by AJ Scudiere
“That was it? He seemed shifty?”
“I realized later that he said some things that didn’t match. Like, he didn’t know anything about plantations, but he called the carriage house an ‘outbuilding’. I never used that word until I got here.”
Ivy nodded and Kayla kept going. “He made a comment about the things from the privy. How did he know that? Why on earth would anyone assume you were digging up an outhouse? Or that the broken dishes would be used to piece together some of the history of the house? Even Reenie and I didn’t know that until this morning when you asked.”
Ivy was reclining against her pillow and Kayla hazarded a glance over at her. Her dark hair seemed to spill out around her head and shoulders, but it was her eyebrows—neat, inky slashes framing very expressive eyes—that showed her shock. “You’re right. He knew way too much to be an amateur.”
“Then he said he lived on Docket, and I knew that was a flat lie.” Kayla looked at the ceiling again. “I just wish Reenie would have trusted me.”
Ivy sighed and Kayla thought it must have been out of exasperation for her. She appreciated the backup. She wasn’t used to it from anywhere other than Evan and she hadn’t expected it. She’d thought Ivy was asleep, but then—just as Ivy rolled over and really relaxed—she heard, “Reenie will learn. One day.”
Evan sat at the desk, running his hand along the smooth leather inset. It had been neglected, cracked and baked, but he’d pulled it from the desk top and worked it. He’d somehow decided that he had the time to rub in an Old World looking stain and conditioner. Then he’d settled it back into the shallow space carved just for the blotter.
There had been other things to do—there would always be other things to do—but Evan had decided that he was entitled to one nice thing in this godforsaken house. The bones were beautiful, but everything over them had been done to a horror of misperfection. The peel-and-stick tiles in the bathroom weren’t even straight. But there were other, more important things first.
He couldn’t change the fact that every surface, which had once been well-crafted and beautiful, had been replaced by something cheap and discordant. The bathroom and kitchen were only two rooms, but sported three colors of laminate. So when he’d lifted the protective sheet and found this desk, he knew he had to pull one body from the wreckage and revive it.
He’d dusted and polished, in all that spare time he’d found since they got here. And now he found irony in the fact that he sat here to pay the bills. That he worried, unsure until he hit the end and again totaled everything, if they were still okay. Sadly, the hundred dollars from the lost diagram had helped a bit. They needed everything they could get and it was the only income they’d seen in two months.
The other sad fact was that paying bills was the highlight of his last eighteen hours. He’d come in after his fitful drive and lay down beside an already sleeping Reenie and stared at the ceiling. Only then had he realized that Reenie not trusting Kayla wasn’t the only issue. There had been a stranger on their property, asking for a full tour and lying about being a neighbor. While Evan could think of several reasons a person might lie, he couldn’t come up with one reason that fit everything.
No one had mentioned anything about it this morning. He’d seen Kayla and Ivy only in passing. They’d had their heads together and he’d decided not to speak or push the fragile peace of the day. So he was surprised to hear his door open and find Ivy standing just inside his domain.
“Is Kayla with you?” It was the first thing to tumble through his brain, the first thing to come out of his mouth.
“No.” She stepped in and pushed the door closed behind her. Pulling up a chair, she sat herself down and looked him in the face. “And that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Oh?” That couldn’t be anything good. But he tried not to show that his precarious day had just taken the much-feared nose-dive he’d expected. “What now?”
“That! Exactly that!”
He’d learned a long time ago, and not just with Kayla, to voice everything and assume nothing. “I have no idea what ‘that’ is.”
“You assume there’s something wrong with Kayla. She’s fine.”
That made him feel better and he was just letting out a bit of tightly reined air when Ivy ruined it.
“Reenie needs some adjustment, though.”
He held up his hand. “I’m glad to talk about Kayla with you, or Reenie, but not Reenie and Kayla.”
“Fair enough.” She crossed her arms and leaned back, her long-sleeved shirt for once covering but not concealing the color of her bra. No wonder the woman gave Reenie the jitters. “When you hired me, you asked me to keep an eye on Kayla.”
He jumped on that immediately, his worries starting to come to light. It was the perfect day for more shit to go wrong, that was for sure. “Do you need a raise?”
“No!” Now she looked offended, and Evan was once again on shifting ground. “I’m not doing it anymore. I’m glad to help out like a friend—meaning if I see she hasn’t eaten, I’ll say something. But I’m not ‘keeping an eye on her’. She doesn’t need it.”
“Oh.” That was news. “She doesn’t? She stayed out all night making that machine once. She’s missed a handful of meals since we’ve been here. Why do you think she doesn’t need it?”
“Because she’s in no danger of starving to death. She’ll eat extra later. If she gets sick or goes missing I’ll be all over it, but she’s not a child and you keep treating her like she is.”
He leaned back and contemplated that. He was of two distinct minds on that one. Who was this woman to come in here and in just a few weeks think she was a better expert than he about the sister he had cared for since she was born? On the other hand, she probably saw things he was blind to. He didn’t get a chance to say anything though; Ivy jumped in again.
