The Boarding House

by Sharon Sala

  And once again, Aaron was left with no way to answer. Just like she’d believed them real, she now knew they were dead. In a way, he could see the wisdom in leaving well enough alone, but as a doctor, he didn’t dare.

  “I still want you to promise me you’ll maintain a regular relationship with your doctor. Even if it’s no more than once a week, or once a month, or whatever makes the both of you happy.”

  She shrugged. “I can live with that.”

  He started to shake her hand, then remembered she didn’t like to be touched. To his surprise, Ellie extended her hand instead. He took it.

  “Thank you for everything you did for me.”

  “You’re very welcome. Don’t forget to write in your journal. When it’s filled up, begin another one and remember, the more you give away . . .”

  Ellie finished it. “. . . the less of a burden you have to carry. I won’t forget.”

  “Best of luck then, and if you need me, you know how to get in touch. Oh. I almost forgot.” He took a video tape from the inner pocket of his jacket. “I thought you might like this. It’s the one of you and your mother when you were a tiny baby.”

  Ellie beamed. “Thank you. Thank you so much. Yes, I definitely want it.”

  He waved and then left her at the door. Ellie popped the video into her suitcase as she glanced at the clock. Still forty minutes before the car came to get her. She had one more person she needed to see, and she wanted to do it without company. She closed her eyes and sent out one last message.

  I’m leaving. Please come to the window. I want to say good-bye.

  The common room would be empty at this time of morning. She hurried down the hall and then slipped inside. Her footsteps sounded doubly loud in the empty space, but she kept on walking toward the window. It was the perfect time and place for one last visit here with God, as well.

  Hi God, it’s me, Ellie. As You can see, I’m leaving today. The next time I talk to You I will probably be in Texas. I’m going to college there. I wanted You to know that I don’t have any hard feelings toward You anymore. One of these days I’ll say another prayer, but not until I figure out how to do it better. I guess that’s all for now. Talk to You later.

  There was a touch on her shoulder but she was already smiling before she turned around. “You came.”

  Luther’s eyes smiled first, but his lips soon followed. “I could not miss my good-bye.”

  A quick burn of tears blurred Ellie’s vision, but she blinked them away.

  “You saved my life.”

  Luther touched the wispy bangs on her forehead then suddenly dropped his hand as if he’d transgressed. “You saved yourself, Ellie.”

  “Cinnamon said once that someone must have loved me a lot to paint something as beautiful as this window. I’ve never said thank you for that, but I am now.”

  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

  Ellie heard it, even though his lips never moved. When she looked up, he was so tall she had to squint her eyes against the sunlight to see his expression. “I know your secret.”

  His eyebrows arched, but he didn’t respond.

  “I know you’re not God.”

  Luther waited.

  “You’re psychic, aren’t you, Luther?”

  His eyes suddenly twinkled.

  “I won’t tell,” she whispered.

  Luther opened his arms and one more time, Ellie walked into his embrace. It wasn’t a hug so much as a union of one soul to another, and then it was over. He turned loose as she stepped back.

  “One last thing, Luther . . . I just want you to know that if you ever tune in and want to send me a message, I will be listening.”

  “And I will be listening for you.”

  She glanced up at the window as he walked away, memorizing every color and hue, then followed him out and hurried back to her room to get her things, suddenly afraid someone would change their mind and make her stay.

  It was surreal to be riding through the streets of Memphis along with thousands of others on their way to somewhere else. But when the driver pulled up to her house to let her out, Ellie physically shuddered. Even though she knew it would be empty, it was still too full of ghosts and bad memories for her to want to linger. The only plus was that her car was sitting in the driveway, just as Doris had promised.

  The driver looked up in the rearview mirror and spoke. “We’re here, Miss. I was told to wait and help you load some things into your car.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know. Just a moment and I’ll go unlock the house.”

  She got out and hurried around to the back, got the key from under the mat and let herself in. She found the car key on the kitchen table along with a large envelope and her purse, but she would look at those later. She grabbed the car key and hurried through the kitchen to the front door. The driver was waiting outside on the porch and the bags and boxes she was taking with her were inside by the front door.

  “Very handy and thank you, Doris,” Ellie muttered.

  She let the driver in, then aimed the remote and unlocked the car, thankful the SUV had plenty of space. “Just put these anywhere they’ll fit.”

  “Yes, Miss.”

  She waited until he’d carried them all out and told her good-bye, then relocked the front door and turned to face the empty house.

  She’d wondered how she would feel coming back to this place and was surprised to realize she felt nothing. Maybe knowing the Devil was dead had something to do with it.

  She walked down the hall to her old bedroom and then pushed the door inward. The room seemed large compared to where she’d been for the past year, but the energy that had been in it—the same energy that came with fear wasn’t there—the room felt just as dead as Daddy.

  She closed the door, then moved across the hall to her mother’s room. For a fraction of a second she flashed on the sight of Fern’s dead body sprawled face down on the bed, and then it was gone. Her gaze moved from the bed to the wall and the array of crosses and icons that had grounded Fern Wayne’s world. Ellie wanted one. It would be like taking a little bit of Momma with her.

