“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“Not at all. It’s one of the things I admire most about her. But she can be too ready to always believe the best in people. I could easily see her opening up her property to someone down on his or her luck whom she met online or through her volunteer efforts. Someone who might have an ulterior motive for staying on the property of a widow who is financially comfortable.”
Jess gave him a sidelong look that made him realize how his words could be interpreted.
“I’m not suggesting you have any ulterior motive. My mother explained all about hiring you to help her clean out the clutter in the house. She told me you come highly recommended.”
“And let me guess. You checked out my credentials.”
He debated how to answer that before deciding honesty was really his only choice.
“Guilty. And I learned she was right. Your reviews are all positive.”
“Good to know.”
“So far my apology isn’t going very well, is it?”
To his surprise, her smile widened slightly. “Don’t worry about it. You’re not the first suspicious family member I’ve had to deal with since my friend and I started Transitions. Children aren’t always happy when their parents decide it’s time to downsize.”
He frowned. Who said anything about downsizing? Eleanor had simply said she was clearing things out. Was she planning to move out?
She wouldn’t sell the house without speaking to him first. He knew that much. But she could be making all these arrangements in a roundabout way of telling him she wanted to leave Whitaker House.
No. He and his mother had a good, loving relationship. She wouldn’t keep a secret like that from him. Or at least he didn’t think so.
He decided to change the subject away from his own disquiet. “Helping people declutter seems an odd career choice for a former staff sergeant.”
She frowned. “Is that something you found in your research?”
“Indirectly. When I was looking at your company’s Facebook page, I ended up on your partner Yvette’s profile and saw an old picture of her in uniform with another soldier who was unmistakably you. I wasn’t cyberstalking, I promise.”
He really was making this worse.
To his relief, she didn’t seem upset. “Yvette and I went through basic training and were deployed together.”
“How did you decide to go into the, er, transition business.”
“We both got out at the same time, around the time her grandmother was about to enter a nursing home. I didn’t have anything else pressing to do so I agreed to help Yvette clean out her grandmother’s house. We both realized we enjoyed the process. A couple of Yvette’s older relatives asked us to help them, as well, and by the end of the summer, we realized we both had found something we love. I’m good at sifting through a house, parsing out what might hold value financially or emotionally and what can go in the bin or to Goodwill. Yvette is fantastic at marketing and design and has made connections in the resale market so our customers get the best prices for their excess items.”
“You do this full-time?”
“More than full-time, if you want the truth. We really need to think about taking on someone else to help us. We seem to have an endless waiting list of people who don’t know where to start.”
“What do you like about it?”
She looked surprised by the question, as if she had never stopped to think about it.
“This may sound silly or even grandiose but I feel like I’m making a difference, one job at a time. People have a hard time with change. If I can facilitate that a little and give them one less thing to stress about, it’s worth it.”
They had reached the sand by now.
“Can I let the dogs off the leash?” Sophie asked.
He scanned the area to make sure they wouldn’t disturb any fragile sea life. Charlie and Cinder were both well-mannered dogs and would back off on command but he didn’t like to take any chances. When he couldn’t see anything but a couple of seagulls pecking through a string of sea kelp washed up on the shore, he gestured to Sophie.
“Go ahead.”
The moment she unclipped them, both dogs raced around the sand like they were kids out at recess.
Eleanor headed straight for the bench he and his father had built a few years earlier, just above the high tide line.
“You’re not going to beachcomb with us?” Sophie asked her.
“You go ahead. I am perfectly content here, watching the sunset and the dogs. You have fun.”
His mother sat down, gazing out to sea with her head slightly bowed.
She was thinking about his father. He didn’t need to see her expression to know. Since his father’s death, he had felt closer to Jack Whitaker here by the ocean than anywhere else.
Grief was a horrible thing, sometimes a living, breathing beast constantly prowling through a person’s heart.
It was lovely to let the worries of the day go. His day had been a busy one, with multiple meetings on the various projects Whitaker Construction had a hand in right now.
Jess seemed to share his feeling as she walked beside him, looking out to sea more than she was perusing the sand for treasure.
“This is a truly lovely way to end a busy day. If this were my cove, I would be here every night. In fact, I think I would pitch a tent right there between those trees.”
He had done that when he was a kid, plenty of nights when he was tired of butting heads with his father.
In retrospect, Nate felt stupid and childish at his own obstinance, especially now that his father was gone. Jack Whitaker had not been overly controlling. He only had high expectations for Nate, as most parents did for their children.
Whether it was grades, sports, his after-school job working for their neighbor’s construction company, Nate had never felt as if his efforts were enough for his father.
They had fought most about college. His father, a tenured professor, researcher, scholar, had insisted Nate’s future would be grim if he didn’t graduate.
Nate probably would have done fine at university. There were times he regretted he didn’t have a business degree, which would still come in handy these days.
His grades had only been average, from what he now knew was a combination of attention deficit disorder and undiagnosed slight dyslexia.
At the time, he had simply felt stupid and so very ready to be done with his educational journey. While he had weighed professional surfing, the military had seemed a more sensible choice.
Nate wanted to think he and his father had managed to attain some level of peace after he and Sophie moved back. Jack had never been anything but supportive as Nate faced the challenges of single parenthood.