And Pop looked at him like he was a creature from Mars. ‘Who are you?’ he said, and then: ‘Go where? I’m not going anywhere.’
And Dad said: ‘You said you needed to go into Paso?’
And Pop said: ‘What’s Paso?’ A town he’d visited a thousand times.
And then he slumped over, and tumbled out of the chair. The ambulance came and he was gone for weeks, and when he came back his face was slack on one side. He’d had to learn to walk again and he needed a bib for dribble. The grown-ups – because I was still only nine or ten – had a meeting and Fiona agreed to give the power of attorney to Dad, and Mom said: ‘Great!’ And that was when the debate about the pavilion started because why did we need it, and who would carry the debt? The whole estate. All of us.
* * *
We hiked towards the cemetery with me in front and Earl a few steps behind, using the broken branch of a eucalyptus tree as a walking stick.
‘I’d forgotten how far it is,’ I said.
‘I’ve never done it in less than forty minutes,’ he said. ‘Do you still have water?’
‘Yep,’ I said, and on we went, sometimes chatting, sometimes in silence, until finally Earl was holding the gate open, and taking off his hat to wipe his brow. I stepped inside the fence, and stood amidst the headstones, remembering each of them: there was Nan’s headstone, beneath which now lay nothing. They’d dug up what we buried for forensics. But there were Pop’s parents – Owen James II and his wife, Ruby – and Owen’s little brother, Henry, who had been only eight when he died.
‘Your dad’s not in here, is he?’ said Earl.
I shook my head and said: ‘No.’
‘Where is your dad?’
‘Mom’s got him.’
I stood in the morning sunshine, eyes closed for a moment, thinking about Dad and his death. It was after Pop’s stroke and after the pavilion went up. I’d been thirteen, sitting at my desk at the public school in Paso when Penelope came rushing in, distressed and dishevelled, to hustle me into the car. I could tell something was wrong: she was weaving all over the road on our way back to the estate, and braking hard at red lights, and she wouldn’t tell me what was going on. Then I saw the ambulance parked by the castle and what seemed like a dozen people surging their way down from the pavilion.
Mom was standing on the castle drawbridge, not wailing but screaming.
Really screaming.
She had found my father in the empty moat. He had gone to Alden Castle to fix some broken bricks at the top of the chimney. Bricks that he’d broken with a sledgehammer which is a whole other story. He’d tumbled. Everyone said this was typical Dad because he was solid and clumsy. What was he even thinking? He was no handyman. He should have asked Earl.
The funeral service was held in the chapel on the estate. I remembered Mom’s outfit: a black dress and a pillbox hat, with netting over her eyes like I’d seen on TV. I remembered Earl putting his arm around me, saying: ‘It’s going to be okay.’ I remembered Fiona crying, being comforted by her kids. I remember Pop in a wheelchair, trying to leave the chapel; and me, feeling dazed, because this was Dad we were burying.
Dad.
I remembered going into Mom’s bathroom, upstairs, in the pavilion, after the service, and looking at his toothbrush, and thinking: he won’t need that. And his nail clippers. He won’t need those. I looked in the wardrobe at clothes he wouldn’t be wearing.
Thinking: I’ve lost my dad. But he’s not just gone. He’s dead.
You have to keep saying it because otherwise it doesn’t feel real.
Then, in the days after the funeral, Mom saying: ‘What am I supposed to do now? You’re going to Briar Ridge. Am I supposed to stay here looking after Owen?’ She wanted Fiona to sell but Fiona wouldn’t, and we’d been forced to pack up and move off the estate, broke and homeless.
* * *
It took some effort to get up to the cemetery and then we didn’t even stay long. It was so small, and a bit weedy, and there’s a nicer place to rest up there. A crop of bald rocks with flat spots, and hanging edges. Earl used his bare hands and the dusty soles of his boots to haul himself up, before reaching back to grasp my hand and pull me up behind him. From the top of the rock pile we could see every structure on the estate – the mossy top of Alden Castle, the light bouncing off the polished surfaces of the Glass Pavilion, the old ruined tennis court behind the chapel – all the way to the sea.
