by Rachel Renee
He nods his head, but his eyes don’t meet mine.
“Anything I should be aware of up there? Things I shouldn’t touch or move?” I asked as a courtesy but when Tucker’s jaw clenches, I realize it probably came out much differently than I meant it to. “I mean…”
“No. I’m sorry. This is your place now. I shouldn’t have stopped you and I won’t again. Everything in here belongs to you.”
I swallow. The fierceness of his voice causes the goosebumps to grow, a chill spreading up my spine, tingling through my thighs. My own words come out choked. “I just meant…”
“It’s fine. You’re not Mrs. Dupont and I need to remember that.”
“You…”
Tucker puts his hand up as if telling me he’ll hear no more. I shake my head but don’t speak. My body turns voluntarily, heading toward the stairway. Each small creak brings a new thought, a new memory, and by the time I’ve made it to my old bedroom, I can still see the body of Samantha lying upon the hardwood. I know immediately that I can’t do this yet. I close the door, my body sliding down the wall until my butt hits the floor.
“Everything okay up there? I heard a thud.”
Tucker is close but not entirely up the stairs. “Yeah. Fine. I just. I can’t do this yet. I can’t be in that room. I thought…” I let my words fall off. I don’t know what I thought. I’d just come in here and get what I wanted, leave without one feeling, one emotion seeping in?
“I get it. Why don’t you start downstairs and work your way up to the bedrooms?” His head peers around the stairwell, his brows raised, asking if it’s okay to proceed.
“I think that’s a good idea. I didn’t know.” I feel my mind go blank momentarily. “It was so long ago. I didn’t realize it would be this hard.”
“Loss is not as easy to get over as some may think.”
A small laugh escapes me, almost a hiccup. Tucker is standing over me, his right hand stretched out to meet mine. His lips are upturned, and there’s friendliness I can see in his eyes. “Let me help you up.”
Breathing deep, I reach my hand up, grasping ahold of the one awaiting me. “Thank you.”
Tucker doesn’t let go of my hand, but his grip is light, barely a grip at all. I don’t pull away. It feels good to have a living presence touch me. He leads me down the stairs and into the kitchen. “I’ll put on some tea and you figure out where you want to start.”
“That sounds wonderful.”
The small table in the corner of the kitchen is covered in paper, envelopes, and pictures. I wonder if it was something Granny was working on before she died. As I sit on the white wooden bench attached to the back wall, a picture of my mother comes into sight. She’s young, her hair dark and flowy. My hand fingers the dress she’s wearing, wondering what color it was as the picture is in black and white. I picture it being a navy blue with white trim and the lace around her shoulders would be white as well. It looks so perfect on her. She’s smiling, her lips reaching her eyes she’s so happy. She loves whoever is behind the camera, you can just tell from the way she’s staring into it.
“Was that your momma?”
“Yes.” I look up into the warm eyes of Tucker. “She was so beautiful.”
I’m surprised he doesn’t know who she is. This being such a small town, and I’m assuming he grew up here. The fact that his father helped build most of the town would lead one to believe. “You didn’t know her? She used to work at the General Store.”
“I think I must have been six or seven when you and her left town. I may have met her, but I surely don’t remember.”
“That makes sense. I was five and I don’t remember anyone from town.”
Tucker takes the picture from me. “You look like her.” One side of his mouth tilts upward. Mine does the same.
“I get that a lot. Although, Momma used to say I had a lot of my daddy in me.”
“Your looks or the way you act?”
“A little bit of both.” My smile widens and so does his.
He places the picture back down on the table as the kettle whistles loudly from the stove. “Sugar?”
“Yes, please.”
I rifle through the pictures, looking for Momma, or Samantha, or even my daddy. There are so many of people I don’t know. The pictures are torn and faded from age. “These must be relatives,” I say aloud. “None look familiar though.”
“Maybe there’s some identification on the back.”
“Oh. Good idea.” I grab the closest one, turning over the yellowed paper in search of an answer. Ella Dupont, 1910. I sit back on the bench, turning the picture over once more. Weird. Not me, but maybe my namesake? A great aunt possibly, or maybe my great-grandmother.
“Find anything?” Tucker asks, placing the porcelain mug down in front of me after clearing off a small space in the clutter for it.
“My namesake, maybe. Ella Dupont.” I hand the picture over to him. He glances at it before placing it back on the table.
“Who else do we have here?” Tucker sits in the chair across the table from me and starts turning the fragile pictures over one by one. “I’ve got a couple more Ella DuPonts here. And…” He pauses. “A Samantha Dupont.”
I reach out, grabbing the picture right from his fingertips. Turning the object over, I glare down at the woman seated in this very spot. It was not my sister. My sister only reached ten years old and this woman was at least in her fifties. “Maybe Samantha’s namesake.”
Tucker’s head tilts slightly. “Guess your family didn’t believe in original names. Kept things simple.”
“Yeah. A little weird, if you ask me.”
“Maybe not.” He shrugs. “Us small town people hate to make anything over complicated.”
“There are so many names in the world. I don’t see how coming up with something different would be that hard.”
