The Ivy House (A Queensbay Novel) (5 page)

She tried to push away the thought of Chase Sanders laughing at her as she spent the day at Ivy House, starting to make a plan of what needed to be done. She looked down at one point at her to-do lists and saw that she had drawn his face. And not just once, but several times. She had drawn him once with his eyebrow quirked up, another one with the beginnings of a smirk, and finally one that focused on his shoulders. She sighed and drew bad-guy, villain-type mustaches on all of them, hoping it would get the thought of him out of her mind.

Halfway through the day, her creative energy had taken a turn, and Phoebe abandoned the plans and the numbered lists, grabbing her sketchpad and drawing, designs coming easily to her. She felt that her creative energy was sapped while she was trying to care for Savannah, and she had given up designing everything after the incident with CallieSue Owens. But now, on Ivy House’s stone terrace, with the light breeze ruffling her hair and the gentle lap of the waves in the background, she felt absorbed, and a plan, one that included the house and her dream, began to take shape.

Phoebe had been so caught up, she’d looked up in surprise when Lynn found her, sitting on the low stone wall, sketching the way the setting sun purpled the sky. It was just a way to capture the colors around her, the way everything seemed so bright and vibrant.

“Ready for dinner?” Lynn had asked cheerfully, and Phoebe realized she was. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast and the idea of a home-cooked meal was definitely appealing. Gathering all her stuff, she shoved it into her bag, jumped up and stretched.

“Do you ever get tired of it?” she asked Lynn as they both looked over the bluff and toward the water.

Lynn sighed. “No, not really. I know that I’ll have to move out soon and I’ll miss it, but maybe someday I’ll find my way back here.”

Phoebe had lived close to an ocean all her life, but there was something soothing and calm about this harbor, the way the bluffs were like arms encircling you in a hug, the simple beauty of lights twinkling in the windows of the houses that ringed the shore. It was comforting, she decided, as she and Lynn walked through a break in the privet hedge that separated the houses.

Phoebe was welcomed into the Masters’ home as if she’d grown up there. As promised, Mrs. Masters, who was a doctor as well, was an excellent cook. She was also a huge Savannah fan. Mrs. Masters was just as open and friendly as Lynn and the pasta fra diavolo was so good that Phoebe decided she didn’t mind supplying all the information Mrs. Masters was after.

Lynn’s father, also a doctor and chief of the local hospital, drifted off to watch a baseball game right around the time Phoebe started to give details about Savannah’s eating habits. It was after the mixed-berry pie à la mode that Lynn had to put a stop to all of her mom’s questioning and declared that she and Phoebe were going out on their own.

“These margaritas are delicious,” Phoebe said, taking a sip. She and Lynn were down in the village at a place called Augie’s. It was different from the Osprey Arms, with a younger, more fun crowd. There were a few families finishing up their dinner, but mostly it was couples and singles, groups of people at tables, some people milling about by a pool table. There was even a jukebox; someone popped in a new song, and people were starting to dance.

“It feels so good to get out,” Lynn said, her dark hair curling around her delicate face. They were leaned up against the bar, so she was swaying to the music and sipping her drink.

“It must be tough, all the hours you put in,” Phoebe said, also feeling herself starting to sway to the music. It was a nice atmosphere, totally low-key, but fun, and even though she was stuffed from Mrs. Masters’ meal, she was eyeing the potato skins someone had ordered a few chairs down.

“Well, at least there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. One more year and I’ll be a real doctor. I am so excited. It’s been a long slog. College, medical school, then residency. But it will all be worth it,” Lynn said. Phoebe thought she detected a note of wistfulness in Lynn’s voice.

“What do you think you want to do?” Phoebe asked. She had known a few doctors in Los Angeles, mostly plastic surgeons or dermatologists. Not bad people, but they were always working an angle once they found out who she was, trying to see if Savannah would be interested in endorsing them. One guy had even gone so far as to promise Phoebe some “free work” if she could get Savannah to recommend him.

“Well, my dad knows a few people who would be happy to bring me into their practice. Or I could get a job at the hospital. Since he’s the chief of staff there, it might be a little weird though, you know, like everyone would think I only got the job because of him.”

Phoebe shook her head. “In Los Angeles, it’s all about who you know. No one would think twice of using any connection they could to get ahead. My last boyfriend was an actor.” She thought briefly of Garrett and the way photographers had always seemed to be around when they went on dates. “And it turned out he was all about my connection to Savannah.”

