Chapter Seven #7
She was striking. Tall, elegant, gold hoop earrings catching the sunlight.
Her face was narrow and lightly freckled, her eyes a dark blue—almost purple.
She had neat bangs across her forehead and sleek, straight, red-auburn hair cut right to her shoulders with a perfect flip at the ends.
Very sixties. Her nails a manicured magenta, her makeup flawless.
Jane Brooks.
“Goodness gracious,” Flora mumbled. “No wonder he likes her.”
Flora was outside when Jane arrived, crouched over her bike, trying to fix a loose chain. She was quietly decrying her bad luck and bad timing.
Jane stood at the entrance of the house, looking around, confused. “Excuse me,” she called, waving her hand. “Do you work here?”
“Uh… yeah.”
Flora wasn’t about to explain that she was a worker’s daughter. Not while covered in bike grease and wearing a Lucky Ace Autobody Shop t-shirt and overalls.
“Where is Roman Woodhouse staying?” Jane asked.
“I think he’s still in the cottage near the koi pond.” Flora pointed over her own shoulder towards the green field that gave way to the pond. “Over there.”
Flora had already been there that morning to say hello.
“Perfect. Thank you!” Jane took two steps forward and backtracked. “Cool shirt. Is that Lucky Ace in Saint Helena?”
“Uh… wow, yeah. How’d you know?”
“My old car broke down there once. Do you work there?”
Flora sighed under her breath. She had no room to be upset. Especially not when covered in grease.
“Nope. The t-shirt and the grease are unrelated.”
“I was going to say, lady car mechanic is pretty cool.”
Flora smiled despite herself. “I wish. Only a bike mechanic.”
“Maybe you can fix mine. The brakes are squealing.”
“Just call me Lucky Ace Bike and Tire.”
“Ha!” Jane laughed. “You’re funny.” She glanced at her watch. “Oh shoot, I’m so late! Nice to meet you!”
And then she ran off.
Flora went back to fussing with her bike, unsure as to what went wrong while she was away to make it this difficult to fix. She was somewhat of an expert with bikes and was perplexed by her inability to solve what seemed like such a simple problem.
As she stared, a loud slam echoed across the meadow, ricocheting off the little shed she was working near. She jumped.
Finn burst out of the house, moving at light speed, scanning left and right. He looked like he was about to unravel. Not common for ultra-cool Finn Woodhouse.
Flora stayed out of view, crouched between the shed and a row of bursting lavender plants. She wasn’t making herself known. There was no reason to do so. Finn’s problems were irrelevant to her, and she had zero interest in whatever mess he was involved in.
After fiddling a bit more, the chain finally snapped back into place.
“Good grief, that took long enough,” she muttered to herself. “You’ve lost your touch, Flora.”
At Berkeley, all she’d ever done is fix her bike. She felt strangely useless knowing it had taken so long.
She swung onto it and pushed down the gravel driveway quickly. Finn—now walking somewhere—had most likely seen her, but it was of little consequence. He was likely wrapped up in some business problem.
She turned the corner by the stables and flew down Evelyn Lane’s long street, past the meadow, and down the small hill where the third pool with the steam room sat, toward the main road.
The bike was working fine.
She let out a happy whoop and threw her hands up, feeling the wind rush past her. There was nothing more freeing than cool breeze on a summer day. Especially when the breeze was carrying the scent of sweet olive tree.
“God bless this estate,” she said as she flew down the hill. “And these insane rich people!”
When she reached the bottom, she decided to keep going past the estate, down the long winding road that led to downtown Mill Valley.
She could take the bus back up—the cursed Marin County Connection.
Plus, she didn’t mind the break from the house.
She didn’t like the idea of seeing Roman and Jane together for the first time. Even if Jane did seem nice.
The bike whizzed along. When she reached the bottom, she wanted to do it all again and wished there was a ski lift to take her back and forth.
But if there was a ski lift, she’d never get a job.
She’d spend her days biking up and down the hill.
And, unfortunately, there was no career title of “Person in Charge of Biking Up and Down Palisades Hill” at the Woodhouse Estate. Not yet anyway.
Still, a ski lift might have been necessary regardless. The bus system was slow, stopping five times on its way up the hill, and rarely on time. The bus driver might have been an ancient Pharoah, banished to drive a bus in the afterlife. He moved like Sisyphus pushing the boulder.
Flora had worked as a waitress downtown from ages fifteen to sixteen and she’d often taken the County Connection to get back and forth.
