Chapter 1
The old gentleman died; his will was read, and like almost every other will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. —Sense and Sensibility
Edward
“The Greenwood women are enchanting—utterly enchanting.” My grandfather mutters the phrase over and over as if it were an incantation.
Watching his cracked lips form the words, I see two men: the confused, dying body before me, and the hale and hearty grandpa who helped raise me.
A man with a thick head of white hair and mischievous eyes, he always took pride in his appearance, dressing in custom tweed suits with silk bowties and cufflinks.
My grandfather never wore a shirt without French cuffs.
On the hospital bed, his bony knees peek out of the flimsy gown.
I tug his blanket over his veined legs, tucking him in gently, the same way he tucked me in bed as a child.
“Don’t worry, Eddie, Nora’s going to take care of me,” my grandfather mumbles as I tap a reminder on my phone to swing by his home and pick up his favorite monogrammed silk pajamas.
“She’s here,” he says, motioning at the empty air beside me.
The medicine is definitely making him loopy.
Nora, my grandpa’s third wife, has been gone for more than thirty years.
Briefly, his eyes clear. His clawed hand grasps mine. “I’ll miss you.”
“You’re not going anywhere Grandpa.” He gives a weak laugh.
“My ride is over. The sun sets in the west.” He smiles to himself. “Enchanting.”
Inexplicably, my mind flashes back to the woman I met several months ago on the trail at Norland Park.
She certainly was enchanting—her profile softly lit by the setting sun, her brown hair twisted up in a tidy knot, revealing an elegant white neck.
Something about meeting her felt like stumbling upon a memory.
“Jeb’s here! Why is Jeb here?” Grandpa says in an agitated voice.
“Make him go!!!” He pulls the thin hospital blanket up to his face, like a little boy hiding from a monster.
Jeb is an old stuffed buffalo head hanging above the fireplace back at Grandpa’s Hotel in Norland Park.
Someone named the taxidermied beast Jebediah years ago.
Grandpa has always been quite fond of him.
This outburst, like so many over the last few days in the hospital, is out of character.
“He won’t get you,” I assure him. “You’re safe with me.” I’ve learned not to argue with my grandpa about his delusions. It works better when I tell him everything will be okay. Even though it won’t be.
I hold his veined hand, marveling at the drastic alterations the decades have wrought on the strong hand I once knew.
It has been years since I held it as a little boy walking through the crowds at the zoo or the park, or when he helped me cross the street.
Back then his muscled hand dwarfed mine; now it is bony, spotted, frail and delicate—like holding a baby bird.
I straighten his blanket and kiss his forehead, breathing in the distinct scent of grandpa and hospital.
A lump forms in my throat. I need to get out of this place, fast.
My phone rings as I cross the lobby.
“Is he going to make it?” No hello, or how are you, which is not too surprising. My boss Lucinda isn’t exactly one for niceties.
“Of course he is,” I lie. My grandpa isn’t long for this world.
I know it—he sleeps most of the day, and when he wakes, he’s rambling about enchanting women and a dead buffalo chasing him.
But I’m not ready to speak the dreadful truth that presses down on my chest. I’m afraid that simply uttering the words aloud would make them more true. I need to get Lucinda off the phone.
Last fall my grandfather granted me permission to explore the possibility of turning Norland Park into a luxury resort.
I made a site visit with an architect from my firm.
The proposal was drawn and the entitlements granted, but it’s been six months and my grandpa still hasn’t agreed to sell.
I’m afraid he’s having second thoughts. Afterall, the rustic campground has been in the family for generations.
The location my great-great-great-grandfather selected to homestead was heartbreakingly beautiful, but the steep terrain was not ideal for farming.
His grandson was the first to build cabins for tourists and a hotel on six square miles of the most scenic land along the California coast.
I’m beginning to think that we should cut our losses and scrap the whole project.
It’s common to cancel projects in my business—even some more advanced than this one.
But I feel more responsibility this time around.
The land has been in my family for five generations, and we haven’t done anything with it.