“Sounds like you were burned by someone.” Lynn looked at her. “Come on, spill. If you tell me about yours, I will tell you about mine. Can’t be worse than someone who got turned on by ‘playing doctor.’”

“Dumped me about a week after Savannah’s funeral.”

“What?” Lynn said, her voice disbelieving. “That creep. What reason did he give you?”

“It was him, not me, you know. The same old stuff. I realized I had just about outlived my usefulness, especially since he had just gotten cast on a new show. And I had this rule: no dating actors. I thought I had learned my lesson, but Garrett was so charming, I just couldn’t resist.”

Lynn’s nose crinkled. “Do you mean Garrett McGraw, the one who’s going to be on the new medical show?”

Phoebe looked at her glass. It was almost empty. There was a group of guys, late twenties, early thirties, casually dressed. One of them tried to catch their eye. Phoebe sent a quick smile and then turned to Lynn. Somehow, a blond cutie in a fleece wasn’t doing it for her tonight, not when she had spent the afternoon drawing pictures of a dark haired, blue-eyed lurker.

Phoebe shook her head. “He’s the one. I thought he was different. We actually went to high school together and, believe you me, he was not that cute back then. So when he showed up looking all yummy and delicious, fresh off that other show, I thought I was being the shallow one, you know, giving him a second chance.”

“But let me guess, he was just using you?” Lynn said, her eyes wide and knowing.

“He wanted to impress Savannah. Turns out, he wanted her to make a few phone calls to some producers, which I guess she did. She never could resist a cute face. Or tight abs. And before I know it, he goes from having a few bit parts in a TV show to being cast as the charming yet deep doctor on the most anticipated show of the season, ‘Mercy.’” Phoebe shook her head and looked into her drink. She had managed to finish her entire margarita.

“Well, if it makes you feel better, real doctors hate those shows. Everything’s always so dramatic and over-the-top. And trust me, none of us look that good in scrubs,” Lynn said.

“Thanks, but I don’t think that makes me feel better.”

“So did you ever act?” Lynn asked.

“No way. Not for me. Let’s just say I am definitely a behind-the-scenes girl. I worked as a set designer for a while and then as a graphic designer and then a designer. Pillows, fabrics, and things. I have my own company, but I mainly do consulting work.”

“Would I have bought any of your stuff?” Lynn asked, and Phoebe could tell she was curious.

“Sort of,” Phoebe answered.

“Sounds like another story.”

Phoebe sighed. Not even tequila could make this story better. “I told a client that she had the taste of a hillbilly.”

“A client?” Lynn was puzzled.

“I was hired by a certain celebrity, one with her own cooking show, to help her develop a line of dinnerware. She and I had different ideas on what things should look like,” Phoebe said simply. The taste of that defeat was still far more bitter than what had happened with Garrett. She had gotten what she asked for when she dated an actor. But the breakup of her professional relationship had come out of left field.

It had hurt when CallieSue Owens hadn’t bowed to Phoebe’s far superior design sensibilities. And that manufacturing company, the one paying Phoebe’s fee, had chosen CallieSue’s white-trash design sensibilities over her own.

“You don’t mean CallieSue…” Lynn started to guess.

“Shh. No one is supposed to know she’s not designing it herself. But yeah, I mixed it up with a gal from Texas and guess what?”

“What?” Lynn asked.

“You really don’t want to mess with Texas,” Phoebe said.

Lynn hooted with laughter. The blond guy in the fleece was starting to make his way over to them, and Phoebe decided she didn’t care if he came over or not. Perhaps a preppy guy in fleece was just what she needed to block the thoughts of Chase out of her mind.

“Did you get another job?” Lynn asked.

“No, not at the moment. I am clientless.” Phoebe only hesitated for a moment. CallieSue Owens had made sure of that. Phoebe had underestimated the amount of pull the woman had and, now, no other celebrity would touch her. Dean, CallieSue’s agent and a friend of Phoebe’s, was trying to smooth things over, but she was pretty sure that it was a long shot.

“Then what were those sketches I saw you working on?” Lynn asked.

Phoebe hesitated. She had, in between consulting gigs, been working on her own designs, her own lines. It had been sort of a sideline, the pillows, but the designs had started to take off around Los Angeles. Someone she knew, an interior designer, had used a few in a client’s home, and that home had made it into a style magazine and Phoebe had gotten credit. She had a website, of course, and before she knew it, people were trying to order pillows from it.

