Aunt Delia's Legacy

Prologue | page 1 | page 2 | page 3 | excerpts

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Sensing that the curtain was about to fall on the final act of her life, Delia Waring ran down her checklist, as she did every night now, to make sure the stage was perfectly set.  Her glance took in the portrait covering the wall safe, then moved to her bedside table.  Everything was perfect except for the diamond necklace.  Very carefully, she placed it in position and then nodded in satisfaction.  Good to know that her days as a theatre major in college hadn’t been wasted.

Reaching for her brandy, she settled herself against the pillows and raised the glass in a little toast.  “To a great opening night and a winning run.”  Then she took a sip and enjoyed the warmth that moved through her slowly.

She’d hatched her little plot almost a year ago, on that sunny fall day when the doctors had told her that her time was running out.  She’d told no one, but according to their scenario, she should been pushing up daffodils last spring. 

Delia laughed softly.  She’d spent her whole life establishing a reputation for being unpredictable.  Spring had come and gone, and she’d managed to live long enough to see one last January Nor’easter whip up the coast and blanket the little town of Westhaven, Connecticut in more than three feet of snow.  She raised her glass again, this time toasting the snow that had arrived just in time for the Winterfest Celebration.

Still, Delia knew that she couldn’t beat the odds forever.  Tonight’s town meeting had exhausted her, and it had taken more out of her than usual to repeat her nightly ritual of setting the scene here in her bedroom.  She took another sip of brandy.  As Hemingway had once said – the end of every true story was death.  Of course, in her opinion, old Ernie had always been a bit over-fixated on death.       

With a wry smile, Delia settled herself more comfortably against her pillows.  Not that she was able to sleep much anymore.  But she’d always figured that sleep was a waste of time when there was so much life to be enjoyed.

She’d certainly enjoyed hers—which hadn’t always pleased her family.  Her ultra conservative brother had often referred to her as a confounded “free spirit.”  Delia supposed the title fit, and it had always amused her when her more tolerant nephew Calvin referred to her as his “Auntie Mame.”  She’d even gotten a chuckle out of the fact that her niece Susan had dubbed her the “black sheep” of the family.

In a way, she’d been that too.  Instead of marrying and settling down the way Calvin’s and Susan’s father had, she’d chosen to become a bit of a nomad—traveling the world in search of adventure and love.  She’d found both, more than once, and in her earlier days, she stirred up her fair share of scandals.  There’d been that very handsome count with close ties to the royal family in...

With a sigh, Delia took another tiny sip of her brandy.  All that had been years ago.  More recently, she’d come back to her home in Westhaven, and in her own way she supposed she’d settled down—if becoming an activist against some greedy land developers who wanted to ruin the landscape of the town with an ugly strip mall counted.  Then, at the age of eighty, she’d run for mayor and to her family’s surprise and consternation, she’d won.

Now her niece Susan no longer thought of her as a black sheep.  Instead, Delia figured Susan and her son Dougie had her pegged as a royal pain in the ass.  They not only owned the development company trying to build the strip mall just inside the town limits, but they’d also tried to persuade her to sell them her farmhouse and the surrounding land.

Not in her lifetime.  Delia glanced around the room again.  If her little plot went well, hopefully not in Susan’s or Dougie’s either. 

If there was one thing that Delia regretted, it might be the fact that she’d never had children.  But at least she’d had a close relationship with her nephew Calvin and her great niece Carly.  Of all the Warings, Carly was the one she’d always had a sense of kinship with.  Deep inside, Carly was a “free spirit.”  But her great niece had also inherited some of her father’s and grandfather’s more conservative genes.  Delia respected that.  More, she had to honor that. 

Wasn’t that why she’d interfered in Carly’s life nine years ago?  At eighteen, with her whole future ahead of her, Carly had been ready to run away with town bad boy Ren Maxwell.  And Delia had put a stop to it.

Now that the time was right, she intended to interfere in Carly’s and Ren’s lives again.  As part of her plan, she’d recently appointed Ren Maxwell as deputy mayor so that when her time ran out, he could take over in the mayor’s position until he or someone else was officially elected.  That part of her plan had gone very smoothly.

As far as Carly went, all Delia had to do was get her to return to Westhaven, and put her in Ren’s path or a little while.  The fact that Carly hadn’t set foot in Westhaven for nine years told Delia more than anything else that her niece still had feelings for Ren.      

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