by Sarah Remy
Then he waded into the frigid water and his own choice words split the air.
Chris snorted. “Told you. It’s cold.”
“Damn right.” And the trickle of rain beneath his shirt didn’t help much, either. “Okay, kid. I’ll hold her steady while you climb in.”
Waist deep in the water, Chris hesitated. “You sure she won’t sink?”
Everett hid a smile. “If she does, you’ll swim. I’m not worried, I’ve seen you in the James. Just stay away from the current in the middle, it drags some.”
“Okay.” Undaunted, Chris grabbed hold of the skiff, and hoisted himself over the edge.
“Careful,” Everett warned. “Don’t swamp her.”
The skiff tipped precariously and then settled low in the water. Chris found his balance on one of the short benches they’d installed in her belly, and waited until she stopped rocking. Then, grinning, he reached for the oars.
“She’s floating!”
“Seems tight enough,” Everett agreed. He ran his hands beneath the waterline, checking the boards. “Take her out slow. Ready?”
“Ready.” Chris settled low on the bench and gripped the oars. “Ready. Go!”
Everett gave the boat a gentle shove. She slid smoothly from the shallows. She wobbled once or twice as Chris tested his balance, and then the boy got the hang of her and let the current take hold.
“It’s easy!” The kid’s huge smile blinded. “She just goes where the water takes her.”
“The hard part’s bringing her back in.” Everett sloshed from the shallows and sat on the muddy bank, in the shadow of the boat house. “Practice turning in the deep before you try it.”
But Chris caught on quickly, and seemed to struggle only a little as he guided the skiff back to shore. The rain increased to a real shower ,and the boy dripped from head to toe as he clamored back onto the bank, and helped Everett tow the boat onto land.
“She’s great!” Chris almost hopped up and down as they beached the little boat safely away from the swelling Creek. “I can’t believe she’s all mine.” That last trailed off uncertainly.
Everett glanced at the kid’s shining face, and sternly ignored the flip flop of his heart.
“She’s all yours,” he agreed. “And as soon as you give her a name, we’ll get her christened in style.” It wouldn’t be an easy promise to keep, not all the way from Seattle, but somehow he’d manage.
Chris stilled, and his gaze skittered away to the tree tops. “Can I name her anything I want? Really?”
“Sure. I thought we’d gone over that.” Everett ran a tarp over the open belly of the boat, and then straightened. “You’ve got a list a mile long.”
Chris shoved his hands behind his back and rolled his shoulders. “Does it have to be a girl’s name?”
Surprised, Everett cocked a brow. “Traditionally. But we’re not sticky about etiquette. Name her what you want.”
The brackets around the kid’s mouth eased, and he puffed his cheeks. “The Richard Tilletson.”
“Richard Tilletson?”
Chris nodded. “My father.”
Chapter Thirteen
“HIS FATHER?” Abby paused in the front hall, muddy sneakers suspended in one hand.
“Is your investment banker with the muscles called Tilletson?” Everett asked, dry.
“Richard?” Abby’s puzzled frown turned to a full fledged scowl.
She set her shoes neatly outside the front door, and then slumped against the door itself. Everett tried very hard not to notice the curve of damp hair against her chin. She’d spent a long day in the office with clients, and her black sweater was rumpled, her long skirt wrinkled.
Tiny pearls studded her ears, and a matching strand encircled her throat.
Everett recognized the pearls. They had belonged to Abby’s ma, a gift from a Navy boy. Juliet Ross had worn the set nearly every Sunday of her adult life. He remembered how determined Abby had been to wear the pearls herself one day.
Now they shone luminescent in the half light through the windows, and turned the girl from his childhood into something delicate and precious.
“After all these years Richard’s decided to look us up?” Abby wrapped her arms around her waist, and her mouth hardened into dangerous lines, dispelling the illusion of delicacy.
“Other way around, I’m afraid.” Everett offered the glass of white wine he’d poured when he’d heard her car in the drive. “Chris found your quarterback. On the internet.”
“We have parental controls.”
Everett shrugged. “A friend’s house, maybe. Seems he did his research pretty thoroughly. Kid’s got brains.”
Abby took a healthy swallow of wine, and sighed. “I know that.” She left the support of the door frame, and took her stem ware into the kitchen.
“You can’t blame him for looking.”
He paced at her heels. Her hair smelled of rain and woodsmoke and, in spite of the changing seasons, of spring. He reached across to refill her glass from the bottle on the kitchen island.
“I know that,” she said, again. She shot Everett an irritated glance. “I just didn’t think...not quite so soon. I never kept anything back.” She shook her head. “I’ve told him everything about his father that I know.”
“Which doesn’t add up to much.” He settled a hip against the island. “He’s naturally curious about his daddy, is all.”