“Have you tried naming a kid before?”
“Well, no.” I glare at him. “But…”
Tucker chuckles. “No use arguing over something so silly.”
I nod.
“See. We’re not making things complicated.”
Now I chuckle. “I see what you’re saying.”
Rusty comes into the kitchen, his head low and he whimpers slightly as he plops down at my feet. I reach down and scratch his ear. “You wear yourself out?”
Tucker is staring at me, his eyes as wide as saucers.
“What?” I ask.
“Does he talk back?”
I laugh again. “No. But that doesn’t stop me from talking to him like he might. Rusty is my only family now. Someone has got to listen to my ramblings.”
Tucker bends down, rubbing the backside of the pup at my feet. The three of us sit in silence for some time. Well, besides the soft snores of Rusty from the floor. Tucker and I drink our tea and sift through the mess on the table. I find a few pictures of my daddy, my grandpa, a couple of Granny in her earlier years, and plenty of pictures of Samantha and Ella Dupont. They were apparently well loved. Until they weren’t. They are pictured over a span of ten years and then one after the other, there are no more pictures of the two.
CHAPTER FOUR
Tucker sat with me for hours, the two of us reading through the documents among the photos and other items before us. Bills from the last year, the wedding license for my grandparents and my parents, birth certificates for me and Samantha. Mostly, there are newspaper clippings starting in the early 1950s, and we even found one from a year ago. Every single one has a date within the first couple of weeks of October. Every article contains a story or obituary of a death inside the community. They have all died of old age or disease, nothing out of the ordinary. I have to ask, I mean, Tucker has to notice it too.
“Is it weird to you that all of these newspaper clippings are deaths in Crimson Falls? And, that they all happen around the same time?” I look over at him, wanting to see if he can meet my eyes when he answers.
“Death happens all the time.”
“Yeah. That’s true. But…why did Granny only save the ones that happened near the middle of October?”
“That would be something you’d have to ask her.” He stops short, apparently realizing his mistake. “I mean. I have no idea.”
Tucker is not taking the bait. I sigh, not wanting to ask the question but realize I’m going to have to. “Is it the curse?”
There’s a slight twitch in his lips, but his eyes never look away. “What do you mean? Curse?”
Is he messing with me? “That’s why we left. Well, that’s the reason my momma gave me. She said this town is cursed. That’s the reason Samantha died.”
“That’s not what Gladys told me. Said it was the chicken pox that killed her.”
“Technically. That’s what it was. But, Granny told us we had to leave. Said the curse would take me too if we didn’t. Momma didn’t want to lose anyone else to this town. She had lost my daddy before Samantha.”
“In an accident.”
“Momma never believed his death was an accident. Before she died, she told me someone had killed him. They made it look like an accident.”
“That’s not what I heard. There was no one in that truck when it rolled over top of him.”
“You don’t even remember back then. How would you know what happened?”
“My daddy…”
“It’s hearsay. You heard one story, I heard another. I bet if we asked the people who were here during that time, we’d get many different versions of what happened that night. No matter. He’s dead. Mid October, just like the rest of these.” My hand flails through the air over the papers.
“It has to be a coincidence.”
“Maybe so. But…” Granny also just died. It’s the middle of October. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. “Do you think my Granny knew she was going to die? I mean, she set all these plans in place. She had to have. Right?”
“She was sick. She knew death would find her sooner rather than later. She started planning last year, when she was first diagnosed.”
“So, it was just another coincidence that it’s just after October thirteenth and she just…” It catches in my throat. “She just died?”
His shoulders go up and down. “Guess so.”
I feel my head shaking from side to side before I even realize I’m doing it. I don’t know why, but I don’t believe Tucker. I think he knows more than he’s letting on. I’ll let him go on thinking I trust him until I have more concrete evidence that the man is a liar. Or part of some sort of conspiracy in this town.
Back to my original plan, I move from the table and start going through the house room by room. I started in the kitchen, as that’s where I was when I knew I needed to get back on track. I put the pictures in a pile and stack the pile in an empty box near the front door. I go through the cabinets, pulling out pieces I think I’d like to hold onto. Some serving dishes, a beautiful blue vase, crystal tea glasses. Granny also had a set of fine china with an 1850 inscription on the back which had to have been passed down through a few generations. I decided I should keep ahold of it. I don’t have any need for it at the moment, but one day I might get married and it’d be nice to have for dinner parties.
It’s dark before I realize and Tucker is back. He left after our curse conversation. I didn’t know if he’d be back, but Rusty barks as he enters through the front door.
“You’ve gone through quite a bit.” His voice is loud and booming through the nearly silent house.
“Just the kitchen and dining room so far. I never thought there would be so much I’d want to hold onto.”
The light eyes of Tucker peer around the corner in the dining area. “Might be easier if you just moved in.”
I snort. He’s kidding right? “I’ve got a life in Georgia. Plus, why would I want to stay in the place where most of my family died?”
“Why wouldn’t you? Their spirits linger here. They’ll look out for you.”
“Do you think I’m comforted by that fact?”
