Cicada Summer

by Maureen Leurck

  I nodded. “Of course.”

  “Signed with them yet?” He laughed.

  “ ‘Yet’? You say that like it’s a foregone conclusion.” My shoulders settled downward, comfortable in our banter, and drawing out the conversation.

  “Well, it is. Unless you got a whole bunch of cash lying around to fix that blackened house of yours,” he said.

  “Not really. But here’s the thing: I want to finish the house. I want to finish what I started. It’s a good house, and a good investment,” I said.

  He laughed. “Sure, after all new plaster, new drywall, electrical work, plumbing, and whatever else that fire destroyed.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice to a whisper. “You know, if you were the one who lit the match, I wouldn’t blame you at all.” He slapped the bar. “In fact, I’d happily pay for your drinks all year.”

  “Yeah, I know. But listen.” I turned and faced him, putting a foot on the bottom rung of his stool. “Do we really want Waterview to win? Aren’t we all kind of in this together? If they start taking over all of our properties, don’t you think that we’ll all soon be out of business?”

  He narrowed his eyes and shook a finger at me. “I see where you’re going with this. Nowhere good. The answer is no. Before you even ask, before you even say whatever it is that you think you want to say, no.”

  “As much as I would hate to work with a snake like you—”

  He cut me off with a slice of his hand. “Exactly. Think of all those beautiful, historic properties that I tore down, without one moment of feeling.” He leaned forward. “And I would have torn down that house of yours, too. Still would, in fact.”

  “I’m fully aware of that fact. But I don’t have a whole lot of other options right now,” I said. “If you can believe it, you’re the lesser of two evils.”

  He downed the rest of his beer and reached into his pocket, throwing money down on the bar. “Never heard that one before. Kinda like it. But sorry, answer’s still no. We’re much better as enemies, not partners. I mean, what would people think if we went into business together?” He laughed. “I might lose my reputation for being such an asshole if I help you on this.”

  “Trust me, everyone will still think you’re an asshole. I don’t think that can be remedied,” I said. “But don’t you want a second chance? You said it yourself—your personal life is a mess. Don’t you want to do one good, decent thing before you drink yourself to death?”

  He stopped in surprise, slightly wobbling back and forth as his eyes focused on me. For a moment, I thought he was going to sit back down. But he stepped back.

  “Good luck to ya,” he said. Then, he turned and walked out of the bar.

  I stayed and finished my drink, part of me hoping he would come back and reconsider. When he didn’t, I slumped my shoulders and silently wondered how much more pathetic I could get, how much further I could slip.

  * * *

  The next morning, my doorbell rang as I was getting out of the shower. I wrapped a towel around me and peeked my head out the door. I saw Jack Sullivan’s Ford pulling down the driveway. His white hair was askew, and I could see deep lines running down his cheeks. He lifted a cup of coffee in greeting. Even from my front stoop, I could tell that he was hung over.

  “Say hi to your parents for me,” he shouted before he turned down the street.

  On the concrete stoop was a manila envelope. I shooed off a cicada, and opened it. I pulled out a piece of paper and almost dropped my towel when I read it.

  It was a contract. He would put up the money to renovate the house, the difference between what the insurance company would pay and the actual cost. All cash, available immediately. In return, we would split the profits on the house. I would do all the work, of course, but it would be finished. The house could be repaired just as I planned.

  I leaned against my doorway as I scanned the contract again, searching for the catch. And the last few lines, in print smaller than it should have been, I found it: If I didn’t find a buyer in sixty days, we would sell to Waterview with no contingencies and then let them tear down the house.

  CHAPTER 38

  “You’ve had a lot of bad ideas in the past, but I’m pretty sure this one takes the cake.” Eddie shook his head and rubbed his forehead with sweat. He ducked down and swatted at a cicada that flew past.

