The Wedding Thief

by Mary Simses

  David peered through a window into the darkness. “And they didn’t even have Starbucks. Imagine that.”

  I gazed into the window as well. I couldn’t see anything except rubble and a pile of rusted metal bars. I thought about what David had said on the phone. We’d have to bulldoze what’s there anyway…Start fresh. They were going to tear the building down. Sad, but not a surprise. I wondered what they would do with the property after that. Build a movie-theater complex? An office park? Anything was possible. I walked along the side of the building, looking into other windows; pools of darkness stared back at me.

  “I wonder when this place closed,” I said.

  “I read it was in the late seventies.”

  He’d done some research. “That means it operated for a hundred and fifty years,” I said. “That’s a long time. There’s a lot of history here.”

  We paused near what was once the front door but was now just a frame with a strip of cyclone fencing over it. I gazed at the broken concrete slab leading to the entrance and imagined the workers—men, women, even children—heading into the building carrying their lunch pails, hearing the steam whistle announce the beginning of their shift. I could see them at the carding machines that brushed and straightened the wool fibers, the spinning frame that transformed the fibers into thread or yarn. I pictured them standing at the skein winders and the looms. I wondered what had gone through their minds when they looked out of these windows. What were their hopes and dreams?

  I picked up a small piece of concrete from the ground and turned it over. “A whole way of life just vanished when these mills closed. These buildings were beautiful back in their day. And now…”

  “That’s what happens when buildings are left behind,” David said. “Nature takes its course.”

  But why did we have to let that happen? It seemed negligent to stand by and watch such lovely things be destroyed. I knew the building could be beautiful again if someone cared enough and had enough money to do the work. I also knew it wasn’t as easy as it sounded. David and his partners, or whoever bought the place, couldn’t be blamed for wanting to tear it down. But that meant this place, with its history and its soul—the collective memories of all the people who had worked there—would be gone forever. I wished he hadn’t brought me here. I dropped the piece of concrete, and it splintered on the ground, the chips scattering.

  “I realize nature takes its course,” I said. “But don’t you think old things are worth saving? I mean, just because something’s old, does that mean you should just let it—”

  “You can’t save everything,” he said as he began walking again. “Sometimes it’s not practical.” I hung back, parsing his words, picturing a graph where the costs side outweighed the benefits side. Then I ran to catch up.

  He stopped, angling his head. “Do you hear that?”

  I listened and heard the faint sound of water rushing, splashing—the river that had once generated the power to run the mill’s machinery. We walked around to the back of the building, where the sound was loud, the river running in quick white currents at the bottom of an embankment of dirt and rocks, water racing over boulders, around saplings, twirling into eddies dappled by the waning sunlight. The air was dank and cool. I tossed a stick and watched the current pull it downstream to a patch of white water, where it spun in a manic dance until it was dragged under the froth.

  “What will you do with the property?” I asked David.

  “This property?” He turned around to view the factory again. “I don’t know if we’ll even buy it. I’m just taking a preliminary look. A lot would depend on what kind of incentives we could get from the state, among others. Tax breaks, grants.”

  “What kind of grants?”

  “Remediation, for one. This will be a huge environmental cleanup job.” He glanced at the ground and pushed a little hill of dirt away with his sneaker. “From all those decades of dumping pollutants before it became illegal.”

  “And you’d try to get the state to pay for some of that?”

  “Sure. We’re talking millions of dollars. Some states have programs to help developers clean up brownfields like this. Connecticut is one of them. There are other sources, too, like federal grants. But it’s not easy. It’s the government, you know. And there’s only so much money to go around.”

  Brownfield. I was still stuck on that word. How sad it sounded. And how sad that it was so expensive just to resolve the environmental problems. If David and his partners bought this, I knew they’d be putting up that office park or condo complex. How else would they get back their investment and make a profit? This old building would be gone, and this place would be changed forever.

