The House Guests Read online

  “You can ask him next time you see him.”

  “What kind of person finds and keeps that much money?”

  “The kind who thinks they need it. Or the kind who thinks they deserve it, since it was put in their path.”

  “Maybe the woman will get the money back now. Whoever found it will know where to return it.”

  “Dream on.”

  They chatted about the weather and upcoming events until Roxanne pulled to a stop in front of Cassie’s new house. Cassie had bought into a gated subdivision, Sunset Vista, on the outskirts of Tarpon Springs, although she’d really wanted something more interesting in the historic downtown, where Roxanne lived. But this house suited their needs and hadn’t needed renovation. It had also been in the right district, so that Savannah could attend Coastal Winds, a newer high school with an excellent reputation.

  The house itself was beige stucco, with a tile roof of a slightly darker hue, forest green trim and a Palladian window over the doorway. The landscaping was mature and adequate, and while she wasn’t allowed to change it, Cassie had already signed a contract to add pavers to the screened lanai that had a lap pool and outdoor kitchen. Once the job was finished, she would take her houseplants out there to preen in the sunlight, adding orchids and bromeliads to her heart’s content.

  She stripped off her scarf and handed it back to Roxanne. Then she got out of the car and hefted her carry-on from the trunk. “Thanks for the ride. Come in and say hello to Savannah.”

  Roxanne wrinkled her nose. “I’ll reserve that pleasure for another time.”

  Cassie waved goodbye as Roxanne drove away. Then she started up the sidewalk. She rapped on the door before she unlocked it and called Savannah’s name. Finally she pushed open the door.

  For a moment she thought she’d ended up in the wrong house. That possibility disappeared quickly. There at the sink, visible beyond the great room, stood her daughter, long brown hair the same cocoa brown of her father’s, hanging around her face, thin body hunched forward. And between them a house that looked as if a hurricane had swept through.

  She released the handle on her bag, along with a soft cry, and stepped across the floor littered with trash and a puddle of something sticky. One of her houseplants, a tall ficus she’d nurtured for years, a tree she had trimmed and repotted, fertilized and decorated at Christmas, was lying on the floor, the trunk split in two, limbs torn away and pot broken into multiple shards.

  She straightened and stared at her daughter. “What happened here?”

  Savannah wiped her hands on her jeans. “You’re not supposed to be here. You were coming home tomorrow!”

  “I texted you. And that doesn’t begin to answer my question. What have you done here?”

  “Jeez, what does it look like? Some kids stopped by and things got a little out of hand. That’s all.”

  Cassie advanced, which was not as easy as it should have been because she had to navigate past more ruined plants, along with food and dirt ground into area rugs. “You call this a little? Where was Dorian when all this was going on?”

  “Off with her boyfriend.”

  Cassie knew Dorian, a distant cousin’s daughter would not have let this happen if she’d been in the house. “And she never came back afterward? I bet you told her not to, didn’t you? I bet you lied to her.”

  “I’m sorry, okay? I was going to have this cleaned up before you got here.”

  “You think a little soap and water is going to make a difference?” Cassie looked around. Two wing chairs flanking the television had been upended, along with side tables. The sofa looked like somebody had poured a pot of soup on it.

  She hoped it was soup.

  Savannah rolled her eyes. “People were supposed to help me clean up.”

  “You must think I’m really stupid, Savannah. You had a party. This was not a few people dropping by. And somehow you convinced Dorian not to show up. Maybe you didn’t mean for things to get this bad, but you couldn’t control them.”

  For a moment Savannah’s sullen expression changed to surprise. Cassie supposed it had never occurred to her daughter that she had once been a teenager herself.

  “I was your age,” she said to remind her. “But you know what? I didn’t have the money this kind of party must have cost you.”

  Savannah glanced to one side as if looking for help. “Kids brought stuff. That’s all.”

  Cassie knew she was lying. Savannah was her daughter in every way that mattered. She’d raised her. She knew. “Where did you get the money?”

  “Kids brought stuff. I told you. And some of my friends had a little money stashed away.”

  “Where...did...you...get...the...money?”

  Savannah’s eyes flicked to the wastebasket at her feet, the one that usually resided under the sink. Then she looked up quickly, but Cassie had seen her expression change again. She could swear she saw guilt.

  She strode over and picked up the trash can, peering inside. “What’s in here? Did somebody bring drugs? Is that what you’re worried I might see?” She brushed aside something slimy and wet and caught a glimpse of bright green.

  For a moment she wanted to leave whatever it was in place. Maybe it was nothing. There were a lot of other things to worry about here. Savannah’s deceit. The destruction of their new home. The pain of seeing the plants she’d nurtured for years in pieces on the floor. And what else was missing or broken? What other parts of her life were left to destroy?

  She was choking back tears, and she couldn’t tell if they were from sorrow or fury. Again, as earlier in Greg’s office, she was filled with both.

  “What’s in here?” She looked up. “What am I going to find?”

  “Just junk. Trash. If it was anything, it wouldn’t be there!”

  Cassie knew from Savannah’s expression that whatever was there was more than trash. Her cheeks were a deep rose and fear shone in her eyes.