  We were working in the upstairs master bedroom, clearing the debris from the fire before the restoration company could come in and begin to fireproof everything. It had been only four days since my deal with Jack, but we needed to move quickly. First, the restoration company would set up ozone generators, to get the smell of the smoke out of all the surfaces. Then, they would have to clean the entirety of the house, removing all the soot so that the walls could be fixed, primed, and painted again. Any walls with extensive damage would have to be replastered, and we would have to rebuild the wood baseboards and trim where the fire had eaten away, and the roof needed to be fixed—again—but it all could be done. For a price and time, of course.

  The holes in the roof and the walls from the fire meant that the cicadas had entered the house in droves. I could almost see the confusion in their weird little eyes as they flew around the house, wondering what happened to all the trees. The smartest beings in the animal kingdom, they weren’t.

  “And what was my other choice? The money tree in my backyard isn’t exactly flowering these days.” I shoveled a pile of charred plaster and roof shingles onto the tarp in the hallway.

  “Sure. But still. Jack Sullivan? You couldn’t have found some other investor who isn’t such a . . . snake? No, snake is too kind of a word.” He carefully lifted a charred, splintered piece of what I assumed had been the window framing. We had so carefully preserved all of the quarter-sawn oak in the first go-around, and now we had to dump it all and rebuild with what we could salvage. “Whatever is worse than a snake.”

  “I could have, if I had the time. The mortgage on this house is—weird concept, I know—due every month. And I’m out of money as of yesterday. It was either find an investor immediately or sell to Waterview. Pick your poison, Eddie,” I said. “And actually, since you aren’t paying that mortgage, you don’t get to pick anything.”

  I had called Jack immediately after he dropped off the contract and asked him to reconsider the contingency clause about selling to the developers if we didn’t find a buyer in sixty days, but he held firm. I had sent an e-mail to Waterview, backing out of the deal even though I knew I might end up at the table with them if we failed to sell the house. The sand in the hourglass had already begun to fall, and there was nothing I could do to stop it except finish the house and pray that a buyer popped up immediately. I had called Eddie and told him the good/bad news, and asked him to triple his crew to get the work done.

  He held up his soot- and dirt-stained hands. “Fair enough. Too bad he’s such an asshole.”

  “Now, come on, I’m not that bad.” Footsteps echoed through the hallway as Jack made his way up the stairs. “I’m not always an asshole. Just almost always.” He appeared outside the bedroom and leaned against the doorjamb, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “I stand by my original statement,” Eddie said. He tossed his shovel in Jack’s direction. “Give us a hand, would you?”

  Jack let the shovel clatter to the ground in front of him. “Nope. My money’s doing the work here, not me. Hopefully, some nice family will buy it, who will put an addition on it, or maybe”—he looked at me—“paint all that woodwork so it looks halfway decent.” Before I could strangle him with an extension cord, he added, “There’s some lady outside, poking around, asking for you.”

  I set my shovel against what was left of the wall. “Saved by a stranger,” I said before I walked down the stairs.

  A woman in her thirties with bright red hair stood on the front porch, phone in hand. “Alex Proctor?” she said as I walked onto the porch.

  “Yes. Why?” My heart started to pound as I wondered if she wa
s from Waterview, or maybe another county office, here to deliver some other fine or citation. Visitors at the house never seemed to come bearing good tidings or nice surprises.

  “I’m Jill Springform, from the Lake Geneva Regional News. I was wondering if I could get a quote from you on the house fire that happened here a few weeks ago.” She tapped on her phone and poised her finger above the screen, waiting for me to speak.

  “You guys already ran a story on it, didn’t you?” I had seen the front page of the newspaper the day after the fire, accompanied by a photo of orange flames shooting out of the roof. In the bottom corner of the picture was my shadowy figure as I stood on the lawn and stared at the house. I had crumpled up the newspaper, bile rising in my throat.

  “Of course. But I’m doing a follow-up. I heard a rumor that you and another investor have teamed up to fix the house.”

  “Yes, that’s true.” The news that Jack and I were working together had hit the real estate blogs almost immediately. It was no surprise, since Jack seemed to want to tell everyone he knew that he was helping me on the project, to show that he could be a decent guy. Charitable, even. “You want a quote about that?”

