‘Wow.’
‘Yep.’
Adele attempted a smile. It quivered. ‘It’s just a lot to take in. Fixable, of course. I’m sure. What about the other rooms?’
Fixable his ass. He’d been trying to fix this shit for a long time now. ‘Room four had a flood about a year ago. There’s some mould damage in the bathroom we’ve been – I mean, Hugh had been waiting to repair that until the roof got fixed on the other side.’
‘Mould damage.’
‘It got into rooms two and three, too. And room six has some termite problems.’
‘Some?’
‘Okay, a lot. In the front walls. We’re assuming that’s gotten into rooms five, seven and eight, but we haven’t gotten Dexter to check yet. We didn’t really want to know.’
‘Sure.’ She stood on the porch next to him, her eyes closed briefly. She looked just like she had on the covers of their albums, just as young. She had to be over thirty now, maybe thirty-three? How did she pull off looking dewy and fresh and sweet when, he, at thirty-five, felt like his bones had too many miles put on them, too fast?
Then she said, ‘What about room one? That was always my favourite anyway.’
‘That’s mine.’
‘Really?’
What, it shouldn’t be his? ‘In exchange for working here. It comes out of my salary.’ It wasn’t like he’d been ripping Hugh off, but he’d be damned if he would prove that to her.
‘Of course, I understand.’
She didn’t. She didn’t understand anything. Not yet. ‘So, next –’
‘But where do the guests stay?’
He looked at her face carefully, to see if she was serious. ‘We don’t have guests. We haven’t had any in a long time.’ He felt his scowl form and didn’t try to wipe it off. ‘You really don’t know anything about the business anymore, do you?’
‘No guests at all?’
‘No.’
‘But how …?’
Nate leaned back against a post and rubbed the tense spot between his shoulderblades. He probably looked like a bear scratching his back on a tree, but he didn’t care. ‘How did he stay in business? Yeah, that’s a question I’ve been trying to help him with for years.’ It was why he’d been working with the bank for more than a year. It was why he’d sold his boat to Ruthann. He’d been so damn close to buying the property – so close he could almost feel the deed in his hand. Hugh had almost – almost – given up hoping that his nieces would come back to Darling Bay and take over the property.
‘And I saw – the café is closed, too?’
‘Has been for years. Had to bring it up to a new code, and he never had the cash for that, either.’
‘Everything is fixable.’
‘Wait till you see the fryer.’
‘Let me guess. Grease fire?’
‘Two.’
‘So we …’
‘You and your sisters own a dump.’
‘Whoa.’ Adele’s face was pale, her eyes even brighter blue. The fog, just beginning to dissipate into wisps over the garden, revealed a blue sky that was just the same colour. ‘Entropy is a bitch, huh?’
It startled him enough that he laughed. He couldn’t help it. So often he’d had the same thought, trying to keep up with the run-down place with little cash and no time to do half the things he had on his daily to-do list.
‘What about the apartment over the saloon? Hugh’s place?’
Even though Nate had gone into this tour to burst the hometown girl’s foolish bubble, not even he was looking forward to this part.
‘It’s still there.’
‘Can we go see it?’
‘You sure?’
‘Why?’ She shot him a suspicious glance. ‘Did it burn up too?’
‘No …’
‘Oh, God, was that where he died?’
‘No!’ Hugh had dropped dead of a massive coronary right where he would have wanted, behind the varnished bar top pulling drinks while a pretty local gal (Sally Williams) sang onstage. He hadn’t been breathing by the time Nate got to him, thirty seconds after Norma screamed. Even with CPR and the ambulance and Tox Ellis putting on the shock paddles and hauling Hugh to the hospital where they tried another couple of times, he’d never opened his eyes again. ‘But it’s where he lived, and that was bad enough.’
Adele shook her head, her hair flowing around her face like a shampoo commercial. Did she know it did that? Yeah, sure, she did. She had to know exactly the effect her looks had on people. Especially on men.
Nate took a deep breath, resolving not to stare at her for one more second. He would barely glance at her. Maybe then he wouldn’t notice how her breasts held up her shirt just right.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘It can’t be that bad. I mean, he was always a collector, right?’
