6. Declan

6

DECLAN

“I still haven’t been able to get a hold of Derek or Raquel,” Hannah informed me over the phone as I walked across the field toward the estate.

I’d just landed on Firefly Island. My brother and his wife were still MIA. They weren’t returning my calls or anyone else’s. Raquel had been posting photos of sunsets and food, but they weren’t geo-targeted, so I had no clue where they were. And the captions were vague.

Time to unplug.

Reset and relax.

Power-down mode.

It was clear that they were on some sort of vacation, or at least Raquel was. They’d just neglected to let anyone at the company know.

“Do you want me to reschedule the meeting?”

The board of directors meeting was too important to delay.

“No.”

There was no way that Derek or Raquel would’ve pulled this shit with Grandad. If they had, he wouldn’t have tolerated it. I wasn’t exactly sure what power I had as acting CEO. My grandfather’s will was not as straightforward as I would have liked, at least where the business was concerned. There were stipulations that I was not privy to, which only my grandfather’s lawyer, Harry, and I assume my grandmother was. They were both keeping those conditions to themselves.

I disconnected the call as I walked up the steps to the front of the house and noticed a car that I didn’t recognize parked in front. It was an older model silver four-door sedan with bald tires. Yesterday, I spoke to someone from the home care agency, and they assured me that Ellen was more than happy to return.

At least one of my problems was solved. I wouldn’t have to worry about my grandmother being out here on the island. She had in-home care. I was stopping by tonight to see how her first day had gone. If it ran smoothly, I wouldn’t be back until the weekend.

Before I reached for the doorknob, the front door opened. “Hello, Mr. Wolfe.”

“Dorothy, please, it’s De?—”

“Sorry, Declan, how was the flight?”

“I landed, so it was good.” I grinned. “Is Ellen with my grandmother?”

“Ellen?”

“From the agency.”

“She, um…” Dorothy looked down at her feet, then back to me. “She’s not here.”

“She’s not?”

“Where is Ellen?”

“She left this morning.”

“This morning?”

“Yes.”

“Whose car is that out front?”

“That’s Miss Thompson’s car.”

“Miss Thompson.”

“Yes.”

“Ashley Thompson?”

“Yes.”

“She’s back,” I stated the obvious.

“She was.”

“She was?” I repeated.

“Yes.”

“Where is she now?”

“Home, I presume.”

“Why is her car here?”

Again, I knew that Dorothy wasn’t being deliberately difficult even though this conversation was like pulling teeth if the teeth were superglued and cemented in someone’s mouth.

“It broke down after they returned from the pier.”

“The pier? Who went to the pier?”

“Miss Thompson and Mrs. Wolfe.”

“They went to the pier?”

“Yes.”

“Miss Thompson took my grandmother to the pier in that thing?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t Fred drive them?”

“Miss Thompson offered to drive.”

“Where is my grandmother?”

“She’s resting. Upstairs.”

“Thank you.” I walked past her to the stairs.

Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t bother my grandmother while she was in her room. But she’d not only fired Ellen, again, she’d also gotten into a death trap of a vehicle with a woman and gone down to the pier. That place was a petri dish of germs and bacteria. At ninety-two, her immune system was not what it once was.

By the time I made it to my grandmother’s room, I could feel that my blood pressure had risen. I didn’t want to snap or be disrespectful, so I paused a moment and took a deep breath before knocking on the door. After calming myself down, I lifted my hand and knocked twice.

“Come in.”

When I opened the door, I found my grandmother sitting in her chair in the corner of the room. She was looking down at her phone, smiling at a video playing on the screen.

Rufus was curled up at the head of her bed on her pillows. Grandad had to be turning over in his grave. He would never have allowed a dog in his bedroom, much less on the bed. When he saw me, he stretched out his legs, and I walked over and gave him a scratch behind his ears. As soon as I felt his soft fur and he rested his head in the palm of my hand, all the tension and frustration I’d felt drained out of me.

When the video she was watching ended, her head lifted, and her eyes met mine.

“Hello, dear.”

“Did you fire Ellen again?” I asked a question I already knew the answer to as I pulled out my sanitizer and squirted it on my hand.

“Yes, I did.”

“We agreed?—”

“I agreed that you could hire Ellen. I did not agree that you could fire Ashley.”

Technically, she was right. We hadn’t discussed me letting Ashley go. But I didn’t see the point of having two people here. “So you did this to prove a point?”

“If you are asking if I hired staff to prove a point, the answer is no. Ashley has a pivotal role in the new direction I’m taking Wolfe Clothing.”

“What direction is that exactly?” Gran had always fought to have a hand in some designs and certain lines of Wolfe Clothing. She had a title in the business, but my grandfather wanted her at home, where she “belonged.”

“We are going to design, produce, and launch a sustainable athleisure line for Wolfe Clothing.”

This was the first I heard about any sustainable athleisure line. “A sustainable athleisure line?”