  She shrugged and rolled her eyes. “Slow news day.” She glanced down at her phone again. “So, how’s the cleanup coming?”

  “As well as can be expected.” I told her about how we first had to haul away all of the fire-damaged materials, and then start from scratch in most of the bedrooms. Not to mention a whole new roof and rewiring the melted electrical components.

  She nodded. “And the other investor?”

  “Yes. Jack Sullivan.” I glanced upstairs and prayed that he didn’t come sauntering down the stairway, eager to toot his own liquor-soaked horn for the reporter.

  “Right. Isn’t he kind of known for tearing down historic properties? Building McMansions, that sort of thing?”

  My eye twitched. “Yep. But I guess he wanted to try saving something instead of ripping it apart.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “I convinced him that old houses are worth restoring. They’ve stood for how many years and we should preserve their history. They have a soul, a life to them. They’ve seen more than we ever have, and we should respect that.”

  She smiled. “That sounds almost poetic.” She pushed her sunglasses back on top of her head. “Look, my editor wants me to run this small column on the property, just a short update on the fire and the cleanup process. But I’d love to talk to you more about what you’re trying to do for the house, and include any neat historical tidbits you’ve uncovered.” A cicada landed on her blouse, and she made a squeaking sound. I reached forward and plucked it off, sending it on its merry way through the air. “Thanks,” she said. “Those things kind of freak me out.”

  I watched as the cicada flew toward Elsie’s house, eventually landing on her empty front porch. I thought of the article that ran in 1947 about the Moores’ house, and the details about the family. Then, an idea sprang to life as quickly as the cicadas had emerged.

  I turned to Jill. “I’d love to help you with a longer story. I have a bunch of pieces of historical information that I think you’d really be interested in, including some great human-interest stories about the people who used to live here. Really compelling,” I said brightly.

  We made a date to meet in a few weeks, after some of the fire damage had been fixed so she could see the progress, and I returned upstairs to where Eddie and Jack were arguing about old windows, and if it was worth the effort to rebuild rotten frames or just replace them with vinyl windows.

  “You’re not taking into account that the windows were made for the house,” Eddie said, his voice rising. “You can’t ever duplicate that.”

  “Why in the hell would I want to duplicate that when I can have something better? You’re out of your mind,” Jack said, his face reddening.

  “Enough. Eddie, we have work to do.” I bent down and threw him a shovel. I turned to Jack. “Enough for you, too. Let us get back to work, if you ever want to get a dime out of this place.” I made a waving motion toward the stairs.

  “Fine. But for the record, I hardly expect a dime from this place. Pennies, maybe,” he said.

  “Then why the hell did you put up the money?” Eddie said as he threw a charred piece of plaster into the debris pile.

  Jack smiled, and ran a gnarled hand through his white hair. “Because it makes me look good.”

  “You still look like shit,” Eddie replied evenly.

  “Out!” I shouted to Jack before he finally turned and went down the stairs.

  “Good luck with the crap upstairs. Remember to drink lots of water and stay hydrated,” he said before he walked out onto the porch.

  I could feel Eddie staring at me as I kept my head down, sweeping up bits of plaster. “Not a word,” I said.

  * * *

  Two days later, we had most of the fire debris cleaned out from the upstairs. As the last pile was hauled away in a Dumpster, Traci arrived at the house with Chris. He slowly followed her up the steps, clapping his hands in excitement at the house.

  “Is this your house?” he said, his eyes wide.

  “Sure is, Chris. And hey, your mom said you might want to help us with some stuff. Is that true?” I asked, my hands on my hips.

  “I would like to help,” he said quickly. He walked right inside, pushing the door open with one swoop.

  “Sorry,” Traci said with a smile. “If you can’t tell, he’s been looking forward to this all week.” When we got inside, she lightly touched my arm. “Do you actually have something for him to do? If not, that’s totally fine.”

  “Yup. The fire debris is finally gone, but we still need to sweep out any remaining dust to get everything ready for the ozone machines.” I pointed to a collection of mops, brooms, and rags in the corner of the foyer. “Hey, Chris?” I called through the house, but there wasn’t an answer.