‘Collector. Huh.’ Nate didn’t want her to see it. He hadn’t wanted anyone to. Before the lender came for the appraisal, he’d been going to hire a couple of guys and clean it out in one fell swoop. He’d tried to start on it one afternoon himself, but it had been too much. Just way too much. ‘That’s a nice way to put it. He wasn’t a collector anymore.’ Just tell her, Houston. A hoarder is more like it.
‘Show me?’
‘You sure? I don’t think you know what you’re getting into.’
She lifted her hands up then let them drop. ‘It’s why I’m here.’
‘Okay. But remember I didn’t think we should do this.’ He wanted it to be on the record. ‘I think you should just hire a crew to go in and clean. The Post brothers, they’ve done this kind of work before.’
Adele walked past him, so close the skin of her wrist almost brushed his. He pulled his arm back sharply.
‘It can’t be as bad as what I’m imagining now,’ she said.
CHAPTER FIVE
Uncle Hugh’s apartment, accessed by a steep set of stairs on the side of the main saloon building, looked okay on the outside. Sure, there were empty boxes and bags of recycling on the rear porch, but there was a picnic table that matched the ones downstairs in the patio garden, and a grill that looked like it had gotten regular use.
Nate trailed behind her on the way up. It had been obvious he’d almost enjoyed showing her how bad the hotel had become. When she’d spun in place under the tarps and met his gaze, he’d had a challenge locked behind his eyes.
But he seemed miserable now.
‘Is it unlocked, too?’
‘No. That I keep locked. Just in case.’
‘In case what?’
He cleared his throat with a rumble. ‘I don’t know. God, in case some kid thinks it’s fun to break into a dead man’s apartment and dies from some kind of environmental hazard. Here.’
Nate held the key out to her. He didn’t even want to open the door himself. Adele felt a shiver of fear run under her skin, but she took it.
‘Okay. Here goes.’
‘I’ll just sit out here, ’kay?’
‘Oh, no!’ Adele spun and grabbed his wrist. It was warm and wide, and felt somehow electric. Embarrassed, she dropped it, fast.
‘I’m not going in without backup. Please?’
He sighed, but then nodded.
She opened the door.
And it was, really, beyond imagination.
The door opened into the kitchen, but no one entering would ever have guessed that was what it was. Everything that made it a kitchen was invisible, up to and including the refrigerator. The room was full of newspaper, so full that Adele’s first thought was how heavy that much paper must be. Was it even safe to stand here? Were they in danger of dropping through, into the saloon below? That would be a pretty bad way to die. And her sisters would be so mad at her.
‘Holy Tanya Tucker.’
Behind her, Nate snorted. She wasn’t really sure how he managed it, since she herself was trying hard not to breathe. The room didn’t smell rotten, exactly – it was different. As if the paper had gotten wet at some point and started to mould. It was
mustily sweet and entirely unbearable.
A narrow path was cut through the piles that in some places rose above her head.
‘I don’t understand. Where did he even get this many newspapers? Every Darling Bay Gazette ever printed, all the issues combined, wouldn’t add up to this many.’ She ran out of breath and took an extra, rapid one. ‘I don’t see – is there even a stove in here? There used to be a stove.’ Adele made herself take a step or two into the room. She pushed down the wings of panic that beat in her chest.
‘Yeah, it’s under there still. I shut off the gas up here a year or two ago, when I realised he was putting the papers on top of the stove. The pilot light made it too dangerous. He mostly ate outside at the grill. Are you claustrophobic?’
‘No.’
‘Good.’
‘But I might be soon.’
‘Yee-ah. That happens in here.’ Nate’s voice was different now, less aggressive.
‘Should I keep going?’
‘I don’t think so.’
That was obvious. ‘Is it like this all the way through?’
‘Each room is a little different. This is the paper room.’
‘Oh, God.’ Adele went forward to the doorway. To the right used to be a small bedroom where Hugh had always slept, and to the left was the bigger bedroom. When they were girls, their mom and dad would sleep in the parlour at the front of the apartment, and the girls would pile together in the king-sized bed in the bigger room.
