Silent Words

by Lisa Fenwick

  Berwick wouldn’t be perfect. I’d never be able to pass as normal there. But it would give me six months to hopefully live with only the challenges of my future and not the weight of my past.

  I took out my phone and looked at Peggy’s email again, with the directions to the little guest cottage she booked for me. “The landlady is very friendly and accommodating. She’s a genuinely sweet person, and you can’t beat the price she’s charging,” it said.

  Not like I needed to worry about the cost. I had just sold a luxury apartment in Manhattan, which freed up what most would call their income for a good few years. I could probably rent out half of the town of Berwick for what I had paid for the apartment, and I’d more than tripled my money ten years down the line.

  Chapter Three

  Amy

  The Present

  I stood on the stoop of my house, in the bright sunlight, unable to take a step. I knew that I needed to go over to the cottage.

  I just couldn’t bring myself to make the first step. Even though Peter, the previous tenant, wasn’t even in Berwick, or even New England, I knew there would still be a lingering sense of him around the place.

  I couldn’t abandon the little cottage that Auntie Jean bequeathed me. Besides, I’d already spent some of the money that the next tenant had given me to lease the cottage. It was really the only thing I had left of her, and the income from renting it out was a good part of what I lived on. It paid the taxes for both the cottage and my house. It did a little more than that. It kept the lights on and put food on my table and kibble in Smokey’s bowl.

  Smokey leaned against me and whimpered. Poor guy needed his walk and had been sitting next to me on the stoop, patiently waiting for me to get on with it.

  “Right,” I said, reaching down and scratching the top of his head. “You need to stretch your legs, don’t you?”

  I could hear him whimpering at me. I stood up on cue and said, “Smokey, walk.”

  On that cue, he stood up and took a tentative step forward, waiting for me to follow.

  “All right,” I whispered to myself, once I was actually moving. When we hit the sidewalk, Smokey hesitated, waiting for me to pick a direction. I turned left, toward the cottage. All I needed was to take the first couple of steps toward the cottage and the unpleasant tasks waiting for me there to summon the resolve to actually get down to doing them.

  We made our way down to the corner, walked a little farther, and turned right. The cottage was just a little past the turn and straight down. That corner, where I’d made that right turn, was one that I always wished I could avoid, but with the river that ran through Berwick, there was no way to get from my house to the cottage without passing it.

  “Witch lady! Witch lady!”

  “Smokey, forward,” I said, pulling his leash up just a little shorter.

  “Don’t witch ladies have cats?”

  “Cats and brooms,” they chanted.

  I could hear them, but I couldn’t see them. I knew that they were near me. I could feel one of them brush past me, or maybe it could have been two of them. I didn’t care, as long as they stopped, or I got out of there as soon as possible.

  “Mrs. Johnson. Your children!” I shouted, seeing as she was doing nothing to control her little kids, also known as monsters.

  “Witch lady! Witch lady!”

  The three Johnson kids, Mark, Lucas, and their sister, Sharon, danced around me. Smokey was very well trained and wouldn’t hurt a fly, but he was also a big dog, an Irish wolfhound that was as tall as me when he reared up onto his hind legs. He also had a certain body language to him, something in his bearing, which spoke louder than any bark could. The big boy was not trained to fight, but he carried himself like a fighter. Unfortunately, the Johnson kids had started figuring out that he was a gentle giant, and they’d started to get closer and more intrusive every time I passed their house.

  “Mrs. Johnson!” I said again, louder. I didn’t know if she could hear me calling for her attention. She could certainly hear her kids at least. I really wished I knew where the kids came up with this “witch lady” nonsense. I didn’t live in a house full of cats or have green skin with a wart on my nose. I didn’t dress in black or wear a big pointy hat or have anything weird hanging in the trees in my yard. My little cottage wasn’t made of gingerbread with a candy cane fence and frosting dripping from the eaves.

  Yes, I was a recluse.

  I left my house only when I had to and had little interaction with the people of the town. How that made me a witch I didn't know. I just wished the kids would get off it and leave me be.

  “Smokey, forward,” I said, unnecessarily. He was a good dog, an observant one. He knew that our job at the Johnsons’ place was to get past and get across the street as quick as we could. At the corner, he stopped and sat beside me. I put my hand on the back of his neck and felt him looking right and left. “Smokey, cross,” I told him.

  “Witch lady! Witch lady!”

  By the time we crossed the street, I was so relieved to be away from the Johnson brats that I briefly forgot how much I had been dreading going to the cottage. It didn’t take long for a heaviness to creep into my steps again, for me to feel my chest tighten as I thought about having to go in and deal with whatever Peter left behind when he moved out.

  Smokey knew where we were and where we were going. As we got closer, and I became ever more reluctant to continue, he grew more excited. He picked up a spring in his step, and even though he was trained to never pull at his lead, I could tell that he really wanted to.

  We finally reached the gate in the fence around the property. It had been a full two weeks since I’d had Smokey out to the cottage, and before that, our visits hadn’t been regular while Peter, the previous tenant, was there. I opened the gate, and as soon as it was shut, Smokey dutifully sat down.

