CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“MAGGIE, HAVE YOU EVER THROWN ANYTHING AWAY?” Louisa was standing in one of the spare bedrooms on the second level of Maggie’s cottage while the old woman rested comfortably in an armchair downstairs. She’d hollered her question toward the hallway, but either Maggie hadn’t heard her or she was ignoring her.
Odds were good it was the latter.
Louisa had come over to continue the daunting project of helping Maggie go through her possessions. She showed up with lobster rolls and potato salad from Bartlett’s Farm. They ate dinner, and Maggie asked her twice if she’d seen Cody.
Both times, Louisa’s mind drifted back to earlier in the day, when she let herself be held in a pond by the man who’d won her heart all over again. The care he’d taken with her, the patience he’d shown as she’d tried and failed and tried again to conquer her fear—it had astounded her. And she couldn’t lie—feeling his hand on the small of her back, brushing up against his skin . . . it had made her positively euphoric.
She’d responded to Maggie’s question with a perfectly benign reply, but Maggie was no fool. That was how Louisa had ended up knee-deep in bank records, certificates, receipts, tax returns, and whatever else the old lady hadn’t thrown away.
She’d run from that arched, bushy eyebrow—the one that made it clear that Maggie knew there were a lot of feelings attached to Louisa’s benign response.
Besides, what was she going to say? Yes, I have seen that beautiful man. He helped me overcome my fear of water this afternoon by holding my weightless body in the pond, and yes, I might’ve taken a little longer to get over said fear because I really didn’t want the moment to end, and yes, I did go home imagining what his lips taste like now that we are both adults, and I may have even wished that one day I would find out again for myself.
No. Those were things to keep to herself.
She shoved the thoughts aside and tried to focus on the papers in her hands. She had three piles: Keep. Pitch. Ask Maggie. So far her Ask Maggie pile was the largest. There was just so much here—so much she didn’t understand.
She started in on a box marked Mail and found piles of unopened letters. Her sigh could’ve been heard on the other side of the globe. But apparently not by someone sitting in a chair at the bottom of the stairs.
She opened the envelopes and removed the contents. Letters from Louisa’s father’s office. Statements going back years. A lot of years.
She knew Maggie had been a client of her father’s. Oftentimes, when they were all together, Cody’s and Louisa’s fathers would end up around a table talking money with Maggie. Maggie wasn’t overly wealthy, not like most people Warren dealt with, but Louisa knew Maggie trusted her dad to help her take what she did have and turn it into more. Judging by the number of envelopes in this box, they’d worked together for years. Did they still? Louisa didn’t know.
She combed through the papers and put them in chronological order, and once she finished, she hoped to get a clear picture as to whether or not this could all be thrown away. Did people keep their bank statements?
But then, these weren’t just bank statements—they were records of investments. Louisa wasn’t a financial whiz like Daniel or even like her father, but she did understand at least some of what she was looking at. She sifted through page after page detailing Maggie’s profits and losses. She’d done well for several months—make that years—and then she hit some pretty substantial losses. Then a gap in the statements. Several months missing or unaccounted for, but then they picked back up again with a deposit of $52,675.
Louisa frowned. $52,675? It might not have caught her attention, but hadn’t Cody said his father’s withdrawals had been oddly numbered?
She flipped back to the previous statement and realized that a few weeks before this deposit was made, a withdrawal in the same exact amount had been made.
But why?
She scanned the page for anything out of the ordinary but found nothing. It was on the same letterhead, had the same form letter attached to it. The only things that changed were the dates and the account balance.
Louisa flipped to the next page and saw that Maggie started making money again after that, following months of losses. Each month, another profit. And then the statements stopped.
Was the account closed, or had this box simply gotten too full? She pulled another box, also marked Mail, from underneath the guest bed. She yanked the tape off and opened it up. Full of letters exactly like the ones she’d just opened.
Another epic sigh. Not that she regretted helping Maggie—she didn’t—but she did have a lot going on at the moment. The regatta. Maggie’s party. Her plan to make Cody fall in love with her. It was a full plate.
She took the statements out and began opening them, discarding the envelopes and unfolding the papers, same as she’d done before. As she did this mindless task, once again her imagination ran away from her. Back to the pond. Back to his strong arms. Back to that feeling of floating.
“Louisa?”
She spun around and found Cody standing in the doorway. She dropped some of the papers she’d been clutching. Was he real? Was she dreaming? Had he materialized out of thin air as a result of her foolish mental ramblings?
“Sorry; didn’t mean to scare you.”
Her face flushed and she tried to gather herself. “No, it’s fine. I didn’t hear the door.” How had she not heard the door? And could he tell by the look on her face she’d just gotten to the part of the daydream where they were about to start kissing?
“I let myself in. I saw Maggie through the window—she’s asleep in the chair.” His eyes widened as they drifted down to the mess she’d made.
“It’s organized chaos,” she said, looking around. “What are you doing here?”
“I talked to my mom tonight.”
She went still. “That’s good.” He probably heard the uncertainty in her voice.
He stood straight, like a man who’d been trained to do so. “Not good, actually.”
“Is she okay?”
“She’s coming for Maggie’s party.”
Louisa’s heart nearly burst. “That’s great.” She stood up, setting aside the stack of unopened mail in her hand. “That’s so great.”
“No, Lou, it’s really not great.”
Her heart deflated. “It’s not?”
“I asked you not to invite her.” He seemed to be talking through gritted teeth and trying very hard not to lose his cool.
“And I decided to ignore you.” She tried to sound sorry but avoided his eyes.
“I should’ve known.”
Louisa folded her arms across her chest. “I know you’re upset, but your mom has a right to be here. She has a right to say goodbye.”
“But that’s not why you invited her.” He took a step closer, keeping his voice low, but his anger was easily detected.
“It is too.”
“No, it’s not,” he said. “You told me as much. You’re trying to fix this. You think that if everyone comes back together, they’ll all be one happy family again.”
She could feel a flame flicker inside her. “Well, what’s so wrong with that? What’s wrong with wanting the people I love to love each other again?”