Carla Neggers - The Carriage House

She was quoting his own words back to him, one of his most stubborn, most old-fashioned convictions that if a woman bought property, it meant she was giving up on having a man in her life. It was one thing to buy a house if she were widowed or divorced-but single? Never married? It was tossing in the towel, he'd told her at least a hundred times.

"Giving up? Nah. Not after meeting that Thorne guy."

Tess groaned. "Pop, if I decide to keep the carriage house, it won't be because of who lives next door."

He sighed, watching two gulls careen toward the shallow water before he replied. "Listen to me, Tess. You don't want to end up like me, all alone, or like Davey, with a couple of ex-wives hounding him for money all the time. Getting a place of your own- yeah, it's like saying you give up, you don't care if you find someone." He added frankly, "Men can sense that, you know."

"They cannot."

"Mark my words." He grabbed up a clamshell and flung it into the surf. "It's that last little prick you went out with. He threw you off."

"He didn't throw me off. He was a jerk. He'd check the stock market when we had lunch. No more investment bankers for me."

She smiled, well aware she wouldn't change how her father thought about relationships, or about her. But there was more to his concern than an old-fash-ioned outlook on women and marriage, only they'd always avoided going that deep. It was too painful, not just for her, but for him, too. She was terrified of motherhood, terrified of dying too soon, leaving behind children who loved and needed her. Not because they couldn't go on, but because they did.

She pushed away the thought, as she always did.

Davey swung back to them, obviously sensing what she and her father had been talking about. "One day, Tess, you won't have to worry about your old man getting in your business. The two of us'll be on our walkers in the home."

"Davey Ahearn in a home?" Tess laughed. "You tell me one home in metropolitan Boston that would have you. No way. You're not moving from the neighborhood until you go to the great big plunger in the sky."

As she turned to head back, she saw Andrew out on the beach with his daughter. They were throwing a Frisbee, and Tess could hear Dolly's squeals of laughter above the surf and gulls, the hum of the wind. She imagined them thirty years from now, Dolly as a grown woman out on the beach with her father, who was still alone, who'd sacrificed so much for his daughter.

Dinner was on the back porch. Hamburgers off the grill, salad, watermelon and chocolate chip cookies from a local bakery. Tess drove over, having decided she'd head straight back to Boston after dinner. A night in familiar surroundings would clear her head. She felt less of a sense of urgency now that her father and Davey hadn't found anything in the cellar, more convinced she really had conjured up a skull last night. Or a ghost.

Harl didn't stay for dinner, instead taking his plate back to his shop, muttering that he had work to do. Dolly tugged on Tess's hand and whispered, "Harl always has work to do."

Tess laughed, knowing the feeling. "That's good, isn't it? You wouldn't want him to be bored."

"Chew-bee thinks he's a bank robber. "

"Who?"

Andrew set a plate of grilled hamburgers on the table. Function beat out charm on the back porch, but the setting on the warm May evening, the scent of lilac, grass and sea, was all the atmosphere Tess needed. He said, "Chew-bee is one of Dolly's pretend friends. She sometimes says things Dolly knows she shouldn't say."

"Harl used to be a policeman," Dolly explained to her company. "I told Chew-bee, but she doesn't listen."

Tess understood pretend friends. As father and daughter argued back and forth, she noted that Andrew never made Dolly say that Chew-bee wasn't real. He never imposed his own concrete way of thinking on her, which was one reason, Tess thought, Dolly exercised her creative imagination so freely, something first-grade teachers wouldn't necessarily appreciate. Tess liked the open way the two talked to each other. She'd never gotten along well with controlling, dictatorial men. Being opinionated was something else altogether. She knew the difference between a man with strong opinions and one who wanted to control everyone in his life.

But she didn't just notice Andrew's manner with his daughter, she also noticed how he moved, the way his eyes changed with the light, the play of muscles in his arms, every tiny scar. Part of her wanted to blame lack of sleep and the strangeness of her first weekend in Beacon-by-the-Sea for making her hyperaware of her surroundings. But another part of her knew it was more than that, wanted it to be.

They talked about renovations, winter storms, what shrubs and trees tended to do best this close to the ocean, window boxes and snakes. It was a free-ranging conversation, peppered by commentary from Dolly, who, when she was finished after dinner, insisted on dragging Tess off to see her tree house.

"It's all right," Andrew said. "I'll clean up."

It was dusk when they crossed the lawn, Dolly scooting up the rungs on the oak tree, Tess going at a more cautious pace. The tree house was made of scrap lumber, with the kind of precise construction that indicated either-or both-an architect and a furniture restorer had been involved. The ceiling height was perfect for Dolly. Tess had to duck.

Dolly showed her a Winnie-the-Pooh tea set, her cache of animal books and stuffed animals and a handheld video game that she'd left out in the rain. She also had a bright red firefighter's hat.

"This is an excellent tree house," Tess said.

She shrugged, sighing. "It needs windows."

Tess couldn't hold back a laugh. The critic. "Are you going to be an architect like your father?"

"Nope. I'm a princess."

"But princesses have to have something to do."

"Oh, I'm going to be a princess astronaut."

With that, it was back down out of the tree house and off across the lawn to show Tess her bedroom. They passed Andrew in the kitchen. "She's exhausting," he warned.

"I'm having fun," Tess said, and realized happily that she was.

Dolly skipped through a gleaming wood-floored hall and up a beautiful, carved dark wood staircase. The house was simply decorated, the den obviously recently renovated, a room across the hall, which was covered in drop cloths, clearly still in the works. Dolly's room was at the top of the stairs, and she immediately pulled down all her various crowns. Then it was her multitude of dolls and stuffed animals, and finally up onto her bed to point to a picture. "That's my mom."

Tess looked at the smiling woman in the picture, taken on a rock by the ocean. Dolly had her coppery hair, maybe the shape of her eyes. "She looks like quite a mom," Tess said.

"I dreamed about her last night."

"Did you?"

The girl nodded. "Yep," she said, matter-of-fact, and jumped down off the bed. "Do you have a daughter?"

"No, I don't have any children, but I'm not married."

"Are you going to live in the carriage house?"

"Eventually, maybe. It needs a lot of work. Right now, I live in a small apartment in Boston."

"Can I come see it?"

"Oh, I don't know. Sometime, maybe," Tess stammered, at a loss. She didn't want to give the girl false encouragement, nor insult her. This was what unnerved her about kids-she never knew what they were going to say, always had to be on her toes. But it was nice, too, stimulating in an odd way. And the idea of a six-year-old intimidated her more than the reality, at least in the form of Dolly Thorne. She quickly diverted the conversation. "I can walk to work. I like that a lot."

"I walk to school."

Dolly chatted on, zigzagging from subject to subject according to a logic all her own, until something drew her to the window. She covered her mouth and gasped dramatically, her entire body getting into the spirit. "Harl's making my window!"