  “Okay, buddy,” I said, and I unbuckled his harness, leaving him with just his collar and tags. That was his cue that he was off duty, but he still waited for a verbal confirmation from me. “Smokey. Run!” I said, and he was off like a shot. Unlike my house, which had a postage stamp for a yard, the cottage was on a full acre and a half of semi-wooded land. It was enough space for him to open up and get a proper run in. While he made a big, loping tour of the property line, I walked up to the front door of the cottage. I stood there with the keys in my hand, listening to Smokey make his rounds. If any of the neighbors were looking, I was sure they were wondering what the crazy lady was up to, just standing at the door to the house and not doing anything.

  I didn’t care.

  They could wonder all they wanted. A few more minutes of standing at the door to my cottage, trying to screw up the courage to step inside wasn’t going to change anybody’s opinion that much.

  Behind me, I heard Smokey bark a greeting to me as he cruised past. He was going to need a big drink of water when he was done running, and all of the bowls were inside. Yet again, it was loyalty to my big, handsome dog that got me to step up and deal with things. I unlocked the door and stepped inside.

  The first thing I noticed was a stale and sour smell in the cottage. It was stuffy, probably because all of the windows were down, but the odor was more than just that. It was more than the typical bachelor funk that I noticed the cottage often had after I’d had a single man renting it for a while.

  “Hey, Amy, I didn’t expect you to come till I finished,” Jen said as she was standing near me.

  I could hear that she was out of breath as if she was running before I entered inside. She had been a big help and one of the few in town that didn’t treat me as a leper. Maybe because she needed the money, seeing as she was desperate to get out of town and go to college. She helped set up the cottage for guests, and I paid her generously for it. I’d never had a complaint from a tenant since she started working for me, and I had to reward her for it. I’d had so many cleaners who took advantage of my situation, but she never did that, and I was grateful. She cleaned my place to
o. I’d always give her the space of letting her clean while I was out with Smokey. I hated the idea of not being able to clean my own place, but in my condition, I had no choice.

  Before I could reply, she said, “The blinds were all down, so I put them up and opened the windows to air this place. I know you tell them not to smoke, but that doesn’t stop them. Maybe you need to take a deposit from them?”

  I nodded in agreement, and she must have been facing me. This place really did need to air out.

  She decided to tell me exactly the state of the place. “The bed was unmade and quite messy, and there were used condoms in the small trash can next to it. When I hit the bathroom, there was an ammonia reek that almost watered my eyes. In the kitchen, there were a stack of dirty dishes beside the sink. Half-empty containers in the trash can were ripe.”

  I sighed. “I’m so sorry, Jen. This annoys me. I was very clear in the leasing contract that he was to leave the place clean and presentable.”

  I was going to tell her that she was right. I needed to do something more. I could start by taking a deposit and stop having so much faith that the tenants would leave the place exactly the way that they found it when they leased it. I could hear her foot movements up and down the cottage. She was busy and I was disturbing her. I was tempted to leave, but then I heard Smokey scratching the door. I took one of the big bowls I kept in the utility closet for him and filled it with water.

  I knelt beside him and petted him while he noisily lapped up half a bowl of water. Then I gave him a few treats from my pocket.

  “Do you need to play for a bit?” I asked. Smokey knew the word “play” very well, and immediately started dancing around. I went back to the utility closet for the tennis ball thrower I kept there, only to find it broken.

  The thrower wasn't some cheap thing made of flimsy plastic. It was a good quality one and was almost new when Peter moved in. There was no way it could have broken just like that. Peter couldn’t have just been getting a broom or mop out of the closet. The only way it could have broken was if he was messing around with it, or if he broke it intentionally. I was willing to give him a little benefit of the doubt until I picked up the tennis balls, and they’d both been either cut or torn open. I started to feel them to figure out if they were cut or torn on purpose.

  Who was I kidding?

  Of course it was done on purpose.

  Peter had really rubbed me wrong in our first meeting. But I had already agreed to rent him the cottage for the several months he’d be in town, and I wasn't one to go back on my word, so we went ahead and signed the lease. He tried to present himself as decent and polite, but it was in that condescending, “don’t you worry your pretty little head, missy” way, that chauvinistic jackass thinking that pissed me off. As well as the fact that he stood too close to me. He found excuses to touch me constantly. Worse, I could tell that he was constantly trying to back me into corners or put himself between doorways and me. Just because I couldn’t see didn’t mean that I was deaf. I could hear him moving, even as quietly as he tried to do it.

  I was desperate to rent out the place and went along with it. I hated him then and even more after this inspection.

  I knew that behavioral pattern all too well. I'd pegged it immediately, and the more he failed to corral me, the more insistent he got, and then the cracks in the façade started to appear. I did the absolute bare minimum required to get the lease signed and get out and then went to the cottage as little as I possibly could while he lived there, and you’d best be sure Smokey was always along with me when I did.

  At least he'd been too much of a cheapskate to have opted for the weekly housekeeping add-on I offered my renters, but once he was in the cottage with me, he did mention it. I couldn’t imagine having Jen come over once a week to clean the place for a scumbag like him, and there was no way I was going to do it myself.

