Chapter 4
FOUR
WINNIE
Please do the laundry if there is any, using the products in the laundry room, nothing else. Do not use any other brands.
Grocery shopping, as I will be home this weekend. Items are below.
Check to ensure that I am not about to run out of staples by checking the pantry, cupboards and refrigerator.
Hire new landscaper asap. I saw weeds last weekend.
Schedule repair of stairs on deck. The wood is Brazilian ipe, sustainably sourced. No other wood will be considered.
Contact arborist for oak tree. One branch looks sickly.
Anything else you notice.
* * *
His food needs were a little stark… vegetables, fish, chicken breasts, mineral water, lemons, skim milk. Somewhat joyless, really. No ice cream, no chocolate, no ribeye.
She’d never been to his house before, but Chatham was probably the most expensive town on Cape Cod, and utterly gorgeous.
Famed for its charming, crooked streets bursting with tidy, gray-shingled houses and lush gardens, as well as the great white sharks that swam offshore, Chatham had a bustling downtown, several gorgeous hotels and inns, and great restaurants.
She followed her GPS to Lorenzo’s house, then pulled into the driveway, her mouth open in wonder. Lark had said it was beautiful. The word hadn’t done it justice.
It was stunning. A huge green lawn with a few mature trees offered shade in the front, a curving slate walkway led to the front porch.
The house was a mid-century modern, sleek, simple, and elegant with clean lines, an asymmetrical, angled roofline, and gray cedar siding.
Winnie was something of a real estate hobbyist, checking the online sites once a day in case a unicorn home came on the market…
something she could afford, in other words.
Dr. Satan’s home had to be worth millions.
The backyard led to a small set of stairs.
Beyond that, the Atlantic, stretching all the way to Portugal.
Wow. In something of a trance, she walked past the house—all those windows!
—and down onto the beach. The waves were gentle, the tide going out, small lines and patterns rippling the sand with the breath of the ocean.
Suddenly, a large blond dog came running toward her, tail wagging, tongue lolling.
“Hello, baby,” Winnie said, reaching out a hand to see if it was friendly.
She. The dog was a girl, a creamy golden retriever or close relative, and she was very friendly, sitting down and smiling at Winnie, her doggy eyes filled with adoration.
“You are gorgeous.” The Lark of dogs, so happy and giving and beautiful beyond compare.
She petted the animal’s silky head, checked for a collar, and found none.
“I bet you live around here,” Winnie said.
“Do you? Do you have a nice house? Does your family know how lucky they are? Hmm?” The dog turned in a circle.
Winnie picked up a stick, whitewashed by the ocean, and threw it, and the dog bounded away after it.
Once she caught it, though, she continued down the beach, ostensibly toward home.
Sweet girl.
Well. Winnie had things to do. She walked around the house, the thick green grass as welcoming as a freshly made bed, though in need of cutting.
A line of hydrangeas, their blossoms indigo, stood against one side of the house.
Otherwise, not much in the way of a garden, flower or otherwise.
She wondered what it looked like in the spring, if daffodils and tulips sprang up from the ground in a riot of color.
Somehow, she doubted it. Dr. Santini seemed more like the color-coordinated type.
Imagine living here every day with that view, these sounds…
the different voices of the waves and wind, the cries of seagulls and terns, the peeps of piping plovers in the evenings.
It would be impossible to feel sad for very long, living here.
She wondered if Lorenzo had bought this place to soothe his soul.
He must face some pretty grueling days. Even Dr. Satan must lose a patient sometimes.
She pictured him telling a family their loved one hadn’t made it, putting a hand on their shoulders, telling him they did everything possible.
Kind and strong, his voice low and somber, sympathy written all over his face…
Nah. He probably made an underling do it. A human, in other words. But he did get to live here, and for at least part of the time in the next three months, she got to spend time here, too. She’d make the most of it.
Inside, the house was just as beautiful as its setting.
The front hallway was wide, the living room on one side, dining room on the other.
Scandinavian or mid-century style furnishings, a little too spare for Winnie’s taste, but all very tastefully done.
A fireplace with an exposed, black-painted brick chimney.
Pale gray walls. There was a huge painting she recognized as an Anne Packard, another from A.
Paul Filiberto, both legendary Provincetown artists that any Cape Codder would recognize.
A more modernistic (and uglier) painting hung in the dining room—slashes of yellow, white, black, and gray.
She bet it cost thousands of dollars, though Imogen could probably do the same thing, more or less.
The dining room table could seat eight comfortably.
The kitchen was a chef’s dream—a six-burner gas range and double oven, Italian-made appliances, white quartz countertops, black cupboards, and gray, marbled tiles in a honeycomb pattern making up the backsplash.
There was an island that could seat four, as well as a small round table with two chairs.