  I thought about Dad and how he used to say we should welcome the future but respect the past. When he and Mom moved from Manhattan to the house in Hampstead, the first thing he did was replace the modern-looking addition a previous owner had grafted onto the farmhouse with one that fit the early-1800s period when the house was built.

  “Why do old things always have to be sacrificed to make way for new ones?” I said. “What’s so great about new stuff? This place almost feels alive with the memories of the people who were here. The men, the women, the children. It seems like such a shame to wave goodbye to all that, let the wrecking ball come in and—”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about saving it,” I said, eyeing the factory again. “Yes, it’s old. Of course it’s old. And it needs a lot of work. But it could be beautiful, David.” I picked up another stick and took a step to throw it in the river. “And you’d be…” I was about to say preserving a piece of history when I felt my feet almost go out from under me.

  David grabbed my hand. “Sara, careful!”

  My heart raced for a moment before I caught my breath. “Oh my God, it’s slippery. Thanks.” His hand was tight around mine. It felt nice. His warmth, his strength.

  “I don’t want you ending up in the water.”

  I was about to tell him I wasn’t worried, that I knew how to swim, but then I realized the currents were strong and I thought maybe that’s what he was concerned about. We stepped back, and as he released my hand I had a sudden feeling that I didn’t want him to let go.

  I tried to sweep away the thought. “Old things are…they’re important,” I said. “They represent what we once were. Sometimes they’re the best examples of what people can create. And they keep getting torn down like they don’t matter. But they do. If we lose our history, we lose ourselves. Don’t you see?” How could I make him understand? “You’ve got to save this place.”

  The sun, barely more than a soft curve on the horizon, cast a faint glow over the bricks, a last-ditch effort to illuminate them. David looked confused. Maybe no one had ever questioned him about what he did in his business. Maybe someone should have.

  “Sara, just so you understand, if we buy this property—and that’s a huge if—we won’t be tearing down the building.”

  Now I was the one who was confused. “You won’t?”

  “No. We’d keep it,” he said as we began walking back toward the van. “That’s the whole point. We’d probably look at doing a mixed-use design. Apartments, some retail, maybe artist lofts, some office space. It would depend on the community need.”

  Mixed use. Community need. That all sounded good. Very good. “So you were never going to tear it down?”

  “No, it would be a rehab. We’ve done a number of projects like that.” He started to tell me about something they’d just finished in Cincinnati, but I felt so embarrassed, it was hard to concentrate. He’d done this before. He’d renovated old buildings. And I’d been talking to him as though he were a novice.

  “I feel like a fool,” I said as we got into the van. “Lecturing you about saving this place when that was your plan all along.” I wondered how I could have been so wrong, and then I remembered his phone conversation. “But you said something on the phone before about everything needin
g to be bulldozed.”

  David started the engine. “Bulldozed?” He gazed into the distance. “Oh wait, you mean when I was…” He nodded. “I did say that, but I was talking about another project, a building damaged in a hurricane. It’s mostly rubble.”

  Another project. I was relieved to know I’d gotten it wrong.

  “I can show you photos of some of the other rehabs we’ve done.”

  Now I wanted to drop the subject. “It’s fine. I—”

  “Let me see.” He pulled out his cell phone and began tapping the screen. “I have an album that I…oh, here it is.” He held the phone between us. I could smell something citrusy and a little spicy on his skin. Aftershave? Soap? Whatever it was, it smelled nice. “This was an old wire mill in upstate New York. We renovated it and turned it into a mixed-use development. Apartments, restaurants, retail. I took these as the project went along. Scroll through and you’ll see.” He handed the phone to me.

  There were photos of the outside of an old red-brick building not unlike the woolen mill—grimy, stained, bricks missing. Inside the factory, the floors were covered with puddles of black water; green paint flaked in sheets off the walls, electrical cords dangled from the ceilings, and broken glass sat like jagged teeth in the window frames.

