Chapter 8
The visitationat the funeral home is packed. There’s barely enough room to stand sipping a drink without bumping against one of the other people here to mourn the late Rodger Tripp.
Though “mourn” is far too strong a word.
Rodger wasn’t a kind or good man. He was a bully. Most of his family members weren’t sad to see him go, let alone the rest of the town. These people are here because they’re afraid not to be—the Tripps can make your life difficult if we feel you’ve disrespected our clan.
And I’m sure the free food and drink were a decent draw. Mark and the younger Tripps insisted on an open bar, and I didn’t fight them. No one wanted to face this night sober, least of all me.
I haven’t spoken to most of the Tripps in years. To say I’m not close with my family might be the understatement of the decade. I’ve forgotten several of their names, in fact, and had no idea my cousin Samantha now has four children or that Uncle Frederick’s hair implants finally took root after decades of fighting male pattern baldness.
Now, thanks to being corned by Frederick in line for the bar, I know more about hair plugs and his triumph over a bad case of gout than I ever hoped to.
Desperate for something to make the time pass more quickly, I do a lap of the room, fetching fresh drinks for the older set and holding the door for the caterer as he swaps out a keg. I help a tiny Tripp in a ridiculous little black suit clean cake off his shoe and fetch him another slice, settling him at one of the tables at the back of the room with half a dozen other sugar-smeared children.
I’m headed for the lobby afterwards, intending to hide in the bathroom and check my email for at least fifteen minutes, when Laura waylays me not far from the door.
“Oh, there you are, Weaver,” she says, her red-rimmed eyes shining in her puffy face. She pats her hairspray-sticky updo, though I haven’t seen her blond helmet shift a centimeter since I arrived. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. We should talk. Before the funeral tomorrow.”
“Of course,” I say, about to suggest we step outside when she grips my arm with surprising strength and drags me to a couch not far from Rodger’s body.
At least she elected for a closed casket. If I’d had to stare down Rodger’s pale, doughy corpse while people sipped wine and snacked on canapés all around me, I doubt I would have lasted more than five minutes.
Still, I avert my eyes from the flower laden casket as I settle beside Laura. I don’t want to think about my brother lying dead a few feet away. I didn’t love him or respect him, but he has always been there, a fixture in my life. The fact that he’s gone, forever, is…jarring.
I blame that off-kilter feeling for the fact that I don’t see Laura’s question coming before she asks it.
“It would mean so much if you’d speak at the graveside service tomorrow. I know you told Mark you’d rather not, but could you possibly reconsider? For me? And for your brother?” She dabs at her cheeks as more tears stream from her pink eyes. “It would mean so much to him. To both of us.”
She looks like a miserable rabbit and is probably the only person in the room genuinely grieving. Rodger cheated on her and treated her like a prize as much as a person—a doll he’d trapped in his mansion of a dollhouse—but he’d denied her nothing. She was his most treasured possession.
I have no idea how she’s going to function without him, but that isn’t my problem. Her misery and grief aren’t my problem, either, but I’m not as coldhearted as most people assume. I feel for her…just not enough to spew a bunch of lies at my brother’s grave.
“I can’t, Laura,” I tell her gently, but firmly. “I didn’t know Rodger well enough to deliver a eulogy with the integrity it deserves.”
“But he was your brother!”
“A brother I’ve barely spoken to in over a decade,” I say, hurrying on before she can voice the protest I can see forming on her lips. “But I could do a short reading. I have a passage by Henry Scott Holland picked out that I think Rodger would have enjoyed. It was inspired by a sermon Holland gave at the funeral of King Edward VII.”
She sniffs again and dabs at the corners of her eyes. “Well, that sounds nice.” Her lips wobble into a smile. “He was our king, after all.”
I suppress a grimace and rest a hand on her slim shoulder. “I’ll speak to the minister now and see where to slot that into the service.”
Laura reaches out, gripping my wrist as I start to rise. “Please, Weaver. Give Mark a chance to prove he can fill his father’s shoes. I know he’s young and still has so much to learn, but he loves this town and so desperately wants to make his father proud.”
