3. Vivien
W ith the bed covered in clothes, two suitcases open, and an exciting new project just over the horizon, Vivien couldn’t help but hum a happy tune as she packed. Even though she had no idea what she’d need.
Work clothes? Beach attire? Was it chilly in Destin in March? Or would?—
At the sound of the front door opening, she breathed a sigh of relief. Lacey was home from work and always packed like a pro.
“Hey,” she called, taking a few steps to the door to make sure her voice traveled down the stairs. “I’m upstairs! Come on up and help me figure out what to take.”
She waited a beat, expecting to hear her daughter’s lighthearted laugh and the sound of her footsteps on the stairs. But there was nothing.
“Lacey?” she called. If she hadn’t come in, then who?—
“I’m here.”
Vivien winced at the tone of utter despair. Oh, boy. Bad day at Ryan Knight Homes.
Abandoning her suitcase, she headed straight downstairs, a mother first and foremost.
She looked down the stairwell as she walked, noticing for the four millionth time that the flat, dull “builder’s grade” gray screamed for color and the wall needed art.
Like the shoemaker’s children, the interior designer’s home was pitiful. Well, she had no connection to this rental and zero desire to hang even cheap wall art.
Coming around the corner, she found Lacey leaning against the back of the sofa that separated the living area from the kitchen, her face covered by her long sandy blond hair as she looked at her phone.
“Hey,” Vivien said, slowing her step when Lacey didn’t look up. “Everything okay?”
She sighed. “I screwed up an order for Dad and…” She tossed the phone on the sofa. “Now the client is unhappy because it’s going to delay plumbing and electric for two weeks, which will push back…whatever comes next.”
“Drywall,” she said without thinking, coming closer with concern in her heart. “It’s okay, Lace. Mistakes happen. They’ll make up the time?—”
She closed her eyes and inhaled so hard it flared her delicate nostrils. “Can I just say it? Can I speak some blasphemy? I hate houses .”
Vivien smiled, mostly because just looking at Lacey made her smile but especially when she got dramatic because, somehow, she made it funny. Her baby blues were never spiteful, her angel’s smile was never really gone.
But, she had to admit, Lacey looked troubled tonight.
“Why is that blasphemy?” Vivien asked.
“Because I’m the daughter of a builder and an interior designer. The niece and granddaughter and cousin of architects. And now, you’re leaving because of a house! I know girls my age have boy problems, but I have house problems.”
Vivien knew the real issue that was bothering her wasn’t that she hated houses…but she did hate that Vivien was leaving. Indefinitely, too.
Unlike most twenty-four-year-old women who might welcome the chance to be out from under the mother they lived with, Lacey didn’t ever push Vivien away. Maybe because Vivien had learned a thing or two from Maggie about how not to be a mother.
She didn’t judge, she didn’t control, and she didn’t keep secrets from Lacey.
Thanks to that, they’d always been crazy close, two peas in a pod who never tired of each other’s company.
“How about some wine and we order pizza?” Vivien suggested, knowing it was a recipe for talk and healing.
“Yeah, whatever.”
Uh-oh. Maybe this was more than wine and pizza could solve.
Vivien took a few steps closer, eyeing Lacey’s expression. “You’re upset that I’m leaving, aren’t you.”
“Upset?” Her eyes widened. “No! I’m thrilled for you, Mom. This whole thing—the beach house, the staging, the money it will bring it? You know I’m one hundred percent on board and happy for you.”
Vivien nodded, waiting for the real reasons to emerge.
But Lacey sighed. “I guess I’ll take that wine,” she said, turning toward the kitchen. “We barely touched that white the other night. Think it turned to vinegar yet?”
“It’s fine. I’ll take a glass, too.” Vivien perched on a barstool at the counter. “Which client got screwed up?”
“The couple from Chicago building in Peachtree Hills. Picky old biddy and her henpecked husband.”
Vivien laughed at the description. “New since I was there. I don’t know this lovely pair.”
“Count your blessings.” She popped the cork lodged into the chardonnay and poured into stemless wine glasses. As she handed one to Vivien, their eyes met.
“I want to quit,” Lacey whispered.
