“Why don’t you buy an inexpensive patio set? At least that way you’d have a table and chairs, and you’d have something to use outside as well.”
“That’s a great idea. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“You would have eventually.”
“I’m not so sure. What about the wall?”
“You could definitely knock down the wall here, and it would make a huge difference in opening up the room. Mind you, the wall between your kitchen and this room happens to be load bearing, but there are inventive ways of using an island with pillars to get around that, which is what I did in my house. Your father had been thinking along the same lines, so I already have the measurements, plans, digital renderings, and an estimate based on the quality of finishes he wanted. I can also give you the name of a couple of other reputable contractors who can do the same thing.”
“I don’t need to call anyone else. I trust that my father would have done his due diligence.”
“If you’re sure—”
“I’m positive. When can I see the plans?”
“How about I come by Monday morning? Say nine o’clock? But fair warning, renovations are messy, they take time, and they can get expensive, depending on what sort of fixtures and finishes you select.”
“Messy I can deal with and I’ve got time. As for the budget, my dad did leave me some money for renovations. Hopefully it’s enough.”
“We’re used to working with budget restraints. As long as you understand that unless the sky’s the limit, there are going to be compromises.”
“Understood.”
“Then it’s settled. Now, enough shop talk for this evening. Let me help you clear the dishes so we can both enjoy a glass of wine.”
Hunky, handy, and willing to do dishes. Now that was a winning combination. Still, I couldn’t in good conscience ask a dinner guest to help me clean up.
“You relax on the couch. It’ll only take me a few minutes.” Another thought struck me. The photographs.
“You mentioned that you grew up in Marketville. Would you mind looking at some pictures in the meantime?”
“Pictures? Like on your phone?” Royce’s eyebrows knit together in a worried expression, as if I might be one of those annoying people who took hundreds of photos on their phone and expected you scroll through them one by one.
“Not on my phone. These are real photographs. There are only four of them. They were taken with my mother and father. I was hoping that you might recognize the setting. I have to warn you, though. There’s a slight catch.”
“There’s always a catch,” Royce said, but he said it with a smile. “What’s this one?”
“The pictures were taken about thirty years ago.”
“You don’t make things easy, do you?” Still smiling, maybe even a little bit flirtatious.
“Sorry.” Smiling back.
“No apology necessary. I’m more than willing to give it a whirl. But wouldn’t it be easier just to ask your mom?”
“I assumed you knew. My mother left us on Valentine’s Day, 1986. She never even left a note. We never saw or heard from her again.”
“I had no idea. It must have been horrible for you and your father.”
“We managed.”
“Do you think your father rented the house out all these years in the hopes she’d come back for him?”
I wanted Royce’s help but I wasn’t prepared to play twenty questions. “I don’t know. He didn’t really talk about her much.”
“I’m sorry. Clearly I’m overstepping. Let me take a look at the photographs, see if I can recognize the setting.”
I whipped into the kitchen and grabbed them from the drawer before he could change his mind.
“Thanks, Royce,” I said, handing the envelope to him. “I’ll leave you to it while I do the cleanup. Oh, and I made a tiramisu for dessert, if you’re interested.”
“Tiramisu. You’re a goddess. When we have coffee, a bit later though, okay? Another glass of wine first?”
“I can live with that.”
I knew the minute I walked back in the living room that something had changed. There was a tension in Royce’s shoulders that hadn’t been there before.
“Where did you find the photos?” he asked.
“In the attic.” I decided not to mention where in the attic. “Why? Do you recognize the spot?”
Royce nodded. “I’m fairly certain these were taken in the park next to the public school on Primrose Street a couple blocks north of here. The tree is a lot bigger now, but if you look closely at the winter photograph, in the left hand corner you can see a tiny bit of brown and yellow speckled brick in the background. That would be the school. It’s an unusual brick color.”
I looked at the photo closely. The snippet of brown and gold mottled brick was barely visible, but it was there. “I’ll make a point of running by there tomorrow and scoping it out. Maybe it’ll bring back other memories. Thanks.”
“There’s something else, Callie.”
“What is it?”
“I think I recognize your mother.”
I stared at him. “How is that even possible? You didn’t live next door until ten years ago.”
“True, but I grew up in Marketville. The reason I recognized the public school is that I went there as a kid, kindergarten to grade eight. Now my folks spend six months a year in Arizona, and six months at a cottage in Muskoka, but we used to live a few blocks from here.”
“Were your parents friends with mine?”
Royce shook his head. “I don’t think so. When I met your dad a few weeks ago, nothing about him seemed familiar and he didn’t mention knowing my family. I think he would have, don’t you?”
“Probably,” I said, though in truth I wasn’t sure. He’d managed to keep more than that a secret from me. Then again, I couldn’t imagine why he wouldn’t have told Royce he knew his parents. “You said you recognized my mother. When did you meet her?”
“My mom has always been into fundraising. She still is. When I was a kid, bake sales were popular, especially when it came to supporting school initiatives. The woman in the photos you showed me—your mother—dropped off a huge platter of peanut butter cookies to our house for one of those sales. I would have been about nine or ten at the time. This was before all the peanut allergies you hear about now.”