A part of me wants to remind her that Rodger is dead and no one will be making him feel pride—or anything else—ever again. Instead, I force patience into my tone as I remind her, “You knew Rodger better than anyone, Laura. Do you think he would have left me in charge if he wanted it to be any other way?”
Her brow furrows and her lips wobble again—down this time—but after a moment, she gives a slow, small shake of her head.
I rest a hand on her back. “I’ll see you in the morning. Don’t wait for me here. I’ll meet you at the cemetery.”
I rise, moving as quickly as possible through the crush of people to the minister sipping coffee at a corner table. We confer briefly, decide my poem should close the section of the service featuring speeches from family members, and I duck out the back door.
Dusk is falling but the children are still running wild through the grass, screaming with laughter, providing the cover I need to ignore Aunt Wendy’s call for me to come say hello.
I have nothing to say to Aunt Wendy or any of these people. The only person I’d actually like to speak to isn’t here. I scanned the crowd a hundred times, but there was no sign of wild, sandy blond hair or clear blue eyes.
None of the Sullivans were here.
Rodger would be pissed.
Or maybe he would have relished the fact that he was able to turn an entire family against him. Rodger didn’t mind making enemies…a fact I’ve been learning the hard way. When I emerged from the trail this afternoon, one of my tires had been slashed in a way that made it pretty clear the damage was deliberate.
And now…
I scan the rental car, covered from hood to bumper in a thick, gloppy gray mess that stinks of sour cream and rotten fish, and sigh. I should have parked closer to the funeral home, but this spot farther down the street felt like a better bet for a fast getaway.
“Chowdah,” a scratchy voice says from behind me.
I turn to see a couple as old as the sea sitting in the shadows on their sagging front porch. Their home is the same faded, dark beige as their skin and the man’s shirt, but the woman’s pink sweater draws my eye to their rocking chairs. “Excuse me?” I ask.
“He said it looks like chowdah,” the woman says in a voice nearly as rough as her husband’s, thick with an old-timer’s New England brogue.
“Ayuh,” the man says with a nod of his gray head. “Smells like it, too. Wicked awful when it starts to turn.”
The woman hums in agreement. “That one’s been off for a day or two, I’d wager. Gonna need a hose.”
The husband grunts. “You can borrow ours. Look just ‘round the corner. To your left from where you’re standin’.”
I nod. “Thank you.” As I climb the steep lawn toward the house, I ask. “Did you happen to see who did this?”
“Nope,” the man says so quickly that I know it’s a lie. “Just got out a few minutes ago. Was havin’ our supper.”
“Ayuh. Just came out after supper,” the woman seconds. “Seems like a lot of work, though, if you ask me. Totin’ all that chowdah up from some restaurant down on Main. Probably a few hundred pounds of it, don’t you think, Bran?”
I can’t see the man’s face—I’m already unwinding their neatly-stored hose and turning on the water—but I hear his grunt of agreement.
“Maybe more. You’d need a big truck to carry a load like that.” As I reappear around the side of the house, he adds in a more pointed tone “If you start looking for suspects, you should start with somebody who drives a big truck.”
“Thank you,” I say with a tight smile, “but I don’t plan on being in town long enough to bother.”
It’s the woman’s turn to grunt this time. “But you ain’t from away, Weaver Tripp. You belong here as much as anyone else, no matter how things have been with your brother and father in charge.”
I look up, a little shocked that she recognized me. I haven’t been in Sea Breeze since I was a very young man.
“Condolences on your loss,” she adds, her dark eyes now barely visible in the dense shadows on the porch. “We would’ve come to give our respects, but we don’t get around the way we used to.”
“Thank you,” I say, turning on the water and directing the spray at the hood of the rental.
The hose has excellent pressure. In just a few minutes, I have most of the soup off the car and the chunky parts guided into a storm drain. I’m sure old chowder isn’t the best thing to send into the ocean a few blocks away, but it’s better than leaving the mess on the road to draw animals and stink up the street.