Right now, there’s nothing more than a run-down hotel and a dumpy campground on it.
The resort is surprisingly profitable, but it has the potential to be so much more.
Last fall grandpa seemed on board with the plan to renovate the park, but I fear his mind is changing.
He’s been dragging his feet on selling the property.
Lucinda expects me to pressure him into selling.
But I won’t. I couldn’t even if I tried. No one can change grandpa’s mind.
When my ninety-three-year-old grandpa was hospitalized with double pneumonia two weeks ago, my boss couldn’t hide her excitement.
She knows that my mom will inherit the property.
They are friendly acquaintances and have similar cut-throat instincts.
They go way back to when they both worked together at the same residential real estate firm.
Lucinda knows my mom will sell Norland Park in a heartbeat.
“How much longer?” My boss’s impatient voice comes through my phone.
“I can’t say.” I pinch the bridge of my nose, take one deep breath and then another before handing my ticket to the valet outside the hospital. “I’ve got to go,” I say. “I’ll keep you posted.”
“Any chance we’re wrong about the will?” she asks.
“No, grandpa has made it clear. My mom inherits everything.”
***
My grandpa died just a few days later. But my mom didn’t inherit everything, though to be clear she inherited a lot: Grandpa’s home in Sacramento, his collection of vintage cars, a cabin in Utah, another home in Santa Barbara, and Norland Park.
She got all of it—except for a two-story farmhouse at the edge of the park built in 1907 by my great-great-grandfather.
The century-old structure, Bumble Cottage, sits high at the edge of the redwood forest overlooking the sea.
In our plans to upgrade the resort, Bumble Cottage is to be torn down and replaced by a farm-to-table restaurant with a world-class view of the ocean.
This morning—two months after grandpa’s death and one week out from finalizing the sale of Norland Park—grandpa’s lawyer informed my mom that she was not, in fact, inheriting Bumble Cottage. For some reason my grandfather bequeathed that small piece of property to me.
“I can’t believe it,” my mom says over the phone.
“I would have been on the lawyer’s case to get through probate if I had known there were surprises like this in the will.
” She’s calling me from her new place—Grandpa’s house in Santa Barbara.
She moved there in June. “He swore up and down he wouldn’t leave you a penny.
” This is true. Both my mom and grandpa are big believers in the myth of the self-made man.
Grandpa loved to say, “Nothing stunts a young man’s growth more than money,” along with his other favorite line: “The struggle makes the man.”
To be clear, I’m not struggling—at all. No matter how much my grandpa and mom loved to give lip service to their tough-love philosophy, I’ve lived a charmed life—and they made it happen.
Even though my mom made it clear that she wouldn’t be offering me a job at her business.
“That way, when you’ve built your own corporation, you can have the satisfaction of knowing you’ve earned it yourself. ”
I’ve never bothered to tell her that I have no interest in ever owning my own business. She just assumes that everyone’s dream is to own their business and make more money than their parents. What other dream is there?
She also would argue vehemently with me if I ever pointed out that I couldn’t really say I’ve made it on my own.
My whole life has been one staggering piece of good luck followed by more good luck, beginning with having Barbara Norland as my mom.
No one who has ever met my mom would call her motherly—including me.
But she is fierce, practical, and committed.
And so selfish that it’s nearly a virtue.
As her son, I benefited from her singular focus on success.
I got the best of everything: best school, best teachers, even really good friends.
I think the other kids felt sorry for me because I had such a scary mom.
Her diva behavior at PTA meetings set the bar extremely low for me.
Everyone expected me to be an entitled brat.
By simply being your average decent human being, I exceeded expectations.
So though my mom likes to tell anyone who is listening how incredibly independent and successful her only son is, it’s all a fairy tale.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m doing fine. But with my mid-level job at a real estate development company—a job I highly suspect I only got because my boss knew of my family’s connection to Norland Park—I’m a poor relation compared to my mom and her father.
Bumble Cottage changes all that.
She told me the news two minutes ago. I’m still in shock. I shut the door to my office. I need a moment to take this in.