by Unknown
“Do not entertain any further ideas of selling my house. If I sell it, which I won’t, I’ll give you half.”
“And if you don’t sell it?”
“I’ll still pay you half—but I might have to make payments to you.”
“Sounds like a deal.”
“Okay?” He was okay with it?
“Okay.”
“You’ll leave me alone and let me do what I want with the house?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
“And please tell Mayor Crane and Darrel Masters to stay off our property. For some reason, I think they may be in on this charade—the spiders, the snake. Those pigs.”
“Mayor Crane and Darrel Masters?”
“No, those pigs—the ones that I found rooting in the kitchen a couple of weeks ago—although if what I suspect is true, Crane and Masters are swine, too. Trying to trick me out of our house, so they can build a parking lot.”
“Our house?”
“My house. You know what I mean.”
Sam changed the tone. “Did you like your present?”
She softened. “I loved it. Thank you—you have beautiful taste.”
“It’s just stationery. Thought you might remember to write when you go back to Seattle.”
“Maybe. Did you like your gift?”
“It’s my favorite one this year. Gold cuff links. Thanks.”
“I hope you have a shirt that you can use them on.”
“Hey, it’s my lucky day—I do. Thanks.”
“Okay then. We’re clear once and for all on the house?”
“Clear as a bell.”
She slammed the receiver down; his calmness infuriated her. How could he be so composed when her whole life was an incomprehensible mess!
“You hung up on him?” Elizabeth set the turkey in the center of the table and stood back to admire the beautifully browned bird. Candles lit the festive red tablecloth and sparkling china. The shop owner had gone to a lot of trouble, Emma realized. And her efforts were well rewarded.
“I know it wasn’t a nice thing to do.” Emma took a sip of eggnog, wandering to the twinkling tree. Ornaments from years past festooned the blue spruce. Memories of Elizabeth’s life nestled among the fragrant pine and shiny tinsel.
“Then why did you do it?”
“I don’t know—Sam can be so nice one minute and so detached the next. Everything I demanded he agreed to. Just like that. ‘Okay. Anything else? Sounds like a deal. Do I have a choice?’ He ripped up the contract without an argument.”
“Did you want a knock-down-drag-out fight?” Elizabeth asked.
“Of course not.” Emma set her cup on the lamp table. “I want some emotion from the guy.”
“And you don’t see his feelings in his eyes?” Elizabeth shook her head. “Everybody else does.”
“That’s nonsense—and it’s not fair to Sam to imply that he cares a wit for me. The whole town is accusing him of being partial to me, pampering me so I’ll give in and sell. It isn’t right. He’s caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.”
“Defending him now?” Elizabeth returned to the kitchen and came back carrying a bowl of sweet potatoes with marshmallow topping. A moment later she brought out string beans. “The man’s in love with you,” she said, arranging the serving bowls on the table. “The beans are from my summer vegetable garden.”
Emma turned slightly at the remark. Somewhere between “defending him now?” and “the beans are from my garden,” the conversation had taken a serious turn. “Excuse me?”
“Come now, Emma. You’re not sightless. Surely you see the way Sam looks at you, the little things he does for you—driving by your house at least six or seven times a day—in a town like Serenity where the biggest thing that happens is the kids playing pranks in the cemetery?”
“That’s why he drives by so often. To prevent the pranks.”
“Kenneth has a car. Why doesn’t he drive by?”
“Maybe it isn’t his territory.”
“In Serenity?” Elizabeth hooted. “Sam and Ken take care of the town; they don’t designate territory.”
Elizabeth returned to the kitchen for the green salad. Emma stared out the window at fading daylight. The days were short this time of year. It was barely four thirty and the streetlights were blinking on one by one. Bare branches tapped the frozen windowpanes.