“Because his mother’s not enough.” It started out as a growl and ended in a whisper.
“Abby.” He couldn’t help himself, he pulled her close, the wine glass caught between them. “You know that’s not true.”
“I know it is true.” She wheeled away from his hands, and stalked along the bank of windows. “Chris has his father’s genes. He’s been strong and smart and bursting with talent, from the very first day. Just like his father, thank God. I’m the local yokel. Never bright enough or brave enough to escape the Creek.
“Lord, Everett,” she spun again, and glared as if he were the devil come up from below. “Even you managed to find your way out. Even you!”
“Even me,” he murmured, realizing with a tiny, painful twist of his innards that for once she had moved beyond his help, beyond his ability to shelter and soothe.
“I thought about running, once. More than once. Most seriously just after Chris was born. But I didn’t even have a high school diploma to my name.” Abby’s hands fisted around the wine glass. “And I had Mom to help, to make sure we ate. And then, Edward.”
“No.” He stepped again to her side, but her expression kept him at bay. “Abby. You’re over reacting.”
“Maybe.” She lifted her chin, stubborn. “He’s been acting out, lately. And sulking. Keeping his door shut. He doesn’t talk to me at all. I had to learn from Jack that he picked up detention for passing notes in class.”
“Little things.”
“I had no idea he even thought about Richard. But, look, he had no trouble talking to you. You’ve spent, what, three whole afternoons with him?”
Somehow he’d become the one at fault. He shoved his fingers through his hair.
“Christ, Abby. The kid just needed-”
“To let the testosterone take over,” she interrupted, sharp. “I know. I’ve heard it before. I get it.” She turned away from the windows, and set her glass on granite, nearly cracking the stem. “Where is he?”
Everett’s jaw knotted. “Watching TV.”
“Fine. We’re going home.” As easy as that, she dismissed him, turning her back and striding down the hall in her socks.
“Dammit, Abby.” He meant to sound rational, but her name jumped from his mouth as a bellow. He didn’t understand how she could make his heart ache and his temper throb at the very same time.
She wheeled at the end of the hall, skirt swirling.
“Give the kid a break, will you?” He said, struggling for calm. “He’s done nothing more dangerous than look into his roots.”
She scoffed.
“And you’d know all about roots, wouldn’t you, Ev?”
The bitter words were as tangible, as painful, as thrown stones. Everett opened his mouth, but couldn’t force a retort past the obstruction in his throat.
Abby stood for another moment in silence, chest heaving. Her eyes were hard and bright but her lower lip trembled. She took one long, shuddering gulp of air, and then she left him and went in search of her son.
Abby Ross suspected she was a colossal fool.
“I don’t understand,” she repeated for the third time. “Why now?”
Chris hunched at the kitchen table, chin propped on his fists. He stared down at the scarred wooden surface. “I told you, because I’m almost twelve.”
“Is it because you’re missing a guy in your life, to do, I don’t know, guy things with?”
“No.”
“Because you know Jack loves you. And I know the two of you have a great time when you hang out together.”
“Mom,” Chris groaned. “I told you, I just wanted to see if he’d come to the debate finals.”
“But the finals aren’t until after Christmas.” Abby felt as though the top of her head might pop off at any moment. She didn’t want to feel hurt, or angry. But her heart had taken one too many sucker punches in the last month, and she felt bruised all over.
Give the kid a break. Damn Everett, anyway. He’d be gone the day after tomorrow. And once again it would be Abby left behind to pick up the pieces of her heart, her family, her life.
“I wanted to give him a lot of time to make plans.”
“But you don’t even know if you’ll make the finals.” Abby said. She hoped she sounded firm. She felt anything but.
“We will.” For the first time, Chris looked up from the table. “We’ll make the team finals and we’ll win. Because I’m team captain and I’m good. And I want him to be there.”
“I’ll be there. And after we’ll do something special. We could drive into Richmond. Have dinner and see a movie.”
“I want him to be there, too.” Chris said, earnest. “I wrote him an email and told him exactly when it would be and exactly how to get here. And I gave him our phone number, just in case. So if he calls, Mom,” he faltered. “You won’t hang up on him?”
Abby wanted to weep. “No, sweetheart, of course not. But, you know, your father is a very busy man...”
“He’ll come. I know he will. It’ll be great.”
Abby nodded, and reached over to ruffle her son’s hair. He didn’t squirm, so she hugged him hard.
“I hope so, bud. I really do.”
The house looked big and dark and spooky. No lights on in any of the windows, not even a porch light or a lamp over the cool two car garage. The rain had stopped, but the wind still screeched over through the trees.
Overhead, disintegrating storm clouds rushed across a silver moon.
Chris stood at the end of the long drive and tried to gather his courage. The darkened house made the hairs on the back of his head stand up and prickle.
