. Making the decision was only the first tentative step. Once made, there was no knowing where that decision would lead you.

“Listen to me.” Her mother leaned in, pinning Riley’s flitting attention. “Are you going to delay and delay until you’re so behind on taxes that the town—or the state—slaps a lien on this place? You know what happens when the government gets involved in any land situation around here. It’ll be just like Camp Abenaki—”

“Mother.” Riley threw up a hand, trying to ward off the words.

“—the whole place swallowed up by the land trust, every building torn down to the dirt, and every last dollar from the sale swallowed up by back taxes.”

Riley turned her back on her mother, like she wished she could turn away from the image in her mind, of Joe and Geri Stenton—the longtime owners of Camp Abenaki—standing stunned, watching the bulldozers knock down their eighty-year-old home.

“Closing your eyes won’t make that truth go away, Riley.” Her mother leaned back against the sink, stretching in an effort to make her meet her gaze. “You have to evaluate, like any good businesswoman, all of your options. And you have to do it while there’s still some value in the old place.”

“Let me guess.” Riley turned, tugged the dishtowel out of her mother’s hands, and dried her own hands on it. “You have the business card of one of those options.”

Her mother pushed away from the counter to zip open her purse. Riley heard a card hit the butcher-block table. “I met him at the nineteenth hole during the firefighter’s charity game last week. He said he’d still use Camp Kwenback as a resort. A different kind of a resort, but still a gathering place. He might even let you manage it.”