The House On The Creek Read online

  He didn’t remember the chain that hung from the ceiling, barely visible in the gloom. The pull chain was attached to a new fixture above the stairs. He didn’t need the light. His feet remembered the way.

  He pulled the chain anyway, because he wanted to see clearly what Abby had done.

  She’d somehow erased mildew stains. She’d painted the walls the color of egg shells. And she’d re-planked the stairs in warm honey colored wood that matched the upstairs boards.

  On one wall, at eye level, she’d installed a coat rack.

  A coat rack. Everett almost laughed aloud.

  The stairs were silent as he padded down into the depths. The notch on the wall above the second to last step, the notch made one afternoon when the old man had actually ventured into Everett’s hole and swung and missed and broken a thumb - that notch was gone, patched and repainted.

  There was a new light switch on the wall at the foot of the stairs. Smiling grimly, Everett flicked it on.

  She’d carpeted the floor and put up a false ceiling to conceal pipes. There was fresh paint and new trim around his window. All in light, bright, soft colors that made the room appear large and clean. What once had been a decrepit fireplace was now a tasteful gas insert.

  And overhead, in the very center of the room, she’d installed a ceiling fan.

  He did laugh then, a sound of disbelief. Abby had made his basement into...what? A game room, a place for entertaining, an extra bedroom. It was warm and habitable and really quite comfortable.

  He couldn’t quite believe it.

  When his laughter began to crack, he swallowed hard and walked to his window. He’d grown only a little and still had to stretch some to see out. He set his palms on the wall, one on each side of the sill, and watched the rain fall. Overhead, the house was silent.

  Everett laid out his bed in the basement. He unrolled a sleeping bag he’d packed all the way from Seattle, and spread out an inflatable mattress he had picked up in a DC mall. They’d made the drive down stuffed in the trunk of the sweet little Spyder he’d purchased outside the city, and they seemed none the worse for the cramped quarters.

  Furniture would come later. For now, the sleeping bag, one duffel of clothes, his tiny computer, an even tinier fax machine, and a toothbrush would have to be enough.

  The sky turned red and gold with sunset as he walked his belongings from the garage to the mansion. Cicadas roared in the trees, and he caught the fertile scent of summer in Virginia.

  Above the peak of the garage something glinted. The wind vane, still damp with rain, sparkled.

  Abby Ross. In the old man’s house. Making it into a home.

  Everett couldn’t quite wrap his head around it.

  He gritted his teeth and let the front door slam shut behind him. Dumping the duffel in the front entry, he strode past windows and into the kitchen. He knew without question that she would have left the refrigerator stocked in welcome.

  And he was right. He found milk, cheese, and fruit. The door held flavored soda water and bottled beer. Tortillas and orange juice and bread up above. Cold cuts and mayo and Dijon mustard down below. And in the freezer, ice cream and popsicles.

  She must have been expecting an army. Or a family. He couldn’t blame her. The old man’s house was big enough to hold an entire clan.

  Everett tossed bread and roast beef and an apple onto the kitchen counter, and then snagged a beer. The chilled bottled felt pleasantly cool in his hand. He rummaged in vain through drawers filled with utensils and then cabinets harboring pots and pans and paper plates.

  Thoughtful Abby had provided napkins and salad bowls and even a cheese grater. But she’d forgotten a bottle opener.

  For some reason the oversight lightened Everett’s heart.

  Whistling absently, he popped the bottle cap free with the blunt edge of a knife and took a healthy swig of beer before he began to build lunch out of sliced bread and cold cuts.

  Abby was late. The school buses had already left and most of the car pools were disintegrating into the dusk. She wrenched her mom’s old Mercedes into the first open parking spot she could find, set the parking brake, and hopped out.

  She took the school’s front steps on a dash, and burst into the main office. Emma looked up and rolled her eyes.

  “Is he furious?” Abby asked, breathless.

  “For about the first thirty minutes.” The school secretary’s lips twitched. She tilted her head toward the office couch. “Then he got caught up in his book. What was it this time?”

  “Anxious client.” Abby sighed. “Wanted to go over a thousand details about a hundred times.” Digging into the stained canvas tote she carried to every meeting, Abby freed a foil wrapped candy and tossed it onto Emma’s desk.

  “What’s this?”

  “Client markets candy. These are her newest. Toffee crunch, or something. She gave me about twenty. Haven’t tried one, but they must be good, she’s making enough money to fuel a remodel.”

  “Another colonial mansion?”

  “House boat.” Abby grinned. “It’ll be a project. But worth every minute.” She dug out a second candy bar and eyed the couch. “Wish me luck.”

  “You’ll need it,” Emma said, unwrapping foil.

  The office couch sagged in place, worn down by years of rowdy Jefferson students. The cushions were faded but clean. The two sneakers resting defiantly on one padded arm were less so.