“The man’s in love with you.” Elizabeth’s words rang in Emma’s ears. Oh, if that were only true—Emma caught her wishful thoughts. If that were true, it would mean nothing. She had been down that rocky path before. Sam was wishy-washy. She couldn’t trust his declarations of undying love. She wasn’t fifteen and starry-eyed anymore, and she knew the hurt love could bring. She knew people could change; she’d changed, grown up. Now she was able to recognize fact from fiction. A serious relationship between her and Sam was fiction. Steven King fiction.
“Here we are.” Elizabeth set the salad on the table and motioned for Emma to sit down. The two women sat across from each other on one end of the long table. Twelve place settings and cut-glass goblets graced the holiday table.
“You must think me eccentric, but I always set the table for twelve. You never know when you’re entertaining angels unaware.”
Emma smiled. She’d never once thought of eating turkey and dressing with angels.
Elizabeth reached for Emma’s hand and bowed her head. Emma followed suit. “Father, we thank you for this beautiful day when we recognize the birth of your Son, our Savior, with grateful hearts. Such a gift cannot be repaid or even given proper thanks. We bow humbly in your presence, Father, grateful for the bounty before us. Forgive us for the ways we fail you. Open our eyes to your grace that surrounds us daily. We are blessed, truly blessed, this day. Amen.”
“Amen,” Emma whispered.
Elizabeth picked up the bowl of potatoes and handed it to Emma. “He is in love with you, you know.”
Uncertain of her meaning, Emma said quietly, “Who? The Lord or Sam?”
“Both,” Elizabeth said. “Both, you silly girl.”
Emma balked at sudden tears. Then why was Sam trying to run her out of town? She hadn’t considered the possibility before now, but hadn’t Oscar Wellman huddled with Sam and come up with a contract? Sam tore the contract in two, but would he have mentioned it if Oscar hadn’t told her first?
Ohhhhh. She scooped up a forkful of beans. The dirty rat.
Emma was still steaming over her argument with Sam when she opened the front door around ten o’clock Christmas night. Gismo greeted her in the foyer and she scratched his head and let him out. A few minutes later, he was scratching at the door to come back in.
Emma threw herself onto the couch and stared at the picture of Christ holding the lamb. Sam said God cared about her, but then Sam didn’t care or he’d never have talked to the developer. But he’d torn up the developer’s offer without an argument. Her head was spinning. “What does it mean?” she asked the picture, but there was no answer.
She curled up on the couch, wishing someone would give her the answers. Then she spied her mother’s Bible on the side table. She hadn’t looked at it since coming back, but Lully had read it every night when they were young. In her journal she’d written of the comfort scripture brought her, especially in the final days of her life.
Almost without thinking, Emma picked up the worn book. The leather cover was cracked at the edges, the pages clearly thumbed. She opened to the first page where births and deaths were listed. Lully. She had to record Lully’s name inside, below their mother’s name. Was Dad still alive? Leave the date of death blank. Reaching inside her purse, she drew out a pen and very carefully wrote Lully’s name and the date of her death. Tears stung her eyes. There was such finality in that small act.
She thumbed through the pages, seeing passages underlined, clearly passages that meant something to their mother and others perhaps to Lully. A yellowed pi
ece of paper fell out of the back of the Bible, and Emma picked it up, pushing Gismo aside while reading a passage from Psalms. Before shoving the paper back into the Bible, she glanced at it.
It took a moment for the writing on the paper to register. Then her loud whoop of joy sent Gismo running for the kitchen. She’d found it! The bill of sale. Written in spidery hand, Jeremiah Stout stated that he’d sold a piece of property with a four-room house on it to her great-grandfather.
Sam. She had to call Sam. Before she even thought, she dialed the sheriff’s office. Sam answered on the first ring.
“Sam! I didn’t think you’d be in the office on Christmas night!”
“I said okay. The house is not for sale. And a sheriff is never off; don’t you know that?”
“I found it! I found the deed!”
“You did? That’s great.”
“It was in Momma’s Bible all along! It’s a handwritten bill of sale. This proves this house belongs to us!”
