The Family Plot (14 page)

He'd better not get his hopes up.

Whatever her cousins were talking about, it didn't sound heated; it sounded like Gabe trying to parent up. She wished he didn't have to do that, but the pattern was locked in place—wrapped around his DNA, practically—and there wasn't much changing it now.

She sighed and closed the door, then used the light of her phone to stumble back to the windowsill and cocoon up in the bag. The light rain sent her back to sleep, and she stayed that way until half an hour after dawn.

Morning came gray and muggy. The rain had mostly petered out, but all the leaves left on the scraggly trees were damp and heavy, and branches drooped all around the house. Even the remaining ivy looked lank and sticky, like Dahlia's hair felt—for it hadn't entirely dried overnight.

She sat up, yawned, and put her feet down on the floor. Sometime in the night, one of her socks had been eaten by the sleeping bag, leaving one foot bare. The other sock sagged down around her ankle. She used the naked toes on the free foot to pry it off and kick it aside.

When she set both feet flat again, the wood floor was cool, but not cold.

She leaned back to unlatch the window behind her makeshift bed, and pushed it open enough to stick her hand outside. The temperature was about the same as the day before. She could live with it.

She dressed herself in jeans and a tee, with a soft flannel pulled over it. She fished a thick pair of socks from her duffel bag and tied her work boots on over them, not too tight, but not so loose that they'd flop around.

Then to the bathroom, for the usual morning routine.

She hesitated at the doorway.

No. She had nothing to be worried about, especially not in the light of morning. Did she?

She crossed the threshold and turned on the bathroom sink, hard and fast, before she could talk herself out of it, or look too hard for shadows hunkering in the corners. Concentrate on the task at hand. Let the water do its job; let the water drown out the dark thoughts.

Or did the water bring them?

She looked back at the tub, still glistening from last night's moisture. Christ, there wasn't a bit of ventilation in that little room, was there? No fan, either.

She wiped the mirror with the back of her hand, then immediately felt the need to wash both hands, repeatedly. Her all-in-one soap was still by the tub, and it'd work on her hands as well as everything else. That was kind of the point.

Finally, teeth were brushed, face was scrubbed, toilet had flushed, and there were no weird cracks of light or darting shapes at the corner of her vision. She turned off the water and knew (or at least insisted to herself and to the house) that she'd been right the night before: Nothing had happened.

Opening the bedroom door again, she heard exactly nothing. Not even any snoring, much less the sound of someone rummaging for coffee in the kitchen. Had she brought any coffee with the communal supplies? Only the instant stuff, if she remembered right.

Instant coffee was not worth getting dressed for. But there was a coffee shop down in Saint Elmo, not even a mile away. It was easy walking distance, and she could use a walk. Something restless twitched under her skin. She wanted out, away from that nasty bathroom with its wet and dirty walls.

She could grab a cup and a breakfast sandwich, and maybe even be a hero of the revolution if she called Brad before heading back. She could bring coffee for everyone. Wait. Did everyone like coffee? Come to think of it, Bobby didn't always care for it—and she didn't feel like doing him any favors. Gabe didn't like it, either. If he wanted caffeine, he reached for a Coke, and they had plenty of those in the fridge and cooler.

She went for her messenger bag and remembered the photo album. She tossed that in, before slinging the bag across her chest and tiptoeing downstairs. On her way out, she left a note in the kitchen saying to call her if they needed anything, and she'd be back soon.

Then she headed to town, on foot.

Outside, a breeze rustled through the trees, the porch spindles, and the lank, half-naked ivy that hung along the house. She buttoned her flannel at the belly, and it was warm enough to keep her comfortable—especially once she got walking.

The woods were crawling with paths, trails, and rutted roads, and Saint Elmo was a straight shot down the hill. A straight shot that meant jumping a gully or two and climbing over some vintage military earthworks, then navigating around a couple of boulders. She imagined there must be easier routes, but a touch of minor, solitary adventure wouldn't be the end of her. If anything, it was a pleasant distraction.

