“This is exactly the sort of house Nancy would wander into.”
“We’ve even got our own mystery,” Elyse said.
“That we do,” Isobel said, taking a pencil from her pocket and marking a small “x” on the wall. Unlike the rest of the walls, which were horizontally laid poplar, the stairwell had been skim coated and covered in ornate wallpaper. Initially, Isobel had hoped to enter the space beneath the stairs through the kitchen, but she’d had to rule it out because it was where the HVAC had run the vents for the air conditioning. The green and gold wallpaper would be impossible to replicate, but as beautiful as it was, it did show its age, with a few seams split and the corner near the far wall peeling.
“Have I told you my theory on that yet?”
Isobel stopped and then restarted her scan for the next stud. “What theory?”
“About Benny?”
“I don’t want to talk about Benny.”
Elyse leaned in and lowered her voice. “Not even about him being Lizzie’s dad?”
Isobel dropped the stud finder. “No.”
“I’m not sure, sure, but it makes more sense than anything else. Think about it.”
“No,” she said again, leaning against the wall and then sliding down to the floor. “Talk me through it.”
While Elyse explained her theory, Isobel half listened to her and half thought about all of her interactions with Benny—trying to figure out if he’d ever dropped any hints of his own. Elyse’s hypothesis was based on three points. The first that he knew Lizzie’s mom when she got pregnant, the second that Lizzie’s mom had stayed in touch with Benny and had in fact suggested him to renovate the house, even though he was terrible. The final point had to do with Benny’s hands—Elyse felt they were almost exactly the same as Lizzie’s. There were other reasons too, but most of those relied on Elyse’s interpretation of the behavior of Benny toward Lizzie. “He treats her differently than you and me,” she said. “You know, like he worries about her more, thinks she needs help. And why else would he go to all the trouble with the house? He’s desperate to stay in Lizzie’s life.”
“Or he was desperate to figure out a way to keep getting a paycheck,” Isobel said.
“I’m right,” Elyse said.
Isobel banged her head against the wall. It returned a reverberation, which at first she didn’t consider. Her mind filled with the possible ramifications of Benny being Lizzie’s father. She couldn’t see any upside to it. Benny had six other children by three different women. He didn’t see any of them often, he drank too much, and he was bad at his job. There was nothing of a father in him. “I don’t know,” she said, banging her head again—her subconscious telling her there was something wrong with the wall.
“I’m sure,” Elyse said. “I just don’t know what to do about it.”
“Nothing.” Isobel knelt and faced the wall, pushing against the lower portion where her head had rested. In that particular spot it felt more like wood than plaster.
“We can’t do nothing.”
Not knowing what to say, Isobel concentrated on the wall. Elyse sounded like she was talking about more than Lizzie’s situation. Her words had echoes of all that had happened that year in the house. “Do you see this?” she asked, putting her hands on the wall and pressing so that the area where she pushed bowed in.
“Weird,” Elyse said, pushing with her. “Let me try something.”
Placing her fingers on it, as she would on a Ouija board, Elyse pushed firmly in each direction. When she pushed to the left, the wall slid open and a faint musty smell entered the hallway. They sat back and looked at the opening, which was about the size of a dog door.
“We need a light,” Isobel said.
Without a word, Elyse hurried down the hall and returned a few moments later with Isobel’s headlight and a flashlight. “What a strange house this is,” she said, turning on her flashlight and directing it inside the opening. “You seen this before?”
“Never,” Isobel said, leaning her head inside the space. The interior didn’t look much different from other areas she’d seen under stairs. Some were enclosed and some open. This particular space had an unfinished quality—subflooring and studs behind the plaster. She crawled partway into the space, wondering what it could have been that warped the floor.
“Are you sure that’s safe?” Elyse asked, trying to shine her flashlight around Isobel’s body. “I think I see stuff back in the corner.”
Isobel crawled completely inside the space. The rear portion of the secret room was stacked nearly to the ceiling with boxes. She looked up, trying to gauge the distance from the floor to the top of the stairs. It was tall enough for her to stand, although she had to be careful because of the uneven spacing of the subfloor. She realized that from underneath the house, the stacks of boxes that nearly filled the space had fooled her into thinking the area had finished flooring. The boxes were wooden, and tufts of straw-like material poked out of the sides and tops.
“Should we open one?” Elyse asked, having joined Isobel in the small space.
“Maybe we should wait for Lizzie,” Isobel said even as she reached for the nearest box. The top had been nailed shut and there were no markings on the side of the container.
“Let’s at least take it out into the light,” Elyse said.
Isobel bent to lift the box and then called her cousin over to help. It was heavy enough that they ended up sliding it out of the secret doorway instead of carrying it. Despite all the movement, the box gave no indication of its contents. In the comparative brightness of the hallway, the box looked smaller and older than it had in the stairwell.
“We ought to wait,” Isobel said, running her fingernail along the top edge of the box, checking to see if any portion of it was loose.
Elyse took a photo of the box next to the opening and sent it to Lizzie. “Let’s see what she says.”
They stared at the box for a few moments. “You really think Benny’s her father?” Isobel asked when the silence between them had become oppressive.