Vivien froze in the act of reaching for her glass. “Excuse me?”
“I hate this job. I’m not crazy about my boss.”
Vivien rolled her eyes, trying so hard not to say anything bad about Ryan to Lacey. Sure, she broke that rule frequently enough, but she tried.
“Mom, I really hate…”
“Houses,” Vivien finished, taking the glass and offering a lackluster toast. “But we do all need them. And we need jobs, so…don’t do anything rash.”
Lacey sighed and started to take a sip, then put the glass down because she obviously needed to talk more than she needed wine. “People quit jobs, you know. You did.”
And Lacey quit her last three—four?—but Vivien didn’t have the heart to pour salt in her daughter’s wound right now.
“I divorced the owner of the company,” she said instead. “It was different.”
“He’s my father.”
“Exactly. And he took you in as an admin when you left the…what was that last job?”
“See? You don’t even remember. That’s not a career, that’s not a calling. It was…” She inhaled sharply. “A garden tool manufacturer and I worked in the accounting department.”
Vivien made a face. “Yeah, that was rough. But, honey, you should talk to your father. Tell him what you want at the job if you’re not getting it.”
She gave a “get real” look. “I want a different job in a different business. I want to do something creative and exciting and… Oh, why am I so lost?” she whined. “Why can’t I be more like Meredith, all focused and certain of her path?”
“Because you aren’t your cousin,” Vivien said. “But you can’t just quit without a back-up plan, Lace.”
“And I can’t quit because I work for my dad.”
Vivien flicked a brow. “It does complicate things.”
Lacey sighed. “Yeah, okay. He does pay me well, so there is that.”
“Good girl. We can talk about it. You can look. I promise you can.” She took a sip and watched Lacey do the same, her shoulders softening with resignation.
“You’re right,” she agreed after swallowing. “It was just a bad day.”
Vivien nodded. “Now, at the risk of suddenly changing the subject, can you help me pack? I’m clueless about what to take.”
She curled her lip. “Pack me .” At Vivien’s look, Lacey clasped her hands together and added puppy dog eyes, pulling out all the stops.
“Please, Mom. I’ll be your assistant. I’ll be your best pal. I’ll be quiet as a mouse and so much fun when you need it and…and… I need an escape. I want to figure out what to do with my life because, as God is my witness, to quote your namesake, Vivien Leigh.” She grabbed Vivien’s shoulders and squeezed. “I will never work in the house business again!”
Vivien laughed at the bad Scarlett O’Hara drawl, wishing she could just say yes and take Lacey along. But she had a job, and Ryan needed the admin support Lacey offered.
“Honey, you have to learn to stick with a job for a while. You’ve quit a few since you graduated.”
“I know,” she said glumly, grabbing her wine and jutting her chin toward the stairs. “Come on. I’ll pack you. Hey, maybe I can be a professional packer.”
Laughing, Vivien followed her, wishing she could help her daughter figure out her life, but knowing she had to do that for herself first.
An hour later, Lacey was still nursing the same wine, laying on Vivien’s bed, shooting orders about clothes and Googling everything she could about Destin.
“Apparently this place got so expensive it’s not even a spring break destination anymore,” she said, tapping her phone. “The college partiers mostly go to Panama City.”
“It was big for spring break when I used to go, but we were only there in the summer.”
“And you were young, right?” Lacey said. “Like, a kid?”
“Twelve the first summer, but eighteen the last.” Vivien folded a cotton sweater, suddenly remembering the diaries. “It’s all chronicled right there, I’m slightly embarrassed to say.”
“What is?” Lacey sat up and peered at the pink box on the floor by the closet door. “What is that hideous thing? A makeup case? Please tell me you’re not taking that.”
“It’s a Caboodle, darling, and I think you had one, too, to stash your girliest items in life. But what’s inside is the real prize.”
Lacey threw her a look. “Oh, I’m intrigued. What’s in that…Caboodle?”
“My teenage diaries,” Vivien said. “Uncle Eli found them before demo. I started the first year, filling one whole notebook for every summer.”
Lacey’s jaw dropped. “And you’ve been keeping this from me?”
