Dear Griselda
As you most certainly know by now I have passed from this world to the next. I leave you in my will everything I owned including the boat house your mother so despised and you so loved. May you find as much success as I did there and where ever you may now roam.
P.S.
You will also be meeting my silent business partner very soon. Don’t worry he is, in a word a little different. But he has always been good to me and your mother so just go with his flow hahahaha!
Love Your Doting Father
Jacob Gallo
Griselda folded the paper she had read over a thousand times and placed it back in to the envelope for the thousandth time. Peering out the window through her lowered lashes Griselda felt tired and emotionally drained. She had not visited her father for the last three years she was attending college and then looking for work. To her just a few days ago everything was grand. She had regular clients coming to her for her 'healing hands' as they called them. Her art was soon to be in a gallery for public view and she was almost done with her final piece called 'Water in Motion'. Never had she fathomed that she would receive a call asking her to return home for a wake that was being held for her father. "Come now honey, don’t be so sad. You are finally getting to see the house your father has told you about for years now. What little girls dream comes true all the time?"
Griselda looked at the charming Alan Bellamy who was sitting behind the driver's seat. Alan Bellamy, the second choice of the big time movie companies for costume design was a little over six feet with sun kissed blond hair, the dashing smile every women around him would fall for, blue eyes, and with all this combined with his regular features radiated a boys charm from long ago. His athletic build always impressed Griselda. She never knew someone who would sketch, sow and take measurement could be in such great shape. The day he stepped in to her crumbling Bronx apartment was the changing point for her nonexistent romantic life for the next year.
"I know. But I really didn't want to come back to Italy under these circumstances." The hills were beautiful close to the end of summer. The heat was intolerable if one had to walk all the way to the docks but in any transportation with air conditioning no one could complain. As the docks entered in to view Griselda could feel that heart wrenching ache attack her chest again. As they parked the dock manager came and handed her the keys, gave his condolences and left her to walk the premises. The old 1993 Stardust model boat was stunning. The side of the boat had the name Zelda printed on it forcing Griselda to blink back tears. "I can't not right now. Call your friend and get the hell out of here."
Fathers Partner - Chapter One