  Abby followed feet and long legs into the sagging furniture and found her son.

  “Hi, Mom.” He didn’t glance up from his book. This afternoon it was The Firm. “You’re late.”

  “But not too late. We can still make it.” She wanted to reach over and ruffle the sweaty thatch of dark hair that hung over his eyes. She didn’t, because he was eleven, and she remembered what it felt like to be almost twelve.

  “Good book?”

  “Not as good as Pelican Brief.” Reluctantly he edge a Harry Potter bookmark into place, and closed the paperback. “What took you so long?”

  “Crazy lady who wants me to redo her boat.” She watched, hiding a smile, as he straightened his sweatshirt with bony fingers and shoved the book into his backpack.

  “A boat?” He considered. “Cool. Where is it?”

  “For now, she’s got it docked on the James.”

  Because they really were late and because he didn’t seem in any hurry to get off the couch, Abby reached down and urged her son upright. “It’ll take some work.”

  “Pay good?” His blue eyes were serious and he nibbled a little on his lower lip as he rose. Only eleven and already he’d overtopped her by half an inch.

  “Pay’s great. And there are treats.” She handed him a candy bar and watched while he unwrapped it. “Ready?”

  “Yeah.” He followed her through the office, munching toffee.

  Emma looked up from her desk as Abby passed. “Night, kids. Don’t forget the math quiz in Johnson’s class, Christopher.”

  “Night, Emma,” Abby and her son responded, nearly in unison, nearly matched in height, but to Abby’s mind different as night and day.

  Chris took shot gun and sank his sneakers on Abby’s tote. He cranked down the window. Sunset dappled his pale skin to orange.

  “What’s the debate tonight?” Abby watched her son out of the corner of her eye as she urged the car ahead through evening traffic.

  His moods had been difficult lately and she’d yet to pin down the problem. She’d begun to think the root of the trouble was at school, although he seemed comfortable enough with both his teachers and his studies.

  But over the last few weeks the quick, humorous boy who’d always been so eager to rush off to school now dragged his heels every morning, and almost invariably came home in a sulk. Abby couldn’t understand what had suddenly turned her mild mannered son so sullen.

  “We’re doing the Louisiana Purchase.” Chris finished the last of his candy bar and crumpled the foil. He sucked a dab of chocolate from his th
umb and stared out the window, shoes scuffing lightly on her tote.

  “Don’t remember much debate over that one.”

  Chris slanted a look away from the window to see if she was serious, and then rolled his eyes. “Maybe if you’d gone to school sometimes.”

  “Hey. Who’s the parent here?”

  Chris’s frown stretched into a grin and he snorted. Abby laughed. Her bright, bright son, who would go so much farther than she had. Yale, at least. Maybe Harvard. Six years of school left, six years of straight As and Advanced Placement and debate club.

  Six years to whip Chesapeake Renovations into shape and make it provide for every bit of her son’s Ivy League education.

  Six years was a long time. Or the blink of an eye.

  Swallowing a sigh, Abby rolled down her own window. The air outside was thick with the remnants of rain. “Which side are you on?”

  “For.” He stuck his balled up wrapper into the car’s ash tray. “We’ll win.”

  “Glad to hear it. Sorry I was late.”

  “You said so already,” he said, unconcerned. “They’ll wait for me. Did you sell the mansion?”

  The check waited in her tote. The next free moment she had she’d run the precious thing to the bank and see it safely deposited.

  “Sure did.”

  “So, what were they like?”

  Abby and Chris had imagined a family for the old house. A middle aged couple with four or even five kids, come to take over Edward’s giant legacy and make it loud and cheerful. Chris had hoped for new young faces in the neighborhood, and Abby had simply wished for people who would love the place as much as she did.

  “You know,” she said at last, trying to sound casual. “It wasn’t a family after all. Just one man.”

  “One guy?” Chris turned from the window and stared. “One guy wanted all that room?”

  “Well, it is a pretty cool house.”

  Chris didn’t look convinced. “Maybe. But wouldn’t it be totally lonely?”

  Abby knew he was remembering Edward and the old man’s sorrow as he lurked alone in one room of an empty and unused mansion. “Maybe.”

  “No kids, or anything?” Her son sounded baffled.

  “No. I don’t know.” Realizing she didn’t. “Not with him, anyway.”

  “Huh.” Chris grunted. “Sounds stupid to me.”

  For a brief moment Abby saw Everett, standing in front of his racy car, hands shoved in his pockets, looking up at her as she balanced on the edge of his father’s garage. His eyes had been as she remembered, deep and still, but full of a new emotion she didn’t recognize.

  “He said he wanted to come back to his roots.”

  “His roots?”

  Abby hesitated, eyeing her young son, and then shrugged. “Yeah, his roots. I guess you could say the house used to be his.”

  Chris gaped. “What?”