“Look. I want that stricken from my job description.” She stood up. “I’m going to grab some lunch for us. But I will say that I don’t ever want to find out how much it hurts her that you thought that and that I went along with it.” She stood and was practically out the door before he untangled that mess enough to ask a different question.
“Did she spend the night on your floor last night?” With Kayla, she might have found a way to curl up in one of the unheated rooms, not wanting to disturb Ivy. You just never knew.
“No.”
His heart stopped for a moment. But once again Ivy set him straight.
“She stayed in my bed.”
“With you?”
Her eyes narrowed at him. “Don’t worry, I didn’t lay a hand on your precious baby sister.”
As she went out the door, leaving the room as though she’d never been there, he could have sworn he heard her say “yet.”
Burying himself in work, Evan tried to erase the thought from his head. He wrote payments and checked due dates. Sadly, the account was almost exactly where Kayla had predicted it would be two months into this venture. She’d made up some formula that included a variable for what month of the year it was and how much the unexpected expenditures of the previous month had been . . . and she had it figured out.
For a moment, he shook his head at the thought of it. Buying a car with Kayla was fun. The dealer would name a price and Kayla would glance up then rattle off a car payment. The first time she did that, the salesman would always give her some “don’t jump the gun, little lady, let me calculate this” comment. Then he’d narrow his eyes when his number was incredibly close to hers. Kayla would barter him down, rattling off payments and rattling the salesman. At one point he’d said, “The car is for me, but you’ll have to pass her to make a deal.” That salesman had sputtered and asked, “Well, if the car is for you, why are you letting her do the bartering?” Evan had just smiled back and asked, “Wouldn’t you?”
Reenie had accused him of making work for Kayla, of creating situations in which she could feel good about herself. Evan had
accused Reenie of being an idiot for paying too much for her car because she had no grasp of what was going into her payment and not letting Kayla help. That had been the first sign—that long-ago argument about the car—that Reenie would never come around. His sister operated outside the bounds of Reenie’s understanding.
Just like last night.
He’d been able to ignore the sandpaper roughness of the two women’s personalities gritting against each other when their interaction had been occasional. But putting them together like this, in the same house, on the same job, was too much. He asked himself if maybe he hadn’t done it on purpose. If maybe it hadn’t been a test. He knew he was testing Reenie, not Kayla. Kayla couldn’t change. She was diagnosed. Reenie could; she just refused to.
Could they hold out? Could he wait until the job was finished and the plantation was opened and Kayla found another place to work? Or would he and Kayla move away, sell their shares eventually? It was the first time it had crossed his mind to leave Reenie behind. But they’d been together for three years now, and he hadn’t passed through that final eye of the needle. He’d never hit that point where he knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.
And maybe last night he’d gotten his answer. Well, he’d been getting that answer for a while, but last night had felt like a two-by-four whacking him solidly between the eyes and leaving him with a splitting headache and twisted heart.
He was stuck in a crappy spot. He didn’t want to leave. That was his cotton in his back field. He’d earned it with cash and muscle cramps. But this was Hazelton House and Reenie was a Hazelton.
A noise roused him from his decision-making/sulking fit and as he looked up he saw sneakers at the edge of the door. Sneakers equaled Kayla, so he tried to push a smile onto his face.
Reenie stood there in jeans and a fitted T-shirt—unusual attire for her, but he guessed he’d been seeing it more lately. Her face held the beginnings of a grin, one she was fighting. She came into the room, pushed by Kayla and Ivy who were crowding the space behind her.
Moving aside like the graceful belle she was, Reenie took a step back so she could face them all at once. “First, I want to say that I’m sorry.”
She turned to him. “Evan, I love you more than anything. And I know I’m hard-headed sometimes. I’m working on it. Kayla, I shouldn’t have yelled. I shouldn’t have started that fight with Evan last night, and I’m sorry you had to hear it.”
Evan heard only what the words didn’t say. Reenie didn’t accept Kayla; she was only sorry that she’d fought and that Kayla had heard. He pushed the half-smile all the way, faking it for now.
“That’s nice, Reenie.” Ivy butted in, “But what did you get?”
“Well!” She was all wide grin, apologies forgotten or forgiven. “They found it!”
She held up a cardboard roll he hadn’t noticed she carried. He’d noticed so many other things, but missed the obvious. Evan frowned, “What?”
“The diagram!” She gently pushed him aside and began opening the tube, unrolling the oilcloth on his desk over his bills and carefully laid-out thoughts. “They called me two days ago to tell me that they had found it and it would be delivered. They also graciously offered the protection free of charge!”
Evan snorted at that. Free of charge, my ass. They owed this family some money for distress or something. But as he looked he saw that the diagram was encased in a flexible, snug-fitting plastic that appeared liquid and tear-proof. He was impressed.
But he didn’t get to be impressed for long. Kayla and Ivy eagerly wormed in, effectively shoving him back. There was a low murmur between them as they looked.
Standing straight and catching his eye, Reenie smiled broadly, “Aren’t you excited, Evan?”
But Kayla announced, “This isn’t it. It’s a forgery.”
7
Old Office, Overseer’s House
“I’m telling you, it’s wrong.” Kayla touched the diagram where a small rod had been removed from the picture.
