Nicole Young: Kill Me If You Can

He nodded. “Sure your grandmother was a Nagy. I remember Eva. But your dad is a Russo. Olivia is his grandmother.” He smirked through his whiskers. “She’s the local matriarch around here. If something’s going on in this town, you better believe Olivia knows about it.”

I held the coffeepot suspended. My dad. I’d almost forgotten I had one of those. And now I had a busybody great-grandmother named Olivia.

“Olivia must be pretty old by now,” I said. I hadn’t been up here in close to thirty years. My father would have had to be young, and his parents young, in order for Olivia to still be kicking.

“The town just celebrated her ninety-third birthday last month,” my visitor told me. “That gal’s too ornery to die.”

There must have been something in the water up here. The people drank from a regular fountain of youth. Even with cancer, my grandmother had lived years past what the doctors had predicted. Too bad the water hadn’t extended my mother’s life any.

I poured coffee into his mug. “So you knew my mother through my dad?”

The old guy took a sip and nodded. “Sweet girl. She was always bailing Jacob out of some sort of trouble or another. She wanted to marry him real bad. Next thing you know, Beth was pregnant and Jacob took off.”

I swallowed hard at the story. To hear Mom’s version, theirs had been a fairy-tale romance. Two people so in love. Two families determined to keep them apart. Then I came along, the apple of their eyes. Dad worked out of town, Mom said, and that’s why we didn’t see him. But she’d always loved him. I could tell.

Once Mom was gone, however, I’d been fed Grandma’s version of things. My perfect mother fell in love with a perfect loser, who’d left town the moment he heard I existed. I remembered how Gram squirmed whenever I asked about my parents’ wedding. I’d eventually figured out there probably had never been one, though Gram always insisted I was “legitimate,” as if the term somehow made me a real person as opposed to a phony. But the fact that my name, Mom’s name, and Gram’s name were all Amble pretty much said it all.

I fixed myself a cup of sweetened coffee. I held the hot mug in my palms, soaking in the warmth as I sipped.

“Want some help getting that water back on? If I’d have known you were going to be staying here, I would have had everything hooked up for you. But Ethyl just told me to keep the road open.”

I smiled. Ethyl Merton was the real estate agent. “I don’t think she believed me when I told her I planned on moving right in. A little too rustic for her taste, she said.”

“She was shocked, let me tell you, when you called her. Papa B had this place waiting for you all these years. Then out of the blue, here you are.”

My neck crawled with heebie-jeebies. “You’ve mentioned Papa B before. Who is he?”

“B for Bernard.” He looked at me like I knew what he was talking about. “Bernard Russo. Your grandfather.”

At the mention of another long-lost relative, pressure built in my sinuses.

I remembered the phone call to Northern Realty a few months back. The agent had seemed utterly thrilled to hear from me, total stranger though I was.

“Did you say your name is Patricia Amble? How wonderful. I have just the thing.”

I’d been equally thrilled to hear she had the old lodge up for sale. “That’s where I spent summers as a kid,” I’d told her.

“Isn’t that a nice coincidence? Are you sure you don’t want to see it before I get the papers ready?”

But I’d been too excited. “Fax everything to me. I’ll sign this week.” I hadn’t paid any attention to the seller’s name.

Not that the name Russo would have meant anything to me.

I glared at Jim Hawley as if he were somehow to blame for the faults of my paternal relatives. At any rate, I wasn’t prepared to discuss family I barely remembered as if they had always been a part of my life. What was their excuse for disregarding me, anyway? And what kind of grandfather kept a log home around for a granddaughter he’d never even given the time of day? Did he think I was just going to move in and pretend there were no hard feelings?

Jim shifted his weight and cleared his throat. “I’ll get that water hooked up. The shutoff’s in the crawl.”

I watched through the narrow window by the door as he pulled a shovel from the bed of his truck and walked to the side of the house. He pushed back the bare branches of a towering shrub. A moment later, chunks of snow landed in the yard as he cleared the hidden access.

Five minutes passed. The faucet gurgled, then spit water into the sink. I rushed over to turn it off. I headed toward the first floor bathroom to check that sink as well. I flipped the handles to the “off” position, then went upstairs to make the rounds.

My feet made hollow thunks as they landed on the slabs of cedar logs that made up the steps. The worn remains of bark still clung to the outer edge of each riser. The rails were constructed of peeled cedar trees, about six inches in diameter apiece, and supported by chunky cedar spindles. The banisters were cedar stumps, complete with roots.

At the top, I slowed and looked out at the lake. A mass of white blanketed the once-blue waters. Wind kicked up walls of snow in the center of the bay. I’d have to wait until another day to see all the way across.

I walked down the hall of the north wing. Two bedroom doors hung open on opposite sides of the hall. I peeked in each one. Both rooms were long and narrow. Neither had furniture. Daylight came in through double dormers, leaving rectangular patches of gray on wide plank flooring. I was relieved to see the original wood had escaped the vinyl updates the first story had endured. I shut both doors and continued down the hallway to the bathroom at the end, toward the sound of running water. Thankfully, the plumbing still worked in the claw-foot tub and matching pedestal sink, regardless of the deplorable condition of the room.

The south wing was a mirror image of the north. I turned off the faucets in the bathroom and shut the doors to the bedrooms. I poked my head in my own bedroom at the top of the stairs, just to see that nothing had moved from where I’d left it this morning.

Jim was just coming in the back door when I reached the kitchen. He grabbed his insulated mug from the counter. “Thank you for the refill. Call me if you need anything.” He headed toward the door.

“Thanks, Jim. I really appreciate all you’ve done.”

He lifted a hand in the air without turning around. The diesel fired up, backed out, and fled down the driveway.

Opening my box of fresh donuts, I chose a chocolate-filled powdered one. Jim’s new slant on my dysfunctional upbringing gave me plenty to think about while I cleaned the white sugar from my fingers.

I spent the rest of the morning scrubbing down the kitchen. The sponge in my hands made a good replacement for the necks of the Russo clan. I couldn’t imagine any excuse great enough to pardon their neglect of both me and this house over the years.

I dried off and took a look around. If I stuck to my unwritten Rules of Renovation, the kitchen required a complete face-lift. But I’d learned at the last house that some things are better left alone. This time I’d settle for removing the asbestos tiles in order to expose the original nine-foot-high walls and ceiling. That, along with a shiny new oak floor, would make the room feel dramatically bigger. Then I’d simply hop on the latest home-decorating bandwagon and play up the ’50s flavor.

I grabbed some turkey and cheese from the fridge and made a wrap. I wandered into the great room and plopped with a rusty boing onto the sofa.