  “He’s probably doing a home inspection,” Traci muttered as we walked into the living room. We stopped when we saw he was standing in front of the fireplace, staring at the cracked and damaged stones on the floor outside the hearth.

  “Yup. Those are broken,” I said. “Our crew is going to come in next week and replace those after all the fire damage is repaired.” In addition to fixing the windows, painting, refinishing the floors, and many other tasks that I didn’t want to list off.

  “Rocks. Like the ones I have in my room in my house,” he said, his gaze never leaving the fireplace.

  “Yes, we have to fix those,” I said with a nod. Traci stepped forward to redirect him, but he didn’t turn away from the stones.

  “My rocks.” He pointed to the broken and missing pieces. “My rocks there. We can put my rocks there.” He turned and looked at me, his eyes sparkling.

  I smiled. “I think that’s a great idea. Would that be okay? Do you mind giving us some of your rocks to use? It would be a big help.”

  “Yes. They would like to go there,” he said. He looked back at the fireplace and hummed with happiness.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Traci whispered.

  “I want to. That’s what this house is—a collection of pieces of the people who came before.” I glanced back at the fireplace. “I love the idea.”

  CHAPTER 39

  Eddie and Chris were again hard at work on the house with mops and brooms when I left a week later and went to the hospital to bring Elsie home. As I helped her out of my car, she froze when she saw the cicadas covering her property. They were dotted on the rails of her porch and moving through the grass in her front yard. A couple clung to the screens on her front door. She slowly turned her head to my house and put a hand to her mouth.

  “It’s just as I remember it.” She pointed to the few insects hanging off the porch eaves. “Oh, yes. Mrs. Moore would be out there with a broom, trying to shoo them away from the porch to quiet their racket, but they never listened.” Her eyes clouded for a moment, lost in some memory, picturing Mrs. Moore standi
ng on the porch frantically waving her arms.

  “We didn’t have air-conditioning back then, so they flew inside and couldn’t figure out how to get back out. At first, it scared us, but after a couple of days, we would just pluck them off the floor and toss them back out the window.” She laughed.

  I pointed toward her house. “We should go inside. The reporter from the newspaper will be here soon,” I said and she nodded, placing both hands on my forearm.

  * * *

  “And you said she had a small wing-shaped birthmark on her right shoulder?” the reporter, Jill, asked as she furiously wrote notes on a black-and-white composition pad. Her phone was next to her, recording the conversation also. She had just finished surveying the progress on the house, which was coming along quickly due to a near-constant presence of crew members funded by Jack’s checks.

  Elsie nodded. “It looked like someone had drawn it on her shoulder, it was so distinct.” She twisted her hands in her lap. “Would you like more coffee?” she said nervously.

  Jill glanced down at her full cup and shook her head. “Oh, no. Thank you.” She smiled. “This is a great story, and really adds a human-interest element to the house restoration. We do have a place to start in all of this, so I really hope that the sidebar helps in your search.”

  “When will it run?” I asked. I had called Jill after her initial visit, and pitched the idea of including a sidebar on Elsie’s search for her daughter. She loved the idea.

  “Oh, soon. I think. End of the week, beginning of next, barring any breaking stories. And I’d also be interested in turning this piece into a series. Maybe do a follow-up on the new owners, and of course, when you find your daughter,” she said.

  Elsie smiled and looked at me.

  “See? When,” I repeated. “Not if.”

  * * *

  “When, not if,” I muttered into the darkness as I stopped to rub my shoulder. “These floors will be done when, not if.” I looked across the expanse of the upstairs, the patches in the wood floor finally done, but the sanding just begun. Due to the delicate nature of the wood, having been sanded down once before already, I was using a hand sander on the entirety. Wood floors could only be sanded down so many times before they became too thin to refinish again. They had just enough juice left for one final refinishing, but I had to be careful and take my time. It had taken me all day to do just one bedroom, and I wasn’t sure that my arm wouldn’t fall off before I finished the rest.