The Lying Woods

by Ashley Elston

  There seems to be a handful of people with the blue paddles, but most of the crowd is just here for the show.

  The auctioneer stands at the podium and his voice booms across the yard. “This home is only seven years old but its beauty is timeless. It’s twelve thousand square feet; ten thousand are heated and cooled. Five bedrooms, five bathrooms, gourmet kitchen, theater room, home gym, his and hers offices, and every other amenity you can dream of. The backyard boasts a swimming pool, hot tub, outdoor kitchen, pool house, and a view of the ninth hole of the golf course. The bidding will start at one million.”

  I knew this house was ridiculous when we bought it but I’m embarrassed when it’s spelled out like that.

  The auctioneer starts the bidding but no one raises their paddle. Probably because no one in this town has that kind of money after what Dad did to them.

  “Come on, folks, this house is a steal at a million. It was appraised for almost double that!” He looks like he’s getting desperate. What will happen if no one bids?

  He ends up dropping the price in small chunks while begging someone to bid. He gets to an even eight hundred thousand dollars and one blue paddle goes up. It goes once, then twice, and then sold to the blue paddle with the number 132 on it.

  One bid.

  I can’t see who it is from here so I move up a little to get a better look just as he stands and approaches the auctioneer.

  “Holy shit.”

  “What? Who is that?”

  “It’s my friend Jack’s dad.”

  “Why did he buy your house?” Pippa asks.

  That’s a really good question. And now all of that crazy talk earlier doesn’t sound so crazy. Is it possible Mr. Cooper was the one helping Dad and Dad screwed him over and now he thinks there’s some hidden vault inside the house? In all the time my family was friends with the Coopers, Mr. Cooper never came to Lake Cane, and now I’ve seen him here twice in one week. And both of those places had a connection to Dad.

  I walk toward the tent while Pippa pulls on the back of my shirt, trying to stop me.

  I’m a few feet from him when he finally notices me. He smiles and extends his hand. “Owen, didn’t expect to see you here.”

  I force my hand into his when it’s the last thing I want to do.

  “Well, we’re both surprised then. I didn’t expect to see you here either,” I say, then pull my hand back.

  No way he’s missing the hard tone in my voice.

  He’s about to say something else when I interrupt. “Why did you buy my house?”

  There’s a crowd watching but I’m used to it by now. There’s always a crowd watching me except when I’m at Gus’s.

  Mr. Cooper puts a hand on my shoulder and guides me to an empty corner of the tent. “This is just business, Owen. I knew this house would go for less than it was worth. And I knew there aren’t many people who could afford it. So I’ll sit on it awhile, until the town bounces back, and make a little money on it. And your father’s victims get some much-needed restitution.”

  The auctioneer is back, announcing the next item up for bid—Mom’s car.

  “Well, there’s plenty more good deals to be had here. Don’t let me stop you.” Grabbing Pippa’s hand, I pull her away from him toward the house.

  “Are we leaving now? Please tell me we’re leaving now,” she says.

  “I want to walk through once before we go, then we’ll come back closer to two,” I answer.

  We wait in line to enter the house. It’s unbelievable how many people are here but somehow the crowd helps us blend in. We finally get inside and it’s surreal being back. The last time I walked through this door was on my way out as I left for senior year at Sutton’s.

  Everything is still in its same place but now there’s a bid tag hanging from it and there are room monitors watching everyone who walks through making sure no one tries to sneak out with anything.

  Pippa and I go with the flow of the crowd and head upstairs. I know my room will be the hardest one to see like this so I’m glad I’m getting it over with early on.

  “Is this your room?” Pippa asks when we step inside.

  “It was,” I answer. It feels foreign now even though everything is recognizable. You can get my bed for only a couple hundred bucks and each lamp for less than half of that. Even the drapes are for sale. Several people stop walking long enough to take pictures before moving along.

  This sucks.

  “I can’t believe you kept this,” she whispers.