“It makes as much sense as anything else.”
“But why wouldn’t her mom have told her? He’s not dangerous or absent. I’m not sure the secrecy makes any sense if he’s her dad.”
“But he’s a disappointment. Think about it. After all these years of not knowing, it would be such a letdown to find out your father was a drunk with scores of illegitimate children. And besides, you know how religious her parents are. What’s she going to say to the younger kids?”
“I’m not convinced,” Isobel said. “Are you going to tell her your theory?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“I wouldn’t. Not without being sure.”
Elyse reached out and pushed at the box with her toe. “Wanna shake it? See if we can figure out what’s inside?”
They put their ears to the box and wiggled it—tipping it one way and then the other. Up close, the box smelled like musty books and beeswax. Isobel thought that Elyse was wrong about Benny, but she didn’t know what her cousin knew. Elyse had always been better at listening to other people’s conversations, especially adult conversations, and who knows what she’d heard over the years that made her believe that Benny could be Lizzie’s father.
“We should ask Benny. If he didn’t sleep with Lizzie’s mom, then he can’t be her father.”
“Are you going to ask him?” Elyse asked.
“We could ask her mother,” Isobel said, trying to think of the last time she’d spoken to Aunt Annie.
“I think we should tell her.” Elyse paused to slide her phone out of her pocket and then continued. “Otherwise it’ll seem like we’re going behind her back.”
“Are you still pissed about something?” Isobel had learned through the years that Elyse’s resentments and annoyances surfaced on her face the way gold settled to the bottom of the pan.
Her phone buzzed back immediately with a text message. “Lizzie says we should open it. She can’t leave pra
ctice for another hour.” Elyse tried to pry off the lid with her fingers and then slid her car key into a small opening and tried to use it as leverage.
“I’ll get a crowbar,” Isobel said, heading toward the kitchen, where they’d let the tools pile up in the last few weeks. She didn’t find a crowbar, but she did find a large hammer with an extended claw on the back of its head.
“No, I’ve almost got this,” Elyse said.
In the two months since the wedding, Elyse had worked through much of her obsession. Isobel wasn’t sure if it was the frank talk she’d had with Landon or if she was seeing a therapist in secret. Lizzie thought that something about being in the house had helped her to realize that for a life to be good, it didn’t have to be big. They hadn’t addressed it directly with Elyse for the same reason you don’t talk to a man crossing a tightrope. When she was on the other side of processing the drama of Landon and Daphne, she’d bring it up and all of them could laugh about how sneaky Lizzie and Isobel had been. They’d stolen her phone, sent messages from her, and then kidnapped her. All in the name of helping her save face.
When she returned, Elyse was sheepishly trying to fish the remains of her car key, house key, and work key out of the box. “Damn it, damn it, damn it,” she said, not making eye contact.
“You should’ve stopped when you broke the first one,” Isobel said, trying not to laugh, but failing.
“Don’t even say it,” Elyse said, falling into laughter with Isobel. The prospect of opening the box had made them giddy.
Crouching down, Isobel slipped the claw end of the hammer into the top edge of the box where they’d found a small space between the top of the box and the lid. She put one foot on the box and leaned all her weight on the hammer. The nails groaned as if they were being tortured, a few of them letting out squeals of protest. The lid inched up. Isobel changed positions and tried from another corner of the box. On the third try, the nails gave way entirely with a suddenness that sent Isobel sprawling backward.
Elyse scrambled to the box and pulled out the straw-like strips that served as packing material. She pulled out several wooden boxes imprinted with dark writing. Each of them took one and fiddled with them until the tops slid away. “What is it?” she asked, holding up a bottle for Elyse’s inspection. “Whiskey?”
They puzzled over the labels on the bottles, each of them using their phones to try to figure out exactly what they’d found. “Jack Daniel’s I’ve heard of,” Isobel said, running her finger over the label. “But who the hell is Geo A. Dickel? And what is sour mash whiskey?”
It wasn’t until Lizzie arrived home a few hours later with T. J. in tow that they fully uncovered the mystery of the liquor. It turned out George Dickel was a lesser-known maker of fine Tennessee whiskey. The four of them sat around the kitchen table staring at the bottle, trying to decide whether they should drink it. They’d gone through the other boxes and determined that whatever it was they’d found, there were at least a hundred bottles of the stuff—all of it from 1908. Lizzie’s best guess was that her grandfather had stored the liquor away when Tennessee stopped making its own liquor in advance of the national prohibition and then hidden it in the house as he built it.
The question they asked themselves over and over as the night unfolded was what the bottles would be worth. T. J. thought they were mostly worthless and that they’d be lucky to get $50 a bottle from the few collectors who were interested in history. Elyse felt the value was higher—pointing out that the value of wine increased with age. In the end, they’d gotten out the handful of jelly jars that hadn’t broken when the cabinet fell and poured themselves shots of the whiskey.
