A half hour later, he was set up in his office, which happened to have a clear view of the Airstream, when Eleanor finally called him back.
“I’m sorry, darling. I turned off my phone when the movie started. That’s what they tell you to do, isn’t it? Turn off your devices so you don’t disturb others in the theater?”
His mother’s innocent tone didn’t fool Nate for an instant. “Right.”
“Is something wrong? It appears I’ve missed four phone calls from you. We told you we would be at the matinee this afternoon after the orthodontist, didn’t we?”
He had known, he had just forgotten. Until Jess Clayton reminded him. “You told me.”
“Then I assume something terrible must have happened if you needed to reach me so urgently.”
“Not terrible. Only somewhat concerning. You have a visitor. A strange woman set up a trailer on the property, on the flat piece of land next to the beach path.”
“She made good time. Oh, that should offer a lovely view of the ocean for Jess. I was thinking that might be the very place. I couldn’t have picked a better spot for her myself. I’m so glad.”
Nate tried not to grind his teeth. That wasn’t the point, was it?
“Obviously you were expecting her.”
“Yes. And I’m embarrassed I’m such a poor hostess that I couldn’t be there when she arrived. Jess originally hadn’t planned to reach Cape Sanctuary until this evening. After she told me she changed her plans and was leaving earlier, I had to explain about the orthodontist and the movie I had already promised Sophie. Thank you for helping Jess settle in, son.”
He waited for his mother to offer some other explanation but she didn’t elaborate. Eleanor had been acting strangely of late. Really, since his father died six months earlier after a long and painful battle with colon cancer.
“Will she be visiting for long?”
“As long as it takes,” Eleanor said cryptically.
“Which tells me exactly nothing about who she is and what she’s doing here.”
She laughed, though it sounded forced and perhaps even a bit guilty. “I should have told you she was coming. I’m sorry. I suppose I wasn’t sure how you would feel about it. And to be honest, I couldn’t figure out how to tell you.”
“Try.”
Eleanor sighed. “Do you remember when I told you my childhood friend Lucinda in Seattle hired a lovely woman to help her clean out her house before she put it on the market and moved into that retirement village in Florida?”
“Yes,” he said slowly, looking out the window at the silvery Airstream glinting in the sunlight as he tried to process the connections. “But you’re not moving into assisted living, Mom. You’re not moving anywhere.”
Her sigh was deep and heartfelt. “Not right now, but who knows what might happen in the future? Your father was here one moment and gone the next.”
“Dad had colon cancer. He had a terminal diagnosis for two years before he died.”
“I’m aware of that. But none of us were ready for him to go. My point is, I don’t want you to have the burden of cleaning out years of accumulated crap. Whitaker House is a cluttered mess and I’m tired of it.”
“Tired of the house or tired of the mess?”
“The mess. Not only do I have all your father’s things that I haven’t been able to part with yet but I still have boxes left over from your grandparents’ day when they lived in the house. Things your father didn’t want to get rid of out of some misguided sense of loyalty to them.”
He knew there was truth to that. Five generations of Whitakers had lived in the house. Six, counting the years when he and Sophie had lived there before he finished gutting and renovating a small abandoned house on the property into a comfortable three-bedroom cottage about six years earlier.
“I need help clearing it all out,” Eleanor continued. “I’ll never do it on my own so I’ve asked Jess to stay for a few weeks to hold my feet to the fire, as it were.”
“Sophie and I could have helped you. You didn’t need to turn to a stranger.”
“Yeah, Gram. We could help.”
He heard his daughter in the background and was glad she was on his side. About this, anyway. He and Sophie didn’t agree on too many other things these days.
“That is a lovely offer. I do appreciate it, but I also know how busy you both are. Nate, you’re running a construction company with more projects than I can keep track of and Sophie is plenty busy with school.”
“We can still find time to help you,” he started to say but his mother cut him off.
“This is what Jess does for a living. Lucinda told me hiring Transitions was the best decision she had ever made. She said Jess made the process of cleaning out years of clutter as painless as possible.”
Eleanor paused, then added quietly, “I think I’ve been through enough pain, don’t you?”
Her words stripped away all his objections. He had worried for her physical and emotional health since his father died. She was only now beginning to smile again over the past month or so, to find some enjoyment out of life.
If she was excited about cleaning out Whitaker House, how could he argue?
“Who knows?” Eleanor went on with a small laugh. “It might turn out that I’m not able to part with a single dishcloth and Jess might find she wasted her time coming all this way up here.”
Jess Clayton. He grimaced, remembering his surliness when she arrived. “I wish you had given me some warning that you were expecting company. I wasn’t very welcoming to her when she pulled in and started parking her trailer.”
“I know. I should have told you. I’m sorry I put it off. I suppose I’ve been afraid to tell you. I know how much you miss your father, too. I wasn’t sure how you would feel about me clearing out all his old things when he’s only been gone six months.”
He did miss his father, though their relationship had always been somewhat complicated.
“I don’t care about a few old shirts and sweaters, Mom.”
“I know I’m being silly,” Eleanor said. “Change is always so hard.”
“But inevitable.”
“Whether we like it, or not.” His mother paused. “I hope you weren’t too hard on my guest. She’s giving me two weeks of her very packed schedule so we can go through the house. She’ll be staying on the property for that time. You’re bound to run into her again. I would hate for things to be uncomfortable between you.”