Cottage on Gooseberry Bay: Charmed Summer

deaths, Arthur’s cousin, Marilee, a Massachusetts native on his mother’s side, was sent to Italy to care for Ava and Avery. A man named Warren Cromwell, a local cousin on their father’s side, had taken over the management of the couple’s financial assets as well as the family estate on the children’s behalf. For reasons I still don’t understand, Marilee became convinced that not only had Warren tampered with the plane that had killed Arthur and Adora but that he had plans to do away with Ava and Avery as well. It was because of those fears that she took the children and fled to America, where they’d spent the summer of nineteen ninety-five at the home of Adam and Archie’s father, Kingston. When summer came to an end, Marilee and another woman, known only as Wilma, took the children and once again fled. After leaving Piney Point, none of the four had ever heard from until I showed up looking for answers seven months ago.

My story seems to hit a wall at this point. All I know is that in December of nineteen ninety-five, I went to live with the cop who raised me, and any memories I’d had from my life before that point seemed to have been buried in my subconscious until I found the photo and a door that had been closed for a quarter of a century began to open. While my life between leaving Piney Point in August and being taken in by the man who raised me in December is still unavailable to me, with Adam’s help, I have uncovered quite a bit about my life before leaving Italy for the final time.

I was jarred from my musings by a second knock on the door. I assumed the delivery man had forgotten something and reached for the door handle, but when I opened it, I found my good friend, Jemma Hawthorn, standing on the deck.

“Jemma!” I screeched, stepping forward to hug her. “You’re back.”

She hugged me in return. “Yes, I’m back. I actually just arrived.”

I stepped aside. “Come in.” I closed the door as my Bernese Mountain Dogs, Kai and Kallie, greeted one of their favorite people. “How was your trip?” Jemma had spent the past four weeks with her father and her sister in the hope of mediating a quickly escalating conflict.

“Exhausting,” Jemma answered.

“Well, have a seat and tell me all about it.”

I knew that Jemma’s father had met and begun dating a much younger woman who seemed to make him happy but also seemed to be bleeding him dry financially. Jemma’s sister, Jackie, was concerned that this woman, who she assumed to be a gold digger, would drain their father’s life savings before slithering away, never to be seen or heard from again. Jackie had been nagging Jemma to join her in an intervention for months, and Jemma, who worked remotely and could really work from anywhere, finally agreed to come home for an extended visit. She’d been gone almost a month, and I’d only spoken to her briefly during that time.

“The condensed version of a very long story is that I managed to dig up some dirt on our father’s girlfriend, and my sister and I used that dirt to convince her to leave. Dad, of course, is heartbroken, but at least what’s left of his savings is secure.”

“So you found out that she really was after his money?” I asked.

Jemma nodded. “I was able to dig up information about past relationships. It seems that she looks for lonely widowers with a decent amount of wealth, but not too much so that they’d be naturally suspicious of newcomers in their lives. Once she chooses a target, she establishes a relationship with them. Once the relationship is cemented, she begins to challenge the man not only to step out of his comfort zone in terms of the activities he participates in, such as taking up skydiving, but she convinces him to take financial risks as well, which she then manages and controls. In the end, I suppose the man is left with the memory of a few fun months and a second chance at youth, but he’s also left with a lot of empty space where his life savings used to be.”

“So she moves on once the money is gone.”

Jemma nodded. “Exactly.”

“I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”

“Me too,” Jemma sighed. “At this point, Dad doesn’t know that my sister and I are behind his new girlfriend leaving town so abruptly. I know she would have eventually left, and, in a roundabout way, she admitted as much. Still, I’m terrified he’ll find out that we interfered. I feel like we did the only thing we could since trying to convince him that the love of his life was a gold digger was getting us nowhere, but if he finds out what we did, he’ll never forgive us.”

“So did the girlfriend agree that she wouldn’t tell him why she was leaving?” I asked.

“I paid her a significant amount of money to tell Dad that she’d simply decided it was time to move on. I think deep down, he knew that she was the sort to do just that, so I think he believed her. At least I hope he did.” She glanced at the boxes still stacked by the door. “Are you mailing something?”

“Actually, the boxes are from Warren.”

Jemma looked as surprised as I’d felt when they’d been delivered. “If Warren is sending you boxes, I must have missed something.”

“Actually, you’ve missed a lot.” I pulled a bottle of wine off the rack. “Let’s retire to the deck, and I’ll catch you up.”

“Okay. That sounds good to me. I’ve really missed our afternoon chats over a glass of wine.”

Once we’d both been served, we toasted Jemma’s return to Gooseberry Bay after a month away, and then I began