“Yes, she lives here, and she’s been waiting for you!” the woman replied. “It certainly took you long enough. I thought you weren’t coming!”
Delilah squinted. “I’m sorry?”
“You should be! You were supposed to be here at nine A.M.” She shoved up one of her sweater sleeves and tapped the face of the gold watch on her plump wrist. The skin along her forearm jiggled. “It’s almost ten o’clock! I hope you don’t make a habit of this.”
Delilah watched in shock as the woman abruptly turned and walked across the living room, then started up the stairs leading to the second floor. “She’s up here!” she said over her shoulder, waving Delilah inside.
Delilah hesitated, unsure whether she should step over the threshold since this woman had obviously confused her with someone else.
“Mom!” the woman shouted, cupping her hands around her mouth. “The new aide is finally here!”
Mom?
Delilah narrowed her eyes at the woman again. She could see it now—the plump little girl whom she used to tuck in bed when Miss Mindy had drunk too much wine or had taken one of her blue pills. This was the same little girl whose leotards and tutus Delilah used to scrub, whose grapes Delilah used to peel and put in her lunch box.
So this is the woman you’ve become, Delilah thought with disappointment.
“Mom, are you awake?” The woman yelled, then faced Delilah again when she realized she wasn’t following her upstairs. Her thin lips puckered into a frown. “Well, are you coming?”
Delilah waffled for a second longer. She considered whether she should tell Melinda’s daughter the truth or take advantage of this unexpected luck. Not only was Miss Mindy still alive, but now Delilah had a chance to see her, to talk to her. She might not get that chance if she revealed who she really was.
Finally, she stepped inside and shuffled toward the stairs.
The interior of the house had been redecorated. In the living room, the avocado and golden wallpaper of yesteryear had been replaced with a non-intrusive gray damask pattern. The burnt orange sofa, chairs, and Barcalounger that Miss Mindy had showed off to her guests at her cocktail parties had been changed out for furniture straight out of a Pottery Barn catalog. They had even knocked down one of the walls so there was a clear view into the kitchen, taking away the privacy of the only sanctuary she, Agnes, and Roberta had had all those many years ago.
As Delilah followed Miss Mindy’s daughter along the upstairs hallway, she could see that the rooms had been redecorated but were, at least structurally, the same. Near the end of the hall, one door sat ajar. Miss Mindy’s daughter shoved it open, revealing a brightly lit bedroom.
“Ah, so you are awake!” she said, walking toward a modified hospital bed, where a frail old woman lay elevated with an oxygen mask over her wrinkled face. “The aide is here, Mom.”
Miss Mindy’s sunken eyes, which had once been a bright shade of emerald green but now resembled filmy pond water, zeroed in on Delilah. She raised a gnarled hand decorated with blue veins and liver spots to her face. She tugged down her mask and squinted.
Delilah didn’t know what disease Miss Mindy had, but it was eating away at her. She was only twelve years older than Delilah, but she looked almost one hundred years old with her shrunken frame and sagging skin, and with a bald head she’d tried, but failed, to hide under a pink satin scarf.
To think how much this woman had intimidated her years ago. Now Delilah almost pitied her. Almost.
“She starts today,” Miss Mindy’s daughter continued, blissfully unaware of Delilah’s less than flattering assessment of her mother. “I’ll give her the tour in a bit, but I wanted her to introduce herself first . . . for you to meet her. Her name is . . .” She paused, then turned to face Delilah. She snapped her fingers. “I’ve forgotten your name already. What is it?”
“Delilah,” Delilah answered softly. “It’s Delilah.”
“There you go! Meet Delilah. You two spend a few minutes getting acquainted, and I’ll come back later to show Delilah around the house, Mom.”
She then walked out of the room, leaving Delilah and Miss Mindy alone to stare at one another.
“Do you know who I am?” Delilah began, taking a step toward the foot of the bed.
“Of course I do,” Miss Mindy answered in a scratchy voice. “I’m dying, but I’m not senile.”
“Do you know why I’m here?”
Miss Mindy shrugged her thin shoulders. “I guess because Teddy couldn’t leave well enough alone. I told him not to bother. We tried and failed to get Harbor Hill back years ago, but he insisted that he should try again since the house belongs to our family.”
“The house belonged to Chauncey—and he willed it to me.”
“But he shouldn’t have,” Miss Mindy said, raising her nose into the air, harkening back to the rich, imperious redhead she had been four decades ago. “It wasn’t his to give away. That house had been in the Buford family for more than a hundred years! It should’ve stayed with us, but instead it went to you.” She sniffed. “You . . . a maid . . . a nigger who my brother had been foolish enough to knock up and even more foolish to marry. But that was Cee, wasn’t it? So spoiled. So dumb,” she spat. “But Mama made him that way. She coddled him, and it got even worse after Daddy died. I told her she was ruining him. I just didn’t know he would ruin us too!”