The only sound was the rustling of lizards in the undergrowth. Above, it was wisps of cloud, and a single hawk, circling.
‘Look at him. He’s seen a mouse,’ said Earl. He was sitting beside me with his boots dangling over the edge of the rock, chewing a blade of grass. ‘You watch. He’s got his eye on something.’
We watched, but the hawk did not swoop. With the sun beating down, we gradually drained our water bottles dry. After a while, Earl took off his T-shirt, rolled it to use as a pillow, crossed his boots at the ankle, leant back and pulled his hat down over his forehead.
‘Don’t fall asleep,’ I said.
‘Why not?’ he murmured.
I shrugged and lay down beside him, resting my head on his naked torso. We dozed a bit, but at some point a whisper of service must have blown into my iPhone and it began to beep.
‘Everything okay?’ asked Earl, lifting his hat.
‘Messages,’ I said. ‘It’s the first time I’ve had service so there’s a hundred notifications piling in.’
‘Anything important?’
I sat up to scroll through the messages with my thumb.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Just friends. School’s breaking up next week and it looks like some of them have gone to Big Bear Lake a bit early. They’re playing on the mountain but there’s no snow.’
‘It snowed here one year,’ said Earl.
‘I remember. We went skiing on cardboard mats.’
‘They were boxes. Flat beer boxes. Your dad called them ex-boxes. Remember that? Xboxes. Like the video games. I can still hear him, saying it, like, ten times: “Xbox. Ex-box, get it?” He thought it was hilarious. I really liked your dad. He always let me help with things when I was a kid. Fixing this and that. And you know he taught me how to drive?’
‘I liked him too,’ I said.
I paused, took a deep breath. I’d decided. No secrets from him. It wasn’t fair. ‘Okay,’ I said, as I tugged at the loose white threads hanging from the hem of my shorts, ‘so you know we had the family dinner last night?’
‘Only because Mom was flat out making it.’
‘Okay, well I now know why we’re all back here. I’m not supposed to tell you. You have to promise me you won’t tell your mom. They want to be the ones to tell her and they can’t tell her yet. They’ve got to nail things down. But it looks like they’ve found a buyer – a potential buyer, anyway – for the estate.’
‘Okay,’ said Earl, evenly. ‘But I thought Fiona didn’t want to sell? She’s only just come back. And she’s always going on about how Fletcher or Austin might want to take over one day.’
‘They’ve changed their minds.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. Money.’
‘And what about your pop?’
‘That’s the weird thing. They’ve found a buyer who is happy to wait. They’ll pay a deposit now, to secure the sale, then the rest, you know … later.’
‘“Later” meaning?’
‘When Pop dies.’
‘Right,’ said Earl, thoughtfully. ‘And when is this happening?’
‘Mom’s bringing the buyer in next week. They know each other, or that’s what I gather. Mom says she met the attorney who works for the buyer like, by accident, by the pool at her apartment. And Mom says she wants to get it all done before I go back to school.’
‘Which is?’
‘Officially I’m due back the week after next. But Mom says it could take two weeks, depending on the paperwork.’
‘Okay,’ repeated Earl. He was sitting
up now, looking off into the distance. ‘But I mean, if nothing is going to happen until your pop … I mean, it sounds like it could still be a while before anyone has to leave.’
‘That’s true. Like Fiona said last night: he could live to be one hundred.’
Earl nodded. He still had his boots crossed at the ankles and he was slowly chewing the blade of grass. My heart was racing, watching as the ramifications sank in.
‘I guess that’s going to be weird,’ he said, finally.
‘Weird, not living here anymore?’
‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Weird knowing that next time you leave here, you might never come back.’
* * *
Earl suggested we stop at Horny Corner on the way back down from the cemetery to refill our water bottles. I wasn’t sure exactly how to find it. Horny Corner had been technically off limits to us as kids. It was Nan’s place, hidden amidst the trees, slightly off the cemetery hiking trail.