She’d aged nearly ten years since then but Ausar, the bus driver, was still glued to his seat, listening to some weird radio station Flora swore was coming in from an alternate dimension.
Despite hating the bus, she’d been on it a lot in her life. She’d never had a car, even though her dad was a driver.
In high school, she either took the school bus or drove with Allison in her old beater Civic, whose bumper routinely came off mid-drive.
Nothing like rolling into school with the bumper scraping the ground and parking next to Amanda Massa’s brand-new BMW.
Allison’s car had also smelled like fermented cabbage, so they drove with the windows down—even in the rain.
Yet another reason they weren’t exactly popular.
Every now and then, she’d catch a break and her old classmate Greer would pick her up in an Audi, which had A/C and a heater. However, those rides weren’t frequent, and Greer only ever showed up when she knew Roman or Finn was around.
Flora now recalled the ill-fated Mt. Tam High junior year picnic, held at Palisades Park just down the road from the estate.
A bunch of her classmates, Greer included, had tried to follow Flora through estate gate, hoping to slip in behind her and meet Finn or Roman.
Predictably, Flora had her headphones in and hadn’t been paying any attention—too busy listening to This Charming Man by The Smiths.
She hummed her way through the gate and didn’t notice the seven girls tailing her.
So much for situational awareness.
Finn had arrived at the wrong—or right—moment, pulling in from the airport coming home for summer from Harvard. He saw the whole thing immediately and managed to stave it off. He’d climbed out of his Mercedes Roadster, custom painted in matte forest green, and assessed the situation.
“Flo—Flora!” he’d called, standing between the car and the door. “She’s got those headphones in! Probably listening to The Smiths or something.”
By then, the girls had sighted him and dissolved into giggles.
“Hey, ladies!” he called, sunglasses still on. “What’s the big idea? Shut the gate, Charlie—not on me!”
He’d been briefly swarmed by the Mt. Tam girls as Flora skipped off into the woods without a backward glance. She’d only heard about it from Charlie a day later and been mortified.
She’d also never talked to Greer again.
Flora snorted at the memory as she sat at the bus stop, buzzing from her ride and covered in a layer of dust, dirt, and bike grease. The Smiths played faintly in her ears as she thought about how na?ve she’d been back then.
A matte black Land Rover Defender pulled up.
The tinted window rolled down slowly.
“What the bloody hell are you doing?” he asked, looking at her over his sunglasses like she’d lost her mind.
Flora was wrong to assume he wasn’t looking for her earlier.
He was.
He’d paid a visit to his idiot younger brother, spotted a card from Flora on the nightstand, and nearly had a heart attack wondering how Roman had come into its possession. The conclusion confirmed his fear: Flora had been with Roman and he wasn’t keeping a close enough eye on her.
Flora blinked at him, surprised. But surprise was secondary to confusion. Something strange was brewing under the surface. For the first time in her life, she was actually happy to see Finn.
She hadn’t been happy to see him fifteen minutes ago when she left the house. Now she was. Maybe it was just because she needed a ride, but she didn’t mind the sudden change.
“I’m riding up and down the hill,” she reported. “The bus was supposed to be here five minutes ago to take me back up. However, the bus has its own time frame, which I still don’t fully understand.”
“You’re just… going up and down?” he asked, narrowing his eyes, like he was trying to confirm he’d heard her correctly.
“Yup.”
A pause followed.
“Well, do you want a ride back up?”
“Aren’t you just coming down?”
“I can drive back up. It’ll take five minutes.”
That was enough for her. Flora put her bike in the back and slid into the front seat. She was admiring the car and careful not to touch anything with her grease-covered hands.
“I’ve got bike grease all over. Do you have a towel I could sit on? I don’t want to ruin the seats.”
“It’s fine,” he said, shrugging.
“Aren’t you OCD about cleaning stuff?” she asked flatly.
Finn glanced at her, surprised she knew that. Sometimes he forgot she’d been around forever. “I am.”
“Then you should be having a panic attack right now.”
“I can get it cleaned. And… I’m trying to be better about dirt.”
Flora laughed. “He says it in such a convincing tone.”
“Hey, I’m trying!”
“Well, I’ll give you credit for trying with this car. She’s gorgeous.”
“It’s literally my baby,” he said—the sentence sounding very much like Flora.
“You named it then?”
“Marylyn. Spelled with two Ys.”
Flora smiled. “I bet it’s cool for drives. I’ve never had a car before. Ironic, considering what my dad does.”
“Dream car?” he asked.
“This, actually. When you got it, I was so jealous I thought I’d die.”