So far, Phoebe had done everything through phone and email, but now that she had no other commitments, she was thinking that perhaps it was time to get serious about it, about her own line of home goods. Still, the decision was so new that it felt weird talking about it out loud. But if there was one person who would certainly not judge her, it was Lynn.But if anyone was certain not to judge her, it was Lynn.

“No, I’ve been working on a business idea. I think I was getting tired of coming up with all these great ideas and having other people take the credit for it. Quitting my job, taking care of Savannah, coming here—it all feels like maybe it’s a part of a journey, some journey to find what I really want to do with my life.” Phoebe stopped.

“Well, Queensbay is about as small and real as it gets. Not that we don’t have our little society here. There’s the Garden Club and the Yacht Club—Friday night barbeques, not to be missed…” Lynn gave a laugh. The guy in the fleece, joined by a friend in a ball cap, was edging closer.

“I guess it wouldn’t be such a bad place to try and blend in,” Phoebe said, twirling the stem of her oversized margarita glass. She realized that she was really considering the thought. Sure, Ivy House needed work to make it fit for habitation, but not that much. After the renovation, she could keep working on it while living there and running her business.

“You totally could. It would be great. And in the summer, the place really picks up. Plenty of guys with absolutely no ambition of becoming actors. You could go incognito.”

Augie’s was filling up, the energy rising. Phoebe could feel the tequila in the margarita starting to loosen her up. It would be nice to be somewhere. Put down roots, start over, far away from the too-bright sun of Los Angeles. Savannah had always said Ivy House was magical. Maybe it just needed a little love to bring the magic back.

“I could do it,” Phoebe said, emboldened by the liquor. “I can fix up Ivy House and live there. Why not? I’m twenty-eight years old, I have some money in the bank. I don’t have to be anywhere I don’t want to be.”

Lynn threw her head back and laughed. “You go girl.”

They clinked their glasses. “And here’s to dating people who have no idea who we are,” Lynn said.

“Here, here. No real names and no real professions tonight!” Phoebe agreed, already feeling the smile starting to curve up her lips.

Phoebe woke up with a throbbing headache, cursing the curtains that had been left open. Sunlight, bright and harsh, streamed into her room. The margaritas. She and Lynn had had more than a few, and then they had walked back to the Osprey Arms, after collecting more than a few phone numbers, all of which they had dumped in the trash can. Lynn had crashed on the couch in Phoebe’s room, and sometime in the morning, while Phoebe was still sleeping, had left to get ready for work.

She’d left a note, scrawled on the pad from the desk: “
Take two and call me later. Lynn
.” A packet of headache medicine was on top of the note, and Phoebe decided that she must have just been subjected to some sort of doctor humor.

She had dreamed of Ivy House last night. It had been a full, richly layered dream, startlingly vivid to her, fueled no doubt by the alcohol. But it had seemed so real, and in it, Ivy House had been perfect. Gleaming wood floors, comfortable couches, color, and light. And there had been laughter drifting through the house. This time, there had been no Savannah. In fact, everything about the dream had been modern, very present day. It had felt right.

Phoebe looked at herself in the mirror. She felt much better now and she sent a silent shout of thanks to Lynn and her medicine. Time to decide what to wear. She tried to open the windows to see what the temperature was, but the paint was so thick that they were effectively sealed shut. She tried applying some force, but that only made her head hurt, so she flopped down in the little wing chair that looked out over the docks and picked up her phone.

She checked the weather first. Another perfect spring day here on the East Coast. Jean capris, she decided, and her pink-and-white-striped Oxford shirt. A pair of canvas sneakers. She still had some cleaning to do at the house, so she’d pull her hair back in a ponytail. And she had a nice lightweight fleece in case it was cooler up there.

That decided, she glanced through her emails. She’d set an alert to go off whenever her name or Savannah’s came up on the Internet. The phone had been buzzing all morning, as more papers picked up on the sad state of Savannah’s financial affairs. Her phone buzzed with texts and calls, none of which she answered. They were from friends and colleagues asking if she was OK. It would have been nice, except she could sense the avid curiosity. They were all wondering what it felt like to be poor.

Her phone rang at that moment. She almost didn’t answer it, but the temptation was too much, and she glanced down to see who it was.

“Dean,” she said, feeling a smile form on her face. Dean was one of her closest friends, the kind of guy who was always there for her. They had met in college when Phoebe had signed on to design the sets for the theater department’s production of “Anything Goes.” Dean had been in the chorus and they’d formed an instant bond, poking fun at the self-important lead, sharing the same taste for bad action movies, and a love of ice-cream shakes.