  I turn to see what she’s looking at and spot the wooden sword on a table with a bunch of other random things that are being sold together since none of the items are worth much on their own. It’s scarred and still has some of the pink paint from a bet gone wrong.

  “Yeah. That was the sword I used to proclaim myself King of Dogwood Drive. Of course I kept it.”

  She moves closer to the table and picks the sword up and points it at me, just like she did when we were little.

  “Miss, no touching the items,” the room monitor says, and Pippa twirls the sword in her hand a couple of times before returning it to the table.

  “You totally cheated on that challenge that made you the King of Dogwood Drive. If you would have finished the obstacle course like you were supposed to, I would’ve won and been named Empress of Dogwood Drive.”

  I laugh because I did totally cheat. She was so much faster than me and I couldn’t stand it. “Do you still have yours?”

  “Not sure. Been a while since I’ve seen it,” she answers.

  Her dad took us to Dallas when we were little to eat at that medieval-themed restaurant and he let us each pick a souvenir. It wasn’t a surprise when we both wanted a wooden sword. And that began the never-ending battle to decide who would rule our street.

  But as I see that sword lying on the table with all of the other things that only mean something to me, even that memory sours.

  “Let’s go back downstairs,” Pippa says. She wants out of here as much as I do.

  We take the stairs at the back of the house that will drop us into the kitchen. There are mostly women in here picking through Mom’s pots and pans.

  “I always wanted a big gumbo pot like this,” some woman says. “But who would pay four hundred dollars for one pot?”

  “Well, you oughta bid on it. I bet it doesn’t go for that high,” her friend says.

  Every time I was home, there was always something good cooking in one of these pots and it’s hard not to think about how much Mom needs them now if she’s going to get her catering business off the ground.

  “This sucks so bad,” I whisper to Pippa.

  “I told you not to come,” she answers back.

  “C’mon, let’s head to Mom’s room and find that bracelet.” Pippa follows me as I weave through the crowd to my parents’ room. There are security guards next to a folding table where Mom’s jewelry is laid out. All of the really good stuff is outside in the opening auction but the rest is in here. Some of the nicer pieces have their own bid number while other pieces are grouped together in lots.

  I bury my hands in my pockets so no one will think I’m taking anything—but also maybe to stop myself from doing exactly that.

  “Is that it?” Pippa asks.

  In the center of the table is the thin silver bracelet I remember Mom wearing all the time.

  I nod and then she pulls my arm. “Okay, so we’ve seen it. O, let’s go. We’ll be back in a few hours.”

  She guides me away from the table and I’m glad she does because I’m so tempted to grab everything I can manage and make a run for it.

  “Let’s leave through the family room,” I say. “We can go out the back door and cut through the side yard.”

  “Good, I’m ready to get out of here,” Pippa says.

  But one last glance at Mom’s things has me stopping short and Pippa plows into the back of me. “Ow,” she says. “Why’d you stop?”

  Backtracking, I pull us back to
the table.

  “What is it?” Pippa asks.

  “That necklace. Look at what’s engraved on the pendant.” It’s a rectangular piece of copper and since it’s grouped with five other pieces under one item number it’s not worth much.

  Pippa moves closer to the table so she can check out the item. “‘S 6 R 9 T 4.’ What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know, but I’ve seen that combination of letters and numbers before.” I pull out the picture of Mom from my wallet, the one that was once inside the Preacher Woods house. “See, same letters and numbers on the back of this.”

  Pippa looks from the picture to the necklace and back again. “This is weird.”

  “I know, and that’s why I’m bidding on it along with the bracelet.”

  • • •

  I need to clear my head and kill some time between now and when we head back to the house to make a bid on Mom’s bracelet and the necklace, so I bring Pippa to the only place where I can get away from everything going on in town and at home—the orchard.

  “Are you sure it’s okay for me to be out here?” she asks for the fourth time.

