House on the Forgotten Coast

by Ruth Coe Chambers

  Elise laughed. “I don’t know. If he is, he’s a redneck with a taste for classical music.”

  When she was in the truck, he said, “Don’t you know you’re supposed to keep me waiting?”

  “Only if I’m trying to impress you.”

  “Ow! That hurt.”

  “What do you expect when you force yourself on someone?”

  “Okay, I deserved that. Can I help it if I like you? Most girls would be flattered.”

  “I’m not most girls.”

  “Maybe that’s what I like about you.”

  In the movie she shoved her hands in her pockets to avoid any awkward maneuvering. Ty wasn’t to be discouraged, though. He reached over, pulled her hand from her pocket and laced his fingers tightly through hers. Her face burned with fury while she kept comparing his hand to Lawrence’s that was so much bigger. When the movie was over he continued holding her hand all the way to the truck.

  “I’d like to go straight home, please.”

  “I’ll get you home early, but first I want to take you to a pretty little spot where we can see the moon on the water.”

  “You’ve never learned to take no for an answer, have you?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “You’re so, so . . .” and then she heard herself repeating what she’d overhead Dallas say, “full of yourself.”

  He laughed. “That what you think? Give me time and I’ll prove you wrong.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I think so, because you are wrong.”

  “But I’m not going to give you the time.”

  “Man!” He hit the steering wheel with both hands. “Why can’t we ever just have a decent conversation? You spend so much time at that spooky old house you forget what it’s like to be with a red-blooded American boy.”

  “How dare you! You have no right to talk about the way I spend my time or who I spend it with.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  He started the truck. “I’ll get you home. I wouldn’t want all this talk to tire you out too much.”

  When they reached her house, he leaned across her to open the door but then pulled back. “Shit!” He walked around, opened her door and walked her as far as the steps. “Elise,” he hesitated and said, “Oh, never mind,” and walked back to his truck. He didn’t have springs in his feet this time. Before she reached the door, he had Beethoven’s Ninth going full blast. She looked back and could see tail lights growing dim in the distance.

  14

  Before she went to the Myers’ on Monday, Elise stopped by the shoe store. Bobby was at the counter alone. “Hey, Miss Elise, did you really come to see shoes this time or you looking for Peyton?”

  “I’d like to talk to Peyton if he isn’t busy.”

  “He just went to the post office. Have a seat in his office. He’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  “Office?”

  “You didn’t know he had an office?” Bobby escorted her to a small room at the back of the store with floor-to-ceiling bookcases and a scarred oak desk. There were leather-bound volumes of Shakespeare and the Oxford Classics. She was just beginning to check a section on paranormal literature when Peyton came in.

  “This is really Bobby’s office, you know. He just lets me use it.”

  She smiled. “Sure he does.”

  “Your mom tell you I about scared her to death the other night?”

  “No, sir, she didn’t say anything. At least not to me.”

  “It was nothing. Her back door was open, and I thought maybe she’d forgotten to lock up or something. Scared her when I walked up on her unexpected.”

  “Must not have scared her too much.”

  “Maybe not,” he smiled. “Guess I’m well on the way to showing her what a nice fella I am.” He laughed. “Want me to get you something to drink from the drugstore?”

  She shook her head. “Thanks anyway. I just stopped by because I hadn’t seen you in awhile.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  “And I’m impressed by your library.”

  “I read a lot. Got a lot of curiosity. Thought maybe I’d write a book myself one of these days. Being dubbed the ‘town historian’ and all, I feel kind of obligated to give Apalach her due.”

  Elise smiled. “Mr. Roberts,” she began, and he had the good sense not to correct her, “something happened to me recently. I’d like to tell you about it, in confidence.”

  “Why I’d be privileged to have you share a confidence.” His acting skills were so honed, it wasn’t difficult for Elise to accept his shock at her account of what happened that morning in the ballroom of the Lovett house. She told it just as Dallas had, but Elise trembled as she spoke. “I haven’t told my parents. I thought maybe you’d understand. I think Dallas is angry.”

  “I’m sure she isn’t angry, hon. That isn’t Dallas’s way. If anything, she’d be worried about you. I don’t know that I can say anything to shed light on the subject. You’ve heard the stories about that house. I can’t explain it, but maybe you really did hear music.”

  Elise closed her eyes briefly. “Thank you. Maybe I’m not crazy after all.”

  “No, I don’t think you’re crazy. I do think you are a highly impressionable young lady, though. You may be sensitive to things the rest of us miss. It can be a gift or a curse. Depends on how you use it.”

  “I’d like to reverse what happened to Annelise.”

  “Darlin’, we’d all like to do that.”

  “But I want to try. If they’d let me back in the ballroom, maybe I could hear music again. Maybe I could finish the dance for her. It sounds crazy, I know. But it’s no crazier than other things, the voices I hear, the music . . . I just have this overpowering feeling that had she finished the dance her hair would never have caught fire. Miss Nadine said she was dancing with her new husband, the last dance of the evening.”

  “Nadine told you that?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s so important that I get back in the ballroom and try to reverse things for her. It was her last dance.”

