Character Post on Ashcroft, Eh?

Sydney Riley from The Honeymoon Homicides, A Provincetown mystery, is visiting Ascroft, eh? today to tell us how sometimes the worst thing that can happen to you is also the best thing.

Her author, Jeannette de Beauvoir says: “The Sydney Riley series currently comprises 10 novels that start with Sydney working as wedding coordinator for the Race Point Inn in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Here I’m imagining how she might have come to Ptown in the first place. Enjoy!”

Welcome, Sydney. I’ll turn the floor over to you –

Sometimes, in life, the worst thing that can happen to you is also the best thing.
I didn’t know it at the time, of course. And I certainly didn’t know that I would start solving murders and become Provincetown’s answer to Miss Marple—updated, of course, for the 21st century. But something was guiding me here when my husband Noah, a surgeon, decided he’d rather be with his emergency-room nurse than with me.

With the divorce grinding on, I felt I couldn’t breathe in the city anymore. Everything reminded me of Noah and our marriage: the hospital where he practiced, the shop where we went for ice cream in the summer, the park where he’d proposed. It was time to change my life. I bought a new (used) car; I accepted the cat that my co-worker had been urging me to adopt; and I found my way to Provincetown.

It had happened quite by accident. One day I got in the car and drove south, not even thinking about where I was going, until I was on a road that led only to Cape Cod.

I’d crossed the Sagamore Bridge and was running along Route 6 without much noticing what I was passing. The late-morning was fine and the signs flashed by with names that were intriguing, but not enough to stop the thoughts whirling around my brain. Marstons Mills. Yarmouth Port, Dennis Port, Harwich Port—you could tell the ocean was there, even if you couldn’t see it. Skaket Beach. Coast Guard Beach. Marconi Beach. English-sounding towns: Brewster, Eastham, Wellfleet. And then finally, without really realizing how I’d done it, I was at the end of the line.

Provincetown. Next stop, Portugal.

I found a place to park the car in a large parking area by the wharf—it was winter, there weren’t a lot of other cars around, or people either, for that matter—and pulled on my wooly hat and mittens and started walking. Down to the end of the pier, where brightly colored fishing boats were tied up, the water sloshing against their sides, and seabirds floated placidly on the surface, bobbing up and down with its movements. The air was frigid but the sun was warm. I walked back slowly, filling my lungs, trying to feel in the moment. This was a beautiful place. I reached the main street and had to make a decision: left or right?

I turned right on a whim and changed my life.

***

A month later I was talking to my mother on the telephone, an activity I tried to avoid most of the time but sometimes found inevitable. “I don’t understand why Noah won’t give you a second chance,” she was saying.

“To do what? Appeal to him? No, thanks,” I said.

“You know what I mean,” she said. “Don’t take a tone with me, Sydney. You know I don’t like it when you take a tone.”

“I’m not taking a tone, Ma,” I said. “I’m telling you about my life. I thought you’d be interested.”

She didn’t rise to the bait. “And what is this place, anyway?” she demanded. “Providencetown?”

“Provincetown,” I corrected. “It’s on Cape Cod. There are beaches. You can come visit.” Please don’t come visit.

“I don’t understand why you can’t stay where you were,” she said. “At least until the lease runs out. It’s as much your house as his.”

“It isn’t, Ma. He’s giving me my half of the deposit back.”

“And I don’t understand why you have to give up your job,” she went on. “I like telling people my daughter’s a professor.”

“I wasn’t a professor, Ma. I just taught a few courses. No one gets tenure anymore.”

“It’s still what I told people,” she said stubbornly. “I don’t understand—”

I cut her off. Sometimes it’s the only way. “It’s all decided, Ma. My furniture’s in storage. My car is packed.” Not our car; Noah had paid me half the cost of the Beemer, too. I liked the small green Honda I’d bought second-hand. I liked saying, “my car.” My furniture; my car, my apartment. “Oh, and one more thing,” I said.

“What?” She sounded like she was anticipating Armageddon.

“I have a cat,” I said, poking my finger in through the mesh of the pet-carrier. “I have to change his name, though. His name is Doctor. I really can’t live with that, not after Noah.”

She had a suggestion. “Pookie,” she said. “I used to have a cat named Pookie, back before you were born.”

I’d been an afterthought in my parents’ life, born eight years after my sister. I wondered how Pookie fit into the family dynamics. It was also the most revolting name I could imagine.

I studied the cat, sitting placidly on the front seat of the little green Honda, a pile of last-minute books and papers behind and under it. Sticking out was a paperback copy of A Doll’s House. “Ibsen,” I said, suddenly inspired. “I’m going to name him Ibsen.”

And then I disconnected the call, started the engine, and set out on my new life.

Thank you for sharing this with us, Sydney, and good luck to you and your author, Jeannette de Beauvoir, with The Honeymoon Homicides, the latest book in the Provincetown mystery series.

Readers can learn more about Sydney and her author, Jeannette de Beauvoir by visiting the author’s website and. her Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Goodreads pages.