  “Yes. It’s fine. I don’t know why Gus has the reputation for eating nosy kids for breakfast but he’s really a cool guy.”

  There’s a white painter’s drop cloth spread out in the yard and a couple of rocking chairs sitting on top of it. Gus is leaned over, painting the underside of one of the chairs, but stops and turns toward us when he hears his truck pull up.

  “He looks younger than I thought he would, you know…for a hermit,” Pippa whispers.

  “Were you expecting a long gray beard, a hump on his back, and yellow teeth?” Laughing, I add, “And you don’t need to whisper. He can’t hear you from here.”

  “Oh, yeah, right.”

  “C’mon, let me give you the tour.”

  We get out of the truck and I wait for Pippa to come around to the driver’s side before moving closer to Gus. He’s watching us and despite my telling Pippa he’d be cool with her coming out here, I don’t know that for sure.

  “Who’s this?” Gus asks when we get close.

  “My friend Pippa. Pippa, this is Gus.”

  She gives him a small wave and he nods back at her.

  “I thought I’d show her around, is that okay?” I ask.

  Gus nods and I motion for Pippa to follow me inside the house.

  “He doesn’t say much, does he?” Pippa says once we’re inside.

  “No and I find that I like that.”

  Pippa stops in the middle of the foyer and spins around in a small circle, taking in all the space from the floor to the ceiling. “This place is beautiful.”

  “You should have seen it a couple of weeks ago. It was a disaster. And the smell. God, the smell. Gus found almost a dozen dead raccoons inside here.”

  She looks horrified. “And he lived in here when it was like that?”

  I shake my head. “No, there’s an apartment in the building next to the house. He’s been living there for years, I think. No one ever comes here except the occasional delivery vehicles and a woman named Betty who brings him groceries and stuff. I don’t think he ever steps foot off this place.”

  Pippa moves closer to the curved staircase, running her hand along the gleaming banister. “You don’t think that’s strange?”

  “Hell yeah, it’s strange.” I pass through the doorway that leads to the back part of the house and Pippa follows. The floors are clean as are the windows but there’s still no furniture and nothing on the walls. “Everything out here is strange. Did you know my dad worked and lived here the summer he moved to town?”

  The surprise on her face is answer enough.

  “Yeah, wait until I show you where he lived.”

  We wander from room to room until we find ourselves back outside. Waving to Gus, we get back in the truck, following the worn path toward the Preacher Woods. I can tell Pippa is surprised when the house comes in sight.

  “Wow,” she says.

  “Wait until you see inside.”

  She jumps out as soon as I throw the truck in park and rushes up the stairs, through the front door. I’m not far behind her. She stands in the center of the room and does a small circle.

  “I like it,” she says with a small smile on her face. “There’s something about it, the…”

  “The smell, the dust…” I add.

  She shoves my arm. “No. It’s quaint. Feels homey. I bet even more so after a good cleaning.” And it’s like once she said it, she starts doing it. Cleaning. There’s a rag and small bucket under the little sink and she wipes down every surface she comes across. And I can’t just watch her clean without helping, so I pick up the couch cushions, taking them outside so I can beat them against the porch railing.

  Once I’m finished with all the cushions, I move to the blankets on the bed. I really should take them to Lucinda’s and wash them but this will have to be good enough for now.

  “What’s this?” Pippa says from somewhere behind me.

  I turn around and see her next to the small bookcase holding a map. The crease marks are so prominent that you can tell it was folded years ago and never opened up again until now. She spreads it out on the floor and I drop down beside her so I can get a good look at it.

  “It looks like this orchard.” I point to a square shape close to the front. “That’s got to be the house. And this is the river that runs along the back of this property.”

  “What do all these numbers mean?”

  I study the map. It seems that the orchard is broken up in sections, each of them numbered. And in each section, each row is also numbered. And then each tree has a number as well.

  “Someone mapped out the orchard with coordinates. I bet you can find an exact tree with just a couple of numbers.”