  “Oh, darling, that’s a wonderful thing that you want to do that, but I don’t know that you could manage it, no matter how strongly you feel about it. Anyway, after what happened, do you really think they’d take you up there a second time?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Don’t get into something so deep that you get hurt. This isn’t your wrong to right.”

  “Sometimes I think it is. I’ve become absolutely obsessed with finding her picture.”

  “You and lots of other people.”

  “I know there’s supposed to be a hidden stairway.”

  “Don’t waste your time. It was sealed shut eons ago. If that picture was still in the house, someone would have found it by now.”

  Seth unlocked the concealed door at the back of the stable and tucked the rolled canvas under his arm.

  Elise cocked her head. “Did you hear anything?”

  “No, but my hearing’s not what it used to be.”

  “I know it wouldn’t seem fair that after all these years a stranger should come to town and find the long-lost picture, but I can’t seem to help myself. I’ve looked every place but the upstairs bedrooms. If I don’t find it there, I suppose I’ll stop searching—or start all over again. I’ve been very thorough, though. I did find a storage area under the stairs, but it didn’t have anything in it but bugs and dust. Sometimes I think Annelise wants me to find her picture. The cold air that follows me, I think it’s Annelise.”

  “Now, hon . . .”

  “No, really. More and more I feel she’s with me. At first I was afraid, but now I think maybe she’s trying to tell me something—I mean, when I heard the music and all. That’s why I’d like to finish the dance for her.”

  “I worry about you, hon. I’m afraid you’re getting in over your head here. Nadine has no way of knowing she was dancing when the accident happened. There’s plenty to
do in Apalach without dwelling on the past.”

  Elise laughed. “There is?”

  “Well, maybe not. But look at all the positive things that helped form Apalach. Have you been to the Gorrie Museum?”

  “Oh!” She clapped her hand over her mouth.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’ve been to the museum, but you made me think of something. The day Dallas and I went to see Aunt Jenny and Aunt Lacey, I happened to mention Miss Nadine’s retirement, and Dallas said she hadn’t retired, that she’d never worked a day in her life.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But Miss Nadine told me she’d taught school here. And she surely talks like a teacher. I get a lesson in Apalachicola history every time I see her.”

  “She knows her history all right, part of it anyway. But Dallas is right. Mrs. Fletcher, Nadine’s mother, taught school, but Nadine never worked. She wasn’t able.”

  “Wasn’t able?”

  “No. When Nadine was in high school there was some trouble with a boy. She was a pretty young girl, very athletic, tall and lean, and had coal black hair that hung nearly to her waist. I was just a young‘un, but not so young I didn’t notice how pretty she was. I guess she could have had any boy in town she wanted. She could play sandlot softball on Saturday, and on Sunday she’d be in the choir singing like an angel. Her daddy, Sam Fletcher, worshipped the ground she walked on. He was a tough old dude with political ambitions, and he expected a picture book family to help him with his quest.

  “Then the beginning of her senior year Nadine fell in love. Lots of girls were falling in love about that time of their lives, but Nadine fell for a high school dropout, son of a local fisherman. In a small town, back then especially, that amounted to political suicide, but Nadine wouldn’t stay away from Nick no matter how much her daddy threatened her. She was Sam’s own daughter, and she stood up to him, laughed at his threats. He kept her locked in her room for weeks, but she never stopped defying him. Finally he took her away. People could hear Mrs. Fletcher scream and beg him to leave her be. Sam came home alone, but a few months later he went after Nadine and brought her back. She wasn’t the same girl he’d taken away. Her eyes were black as two dark holes, and she was docile. Didn’t give him one bit of trouble. Meek as a lamb.”

  “So he had his political career back on track?”

  “No. Nadine’s mother jumped off a bridge. That ended Sam’s career once and for all. And just to be sure she hadn’t jumped for nothing, she sent a letter to the editor of the local paper. It was never published, but it didn’t have to be. News travels faster than a printing press in a small town. And Nadine couldn’t finish school. Sam tried sending her back, but she couldn’t hold anything in her head long enough. But she remembered her history. She can quote Apalach verse and chapter. And she’s gotten some better over the years. They say she takes books out of the library every now and then. And she’ll go for long periods and seem almost normal. Mostly though, she talks about the past, about the time when she was a child.”

  “And Nick?”

  “Disappeared. Never did find him. His family tried but they were poor people with a house full of young’uns. I figure Sam either paid him off or scared him so bad he never came back.”

  “What happened to Mr. Fletcher?”

  “Heart attack about twenty years ago. Left Nadine well fixed. She wouldn’t have needed to work if she could. And she’s able to live there by herself. Such a headstrong young girl.” Peyton shook his head from side to side.

  “She still seems kind of headstrong to me.”

  “That right? Well, maybe she’s at peace with herself. Eventually I guess we all find peace of some sort, one way or the other. I’m glad she’s made friends with you. You can take that as a compliment of the first order. I haven’t known anyone to go in that house since before her daddy died.”

  “Oh, we never go inside. We just sit on the porch.”

  Peyton stood up and looked down at Elise. “That’s mor’en I’ve seen anyone else do. But be careful now and don’t take this business with Annelise too seriously. You’ve got your own life to live.”

