by Anna Adams
“Because he had to get his hands dirty?” Jason eased over a crevice in the driveway. “That’s the only time he gets them in the dirt and oil.”
A broken parking area out front offered just enough room for the SUV.
Fleming opened her car door and got out. Up close, the house’s flaws were easier to see. The place looked haunted—not a home at all. Its emptiness was a low howl in the cold, windy silence.
Only the garage looked as if it could be habitable. Jason’s father had kept that up at some point, with more care than he’d given his home.
She went around the car, compelled by an urge to protect Jason from all this neglect, But just in time, she remembered they didn’t have that kind of relationship, and she had no right.
She stopped before she reached him. “How long since anyone’s lived in it?”
Jason’s face was expressionless. He’d perfected hiding his emotions. He stared at the peeling paint, the wooden porch with railings missing, the shattered windows framed by filthy shutters. “I’m not sure. I don’t know if my father rented it out. I couldn’t find anything in the records, and I won’t be asking him.”
“Wow.” There didn’t seem to be a lot more to say. That she felt sorry for him, he wouldn’t welcome. That she was appalled his father would let the house fall into disrepair, he probably didn’t want to hear again.
But she hoped he hadn’t suffered the same neglect this house had endured, living with a man who could walk away from so much.
“I get that he didn’t want to live in it, and he didn’t want my mom to have it,” Jason said. “But why let it fall into ruin?”
Fleming couldn’t tell if he was expecting an answer. He might not even know he’d spoken aloud. “Maybe he was trying to forget something that happened here?” she ventured.
“It’s not like he killed my mother and buried her body on the property. I don’t know what he’d want to forget.” Jason headed toward the stairs. “At first I thought they must have been happy here because they lived in this house at the beginning of their marriage. Now I wonder if they ever knew happiness.”
“Where is your mom now?” Fleming asked, curious enough to take advantage of a possible moment of weakness.
“Somewhere in town here.” He turned his head, his face bleak and yet still blank. “She called me today.”
“What? Your mother lives here? Do I know her?”
“I have no idea. Her last name is Brown now. Maybe she never uses Macland.”
This man kept secrets as well as his father did. That fact seemed relevant to every conversation they’d had. “That’s how you found out about the house? She told you in the phone call? I thought you hadn’t heard from her.”
“I haven’t until today. I was surprised when she called. She’d sent a letter a few days ago.”
“With no address?”
“No. Just mine, and a request that I see her.”
Fleming was startled again, as more of this story unfolded, piece by piece. “You didn’t think that was odd?”
He looked back at her. “She seems to think this is all some choice I made.”
“I didn’t mean that.” Fleming knew what it was to be a child in the middle of angry, divorced parents. “But why don’t any of your family ask questions of each other?”
“You can ask all you want, but sometimes you can’t pry the answers out of someone who doesn’t want to talk.”
“You’ve got that right. Did you ask your mother where she is in Bliss?”
Shaking his head, he started for the house again. “She didn’t volunteer her address, and I didn’t ask. Normally, it’s the child who runs away. Not in my family.”
“Maybe she was hoping for acceptance.”
He looked irritated. Fleming couldn’t blame him.
He turned toward the blue house. “You weren’t in on the phone call. Did you manage to accept your father after he left?”
She shook her head, even though Jason couldn’t see, and the cold mountain air kissed her cheek. “He died before I ever found a way to trust him again, and I feel bad about it.”
Jason went to reach for her, but he must have drawn the same conclusion she had about comforting him. His hand froze in midair.
They stared at each other in a silence broken only by the rustle of dry leaves and the whistle of wind through broken windows.
His expression finally softened. He smiled at her with a look that asked her to understand him. “I’m sorry about your father.”
“So am I.” The blood seemed to rush in her ears. She never talked about him, not even with her mother.
“But I can’t just pretend nothing happened with my mom,” Jason continued. “She left, and she never made any effort to see me or even talk with me. She’s only getting in touch now because she wants this house.”
“What if it’s an excuse for her to contact you? After you showed up in town? Could be that after all these years, she didn’t know how to do it, so she thought of this.”
From the way he grimaced, suggesting his mother’s behavior was an error in the woman’s judgment might be like grinding salt into a raw wound.
“Like I said before, you weren’t in on the call.”
“But what if you change your mind, only to find you’re too late? Maybe that’s exactly the reason we should try to accept people. Being bitter did me no good, and it certainly brought me no feeling of relief. My dad finally came back and asked me to make things right, but I couldn’t. And then—well, I just waited too long.” She covered her mouth with her fingertips. She’d told him too much. She didn’t want his sympathy, and her own wound was pretty raw, too.
“Forgiveness would be good for me?” He walked toward the house again. “I should have asked my mother to meet me here. If she saw this place, she’d probably betray her true colors. The house is likely too derelict to be repaired.”