“It comforts me knowing my ancestors keep an eye out for me.”
“You and I have very different opinions on ghosts.”
Tucker lowers his eyes. “Guess so. Anyway, I brought you some dinner. Just a sandwich and soda from the diner. Thought you were probably starving.”
“You’d be correct with that statement. There is nothing to eat here.”
“Yeah. I cleared out the refrigerator and freezer earlier this week. The food in the cabinet was donated to some local families.”
“That was nice of you to do that.”
“We do what we can.”
I’m not sure who the collective we is, so I ask. “We?”
“Pa and me. We have more than others. I don’t know if you saw the homes over by the bakery, but we don’t all live this well.” His head scans the room.
“Not many people live like this. Well, not many that I know.”
I see Tucker’s eyes scan me, perusing my clothing, my non-existent jewelry. His face scrunches up when he reaches my face, the one wearing no make-up, hair falling around in wisps from the braid I threw together earlier today. “I just assumed.”
“When we left, we started over. Momma and me. We didn’t have a lot of money, just enough to get a small place of our own. I still live there and now work in the diner where Momma worked while she raised me.”
He smiles in understanding. It’s so much easier to judge someone when you don’t know the truth about them. “Why don’t you take a break and eat? I brought something for Rusty too.”
“Thank you. I did remember to bring his bag of food though.”
“Oh, well…” Tucker wrings his hands.
“It’s fine. I’m sure he’d love to have a special treat.” I smile in assurance and Tucker’s cheerfulness returns. “Do you want to join us? Did you already eat?” I ask as he hands me the brown sack.
“I don’t want to intrude.”
“It’s fine. Rusty and I would enjoy the company. This house is too quiet.”
Tucker grabs his sandwich from his truck and the three of us settle in the kitchen once more. The conversation is less morbid this time as Tucker asks me questions about home and what I do. He likes that I work at a diner, taking care of people, making sure they get fed. He says it means we have something in common, serving others. I never really thought of my job in that capacity, but it makes it feel more meaningful to think of it that way.
“What would you do if you could do anything?” Tucker asks.
I take a bite of my bologna and cheese sandwich, the mayo dripping slightly from my lip. Before I can grab my napkin, Tucker is wiping it off with his own. My face heats up at his touch. “Thank you,” comes out barely louder than a whisper.
He doesn’t acknowledge the awkwardness I’m feeling so I push past it and begin to think of my answer to his question. “I probably would have gone to school to become a vet,” I eventually answer.
“I could tell you had a special bond with your dog. Didn’t realize it carried over to other animals.”
How would he have? It’s not like we know each other. “I’ve always had a special place in my heart for them. I begged Momma for a pet but we could never afford to get one. After she"—my eyes avert to Rusty—“after Momma died, Rusty found me. I kind of felt like it was a gift from her. A replacement, so to speak.”
“And you say we have a different opinion on ghosts.” His lips turn up once more.
That makes me chuckle. “I’ve never considered it.” I nod. “You’re right. That thought has always comforted me.” I tell Tucker the whole story of how Rusty came to be. His look never changes and his eyes never leave mine until I’m finished.
“I’d say someone was looking over you.”
The mood transforms after that and Tucker feels it too. “Well, I think I better head home. Thank you for letting me join you for dinner.”
“Thank you for providing it.”
“You’re welcome. I can bring
you some groceries by in the morning if you want?”
“Oh, no. That’s okay. I’m hoping I can finish up tomorrow. Then, I’ll just need to call Mr. Jones and get him out here to look over the rest and set up the sale of the estate.”
“That’ll still be a couple days,” he adds, not skipping a beat.
“It’ll give me a reason to go to town in the morning. I can pick up a couple of things to tide me over. I appreciate the offer.”
He outstretches his hand after rising from his chair. I think he’s trying to help me up but he actually just wants to shake it. The man definitely has manners. I shake lightly and try to let go. “Have a good evening,” I say, hoping he gets the hint.
“You let me know if you need anything. I may stop over and check in tomorrow.” He still holds on.
“That would be fine. I’ll look forward to your visit.” The brown of his inner irises seems to lighten as he stares into mine.
“Sleep well,” he adds.
“Thank you.” His warm hand is still grasping mine. I jerk back suddenly, pulling myself from his grasp.
His eyes go immediately to his hand. “I’m sorry. I was just— I was just mesmerized by the color of your eyes. I’ve never seen that color green in anyone’s eyes before.”
“I have my Momma’s eyes.”
Tucker finally looks away, clearing up our dinner mess before heading out of the room. “See you tomorrow sometime. My number is by the phone if you need anything before then.”
“I appreciate that. Good night,” I yell out as I hear the front door click open and quickly latch back in place.
I get up from the wooden chair, my backside sore from sitting on the hard surface for so long. “We should probably get some sleep.” I look down to my furry friend who is staring up at me intently.
After letting him out to do his business, I lock up the door to keep the strangers out, trying not to think about the visitors that could be lingering inside. “Think we will just make ourselves a bed on the couch. I can’t stand the thought of going upstairs.”