His Sweetest Song

by Victoria H. Smith

  Talk…

  Talk.

  Nothing sounded worse considering the other day and I think she had an indicator of that, how I felt about a talk, when her gaze escaped mine.

  It drifted in the direction of the door I had partially closed and bracing the knob, I made sure her sight didn’t have the opportunity to go any farther.

  I moved my lips.

  “I’m not—”

  “We can talk outside,” she said, blinking. She messed with the chain of her purse on her arm. “And it won’t take long. I don’t want to bother you. I really just came to ask you something. A… quick something.”

  The fact she’d taken one more step back wasn’t lost on me. We could have easily stretched two or three people between us and still would have had room with the space she’d created between us.

  Rocking on her heels, she awaited my answer, her travel companion behind her and trying not to watch. The bartender’s thumbs played at the wheel, her gaze facing forward.

  Breathing, I stretched my arm up, scratching the back of my head. The odds of Alicia coming down here to confront me about what happened at her aunt’s home I found highly unlikely. The situation had been uncomfortable for all three of us.

  I moved my jaw, lifting a finger to indicate one moment to her before going back inside the house. Not quit closing the door, I stepped back from it and then found my daughter where I left her.

  Completely unaware to the presence of our visitor, Laura continued to watch television, the tube playing old episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants.

  “Laura?” I questioned, hoping I didn’t have to do more than that to know she was listening to me. But like many things, they couldn’t be easy when they came to my daughter.

  I pushed my hair forward, messing with it again. “Sweetheart, we talked about this. What do we do when people speak to you directly?”

  She knew the answer. One faced people when they were acknowledged and my kid knew that.

  Using her knuckles, she turned softly from her position on her bed until she was doing just what I asked, facing me. Sitting cross-legged on the bed, she placed her hands in her lap, expressionless with neither anger nor annoyance by me telling her to do something, or anything else. She just sat, not so much in contentment but something else.

  I supposed I’d take that. At least she listened to me when I forcefully told her to. Some parents might not find value in that but when one had an essentially mute child the situation changed.

  Breathing, I scratched into my hair, not knowing for how long I actually did have her attention.

  “Dad’s got a visitor,” I said to her, not expecting much from that statement, which was what I got. I dropped my hand. “She’s going to come inside for a little bit, the living room, but she won’t be any bother to you. You don’t have to do anything.”

  Again, no reaction. My kid had the endurance to be silent and still as an oak tree’s trunk.

  I breathed again.

  “You just stay in here,” I went on. “I’ll leave your door cracked if you… well, if you need me.”

  She never did, and sometimes I really wondered how much my kid actually did need anything outside of the obvious of food and shelter over her head. She trusted me, that was a given, listened to me when I needed her to, but she was absolutely absent from anything else. I had a blood-related child, but I didn’t feel like her father sometimes, my kid passing through life like a zombie.

  The hole in my chest just expanded that much more before I inched the door closed, Laura’s eyes still on me until they couldn’t be. I closed it silently and, standing for a second, I heard shifting, what I assumed to be her moving on the bed and watching television again.

  Shaking it off, I returned to the door that hadn’t been tampered with since I left it. I opened it so quietly this time Alicia’s gaze didn’t sever from the ground, her fingers wrapped around the chain of her purse at her hip.

  “You can come in… if you want.”

  Dark eyes the color of midnight found mine, the delicate skin of her neck moving a little with her swallow shortly after.

  Blinking, Alicia faced the woman from the bar who still sat in her car. She waved the woman off, and shifting, her ride buckled herself in and then started the Honda. The beater chugged down the street and Alicia smiled at me.

  “She’s going to tour around the block a little before coming back for me. I didn’t want her to wait or anything.”

  I could drive her home if she wanted. Though, that probably wasn’t a good idea considering Laura.

  Choosing not to suggest the option, I pushed a hand behind my neck, guiding Alicia inside with the wave of a hand. Gingerly, she parted from the grass and stepped from in front of me into the house and I had a little smile at that before I closed the door behind her. She was literally trying not to disturb the peace of the environment or possibly even rock the situation with me.

  I’d given her a reason for that I supposed and the expression eased away from my lips. Especially, as I watched Alicia circulate the room with her gaze. She took in that of a beat-up couch and dated carpet that came with the trailer. I was happy to find a place outside of town. I didn’t always get that when I moved, the privacy.

  “You said something about talking?” I questioned and stopping at her side, I lost her, attention on a particular part of the room.

  The part in question happened to be the very room my daughter sat in, the sounds of SpongeBob SquarePants traveling from underneath the door.

  “Uh, yeah,” she said, turning away from the direction of the sound. Crossing in front of her, I directed her toward the kitchen, moving a chair out for her.

  She took the seat and I moved my notebook over to the side and away when I took mine. I placed my hands on the table, Alicia doing the same.

  She looked up at me. “I guess I thought it was important I come out here.”

  I sat back, not understanding why.

  “For what reason exactly?” I asked shaking my head.

  Hadn’t the other day been enough for her, the awkwardness of it?

