The House on Mermaid Point

Chapter One

Although she hadn’t exactly planned it, Madeline Singer had recently achieved two things that surprised her: a senior citizen discount; and the legal right to date.

Over the course of her twenty-seven-year marriage, Madeline had fulfilled many roles and been described in a variety of ways. She’d begun as a young bride, morphed quite happily into a suburban housewife, and genuinely enjoyed the years spent taking care of her husband and two children who followed. Two years ago, for a time so brief she wasn’t sure it should count, she’d become an “empty nester,” eagerly anticipating what she was sure would be a new and exciting phase of her life. That anticipation had been blotted out by the discovery that she was, in fact, a Ponzi victim; a dark thundercloud of reality that had forever changed her, her family, and her life but that had been rimmed with a silver lining of unsuspected inner strength and sense of purpose. She could now be described by two words that she’d never imagined joined together. Those words were “fifty-one” and “single.”

As oxymorons went, hers was nowhere near as clever as “jumbo shrimp,” “virtual reality,” or even “a little bit pregnant.” But it did qualify her to join AARP. And, apparently, to go out with new men.

Most of all it made Madeline more determined than ever to prove that being old enough to get a senior citizen discount didn’t mean you couldn’t start over.

It was May in the Atlanta suburbs. The azalea bushes bulged with white and fuchsia blooms as Madeline contemplated the For Sale sign now planted in the sprawling yard her children had once played in. A row of deep orange daylilies marched down a gentle slope to meet the mass of purple and red tulips that had shot up through the red clay. The deep green leaves of the magnolia trees she’d planted to celebrate Kyra’s and Andrew’s births cupped large, white, saucer-shaped blooms.

Madeline’s pollen-dappled minivan sat in the driveway, crammed to capacity for the drive down to Tampa, where she, Kyra, and her grandson, Dustin, would spend the night. The next morning they’d caravan with their partners, Avery Lawford and Deirdre Morgan, to meet Nicole Grant in the Florida Keys, where they’d spend yet another sweat-soaked summer transforming a mystery house for an unknown individual for their renovation-turned-reality-TV show, Do Over.

“Geema!” Her grandson emerged from the open garage, his mother behind him. The one-and-a-half-year-old ran to her, his chubby arms outstretched. Madeline lifted him into her arms and rubbed her nose against his. His golden skin was soft and warm. His dark lashes were long enough to brush against her cheek in a butterfly kiss.

“Dustin!” She planted a kiss on his forehead and hugged him to her chest. When her daughter had been fired from her first feature film for sleeping with its star, Malcolm Dyer and his Ponzi scheme had already plunged their family into dire financial straits. Kyra’s pregnancy had seemed just one more crisis to overcome. Until the first time she’d held Dustin in her arms.

“I can’t believe you’re selling the house,” Kyra said, looking at the sign. Her long dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Her arms were filled with camera gear. A diaper backpack dangled from one slim shoulder.

Madeline braced herself for one of Kyra’s pointed observations about just how few women Madeline’s age would have had the guts to ask for a divorce. Or toss out some new and troubling statistic about the shocking percentage of divorced women and their children who ended up living below the poverty line. As if their entire family hadn’t already hovered uncomfortably above that line for the past two years. But to Madeline’s relief, Kyra kept her thoughts to herself.

The previous day, which would have been her twenty-seventh wedding anniversary, had been spent packing and de-cluttering the house so that Kelly Wittes, her ex-husband’s girlfriend, could stage it and the Realtor could start showing it. Their history as a family in it had been either stuffed into boxes or discarded. “I know. It’s hard to imagine someone else living here,” Madeline agreed. And yet, if the real estate gods were bountiful, the next time she saw their house it could belong to someone else. “But maybe a new family with young children will move into it like we did.”

Like mourners not yet ready to lay a beloved family member to rest, they observed a moment of silence. “I don’t want to picture anyone else in our house. I’m having a hard enough time trying not to think about the people who’ll be living in Bella Flora.” Kyra’s hands tightened on the camera bags as she mentioned the neglected mansion on the tip of St. Petersburg, Florida, that Madeline, Nicole, and Avery had desperately nursed back to life not once but twice. “Are you ready?”

The answer was no, not really. Even though she knew in her gut that divorce had been the best, most positive option for both her and Steve, her excitement was tinged with regret. Madeline was looking forward to going to the Keys for the first time; she couldn’t quite believe she was going as a single woman.

