by Jill Bisker
Chapter Eleven
After clearing away lunch, I headed upstairs with my cell phone. I needed to call and make an appointment with the lawyers to sign my divorce papers. I’d been holding on to the past for way too long. For the first six months after Simon left I wanted him to come back. I thought he would come to his senses and remember when it was good between us. The next six months I was working on figuring out where to go with my life. Unfortunately, I didn’t come up with much until my mother and aunt intervened.
Stopping on entering the master bedroom I could feel there was something different, something kind of off. It was quite cold but the heating vents were often covered by boxes. I looked around but I didn’t see anything out of place, or at least any more out of place than it had been before. All the piles of boxes and stuff sitting around were making me anxious. I couldn’t wait to have a spot cleared out, so I would have someplace where I could relax.
Finding my Vera Bradley bag I had bought when I was doing my latest retail therapy, I dug around for my address book. I searched through it for several minutes and totally jumbled everything in my bag without finding it. However, I did find some credit card receipts I had been looking for the month previously. Normally I would just lose them before the statement even came. I could feel myself getting tense as I let out a loud sigh. Did everything have to be so difficult? Dumping my entire bag on the bed and sifting through it, I finally found the book hidden between some papers I’d stuffed into the bag at the last minute. After feeling my jaw begin to clench I forced myself to relax. I needed to clean out the inside of this bag anyway. Fifteen minutes later, it was cleaned, sorted and organized again, helping to lower my feeling of anxiety that was brought on by the disorder.
Picking up my phone, I again got the strange feeling something was wrong with the room. I sat on the bed and looked around the bedroom again. There was nothing I could put my finger on.
I looked down at my cell, and noticed there were several messages. I decided to wait to listen to them until later. No doubt they were mostly the messages from Simon trying to call me. I looked through my address book until I found the lawyer’s number. Taking a large breath, I punched the numbers on my phone.
“Dillon, Marks, and Andrews. May I—,” I heard a receptionist begin on the other end and then nothing. Ugh, my phone had dropped the call. Looking down at the screen, I was going to redial when I noticed the screen was black. Dead. I could have sworn I just charged the stupid thing that morning. The rechargeable battery must be going.
Traipsing back downstairs with my phone and charger I went in search of Connie. “Do you mind if I borrow your phone? Mine’s dead.”
“No problem. It’s plugged in on the counter in the kitchen.”
Backtracking again, I plugged my phone in and took Connie’s back upstairs with me. I sat on the edge of my bed, redialing once again. Why did the simplest of things have to take so long?
This time when the call went through I quickly asked for an appointment. The receptionist indicated that I could get in first thing in the morning of the next day due to a cancellation.
“Great, let’s get it over with,” I answered. Just as I was saying goodbye the screen went black. I tried to turn the phone on again. It was dead. Good thing I’d just finished my call. Apparently Connie was no better than me at keeping her phone charged.
I could hear the women chatting downstairs in the living room as they waited for me. Connie was amusing our mothers with stories from her vacation. I wished I had friends who lived in North Carolina who would invite me to stay with them for a week. Rejoining them I said, “Connie, your phone is dead. I’ll plug it back in.”
Connie got up and followed me into the kitchen. “What do you mean it’s dead? How did that happen? It’s been charging all morning.”
“Really? It went dead for me just as I finished my call. Maybe it wasn’t plugged in fully.”
“Laney, I do know how to charge my phone,” Connie answered irritably.
“Sorry, I was just thinking of reasons for it to die so quickly.” Connie’s fuse seemed as short as mine. Maybe she was getting a migraine too.
“Well, whatever,” I continued. “Let’s get started with the inevitable and get going on that room. What time are Emmett and his friends coming?” I asked.
“Around five,” Connie answered. “I thought we’d have pizza delivered.”
“Perfect. I got some beer when I was out also. You know that’s most men’s currency.”
Connie giggled. “Isn’t that the truth?”
That was one thing I loved about Connie, she never held a grudge. She might be irritated with me one moment but then her sense of humor would switch back on the next.
We set up a station for our mothers in the living room, putting two kitchen chairs in front of the long coffee table. Connie and I decided we would bring boxes or items to them and then they could sort them the way they liked.
It was difficult to see much of the study, as it was loaded with boxes of books almost shoulder height. I could see built-in oak bookshelves running to the ceiling behind the boxes, and woolen, plaid curtains at the two windows. The rest of the room was obscured by the boxes. The books I could see on the shelves looked like they would be the most interesting, with colorful leather and cloth bindings facing the room. Both windows had built-in window seats with green cushions that invited one to sit and read.
I lifted a box on top of one of the piles closest to the door and put it on the floor in front of me so I could see what was inside. It was a smaller one and I hoped it would be an easy beginning. Looking inside I found newer paperback mysteries. I lugged it into the next room for Mom and Aunt Shelly to inspect.
