“If he’s willing,” I say. “But we need to have some vegetables with it to make us strong and healthy.”
“Right.” She nods. “Carrots.” The only vegetable she likes.
“Carrots,” I agree.
* * *
“Let’s go see the new house when you get home tomorrow afternoon,” Daddy says as we clean the kitchen after dinner. “I know you haven’t felt like going over there, but we really should make sure it’s ready for your furniture to arrive on Saturday. Make sure the workers have taken care of the punch list.”
“Sure,” I say, but my anxiety level climbs another notch at the thought of moving. I remind myself that we’ll be less than two miles away from our safe haven with my father, and once he moves, Rainie will still spend her afternoons with him. The condo complex has a playground and even a pool. We’ll still have dinner with him occasionally. The only change will be that Rainie and I will sleep in the new house. I shudder at the thought of the dark woods. Ours will be the only completed house on the street so far. The construction crew, many of whom knew and respected Jackson, thought they were doing me a favor by working overtime after his death. “A gift for you,” one of them said. The house took my husband from me. It doesn’t feel like a gift.
Daddy knows how I feel. He rests a hand on my shoulder. “It’s going to be fine, Kayla,” he says, and I nod. He thinks I just need time. Maybe I do, but I don’t think I will ever be able to live in the house without thinking These are the windows Jackson special-ordered, or This is the quartzite we argued over and Jackson let me win, or This is the color Jackson chose for the foyer.
“A weird thing happened today,” I say, as I dry the last plate. I speak quietly, although Rainie is in the living room and I can hear her giggling over a video she’s watching. I tell him about the red-haired woman and he frowns when I get to the part about her knowing that Jackson died and that we’re about to move into the house in Shadow Ridge.
“Well,” he says, “a lot of that information was in the paper after the accident.”
“I know, but what does it matter to her? Why did she seek me out? Who does she want to kill?”
“Can it just be that she’s crazy and talking through her hat?” he suggests. “Nothing more than that?”
“It’s even scarier to me if she’s crazy,” I say. “If she’s crazy, there’s no way of predicting what she’ll do.”
He smiles at me with the calmness I usually love about him, but which is bugging me at the moment. I want him to take this seriously. “Well,” he says, “I’ll keep my eyes open and my wits about me. And you do the same.”
Chapter 6
ELLIE
1965
We lived in the only house on Hockley Street, on the corner where Hockley intersected with Round Hill Road. Daddy’s father named the street after himself—Amos Hockley—and he and his brother built the house. Hockley Street was the only actual “street” in all of Round Hill. There were plenty of roads and lanes and trails, but my grandfather’d thought “Hockley Street” sounded grand. It was decidedly not grand. It had been a dirt road back when the house was built and it was a dirt road now and probably always would be. But our house was big, whitewashed, with black shutters, a red tin roof, and a wide porch with white rockers, one for each of us, and I always felt rich and proud. Our view from the porch was of the kudzu-choked trees and shrubs across the street. “Beautiful monsters,” Mama called them when I was small and afraid. They rose up from the earth to the sky in the shapes of dragons and dinosaurs. The kudzu didn’t come near our house, so it didn’t bother us and it kept anyone else from building on Hockley Street, which was just the way my family liked it. “We have paradise all to ourselves,” Mama always said.
Our narrow road ended in the deepest, darkest woods anyone could imagine—straight out of a Grimms’ fairy tale—but they didn’t bother us. When Buddy and I were younger, we just about lived in those woods, climbing the trees, playing hide-and-seek, and fishing in the lake. I was shy and had few friends other than Buddy and Mattie, who was our maid Louise’s daughter, a year younger than me. I loved Mattie. She died when I was eleven and Buddy started hanging out with older kids, and I suddenly had no one to play with. For a year, I was on my own, mourning the loss of both Mattie and my brother, but then Brenda Kane and her parents moved to Round Hill and I suddenly had a friend.
Buddy was smart enough to become a pharmacist like our father, who’d hoped his son would be the third generation of pharmacists in the family, but Buddy discovered cars and that was that. Everyone in town depended on him, not just for their cars, but their washing machines and radios and any other gadget they couldn’t get to work right. Once Daddy accepted Buddy for who he was, they grew close. Now they were up in arms together over the idea of a bunch of Yankee kids telling us how to run things down here.
The Sunday after the wedding, Buddy and I strolled up Hockley Street to the woods.
“So how was the wedding?” Buddy asked, putting his arm around me as we walked.
I thought back to the day before and the quiet, sort of sad little wedding at the justice of the peace’s office. Garner had looked nervous, perspiring in a dark suit, and I thought Brenda was going to burst into tears at any moment. She wore a pale blue dress I’d seen her in several times before. Her best, I knew. It was a dress she wouldn’t be able to get into in another week or two. I teared up during the wedding, remembering how she’d paged through the Brides magazine with such longing. She would never wear one of those long lacy wedding gowns. She would never have a string of bridesmaids and groomsmen. Just me as her maid of honor and Reed as Garner’s best man.
“Simple,” I answered Buddy. “I felt more sad than anything else. It wasn’t exactly joyous.”
“I can’t believe she’s going back to school with you like she’s not a married girl,” Buddy said. “Married woman.”
“I know,” I agreed. “Still, it’s good she can finish out the year. Then maybe she’ll pick it up again someday.”
“She should’ve dropped Garner for me,” Buddy said. “I wouldn’t have let her get in this predicament.” He’d had a crush on Brenda since we were all in high school together, but Brenda only had eyes for Garner. “You think she’s really after him for his money?” he asked.
“Hell, no,” I said. “How could you think that? She adores him.” Garner’s father was probably the wealthiest man in Round Hill, but I’d never even heard Brenda mention the money Garner was sure to inherit.
“Well, maybe she could talk Garner into telling his daddy to stop raising my rent,” Buddy said. Randy Cleveland owned nearly half the buildings in town, including the one that housed Buddy’s car shop.
“I doubt she has that sort of clout,” I said.
“Well anyhow,” he said, “don’t you ever let what happened to Brenda happen to you.” There was a warning in his voice like he’d break my neck if I came home pregnant.