“You can’t know for sure that she’s trying to manipulate you. I mean, she obviously never explained to you what she was thinking, but a parent must have a reason to run away from her own son.”
He turned back. “What was your father’s reason for staying away from you?”
Fleming stopped as if he’d slapped her.
“My dad never gave me a reason. He’d promise he was coming for me on a specific day at a specific time, and I’d be like one of those kids in a movie about broken families—sitting on the curb with my tiny suitcase packed. Truly heartbroken with disappointment when he didn’t turn up. Over and over. And I refused to go inside. As if waiting was some sort of cosmic way to pull him to me. I was hard to convince, but finally, I had the choice of either crying my eyes out until I was old enough to tell him to stop making me believe he cared about me, or I could assume he wasn’t going to come.”
“But you said he finally did show up?” Jason went up the front wooden steps, testing each one for safety.
“He did, sometimes. I learned to pack in a hurry if he actually arrived. My mom was never that thrilled to see him, and when Hugh came along, he acted the way he has ever since—as if he was protecting his own child. I can count on him.”
“I never had that,” Jason said. “But at least my mother never promised she was going to visit.”
“Maybe it’s better that way. I can’t adequately express how that kick in the gut hurt. Every time.”
Jason held out his hand. Fleming stared at his broad palm, tempted because no matter how many times she’d been abandoned, she couldn’t quite believe she wasn’t lovable.
She put her hand in Jason’s.
He tugged her over a particularly weak board, and she laughed to hide her embarrassment. She was still so gullible, so eager. He’d offered his hand only to help her up the rickety stairs. No doubt he was seeking to avoid a lawsuit if the place fell in.
“It’s the House of Usher,” she said, and grinned up at him. “The story by Poe, not the home of the singer.”
“No explanation needed.”
“Sorry. I make jokes when I’m feeling awkward.”
He tried another couple stairs. “You should put your feet exactly where I’ve put mine.”
“I’m not sure it’s best to strain the boards in the same place more than once.”
He laughed. After reaching the porch, he crossed to the door, which swung inward the second he touched it. It gave a prolonged creak that sounded like a ghostly scream in one of those half comedy, half horror movies where terrible things happened, but with lots of bad jokes.
Fleming pointed at the hole in the door where a knob had been. “Someone stole it.”
“If it was period, it was probably valuable. I doubt anything’s left if it’s this easy to get inside.” He stepped over the threshold.
From behind him, she peered around his shoulder. Plaster was peeling off the walls and ceilings. There were so many holes it looked as if trespassers just hadn’t liked using the wide doorways.
“And someone took the light fixtures, too,” she said.
“They were probably also period,” he said. “I was able to search the tax records, and the house was built in the late 1800s.”
“I don’t understand how everyone left.” She glanced at his set jaw. “Your whole family, I mean.”
“My father was an only child. He met my mom in college. His parents lived here, but they came to New York to look after me. Otherwise, I’d have been in the care of nannies, and my grandparents didn’t want that, though I don’t imagine either of my folks would have minded.”
“Then your father remarried?”
“My sisters have one mother and my brother has another. We had no continuity. My dad was busy, busier as I got older. Their mothers were more in their lives than mine was, but our grandparents were the constant. They are the constant for all of us.” He went farther inside.
“Jason, you should be careful. This floor can’t be safe.”
He bounced a little on his toes. The wide planks held. “It feels steady. Wait here. I just want to look around.”
“You mean wait by myself?”
“In case you’re right about the floor.”
Surely the weather was too cold for snakes. But not for squatters or snoopy people like her. “Don’t go. This place is creepy.”
“Are you afraid?” He smiled as if the thought amused him, but kept going. “I won’t be long. I just want to see what’s left.”
She started to follow, but hesitated, uncertain of protocol. “Do you want privacy?”
“For what?”
“Your memories? I like to be alone with mine when they’re...” She almost said painful, but she’d shared enough personal stuff for one day. She’d never had memories like the ones that must be dying inside this house. “...intense.”
“I have no memories of this home. It isn’t going to hurt.”
There wasn’t even a picture left. Someone had stolen all the furniture except for broken sticks here and there that might once have belonged to chairs or tables. An old chintz cushion was wedged beneath the living room window. If anyone had ever been happy here, no one would be able to remember in all this musty gloom.
Any aid to memory had been stolen or thrown away.
“It was your home, though, once. If things had been different, it might still be,” she mused.
“Don’t get carried away,” Jason said. “I don’t need a home here after I finish my work at the bank. If I needed convincing about that, this is it.”
“Oh.” She’d thought finding a home he could make his own might feel like a new beginning to him, but he somehow thought it underscored the ending.
Just in case she needed a reminder of how he looked at his world.
CHAPTER NINE
JASON FELT AS if he should hold on to Fleming as they investigated the main floor. The fireplace in the living room was missing bricks. Many of the windows were open to the cold air. She was right about the floors. They did feel suspiciously bouncy.