By the time I turn off the water, the car is fine to drive. There’s still a hazy gray cloud on the windows, but this will work until I can locate glass cleaner and a rag.
I return the hose to its holder and start back down the steep yard, intending to offer the couple payment for the use of their water. But when I reach the front of the home, they’ve vanished. The laugh track of some thirty-minute comedy echoes loudly from behind their closed doors, making it clear calling out to them would be pointless.
And unwelcome.
I know when I’ve been dismissed.
But they were kind first, a gift I’m not sure I deserve. No, I’m not my father or my brother, but I doubt they’ll like my plans for the Tripp fleet any more than the way Rodger ran things. I intend to increase pay for anyone operating under the Tripp banner, but I can’t disband the entire operation.
At least not right away. Too many families depend on things staying the way they are.
I’ve already been approached by several cousins concerned about losing their health insurance. There are sick kids and wives on the verge of giving birth to think about. And Rodger handled a lot of the red tape. He did so to keep our relatives dependent on him and continuing to cut him in on their profits without a fuss, but it will take time to educate them enough to see the benefit in taking control of those aspects of their lives themselves.
In the meantime, I’ll be expected to keep greasing politicians’ and regulators’ palms to keep them from cracking down on our monopoly.
Dismantling any system is a difficult thing, but one this deeply entrenched has the power to suck us all up in its gravitational pull. The old ways might prove too difficult to change without a certain degree of pain for everyone involved.
And without my presence in Sea Breeze…
My firm has already made it clear they’re open to me working remotely—I’m their top mergers and acquisitions advisor and would be difficult to replace—but I can’t stay here. I can already feel my hometown sinking its claws into me, doing its best to twist me back into the person I was before.
Sea Breeze will never allow me to be the man I truly am. Here, I’m an avatar, a storybook villain twirling his moustache or a prince on a stolen throne. I’m someone who inspires fear, awe, and contempt, but never just Weaver, a man who’s created his own success, his own life.
I can’t let that happen. I’ve worked too hard to put the past behind me to let the Tripp whirlpool suck me back in. I’ll have to find a way to manage the transition into a new business model from the city.
I can’t get back there fast enough. I’ve only been in Sea Breeze two days and look what a mess I’ve made. I’ve become the target of expensive adolescent pranks and developed a fascination with a woman I never should have laid a finger on.
I avert my gaze as I pass by the Sweet Pussy Cat Café, refusing to think about Gertrude Sullivan’s sweet pussy or how much I’d like to have her under me again.
Back at the dock, I fetch the materials to clean the car and take care of the mess with just enough sunset glow left to lock up the yacht for the night without turning on the deck lights. Before I go below, I pull up the gangplank, just in case. I don’t want any surprise visitors tonight, not even ones with killer curves and a plush mouth that fits perfectly against mine.
Not that I really think she’ll show up, not after her behavior today. She’s clearly horrified by our connection.
As she should be.
I destroyed her family. I didn’t intend to do so, but destruction is my superpower. Even in New York, far from the chaos of my clan, I have a knack for breaking things.
As a younger man, I chalked it up to being focused on my work, with no time to invest in romantic relationships. But as I aged, and forged connections with women I would have liked to keep in my life, longer term, it became clear there’s something not quite right about my relationship style. I’m too blunt, too reserved, and demanding, too…something for most women.
I don’t consider myself an unkind man, but I don’t understand courting games and have no wish to engage in them.
Eventually, I quit trying to find “The One” and leaned into my identity as the cool, detached billionaire who’s good for one thing. I’m the man you fuck for a month, maybe two, while you’re in between better prospects. I can be trusted to deliver multiple O’s and to pay for the car service back to your apartment and not much else.
There are no car services in Sea Breeze, only a single taxi that operates on its owner’s random, sporadic schedule. There’s very little public transportation, either. If you want out of this town, you have to drive, or wait in the pedestrian shelter by the old courthouse for hours until the bus trundles by on its undependable route.