Pop built it for her, with his own hands, back when he was a younger man. This was before she got sick, when Nan was still talking about one day writing a book, and it was all about how she needed a room of her own to do it. Like there weren’t fifty spare rooms in Alden Castle? But Nan said, ‘No, no, you need a place that’s all your own.’ And there wasn’t anything Pop wouldn’t do for Nan.
Then, when I was about ten, Fletcher told me that Horny Corner wasn’t really for writing books.
‘It’s their love shack,’ he said, and I hadn’t known what that meant.
‘Where they go to have sex,’ he said, bringing his hips in and out, while Austin said: ‘Eew.’
I didn’t believe it, mainly because kids don’t. Also because you can only get to Horny Corner from the cemetery trail, and it’s not an easy hike. But the way it’s decorated … it makes you think! There are only two rooms, and the main room has orange shag pile on the floor, and the walls are covered in this wallpaper with black and silver stripes, and there’s wood carvings of topless women from Samoa on the walls, and at one point, they even had a mirrored bar. So maybe!
Earl took the lead, breaking branches sticking out over the path, until the cottage, with the timber door, loomed into view. Once siren-red, it had faded to pink, and the paint was peeling.
‘All the plants are dead,’ said Earl, reaching up to touch a crusty brown fern in a macramé hanger.
‘It’s probably been years since anyone was here,’ I said, because who would come here? Fiona would never make the trek. Pop was too old, and why would Penelope bother?
‘There better be water,’ said Earl. He’d removed his boots to enter – a cowboy’s habit – and padded across the shag pile to twist the faucets. The pipes screamed as brown water came spitting out in bursts.
‘It’s tank,’ he said. ‘You’re supposed to let it run clean, but there might not be enough in there.’
‘Maybe there’s something else to drink?’
I climbed up onto the kitchen bench and reached into one of the high cabinets and, right at the back, found a nearly empty bottle of whisky.
‘Here,’ I said, passing it back. ‘And there’s tobacco, but no matches, unless they’re in a drawer.’
‘You seem to know a lot about this place,’ said Earl, yanking an old drawer open. There was a fork, a plastic egg slicer and a couple of dull spoons, but no matches.
I jumped down, dusting my hands.
‘Fletcher used to like hanging here,’ I said, tipping the bottle in my hands, to make the amber liquid move against the glass, ‘but that was when I was a kid. I used to think it was glamorous. Now when you look around, it’s like when they switch the lights on at the end of the night in a club.’
‘What do you know about clubbing?’
‘Not much,’ I agreed.
We sat side by side on the kitchen bench, legs swinging, taking turns to sip the whisky. There wasn’t enough for either of us to get drunk on, but the sting was nice on the back of my throat.
‘I should bring Sol here. She’s got a blog. She’d probably love it,’ I said.
‘Sol is the girlfriend Fletcher brought with him?’
‘Yep. She’s gorgeous and she has all these followers. People love her.’
‘I don’t really get what blogs are,’ said Earl. He jumped down from the bench, and reached up to put the now-empty bottle back in the kitchen cabinet. I jumped down too and moved behind him, wrapping my arms around his waist, letting the side of my face rest against the back of his white T-shirt.
‘You okay?’ he said.
‘I am if you are.’
He turned in the circle of my arms. He was so tall and broad it was like being cuddled by a bear.
‘I’m worried about you,’ I said. ‘What are you going to do when we sell?’
‘Me?’ said Earl, bending down to plant a firm kiss on my forehead. ‘I’ll be fine. The big question is, what are you going to do?’ A question I couldn’t answer. I didn’t know. I’d grown up thinking I’d live my life in Alden Castle, maybe even after I got married. Then Dad died and everything got thrown up in the air, and who knew how it would land?
* * *
It was late in the afternoon by the time we got off the hill and down to Paso. Earl dropped me at Margaret’s. Mom had warned me about her drinking, saying: ‘It might take a while to get her to come to the door.’
I knocked and waited, knocked again, then heard: ‘Who’s there?’
‘It’s me,’ I called out.
‘Eden?’
I listened for the sound of Margaret getting to her feet. I waited patiently in front of the security grille, staring at the window boxes of red flowers stuffed with cigarette butts, as she made her way to the door.