“Please. I was a kid. I’m sure they’re full of things like, ‘We made a bonfire,’ and ‘Crista cried when we wouldn’t take her on the boat.’”
“Aunt Crista cried? Never!” Lacey joked. “And who’s we? You and Uncle Eli? Didn’t you tell me there was another family there, but Grandma Maggie had, uh, issues ?” She rolled her eyes and laughed, already off the bed and headed toward the box.
“The Wylies—The Others, as Eli and I call them. The family that shall not be named.”
“Why not?” she asked, twisting the pink latch to open the case and pluck out the top notebook. “May I?”
Vivien shrugged. “You may, but no judgment if I dotted every i with hearts and flowers. And I don’t know why, but we lost touch with that family.”
Lacey examined the spiral notebook splashed with shades of pink and purple. “Vintage Lisa Frank.” She fluttered the cover, which, Vivien knew without looking at it, featured either a fluffy kitten or a unicorn. “These are worth a fortune on eBay now.”
“Empty,” Vivien said. “Which that one is not.”
Lacey pressed the notebook to her chest and sat back on the bed, a gleam in her eyes. “This could be fun.”
“Or mortifying. Please remember I was twelve in that first one. And it was 1989.”
She stroked the colorful cover. “Of course you were. No one else bought Lisa Frank but middle-schoolers.” She cleared her throat and flipped the cover, then snorted.
“What?” Vivien cringed, half expecting Lacey to show her a large heart with Vivien luvs Peter scripted on the page.
But Lacey pointed at small lettering. “‘Do not read under penalty of death’? Guess Aunt Crista isn’t the only one with a drama streak.”
“No, but I had a brother and his best friend poking around that beach house. No one could be trusted with a young girl’s secrets.”
Vivien packed another top, then picked up her wine glass and sat down next to Lacey, reaching over to stop her before she turned the page. “Wait. Maybe I should preview before you read.”
“Are you embarrassed, Mom?”
“About what I wrote thirty-seven years ago?” She took a sip and leaned over, setting the glass on the hardwood floor. “Maybe. Give that to me.”
Taking the notebook in her hands, she was instantly transported. The feel, the scent, the excitement of the first summer in Destin.
Suddenly anxious to read, she turned past the dire warning and looked at her round, clumsy, girlish words, written in a pink Flair pen.
May 25, 1989
Today, my life changed forever.
She glanced at Lacey, who was reading over her shoulder. “Okay, maybe the drama streak runs through the whole family,” Vivien acknowledged.
“What happened?” Lacey asked, pointing to the page. “Read on, young Vivien.”
Giving her a look, Vivien scooted back to read alone, in case she had to edit on the fly. There could be something about Peter McCarthy on these pages that Lacey would surely use against her forever.
“‘I officially have not one but two best friends!!!!’” She looked up. “With four exclamation points.”
“Just read, Mom.”
“‘I have met Kate and Tessa Wylie and I totally LOVE them! They are only three months younger than me, and they came all the way from New York! Our moms were sorority sisters and I get to call their mom “Aunt” Jo Ellen. They are the coolest, most fun girls I’ve ever met and we are all sleeping in one room until school starts in September! They are twins but don’t look anything alike. Aunt Jo Ellen calls them opposite twins. Tessa is soooooo pretty and funny. Everything she says makes us laugh. (Especially Eli!)’” She looked up again. “There’s a heart next to that. He had it so bad for that girl.”
“She was twelve ,” Lacey said, aghast.
“Not toward the end. Anyway, Tessa Wylie was never twelve. She was born nineteen and so pretty it was hard to look at anything else when she was in the room.”
“Read on.”
She scooted up, leaning against the pillows, packing forgotten for the moment.
“‘Kate is the smartest girl I ever met and gets all A’s. She knows everything but doesn’t talk as much as Tessa. I love them both already. Tomorrow we go to the beach!!!!’” She snorted. “The amount of exclamation points and hearts is kind of incalculable. Can we stop now?”
Lacey had her phone out, tapping the screen. “For now, but only because I’m on Facebook looking for them. Tessa Wylie? Spell that. And is it Kate or Katherine?”
