“Right.” Trey looked at the time. “Forgot.”
“I can’t fault the way she’s handling this. But I find myself annoyed with my dead friend for not reaching out to her, talking her through it, answering her questions before he died.”
“He might have down the road. He had to think he had plenty of time left.”
“Did he?”
Trey sat back. “Dad. There’s nothing that says it was anything but an accident.”
“Nothing but hindsight. The last conversations we had.” Absently, he patted the dog’s head when Mookie laid it on his knee. “I told you, he’d bring her up, ask me to be sure to convince her to come, to take over the manor. He wasn’t sad, and I never thought suicidal, but he was … absent somehow. As if he’d already left. Still, I couldn’t convince him to contact her. He’d just smile, tell me he would when the time was right.”
“Which goes back to him thinking he had that time.”
Deuce just nodded. “Ah well. You’ll keep looking after her.”
“I wouldn’t call it that. I’m betting she wouldn’t like calling it that.”
“You’re right there. Just check in on her now and then.” He cupped the dog’s face, rubbed. “Take this one. She’s thinking about getting a dog. You should send her the information for where you got this mutt right here.”
“I can do that.”
“Good. I’ll let you get back to work.”
“Dad,” Trey said as his father rose. “She strikes me as a capable, self-reliant woman.”
“Yes. And she’ll need to be.”
* * *
Sonya’s phone rang just as she pulled up to the manor. She pulled it out as she parked, held her breath as she saw Anna Doyle on the ID.
“This is Sonya. Hi, Anna.”
“I was working, so I didn’t get to the phone. Then when I did, I had to look at everything, then look at it again. And again. I love it. I love it all. You’re a genius.”
Sonya let out the breath. “That’s true, but it’s always nice to have my genius recognized.”
“I want Option One—the whole package. I love the use of color, the streamlined style that still manages to be friendly. And! How it looks on my phone!”
Sonya shook a fist in the air, as she’d hoped for Option One. “Putting you on speaker so I can get the bags out of my car.”
“Oh, I can call you back.”
“No, that’s fine.” She hauled the bags out of the back seat of her car, juggled them and the phone while she dug for the house keys. “I need all the photos and descriptions to build the shopping pages, then the shopping cart. We need to finalize your bio and so on—that list I attached—and we’re ready to—”
She broke off as something drew her eye up. As on the first day, she saw a shadow at the window. She’d have sworn the curtain moved. Then she shifted a bag, and it was gone.
“Ready to?”
“Sorry, distracted.” Just the way the light hits the window at this angle, she decided, and walked to the portico.
“Ready to launch your social media.”
“Yeah, that’s my hitch.”
“I can get it up and running, and keep it updated for you. As long as you give me those updates. But you need that presence.”
She unlocked the door, dumped the bags.
“Let’s start with the photos,” she said as she took off her coat. “And the bio.”
“I dragged my mother into my studio today to take pictures of me at the wheel, and moving a piece through to firing. She’s a really good photographer. Some of her work’s at the same shop mine is.”
“I was in that shop today. I bought one of your pots.”
“Hooray.”
“Send me the pictures.” After hanging up her coat, she went back for the bags to carry them upstairs. “We’ll start there, and I’ll finish the design for the brochure.”
When she walked into the bedroom, she caught the scent of perfume. Her new perfume, since she’d tossed out what Brandon had given her for Valentine’s Day the year before.
The bottle stood with the three decorative ones, and not beside the hand mirror.
“Sonya?”
“Sorry, I missed that.”
“Could be because I’m talking so much and so fast. Send me the contract. I’m in for the works, and I’ll get you the pictures. I’m going to ask my guy to help with the bio. He writes a lot of the publicity stuff for the hotel.”
Deliberately Sonya walked over to the dresser, moved the perfume bottle back where she wanted it. Groggy this morning, she thought. She’d been groggy.
“I’ll send it this afternoon. You should have one of your three handsome lawyers look it over. I can take care of getting your business cards printed if you want.”
“I’ve got a source through the hotel, so that’s no problem. This is all better and easier than I expected, Sonya. And a whole lot faster. I really do love everything.”
“You’ll love it more when it’s fully built. Send me the pictures you have. We’ll need one of the piece you made today when it’s finished.”
“Sometime tomorrow for that, but I’ll send the rest. Talk soon.”
“Talk soon.”
After a quick happy dance, she unwrapped the bowl she wanted for the table on the second floor of the library, the candle she’d bought for the bathroom counter.
She pulled out one of the books, set it and a bookmark on the nightstand. After draping on the scarf to put away downstairs, she took the other books and the bowl into the library.
Rather than put the books on a shelf, she put them on a table by the sofa, and since she’d work, laid some logs in the hearth, lit a fire.
She took the bowl up, admired the way it looked, then walked down again to get a Coke out of the kitchen.
“Stairs, lots of stairs in this place. I probably don’t need to try the gym if I keep going up and down all these flights every day.”
The part of her that wanted to explore in what she still thought of as secret passages warred with the part that imagined getting stuck down there. Somehow.
“Maybe tomorrow. I’ll have my phone, so if I do get stuck, I can call somebody to get me unstuck. I’ll feel like an idiot, but so what?”
Plus, she needed to take a good look at what she had in storage spaces.
Over the weekend, she told herself. Just like a professional. Workweek, weekend.
“I’ll begin the going down there, going up there on Saturday.”
As she started upstairs to do that work, the music came on.
Elton John, shouted out: “It’s getting late, have you seen my mates? Ma, tell me when the boys get here.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!”
After jogging up the rest of the steps, she turned into the library. Sir Elton sang away on her iPad.
“What’s wrong with you? And that’s too damn loud.”
She lowered the volume, and shaking her head, sat.
Fine, just fine, she’d have turned on the music anyway.
First, she downloaded the photos Anna had just sent.
“Okay, yes, yes. These are very good. In fact, perfect. Exactly what I want. Nice work, Anna’s mom. So here goes.”
She brought up the contract, sent it, then went back to the photos.
As she worked on layout, she caught herself singing along with the music. “Saturday, Saturday, Satur—”