Isobel leaned over and smelled her glass. It had the scent of burned wood and maple syrup. She mostly drank wine and was unprepared for the burn that jumped from her stomach to her throat after she’d swallowed it. Only Elyse and T. J. took the shots in stride. Lizzie, who almost never drank, doubled over coughing after the first shot and then sipped at her second shot the rest of the night. After a moment the burning subsided, replaced by the faint aftertaste of brown sugar and nuts. They drank another and then again, toasting one another and figuring that, at the least, Lizzie could make a couple thousand off the stash of whiskey.
About the time that Isobel began to feel unsteady on her feet, her phone rang. It took her a moment to recognize the area code as being from California and before she answered, she hushed everyone. It was true what they said, if you wanted a thing too much, it hid from you, and the moment you stopped wanting it, the thing that you wanted most showed up. Craig’s voice on the other end of the line sounded like he was across the ocean instead of across the country.
“I’ve got good news—two networks interested in seeing a pilot and enough investors to fund the thing.”
With her entire body warmed from the inside out, Isobel lost all apprehension. She screamed in happiness and before Craig understood what had happened, he’d been put on speakerphone in the middle of the table.
“Tell them,” Isobel said.
“Are you there?” Craig asked. “Have we been cut off?”
“No, no. We’re all here. I want you to tell them.”
All around her, the people she loved most in the world raised their glasses of hundred-year-old whiskey and toasted the possibility that everything would work out in the end.
November 2012: Memphis
Are you sure you aren’t bothered by the cameras?” Isobel asked Tom. He hadn’t even blinked twice the first time she showed up at the home improvement store trailed by Jake and the rest of the crew, which had grown to nearly a dozen people this time around. But now they were on a date—or what passed for a date on reality television.
“What cameras?” Tom asked, holding her purse while she slid into the green booth.
“Don’t talk about the cameras,” Kitty said. The sound girl had indeed been promoted to field producer for the pilot, which they’d sold to the investors and the studio as Southern Bel. Of course the fact that no one had ever shortened Isobel’s name to Bel didn’t concern Craig. “It’s a concept,” he’d said to her. “Nothing’s set in stone.” He had however insisted that everyone call her Bel, which made for lots of stuttering as the cousins and Tom got used to the forced nickname.
Isobel sat down. “Is this a local place?” she asked, looking around the restaurant, which was in the only part of Memphis that reminded Isobel of the West Coast. Tom took his seat—or rather he expanded into the space, looking at home in the restaurant as he did everywhere.
“You come here a lot?” she asked.
“Enough,” he said, handing her a greasy plastic-coated menu. She didn’t understand how he could be so comfortable in his own skin. Lizzie thought it might be because he spent his weekends on stage with that band of his, but Elyse said it was because his parents were still together.
“Why the band?” she asked. The point of this outing had been to establish that they were dating—for the show. Craig had talked to her about making sure the conversation covered their backgrounds because it would make it easier to set Tom up as a character.
“Youngest child,” he said, shrugging.
“Me, too,” she said, raising her diet soda in a mock toast to an accomplishment neither one of them had any say in. “What does that mean? We’re immature brats who’ll fight over who gets the most attention?”
“Nah,” he said. “Or rather only if we’re ever on stage together—there’d be a fight.”
“I’d win,” Isobel said, wondering what sort of band he had. Lizzie told her that in Memphis music flowed out of the Mississippi and into everyone’s veins: having a band was like saying you restored old cars. It was what people did in their spare time. Still, she wasn’t convinced it was a hobby until Tom got out of his car to pick her up for their date. Instead of wearing a T-shirt or other merchandise advertising his band, he had on a short-sleeved button-down that was tight in a way that indicated vanity about his looks. The restaurant was a loca
l burger chain—known for its buttered buns and cluttered décor. They encouraged people to write on the walls, and at the booth where they sat, thousands of people had autographed the plaster or scrawled bits of wisdom. They took turns reading them to each other while they waited for their food.
“For a good time call your vibrator,” she said.
“Here’s one. ‘Be careful, I bite.’”
“Mrs. Looper is a pooper.”
He laughed the loudest at that. “That’s something Bobby would write.”
“Bobby?”
Tom looked away from her, and then the waitress arrived with their food. He showed her how to put the toothpick in her straw and launch it at the ceiling where thousands of others had landed, their cellophane flags making the tiled ceiling look like a map of places people had been.
“How does a thing like that start?”
He reached across the table and held her hand. “How does anything start?”
She lowered her eyes and then took a bite of the burger. What was between them felt different from most of the other dates she’d been on. She didn’t know if it was because he was different or because of who she allowed herself to be in Memphis. For one thing, she’d never once sucked in her stomach when she saw him. In getting to know him at the home improvement store, there’d always been a context for their conversations. She’d ask him about the grit on sandpaper or the best glue for pipes and then if they ran out of things to talk about, she could bring up insulation or light fixtures. Mostly they hadn’t run out of conversation.
She tried to picture him in his other life—performing on stage. Not that she knew much about it. He had the sort of face that would always look younger than he was—at least unless he lost his hair. What beautiful hair he had, a sandy blond color and always somehow looking as if he were two weeks overdue for a cut. He reached for his soda, and she scooted forward in her seat so that their legs touched. His feet tapped out a rhythm that she felt under the table as his knees moved up and down to the song in his head.
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