The House On The Creek (3 page)

Abby flushed and nodded. Everett watched the pink creep into her cheeks. He wondered if she still smelled of spring and wildflowers.

“It must have taken quite a bit of time. And money.” He said after a moment. “To fix this place up.”

She shrugged. “Around here, a girl like me has got nothing but time. And I’ve made the money back five times over. As soon as you hand me that check.” She grinned at him.

“Who knew the old man had managed to keep from drinking every dollar.” Everett turned in the center of the kitchen and placed his palms on the granite counter tops. “Who’d have guessed he’d leave what he had left to the Ross girl.”

He heard her sharp inhale. “He had good reason.”

“I’ll be he did.” Everett regretted the words as soon as they were said. But the heat of anger eased some of the constriction in his chest.

Abby gaped. And then her palm flashed up and out. Everett caught her hand before it could connect and squeezed her fingers between his own.

She seethed in his grip. “Let me go.”

“Abby. We both know about my father and his women - “

She didn’t let him finish. Her knee came up, quickly, and might have brought Everett down if he hadn’t seen the spark of intent in her eyes. He shifted, and her kneecap rammed the inside of his thigh. He’d forgotten her strength and he gasped, bent almost double. Her fingers slipped free.

Everett heard the clatter of keys across the countertop. She squatted before him, eyes dangerous.

“The check, please. And then we’ll be done with business.”

He swore aloud. Abby’s expression didn’t change. She waited, palm up, mouth hard. Rubbing his thigh, he straightened, and reached into his coat for the money. He found he couldn’t take his eyes from her mouth. She’d been a nibbler, sharp almost bites across his lower lip. And she’d made little sounds, softy weepy breathes as he’d ravaged her tongue. He still remembered. He wondered if she did.

Abby snatched the check from his hand, glanced at the signature, and stood up.

“I imagine your money is nearly as dirty as Edward’s. But I’ll take it.”

Everett winced. Abby was already across the kitchen and down the hall. He limped after, and caught her elbow just as she reached for the front door.

“Abby.”

“Shut up. Just shut up!” She pulled free and leaned back against the door. In the white light of the windows, temper leaping in her eyes, she seemed too hot to touch, to wild to soothe.

“You shouldn’t have come back, Ev. Why did you come back? You should have just stayed the hell away!”

Everett opened his mouth but couldn’t force a reply past the bile in his gut. Abby shot him a last burning look and then she fled, slamming the front door at her back, leaving him alone in his father’s house.

Alone with the ghosts of his past.

Rain fell in sheets. Water pounded cracked walls, turning the already stifling basement air humid as a hot shower. Everett leaned his elbows against the sill of the one narrow window that let light beneath the house and peered up and out at the world beyond his father’s kingdom. In the summer cloud bursts came like clockwork and this shower was right on schedule. Five o’clock, by Everett’s battered Timex. Nearly supper time.

In a moment he would stir himself, climb the wood plank stairs from the basement to the kitchen, and scrounge up something edible. The old man was probably already snarling with his hunger.

If he hadn’t passed out before the boob tube, beer can slipping from lax fingers, adding another stain to the mildewing shag carpet.

In a moment, Everett would go. In a moment. For now it felt safe and somehow soothing to watch the rain fall grey across the Creek woods. Wildflowers nodded their heads against the onslaught, and birds fluttered beneath dripping shrubs. Down below, the Creek would be swollen, the air cooled by black clouds. It was a perfect evening for a swim or a sail.

Everett guessed Abby was probably already down on the bank, absurd and eager in a bathing suit two sizes two small. He wondered if she would wait for him. Maybe, if Edward was out before the TV, he’d steal himself a snack and sneak down to the water.

Thunder rolled overhead, not the natural rumble of the storm, but the growl of heavy feet on old floor boards. Then the rattle of glass as the fridge door was thrown open and slammed shut again.

“Everett!”

No time for a swim, then. Maybe he’d escape after dark, sail the Creek by moonlight, as the Confederates had done during the Civil War. He’d found an ancient bullet down on the loamy shore one fall afternoon and was sure it belonged to a Bluecoat. He’d take the skiff out, patrol the currents, keep the enemy at bay...

“Everett, dammit! Get your ass up here!”

The rain was slowing up, anyway. But the thunder overhead grew closer.

“Have you got a joint down there?” Cowboy boots creaked to a stop at the top of the basement steps.

“No, Dad! Coming!” Everett jerked from his position by the window. Edward rarely descended into the depths of the house but it wouldn’t do to give him reason.

“What’re you doing down there?” The old man’s voice was slurred and pitiful. “Lookin’ at girlie magazines?”

Everett felt rage and shame heat his cheeks.

“No, Dad.” He set his hand against one concrete wall, and started up the steps.

“You know your mother wouldn’t approve.” Edward’s whine deepened dangerously. “You lookin’ to chase her away again? You with your drugs and magazines. You think I don’t know? You think she don’t know? Come up and apologize to your mother, boy.”

Everett stood very still on warped wood and gazed up into the square of kitchen light, regarding his father’s shadow uneasily. If there was a woman up there in Edward’s territory, she wasn’t his mother. One of the town whores, or a College girl who hadn’t learned any better.

His stomach turned, and he swallowed hard to keep the sour taste down.

“Everett!” His father stuck his head into the stairwell, and Everett could see yellowed eyes rolling in rage. “Move!”

Chapter Three

“MOVE!”

The shout echoed in the empty house. Everett woke and sat upright. His mouth was dry, his palms dampened by the nightmare. The sound and scent of Edward vanished with waking, but the better part of rain and wind remained, solid and real against fading memories.