“Paperbacks,” I proclaimed, putting it on the coffee table. Both heads bent to look into the box. My aunt moved out of the way so my mother could pull two from the top. My mother and aunt looked at one another and nodded almost imperceptibly. They had this uncanny silent communication where they didn’t even have to exchange a word to understand what the other was thinking. “Would you put two empty boxes next to my chair, I’ll look at each book and we will have a keep box and a go box,” my mother directed.
“More mysteries,” Connie said, coming into the room and setting the box in front of her mother.
Walking back into the study, I scrutinized all the boxes packed in the room. “You don’t suppose it’s all books do you?” I asked Connie.
“Well, it was his study,” Connie said. “I suppose after he filled the shelves, he just kept putting them in boxes. I wonder if he read them all or just collected them.”
Taking more boxes out into the living room we found my mom and aunt hard at work looking over each title and sorting them into the two new boxes.
“We are getting rid of most of them so far. You can carry the full boxes out to my SUV. Shelly and I will take them over to the second hand book store to see if they want them. We should look up the older books online to see if they have any value. I know our father used to like signed books so we’ll have to check each one. He used to have a full set of Lincoln Finds a General that he always treasured. It took him forever to find volume four. We want to be careful not to let things like that just be taken to the used book store. How does that sound to you, Shelly?” My mother was in high gear and hardly took a breath.
“Perfect,” Shelly answered. “That way we would be getting some boxes out of the house right away and we would only be touching them once and deciding right away.”
We worked our way through the stacks and found a desk that had been buried. When we pulled away the last of the boxes hiding it, I was pleased to see it was a beautiful piece of furniture that I could use later in my design. It was made of heavy walnut with a center top drawer and three drawers stacked on each side. The top was covered in tawny-colored leather embossed with gold around the edges. There was an old library lamp sitting on it but he must have moved his other personal possessions elsewhere to make room for more bo
xes.
By the end of the afternoon we had gone through most of the boxes in the study. We filled both our mother’s cars nearly to overflowing, and put to the side only eight boxes of books to figure out later. I made a list of the books we had to value by some internet research. Probably most of them wouldn’t have much worth but I hoped to find an unexpected treasure. They were a mixture of thrillers, old westerns, historical novels, biographies and everything in between.
“Well, Darling, I think I’ve had as much of this as I can stand for today. I need to go home and have a shower. I feel filthy,” my mother said, coming into the study and wiping dust from her hands. She glanced around at the room. “I haven’t seen this room up close like this since I was a child, and even then my father didn’t want me in here. It was always his private space.”
The dark oak floor boards in the room were scratched and dented and full of dust and little bits of debris, but you could still see the old grandeur of the room. I was happy to see the nineteen seventies updating hadn’t reached this room, probably because it had already been so filled with boxes.
“When my parents were first married, they didn’t have much money but they furnished this house a little at a time,” Mom continued. “As my father became more successful they added all the woodwork and other touches. I was always surprised they didn’t move to a grander house as they could afford it. My father loved to show off his wealth when he was younger with snazzy clothes and new cars. Since my mother died here maybe he just couldn’t leave the place.”
I turned at the wistful note in my mother’s voice. Aunt Shelly leaned on the door frame looking into the room. Connie came in to sit on one of the window seats, a wisp of dust rose as she thumped down.
“I always forget she died in the house. How old were you when it happened?” I asked, stretching my aching back. I had never been very interested in our family history, but now it felt like some of the history was coming to life for me. My mom and her sister told their stories occasionally but they rarely mentioned other family members. It had to be really difficult for them, growing up without a mother. But they never dwelt on it. I was always so worried about my own problems, I never thought what that must have been like for them.
“I was about twelve, Shelly was ten. It was a difficult age to lose your mother. Not that there is ever a good age for it but that’s a particularly difficult period in a girl’s life. What do they say? Just on the cusp of womanhood. Then, our father was so shut down. Cold, unemotional. He always seemed like such a bastard. I don’t know if it was because he no longer had anything to give or if it was because he was just a bastard,” she finished with a sad sort of laugh.
“He was just a bastard,” Aunt Shelly joined in, laughing with my mother. I could tell this was a subject they had shared before, albeit privately. They weren’t the type of women to let their experiences cloud the opinions of others. They largely kept their thoughts to themselves and let others form their own views. “He was always harder on you than me. I always felt guilty because of that.”
Connie broke in, “Do you think it might be Grandma haunting here? She might have unresolved issues. After all, she died young, leaving her children to fend for themselves.”
“No,” my mother answered assuredly. “Oddly enough, the haunting started right when they moved in. Our mother had a few stories even from before I was born. Items not being left where the person had put them down, light knocking, doors opening on their own, that sort of thing.”
“It was haunted when they first moved in?” I felt like an idiot but asked the question anyway. “Don’t tell me—was it built on ancient burial grounds?”