  She looked them over, then finally chose a simple iron cross and took it down from the wall. She walked out, then paused a moment to gather her thoughts. Daddy’s room was at the end of the hall, but she had no intention of wasting her time looking. She’d spent the best years of her life being tortured in there. She had no desire to take the memory with her. Instead, she headed for the kitchen, the one place where she had known peace.

  She opened the large envelope by her purse. It was from her executor.

  Miss Strobel,

  I have taken the liberty of transferring your bank account into your new legal name. There are new checks and a new ATM card as well, and Mrs. Bailey, your housekeeper, has packed the rest of your checks into your luggage. You will also note I have secured your high-school transcript, along with the paperwork regarding your name change which you will need to secure college entry. Since you are leaving the state, I recommend you get the name changed on your driver’s license after you get settled there. Remember to take the paperwork with you to the tag agency for proof.

  It has been my pleasure to serve you over these years and I will continue to do so until you have reached the age of twenty-one, at which time the entire proceeds and property of your mother, Fern Strobel Wayne, will be turned over to you.

  You have my contact information. I am at your service.

  Regards, Milton Crossley, Esq.

  Ellie put the new checks and ATM card in her purse and checked to see if her old driver’s license was there as well. Doris had packed her Momma’s china and silverware and they, along with the other stuff she was taking, were in Ellie’s car. But there was one more thing she wanted that she hadn’t thought to tell Doris about, and that was Momma’s rolling pin.

  She took it out of the drawer, then got a sack from the pantry and put the cross, the envelope with her papers, and the rolling pin inside.
She was getting ready to leave when she noticed a note taped to the refrigerator. It was from Doris.

  Ellie,

  I say prayers for you every day, and I want you to know I think of you as family. When you get settled into your new place, I would be honored if you wanted to stay in touch. You know my address. If you need anything else done at the house before it sells, all you have to do is call.

  Love, Doris,

  PS, I left you a treat in the refrigerator.

  Ellie appreciated the invitation, but she already knew she was cutting ties with everything and everyone connected to this part of her life. Still, she opened the door to see what Doris had left and found a box of homemade oatmeal-raisin cookies and a cold bottle of Pepsi, just like when she and Wyatt were kids. As the memory slid through her mind, she realized it was the first time she’d thought of Wyatt without a huge sense of loss. That had to be a good sign.

  She took the cookies and the pop, locked the door as she left and put the key back under the mat. By the time she got off the porch, she was running for her car. Only one more stop and then she was out of Memphis and never coming back.

  Stanton Brothers Funeral Home wasn’t far from Franklin’s Ice Cream Parlor, where she used to work, so she had no trouble finding the place. She pulled into the driveway and got out, brushing cookie crumbs from the front of her dress as she headed for the entrance.

  A bell dinged as she entered, which brought a forty something man in a light-blue summer suit up from behind a desk. He folded his hands against his waist and walked toward her.

  Ellie guessed it would be hard to figure out what kind of an expression to use when you worked in a place like this. You couldn’t frown because people were already sad or they wouldn’t be here, and you couldn’t smile in welcome, because they were here because someone was dead. She wondered if he’d practiced that zombie look or if it was his natural appearance and thought the bald head he was sporting didn’t help.

  “Hello. My name is George. May I help you?”

  “I’ve come to pick up my father’s ashes.”

  His expression instantly shifted to one of deep concern. “We call them cremains. Please have a seat at my desk so I can pull the file.”

  Ellie sat.

  George moved to a set of file drawers. “What was the name of the deceased?”

  “Garrett Wayne.”

  She watched George reach for the lowest file drawer, which figured, since W was near the end of the alphabet, then pull out a file and open it. She braced herself, waiting for the moment when it dawned on him she was the girl who’d killed her father.

  “Oh. My. I, uh . . .”

  Ellie sighed. “If you don’t mind, I’m kind of in a hurry.”

  “Yes, of course. I just wanted to—”

  “I’ve already spoken to my executor. Everything has been paid for and you were to keep what’s left of him until I got out of the hospital. So as you can see, I’m out.”

  George tried to smile, then wasn’t sure it was the proper thing to do, then wondered if it was safe to turn his back on her as he headed for their storage area to retrieve the deceased.

  He was close to running when he came back with a square black box about the size of a box of tissues. He set it on the desk and then discreetly removed his handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his head. Ellie noticed it made his head shine even more than it already did, which then set her to wondering if bald people had shine spray like people with hair had hair spray, then made herself focus on the box.

  It was smaller than she’d imagined it would be and very nondescript. There was satisfaction in knowing that much evil had been reduced to such a small pile of waste.

  “Uh, Miss Wayne, it’s customary to choose an urn for the cremains, if you would like to follow me into the viewing room I have some on display.”

  “No need,” Ellie said. “He isn’t going to be in there long.”