The canopy above shook cast-off rain as the wind picked through it. Last night's water and wind had pulled down much of the flame-colored foliage and left it glistening damply on the forest floor.

Before long, she found the asphalt road without any lines painted on it and followed it down to an intersection where the tiny street pinched down to one lane … then went slinking beneath the Incline's tracks. The tracks themselves disappeared into a layer of cloud cover that squatted across the mountaintop, spilling over and dripping down, but not quite reaching the little valley below.

On the main drag nearby, morning traffic crept in from Georgia. It was stop-and-go up through the blinking light at the pedestrian crosswalk, and then sluggish as hell out of the neighborhood and into the city. It was just as well that Dahlia hadn't taken one of the trucks.

She strolled past a wee strip mall that looked a hundred years old, a burrito joint, the Incline station, a restaurant, and a flower shop—everything still locked up for the morning.

Dahlia's phone said it was barely seven thirty. Only the coffee shop was open, and it hadn't been for long.

Inside, the atmosphere was warm and noisy. Someone was grinding beans, and someone else was steaming milk. Two or three customers waited ahead of her, so she took the time to check her e-mail, catch up with a couple of messages from her dad, and start a game of solitaire on her phone before a girl with thick glasses and a nose ring took her order.

“Tall coffee, black, please. One of those egg and cheese croissants, too, and do me a favor and throw in a cookie, while you're at it.”

She could grab something for Brad before she headed back, but first she wanted to hang out for a few minutes—eat her breakfast and wake up good. The hike down the hill had gotten her blood flowing, and coffee would get her brain in gear. Between the exercise and the caffeine, she might actually be ready to tackle another workday with Bobby underfoot.

She struggled to keep from thinking about how mornings used to be, when Bobby would come over to her house on the weekends. She'd let him and Andy cook breakfast, and she'd clean up. They'd empty the Netflix queue. She'd smoke her one weekly cigarette. Be lazy as hell, just that one day—because nobody was ever game for church.

None of it was real anymore, not the house and not the husband, and not the amicable family atmosphere. Could be, she was rose-tinting it in retrospect. Maybe it was never really that idly pleasant, and it wasn't worth mourning.

She shook off the memory of scrambled eggs bubbling and Marlboros sizzling.

The high-pitched squeal of the milk steamer rang in her ears again, and the cash register pinged. Chairs squeaked on the tile floors. The bell on the door rang, and rang again. She let the new noises wash away the old ones. It worked a little better than the water at the Withrow house.

Dahlia sat down at a corner table and put her phone away. She took a sip of coffee, pushed her plate aside, and withdrew the photo album from her bag. She ran her hand over the cover, partly thinking that this was none of her business—and partly feeling like everything in the house was her business, because her father had paid for it and this was her job, to recover all the things worth recovering.

She flipped the cover open, and was greeted with the musty smell of old paper. It wasn't entirely unpleasant, but she wrinkled her nose and slipped her fingers inside the cover. Someone had put a bookplate there, declaring
ex libris
but not naming anyone in particular. She mumbled, “Someone didn't care too much about their
libris.
”

She was too far away to be talking to the house, but no one was sitting close enough to accuse her of talking to herself. Dahlia took a bite of her sandwich, and another swig of coffee.

The black paper was as light and flaky as a butterfly wing. There weren't any photos attached to the first page, to the right of the open cover with its blank bookplate. She turned to the next one. A photo fell out, shedding the tiny black corners that had kept it in place. She caught it, and put it back where it belonged, though it wouldn't stay there. All the glue was shot, and all the small corner pieces rustled around like so much confetti.

Gingerly, she straightened the images so she could see them in order.

At the top left was a very old shot, from the early 1880s—or so she guessed from the clothes. A man and a woman sat in a studio, straight backed and wearing neutral expressions. They were youngish, maybe thirty years old. The woman held a baby wrapped in such a profusion of lacy clothes that only its round little face was visible. Along the bottom, right across their knees in ink that'd faded to a rusty brown, someone had written, “Francis and Mary, with baby Judson.”