  Cassie dug her hand inside the can and pulled out a green zipper pouch. She stared at it a moment. Before she even turned it over, she knew what it was, who it had belonged to, what it had once contained. She also knew who had spent the money and how.

  “Jeannie,” she read out loud. Then, after a series of shaky, deep breaths she looked up. “Savannah, who the hell are you? Because you sure aren’t the little girl I raised, the one who routinely took spiders ten stories down in the elevator because you didn’t want them to die. You stole this money. There’s an article in the Tarpon Times about the poor woman who lost it. Did you know she was evicted because you stole her rent money? And now she’s homeless! How does that make you feel?”

  “I didn’t steal anything! I found it on the ground in a parking lot. I waited around—my friends did, too—but nobody showed up to claim it. And where was I supposed to take it? Who was I supposed to trust to take care of it? Maybe it was drug money—”

  Cassie waited until the explanation ground to a sudden halt, as if Savannah had run out of excuses midsentence or realized how ridiculous they sounded. “Or maybe you just ruined somebody’s life because you could,” Cassie said.

  “The way you ruined mine?” Savannah turned and fled down the hall.

  Cassie watched her go and wondered what Mark would have done.

  Sadly she would never know. Now and forever she was truly alone to parent a girl who hated her.

  6

  ALTHOUGH ROXANNE MADE SUGGESTIONS about where Cassie should look for Travis, finding him was anything but simple. She tried calling, but when her call went to voice mail, she hung up, because telling him about Savannah was best face-to-face. The address Roxanne gave her had turned out to be a vacant lot waiting, alongside its neighbors, to be turned into a big-box store.

  Travis seemed to exist on part-time jobs, some of this, some of that, none of it regimented. Sometimes he helped a friend who provided sponge diving to
urs, but when she checked on the docks, nobody had seen him. He wrote for the Tarpon Times, but only freelance. Somebody there thought he was working on a novel and might be tucked away at home but sensibly refused to give an address.

  Whatever he did, Travis was obviously holding body and soul together, because by the time she tracked him to his real address, Cassie was surprised to find he lived just steps from the Anclote River in a small frame cottage with two wings extending toward the water to hug the backyard. She imagined a dock just beyond that warm embrace, and perhaps a pool, or at least a spa in the center of it surrounded by a patio with a view that she envied before she even caught a glimpse.

  The house was a pale gray, with white shutters and a door several shades darker than the magenta bougainvillea on a trellis between windows. Maybe she and Travis were closer on the family tree than she thought, because colorful ceramic pots overflowing with flowering plants adorned a porch and sat under large live oaks shading the house.

  She hoped he really was writing a novel, because she couldn’t imagine a more inspirational view.

  At the front door she rapped softly, then louder when nobody stirred. She was about to add the address to her list of failures when the door opened and a man in shorts and a T-shirt appeared. A moment passed before she recognized him.

  She smiled. “Travis. You were hard to find.”

  He tilted his head, as if trying to place her. “I come and go.”

  “The last time I saw you, you had a bottle of ouzo in one hand and retsina in the other, and you were pouring both for anybody who held up a glass. Yiayia was beaming at you.”

  The pieces of a puzzle dropped into place. “Cousin Cassie. How long has it been?”

  “More than a couple of years. But that’s an easier question than how we’re actually related. I have no idea.”

  He held open the door to invite her inside, and she stepped into a hallway leading into a brightly lit room with French doors overlooking the patio she had imagined. There was a small pool right in the center and more pots adorned the paving stones.

  “This is amazing,” she said.

  “My father bought it as an investment when he was still alive. I moved in a couple of months ago, but I guess I haven’t updated the family address book.”

  Instantly she could picture Travis’s father, who had died the previous year. She hadn’t been able to get home for the funeral, and Yiayia hadn’t yet forgiven her.

  “I’m sorry he’s gone. I remember him. He and my father got into a huge fight, didn’t they? When I was in high school. At a family gathering.” She could picture that, too, and the sight of fists flying until family separated the two men. “At Yiayia’s?”

  He didn’t look sorry that she’d reminded him. “I think that fight happened somewhere else. Some kind of cousin or other, at least of mine, if not yours.”

  She felt the familiar shame that would outlast her days on earth. “He was drunk. My father, that is. I’m afraid drinking too much, too fast, wasn’t unusual for either of my parents.”

  “I do remember he could really put it away, but then so could my father. I don’t know what your father said, but it really didn’t take much for either of them to get angry.”

  Cassie appreciated the way Travis was trying to spread the blame, when it was unlikely he needed to. His father had been quiet and thoughtful, only good with his fists when he had to be. “I liked your father.” She paused. “I didn’t like mine.”

  He didn’t look surprised, because not liking George Costas was commonplace, even among family. “Your husband died recently, too, didn’t he? I’m sorry. I can’t imagine how hard that must be. I’m glad you came back to be with family. Let’s sit.”

  “It’s a complicated time.” She followed him to a sofa facing the view and took a seat beside him, refusing his offer of coffee or iced tea. Then she launched into her reason for being there.

  “I hate dumping this on you. But I have to because I don’t know who else can help me.”

