Chapter 9
“Close your eyes,” Jenna instructed the bride, Yaya, aka Lydia Costas, as they sat in her granddaughter Frankie’s sunroom trying to keep her sitting still, which was a much more difficult task than one would think for a ninety year old.
The woman was Jenna’s hero. She wanted to be Yaya when she grew up. Yaya had a standing appointment at The Beauty Shop every Friday morning at nine for a wash and style, and it was honestly Jenna’s favorite hour of the week.
She could listen to Yaya’s stories for hours, for days, for weeks, or just sit and be in her presence in silence, not that Yaya was silent that often.
But if she were, Jenna wouldn’t care. She just wanted to be near her.
She had an instantaneous soothing effect on her, which was probably not how most people would describe Lydia Costas.
But for some reason, when Yaya was around, Jenna felt like everything would be okay, that it would be taken care of.
That she would be taken care of and okay.
Jenna never had that feeling from a woman who was older than her before.
She guessed it was the first maternal figure she’d ever had in her life.
After losing her husband of sixty-plus years, who was, by all accounts, the love of her life, Yaya was saying I do again, this time to the official town badass, who was also ninety.
Arthur Santino was infamous in Hope Falls.
He’d moved to town over thirty years earlier and had been a recluse most of that time.
He was the exact opposite of Yaya. Never spoke, lived in the woods, and wanted to be left alone.
He did not want any attention. It worked for a while until, over the years, he started performing heroic feats, which, much to his chagrin, drew both public attention and praise.
He saved the now-pastor when he was a boy, after he was bitten by a snake in the middle of the woods.
If not for Mr. Santino’s quick action, Caleb Harrison would never have lived to become the viral sensation “Hot Pastor.” After Karina Black, who grew up in Hope Falls but went on to become a huge pop star, tweeted comparing him to Fleabag’s “Hot Priest” and Nobody Wants This’ “Hot Rabbi.” It was an international viral moment that Blake and her friends had a lot of fun with.
A few years after that, when Mr. Santino was in his eighties himself, saved the life of his eighty-eight-year-old “neighbor, Mrs. Samson, who was a smoker, fell asleep in bed smoking, and the cigarette fell from her mouth next to her bed onto a pile of tissues.
He woke up, smelled the smoke, ran to her house, pulled her out of bed and out of the house seconds before the entire thing went up in flames.
She spent a few weeks in the hospital for smoke inhalation, but the fire department said if he had been even a minute or two later, she would have been gone.
Then, just a few months ago, he’d been out on a walk and intervened when an abusive ex showed up to abduct a single mom who lived next door to the senior home he currently lived at.
He not only took a bullet for her, he disarmed the man and held him there until police arrived while he had a slug in his shoulder.
But if anyone ever brought any of those incidents up, he shut it down, changed the subject, or would just walk away.
Literally. While someone was speaking to him, mid-sentence, he would turn and walk away.
Jenna guessed after ninety years on the planet and those heroic acts, if he didn’t want to discuss them, he had that right.
There were all sorts of rumors and speculation about Mr. Santino’s past. Everything from him being a hitman for the mob, to being a spy, to him being a Hollywood fixer like Ray Donovon.
What most people in town didn’t know was the truth, that before moving to Hope Falls, Arthur Santino worked for the CIA in Black Ops for thirty years.
He was pretty much an assassin. In fact, when the show Homeland was being developed, they asked him to be a consultant for Peter Quinn’s character, played by Rupert Friend, which was loosely based on exactly what his job was.
Jenna knew that information because, well, she asked him. And he told her because he knew the rule. Hairdressers, like bartenders, therapists, lawyers, doctors, or priests, are all legally and ethically bound by client privilege confidentiality and the sacramental seal of confessional gossip.
That or no one ever asked him, and she had when they were alone in the salon and he liked her, so he told her.
But she never told anyone, not even Blake, who was constantly theorizing with her friends, even though she knew she’d get major ‘Cool Mom’ points for knowing, because of the client privilege confidentiality, and sacramental seal of confessional gossip.
Which was why she’d been so upset when her Hot Bartender turned out to be Hot Not-a-Bartender.
She wondered if she would ever go an hour without thinking of that night, of thinking about him. It had been a year and a half, and so far, it hadn’t happened. Something always reminded her of him.