“Is that why Mr. Williams killed him?” Delilah asked.
It had been her sneaking suspicion since she had seen Cee’s old silver flask in Teddy’s office. Cee had been carrying that flask the night of the murder, and the police had not recovered it. Delilah had never found it anywhere in the house either. For Teddy to have it, someone had to have given it to him. She suspected that either Miss Mindy or her husband had done it, and that meant they had to have been in the house the night of Cee’s murder.
That also explained all the puzzling evidence that had never been considered during her trial: the position of Cee’s body, indicating he had been moved, the opened door that had been unlocked from the inside.
All signs indicated that someone else had been there that night.
And the Williams family had inherited money after Mama Buford’s death, but the way they spent it, she could see them wanting more. They stood to gain not only Cee’s money but also Harbor Hill if Delilah was found guilty of his murder. While she had been in jail, they had lobbied hard for that very thing in court.
And she still remembered the hard slap Mr. Williams had given Miss Mindy, how he had sent her flying back into her makeup table. A man like that was capable of violence, maybe even murder.
All the pieces of the puzzle fit together. She just needed Miss Mindy to confirm her suspicions.
Miss Mindy laughed. It came out as a jarring cough, and she had to reach for her oxygen mask and place it back over her mouth and nose. She took several deep breaths. After a few seconds, she removed the mask again. “Is that what you think? My husband killed Cee?”
“Well . . . did he?” Delilah asked, taking another step toward the bed.
“No! He tried to clean up Cee’s mess, not kill him! He’d even tried to sober him up by wrestling that stupid flask away. The little bastard had knocked you out cold! He called us in a panic because he’d thought he’d killed you and didn’t know what to do.” She sighed. “He didn’t even have the brains to check for a pulse! We got there and saw you were still alive, but Cee was too drunk to care. He just kept ranting and raving, acting like the ungrateful little ass that he was . . . like he always had been! I got tired of it. I got tired of him and his selfish antics. He had been a burden on Mama, and now on us. It had to end!”
At those words, Delilah did a sharp intake of breath. “Wait. Did you kill him?”
Miss Mindy sank back against her pillows and sat quietly for what felt like an eternity. Finally, she said, “Hell, I’m old, and I’m dying! It’s not like they would send me to prison for it now.” She nodded. “Yes. Yes, I did it. I didn’t go ther
e intending to do it, but it happened. He pissed me off! He kept talking to Jake and me like we were his servants. He cussed at us. He was completely belligerent! I hit my breaking point, so when his back was turned, I gave him a hard shove and down he went.”
She did it while his back was turned, Delilah thought. So Cee probably didn’t even know his own sister had killed him.
“I don’t regret it. Like I said, I couldn’t take the burden anymore.”
“She couldn’t take the burden,” Delilah repeated back in a whisper, slowly shaking her head.
She thought back to her stint in prison and the decades after, the taunts from townsfolk, and the feeling of isolation. She thought about the guilt and the grief, and how both had almost driven her to madness. And this woman thought she had suffered a burden?
This time, Delilah was the one who laughed. It was hollow and bitter, much like she felt right now. But her bitterness quickly gave way to anger.
How dare this woman rip away her freedom? How dare she sully her name? How dare she steal years away from her life? And worse, she had justified what she did because she felt her little brother was a brat who had given away a house she’d wanted.
Delilah took yet another step toward the bed. She itched to reach out and rip the oxygen mask from the old woman’s neck and slap her across her smug face. She wanted to shove her off the bed and watch her tumble to the floor. She had never wanted to physically harm someone this much in her life, but she felt an overwhelming urge to do so at the moment.
“So there,” Miss Mindy said. “You got your answer. You got what you came for. I suppose you’ll be leaving now?”
Delilah nodded. “Yeah, I’ll leave . . . but I have something I want to do first.”
She then reached for Miss Mindy. The old woman’s imperious air disappeared. She looked frightened. She flinched when Delilah touched her, but then stared in surprise when Delilah didn’t hit her but instead squeezed her hand.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
Oh, how she wanted to hurt her, to inflict the physical pain that reflected the emotional pain she had experienced all these years. But Delilah thought back to that night nearly fifty years ago and finding Cee’s crumpled, lifeless body at the bottom of the stairs. She thought back to that night a few days ago and Tracey’s bloodied face. She had seen her share of violence. She’d had enough of it.