She followed Kyra to the van.

“I wish they’d tell us a little more about the owner of the house we’re going to renovate. I mean, ‘high-profile individual’ covers a lot of ground,” Kyra said as she loaded the camera bags into the backseat. Their first full season of Do Over, which would begin airing in just a few weeks, had been shot in South Beach, where they’d renovated a home for a former vaudevillian they’d all fallen in love with.

“Well, from what I hear, Key West is party central. If we end up down there you can hit the bars, Mom. We could go drinking together, troll for dudes.” Kyra took Dustin and began to buckle him into his car seat. “The tabloids would eat it up. And I bet our ratings would go through the roof. I’m surprised Lisa Hogan hasn’t already set it up.” Neither of them were fans of the network production head, who cared only about ratings. “Who knows, you could get your own reality TV spin-off called Cougar Crawl or something.”

Madeline looked at her daughter, who seemed unable, or unwilling, to grasp the fact that the divorce had left both of her parents happier, or at least less unhappy, people.

“Well, if I get that spin-off I’ll be sure to invite you on for a cameo appearance as the cougar’s disapproving daughter.” Madeline bit back a smile at the horror in Kyra’s wide-set gray eyes. “We’d better get on the road. I told Avery we’d be there in time for dinner.” Madeline climbed into the driver’s seat of the minivan. She averted her gaze from the For Sale sign as she backed down the drive for what might be the last time and reminded herself that the time had come to stop apologizing. Still, the last thing she wanted to think about was partying or, God help her, dating. Ending her marriage had been all about making the most of the life she had left, not the right to sashay through bars or pick up men.

Fifty-one-year-old grandmothers did not belong in the dating pool when they weren’t even sure they remembered how to swim.

Avery Lawford had what some might consider an unhealthy relationship with power tools. She’d come by it naturally, the result of a childhood spent trailing behind her father on his construction sites, a bright pink hard hat smashed down on top of unruly blond curls, a training wheels of a tool belt buckled tightly around her little-girl hips.

Before her mother ran off to Hollywood to become an interior designer to the stars, Avery went with other little girls to ballet and tap lessons, where she discovered she had no discernible natural rhythm or the slightest chance of learning to leap like a gazelle. By the time her mother left them, Avery knew how to handle the business end of a hammer and when to use a fine blade in a circular saw versus a rough cut. The whine of a band saw, not Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, was the music that moved her.

She spent most of puberty telling herself that her mother had been nothing more than a vessel who’d carried her father’s DNA. On the morning of her sixteenth birthday she’d finally conceded that her height, which was nowhere near tall enough for the size of her chest, and the blond hair, blue eyes, and Kewpie doll features that resulted in an immediate deduction of perceived IQ points and caused strangers to talk to her slowly, using really small words, were, in fact, unwelcome “parting gifts” bequeathed by the absent Deirdre Morgan.

In architectural terms Avery was a Fun House façade wrapped around Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. It was that façade that nullified her architectural degree and the years spent on her father’s construction sites and that had encouraged two television networks to try to turn her into the Vanna White of the do-it-yourself set.

Avery drew a deep breath of freshly sawn wood, shook a ton of sawdust out of her hair, and smiled. It was a heady scent, filled with new beginnings, borderline heavenly, one that conjured her father and everything she’d learned from him in a way nothing else could.

She took in the room that had been designed for Chase’s father, who’d fallen and fractured both his hip and his femur just before she and Deirdre had moved into the Hardins’ garage apartment. The newly framed walls, just-laid hardwood floor, windows stacked against one wall waiting to be shimmied into their openings. She ran a hand over the shelf of a bookcase that she’d built around the front window. The large bedroom/bath/sitting room would be warm and cozy. Most important, it would be barrier free.

“It’s looking good.” Chase Hardin, who had once been a contender for the title of most annoying man in the world, stepped up behind her, hooked a finger in the tool belt slung low on her hips, and pulled her closer.

“Yeah. The space will be perfect for your dad. He’ll be right here with you and the boys, but he’ll have his independence, too.” She turned in his arms and looked up at him. “I hate to leave before the addition’s finished.”

“I know. But it means a lot to Dad that you and I have been working on his new space together.” Chase’s father, Jeff Hardin, had been her own father’s longtime partner in the construction business they’d founded and that Chase now ran.