  “He used to live there,” Abby clarified. “His name’s Everett. He’s Edward’s son.”

  “Edward had a son?”

  Abby nodded, amused in spite of herself by Chris’s baffled expression. “He and Ev didn’t get along so well. They decided not to live together any more. He moved out to Seattle. A long time ago. He’s all grown up, now.”

  “Everett,” Chris repeated, giving the name a Southern roll. “Did you know him?”

  “When I was a kid.”

  “Can I meet him?”

  Abby shook her head before she thought.

  “Why not?” Her son whined, instantly aggrieved.

  “I’m sure he’s very busy.”

  “Doing what?”

  Abby shrugged. “Computer stuff. I think he does computer stuff.” And she could have bitten her tongue.

  Chris’s face lit up. “Computer stuff! What kind of computer stuff?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember.” But she remembered the way Ev had looked at her as she fled his touch, fled his father’s house, the check burning a hole in her pocket.

  “Geez, Mom.”

  “Sorry.”

  They drove in silence until the thump of Chris’s sneakers against her tote grew vicious.

  “Stop that.”

  Chris folded his arms over his chest. “I wonder if he has an iPad. Seattle. I bet he does. Nobody in this hick town has even seen one.”

  The bitterness in her son’s voice made Abby glance in surprise from the road. “Williamsburg is not a hick town.”

  “Mom!”

  “Chris!” Abby whined back, mimicking her son’s wounded tone. When he refused to smile, she sighed. “Most of the buildings even have electricity.”

  He softened some. “But not plumbing.”

  “Maybe next century.” She took one hand from the wheel and touched his shoulder. “Now tell me about the Louisiana Purchase.”

  At last he relented and began to chatter. Abby relaxed and listened with attention to her son’s lecture, determined to focus on the moment, on the enthusiasm on her remarkable child’s face.

  Determined to forget, for the moment, about Everett Anderson and the alarm he caused her.

  Chapter Four

  EVERETT WOKE JUST BEFORE NOON, startled from deep sleep by the squeaks of Virginia’s thriving bird population. He rubbed at his face, briefly confused by the sounds of his childhood. Expecting the thump of Edward’s boots overhead.

  Then he smelled new paint and heard the murmur of the ceiling fan above his head. His pulse slowed. He blinked up at the square of sunlight that fell from his window, and touched the carpet, and found that he could smile.

  He’d slept soundly, muddled by time zones and stuffed with food. Cold cuts and chocolate pie. The pie had been on a cake plate at the very back of the fridge and he’d laughed when he found it.

  That last summer, Abby Ross had been determined to become a famous pastry chef. She’d planned to move to New York and work in an elite restaurant. She had talked endlessly of the big city adventures she knew she’d have and she had baked pie after pie on her ma’s old wood burning stove.

  But each baking attempt had ended in disaster. He still remembered her temper when crust refused to set and filling burnt. Not long after she reduced her final pie to ashes, Abby stopped talking about New York.

  He thought she’d finally mastered the oven, because the pie he’d found in his new fridge looked home made and tasted of heaven. He had downed a good portion of the treat before finally descending into the basement for sleep.

  Anticipating another slice for breakfast, Everett shed his sleeping bag and yanked on a worn pair of sweats. He wandered barefoot across the carpet to his window. Beyond the glass the clouds had disappeared, leaving blue sky and building heat. He could feel the sticky warmth even through the pane.

  Abruptly, he wanted a swim. A dip in the Creek and a look at the boat house. And, after he cooled his flesh, chocolate pie and a beer. Then some time to play with the massive TV he’d glimpsed earlier in the living room.

  Laughing at himself, feeling rebellious as the teenager who’d left his father’s house, Everett ran upstairs to his duffel and rummaged around until he found the bathing suit he’d almost forgotten to pack. He stripped without embarrassment before the front windows, pleased by the privacy the long driveway provided. Not a neighbor in sight. Nothing but trees and water to every side.

  He decided then that he’d never put up a single curtain. He liked the way the sunlight filled the house.

  Because his gurgling stomach decided it wouldn’t wait for breakfast after all, he took the beer and pie down across the back lawn, munching contentedly as he walked. The afternoon heat felt good for a handful of minutes before he began to sweat. By the time he stepped beneath the woods, he was more than ready for the chill of the Creek.

  Plate balanced in one hand, bottle dangling from his fingers, he paused, listening. And he could hear it, the faint rush of water from below.

  Everett began the careful climb down the hill, wincing as bare feet met twigs and stickers. He’d
always gone barefoot through the woods and he didn’t intend to wimp out so late in the game, even if his toes had lost every callous he’d ever earned.

  He slid a little down the last few yards of the bank and then he saw the boat house. He thought she hadn’t touched it. The building looked just as he remembered, crumbling at the edges, solid at the core. Twelve years and it was still standing.

  What a colossal joke.