Page 14 of The High Tide Club
“Exactly how do you know my family?” Brooke persisted.
“If you must know, your grandmother was a dear, dear friend of mine.”
“You were friends with Georgette?” Brooke asked, confused.
“Good heavens, no! Not your father’s mother. I’m sorry to say this, but Georgette Trappnell was truly a horrible woman.”
Brooke wouldn’t argue that point. Georgette Trappnell had been a dragon. A selfish, self-centered terror whose acid tongue could peel the paint off a wall. Not unlike Josephine Warrick.
“I meant your mother’s late mother,” Josephine said sadly. “Dear, darling Mildred.”
“Wait. Your friend Millie was my granny? The friend you went skinny-dipping with?”
“Yes,” Josephine said. She changed the subject abruptly again. “What about your son’s father? Do you know who he is?”
Brooke shot to her feet, nearly knocking the chair backward. “I think I’d better be going. I don’t need money badly enough to be insulted this way.” She reached for her briefcase and her pocketbook. “I suggest you find somebody else for this particular assignment.”
Teeny and Tiny, sensing her hostility, went on the offensive, jumping down to the floor, bracing themselves on either side of their mistress’s chair, yapping loudly.
“Don’t be foolish,” Josephine snapped. “I didn’t mean to wound your pride. I just wanted to learn more about you.”
Brooke’s face was hot. “I don’t appreciate your insinuation that I’m some sort of harlot.” She would have said more, but she hadn’t been raised to disrespect her elders. Even elders who were as loathsome as Josephine Bettendorf Warrick.
“That’s not what I meant to insinuate at all,” Josephine said. She scooped the dogs back up into her lap, stroking their heads soothingly. “I just wondered if your son’s father is part of your life—that is, does he provide financial support? Does he see the boy?”
“He doesn’t need to be part of our lives,” Brooke said. “Henry and I do just fine without him.”
“Is this man even aware that he has a child?”
The smaller of the two dogs arched her neck and began licking Josephine’s chin.
“No.” Brooke still had no idea why she was submitting to this deeply personal line of questioning. Maybe it was because she’d become immune to the intrusive questions asked by strangers who all seemed to feel entitled to ask questions about Henry’s absent father.
“Do you think that’s fair? To your little boy? Doesn’t he wonder where his papa is?”
Brooke sighed. How often had both her parents asked that same question? “Henry’s only three. I’m all he knows. Anyway, times have changed, Mrs. Warrick. There’s no longer any real stigma to being a single parent. Now that we’ve established that I’m broke and unmarried, is there anything else, before I catch the boat back to St. Ann’s?”
“I really must insist you call me Josephine,” the old lady said. “And I’ve already told you what I want. Two things. I want you to keep the state from taking my island away from me. From ruining all of it. Whatever it takes, that’s what I want from you. And I want you to help me make things right by those women I told you about.”
She coughed again, then reached for a thick, leather-bound book on the table beside the chair. Opening it, she took out an envelope and extended it toward Brooke.
“That’s your retainer. It’s a certified check. I’m assuming $25,000 is sufficient for you to get started?”
“I’m sorry,” Brooke said. “As I’ve tried to explain, based on the little you’ve told me, I really don’t think I can help you.”
The old lady’s eyes were closed again.
“And remember,” Josephine said. “Strictly confidential. Not a word to anybody about what we discussed today.”
Josephine nodded off once more, leaving Brooke wondering again if she should go or stay. She still smarted from the intrusive questions about Henry’s paternity and whether his father knew of the boy’s existence.
Henry had straight dark hair, a high forehead, and a short nose like her own. His moods changed moment to moment. One minute he was climbing into Brooke’s lap and smothering her face with kisses while she was trying to work at the kitchen table, and the next thing she knew he was scowling and howling, “Bad Mommy!” Strangers stopped her at the grocery store to comment that he was a carbon copy of his mama. But sometimes, when the tantrum clouds passed, and he gave her that full-faced impish smile, all she could see was Pete. He had Pete Haynes’s smile, Pete’s square jaw, long, Bambi-like lashes, stormy blue eyes, and smooth olive skin. Even the faint sprinkle of freckles across Henry’s nose and cheeks were Pete’s.
He was his father’s son, a son Pete knew nothing about.
6
Josephine