  It’d been enough for me and there’d been no intention on my part to ever go back to her and her aunt’s place. No matter how much it hurt to know I would never be able to finish fixing up Josephine’s house.

  Perhaps Alicia felt differently than I had.

  She faced that room again, the one containing my daughter, and I started to question whether or not letting Alicia inside, so close to my skittish kid, had been a good idea. I didn’t think she’d come all the way here only to bring up events of the other day but maybe I had been wrong.

  “You seem to care a lot,” she said, returning to me. “About my aunt’s house. I remembered what you said about working for free. That’s a big deal.”

  “Not really,” I told her, tapping my finger against the triangles that made up the table’s design. “Your aunt was good to me, my daughter and me. Laura, she doesn’t—”

  “Laura?” Alicia questioned, soft. “That’s her name?”

  I swallowed.

  “Yes. She doesn’t get along with a lot of people, but your aunt was one of her favorites. And I did ask you if she could come inside. You said yes at the time.”

  Though, she had been distracted.

  It had been something I took advantage of.

  I had a task to do that day and my daughter unfortunately had to be there with me. I knew full well Alicia had sounded preoccupied, but I didn’t care. I guess in the end I paid the price for that.

  I swallowed before I found dark eyes on me.

  Pushing her fingers together, Alicia leaned forward, that flowy blouse of hers brushing the table. “I don’t remember that, but I’m sure you’re right. I was just a little out of it that morning and the night before.”

  My memories of the wine bottles in the sink stapled themselves at the forefront of my mind. Had she drunk all that over the course of one night? She didn’t seem like an alcoholic, but then again, no one
ever did.

  “The situation had nothing to do with you of course,” Alicia continued, shaking her head, “but I brought all of that with me that morning. I was already flustered, so I ended up screaming—surprised at any little thing.”

  The “any little thing” happened to be my kid that day.

  Alicia ran her teeth across matte lipstick that didn’t wear away with the motion.

  “I apologize,” she told me finding my eyes. She blinked once. “I didn’t mean to scare her and if you could please pass that apology on for me? I really didn’t mean to scare her. I feel so bad about that.”

  She was apologizing… to me?

  My mind pushed in wonder of that. She’d definitely done nothing wrong. It had been myself who brought an already timid little girl into her house with barely any permission at all to do so. I probably should be apologizing to her.

  I stared at her, that remorse on her face, as she played with her fingers.

  “Anyway,” she said, looking up. “I’d like to ask you a favor. You don’t have to do it of course. Especially with…” Her gaze traveled in the direction of Laura again before returning. “Basically, you can tell me to leave right now if you want. I just don’t know who else to go to.”

  I watched her shrink in her chair and gripped my arms before I leaned forward.

  “What is it? I mean.” I paused, moving my jaw. “What do you need exactly?”

  I was still in awe that this woman was even here and apologizing let alone asking me for something, and yet, here she was.

  Alicia chewed the inside of her cheek. “I just came from my aunt’s estate planner’s office. I was there for only an hour, but what they loaded on me in that time I wasn’t expecting. My aunt has more than just the house, quite a bit more, and I’ve got a lot of thinking to do in regards to how the property should be handled.”

  Because she wasn’t staying in it or on it. She wasn’t keeping the property.

  She was leaving.

  She didn’t have to tell me any of that in the end, though. I just assumed.

  I knew nothing about this woman before me besides the generalizations I’d already made. She had obvious quirks about her personality that could be easily discerned. She walked and talked in a certain way that spoke of the city and a possible higher upbringing. Between that and the general state of her dress, well, I figured she wouldn’t be staying in Mayfield, Kansas, long. She didn’t particularly fit this place and I believed I could be correct in assuming that.

  But she was suddenly surprising me, her appearance here today to apologize amongst other things.

  Clearing her throat, Alicia reached a finger over to play with, what I assumed to be, a diamond tennis bracelet on her wrist.

  “Regardless of what ends up happening to the property I want my aunt’s home to be preserved. I spent a handful of summers there as a child and I guess I have a place in my heart for it. I also want something of my aunt’s to remain in the state in which she left it. I’ll be making calls to the city to see if I can get the home recognized as maybe a local landmark. From what the estate planner told me, it’s got quite a long history.”

  I took her at face value with her comments, not knowing the history of the house or the property itself other than the clear understanding I had with my own history. That place was special to my family and me, just as her aunt was.

  I opened my hands. “That sounds nice, wonderful actually, but I don’t know what that has to do with me.”

  I wasn’t trying to be smart with her, but genuinely wanted to know my role in all this. She said she had a question for me and sought me out for it.

  Something of a soft light touched her eyes after my words, bringing out the various tones of brown in them and I recalled such a detail in someone else I used to know, the eyes more aged around the corners and the face fuller. She looked so much like her aunt. Like sneaking a beautiful glance into the past of one who’d been so special.