  “Anything I can do.”

  “I read your story about the woman who lost the zipper pouch.” She watched him nod. “I need her name.”

  He looked surprised. “She made it clear she didn’t want to be identified.”

  “Let me back up.” She looked out at the river rippling beyond his yard and watched a double-rigged shrimp trawler heading out toward the Gulf. For a moment she wished she was sailing away with the crew. “I imagine if somebody turned in the purse filled with cash, you’d tell that person who she was.”

  “Are you about to?”

  She shook her head, and he continued. “If that happened, I would certainly tell the woman the good news and ask if I could give out her name. Although even returning the purse wouldn’t change enough. She lost her apartment, and the landlord didn’t strike me as the forgiving sort.”

  Cassie had worked out those details for herself. “I checked with my real estate agent. She said if anything could be found when snowbirds are flocking here, it would be third-rate at best, ridiculously expensive anyway and come with huge security deposits. And under the circumstances, this young woman probably missed utility payments and will have to put down large deposits for those, too.”

  “That about covers it.”

  “Does she have another place to go?” Cassie hoped the answer was yes. “A safety net of some kind?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “Did she leave town?”

  He frowned. “No, she has a job here and a son in high school.”

  The son hadn’t been part of Travis’s article. “A son...”

  “What’s this about, Cassie?”

  She was reminded of the brief eulogy she’d recited at Mark’s memorial service. Her next words were almost as hard to get out. “My daughter, Savannah, found the purse. She was with friends in a parking lot downtown, and apparently she tripped over it.”

  “Then she has it?”

  “She had it. But she and the others decided that since nobody seemed to be looking, it belonged to them. So they threw a party and spent every penny.”

  “A party?”

  She told him what had happened. The house was still a wreck. She’d hired a cleaning service, who had finished what they could, filling their van with bags of trash and a pickup with furniture that would cost more to repair than replace. But upholstery and carpets were yet to be cleaned.

  “Well, that must have been a shock,” he said.

  She wanted to defend Savannah, but the words were hard to form. “She’s been through a lot. But none of that excuses what she did. I still can’t wrap my head around it. She’s never been an easy kid, but I always knew that at heart she was a good one.”

  “And now you’re not sure.”

  “I still want to believe it.”

  Travis rearranged the pillows behind him, as if he needed the time to think. “So what do you want to do about this?”

  “I want to pay back what Savannah spent. That’s a given. I plan to pay the landlord and then see if he will let this woman move back in. I can pay everything she owed him and give him next month’s rent, too.”

  “Good luck with that. I interviewed him, or tried to. He was furious—one of those people who’s sure the world is plotting to bring him down. And he’s probably even more that way now that my story’s out there.”

  “I still have to try. That was her home.” She tried to think of a way to avoid the next part, but she couldn’t. “I can’t afford much more than that. My financial situation isn’t as good as I hoped when I left New York. I’ll do everything I can, but helping her settle back in would be the best solution, if I can work it out.”

  She made sure he was looking at her as she spoke. “You can trust me, Travis. You’ve known me since we were kids. Can you give me her name and where she’s living? I won’t tell anybody else, I
swear. I have to talk to the landlord, and then I have to talk to her.”

  “And if that doesn’t work?”

  Cassie had considered and reconsidered, but there was only one answer, and she wasn’t ready to say it out loud. “We’ll see,” she said instead.

  * * *

  The sun was close to the horizon by the time Cassie found Sunny Acre Estates, where Amber Blair and her son, Will, were now living. The campground was out of town on a rural road, clean but rustic, with RV sites so close together she was sure everybody knew every detail about their neighbors. RVs nearly as large as a city bus sat next to compact models, and more than a few sites had signs with owner’s names and colorful lanterns strung from trees. She spotted a Pilgrim banner in honor of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday and several bright pink flamingos. The air smelled pleasantly of woodsmoke.

  She doubted the tent sites were quite as friendly. She’d been pointed to the back of the grounds, far away from the small pond with signs warning of alligators and the screened pavilion where a bingo game was in progress. The caller was loud and fast, too much of both, apparently, because a woman began to protest, accompanied by the applause of other campers. She wondered if Amber and Will were in there, too, mixed in with the senior snowbirds nesting at the campground for the winter.

  Not for the first time she wished that she had insisted Savannah come with her so she could see what she’d set in motion. But surly, defiant Savannah was the last person Amber Blair and her son needed to confront at the moment.

  She followed the road until she crossed a low bridge over a creek and came to a stretch of sandy soil. Sites here were numbered but with no electrical hookups and only a faucet for water. They were farther apart than those for the RVs, but haphazardly placed, some under oak trees dripping with moss, some exposed to sun and wind with nothing but scraggly palms and palmetto. Those sites were probably vacant in the summer.

  She parked on the side of the road and got out, peering at the numbered posts as she walked past a few and waved a greeting at a friendly family sitting around a picnic table. She finally spotted number six, set back from the others and more private, although that was the only positive. The site was right at the edge of encroaching scrub with no trees and a grill that looked as if a million hamburgers had dripped grease into a million bags of charcoal over the years.