“Yes, I have been telling your grandfather that I wanted to do one for years, but he never saw the benefit.”

Had she? It wouldn’t surprise me if she had. Grandfather had blinders on in business and didn’t take other people’s opinions or wishes into consideration, even his wife’s. Maybe even especially his wife’s.

“When you say that she has a pivotal role, what exactly is her position?”

“COO.”

“COO? That’s Raquel’s title.”

“Exactly.”

Wow. My grandmother had a little savage in her. I wondered if she’d told Raquel that she had been replaced or if that would be news to my sister-in-law. Either way, I had a sneaking suspicion that Ashley’s lack of experience may have worked for her and not against her. I could be reading way too much into the calculated gleam in my grandmother’s eye, but I had a sneaking suspicion that Gran had a point to prove that Raquel’s job could be done by someone with little to no qualifications.

“Is that why you went down to the pier? For the clothing line?” I asked, trying to put the puzzle pieces together of why my grandmother had driven in that car and gone to that cesspool.

“Oh no, we went down to the pier so we could film Ashley’s audition tape.”

“Audition tape for what?”

“For the television show Married by a Matchmaker . ”

I stared at my grandmother, waiting for the punchline. Surely, this was a joke.

My grandmother continued to explain, “It’s a show where a matchmaker arranges a marriage between two single people. You meet your spouse at the altar, then you move in together for three months, and at the end of twelve weeks, you decide whether or not you want to stay married.”

I was beginning to think this was not a joke.

“So, I want to make sure I’m understanding you. The woman you just hired as COO to help you launch a sustainable, eco-friendly clothing line took you to the pier so you could film her submission for a reality show where she wants to marry a total stranger. Does that not give you pause about her decision-making?”

Gran’s shoulders squared as her posture stiffened. “Not at all. I like a woman who knows what she wants and is brave enough to go after it. A risk taker. Someone who has the convictions not only to believe in true love in this cynical world but to back it up and put her heart on the line.”

“That’s one way to look at it.” Another way would be someone who is delusional, na?ve, and possibly a few cards short of a full deck. I took a deep breath. “Why is her car here?”

“It broke down when we got back.”

“Why didn’t Fred drive you?”

“She offered to drive.”

It was the same thing Dorothy had said. I wondered if the real reason Gran hadn’t wanted Fred to drive was that she was leaning into this new independence. When Grandfather was alive, Fred drove Gran everywhere. He hadn’t allowed my grandmother to get a license. I could see how that had been suffocating to her.

I wanted to tell her never to get in that car again, but I knew that she wouldn’t listen. She was going to do what she wanted. I’d have to figure out a way to make sure Gran was safe in the car and safe out here on the island without her feeling like she was being babysat.

“Have you found someone to care for the horses yet?” I asked, as genius struck me, that she might have given me the perfect excuse for extra help on the property.

“What do you mean? Fred and Dorothy?—”

“That’s too much to ask of Fred and Dorothy. The horses need to be exercised, groomed, have regular checkups, and?—”

“I can have someone come out?—”

“I’ll take care of it. Hannah knows people in the equestrian world. They can stay in the guest house. It’s better for the horses to have someone with them every day.”

“Fine.” She looked back down at her screen.

“Dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes,” Dorothy called up.

“I’m going to go wash up.”

On my way down the steps, I pulled out my phone. As soon as I was outside, I called Hannah.

“Still nothing from Derek,” she answered.

“That’s not why I’m calling. I need you to find a live-in horse caretaker for the Clydesdales who has a partner who is a qualified nurse.”

“That’s oddly specific.”

“Yes, it is.”

“She fired Ellen,” Hannah correctly guessed.

“Yes.”

“On it.”

Game. Set. Match, Gran.

I hung up the phone and knew that Hannah would take care of it. She was the only person in my life who reduced my anxiety instead of increasing it. Working with her had made my job, and since I worked at least sixty-plus hours a week, my life a much more tolerable experience. I knew that if she was handling something, it would be done, and it would be done correctly. There wasn’t anyone else who I could say that about.

After I removed my jacket and hung it over the railing of the porch, I rolled up the sleeves of my white button-down shirt as I walked down the porch steps. Up close, the tires were even worse than I’d originally thought. The tread was balder than Mr. T’s head. When I peered inside the driver’s window, I saw the key was in the ignition.

Who leaves their keys in the ignition?

I pulled my handkerchief out of my back pocket, opened the door, and popped the hood. My grandfather didn’t believe that you should pay anyone for something you could do yourself, so he taught me and my brother how to work on cars. It hadn’t stuck with Derek, but I loved working with my hands. I loved the satisfaction of fixing something that was broken.

After seeing the condition of her oil, brakes, wiper fluid, tires, spark plugs, air filter, coolant, and battery, my fears about Gran’s decision to put Ashley Thompson in an executive role in the company were becoming reality. If she ran the business the way she cared for her car, we were in serious trouble.