My mom laughed, walking to the window to look out. “I don’t think so, at least I never heard of anything like that around this area. There are some mounds over in Wisconsin on the banks of the river, but I never heard of any here in town. But who knows, there might have been something else built on the land before this house.”
“It sure has been a long time since I’ve been here,” Aunt Shelly said. Then she perked up and exclaimed excitedly, “Hey, I’d forgotten all about this feature.” She reached her fingers in the door jamb where she was leaning and pulled. A hidden door glided out from inside the wall. “I loved this pocket door.”
I moved over to take a look. “This is what I love about older homes. They have such character. You don’t get that in the new homes anymore unless you spend tons of money.”
“Well, enough of all this talk and remembrances,” my mom said. “We’re leaving now. Call and tell us all about your ghost hunting.” We all walked out on the front porch and hugged. We never used to hug so much before. Surprisingly, I found that I really liked that.
“Now, make sure someone helps you with those boxes. I don’t want to hear you and Aunt Shelly lugged them all into the store by yourselves.”
“Would you stop worrying?”
“Worrying is what I do,” I answered.
Chapter Twelve
As evening neared, I found myself constantly watching the clock. Emmett and his friends weren’t coming until after dark, and I couldn’t seem to settle down. I paced through the rooms, picking up an item from one room and depositing it in another, yet not accomplishing anything. Probably we should just call the whole thing off. What were they going to find anyway? My mother had said the house had always been haunted, they just lived with it. Well, we could too.
Trying to get my mind focused on something else, I swept the floor in the study, removing the debris and dust. I felt a sense of satisfaction that we had one room fairly cleaned up. Next to the far wall was one row of boxes containing the books we were going to look up to find their value. It was a shame to store more piles of boxes in here after we’d gone to the trouble of cleaning it out, but it couldn’t be helped. We had to sort somewhere. In my mind I could see the room finished and redecorated. Beautiful blue silk curtains, new coordinating cushions on the window seats with matching pillows, the floors sanded and refinished. I would keep the desk and some of the older books, then add family heirlooms when we found them. Wishing and dreaming about decorating, I jumped when I heard a sudden knock.
I walked out to the living room to find Connie letting Emmett and his crew in. They were all carrying plastic, suitcase-type boxes and bundles of extension cords neatly rolled on spools. As an afterthought, I realized I hadn’t taken a shower after working in the study all day. Again, Emmett was going to see me in less than stellar condition. Why did it even bother me? What was I thinking? I wasn’t even fully divorced yet. Men shouldn’t be anywhere on my radar. Of course, I wasn’t dead yet so I couldn’t help noticing how blue his eyes looked with that navy polo he was wearing, or how his entire face lit up when he smiled. Laney, you’re an idiot, I thought to myself.
Shaking my head, I turned back to the issue at hand. “Hi, Sim—Emmett! What would you like to do first?” If there was a rock nearby I would have crawled underneath it. I couldn’t believe I’d almost called him Simon. What would he think? Then I chastised myself even more—what did I care what he thought? More likely, he probably didn’t care at all.
“Laney, these are my allies in the ghost hunting business, Glen Alexander and Dean Adams.” Glen put his hand out to shake mine. His grip was warm and comforting, his gentle brown eyes friendly and intelligent. I don’t know what I expected other ghost hunters to look like, but he was just a normal guy.
“Nice to meet you, Laney.”
“Dean Adams,” I said to the other cohort. “You, I already know.” Dean had been in my class in high school. He smiled as he stepped forward, tall, blond and muscular, he was handsome if you like that Thor sort of look. Every girl in high school had been crazy about him—I would bet most women still were. At first I wasn’t sure who was more embarrassed as we gave each other sheepish grins. He’d been the all-around jock—football, basketball, baseball—and he’d been good at all of them. He still managed to be humble, sweet and smart. There weren’t that many guy
s like him. And now here he was a ‘helper’ to the local ghost hunter I had asked to come investigate my house. Fortunately, after a brief awkward moment, we both seemed to get over it and it was like the years melted away.
“Laney, long time no see,” he said as he enveloped me in a bear hug. “Still as pretty as always.” I blushed and couldn’t come up with an appropriate response. I hadn’t been popular in high school and no one ever thought I was pretty, especially someone like Dean. On top of everything else he was just plain gorgeous. If anything, the years made him even more handsome. Obviously, he was still working out. I could picture him doing one of those workouts on TV that made people really buff. He wore his hair shorter now than in high school but it was still thick. Then there were those big blue eyes.
“Yeah, right. Thanks, Dean,” I mumbled. Was I totally incapable of not looking like an idiot every time I was around an attractive man?
“I ordered pizza and it should be here any minute,” Connie rescued me from further humiliation. “Should we start with a beer?”
“Beer is always a good place to start,” Dean replied as he put his arm across Connie’s shoulder. I remembered Dean as that warm and gracious guy who always made everyone laugh and included even us outsiders in things. I saw him smile at Connie and I was intrigued when I detected a slight blush in my cousin.