His tone softened. “I’m glad for you, Emma. I’ll talk to Ned and get the abstract update started.”
When she hung up, Emma danced around the room and Gismo ventured out of the kitchen. “I don’t have to sell the house!” she told him. “They can’t make me sell it or take it away from me!”
It was only later that she wondered why it had been Sam she wanted to tell first about the bill of sale. Sam with whom she wanted to share her joy.
Well, he owned part of the house, she reasoned. It was natural to share the news with him first.
Of course, her conscience said.
“Of course,” she repeated. “Only natural. Don’t try and make anything out of it.”
Chapter Fourteen
The day after Christmas—could there be a more lackluster day? Emma had been so excited about finding the bill of sale she hadn’t slept a wink. She could hardly wait to show Mr. Crane and Mr. Masters that precious piece of paper. There would be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the property was hers and that she had every right to either keep it or sell it.
Yet what difference did it make?
She and Sam were still at odds over what to do with the property. Although Sam seemed willing to give in about selling the house, his mother’s plight still nagged her conscience.
And the whole town was at odds over the house now too. She’d overheard two women arguing at the market this morning. One said that Emma was perfectly within her rights to keep the house—after all it was almost a town monument. The other rather heatedly threw a head of lettuce in her cart and said they needed a parking lot a lot more than they needed a historical monument, and she had the calluses on her feet to prove it. All the bill of sale confirmed was that the town didn’t have the right to take the property.
Emma sorted through the remains of Christmas papers and ribbons. She carefully unwrapped and set on the mantel the Hummel collector’s plate that Elizabeth had given her.
“Ride into Christmas” depicted a rosy-cheeked boy riding his sleigh through the snowdrifts of Christmastime, clutching his lantern and carrying a Christmas tree.
Her hand paused. She couldn’t put her hopes in Sam, not again. It had taken years to get over him—she couldn’t go through that agony again.
His mother had told her that for some reason he couldn’t make any serious commitments. For Pete’s sake, he was thirty-four and still single. Was it because of her? Could it be?
And what about you, Emma Mansi? You’re thirty-two and single. What does that say about your commitment tendencies?
It’s not the same, she argued with herself.
It’s exactly the same. It seems that every time you or Sam come close to committing to another person, you each get cold feet.
You don’t know that for certain.
Yes I do.
Annoyed over her argument with herself, Emma picked up two cardboard boxes and headed upstairs, armed with a club, a flashlight, a broom, a dustpan, and large garbage bags. She still had much of the attic and the entire basement to clean. Items would have to be shipped to Seattle, thrown out, or put into storage.
She reached the top of the stairs and walked to the overhead door twenty feet from the stairway and yanked the chain. A short set of rickety steps rattled down.
The attic always made her think of Clark Griswold in the movie National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, where he’d been accidentally locked in the attic while his family and in-laws took off for a day of Christmas shopping. The Mansi attic was a replica of the Griswolds’: boxes, battered furniture, old trunks, discarded lamps, even an old Victrola. And cold. Extremely cold. She rummaged in an old trunk and put on two moth-eaten sweaters, a pair of heavy, insulated hunting pants, and a Denver Broncos ball cap before tackling the job.
She worked through the afternoon, sorting through boxes and trunks. Old broken toys, kitchen junk, forty-year-old bank statements she pitched. Some of the better clothing items were set aside for charity, and others were thrown in a box for trash. At times she found herself sitting cross-legged on the cold rafters, looking through old picture albums, laughing and crying. Her school pictures were a disgrace. In one her hair looked like a heinous rooster tail; in another she was grinning with two missing front teeth and a gap on the bottom row.
Lully’s third-grade picture was sidesplitting. The collar—big collar—of her dress was tucked in on one side. Her hair escaped a barrette, and she must have had a cold that day because her nose was beet red from constant wiping. This was serious family blackmail material—if she had a family. The sudden impact of that thought devastated her. She had no family; she was completely, utterly alone.
