As I shut the front door to my home, the silence was palpable. My shoes rang out dully against polished concrete, the lights low and a bit lonely. I peeled off my jacket, snickering once more when I thought of Dick’s face when I took it off. Tattoos were commonplace in this day and age, but there’s nothing like neck ink on a girl to make a guy in a suit blink. I shouldn’t snicker; he didn’t deserve total annihilation like that. Not over appetizers. I tamped the snicker down as I passed by the wall photo of my mom on my way to kitchen. “Sorry, Ma, but come on. Berretta?”
I may have snickered once more. Just the one.
Contemplating the effects tomorrow morning of having one more bump of Scotch tonight, and deciding the hell with it, I splashed a little more into a glass and leaned back against the counter. Polished concrete, like the floor. My home had an industrial feel to it: clean, uncluttered, orderly. Steel, chrome, blacks, and shades of—you know.
Along one wall was a line of pictures, all in black frames with black mattes. Spaced exactly three inches apart (above, below, and in between) were photos of my family. Five older brothers. Mom. Dad. All of us together.
It had been interesting, growing up. By the time my parents got around to having me, they were so used to football, hockey, and baseball, that into the jerseys I went, and never even entertained the idea of a dress. I wore dresses sometimes now, but they were the skintight-over-fishnets-and-combat-boots type. Courtney Love circa 1996. Without the smeared lipstick. Or the heroin.
Growing up with five older brothers meant that everyone in town saw me as one of the “Franklin Boys.” Something that became harder to lump me into when I developed serious lumps of my own when I hit puberty, but the fact that I ran around in ball caps and sweatshirts continued the myth. Following in my brothers’ footsteps also meant that I exceled at school, particularly math and science, taking calculus in tenth grade. Franklins are good at math and science, therefore as a Franklin, I was too. The hitch in the giddy-up was that I also loved art. Drawing, painting, you name it, I loved it. There’s a symmetry to drawing, an innate sense of placement and scale that appealed to my inner math geek. But between after-school sports and advanced placement college prep classes, it was a side that I didn’t have much time to explore.
And frankly wasn’t encouraged to explore. The family business was computers, and that’s what all of us were groomed for. And I followed suit—for a while.
Next to the framed pictures of my family was the single piece of artwork in the room, the only piece that was in color. Bold splashes of bright corals, sugary pinks, soft curling puffs of white. April in Paris. I let my eyes follow the swoops and swirls of color, remembering what it felt like to spend my days in a studio in France. Heaven. A heaven that was a world and a computer software company away.
I pushed the thoughts aside, draining the rest of my Scotch and fumbling for my phone. I decided to bite the bullet and check my messages. There were at least three from my mother and two from an unknown number. Knowing that Mother just wanted to see how the date went, and not caring about messages from someone I didn’t know, I erased them all and headed for my bedroom.
Slipping out of my clothes and into a fluffy white robe, I made my way toward the only room in the house that didn’t have my monochromatic modern theme. I opened the door into rosy chaos.
Rose wallpaper, rose carpet—if there was a surface I could stick a rose onto, I did it. Gold candelabras too; I had plenty of those. White taper candles with romantic drips spilling down them—it was all there. My private escape. My romantic nirvana.
Soaker tub. Deep. Long. With a shelf overflowing with bubble bath gels, salts, pearls, and oils. Fragrances of lavender, geranium, and of course, rose. I flipped on the radio, tuned to the local classical station, and felt the evening fade away as I turned on the hot water. Pouring the rose-scented bubbles into the stream, my eyes zeroed in on the book I’d be finishing tonight. On the cover? Man. Strong. Fierce. Pecs. Woman. Beautiful. Swooning. Boobs.
Dropping the robe and all memories of Dick Weenie, I slipped into the perfumed water and let my world fade away.
I was sound asleep when my cell phone rang, jolting me out of a dream in which a giant shoe was chasing me down a water slide. I grappled across the nightstand, knocking over a stack of books and a water bottle, finally clutching my phone. “Hello?”
Static.
“Hello?”
“Hello, is this Ms. Vivian Franklin?” a man’s voice asked.
“This is Viv, yeah, who is this?” I barked, noticing the time. Who the hell called at 1:28 a.m.? “Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“I am terribly sorry for the time difference. It’s considerably earlier here in California.”
“Well, bully for all the granola eaters. Who the hell are you, and what the hell are you doing calling me in the middle of the night?”