“I’m just going to tell you something,” she continued. She leaned toward her ear, tightening her grip on Miss Mindy’s hand when she tried to pull away. “You may not go to jail for what you did. You may not even feel guilty about finally admitting what you did, and now he knows. He knows—and he’s waiting for you. He’s been whispering to me for the past forty-eight years, getting angrier and angrier. He told me that he was waiting for me so he could take revenge for what happened to him. But it wasn’t me he should’ve been waiting for. It was you all along. Judging from how close to death’s door you are, I’m glad Cee won’t have to wait much longer to get what he wants.”
She then stepped back from the bed and stood upright. She released Miss Mindy’s hand. The old woman frowned up at her.
“What nonsense are you talking about? Are you trying to say you were haunted by my brother’s ghost?” She barked out a cough and gave a skeletal smile. “Am I’m supposed to be scared now?”
Ghost . . . it was an interesting word. Delilah couldn’t say for sure that what had been chasing her for so long was a literal “ghost,” in a classic sense. Sometimes, it felt like the voice she’d heard for decades was all in her head, and sometimes, the being felt as real as the bed rail now inches from her side. But that was the nature of ghosts, she supposed. They were what you allowed them to be.
“You don’t have to be scared, Miss Mindy,” she assured with a smile, “but know that not all ghosts are like the ones in a Charles Dickens novel. They aren’t all moaning and banging shackles, floating over your head. Some are quieter than that. But it’s the quiet ones that lie in wait that you really need to worry about.”
“You don’t . . . you don’t frighten me,” Miss Mindy said in a shaky voice. She didn’t sound or look convincing. “I don’t believe in that stuff!”
“Then don’t.” Delilah shrugged. “After all, I’m just a dumb colored woman, after all. What would I know?”
“So have you two had a chance to get acquainted?” her daughter asked, bursting through the bedroom doorway. “Ready for the tour?”
“No, no tour,” Delilah said, turning away from Miss Mindy. “I’ll be leaving now.”
“Leaving?” Miss Mindy’s daughter blinked. Her mouth fell open. “How the hell are you leaving? I thought you were here to help my mother!”
“I’m afraid not, honey.” Delilah shook her head and glanced back at Miss Mindy’s stricken face. “I can’t help her. No one can.”
She then headed toward the bedroom door, brushing past Miss Mindy’s daughter, who was still sputtering. She didn’t look back as she walked down the hall and the staircase.
“It’s good to finally get some peace,” she whispered to Cee. “I never thought I would.”
He didn’t reply. She realized, almost sadly, that he would never speak to her again. He would be Miss Mindy’s companion from now on.
Delilah smiled to herself and stepped through the front door into a world still illuminated from the inside out.
A READING GROUP GUIDE
The House on Harbor Hill
Shelly Stratton
ABOUT THIS GUIDE
The suggested questions are included
to enhance your group’s reading of
Shelly Stratton’s The House on Harbor Hill.
Discussion Questions
1. What purpose does the voice plaguing Delilah serve in the novel? What does it represent for her?
2. Do you think Aidan gets anything out of his relationships with the women at Harbor Hill besides sexual gratification? What else do these relationships offer him?
3. How does Tracey see her relationship with her mother and her memories of her childhood in light of the mistakes she’s made as an adult? How does she think they influenced her choices?
4. Tracey decides to move into Harbor Hill after she’s unable to find conclusive evidence that Delilah intentionally murdered her husband, Chauncey Buford (Cee), forty-eight years ago. Would you have made a similar decision?
5. Despite her misgivings and the social obstacles of the time, Delilah decides to move forward with a romantic relationship with Cee. Do you think love was her only motivation?
6. Even though Harbor Hill was the site of painful events for Delilah, she decides to make it her home for the rest of her life. What are her motivations for staying there?
7. Considering the origin of Harbor Hill, how does it function as a place of healing to the many wayward women who come there?
8. Why does Delilah stay with Cee? Is it just because of fear of violence or does she have other reasons?
9. Though she initially thought they were opposite, Delilah starts to see parallels in Cee’s and his sister, Melinda’s, behavior. What traits do the siblings have in common?
10. Delilah insists that Aidan is battling the same depression that his mother has had for most of her life, but he experiences it in a different way. Do you agree with her?
11. Delilah finally figures out Teddy’s true identity. Did you guess prior to the reveal, or was it a surprise?
12. Caleb always carries The Hulk action figure with him, but he decides to give it to Aidan unexpectedly. What is the purpose of him doing this?
13. Why didn’t Tracey follow her husband’s orders and return home with him? Why did she risk her and her children’s safety rather than go back to him?
14. Delilah finally finds out what happened the night her husband was murdered. Were you able to guess what happened prior to the reveal?
15. Delilah bequeaths “the voice” plaguing her for decades to Melinda. If the voice is not a literal ghost,
how is possible for her to do that, keeping in mind what the voice symbolizes for her?
The House on Harbor Hill Page 32