“Oh, Lord,” she whispered. Tears rolled into her mouth and she swiped them away. “I am so scared.”
Why? I am with you.
She swiped at her eyes and glanced up. Imagination, that’s all it was. Her imagination had created a voice in her mind, a voice saying exactly what she wanted—desperately needed—to hear.
Why do you doubt me?
“I don’t doubt you—not really.” Emma glanced around, glad there was nobody in the attic to hear this. Maybe she was going crazy—no, she didn’t hear an actual voice. It was more like a thought or a feeling, a sense of presence. She’d had many silent conversations with this whatever-it-was, but she’d always considered it her own thoughts talking back to her.
“I … haven’t talked to you much since Lully used to read the Bible to me.”
I know. I’ve missed you.
This is nuts. Emma put the albums in a box and set it aside. She worked for a few more minutes, and then paused, listening to something deep within.
Do not be afraid. You are my child, and I care deeply about you.
“I … love you too,” she whispered, realizing finally that she truly did. “I’m sorry, God—I’ve been mad—mad at you.” Her voice caught and her eyes closed. “All these years I’ve been furious with you,” she sobbed. “Because of Mom—then Dad. Leaving Lully and me to make it on our own. Why? Why do you make some people’s lives so perfect and others—?”
Someday you will know—in my timing.
“Oh, God.” She knelt, weeping. “Please forgive me.” Bringing her hand to her nose to stop the flow, Emma sobbed. She was sitting in the attic talking to God. And he was talking back.
She surely had lost her mind. Scrambling to her feet, she started pitching boxes through the attic opening. They landed with a thud at the bottom of the attic steps. Box after box dropped, one breaking open and the contents spilling into the hallway.
She crawled over the rafters and reached for several mid-size cartons wedged in the very back corner. When she opened the first one, she frowned. The box contained feathers and colorful beads. Packages and packages of ornamental beads of several sizes and colors, of shells and pearls. As she opened each box she discovered tools suitable only for making fine, delicate jewelry.
Lully’s jewelry supplies—but how? She glanced at the attic opening.
How did
they get in the attic? Lully had made the strange, exotic looking necklaces and earrings until the day of her death. Part of a necklace was lying in her lap when they found her, the other part grasped in her hand. Her workbench was downstairs. Emma hadn’t paid much attention lately, but that first night she’d noticed that some of Lully’s finished jewelry, materials, and tools were on the bench.
Setting the boxes aside, she puzzled over the find. Had someone boxed up the supplies since Lully’s death to get them out of the way? Who could have done that? Sam? Ken? Ray Sullins?
Shoving the ball cap to the back of her head, Emma grunted as she tried to move a trunk that must have had an old Buick in it.
Dragging the trunk to the edge of the stairs, she decided to leave it there until she could get help.
“Don’t even think about it.”
Emma started at the sound of Sam’s voice. Peering down through the opening, she saw him standing in a jumble of boxes at the foot of the ladder.
“Hey.” She was more than surprised to see him.
“Hey. What’s going on?”
“Sam, you wouldn’t believe what just happened.”
“What?”
“God … it was … I could have sworn …” How could she tell him she had made peace with God? That she’d actually talked to him—well, not talked to him exactly, but she’d heard that still small voice people talked about? Would Sam understand? “I … just talked with God.”
He smiled. “I talk to him several times a day.”
She cocked her head. “Are you serious? You’re not making fun of me—don’t think I’m some kind of weird fanatic because I talked … with him?”
Sam’s features sobered. “I don’t think you’re a fanatic. You seemed close to God when you were younger. What happened, Em? What made you turn away?”
Emma sighed as she sat down at the edge of the opening. “I don’t know—I was mad at him for so long, Sam. Furious, actually. Because of what he’d done to me and Lully.”
“He didn’t promise a perfect world—not down here,” Sam reminded.
“I know.” She sat for a moment lost in thought.