“Ms. Franklin, I did try calling earlier in the evening. Did you not get my messages?”
“Five seconds, California, or I’m hanging up,” I growled.
“Forgive me for saying so, but you do remind me of your aunt.” He laughed a cultured laugh, and I frowned.
“My aunt?” I didn’t resemble either Aunt Gloria or Aunt Kimberly, and neither of them lived in California. Wait a minute— “Are you breathing heavy?” Ick, he was! “Dude, you picked the wrong chick for an obscene call—”
“Oh, no, Ms. Franklin. I just climbed up a rather long staircase, and I’m afraid the old ticker isn’t quite what it used to be.” After taking a deep breath, he laughed. “Obscene—the idea. Your Aunt Maude would have loved that.”
Aunt Maude. Aunt Maude? Ohhhh, Aunt Maude.
“As in my Great Aunt Maude? Maude Perkins?”
“Yes, the very one. I’m sure you’ve heard this time and again in the last few days, but let me please extend to you my condolences.”
“Condolences?”
“Yes, of course, on your aunt’s passing. My firm represented her for decades, and I’d gotten to be quite fond of her in the last few years. What a remarkable woman.”
Great Aunt Maude was . . . well . . . in need of condolences?
“Okay, California, start from the beginning, including your name and why in the world you’d be calling me in the middle of the night about a woman I barely know and haven’t seen in fifteen years. And who by the way, I didn’t even know had . . . well . . . passed.”
“Oh my! You didn’t know? Well, this is all a bit strange then, isn’t it? I’m so very sorry, Ms. Franklin. Let me introduce myself. My name is Gerald Montgomery, your aunt’s attorney and executor of her will.”
I switched the light on, climbed out of bed to grab a pad of paper, then got back in bed.
“Okay, Mr. Montgomery, you’ve got my attention. Now tell me everything, including how in the world she died without even one person in my family knowing about it.”
“Well, Ms. Franklin, she was, as you are aware, quite eccentric,” he began with a chuckle.
Thirty minutes later I set the phone down, utterly numb and confused. I looked back down over the notes I’d scribbled on the pages.
? passed away with no one but me named in her will
? house and ranch and all worldly goods . . . to me?
? Mendocino. As in California!
I looked at the clock, my mind whirling. It was too late to call my parents. I’d have to call them in the morning. I could barely process all of this. Crazy Aunt Maude. I hadn’t seen her since I was twelve, spending the summer out west with her in her old house.
The old house on a cliff above the beach. Oh my God—the beach house.
I flew out of my bedroom, down the stairs, and toward the bookcase in the living room. I grabbed an old family photo album, filled with Polaroids from family vacations and holidays from when I was kid. Flipping through the pages quickly, I found the ones I was looking for.
I spent one summer in Mendocino, one magical summer with my family and Aunt Maude. It was so long ago I’d almost forgotten it. I closed my eyes, remembering the feel of sun on my skin, salt in the air, and sand between my toes. I opened my eyes and stared down at the picture of the Victorian home overlooking the raging Pacific. Named “Seaside Cottage,” it was anything but. Turrets. Widow’s walk. Porch for days. Wide plank floors rubbed smooth from years of bare feet running across it. Kitchen garden. Attic, filled to bursting with trunks and old dress mannequins. It was like little girl wonderland.
And I’d inherited it?
And the ranch! Christ, how could I have forgotten the ranch that was adjacent to the picture-perfect house? Acres and acres of fertile California land, dotted with sheep, chickens, and the occasional milk cow. And horses. How could I have forgotten the horses? And the quaint old barn where . . . wait a minute . . . horses need tending to. Usually by a . . . cowboy.
A mysterious phone call in the middle of the night, beckoning me from my sleep. A call that awakened my mind with endless possibilities. An adventure? A new beginning? A journey across the land where a new life awaits? One with a . . . gulp . . . a cowboy? Shit. I could gulp a cowboy. Especially if I was about to be starring in my very own romance novel. But could I actually move across the country? I didn’t know a soul in California.
Wait, strike that.
I picked up the phone to call the only person I knew on the West Coast. One who shared the same sense of adventure that I once did.
It was only eleven o’clock in California. Of course, who the hell knew where he might be, knowing his job? I scrolled through my phone, looking at his name, weighing the decision about waiting to call in the morning.
Fuck it.
I called my old friend from high school, Simon Parker.