  As I scrolled on, the photos revealed a gradually changing building. The missing bricks were replaced and the façade cleaned. The floors, which I now saw were made of wood, had been refinished and shone with an amber hue. Light poured in through new glass in the oversize windows, and I couldn’t believe the dark, dank-looking place in the first photos had become this clean, sunny space.

  “We turned that floor into apartments and artist lofts,” David said, pointing to a photo I’d enlarged of a renovated studio.

  “This is incredible. I can’t believe the difference.” It seemed like magic.

  “Yeah, it came out pretty nice.”

  He backed up the van. “You know,” he said, gazing at the building that must have held a million secrets, “sometimes I think about the people who worked in these places. Decades ago, or a hundred years ago. I wonder about them—who they were, where they came from. How did they get here? Did they cross the ocean? Some of them did. Probably a lot of them. I imagine them at their machines, working. There are places in the floors of some of the factories we’ve rehabbed where the wood is worn from years of people standing by the machines. Think about that.”

  I was thinking about that. I could see those people. I wondered if he’d read my mind.

  Chapter 15

  Intruders

  It was dusk when we made the turn onto the path that led up to Jeanette’s house. The woods seemed to have grown thicker since our visit a few days before, and I began to feel as though I’d stepped into the middle of a Grimms’ fairy tale. We reached the top of the hill and drove into the clearing. The house was dark.

  “Looks like they’re not home,” I said, a feeling of foreboding edging into my bones.

  David parked the van. “Who knows? Maybe they use candles. That would be their kind of thing.”

  That did sound like them. Still, there should have been some signs of life. I gazed from window to window. The place felt deserted.

  “Well, they knew we were coming,” David said. “Let’s go ring the bell.”

  We walked to the porch and he yanked the bell’s cord; the clang shattered the blue stillness of the evening. Fireflies blinked in the yard, yellow dots rising from the grass. I peeked through the little window in the kitchen door, but it was too dim to see anything inside. I rapped on the glass. The wooden boards of the porch creaked under my feet.

  David rang the bell again. “It’s eight fifteen. She said to come at eight. Where are they?”

  “I don’t know.” I didn’t have a good feeling about this.

  David took out his phone. “Do you have her cell number?”

  “She never gave it to me,” I said, realizing too late we should have asked for it.

  “Let’s wait in the van. They’re probably on their way back now from wherever they went.”

  I slapped a mosquito on my arm as we headed to the van. Inside, David turned on the radio. John Coltrane was performing magic with his tenor sax, playing an old classic called “Say It.”

  “Coltrane,” I said. “From the Ballads album.”

  “Yeah. Great album. You know, it might not be the one most people would associate with him, but it sure shows how well he could make beautiful music.”

  It was beautiful music indeed. We sat there and listened as the sky went dark and the song came to an end, Coltrane’s final notes hanging in the air like gossamer. I watched the lightning bugs send their mating signals to one another through the night. “Where or When” began to play, Sinatra singing the Rodgers and Hart tune. I sat there, mesmerized.

  “You know, you’ve got a nice voice,” David said.

  I sat up straight. “What?” Oh my God, I’d been singing. Talk about embarrassing. “Sorry. It’s a bad habit. Sometimes I don’t realize I’m doing it. I know these songs like the back of my hand.”

  “No, I mean it. You’ve got a decent voice. It’s soft. It’s pretty.” He was staring at me, all serious now.

  I could feel myself blush. “Oh, no way.” He was being polite, that’s all.

  “If you’d been around during my Jazzmatazz days, I would have had you audition for vocals. We had Pete Rinaldi. He could play guitar, but he sure couldn’t sing. You would have been a lot better.”

  He was looking at me in a funny way. An intense, concentrated way, as though everything had suddenly slowed down. “Just because you played sax in Jazzmatazz doesn’t mean you’re an expert on vocals,” I said.