  “Ah. I see. You have a special place where you intend to scatter the ashes, which is often another favorite family choice.”

  “Yes. I have a place in mind. Is that all?”

  He took a couple of papers from the file and spread them out before her. “If you would just sign here, and then here, as well, you’ll be on your way.”

  Ellie signed the name, Ellie Strobel.

  He saw it and frowned. “I’m sorry. I thought you were—”

  “I am. I had a horrible father and no desire to carry his last name any longer than I had to. I had it legally changed to my mother’s maiden name. I’m sure you know of Strobel Investments here in Memphis?”

  “Why yes, I do, but I had no idea—”

  Ellie suddenly laughed. He’d just said, “I had no idea”—what had been Sophie’s favorite phrase.

  And George had no idea why she’d suddenly laughed with her father’s remains only inches away from her nose, nor was he going to ask.

  “Alright then. This is your copy, and here is your—the, ah . . . cremains.”

  Ellie folded up the paper, ignoring George’s horror; she pulled a plastic Walmart bag from her purse and dropped it and the box inside. She walked out of the office, swinging the bag in one hand and her car keys in the other.

  “Lord have mercy,” George muttered, and wiped his bald head a second time as Ellie drove away.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  It was just after 1:00 p.m. when Ellie pulled up to a big truck stop just off Interstate 40 in Forrest City, Arkansas. She was hungry and this was as good a place as any to grab a bite to eat. She filled up with gas first, paid at the pump, then drove up to the station and went inside carrying her purse and the Walmart sack with Daddy’s ashes.

  The deli case next to the register was full of greasy offerings of corn dogs, potato wedges and hunks of fried chicken, or if she wanted to go ethnic, she had a choice of taquitos or nachos with thick canned cheese sauce that tasted more like yellow paste than cheese.

  Ellie bypassed the fried stuff for the Subway sandwich area and ordered a ham and cheese sub on flatbread, and a Pepsi. It was so different from what she’d been eating for the past year that her mouth was actually watering when she took her first bite.

  She ate without thought, thankful for the freedom to be sitting here and choosing her own food. When she was finished, she dumped the remains in the trash, picked up her purse and her Walmart sack and headed for the ladies’ room.

  There were six stalls, including the one for the handicapped, and they were all empty except for one, which she quickly bypassed. She could get to it later.

  Ellie used the bathroom, flushed the stool then took the box with her father’s ashes out of the sack.

  “Right where you belong,” she muttered, as she dumped some in and flushed.

  She waited until the smoky contents had more or less gone down the hatch before she moved to the next empty stall where she repeated the process, dumping ashes, then flushing, moving from toilet stall to toilet stall until she’d covered them all and there was nothing left to flush.

  She dumped the box in the trash, then calmly moved to the sink where she soaped and rinsed her hands over and over until she was satisfied there wasn’t an iota of the Devil on her person.

  In the meantime, women had been coming and going, doing their business, then washing up and moving on. Ellie waited until she was once again alone in the room before she said her good-byes.

  “So, Daddy . . . I feel you have earned your final resting place, which is in the sewer. It’s where your mind always was. It seems only fair that your remains rest there as well. With, of course, the added benefit of having women shit on you with daily regularity. It saves me the trouble of telling you to go to hell, because you’re already there.”

  When she walked out, there was a bounce in her step and a slight smile on her face. She stopped in the candy aisle and bought herself a Hershey bar, then left the station heading west.

  Epilogue

  It had taken Ellie a couple of days to find just the rig
ht house near the Baylor campus. It was a small, one bath/one bedroom with a great kitchen, a living room and a tiny dining nook. The draw had been the fenced-in backyard. Ellie was toying with the idea of getting a dog. She’d always wanted one, but had never been given the option. After another two days of unpacking, she was finished.

  She stood in the middle of the living room, eyeing her new furniture and fluffing a pillow here and there, then finally stopped fussing and stepped back for a final look. The suncatcher Wyatt had given her for her eighteenth birthday was hanging in the front window. It gave her hope for the future.

  You will be happy here.

  Ellie’s heart skipped a beat. “Wyatt?”

  But when she turned to look, he was nowhere in sight. She swallowed past a sudden lump in her throat as reality hit. Then she took a deep breath and lifted her chin.

  “You’re right, honey. I will be happy here. I promise.”

  As promised, she called Dr. Tyler, who gave her the name and phone number of a psychiatrist there that he wanted her to see. The doctor’s name was Butterfield. She liked that. It made her think of butterflies. Tyler told her that he had already filled the man in on her history, which was good. It saved her the trouble of rehashing it with a stranger.

  It had taken some fancy paperwork, as well as letters of recommendation from Preacher Ray, her executor, and her banker, to get her into the fall semester at this late date, but when school at Baylor College began, Ellie Strobel was listed as a freshman.

  She’d dressed for the day as carefully as a bride would have dressed for her wedding, choosing just the right clothes and shoes—even the right backpack, with just a touch of pink.