After college, Dean had realized he couldn’t handle the amount of rejection and poverty it took to be an actor, so he had started working at a talent agency. His good looks coupled with a killer business sense had him quickly rising up the ranks. He’d been responsible for a lot of Phoebe’s more interesting and lucrative gigs, whether they were set designs or movie posters, and since he was CallieSue’s agent, it was he who had suggested they work together on CallieSue’s own line of country chic placemats, tablecloths, and other things.

Too bad CallieSue couldn’t see the chic through the forest of tackiness she lived in. But even though CallieSue was Dean’s biggest client, he had fought hard for Phoebe, so hard that Phoebe had to quit before Dean could ruin his own career trying to help hers.

“Phoebs, I saw the article, are you OK?” His voice radiated concern even over the phone. It was early on the West Coast, but she knew Dean rarely slept more than a few hours a night. He was seemingly married to his job, always dealing with clients, crises, and other issues. Phoebe knew he was angling for a big promotion.

“I’m fine. It’s nothing.” Phoebe tried to brush his concern off. He’d been a great friend for her the past few months as Savannah’s decline became apparent, checking in on her, sending over takeout, sending flowers, and even his own housekeeper when Phoebe needed help sorting through Savannah’s stuff. Still, she had come all this way so that the news from Los Angeles wouldn’t bother her, so that she could have time to think, to be herself.

“So are you really out there, in the middle of nowhere? Sure I can’t convince you to come back to the Los Angeles? Tinseltown misses you.”

Phoebe tensed. After Savannah’s death, Dean had told her that he would find a way for her to get her job back, that he could smooth things over with CallieSue, but she had resisted, asking for more time to sort things out. He hadn’t thrown a fit, but it seemed like they had come dangerously close to having a moment, to him telling her how he “really felt” that she had panicked and started talking about her need for a strawberry shake. Emotional honesty averted, they had been able to part as friends.

“Dean,” she said carefully since she didn’t want anything to change between them. She looked out at the water because she found the view, the sky blue with only a few wisps of milky white clouds, and the surface of the harbor cobalt, flecked by the tiniest of white caps, calming.

“I know, I know. You’re on a leave of absence from your life. I get it, but let me know if you get bored and want to come back. CallieSue is busy terrorizing someone else and I’m pretty sure she has forgotten about you. I wouldn’t be lying if I told you I already have some other opportunities brewing for you. Maybe another movie set, a big-name director. It can be just like old times.”

Phoebe smiled wanly into the phone. That was the problem. She hadn’t been happy with old times and always working on someone else’s vision, and Savannah’s death had only brought that into focus.

Sensing her hesitation, he hurried on. “Well, whatever it is, I’m here for you, Phoebs. You know that, right?”

Phoebe took a moment to picture Dean’s face. He was fair, blond, with green eyes and high, sculpted cheekbones. He was a good-looking man, gym-fit, with a nervous energy and driven ambition. She had seen him be both charming, with clients, and ruthless, when it came to winning a deal.

“I know that.” Phoebe closed her eyes.

All the time they had known each other, they had never managed to both be single at the same time, so the question of getting together had never come up. But now it was out there. Dean was a great guy and, unlike Garrett and a string of others she had dated, didn’t need anything from her. But she wasn’t sure that was enough.

After a few more words of support from Dean, she clicked off and leaned back again, closing her eyes, trying to soothe her troubles away. Could three-thousand miles really change her life? There was little for her in California. To focus on taking care of Savannah, she had even given up her apartment, putting most of her things in storage, and ever since she’d sold Savannah’s house, she’d been couch surfing. She had no house, no job, and perhaps no future.

Savannah’s words came unbidden to her:
We make our own destinies.
If anyone could truly believe a saying like that, it would have been Savannah, who’d been sublime at reinventing herself. From the girl next door to an ingénue to a stately matron, Savannah had played every role and then some.

Phoebe took a deep breath. Perhaps she was where she was supposed to be. She was free. For once in her life, she had no ties. She had money in the bank and a roof over her head.
Count your blessings,
Savannah’s voice whispered to Phoebe and she laughed.

Phoebe checked the email on her phone. There was only one email from a reporter asking for a comment on the state of Savannah’s affairs. She ignored it. It would be better if that story died out.

Right now, she needed to focus on her legacy and her future.