  My gaze severed from those haunting eyes when Alicia moved her chair over and spread out what looked like a map on my kitchen table. Her smell wafted with the maneuver and I watched the top of her head while she adjusted the map. Light and airy, the woman had a subtle aroma reminiscent of roses in the wind and I realized I hadn’t smelled anything like that in many years.

  “This is everything the property entails,” she said to me, looking, and I realized she needed my attention. I’d seen diagrams like this before, again many years ago, but yes, I understood them.

  I leaned forward, my eyes wide.

  Josephine owned… all this? I mean, I had a bit of an indictor of the property’s width with the lake and all that, but still this was quite a surprise.

  I blinked up. “What will be done with it?”

  Shrugging, Alicia leaned back. “I have some ideas, but my priority is the house and the surrounding land. I want it as beautiful as can be and that’s where you come in.”

  I shook my head, not understanding.

  Alicia’s eyes crinkled in the corners. “You have a care for this place that no one I could hire would have. I’d like you to lead a complete restoration. You don’t have to do anything technical if you’re not comfortable with that. I know you’re a handyman so I wouldn’t put that type of pressure on you, but I want you there to consult with the team that’s brought in. You’ll be paid of course. Anything you want. The value of my aunt’s land is quite high, but even if it wasn’t I have the means to make this happen. I want this place to look the best it could be and I feel I need your help to do that. You knew my aunt. I just feel in my heart you’d know what she’d want done.”

  Everything she’d laid out before me had my mind lost in a sea of possibility, generosity, as well as her own care and graciousness she had to have to take on such a task. She could easily sell this place to the highest bidder and be done with it.

  But she wasn’t.

  My hand moved across the map.

  “What you’re asking could take months,” I told her, spelling out her reality. “You have to know this won’t be easy.”

  Alicia’s eyes worried a little after my words and I immediately regretted saying them. I didn’t want to make her feel bad, but this would be a challenge. Not just for me, but especially her. She’d be in charge of all this. Essentially, the boss of the entire project.

  She blinked at me.

  “Are you not up to it?” she asked, chewing her lip a little. She moved her hair around. “I mean, if you don’t want to commit to this I understand. I could find someone else. I just feel like… I don’t know…”

  She trusted me, and more than that, she trusted that I knew what Josephine would want. She was right about all that she assumed. No one else would care about this house like I would. I’d put everything I had into it and I owed that to a wonderful woman. I had something invested in Josephine’s house and land that no one else she hired would, as well as an expertise that went far beyond what Alicia could ever imagine. I acquired it in a life I had before, and though happily left behind, I’d never forgotten.

  I couldn’t even if I wanted to.

  “I’d like to hire my own team,” I told her, pushing my hand over the property map. I looked up at her. “And we need to talk about my daughter.”

  Chapter Nine

  Alicia

  “Dearest, you have to know this will take months. You can’t possibly undertake such a project on your own.”

  This was the second man to have said such a thing to me in a twenty-hour period and I wondered if I had something stamped on my head that said I couldn’t do things for myself.

  I understood where Gray had been coming from yesterday. He didn’t know me and hence wasn’t aware of my capabilities.

  But my father knew better.

  My lip stiff, I tossed down a blouse I had gotten from my bag and switched it out for a floral dress. I was in the process of unpacking all my stuff and putting it in the closets, but was still currently living out of a bag. Going over
to the mirror, I put the gown in front of myself, tugging out the fabric to see where it’d sit at my hips. I didn’t have a lot of options since I’d only packed long enough for a week’s stay, but I would have to make do until the rest of my stuff came in. I had a service pack up some of my things from home and ship it down to Kansas just this morning. Gray and my father were right. This project would take months.

  Sitting on the soft seat of the armoire my aunt had in her guest room, I adjusted the phone I had lodged between my ear and shoulder.

  “I get that, Daddy,” I told him. “But I need your support. I didn’t call to ask for permission. I just wanted to let you know what I was doing and where I’ll be for a little while.”

  I had to do this. I had to be here for a woman who did have family. I was Josephine Bradley’s family and I was going to take care of her and her legacy.

  “But this isn’t your crusade, honey,” Daddy said, sighing into the phone. I caught him in the middle of a meeting in which he stepped out of to take my call. He always did though I told him not to. My dad was a good man and I came from a good family. He and my stepmom took care of all of us. My brothers and I went to the best schools and had the best lives because of it.

  In my silence, I played with the hem of the floral dress that currently sat in my lap.

  “At least let me use my resources,” my father went on. “I’ll send people down there and you won’t have to do a thing. You come back home and can be involved in the decisions via email and video chat.”

  “You know good and well if I go home I’ll bury myself so much in my life and work that I won’t have time for anything down here.”

  Daddy laughed a little. “I do know that, which was why I suggested it,” he said, laughing more. “I was counting on you and your work ethic.”

  He wasn’t sly at all and I would roll my eyes at him if he were here to see it.

  “You get it from me,” he chimed.

  “And my stubbornness?” I questioned.

  He laughed again.

  “That you actually get from your mother,” he said, serious now and I went quiet. He didn’t say my mama. Mama was my stepmom, the woman who had been my mom over half my life.