“You can remember a woman you met once, back from when you were nine or ten? I’m impressed.”
Royce grinned. “I remember because your mom brought me my own special homemade cookie. It was roughly three times the size of the other cookies, and she put a smiley face on it using chocolate chips. To a kid, merging peanut butter with chocolate to make a giant cookie was on par with getting a day off school without being sick.”
“My mom used to make me a cookie like that for special occasions. I haven’t thought about that for years.” I frowned. “But why is it that I have no recollection of these photos being taken? Even after studying them, nothing rings a bell.”
“Sometimes we suppress memories to protect ourselves. Perhaps when you’re ready to remember, you will.”
“Why would I need to protect myself?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you remember the woman’s name?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t.”
“Would you mind calling your mom? I’d like to know if she remembers anything about my mother. Her name was Abigail, but I’m pretty sure that she also went by Abby.”
“Consider it done.”
I tried to make conversation after that, but suddenly my head was filled with a kaleidoscope of old memories. My mother baking a cake and letting me lick the bowl. The two of us building sandcastles at Musselman’s Lake. Me playing jumpsies in the driveway, my mother’s face lighting up as I called out M-I-SS-I-SS-I-PP-I, my feet and legs navigating the carefully connected elastic bands, without thought to the fact that Mississippi was an actual place, many miles to the south, in another country. It occurr
ed to me that my father wasn’t in these particular memories, but I wasn’t ready to go there.
Royce seemed to understand, passing on my halfhearted offer of coffee, although he did accept a small serving of tiramisu, probably because he’d made a bit of a big deal about it earlier. When he finally got up to leave, promising to return Monday morning with the renovation plans, we were both more than ready to be alone with our own company.
“I’m sorry to be such a poor hostess,” I said. “Being in this house, the photographs, hearing that you might have met my mother. It’s starting to bring back memories long buried.”
“I can only begin to imagine. Look, if you’d like, we could both pay my folks a visit, take the photographs with us. My dad travels a fair bit, but I’m pretty sure he’s around next weekend.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m positive. My folks love company, especially my mom. Besides, you’d be getting anything they knew firsthand instead of filtered through me. Even if it isn’t much, or my memory is faulty, there are worse ways to spend time than a weekend at Lake Rousseau.”
“I’d like that,” I said, although I wasn’t entirely sure. What if the Ashfords didn’t remember anything? Even worse, what if they told me things I didn’t want to know?
“Let me set something up,” Royce said, leaning over to kiss me gently on the forehead, the soft scent of Irish Spring soap lingering. “Sweet dreams, Callie.”
“Sweet dreams, Royce.” I closed the door and gently touched the spot where his lips had been.
Chapter 13
I got up early Sunday morning after a night of tossing and turning, the odd bits of sleep I did have filled with disjointed dreams. I ate a light breakfast of oatmeal and tea, then got my running gear on and headed out, winding my way around the side streets and occasionally getting turned around. It would take some time to figure out the neighborhood. Eventually I found the public school Royce had mentioned.
The distinctive brick made it easy to spot, as did the gigantic maple tree now in full bud. I stopped my GPS wristwatch and closed my eyes, trying to remember standing there.
Nothing.
I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but nothing wasn’t it. I plopped onto a wooden bench by a baseball diamond and surveyed my surroundings. Maybe if I sat here for a bit something would come to me.
It didn’t. I felt an errant tear trickle down my cheek, quickly followed by a torrent of them.
The tears took me by surprise. I’ve always been a bit of a loner, and after my St. Valentine’s Day massacre I’d made it a rule to eschew sentimentality. Yet here I was, sitting on a schoolyard bench, crying over a woman who had probably abandoned me and whom I could barely remember. I wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my shirt, restarted my watch, and ran back to Sixteen Snapdragon Circle, wondering if I’d ever think of it as home.
I got back, made and drank a pineapple banana protein smoothie, put together a macaroni and cheese casserole for later—comfort food at its finest—and spent the remainder of the day removing the carpet in both bedrooms. It was tedious work that took a lot of muscle, moving furniture around to get at it, and taking the rolls out to the carport until next week’s garbage day, but it felt good to know the job was finally done.
I wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or disappointed that there were no more hidden surprises. I checked my watch. Time to pop in the mac and cheese and toss a salad.
As tired as I was physically, I couldn’t seem to relax after dinner. I tried reading, watching TV, and cruising around Facebook and Pinterest. I thought about the lease agreements Leith had emailed to me.
I’d no sooner poured a glass of chardonnay, grabbed a notebook, and sat down at my desk to Google Jessica Tamarand, the tenant who’d broken her lease, when the doorbell chimed.
I checked the peephole. The woman on the stoop was in her late sixties or early seventies, with soft wrinkles, over-permed gray hair in an afro-style popular three decades back, and gold-rimmed bifocals, the lines heavily etched into the glass. No progressive lenses for this one. Her thin lips were smeared with candy apple red lipstick and a shade of liner that didn’t quite match. I opened the door and caught a whiff of face powder and rosewater. Both had been used more than was absolutely necessary.