“Careful,” he said. “We probably shouldn’t be in here.” Or she shouldn’t. Why had he thought bringing her would be a good idea?
He hadn’t wanted to be alone, coming to a place that might evoke memories. And yet if he were a less pragmatic man, he might believe the house was a victim of the bitterness that made his father resent his first wife so much he was still keeping the house from her. And his mom was clearly still furious with Robert.
“I want to see it all. I’m stunned that it’s sat here empty all these years,” Fleming was saying.
“It’s likely my father forgot about it.”
“He can’t have been that determined to keep it out of your mother’s hands.”
She said it so matter-of-factly. “That doesn’t seem believable to you?” he asked.
She shrugged, skidded on a piece of wallpaper lying loose on the floor, and caught his arm. “It seems like a ridiculous waste of time and emotional energy.”
“Emotional energy?” he asked.
“You know—wasting all your feelings on something you can’t change. Even two decades later.”
“I don’t think he wants to change it. He wants her to be unhappy. The guy she left with was his best friend.”
Jason said that as if it wasn’t surprising. He was wishing he’d kept it to himself when Fleming’s silence made him glance down at her.
“What?” he asked, trying to understand her troubled expression.
“Could you want vengeance that long?”
He sincerely hoped he wouldn’t ever waste that much of his life. “I don’t intend to put myself in that position.”
Her smile was more of a grimace. “I forgot. You’re planning to remain distant from all human communication.”
“You’re really an understanding woman.” He stepped away from her, through an arching doorway, and found himself in the remains of a kitchen. “Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you don’t have a big heart.”
“Sorry.” She crossed to the counter beneath the window, completely ignoring the wooden floor groaning beneath her feet. “Someone made away with your sink.” She peered into the open hole. “And they used the cabinet as a garbage can. Someone really enjoys McDonald’s.”
“Let’s go before you fall through to the basement and sue me for the cost of your mortgage,” he said.
“I’m fine. How many bedrooms do you think this place has?”
“Are you in the market?” He wasn’t fine. He didn’t want to discuss his abandoned home. He’d prefer not to confide any more of his family’s scandals, and he didn’t want to feel any closer to Fleming Harris.
“I’m thinking of you. You’ll need to either knock it down or put it back together.”
“Why do I have to do anything with it at all?”
She went to the wall of windows at the back of the kitchen. “They must have put a table here in the old days.” She peered through the dirty glass—what was left of it. “Come look. It’s beautiful.”
He joined her. At the end of a sloping lawn, the Smokies rolled away into the distance. Ridge after ridge, covered in brown hardwoods and verdant evergreens spun a soft painting. Mist-and-snow-dotted peaks that seemed to be shaded in soft blue.
Winter was taking over the landscape. It should have looked cold, but it was so beautiful it tugged at him. This view had been his once. And his father’s and mother’s when they’d been a family. The family he couldn’t remember.
“What do you think?” Fleming asked, as if she were selling him that view.
“It’s nice, but it’s not really mine.”
“Why couldn’t it be?
”
“Why not raze it?” Jason asked, knowing he would never do that. “I don’t have time to spend in the mountains, an hour and a half from the nearest airport.”
“You can land a helicopter here, and this could be a vacation home. And don’t you ever work from home? Isn’t that the advantage of consulting?”
“Why are you thinking all this over, Fleming?”
She blushed. “I’m thinking this is an amazing spot, and it’s a beautiful house still. It’s just a little broken.”
Like him? Was she implying he was like this house? Ridiculous. One conversation with each of his parents, and he’d turned paranoid.
“Let’s go.” But instead of taking her hand and dragging her out of the derelict building, he was drawn back to the mountains outside that broken window.
It had been a home, and he didn’t have to repeat his parents’ mistakes. It was a place his sisters and brother might come to. His grandparents spoke of Bliss with a longing that made him feel guilty, because he was the reason they’d given up their life here.
But it didn’t make sense. He’d been born here, but it was no part of his real life.
He turned toward the archway that led to the next room. “Come on, Fleming. We should get out of here before it gets too dark.”
“Wait. Can’t we go upstairs?”
“You sound like a kid, asking permission,” he said, and wished it was easier to say no to her.
“It’s your house, and I may never be invited back. I’d like to see the upstairs.”
He ignored her uncomfortable suggestion. “Until the stairs start to creak.”
She hurried ahead of him, cute and excited and happier than he knew how to be, over an old house that had too much past and no future.
“Can’t you slow down?” he asked, as she hurried up the first three stairs.
“No, because you’ll change your mind and call me back.” She glanced around as she reached the landing. “Wow. You have to see this.”
“What is it?” He followed her. She’d stopped, and he peered up the stairs beyond her. The light coming through the huge circular window in front of them was turning a darker blue-gray with every minute. “I can’t see up there.”