“Oh, honey, you’ll never find them. I think her real name is Theresa, but no one besides Uncle Artie ever called her that.” She closed the notebook and slipped down to get the wine she’d left on the floor. “They’re probably not?—”
“Could Kate be Dr. Katherine Wylie, a research chemist at Cornell University?”
Vivien laughed. “If anyone could be, it would be her.” She inched closer to see the phone screen. “Cornell makes sense because her father was a professor there and they lived in Ithaca. How did you do that? Let me see.”
“You said New York and they were born the same year as you.” Lacey handed her the phone and Vivien squinted at the screen. The face peering back at her was…yeah, that could be Kate.
She flicked the screen to zoom in on a professional shot of a woman in her forties, with dark auburn hair and sharply cut bangs that brushed scholarly-looking dark-rimmed glasses. And that wide smile with dimples? Absolutely Kate Wylie.
“I think it is her,” Vivien said. “How can I tell?”
“Check out her friends. Type ‘Tessa’ in her friends list and see if her sister comes up.”
“Oh, you’re so smart.” She did and gasped softly as an image popped up. A gorgeous woman who could be on social media selling makeup products. Blond, stunning, dressed to turn heads and keep all eyes on her.
“Bingo,” she whispered. “There you have the most fun person I ever knew in my life. She’s a human party.”
Lacey leaned in and whistled. “Yikes, she’s attractive. I mean, she probably had some work done, but yeah. She looks good.”
Vivien clicked back to Kate’s picture, her heart aching in a way she didn’t quite understand. “I loved Kate, you know. I loved them both, but Tessa intimidated me. Kate was so soft and smart and special. The last time I saw her we were sailing and promised to be friends forever, then, wham. It was over.”
“You should message her, Mom. Tell her you’re going back to the house where you spent all those summers together. Reunite with your old friends.”
Vivien considered that. “After thirty years? What would I say?”
“Just say hi. Tell her you own the house. Wouldn’t you want to know if the tables were turned?”
She sure would, except for one little problem. “My mother would have me put to death,” she said, only slightly joking.
“What’s Grandma’s deal with these people?”
“No one knows or has the nerve to ask because she shuts it down.” She angled the phone, thinking about long walks on the beach and the summer they graduated and all the years in between. “Send me this link so I can find Kate again, okay? Now, I want to finish and get some rest.”
Lacey pushed off the bed. “I still think you should take me.”
“And I think you should be a grown woman and go to work tomorrow,” Vivien replied. “Go face your boss-father, and knock his socks off by being the best admin Ryan Knight Homes has ever had.”
Lacey made a face. “I don’t want to be the best admin they ever had.”
“What do you want?” Vivien asked.
All her daughter could do was sigh. “I don’t know but I do know that I’ll recognize it when I find it. But how can I figure it out when I’m trapped in that office doing change orders?”
She heard the plea in Lacey’s voice, but didn’t give in. At least there was one person she could say no to—but only for her daughter’s own good.
“I’m just your mom, trying to guide you to do the right thing, Lace,” she said. “And if you really, really want to quit, then I’ll help you work on your resume. I promise.”
“Fine.” She groaned the word. “Are you taking the diaries? Because I’d inhale them.”
“Which is exactly why, yes, I’m taking them,” she quipped.
“You are no fun, Mom.” She blew a kiss, and took her phone, leaving Vivien to fold her last few items and organize her cosmetics. But the entire time, she was thinking about Tessa and Kate, the opposite twins.
They’d even grown up to be exactly that way, it seemed.
When she climbed into bed, she went back to Facebook and looked at both pages again. Kate hadn’t posted in four or five years and the page was essentially dead. Tessa posted a few pictures of Ritz-Carlton hotels, giving the impression that was where she worked.
It was sad that they’d lost touch, and for no reason she ever really understood.
On a whim, she tapped “messages” on Kate’s page.
When the box came up, she stared at it, knowing that sending a message would absolutely infuriate her mother. What would she do? Cut her off from this new inheritance?
Maybe.
But why ? Why did Maggie hate the Wylies so much? And why should she have the power to keep Vivien from reaching out to an old friend? And should Vivien automatically submit to that demand?
She started to type and when she finished, she closed her eyes and hit Send.
Take that, Maggie Lawson.