Two more photos followed at five-year intervals, both of them missing Francis. Perhaps he'd taken the pictures himself, or he'd died somewhere offscreen. There wasn't much evidence either way, for he never appeared again.

On the next page, Dahlia found a wedding photo. Baby Judson was all grown up, gone tall and lanky. His bride wore cascades of lace and a veil that draped across her shoulders, pooling in the chair. It must've cost a fortune.

“Judson and Eleanor, 1899.”

Beneath it, another picture—taken no more than a handful of years later. Eleanor appeared much the same, but now she stood with two small children beside her, a boy and a girl. They were posing stiffly in a patch of grass, perhaps on the lawn of the house itself. Nothing was written on the picture or beneath it, but a third image showed three children together: the boy, the girl, and a toddler, sitting in a line on the steps of what looked like the Withrow front porch. They were identified in different handwriting, using a pencil that was scarcely legible against the black paper. “Abigail, Buddy, and Hazel.”

A long black shadow stretched toward them, a man with his legs slightly apart, his arms bent. “Oh. The photographer.” It was probably Judson. He was backlit by the sun, so he'd joined the picture by accident.

Dahlia took another bite of sandwich, chewed it, and chased it with more coffee. The next few pictures featured mostly the same five individuals, aging with every turn of the page. A few stray cousins were introduced, but never more than once. Judson and Eleanor became older and heavier, and their children grew taller.

As the next ten years went by, the photos became less formal, less precisely composed. Personalities cracked through the sepia.

Dahlia decided that Judson was formal and stern, fair but stubborn. In one washed-out image, he wore a military uniform, but the image was in such a poor state, it was hard to say what kind. He held himself like a man with money—a man who expected his family to uphold certain standards of decorum. Eleanor may or may not have agreed, but she was dressed beautifully in every image. “Quite the fashion plate,” Dahlia breathed into her beverage.

Eleanor smiled softly, showing no teeth. She always looked at the camera, never her children.

The farther Dahlia browsed, the more confident she became that something had been wrong with Buddy. Something about his blank face and permanent squint … was he blind? Mentally delayed, somehow? He often stood apart from the rest of the family, though his little sister Hazel sometimes held his hand, as if she was trying to keep him close, or draw him in to the circle.

By her preteen years, the oldest girl, Abigail had developed a classic case of resting bitch face. She'd turned out pretty, but her mouth aimed down at the corners. Her eyebrows had a permanent arch that suggested that whatever you were saying, she didn't believe it.

Hazel was more of a mystery. The youngest and smallest, she came off as the quiet, bookish type. Or was Dahlia making up details, in the absence of information? Maybe … But if she looked hard at this picture, or that one, she could see a curious gleam in the girl's eye. She was almost a fey little thing, with her braided hair and tiny bow mouth. Was she a trickster? A flirt?

The croissant sandwich was almost gone. Dahlia popped the last chunk into her mouth, and turned the page with the two fingers that had the least amount of breakfast grease on them. She stopped chewing and almost choked, but caught herself; then swallowed too hard, too soon.

She coughed into her hand.

Abigail, 1915.

She would've been about fifteen or sixteen years old, in that awkward space between being a girl and a woman, and her clothes showed it. She was wearing a long, light dress that was not exactly a child's, but not from her mother's wardrobe, either.

Dahlia had seen that dress before. She would've sworn it on her own mother's grave.

In just a flash, yes—just a pattern of fabric billowing in the breeze, out of season. Was it yellow? Everything was yellow in a photo that old. She ran her thumb over the image, smudging away a dusting of black paper. The dress's fabric had a pattern to it, something small. She couldn't suss out the details, but she knew it must be covered in flowers.

The dress fit Abigail funny. Either she wasn't wearing it correctly, or it wasn't the right size, or … something.

Dahlia leaned down closer, wishing for a magnifying glass—and nearly fell out of her chair when her phone rang. The ringtone brought her back to the present, to the coffee shop, to the foot of Lookout Mountain. She fished out her phone and checked the display.