  “It’s not available yet,” I’d told him.

  “You sure?”

  I'd had to think fast. I went for something not too far off the truth. “I used to have one of the high school girls do it, but she just left for college. I haven’t found a replacement yet, and I can’t do it myself.”

  “It’s okay…” he'd said, sidestepping, trying to block me from the door. “You must know this place inside out. Maybe you could do it?”

  It had annoyed me that he was asking me such a stupid question. If I could have done it, then I wouldn’t be hiring someone in the first place.

  “No.” I'd had to think fast again. What else to say? My lack of interaction with people was showing, and I wasn’t good at lying, let alone quick thinking. “It wouldn’t be professional of me to do that. I need to keep up my standards. You could put in a bad review about me, and my small business would be blown, and I need the money.”

  He didn’t need to know my business. I kept my excuse short and sweet.

  “I’m a bachelor,” he'd said, stepping in close again, as if that was a good reason to clean up after him. Smokey saved me by coming up to the front door and pawing at it. The sudden sound had distracted Peter just enough for me to duck around him and let my dog in. My very large dog that tended to walk around like a military K-9.

  “Seriously, I promise not to put a bad review, and I’m sure that the place wouldn’t need that much cleaning on a weekly basis.”

  As I remembered the first and very unpleasant interaction I’d had with Peter, I could easily see why he would intentionally break the dog’s toys. It was exactly the kind of thing my dad would have done under the same circumstances.

  The memories of my past flooded through my mind.

  “Peter was just like my dad,” I said, holding Smokey’s broken toys. Smokey was still sitting in front of me, vibrating with excitement ever since I’d offered to play with him. I couldn’t imagine getting much use out of the busted tennis ball thrower, but even cut open, the tennis balls would still fly through the air. I let my dog outside and did the best I could for him with what I had.

  Dad had known better than to hit me. I found out later that the teachers at my preschool were very, very good at identifying physical abuse, and the police would actually take any reports they made seriously. That was why I had to hide Cherry-Berry from him when I was a girl, because every other favorite stuffy I'd had before her had been ripped apart or burned. That was why it was a special treat when Barney was on TV in the house, because he’d destroy the DVDs when he was mad at me. Sometimes if I really made him mad, he would beat Mom. If she did something wrong, he’d break things that were valuable to her, or he’d forbid her from talking to Auntie Jean or any of her friends, and there weren’t many of them who came around. Everyone in town knew what Dad was like, and none of them did anything about him or even offered to help Mom, so I found out as the years rolled by.

  By the time Smokey was finally worn out, my arm felt like it was going to fall off, but he also seemed happier than he’d been in quite a while. He liked the cottage and its huge yard a lot, and it was a shame that Peter kept him from getting out there as much as I’d have liked. I only made it out sometimes on weekdays when I knew Peter would be at work.

  As I poured Smokey another bowl of water, I decided that it was time for me to leave.

  “Jen, I’m leaving,” I shouted.

  There was nothing more for me to do here. Jen had her own key. “No problem, Miss Martin. Give Ol’ Smokes a big scratch for me, and I’ll see you later.”

  I harnessed up Smokey, and we made our way home. At least the Johnson children were busy doing something somewhere other than their corner when I passed. It was a small blessing, magnified in importance by the unpleasantness of clearing Peter out of my cottage.

  As I unlocked the door and stepped aside, I found myself wondering again if it was worth it to keep renting out the cottage. If I got rid of it, I could fold the money from the sale into the trust fund that Mom’s life insurance had set up for me. Or, if I sold my house and moved into the cottage, I would be able to pu
t even more money into the trust, and with the cottage being much cheaper to maintain, I could live comfortably. Plus, Smokey would have that big yard to run in every day.

  The problem was that I couldn’t bear the idea of letting either property go. My house was the one I was born and raised in, right up until the accident when I went into foster care. As soon as I turned eighteen, I moved back into the house and had lived there ever since.

  The cottage was also an inheritance from my Auntie Jean. She’d set up a robust trust for me in her will, leaving her estate to me, making sure that it was in a bulletproof box that my dad wouldn’t be able to touch if she died before I turned eighteen.

  Her attorney was brilliant, and Auntie’s time of death was recorded as two minutes later than Dad’s and five minutes later than Mom’s. Her attorney managed to convince the courts to declare my auntie to be my legal guardian for those two minutes that I was an orphan and she was still alive. Thus, the house, the little bit of savings they had, and their life insurance payout passed to Auntie Jean and then from her into the trust she’d set up, along with her cottage and life insurance.

  So even though I spent my fourth through eighteenth years being bounced between facilities and foster homes, there were two houses and a respectable amount of money being managed for me.

  If I did decide to sell one of the two places, it would be the house. My feelings about it had always been mixed. I had no happy memories of the house, because Dad’s cruelty and abuse were an indelible part of it. But it was also home. My years in the child welfare system were fundamentally unstable, as I moved constantly from place to place or had a rotating roster of girls when I was in the juvenile facility. In that time, the house came to represent stability and predictability. It was the Hell that I knew, the one I remembered, through thirteen years of being moved from one Hell I didn’t know to another.