She wondered if she could bake here. Even in her current house, where the kitchen had about twelve inches in counter space, she baked at least twice a week, funneling the goodies to Grandpop and Robbie, the former because any kind of sweets delighted him, the latter since he had four older sisters and was thus helpless.
Baking in this kitchen would be like having her own show on The Food Network.
At the end of the hall was the large owner’s suite, looking about as personal and welcoming as a hotel.
More gray walls, a darker gray comforter on the bed, four stark white pillows.
Tasteful but dull. There was a single family photo on his long, low dresser—his family at his sister’s wedding, the one Lark had gone to.
Everyone was laughing except the tiny grandmother, who stared directly into the camera, and Lorenzo, who looked somber and handsome.
She studied the photo, wishing he was smiling, too.
Then again, it was just a photo. Surely, he’d smiled and laughed with the rest of them.
Lark had said it had been one of the most beautiful weddings she’d ever been to.
There were two other bedrooms on this floor, each with en-suite bathrooms, also furnished with Scandinavian style, plain-but-handsome furniture.
Chilly. Nothing that indicated he was a doctor, or had hobbies, or a penchant for, oh heck, dogs playing poker.
Just a lot of blank walls and spectacular views.
Winnie spied a spiral staircase, went down it, and there was another story, this one at beach level.
There was a more casual living room with a huge TV on one wall, a fireplace, empty bookcases and no other furniture.
Hm. Guess he (or his interior decorator) hadn’t gotten around to this area.
The hallway led to two more bedrooms, smaller than those upstairs and more unfinished looking—no pictures on the walls, empty closets and bureaus.
She chose the one that overlooked the water.
It was painted the same pale gray as the rest of the house.
The comforter was white, and there were no shams or throw pillows to warm it up.
She had mentioned the view, though, right?
A sliding glass door opened directly into the backyard and sea beyond.
Winnie opened the door and stood for a minute, listening to the song of the Cape—water, birds, wind.
No human sounds, not at the moment. Yes.
She could live here for a while and let her stupid heart heal.
Because if she let her guard down for just a minute, the truth of the word heartache twisted in her chest. It had been two weeks since Blakelee’s party.
Two weeks since she’d been in love with a man who did a helluva job making her think he loved her, too.
And God, it had been amazing. The warmth in his eyes, the thrill of being part of a couple, the almost surreal happiness of lying in bed with him.
He cooked breakfast for her every time she stayed over.
(Four times. That should’ve told her something, all those nights when he told her, regret on his face, that he needed a good night’s rest, and “I sure don’t feel sleepy around you, Winnie.
”) But that was the thing! He’d made such incredible statements, things that a guy in love should not have been able to come up with.
“It’s hard to remember a time without you” and “I’ve been waiting all day to hear your voice. ”
Winnie wished she could tell Blakelee how sorry she was. She wished she could apologize to those cute little kids. I didn’t mean to take him away from you. He should’ve been home. He should’ve been with you. I didn’t even know you existed. I’m so sorry.
She could’ve looked harder. Should have, obviously.
Last week, while she was still wallowing in fury and hurt, she’d fallen back into the internet rabbit hole of stalking.
There had been one article from seven years ago that she had read…
mostly. It was from one of those lifestyle magazines, and she could only read six paragraphs before the paywall asked her to subscribe.
She’d opted not to the first time, when she’d just met him.
This time, she coughed up the four dollars.
And had she done that six months ago, she would have seen the seventh paragraph—the one that said, The chef, who formerly used his legal name Tanner Johnson at Bon Vivant in Boston, wanted a fresh start on Cape Cod.
There it was. She should’ve dug deeper back then, because she would have googled Tanner Johnson, Cape Cod, chef, and found out exactly who he was, and she would’ve blocked his number and not given him another thought.
The liar. The lying liar of Lie-Land had made her, the straightforward and unremarkable, unemotional and logical Smith child, a messy queen homewrecker baddie.
The remembered quiet of her single life—the time before Mitchell-Tanner—flooded back hard.
For six months, her world had been filled with buzzes on her phone from his texts, his warm voice when he called her (so old-school).
She hated that she missed the anticipation of having somewhere to go, someone to wait for.
That weird, new happiness brought on by stopping by Nuage Bleu an hour before closing, sitting at the bar and catching glimpses of him, waiting for him to finish the night and take her back to his place.
She missed a man who didn’t exist in real life. She missed the woman she’d been in that fiction.
“Knock it off, Windsor,” she said to herself, her voice flat and stern. “Live and learn.”
She unpacked her clothes—just shorts, shirts, jeans and a sweater, plus two bathing suits, because she wasn’t going to let that beach go to waste. Then she got out her list, found the credit card Lorenzo had left for her in the kitchen, and drove into town to buy groceries.