He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. He’d fallen asleep without meaning to. Sat down, for just a moment, in a spot of sunlight on the living room floor. And then, apparently, fallen asleep.

Not surprising, really. The drive from DC had been arduous, and the shock of seeing Abby again after more than a decade had set him reeling. The sun warmed floorboards and the view through the newly re-paned windows had been irresistible.

But he hadn’t meant to fall asleep. Not here, not yet, not until he’d regrouped and gathered his defenses.

He hadn’t dreamed of the old man, or even of the his house, for at least five years. He’d chosen Seattle because it was worlds away from Virginia, and he’d purposefully kept life busy. He’d made a point of forgetting his past, his roots. And he’d done a good job of making a new life.

Until Windsor, ever vigilant, had handed Everett a press clipping. Windsor knew which details were important and which were not. The small real estate add had been very important. If the Anderson homestead was on the market at last then Everett wanted it.

So he sent his agent to make sure the sale happened.

But Windsor hadn’t mentioned Abby Ross. Everett had made an effort not to wonder where the old man’s legacy had gone. He’d schooled himself not to care.

Windsor had made the check out to Chesapeake Renovations. A start up company, Everett supposed, as he sat on the smooth maple floors, listening to the rain. He wondered if Chesapeake Renovations was doing for Abby a fraction of what Westex Investments had done for him.

He wondered if she were happy.

She’d looked it, he thought. She’d looked healthy and at ease and full of energy. The memory of her tilted grin made him frown.

“Damn.” Everett climbed carefully to his feet and crossed the living room. On the east wall huge bay windows looked out across an expanse of new lawn.

Twelve years ago the lawn had been a sludge of mud and weeds. Now grass gleamed emerald beneath evening shadows. The sun had disappeared behind the trees and the clouds were beginning to shred away. Right on time.

“Welcome to Virginia,” Everett muttered, and set his forehead against cool glass.

Beyond the edge of the lawn pink and yellow tulips bobbed alongside a freshly whitened gazebo. The Creek woods looked almost inviting.

He wondered how she’d handled the boat house, whether it still slumped alongside the Creek, or whether she’d renovated it alongside the mansion. Or had she taken it down, torn old bricks at last from the reluctant earth?

He moved away from the windows, meaning to find his way out of the house and down to the water. Fully intending to see what Abby Ross had done with their boat house.

Instead his feet led him through the kitchen, around a beautiful new stainless fridge, and into the little alcove that hid the basement doorway. The door was still there, repainted, brass knob brilliant. She hadn’t boarded it up. But then, why would she? Abby had never had occasion to visit the boy’s lair.

He turned the knob and the door swung open, creaking a little, as doors in old houses will, even when oiled. Everett remembered the sound well.

He didn’t remember the chain that hung from the ceiling, barely visible in the gloom. The pull chain was attached to a new fixture above the stairs. He didn’t need the light. His feet remembered the way.

He pulled the chain anyway, because he wanted to see clearly what Abby had done.

She’d somehow erased mildew stains. She’d painted the walls the color of egg shells. And she’d re-planked the stairs in warm honey colored wood that matched the upstairs boards.

On one wall, at eye level, she’d installed a coat rack.

A coat rack. Everett almost laughed aloud.

The stairs were silent as he padded down into the depths. The notch on the wall above the second to last step, the notch made one afternoon when the old man had actually ventured into Everett’s hole and swung and missed and broken a thumb - that notch was gone, patched and repainted.

There was a new light switch on the wall at the foot of the stairs. Smiling grimly, Everett flicked it on.

She’d carpeted the floor and put up a false ceiling to conceal pipes. There was fresh paint and new trim around his window. All in light, bright, soft colors that made the room appear large and clean. What once had been a decrepit fireplace was now a tasteful gas insert.

And overhead, in the very center of the room, she’d installed a ceiling fan.

He did laugh then, a sound of disbelief. Abby had made his basement into...what? A game room, a place for entertaining, an extra bedroom. It was warm and habitable and really quite comfortable.

He couldn’t quite believe it.

When his laughter began to crack, he swallowed hard and walked to his window. He’d grown only a little and still had to stretch some to see out. He set his palms on the wall, one on each side of the sill, and watched the rain fall. Overhead, the house was silent.

Everett laid out his bed in the basement. He unrolled a sleeping bag he’d packed all the way from Seattle, and spread out an inflatable mattress he had picked up in a DC mall. They’d made the drive down stuffed in the trunk of the sweet little Spyder he’d purchased outside the city, and they seemed none the worse for the cramped quarters.

Furniture would come later. For now, the sleeping bag, one duffel of clothes, his tiny computer, an even tinier fax machine, and a toothbrush would have to be enough.

The sky turned red and gold with sunset as he walked his belongings from the garage to the mansion. Cicadas roared in the trees, and he caught the fertile scent of summer in Virginia.

Above the peak of the garage something glinted. The wind vane, still damp with rain, sparkled.

Abby Ross. In the old man’s house. Making it into a home.

Everett couldn’t quite wrap his head around it.

He gritted his teeth and let the front door slam shut behind him. Dumping the duffel in the front entry, he strode past windows and into the kitchen. He knew without question that she would have left the refrigerator stocked in welcome.

And he was right. He found milk, cheese, and fruit. The door held flavored soda water and bottled beer. Tortillas and orange juice and bread up above. Cold cuts and mayo and Dijon mustard down below. And in the freezer, ice cream and popsicles.