  Elise stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek. “You don’t know how much it matters to me that you care.”

  When Bobby came back to the office to see what was keeping him, Peyton still had his palm to his cheek.

  All the way to the Myers’, Elise kept listening for Ty’s truck, but he was nowhere around. She walked rapidly, but it was a long way. As Peyton said, it might be the end of the earth. She took one last look down the dusty road before she opened the gate and started up the steps. She didn’t see Lawrence anyplace, but his mother said she thought she’d heard him chopping wood.

  Elise found him near the woodpile. He’d taken off his shirt and his tanned, muscled back glistened in the hot sun. He split several pieces of wood and then wedged the ax into a stump when she was sure he heard her behind him. He continued staring off into the woods, and she raised her hands, longing to touch his back, but stayed inches away, caressing the air. Embarrassed, she turned to go back inside.

  “I’m begging now. You’ve reduced me to that. Don’t come here again.”

  Without turning, she stepped backward until their backs touched.

  “You can’t mean that.”

  He sighed. “If you understood, you’d know I mean it.”

  She could see his fists clinched on either side of his body and pushed more tightly against him. He made no effort to move away. Growing bolder, she took a fist into each of her hands, slowly loosening his fingers. “Do you have any idea how absolutely gorgeous you are? How can I help but love you? Those Greek fishermen have nothing on you, Lawrence Myers. I ache, actually ache for you. I can’t get close enough. I could melt right into your body. Oh, Lawrence, what are we going to do?”

  “We aren’t going to do anything. There’s only heartache for meddling in something you don’t understand. You can’t keep coming here.”

  “You don’t want that any more than I do. I know you don’t.”

  “No. I want all the things you want, only more. You can’t know what it’s like after all these years . . . but it isn’t a matter of what I want.” His hands squeezed hers so hard they hurt and she let out a low moan. He turned then and took her in his arms, kissing her lips, her eyes, her tears, pressing her to him and then pushing her away.

  He spoke harshly. “That’s what you’ve wanted, now go.” He started off into the woods. “Leave us be.”

  15

  Hello there, Miss Gone with the Wind. Were you going to try snubbing me again today?”

  “No, ma’am. I didn’t see you.” Elise tried to make her voice sound normal, fearful of betraying her newfound knowledge of Miss Nadine’s circumstances.

  “You weren’t looking either, were you? How you been?” She didn’t wait for an answer but proceeded to tell Elise about a book she’d been reading. “It’s about time.”

  “I can’t hear you, Miss Nadine.”

  “No wonder, standing way out there on the sidewalk. The book I’m reading. It’s about time,” she shouted. “Says time’s a continuum, like everything that’s happened is still there, back up the road a piece. I like to think that’s true. I was just sitting here thinking of the boy who used to deliver groceries when I was a little girl. I remember that black bicycle as good as if he’d dropped my groceries off this morning. He was a teenage boy when I was just a tyke. Been dead years now, but I still like to think of him with that curly head of hair riding up the road—it wasn’t paved then—with a basket of groceries for my mother.”

  “If only we could find a way to go back up that road,” Elise said.

  “That’s the trick, Miss, getting back.”

  “I guess memory is the only road we have, Miss Nadine, but I have to go. I’m on my way to the Lovetts’.”

  “The Lovetts’? Why in the world would you go there?”

  “I visited them with Mrs. Anderson, and I wan
t to thank them for their hospitality.”

  “You’re mighty polite.”

  “Thanks. I hope they think so. By the way, could I borrow that book sometime?”

  “Book?”

  “The one about time.”

  “Oh, yes. Sure.”

  ELISE’S STEPS SLOWED AS SHE neared the house, and her palms were moist on the box of cookies she’d baked that morning.

  When Aunt Jenny came to the door, Elise smiled and said, “I brought you some cookies.” Elise held the box in her outstretched hand, but Aunt Jenny made no move to take them. Aunt Lacey came up behind her and reached for the box, but her sister pushed her away.

  “I understand how you must feel, both of you. I just want to apologize for what happened that day. You don’t know how bad I feel.”

  “I don’t care how bad you feel! You aren’t welcome here. Ever!”

  Before the door slammed in her face, she heard Aunt Lacey calling, “I care, Elise. I care.” Aunt Jenny shoved her away from the door and snapped, “Shut up you old fool, or they’ll have us both committed.”

  Elise looked down at the box in her hand. “They’re still warm,” she said quietly and placed the box on a table by the door. “They’re still warm.”

  It wasn’t until she reached the sloping lawn that Elise shivered and remembered the old saying, somebody’s walking on my grave. She stopped and looked back at the house, realizing she’d retraced Annelise’s painful flight. She strained to hear the whispered voice of a man say,

  Oh dear God, Annelise. Oh my darling.

  Elise closed her eyes tight on unshed tears, rubbing her hands down her cold arms. I want to help you, that’s all, but I can’t even get inside the house. She jammed her trembling hands in her pockets and followed the river road so she wouldn’t have to pass Miss Nadine’s again. The wind picked up, and she’d just become aware of the sweet smell of pot when a voice startled her.

  “You make a pretty picture with the wind in your hair that way.”