‘Eden!’
Margaret was standing there with one crooked hand still around the lock, and the other on a walker with tennis balls on the front feet. ‘Your mother said you were coming. So come in already.’
She shuffled back and let me pass. I went ahead of her down the short corridor, past an occasional table heaving under a clutch of photographs – children’s weddings, graduations – in frames of various sizes; past a string of year-old Christmas cards; past a portrait of Margaret as a young woman in jeans, near an old Stoughton’s Beef sign; towards the little kitchen with its upright stove, and the French windows with lace curtains, neatly tied at the waist.
‘Do you need some help?’ I asked, as Margaret eased herself from the walker into her favourite chair, with the flat pillow resting against the hard rods of the chair’s back.
‘No, no,’ said Margaret. ‘I’m not disabled yet.’
I sat down opposite her at the pine table, where she had been playing Solitaire on a tablet. She had a white wine glass and ashtray by her side, and the back door was open.
‘You can’t stay if I can’t smoke,’ she said, picking up a resting cigarette with drooping ash.
‘Half the kids at Briar Ridge smoke.’
‘Do they, now?’ said Margaret, through the corner of her mouth. ‘I wonder if your mother knows that.’
‘She’d probably love it if I smoked.’
‘Maybe she would. So, what do you have for me?’
‘This,’ I said, digging into my backpack for the envelope Mom had given me.
‘How did you get here?’
‘Earl dropped me off. He’s going to come past and pick me up in half an hour.’
‘Is he now?’ said Margaret, tapping the cigarette. ‘Well, if you’re here for half an hour, have some wine.’
‘I’m seventeen.’
‘I didn’t ask how old you were.’
‘I’m okay.’
Margaret grasped a half-empty bottle by the neck and began to pour.
‘I take it this is about the sale?’ she asked, tapping one finger on the manila envelope I’d delivered.
‘I guess,’ I said, although Mom hadn’t told me exactly what was in the envelope.
Margaret gulped some wine, coughed, and banged her fist
against her bony chest.
‘Well,’ she said, finally. ‘That’s good. Fiona told me weeks ago about your mother’s plans. I take it you’ve been kept in the dark, but this has been going on a while. I’ve been wanting to see something in writing, though. They’ve promised me a little nibble. I’m not entitled to anything. Never mind that I’m Owen’s only sister; he inherited the estate in its entirety from my father. Shocked me at the time. Something to do with girls going off and getting married and benefiting from their husband’s estates. Unbelievable. You do know I was born in that castle, don’t you?’
I did know that. ‘It was the same story in your uncle Stan’s family,’ she continued. ‘He got the ranch from his father. Now it belongs to my sons. So good on Owen for setting up a trust that includes all his descendants. Not just the boys. Of course, it would have been nice for him to also include me, but Fiona says I won’t be forgotten.’
‘Will you miss it when it’s gone?’ I asked.
‘I haven’t lived there for more than sixty years,’ she said, as the Solitaire playing cards on her screen faded. ‘It’s your mother who must be over the moon. She’s been trying to get Fiona to sell up forever and now she’s getting her way. How do you feel about it?’
‘I guess it makes sense.’
‘It certainly does,’ said Margaret, stubbing out her cigarette. ‘And it’s good of them to keep you involved. She doesn’t have to consult you, you know? Your mother. With you still being seventeen. But she’s planned this whole thing very well. She’s making sure you get a say. Very clever. You know, she hasn’t changed since the day I met her. Always plotting. I don’t mean it in a bad way. She never let up when she lived in the castle: how bad everything was, and how much better she could make it if only she had money. Then when Jack took control she borrowed hard against it. Fiona was furious. Not that I have a problem with anything she did. The pavilion looks terrific.’
‘Well, she’s not interested in the pavilion anymore.’
‘No,’ said Margaret. ‘Bigger fish to fry.’
She paused to sip, adding another lipstick smear to the rim of her glass. Her face looked like she was considering whether to tell me something. Finally, she said: ‘Did your mother ever tell you how she met your father?’
The Lucky One Page 10