Trying to push him out of her brain, she focused on Yaya and her makeup.
“Are you excited?” Jenna asked as she swiped a base coat of cream on Yaya’s upper lid.
“Yes, yes, yes!” Yaya clapped her hands. “Arthur finally know what is good for him!”
Finally?! They’d been dating for two months…if that. Maybe when you’re ninety you don’t have time to waste.
“Morning.” Frankie yawned as she walked into the sunroom, coffee in hand, her long red hair was piled up in a bun, and her fair skin looked pale even for Frankie. “Everything looks good in the backyard. They’re almost done setting up.”
“Same as yours, yes?”
Frankie’s wedding had been held at her house just a few weeks earlier.
It was beautiful, Jenna could understand why Yaya wanted to copy and paste, especially since the wedding was so last minute.
She’d only decided to get married a week and a half ago.
At least that’s when she told Jenna about the wedding.
“Yes, just a smaller scale.” Frankie yawned again. “Since the guest list is less than half.”
“Why so tired?!” Yaya barked. “You stay up all night trying to make baby?”
“I wish.” Frankie collapsed in the chair beside Yaya.
Jenna envied Frankie and her grandma’s relationship. Yaya had sixteen grandchildren but made no secret that Frankie was her favorite. She was her only granddaughter, but there was clearly a very special bond there as well.
Jenna never knew her grandparents on either her maternal or paternal sides.
Unfortunately, Blake had been cursed with the same misfortune.
Thankfully, Yaya adopted the entire town, herself and Blake included.
She’d even taught her and Blake how to make loukoumades, baklava, and other Greek delicacies.
“No,” Frankie continued as she took a sip of her coffee, then laid her head back and closed her eyes. “We had to call an emergency family meeting.”
“What?!” Yaya sprang forward in her chair, and Jenna jerked her hand away. “Why no one call me?!”
“Yaya! Please, don’t do that.” If Jenna poked Yaya’s eye out on her wedding day, she’d never forgive herself. “You could have lost an eye.”
Jenna typically did hair, and Kiki was the makeup artist at the salon, but Yaya only wanted Jenna today, which made sense since it was a very small wedding party.
“Ah.” Yaya waved her hand dismissively. “I have one more.”
Frankie, used to her grandmother’s outbursts and maybe even close calls of losing an eyeball, casually tucked her feet beneath her legs and ignored the entire thing. “It wasn’t this side of the family, Yaya. It was Liam’s side.”
“Oh, oh, oh.” Yaya settled back, then threw her arms up once again. “No, no, no! This side, that side, same side! I should get phone call.”
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Frankie apologized.
“You’re right. I should have called, but it was the night before your wedding, and it all happened so fast.” She took a deep breath sat up, then explained, “Poppy came over, she was upset because she found out that AJ had uncovered that Deacon St. Claire is not who he said he was.”
I knew it, Jenna thought to herself silently.
She’d never met nor laid eyes on the mysterious Deacon St. Claire, but she knew all she needed to know about the man. He was a billionaire. Money was the root of all evil. It did things to people and made them awful. Made them horrible to each other.
And St. Claire money. Forget it. The hotels, liquor and wine, and airlines that’s stupid, filthy rich.
She’d heard the rumors that he made his own money, that he’d started some sort of business at fourteen and then gone to MIT and graduated at twenty, but still, to grow up in that sort of luxury, she didn’t trust the man as far as she could throw him.
He moved to town months ago with his daughter and kept to himself.
He hadn’t gotten involved in the community, which in Hope Falls was pretty much a mortal sin.
She knew he was up to no good. He had gone trick-or-treating upon Poppy’s invitation after she started as his nanny, which had made quite the stir amongst the downtown shop owners.
Debbie Wilson, who owned the Barking Brush, was in for a cut the next day, and she said that Claudia Benson’s niece, Kimberly, tripped over herself, literally, to get his attention.
Apparently, she’d pretended to trip and fell into him.
He didn’t fall for it—pun intended—just helped her right herself and then continued walking.
Lola Johnson, who owned The Secret Garden Flower Shop, was working the Witch Hat Ring Toss booth, said that when she saw him, he was so hot her mind went totally blank.
She forgot what she was doing, where she was, who she was.
She said she thought she let Max Colburn have about ten free throws at the Witch Hat Ring Toss.
He still didn’t win, so it didn’t matter.