‘I didn’t bring my car. I walked.’
‘Walked?’ My mouth hung open. Naddie lived in Ginger Cove, a retirement community at least eight miles away.
Naddie furrowed her brow. ‘You didn’t get my change of address card?’
I shook my head, puzzled. ‘You’ve moved? My gosh! Where?’
Naddie stood at the head of a concrete path edged with liriope and pachysandra that curved gently down the hill from Spa Paradiso and led through a gate to one of the neat brick Georgian-style buildings of Calvert Colony. She pointed vaguely in that direction. ‘I bought one of the town homes over there,’ she told me.
I sucked in air. ‘I thought you were happy at Ginger Cove!’
‘Oh, I was, Hannah. No complaints. It’s just that…’ She paused. ‘Well, I’m one of Calvert Colony’s investors, actually.’
‘Well, I’ll be,’ I said, although the news didn’t really surprise me. During her successful forty-year career as a novelist, the sales of such mystery classics as Death Be Not Proud and A Talent to Deceive – now in their umpty-dumpth printing – had earned L.K. Bromley – the name under which Naddie wrote her stories – a place on the list of America’s Richest Women. And that was before Tom Cruise optioned her novel, Triple Jeopardy, and turned it into a blockbuster movie and popular video game.
Naddie had always been fiscally sensible. Rather than spend her money on a chateau in the south of France, luxury yachts or major league baseball teams, she’d invested in real estate.
‘The Baby Boomers are easing into their seventies now,’ Naddie explained. ‘At least 800,000 older adults are already living in high-end communities like this. The demand can only grow.’
I had learned from my son-in-law that while the plans for Calvert Colony were still on the drawing board, Spa Paradiso had worked out an agreement with the developers to provide spa and health club services to their residents, and I wondered, with some affection now, if my friend Naddie had had anything to do with facilitating that contract. As part of the deal, Dante (the mononym my son-in-law had invented for himself) and his stockholders had ceded some of their land to the Calvert Colony development group.
‘Have you toured our campus?’ Naddie asked.
‘Haven’t had time, Naddie. I got an invitation to the grand opening but I was away on a cruise to Bermuda with my sisters, so I missed it. I wandered around a bit while the place was under construction, though. It’s pretty impressive.’
Even in its earliest stages, Calvert Colony had sprawled over the old Blackwalnut Creek property, a twenty-acre campus at the end of Bay Ridge Road just east of Annapolis. Before the construction of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge opened up the Atlantic Ocean beaches to vehicular traffic, Washingtonians seeking relief from the stifling summer heat had flocked to Anne Arundel county resorts. Blackwalnut Creek had been one of them. After the popularity of the resorts faded, the Catholic Church had purchased the Blackwalnut property for use as a Jesuit retreat and conference center. Early in our marriage, Paul and I attended a Marriage Enrichment Program at the center, but it had been a little too touchy-feely for us. Trust falls, blindfold walks and bouts of extended eye contact weren’t exactly our style. We’d gone home, giggling like children, shared a bottle of wine, chased each other around the bedroom and… well, let’s just say that was all the ‘enrichment’ we needed.
After the Jesuits moved on, the Catholic Church sold the prime Chesapeake Bay waterfront property to a development company. According to the Baltimore Sun, they needed the money to replenish coffers sorely depleted by cash settlements to victims of pedophile priests.
The centerpiece of the Blackwalnut Resort had been a grand, sprawling, white clapboard New England-style hotel called Blackwalnut Hall. Calvert Colony architects sensibly preserved the hotel – including the charming chapel that the Jesuits had annexed onto its southern side – and it now served as the focus of a development which included an apartment building, six blocks of individualized semi-detached town homes, several dozen two-bedroom single family homes and a scattering of cottages, all connected by narrow winding roads that were just wide enough for two golf carts to pass.
Naddie interrupted my reverie. ‘So, what did you think?’
‘My first impression?’ I paused for effect. ‘Wow. Just wow.’
‘There’s still tons of work to be done, of course, Hannah, but folks have been gradually moving in. The old hotel is nearly full.’
‘The newspaper mentioned it was to be a combination of independent and assisted living,’ I commented.
‘It is,’ Naddie said. ‘And they’ve added a secure wing near the chapel to house the memory unit. Blackwalnut Hall serves as our community center, too. Would you like to see?’
I indicated my ragged jogging shorts and stained T-shirt, both soaked with sweat, and spread my arms. ‘Now?’
She hesitated a second too long.
‘Love to,’ I laughed, ‘but for everyone’s sake I’ll need to change.’
‘After lunch, then. I’ll meet you at the main entrance,’ Naddie said. ‘Give you the fifty-cent tour.’
I grinned. ‘If I don’t get the full dollar tour I’ll feel cheated.’
‘Come to the reception desk in Blackwalnut Hall,’ Naddie instructed. She started off down the path. ‘Know where that is?’
‘In the lobby of the old hotel, right? Hard to miss.’ I wiped my face with the hem of my T-shirt.
‘See you around two?’
‘It’s a date.’
Back inside Spa Paradiso, I made my way to the women’s locker room, showered and changed back into the black jeans and striped T-shirt I’d arrived in. With my hair still damp, I wandered into the spa’s restaurant, studied the specials board and ordered a chicken salad sandwich and a cup of gazpacho which Francois Lesperance, the spa’s master chef, served to me personally at a small round table near the swimming pool. While I waited for two o’clock to roll around, feeling content and well-fed, I lay in the atrium on a lounge chair reading a well-thumbed paperback copy of Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief that somebody had carelessly left behind.
After a while, I closed my eyes. Life was good.
TWO
‘The Holy Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) has observed: “Let that man be disgraced, and disgraced again and let him be disgraced even more.” The people inquired: “O Prophet of God (peace and blessings of Allah be upon you) who is that man?” The Prophet of God (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) affirmed: “I refer to the man who finds his parents old in age – both of them or one of them – and yet did not earn entitlement to Paradise by rendering good service to them.”’
Abu Umamah al Bahili.
‘Mrs Ives. Mrs Ives.’ A hand on my shoulder; a gentle shake.
My eyes snapped open. Ben, the pool boy, loomed over me. ‘Sorry to bother you, but didn’t you say you had to be somewhere at two?’
I leapt to my feet so quickly that my head swam. ‘What time is it, Ben?’ I asked, bracing one arm aganst the wall until the dizziness passed.
‘Ten minutes to.’
‘Oh, thanks! You’re a lifesaver.’
Making a mental note to tip Ben double the next time he brought me a fresh towel, I gathered up my handbag, tucked the orphan paperback into it and headed out.
Blackwalnut Hall was much as I had remembered it from days gone by. A porch, long and deep, ran the length of the front that faced the bay. Eight tall white Doric pillars supported the roof. Rocking chairs were arranged at regular intervals along its length and, since it was mid-afternoon, half of them were already occupied by seniors resting their eyes, reading or simply enjoying the view.