Now, Hugh’s room, its door stuck permanently open, was full of … she couldn’t even work it out at first. ‘What is all of that?’
‘Buoys.’
‘Pardon?’ From floor to ceiling, the room was packed with shapes that didn’t make any sense. Most were round, like mannequin heads, but there were no faces. The windows were completely covered by them, so the only light that came in was from the doorway she stood in. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘From the water. Old ones. He liked the glass floats best, but those don’t wash up that often. He’d get really excited about those. These are mostly the plastic kind; some are styrofoam.’
‘So that smell …’
‘I think it’s seaweed. And other gunk.’
But the way Adele remembered seaweed, it smelled good. It smelled green and salty, strewn on the tide-worn sand. This smelled rotten and sour.
‘He didn’t clean them before he threw them in here. Didn’t think they needed it.’
‘I don’t – what was he going to do with them all?’
Nate yanked off his ball cap, revealing a head of thick wavy brown hair, smashed half-flat. He ran his hand over his face then through his hair, standing it straight up. Then he jerked the cap back on, brim-side forward this time. ‘I must have asked him a million times. Sometimes he would say they were for a boat. Sometimes he would claim he was going to sell the glass ones on eBay. But he never did. The room pretty much filled up a couple of years ago, and since then he just kept shoving them in.’ Nate spoke over Adele’s shoulder. He was so close to her that if she’d stepped backward, she would have run smack dab into him.
Instead, she straightened her shoulders and locked her knees so they wouldn’t lurch. ‘This doesn’t make sense. He collected beer cans, I remember that.’ Recalling that brought sense to the other smells, though, the under-scent of yeast and brine. ‘Those are in another room. Am I right?’
He pointed behind him, into the room she used to sleep in with her sisters. It was full of paper bags, piled to her chest height. Each bag was overflowing with flattened cans. ‘He started crushing them, at least. Before that, they wouldn’t fit at all.’
‘He always said he was going to recycle them.’
‘These were the ones that wouldn’t fit into his bin every week. He was going to bag them and take them in for cash, but as far as I know, he never even made one run.’
‘He wasn’t a hoarder when we left.’
‘He wasn’t one when I met him. But he sure as hell turned into one.’
Adele had seen enough TV shows on hoarding to know the mental disorder could be triggered by trauma. Uncle Hugh’s brother – her father – had died. Would that have been enough to do it? They’d been close …
And the girls themselves had scattered after that. None of them had ever come home to Darling Bay. Adele hadn’t come because she thought it would make her too sad; to be back in the place she’d been so happy, without her mother, without her father, without her sisters who meant so much to her that every second without them hurt.
What if that had done it? What if by staying away they’d made their uncle actually sick?
The very thought made her nauseated, and the apartment’s smell was such an assault Adele wondered if she were going to throw up. She couldn’t – there was no place to do so. And if she started, she doubted she’d be able to easily stop. What had crawled into those cans and died over the years? So many things could have gotten in and grown or reproduced.
‘What’s in the parlour? Oh, no. Not beer bottles?’
‘I told him I’d put him in a home if he carried up the empty glass from the saloon. The floor wouldn’t have held. I think he finally believed me about that. The parlour’s full of books.’
‘Well.’
‘They smell less, anyway. Still heavy, though, and I’m worried about what could have crawled in under them. Bugs, mice, rats –’
‘Ugh. What about the bathroom?’ She’d seen the television shows. She knew what hoarders did to bathrooms.
‘It’s not as bad as you’d think. That’s his magazine room, and the clawfoot tub has been too overflowing with them for years, but his shower and toilet are clean enough. He tried.’ Nate paused, sticking his hands into his pockets as if he were nervous he’d touch something by accident.
‘This is not trying.’ This was nothing but failing. On every single level. How was it possible that she and her sisters hadn’t known how bad it had gotten?
‘I think he tried hard, actually. He tried his ass off. I told him that if I came up to find he couldn’t use his toilet I was going to tell the zoning board. I came in once a month to make sure.’ Nate covered his face with his hand, then spoke around it. ‘Can we get out of here now, please?’
‘Out.’ As soon as she said it, she wanted to climb over him, to kick and flail her way to the door, screaming all the way. ‘Oh, sweet Loretta, yes. Out.’