Chase buried his face in her hair. “Mm-mm. What’s that perfume you’re wearing?”

Avery snorted. “I believe that would be Trésor de Two-by-Four. Or perhaps zee Poison de Pine.” She tried for a French accent and failed miserably.

He nuzzled her ear. “I like it. Maybe we should bottle it.”

“Great idea. I’m sure we could sell a ton of it at Home Depot.” She laughed. “Right next to the Drano and commercial cleaning products.”

“Hey, there are a lot of men who like the smell of a woman who knows her way around a construction site.” He nuzzled her other ear. “Of course, they like her to be wearing less clothes than you have on right now.” His hands dropped down to cup her bottom. Which vibrated on contact.

“Wow,” Chase said. “That’s incredibly . . . responsive. I’m flattered.”

“Very funny,” she said, already reaching a hand toward her shorts’ pocket, which was, in fact, buzzing. “I asked Kyra to let me know when they were close.”

Pulling out her cell phone, she held it up so she could read the screen. The text read, Amset air in HaRrin funjom.

They looked at each other. “I don’t understand it. But I know who sent it.” Maddie Singer’s thumbs and her iPhone were often incompatible. She claimed she’d been a lot more comfortable with her smartphone before it got so smart.

Avery peered down at the screen again to check the time. “I was so into the bookcase, I forgot to order the pizza.” She swiped at her T-shirt. Fresh shavings sprinkled to the floor. “I know I’ve got the delivery number in here somewhere.”

Many of the meals she and Deirdre had shared with Chase, his two teenage sons, and his increasingly frail father had been delivered. Few of them had required silverware. She began to scroll through her contacts.

“I have it on speed dial,” Chase said. “But Deirdre took care of dinner.”

“Deirdre?” she asked. “Deirdre ordered pizza?” Deirdre had returned almost two years before and continued to claim that all she wanted was to be Avery’s mother. But none of her efforts to build a mother/daughter bond had included a willingness to lower her epicurean standards.

“Not exactly. I think the appetizer is a liver pâté of some kind. The main course is pompano en papillote.”

Avery groaned. “I don’t know why your dad gave her that apron and those cooking lessons for Christmas.”

“Hey, there’ve been four males living in this house for way too long for me to see a downside to a home-cooked meal of any kind. And he was smart enough not to give them to you,” Chase said.

“Ha. Deirdre always has an angle. She took mothering lessons from Maddie in Miami. Now she’s trying to become Betty Crocker. If she thinks she can turn her reappearance in my life into some kind of Brady Bunch reunion show, she’s crazy.”

“I agree that she has a lot to make up for. No one’s ready to pin the Mother of the Year medal on her chest. But she did throw herself in front of a bullet for you,” Chase pointed out.

This was still almost as hard to believe as it was to dismiss. “Well, all I know is Maddie and Kyra have been on the road for eight hours with a toddler. Greeting them with ground-up goose livers and fish cooked in a paper bag is ridiculous.” Avery hurried through the newly widened doorway and into the family room.

In the kitchen Deirdre was arranging crackers around a mound of pâté. Jeff Hardin sat at the kitchen table, his walker within easy reach. A bowl of fancy nuts and an opened bottle of red wine sat breathing on the counter.

“There.” Deirdre slid the plate of hors d’oeuvres closer to Jeff and untied her apron. She wore a periwinkle blue silk pantsuit that looked as if it had been dyed to match her eyes. She was built just as small and big-breasted as Avery, but the cut of her tunic top downplayed the D cup that dwelt beneath it. A pair of strappy sandals gave her an extra couple of inches.

Avery wore a pair of Daisy Dukes, a chopped-off Do Over T-shirt, and an ancient pair of Keds. Which just went to prove that the apple could fall far from the tree if it tried hard enough.

“Dinner’s almost ready,” Deirdre said, giving Avery the once-over. “But there’s time if you want to shower and change.”

That had been Avery’s plan until Deirdre brought it up. “I’m good. Thanks.”

With a snort of laughter Chase reached in the refrigerator and pulled out a beer. “Dad?”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

Chase handed his father a beer, then opened one for himself. He slathered pâté on a fancy cracker and popped it in his mouth. “Mm-mm.”

Deirdre beamed at him. Avery gritted her teeth and went to the pantry.