As though Kayla were smearing an original document, Reenie sighed and swatted Kayla’s hand away. Hadn’t that been the whole point of sending it out for a protective cover in the first place—so they didn’t have to worry about who touched it?
“How could it possibly be wrong?” Reenie pointed now, her manicured nail hovering over the clear plastic, “It’s initialed. It’s dated the same. It’s the same kind of paper and ink.” She sighed. “I’m sorry, I just don’t buy this idea that the preservation company switched two diagrams by Eli Whitney. I recognize this one. It’s ours.”
She crossed her arms as though all was said and done, but no one was paying attention.
“It looks good.” Ivy ran a hand across the surface as though she were caressing the document itself and not just the plastic coating.
Exasperated, Kayla spoke before thinking. “Of course it looks good; you don’t forge a Van Gogh with a box of crayons. But even I can forge the handwriting.”
“I think Kayla’s memory is just off. It’s preposterous that there are two nearly identical documents that got switched.” Reenie gave an unladylike huff.
“I’m going to go get my copy.” Kayla took off without waiting for anyone to reply. She bolted through the back door at the Overseer’s and bounded like a kid, making a gazelle leap from the top step to the worn ground. Crabgrass had sprung up where people had once walked frequently, but hadn’t for too long. Now, she and her family had worn it to nubs.
Rounding the carriage house, she passed through tall grass and over packed dirt. The blacksmith’s shop was her personal place, and she’d left her copy of the diagram here. Not even breathing heavily, she went to the rough-hewn workbench and picked up the smooth river rocks she’d stolen from the stream and freed the paper she’d tacked down with their weight.
Pushing back up the hill, she didn’t even break a sweat. That was new to her. In two months, she’d done enough physical labor to change her physique. Her lungs pumped, taking in the clean country air, sweetened with the scents of grasses, running water and freshly turned earth.
She’d folded the paper as she ran and had it in hand as she popped up the four back steps onto the porch of the Overseer’s House.
Evan held out his hand, and Kayla handed over the paper. Only then did she feel the need to suck in a little extra air. She opened her mouth to tell Ivy how excited she was—what a coup it was for a girl who worked at a desk most of her life to feel actually physically fit. But she didn’t get to say it.
Reenie laid out the oilcloth drawing they had made for the museum, the two copies spaced out on the leather blotter on Evan’s desk. “They look pretty much the same to me.”
“Yeah, they do.” The need for breath caught up to her, as though she’d outrun it on the way here. Kayla tried to disguise the deeper inhale, and she pointed at the drawing. “But look here . . . and here.”
“Your memory must have been wrong.” Reenie turned to the returned “original.”
“It’s a fake.” Kayla declared it quietly. She hated confrontation, but she and Reenie had been at each other for a good twenty-four hours straight. Her stomach might just churn her inside out if this continued.
Reenie nodded. “It’s actually very impressive that you remembered as much as you did. That you were able to forge the handwriting so well. It’s understandable you made a few errors.”
“But I don’t make errors.” Why didn’t Reenie understand that? She felt her jaw clench and she was suddenly seven years old again when no one believed she’d drawn the print in art class. Suddenly fourteen, in high school, where all the academics were too easy and the people too hard. Here in this plantation house, defending herself yet again. She looked at all three of them. “I don’t make errors.”
“Everyone makes errors.” Reenie shrugged. “It’s not a big deal except that you won’t let it go.”
“Because it’s not an error.” She was starting to panic and she knew Ivy could see it.
“I’m sorry,” Reenie said it to Evan, but Kayla could tell she didn’t mean it as an apology. “I just don’t buy that your sister has a disorder that renders her completely error-free.”
Evan’s weariness showed in his sigh. “Reenie, you know—”
“And I read up on it. I didn’t find anything saying that Aspergers patients are error free. It does say they have a hard time lying, so I think your sister actually believes she’s all that. But she’s not. Why am I the bad guy here? Because I won’t put your sister up on a pedestal?”
“I tried to stay out of this.” He held his hands palm out in a classic surrender. Kayla felt bad for him. “But you put me in the middle, Reenie.”
With his hands still out, he plopped down in the chair behind the desk, as though he needed to be seated for whatever was about to come. “Reenie, you know the Aspergers gives her intense focus. You freely admit her limitations, but you refuse to see the advantages. I’ve put them in front of you in print form from respected sources, and you still refuse.”
“Nothing in there said she’s a demi-god who’s always right.”
“I’m standing right here.” Kayla pushed it out through clenched teeth.
But Evan ignored her. “Kayla is bright, incredibly bright, but even beyond that, there’s tons of evidence about autism spectrum disorders producing photographic memories. Hell, just look online.” He slashed one hand through the air in an angry gesture. “She’s often wrong about things. But she’s learned to keep her mouth shut when she doesn’t understand. So if she spoke up now, she’s right. In all my life, I’ve never seen her make a mathematical error. It is preposterous to think there are two nearly identical prints that got switched. If it were anyone other than Kayla insisting this is a forgery, I’d laugh at them. But it is Kayla.”