“I’m sorry to be calling so late,” the woman said, though it was barely seven p.m. “It’s just that I just ran into Royce when I was coming back from my evening constitutional—I like to walk around the block every night after dinner—and he told me you’re not just another tenant. He told me you were Jim and Abigail’s daughter.” The woman smiled broadly, revealing a smear of red lipstick on her upper eyetooth. “Ella Cole. I live next door, on the left side of you. The brown brick bungalow with the hunter green shutters and the rose garden. Our house is on the Marketville Gorgeous Gardens Tour. Not that the roses are in bloom just yet. I’m an original.”
“An original?”
Ella nodded. “As in an original homeowner in the Wildflowers subdivision. Picked the house from plans way back in the seventies when Marketville was just a blip on Toronto’s horizon, can you imagine? All of twenty thousand residents back then, the mall had forty stores, versus the two-hundred-plus today. And there were none of those big box monstrosities that are sprouting up everywhere like a bad case of teenage acne.”
The last thing I needed to hear was a tangent on urban sprawl. I recalled something a builder friend had told me a few years back. “Sprawl is the house built next to yours.” I attempted to divert her. “An original resident? That must have been very exciting.”
Ella Cole practically preened. I could almost see the tightly permed curls spring into action as her chest puffed out.
“Of course I’ve made some improvements since. We all have…” She looked down at the linoleum and blushed. “I mean, most of us have. Those of us who haven’t rented out. Not that I blame your papa.”
I disregarded her blathering while I took full meaning of her words. Ella Cole might know something about my mother. Maybe even my father. “Won’t you come in? I was just having a glass of wine. I have red and white.”
Her mouth pursed into a tight grimace, the red lipstick making it look like shriveled poppy. “You like to drink alone.”
I should have been annoyed at the implication that I was some sort of fall down drunk. Instead, I found myself going into full defense mode. “Just a small glass of wine after Sunday dinner following a day of hard work. I’ve been stripping carpet all day.”
The mouth remained pursed. A large part of me wanted to tell her to sod off, but that wasn’t the way to get information, or to be neighborly. I made an effort to be conciliatory.
“I can make a nice pot of herbal tea, chamomile perhaps, always good at night, and I have some chocolate chip cookies. Store bought, I’m afraid, but quite good.”
“Store bought is fine,” Ella said, visibly thawing, “though as I remember, your mama loved to bake.”
“A passion I didn’t inherit, I’m afraid, but come on in and make yourself comfortable. Kitchen or living room?”
“I always find a kitchen so much more intimate.”
“Kitchen it is.” I plugged in the kettle and realized I’d neglected to tell Ella my name. “Excuse my bad manners. I’m afraid I haven’t properly introduced myself. Callie Barnstable.”
“Of course I know who you are, Callie, although as I recall, your mama always called you Calamity.”
Why didn’t I remember my mother calling me Calamity? Was that the reason I insisted that everyone, including my father, call me Callie?
“I go by Callie now, Mrs. Cole,” I said, forcing a smile.
“No need for formalities between neighbors. Ella will do just fine.”
“Thank you, Ella. Let me get the tea and cookies then we can chat. I’d love to hear more about my parents when they were young. That is, if you’ve got any stories to share.”
Ella gave a smile fit for a winner of the Lotto Max millions, and I kne
w I’d nailed it. This, then, was the neighborhood busybody. Probably avoided by everyone on Snapdragon Circle, if not the entire Wildflower subdivision.
In short, my new best friend.
Chapter 14
“You mentioned stripping the carpet,” Ella said, dunking a cookie into her tea. “I noticed the rolls at the curb on garbage day. I thought I saw Royce giving you a hand with them on Thursday evening. Did he help you with the work?”
My assumption of a neighborhood busybody was confirmed. “No, I did all the work. Royce saw me taking the rolls of carpet out and offered to help.” As if she didn’t know. Probably had her window open, trying to listen in to our conversation.
“I have a bunch more in the carport, ready for next week’s pick up. I’m pleased, though, at how good the hardwood looks. The floors should refinish nicely.”
“They will indeed. It was all the rage to put wall-to-wall carpeting in back then. We did it, too, though we got rid of it about fifteen years ago. I’m delighted to see that you’re putting in some elbow grease. Does this mean you plan to stay?”
“For a while, anyway.” I wasn’t about to tell her about the conditions of the codicil. Ella would have it spread all over town by the next morning. It was time to steer the conversation into another direction.
“Maybe you can give me some advice on gardening, Ella, seeing as how you’ve done so well with yours. I’ve been told that nothing grows on this property but the lilac. I’d love my own vegetable patch. Nothing elaborate. Some tomatoes, cucumbers, maybe some zucchini.”
“Those are all easy to grow in this area. I’d be happy to go to the garden center with you, once you’ve dug up the plots. I won’t do any digging, but I can show you a perfectly good location. There’s plenty enough light now, if you’re interested in seeing it.”
“You’re on.”
We wandered outside where Ella proceeded to point out a rectangular weed-infested area near the back of the yard, behind a storage shed that had seen better days. The rest of the yard might have been patchy, but this section was downright depressing.
Skeletons in the Attic (A Marketville Mystery Book 1) Page 6