It’s logical to feel trapped here. Most people are trapped.
But I’m not. Not anymore.
I remind myself of that the next morning as I dress for the funeral and make the drive to the cemetery, arriving just seconds before the minister asks everyone to be seated for the service.
I take my place in an empty chair beside Laura. Mark leans forward from his position on her other side to shoot me a judgmental look, but I ignore him. I’m here, in a suitably somber black suit with the poem I promised committed to memory.
I don’t owe Mark or anyone else at the funeral anything more.
Laura cries softly throughout the service, her tears reaching a fever pitch as Mark talks about what an inspiration his father was to him, but the rest of the crowd is notably unmoved. As we file past the coffin at the end of the service, dropping white roses onto my brother’s casket, I’m struck by the sudden realization that my own funeral will probably look much the same from the outside.
None of the people I work with or my friends in New York would be secretly celebrating my death the way I suspect many of my family members are celebrating Rodger’s, but there won’t be tears. Even Bella, my closest ex-girlfriend, who’s become a friend in recent years, will remain dry-eyed. She’s learned to hold me at an emotional distance. Even Bella’s abundant warmth couldn’t melt the permafrost around my heart, so she stopped giving me access to that part of her.
She’s a smart woman.
So is Sully. I realized that within a few minutes of meeting her.
So why is she waiting for me when I return to the yacht early that afternoon, after an equally uncomfortable post-funeral lunch? She leans against the ice cream shack in a striped sweater and yellow raincoat that make her look like the poster child for Sea Breeze’s famous Seafood Seasoning Salt.
And cute. She’s very fucking cute.
“Can I help you?” I ask, my voice rough from disuse. I didn’t speak much after the last line of the poem. I didn’t have anything else to say to my dead brother or the people gathered to say their goodbyes to him.
Sully pushes away from the faded wood behind her, sliding her hands into the pockets of baggy jeans that do nothing to disguise her strong legs and curvy hips. “Maybe. I have a few questions. Is now a good time? I know the funeral was this morning. I can come back later if?—”
“It’s fine,” I cut in, nodding over my shoulder. “But we should go below.”
“To talk,” she says, emphasizing the word in a way that makes her meaning clear. “Just talk.”
I incline my head. “Of course. My family will be driving this way. I doubt either of us wants to risk them seeing us chatting alone on deck.”
She nods. “Agreed. I don’t want my people to see anything, either. The quieter we keep this, the better.”
Her words give me an idea…
“Want to get out of town?” I ask. “I haven’t had the boat inspected, but Rodger’s attorney assured me it was in sea-worthy shape. We could head up the coast, dock, and grab lunch somewhere?” I barely ate anything at the post-funeral luncheon and like the idea of treating her to a nice meal.
She hesitates only a moment before she shrugs. “Sure. I’ve never steered a yacht before.”
“And you’re not steering it now,” I say as she moves past me to the gangplank.
Once I join her on deck, she pins me with a steady gaze. “Yes, I am. You’ve been in the city too long to be trusted on the water. I navigate this area five or six days a week. I’m the best choice for captain of this vessel.”
I arch a brow as I stow the plank. “You think I haven’t been out on the water since I moved to New York? I have a boat at my place in The Hamptons.”
“That’s cute, but the answer is still no,” she says, propping her hands on her hips. “Either I drive or we stay docked.”
“You’re bossier than I remember,” I say.
Her cheeks flush. “Yeah, well, that was your area of expertise. This is mine.”
My lips curve. “Thanks for the compliment.”
She rolls her eyes and exhales a flustered breath that makes me happier than it should. I shouldn’t want to fluster this girl. I shouldn’t want to take her to lunch or to kiss her again, but…I do.
So, I don’t put up a fight as she collects the keys from the hook by the door of the cockpit and starts checking the controls.
I simply settle into the leather chair near the window and watch her work, doing my best not to find her capable handling of the yacht sexy as fuck.
I fail, of course.
But I try. I honestly do.