Daddy's Choice. Doreen Malek Owens

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      “You can tell your boss that I’m going to see my lawyer today,” Carol said regally to the first workman, passing him as she went back into the house.

      He waited until she had closed the door and then scrambled up to join the tall blond on the roof.

      “What’s going on, Tay?” he asked his boss. “That little lady is pretty upset.”

      “Mother Superior is trying to expel us, but we’re staying,” Tay said lightly.

      “What?” the workman said, bewildered.

      “I contracted with her old man and now that he’s dead and she’s inherited the place, she wants to cancel the deal.”

      “Can she?”

      “Not without a hassle, Mike. The last time this happened to me, when old Hendrickson died, I won, and his kids had to let me finish the addition to his house. So I’m going to continue unless I get some legal papers that tell me I can’t.”

      Mike shrugged and walked off, delivering himself of a parting comment. “Hey, Tay, you should schedule an eye exam as soon as possible.”

      “What’s that?” Tay said, glancing up at him.

      “If that stacked brunette looks like a nun to you, I think you need a pair of glasses.”

      Tay smiled faintly and went back to nailing a shingle into place.

      

      Carol returned to the bedroom, stripped off her nightclothes, and took a bracing shower. Then, still wrapped in a towel, she dialed her father’s lawyer in Avalon and got his voice mail. She explained the situation and asked for him to call her back. Then she made coffee and tried to endure the din surrounding her, closing her eyes when something crashed from the roof to the ground outside the kitchen window. She retreated into the living room with her cup of coffee and waited for the phone to ring.

      Contracts law was not her specialty, but her memory of the few courses she had taken made her fairly certain that she could force Kirkland to stop work. She was just annoyed that she would have to spend precious studying time getting rid of this intractable man and his crew of industrious noisemakers.

      Carol sighed and took a sip of her drink. She had decided to spend the summer in Strathmere, a small New Jersey shore town, because it was quiet and out of the way, the perfect place to study. She had finished law school in May. Her father had seen her graduate and then died two weeks later, leaving her this house, where she had spent her childhood summers. Carol hadn’t been back to the cottage in Strathmere since she was ten, when her mother had died. There had been too many memories in the house for either remaining Lansing to enjoy staying there, so her father had rented it out during the succeeding years. Carol had no idea why he had decided to renovate it; he had been dating someone during the last year of his life and maybe he had wanted to bring Gloria to the house. Carol herself had only decided to come to Strathmere after his death, when she had remembered the town’s isolation and knew the house would be empty. She had felt that fifteen years was enough time to make the absence of her mother from the house less keenly felt, and she was right. Now only the good memories remained, and she had been looking forward to a quiet summer.

      Strathmere was located between Ocean City and Avalon on a barrier island off New Jersey’s coast. Between the island towns and the peninsula, which ended in Cape May, flowed the Intracoastal Waterway on the west and the Atlantic Ocean on the east. With its elderly clapboard houses, single main street, and dusty, unpaved alleys housing fishermen and boat mechanics, Strathmere was not a tourist attraction. It had no boardwalk or amusements like Sea Isle City or Avalon or Wildwood farther to the south. It was isolated, accessible by only one bridge and clinging to the northernmost tip of the strip island. It had one decidedly noncontinental restaurant/bar and a handful of permanent residents whose families had been living in the little town for generations. The abandoned schoolhouse just a few doors away from Carol’s cottage was two hundred years old, built by laborers with their own hands; the streets leading away from the main drag to the water were little more than pebble-strewn footpaths, just wide enough to accommodate cars. Since its location discouraged “summer people,” its population was low all year ‘round, and it was the perfect place for Carol to hole up with her books and block out the rest of the world until the ordeal of the bar exam was behind her.

      And now here she was in the midst of this sudden and infernal din, saddled with a raucous construction crew that refused to depart. That man Kirkland was certainly rude. She intended to make short work of him and his deafening little band.

      The telephone rang. Carol went into the kitchen to answer it, avoiding the bedroom extension because of the noise right above that room.

      “Hi, John,” she said in response to the greeting from her father’s lawyer, John Spencer.

      “What seems to be the problem?” John asked.

      “I described the problem on your voice mail,” Carol replied crisply. “I have this construction crew at my house and I want to get rid of them. Whatever they’re doing, I don’t want them to do it, and the boss refuses to call them off and leave.”

      “Which company is it?” John asked. Carol heard the rustle of papers in the background as he took notes.

      “Kirkland Construction.”

      “Tay Kirkland?” John asked in surprise.

      “Yes. That’s who he said he was, anyway.”

      “He’s usually pretty reasonable.”

      Carol made a disgusted sound. “Not on this occasion, I’m afraid.”

      “Well, look. I don’t know what’s going on, your father never said anything to me about renovating the cottage, and if he signed a contract, he did so without my knowledge. I’ll give Kirkland a call and see if I can resolve the situation.”

      “He’s up on my roof, if you want to talk to him,” Carol said dryly. “Do you want me to get him?”

      “He’s usually in his office after he lets his crew go at three,” John said. “I’ll talk to him then. If you want to stop by my place around five, I should have something for you.”

      “Fine,” Carol said shortly. “I’ll see you at five.”

      She hung up the phone and went to the kitchen window, gazing out at the driveway where Tay Kirkland was now standing at the mouth of his pickup truck, directing the action. The sun glinted off his blond hair and ignited the gold in his watch as he raised his arm to gesture to one of his men. Carol studied the scene for a few moments, then went back to her bedroom. She went though the clothes she had brought with her, choosing a blue sundress with a bolero jacket and a pair of sandals that would not put pressure on her injured toe.

      She would curl up in here to study and try her best to block out the noise. It was only for one day. After that the problem would be solved.

      

      The construction crew departed precisely at three, and Carol enjoyed an hour and a half of blissful silence before she got into her father’s car to make the trip to Avalon. The weather was pleasant, with a sea breeze all the way, and she left the windows open for the salt air. Her good spirits had been restored by the time she reached John Spencer’s office, which was housed in a converted СКАЧАТЬ