  “Oh, I think you’re wrong about that. I’m definitely an expert on vocals. I’m an expert on a lot of things.” There was a mischievous tone in his voice.

  I laughed, wondering where this was going. “Yeah? Like what?”

  “Like what?” He looked through the windshield for a moment as though sizing up the Gwythyrs’ house, which was visible now only in silhouette. Then he turned back to me. “Well, like this.”

  I don’t know what I expected, but I wasn’t expecting what he did. He leaned in and kissed me, there in the front seat of the van, with Sinatra crooning, and a chorus of crickets and cicadas outside. His lips were warm. His skin smelled like oranges. His kiss was soft.

  But it was all wrong.

  I was in love with Carter, and David was about to be engaged. What were we doing? This wasn’t in the plan at all. We pulled apart.

  “Oh God, I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what I…I didn’t mean to…”

  I waved my hands like I was trying to clear the air. “Just a mistake. That’s all. Let’s forget the whole…”

  He turned the radio off. “Yeah, yeah. Maybe we’d better, uh, figure out what we’re going to do here. I mean, you know, about the hand.” I sat there pretending to think about the hand, but all I could think was What just happened? and I knew he had to be thinking the exact same thing.

  “Yes, the hand,” I finally said, but I kept remembering the feeling of his lips on mine. And I hadn’t even minded the stubbly beard. Okay, that was enough. I had to stop.

  David glanced at his watch. “You know, I don’t think the Gwythyrs are coming back.”

  I didn’t think they were coming back either. This night was going sideways. “Maybe we should leave a message on their phone. And a note on the door.”

  “Good idea. I can come back tomorrow if I know they’re going to be here.”

  I searched through my handbag for paper and found a scrunched-up Sizzling Wok takeout menu. I wrote a note on the back and we stuck it between the front door and the jamb. Then I called their phone. We could hear it ringing inside the kitchen. The answering machine picked up, Jeanette’s voice on the recording. The message was new.

  Hello there! You’ve reached Jeanette and Cadwy. We’ve gone to a psychic fair in New Mexico. We’
ll be back…uh, Cadwy, when are we coming back? Cadwy? Oh, never mind. In a week, I think. We’ll be back in a week. Oh, two? Okay, two. So, leave a message. And if you need any herbal remedies, tell us and we’ll call you when we’re back in town. We’ve got a special going right now on coffee enemas. Buy one, get one free. Be well.

  New Mexico? I felt like I was going to crumble. “I can’t believe this. They skipped out on us.”

  David was quietly banging his head against the front door.

  “They knew we were coming,” I said. “How could they leave without telling us?”

  “Maybe they forgot. Maybe Jeanette’s mental calendar malfunctioned,” he said. I could hear the frustration in his voice.

  I wanted to dig a hole and hide. “I can’t believe this is happening. I never should have trusted her. I should have known she was too flighty. I’m so sorry.” We stood by the door, the chorus of nocturnal insects growing louder by the second. “What are we going to do?”

  “We’re going to leave. We’ve gone as far as we can. I’ll do what I should have done in the beginning—tell Ana and Alex what happened. They’ll make an insurance claim, and—well, that’s it.” He stepped off the porch.

  Ana. Her name felt like an intrusion. But I had no right to think that way. She was David’s girlfriend, soon to be his fiancée. And my plan was to get Carter back. Carter, the man I loved.

  Enough of that. I needed to deal with the immediate problem. The hand had to be inside the house. It was probably finished and ready for us. Were we really going to walk away when we were that close? “I have an idea. We’ll go in and get it.”

  “What do you mean, go in and get it? They’re away. The house is locked.”

  “We could see if there’s a door or a window they forgot to lock. And if there is, all we need to do is go in, get the hand, and leave them some money.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Sara, that’s insane. We’re not doing it.”

  “Hold on, listen. Nobody’s around. And you can’t even see another house from here. It’s all woods. At least let’s check. If something’s unlocked, then we can decide.”