For an instant, he saw it as it had been when Edward was still alive. Sagging around the edges, paint cracked and peeling, torn curtains in the windows and mildew on the plaster walls. The perfect setting for a ghost or two or three.
Chris shuddered. Huddling his coat tight against the wind, he glanced over his shoulder at Creek Lane and thought about turning back.
But it was too far to walk. And he didn’t really think he’d be able to catch another lift this far off the main road.
Besides, he reminded himself, it wasn’t really all that late. Just after nine. Everett was probably at the back of the house, watching news on that monster of a TV. He’d probably turned off all the lights in the front of the house to conserve energy. Chris had heard through Roddy that people from the West Coast were all about going green.
Lifting his chin, Chris walked slowly up the rest of the drive, trying not to step too loudly. The butterflies in his stomach lessened a little when he got close enough to see the new coat of paint his mom had put on the front door.
The shiny paint reminded him that the house was practically brand new, inside and out, and hardly haunted looking at all any more.
Besides, he didn’t really believe in ghosts. Not really. Because his mom had spent hours in old houses, hours after dark even, and she’d never seen one haunt. And, just last Halloween, he’d walked through Bruton Parish cemetery in CW.
Right at midnight he’d hunched down behind the ancient church, just waiting to see an old Civil War soldier come popping up from behind one of the moss covered tombstones.
But nothing had happened.
And if he didn’t have to be afraid of a Civil War era graveyard, he certainly wouldn’t let Edward’s house frighten him away. Even if it was really dark and empty looking.
It didn’t occur to Chris until he’d climbed the front steps that maybe Everett had gone out. The Spyder wasn’t into the drive, but maybe he’d just moved it into the garage and out of the rain.
Praying as best he could - because, please, God, he didn’t want to walk all the way back home on a windy, freaky night like this one - Chris lifted his fist and pounded on the door.
His knock seemed to echo away into the distance. Chris leaned hard against the door, but he didn’t hear one single scuffle through the thick wood. He pounded again, and then, in desperation, pressed the doorbell over and over with his thumb.
On about the seventh try a light came on in the front hall. Chris puffed out a sigh of relief, and buried his fists in the pockets of his coat.
The door swung open with a creak that would have done any haunted house proud, but Chris was no longer afraid. Because beyond the square of light he could see the floors his mom had redone, and he could smell lemon and beeswax and fresh paint. Scents that reminded him of his mother, and of home and safety.
“Christopher.” That long, slow drawl made Chris want to smile.
Often, lately, when he stopped to listen to the sound of his own voice between his ears, he thought that when he grew up and his tones deepened and became less squeaky he’d sound just like Everett Anderson. Southern as grits and sweet potato pie.
He guessed that moving away to a place where people were weird about conservation and whales and the ozone layer couldn’t really make a person less Southern.
“Where’s your ma?” Everett shifted slightly in the doorway, looking over Chris’s shoulder.
“She’s not here.” He did his best to sound casual. Everett didn’t look like he’d been watching TV. In fact, he looked like he’d been sleeping. His funny blond hair stuck up in clumps, and his feet were bare. He wore baggy sweat pants and the fancy blue sweater he wore didn’t match the pants at all.
Chris thought he looked like he’d rolled out of bed and pulled clothes on at the sound of the doorbell.
Except Everett had a beer bottle in his hand. And, when Chris looked more carefully, a gold pen stuck behind one ear. So maybe he hadn’t been sleeping, after all. Just working.
Still, all at once, Chris felt a little guilty.
“I didn’t mean to bother you,” he muttered, although that wasn’t what he’d had in mind to say at all. “I know it’s kinda late.”
“Come in out of the wind.” Everett waited until Chris stepped into the hall. Then shut the door firmly. “You drive yourself here, kid?”
“No.” Chris tried to look as innocent as possible. “Took a cab.”
It was only a little white lie, really. His mom would kill him if she new he’d hitched. Besides, it was the first time he’d dared, and he wasn’t sure he’d ever have the guts to try it again.
Everett’s eyes narrowed, and he looked as though he knew exactly what was going on in Chris’s head. “Abby know you’re out?”
“Noooo.” He said it carefully. “She was asleep at the kitchen table. I didn’t want to wake her.” He didn’t want to remember how he’d sat in the hall and listened to his mom cry herself to sleep so he screwed up his gu
ts, and looked Everett straight in the eye. “I snuck out. I wanted to talk to you.”
Everett’s face didn’t have any expression at all. He stood so still and silent for so long that Chris had to resist an urge to wiggle. Then he nodded, and pointed the butt of his beer bottle at the room off the hall.
“I’ve got a fire going in the parlor. Sit down and warm yourself. I’ll join you in a minute.”
“Where are you going?” Chris asked, although he could guess.