“Where are the Cheez Doodles?” she asked, scanning the shelves.

Deirdre raised an elegant eyebrow. “I believe we’re out.” She said this with a regretful tone that was no more convincing than Avery’s French accent. “But if you put them on the shopping list I’ll—”

“Forget to buy them. Again.”

“They turn everything they touch orange. There’s no telling what they do to your internal organs,” Deirdre said.

“I’m thirty-six years old. My internal organs belong to me. And you showed up on the scene way too late to influence my taste in food.”

Deirdre rubbed her arm where the bullet had gone in.

Avery rolled her eyes. “She does that every time I even think about disagreeing with her.”

“Which is pretty much all the time,” Deirdre said.

“My Cheez Doodle habit is my own business,” Avery pointed out.

“That’s true. But I think ‘habit’ is the operative word.” Deirdre’s chin jutted forward. Her hands fisted on her hips.

It was like looking in a freakin’ mirror.

There was a strangled laugh and Avery turned her attention to Jeff and Chase.

“Sorry,” Jeff said, smothering his smile. “I just never can get over how much you resemble each other when you square off like that.”

“Well, I think orange dye on a woman is kind of sexy,” Chase said. “Add a little sawdust and . . .” He managed to shrug and leer simultaneously. “I’m a goner.”

Jeff guffawed.

“Fine. Laugh all you want.” Avery settled on a bag of mini pretzels. Which was a poor substitute for the air-filled cheesiness of her favorite snack. She was munching the little twists when the doorbell rang. “I’ve got it.” She strode to the front door and pulled it open. Kyra stood on the front porch with Dustin in her arms. Maddie stood beside them. She was already hugging Maddie when she spotted movement on the sidewalk.

“Hallo, Avery!” The voice was loud. The accent British. The tone overly familiar. The tabloids had gone crazy over Kyra from the moment they’d discovered she was pregnant with Daniel Deranian’s child. It had only grown worse since Dustin was born. “Are Deirdre and Chase inside?”

The photographer was tall and lanky. A pack of paparazzi jostled one another behind him. They looked completely out of place on the modest, tree-lined street. Like a pack of wolves hunting sheep in a grocery store.

A digital flash went off. Avery fell back a step.

“Come on, Kyra, luv!” the Brit coaxed. “Just one clean shot and we’ll be on our way.”

“That’s Nigel and he’s lying,” Kyra said with a shake of her head. “Last week in Atlanta I was at a drive-through waiting for Dustin’s Happy Meal when I heard his voice on the speaker. I hesitated for just a second, because you don’t hear all that many English accents at a fast-food place and I’d already paid for our food. A whole herd of them jumped out from a bush right next to the cashier’s window.”

Another flash erupted. Avery looked up and the flash went off again. She had a brief vision of what she was—and wasn’t—wearing.

“Avery. Darlin’,” Nigel urged. “If you can just get her to turn around for . . .”

Avery grabbed Kyra’s free hand and pulled her the rest of the way into the foyer. Maddie tumbled in after her. Avery shoved the door closed behind them.

“I’m so sorry,” Kyra said. “I don’t even know where they came from. I didn’t see anybody tailing us down from Atlanta. Although there was this really homely woman wearing what looked like size-thirteen shoes in the stall next to me at the rest stop.” Kyra sighed. “That’s how bad it’s gotten. I’ve been reduced to checking out feet in stalls! But I thought we were safe. I didn’t even think about wearing a disguise. Plus there was no way I was making an eight-hour drive in a burqa.”

Dustin rubbed his eye sleepily. One side of his face showed signs of contact with what must have been a corduroy car seat. His dark curls looked smashed from sleep.

Chase and Deirdre came into the foyer. Maddie set down their overnight bags. “I need to get Dustin’s booster seat and Pack ’n Play out of the car.” She squared her shoulders and turned back to the door with all the enthusiasm of a condemned prisoner about to face the firing squad.

“I’ll get them.” Chase took the minivan keys and offered a mock salute. “Cover me! If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, send reinforcements.”

“If I had a gun I’d gladly cover you,” Kyra said. “I don’t know how to get rid of them. I just keep praying that a real celebrity will show up to distract them.” She propped Dustin up in the crook of her arm. “I mean, where are Kim Kardashian and Lindsay Lohan when you really need them?”