Susan Wiggs - Fireside

The intruder turned out his hands, palms up. “You must be Kimberly,” he said. “Penny talks about you all the time.”

Penny? The housebreaker had a nickname for her mother?

Kim’s heart constricted when her mother came out into the hall, an expectant look on her face. “I thought I heard voices out here—Oh.”

“If you lay a hand on either of us,” Kim warned, “I’ll hurt you, I swear, I will.” She did know self-defense, though she didn’t relish the idea of performing the moves nearly naked.

Her mother gave a laugh. “Dear, this is Mr. Carminucci.”

“Dino,” he said. “Call me Dino.”

He smiled, which made him resemble that Italian crooner, Tony Somebody. Bennett. Tony Bennett. Kim felt so disoriented she could barely say a word. Caught up in the surreal moment, she offered a halfhearted smile while trying to make sense of his presence here, in the second-story hallway of her mother’s house. He really did look a lot like Tony Bennett, right down to the warm brown eyes and iron-gray waves of hair. He was gazing at Kim’s mother as though he might burst into song at any moment. Penny. No one called her mother Penny.

“Dino is one of our guests,” her mother said easily. “You’ll meet everyone else at dinner.”

Guests? Everyone else? Kim didn’t bother hiding her confusion. “Um, it was nice to meet you, but …” She let her voice trail off and gestured vaguely toward her room. She thought about the sign on the car. Suspicion reared up in her.

“Kimberly just arrived for a nice stay,” her mother explained to the stranger. “She came in from L.A. on the red-eye.”

“Then I imagine you must be ready for a rest, Kimberley. See you later, ladies.” Whistling lightly, he headed for the stairs.

Kim grabbed her mother’s hand and pulled her back into the bedroom. “We need to talk.”

Penelope’s smile was tinged with irony. “Indeed, we do. I’ve thought the same thing for the past, oh, fifteen years.”

Ouch. Well, maybe now they would finally get the chance.

“I drew you a nice warm bubble bath,” Penelope continued. “We can have our talk while you bathe.”

Kim was too tired to do anything but surrender. Within minutes, she was in the adjoining bathroom in the deep, claw-footed tub, surrounded by a froth of lavender-scented bubbles. It felt so comforting that her eyes filled with tears. She quickly blinked them away.

Seated on a vanity stool nearby, her mother regarded her fondly. “It’s nice to have you home, Kimberly.”

“If it’s so nice to have me home, why haven’t you invited me to visit since Grandma’s funeral?” That had been two summers ago, Kim realized. It had been a time of terrible loss for Penelope, the loss of her mother coming so soon after her husband’s death.

“I always thought you’d prefer meeting in the city, or having me come out to Los Angeles. I imagined you’d find Avalon terribly boring compared to life in the big city.”

“Mom.”

“And, all right, I didn’t think you’d be supportive of my enterprise.”

“Your enterprise. The ‘guests,’ you mean.”

“Well, yes.”

“How many people are you talking about, Mom?”

“Currently, I have three visitors. Dino owns the pizza parlor in town, and he’s in the process of remodeling his home, so he’s staying temporarily. Mr. Bagwell normally goes south for the winter, but this year, he’s staying in Avalon and needed a place to live. Then there’s Daphne McDaniel—oh, she’s just delightful. I can’t wait for you to meet her. And there’s room for more. We just finished refurbishing the third-floor suite. I hope to find a guest for that one very soon.”

“Mom, what’s going on? Why do you have a bunch of strangers living here? Were you that lonely? I wish you’d said something—”

“They’re not strangers. They’re guests. Paying guests. And believe me, they are no substitute for my daughter.”

“You should’ve said something to me.” She winced with guilt as she thought of the visits with her mother in the aftermath of her father’s death. They had rendezvoused in Southern California, Manhattan, Florida. It had never occurred to Kimberly that her mother wanted her to come here. To come home.

“My life has changed a lot since your father passed away,” her mother explained.

Kim thought of Dino Carminucci. “I’d say so, Mom.”

“I obtained a business license and started this right after Labor Day.”

“This …?”

“My enterprise. Fairfield House.”

Kim’s head felt light. She wasn’t sure if it was from the hot water, exhaustion or sheer confusion. “I had a long night, Mom, so forgive me if I’m a bit slow on the uptake. Are you saying you’ve turned this place into a boardinghouse?”

“Indeed, I have.” She spoke as casually as she might have about getting her nails done. “And actually, it’s in keeping with family tradition. My great-grandfather, Jerome Fairfield, built this place with the fortune he made in textiles. At the time, it was the grandest mansion in town. Then, like so many others, he lost everything in the crash of ’29 and never quite recovered. He and his wife took in boarders. It was the only way to keep the house out of the hands of his creditors.”

Kim had never heard that bit of family history before.

“So truly,” Penelope concluded, “you could say it’s in my blood.”

Kim was speechless, taking in the news the way she would if her mother had said, “I’ve taken up bungee jumping.” Or, “I’ve become a nudist.”

When she found her voice, Kim asked, “And you were going to tell me this … when?”

“To be honest, I’ve been putting it off as long as possible. I knew you wouldn’t be pleased.”

“There’s an understatement. Taking in strangers, Mom? For money? Are you crazy?”

Her mother stood up and placed a stack of fresh towels on the vanity stool. “Say what you will, Kimberly, but I’m not the one wearing an evening gown and spike heels on a cross-country flight.”

“This is not crazy,” Kim said defensively. “This is a crisis, Mom. My own personal crisis.”

Her mother smiled. “Then you came to the right place.”

“So this boardinghouse—it’s a home for people in crisis?”

“Not by designation, no. People in transition, though. They seem to find their way here, to Fairfield House.” She spoke with a curious pride.

Kimberly studied her mother’s mild, sweet face as though regarding a stranger. Did she even know this woman anymore? Had she ever? Penelope Fairfield van Dorn had been born and raised in Avalon, and was a card-carrying member of the town’s old guard—the elite upper class, her roots going back to the days when the Roosevelts and Vanderbilts used to keep summer places in the mountains. Yet while most people grew more stuffy and more pretentious as they aged, widowhood had the opposite effect on Kim’s mother. Kim’s father had never liked this little Catskills village, even though it was his wife’s hometown. Daddy had always preferred the city, pulsing with the noise of commerce. But Mom claimed her heart had never left here, and she seemed happy enough to live in the house where she’d grown up. Even as a child, Kim had observed that her mother used to be happy here in a way that eluded her in the big city. This was the only place she’d seemed truly relaxed and at ease.

And finally, Kim came to understand why the house of her girlhood was so important to Mom and why keeping it meant everything to her.

Kim found jeans, a T-shirt and a pair of thick socks lying on the bed beside the sweatshirt. Her old—ancient—clothes were not too small for her, but the fit was different. Not quite comfortable. The clothes, however, were the least of her problems.