  I glance at the bottom of the map and see the name Leonard Trudeau scrawled across the bottom.

  Pippa looks at it like it’s a puzzle. “Like this one right here,” she says pointing to some random tree in the middle. “I bet I could say 4, 17, 3 and Gus would probably know the exact section, row, and tree I’m talking about.”

  Section, row and tree. 4, 17, 3. S 4 R 17 T 3.

  Oh shit! That’s what the numbers on the picture stand for. And on the pendant that’s up for auction. I look at the map again, searching for the exact tree that apparently meant something to Mom and Dad.

  I find it and I’m not surprised it’s the one right outside the front of this house. Grabbing Pippa’s hand, I pull her off the floor and through the front door.

  “Where are you taking me?” Pippa says, laughing.

  “Right here.”

  We’re standing in front of a massive pecan tree. The roots are sticking out of the ground and the trunk is so wide I don’t think Pippa and I could circle it and touch hands.

  “Remember the pendant at the auction? And the picture of Mom? SRT 6, 9, 4?”

  She looks at me and then the tree and I can see when she puts it together. “Yes! It’s the coordinates for a tree in this orchard.”

  I put my hand on the tree in front of us. “This tree.”

  Pippa puts her hand on the trunk right next to mine.

  “This tree must have meant something to her. I have to get that necklace back for her.”

  Noah—Summer of 1999

  Pushing open the side door, I quietly make my way into the kitchen.

  For the last week, I’ve been sneaking in here after everyone else has gone to bed to pilfer the things of Abby’s that Gus wants since he’s refused to step foot inside. It sucks to be the referee between these two warring factions.

  All the things her parents mention taking with them as mementos to remember her by are things Gus refuses to part with so I sneak in to steal them so he can hide them somewhere in the barn.

  I get where he’s coming from but the guilt when I see her mom searching for them the next day is eating me up inside. I’m sure she suspects me but I play dumb eve
ry time she asks me where something has disappeared to.

  “You’re up late,” a voice says, cutting through the darkness. A light flips on and I see Robert leaning against the door that leads from the kitchen to the laundry room.

  “So are you,” I answer back and make my way to the cabinet near the sink. I haven’t really seen much of him since the night I came home from that party.

  Tonight’s mission has me looking for this small set of coffee cups that Gus and Abby bought on their honeymoon. They were in Mexico and she fell in love with them while they were walking through some outdoor market and had to have them. Gus told me the story about how they were inexpensive but she still wanted to bargain with the guy, hoping to get him to come down on the price. He said she was so proud that he knocked a little off the price that he didn’t have the heart to tell her the same cups were in the next stall over for even cheaper.

  I find the coffee cups and unroll a length of paper towels to wrap around them before putting them in my bag so they don’t break when they bounce against each other.

  Robert moves a little closer. “You know, Aunt Susan told me earlier that she wanted to take those home with her after Betty mentioned to her the other day that they were Abby’s favorite.”

  “Yep,” I say, placing the last one in the bag, then look at him. “I want to apologize again for the other night. I’m sorry I said what I said to Maggie’s friend.” I hold out my hand and he hesitates a second or so then reaches out to shake it.

  “Are we good?” I ask.

  He nods and gives me a small smile. “Yeah, we’re good. I think we’re both cracking from being under the strain of what’s going on in this house.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure that’s it.”

  “Well, don’t run off. It’s so damn boring around here at night. Uncle John and Aunt Susan go to bed before it’s even dark and there’s nothing to do around here. Stay. Have a drink with me.”

  I rarely drink anymore but it’s been a long month and I want things to be cool between Robert and me.

  He walks to the pantry and comes out with a dusty bottle of whiskey and two glasses. I pull the ice cube trays out of the freezer and meet him at the large island. Robert pours us both a drink while I drop a couple of cubes in each glass. He puts the bottle down and his hand grazes a decorative jar of seashells that sits next to the sink. It falls over, the glass breaks, and the shells slide across the counter.