They stood on the patio. Adele pinched her nose and breathed through her mouth, two long steadying breaths. ‘How could this have happened to him?’
Instead of answering, Nate said, ‘Loretta?’
‘Loretta Lynn.’ Of course.
Nate seemed to accept this. He rolled his neck and then shrugged. ‘He was old. No family to take care of him. Probably more common than we think.’
Sudden tears, fast and unwelcome, pressed against the backs of her eyes. ‘Don’t you dare.’ Uncle Hugh had still had family. Yes, they’d left. Everything had broken. They’d just been trying to put their lives back together ever since. ‘He didn’t say he needed us. Not once.’
‘He didn’t ask you to visit?’
‘Of course he did. He loved us. He wanted to see us. But we were … God, we were always so busy.’ So sad. Her voice broke. ‘He didn’t say he needed us.’
Nate’s voice was suddenly too loud, as if he’d been holding it back till now. ‘And what was he supposed to do? He was too proud to admit he needed help, and besides, most days he didn’t think he did. You should have been here the day that I told him it wasn’t normal that a grown man slept on top of an old couch, wrapped in a sleeping bag. It was like it hadn’t occurred to him. That day, I thought he was going to cry, you know that?’
‘But –’
‘But he didn’t. He just laughed it off, the way he laughed everything else off, and he pulled another drink for someone he loved downstairs and he told his stories, and you girls never came home. He’d lost everything over the years, everything but the saloon, and he hel
d on to it, to share that at least with you, and none of you ever came. Not one of you.’ Nate yanked at the latch of the porch umbrella, folding it halfway down and then springing it back up again, locking it in place.
Grief warred with anger in Adele’s chest. Uncle Hugh was gone. They’d all blown it. They knew it. They’d never get a chance to apologise. But this guy had no right. ‘You know what?’
He fiddled with the umbrella latch. His scowl was deep, a long furrow creased across his brow. ‘Yeah?’ It was a dare. He wanted her to come at him, she could feel it.
And his anger diluted hers, suddenly. He was correct. He was totally right. ‘We should have come.’
‘Huh?’
‘You’re right. That’s all.’ She raised a shoulder and let it drop, hoping some of the tension would leave her neck. ‘Lord. I guess I need to find a place to stay tonight.’
She saw it hit him. ‘You thought you’d stay here tonight? In the hotel.’
‘Kind of. I thought …’
‘You were going to stay in there.’ Nate pointed back towards the open door to Hugh’s apartment.
‘It’s where we always stayed. I just made the mistake of thinking that …’ That things wouldn’t change. ‘That he still had a spare bed.’
‘To be fair, he probably does.’
Adele laughed in spite of herself. ‘I bet you’re right. It’s in there somewhere.’ She shuddered. ‘Can you imagine?’
He shook his head, hard. ‘Look. I’m sorry.’
‘You did nothing wrong. Nothing at all.’
She let herself sit on the bench of the picnic table. Exhaustion flooded her, mixing with the guilt, creating a toxic, enervating sludge in her veins.
‘You must be tired. It’s a long drive.’
‘It’s fine. Does Miss Clarkson still rent out rooms?’
Nate swung a leg over the opposite bench like it was a tiny horse. ‘Not since she got busted for renting them out by the hour.’
‘Ouch. In sweet little Darling Bay?’
‘Every place has its dirty secrets, even here.’
Adele looked back towards the apartment door. How many times had she and her sisters run in and out, letting the screen door slap closed behind them? Uncle Hugh would roar at them, a happy bear pretending (and failing) to be angry. They would just giggle and run faster. Hugh and Dad would sit right here. It was a different porch table they’d sat around then, a round one. Now it was rectangular. Dad was gone, eleven years now. Uncle Hugh was gone. Her sisters were far away, and Darling Bay had changed so much she’d gotten lost coming into town, ending up going the wrong direction on a one-way street for half a block. Luckily, it was still a sleepy town, and one old farmer in a beat-up pick-up had honked at her to let her know, waving kindly at her as she did a panicked three-point turn.
The Darling Songbirds Page 3