That encouragement was the reason Sarah could never completely hate Cassandra for not being there when she’d most needed her.
Sarah found herself sniffling, rubbing her eyes with the heel of her hand as if she were twelve all over again.
Two months after she’d returned from that August visit with Aunt Cassandra, on a sunny autumn afternoon, the principal at her junior high school had stood solemnly at the door of Sarah’s English classroom. After she’d followed him into the hallway, he’d spoken the worst words she could have imagined.
Her parents were dead.
All of her grandparents had already died.
Her father’s only brother had been off in the army in Germany.
And Cassandra, her mother’s sole sister, had been somewhere on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, inside an artists’ colony with her married boyfriend. They most definitely hadn’t wanted to be found by the outside world.
Sarah wiped her eyes. At twelve, she’d learned tough lessons about self-preservation, self-reliance, success and grit. The hard, cruel world didn’t help the vulnerable. People could be abusive, both emotionally and physically, and strangers didn’t take care of the weak.
But soon she would be invulnerable. Just a few more months of putting up with her new partner, Richard Lee, and his games and indignities, and then she could take her company public. That’s when the really, really big money would start coming in. Then she could say “screw you” to the Richard Lees of the world, and anyone else for that matter, for the rest of her life.
Slinging the briefcase over her shoulder, she hauled herself to her feet and glanced around. Hadn’t Aunt Cassandra heard her yet? Her arrival hadn’t exactly been subtle, with the slamming door and textbooks dropped on the driveway. Then again, maybe her aunt’s hearing wasn’t great. Sarah guessed she would be in her midseventies by now. Sarah had been the only child of parents who had waited until they were in their forties to marry.
Well, Sarah was turning forty herself this summer. And that milestone birthday wasn’t improving her mood, either.
Scowling, she tried the handle of the cottage door, but it was locked. Strange. Aunt Cassandra hadn’t believed in locked doors when Sarah was twelve, but that was back in a magical, faraway past when the world seemed so much more innocent than it was today.
Sarah went around to the beach-facing side of the cottage, put a hand up to shade her eyes from the sun and peered inside the living-room window.
The furniture was different than she remembered. The paintings on display were also new. But she could see into the open doorways—the two bedrooms and the tiny, rustic bathroom—and it was apparent that no one was home.
Cassandra must have stepped out.
She couldn’t have gone far. Her aunt didn’t drive, and her mobility was limited.
Sarah dropped her bag and went out to the beach to search for her. On a sunny June weekday afternoon the shore was dotted with people. Couples, families, groups of moms and kids. A lifeguard with a perfect body stood beside his chair. Arms crossed, listening to one of the moms as she spoke to him in an animated fashion.
But no Cassandra.
Frowning, Sarah checked the time on her phone. She was right on schedule. Cassandra knew she was coming. Sarah had written the letter to her aunt herself—no email for her free-spirited, unorthodox aunt—and Cassandra, in her flourishing, dramatic script, had confirmed Sarah’s visit.
What the hell?
One would think that if her aunt really cared, then she would be more careful. Or could she be doing it again? Could she be cavalierly reburning the bridge that Sarah had let stay burned for all these years before deciding to tentatively rebuild it just last month?
Sarah didn’t know because Cassandra wasn’t here to ask in person. And it wasn’t as if Sarah could simply direct her administrative assistant to zip off a quick text message to her aunt.
Cassandra had no cell phone, no email address—not even a tablet with banking apps. She still wrote paper checks. She relied on the post office to mail pleasant notes written on real stationery. Her lawyer in town handled any communications of urgent importance.
Sarah didn’t have an administrative assistant here to deal with a lawyer, anyway. That meant she had to hunt down her technophobic aunt herself, on her aunt’s terms.
Gritting her teeth, she took out her phone and pulled up the lawyer’s contact number.
“Kimball Law Firm,” a young female voice answered.
Sarah gripped her phone and spoke firmly, like she always did, as a woman of substance. “This is Sarah Buckley. Put Natalie on the line.” She swallowed and thought of Richard Lee’s admonition to her. “Please,” she added.
“Ms. Kimball is in a meeting right now, but I’ll take a message.”
“Who is this?” Sarah demanded. “What is your name?”
There was a slight pause at the other end. As there should be.
“This is Sophia, Ms. Kimball’s assistant,” the woman said pleasantly. “Would you like to leave a message for Ms. Kimball?”
“Yes, tell her to get her ass down to Cassandra Shipp’s cottage to let me in. Otherwise, my aunt will be looking for a new lawyer to manage her affairs.” Anger coursing through her, Sarah clicked the phone off and tossed it onto the sand.
It sat there, winking in the sun.
What the hell was she doing?
Sarah knelt and picked it up, brushing off the beach sand. This phone was her lifeline. With it, she could call Richard Lee and beg him to reconsider her temporary banishment from the company she had started.
She wasn’t cut out for a “retreat.” She didn’t want to “put her head on straight,” or “think about her actions” as he’d instructed. She was meant to work. To get things done and accomplish business miracles.
She put her head in her hands and began to weep again. Honestly, she’d reached rock bottom. She hadn’t even wept when her entire staff had resigned en masse.
Just because she’d called them “ungrateful little shits” during their morning motivational talk. Who the hell needed morning motivational talks—aside from Richard Lee, apparently? What were they all—in kindergarten? These were business professionals working in Silicon Valley’s most up-and-coming tech firm, for the California Business Bureau’s Woman of the Year.
Yet again, she wiped her eyes.
Her phone still remained silent. No one called her back. No one jumped at her command.
This was not her usual life.
Sarah sat cross-legged, imitating the picture on the cover of the meditation textbook she’d marked up for all six hours of her flight. Airy-fairy, none of it made a bit of sense to her, but since she was at rock bottom, she was going to do anything she possibly could to claw her way out of this pit of despondency.
Breathe in, breathe out, she told herself. Breathe in, breathe out.
So friggin’ idiotic. What was the point in counting breaths like a child just learning her numbers?
Still, maybe she shouldn’t have called that lawyer’s assistant—she couldn’t even remember her name—an ass. Or had she called the lawyer an ass? Sarah couldn’t remember. It didn’t even matter, to tell the truth, except that if she didn’t please Richard, didn’t at least try to “calm down,” then she would never influence him to bring her company public in the timely manner she wanted.
She needed Richard’s goodwill. Richard Lee was respected. A big-time mover and shaker in the Valley, with a track record of bringing