Carolyn McSparren - House of Strangers

BY THE TIME Paul got back to his motel after dinner in a fast-food restaurant, all he wanted was a hot shower and bed. His damn shoulder was no longer just an ache, but a throbbing pain, and he still had his physical-therapy exercises to do. The hit he’d taken from Ann’s dog hadn’t helped any.

He turned on the television, muted the sound, picked up the telephone and dialed Giselle’s number. A moment later a youthful male voice answered.

“Harry, it’s Uncle Paul. May I speak to your mother?”

Without replying, the teenager yelled, “Mom, it’s Uncle Paul.”

He heard the telephone drop with a clunk and his cousin’s voice. “Harry, you have the manners of a tarantula! And turn down that music!” Then a moment later, “Paul, why didn’t you call last night? I’ve been so worried.”

“Sorry, Giselle. Landed too late to disturb you.”

“Was your car waiting for you? No dents?”

Paul laughed. “Yes, Giselle. You can tell Harry that his buddy seems to have driven all the way down from New Jersey without so much as a speeding ticket. He also washed the car, cleaned the inside and left it sitting beside the airstrip with the keys under the fender in the magnetic case.”

Giselle gave a sigh of relief. “Thank heaven. I had visions of Kevin doing a Thelma and Louise somewhere on the Blue Ridge Parkway.”

“He even left me copies of his gas charges on the front seat. Very responsible young man. Tell Harry I’ll send both him and Kevin a bonus.”

“Have you decided to give up this madness and come home where I can look after you?”

“You’re already looking after two teenage sons and a husband. I’m fine on my own.”

“Humph,” Giselle said. The sound came out with a Gallic flavor. Giselle spoke both English and French without accent, but her wordless expressions still sounded more French than English. “You don’t belong down there. What good is it going to do? You won’t find anything. That Paul David Delaney is dead, assuming he is the right Paul David Delaney.”

“Oh, he’s the right Delaney—my honorable father, pillar of society, richest man in the county, the man who married and abandoned my mother and then killed her when she found him.”

“I know you and Maman believed that, but you could be wrong. The detective said a serial killer or someone could’ve picked her up along the way. You don’t even know for certain whether she even met your father after she went down to Memphis.”

“Tante Helaine, your mother, never believed that my mother was murdered by a stranger at the precise moment she was due to confront my father, and neither do I. Too big a coincidence. No, he killed her all right. I’ve always known it in my heart. I had no way to check it out before.”

“No one has ever found her body….”

“That’s another thing. I want to find what he did with her, give her a decent burial if that’s possible.”

“After thirty years? What would be left to identify? Besides, you can’t bring a dead man to justice.”

“Well, I want someone to pay. I want to rub the noses of every living Delaney in the muck of what Paul Delaney did. I want them to admit in public that my father was a murderer.”

“The present generation had nothing to do with it. Anyone who might have known about it is long dead.”

“The present generation benefited from my mother’s death. Why should they live out their lives thinking their father was a paragon? I promised Tante Helaine I would expose him, and I will. Let them deal with the truth for a change.”

“Then go tell the son what you suspect, who you are. He’s your half brother, after all.”

“And have the entire clan circle the wagons? No, until I have incontrovertible proof that my father killed my mother, proof that would convince a jury, nobody down here is going to know I have any connection with the Delaneys. Now that I own the family home I have the perfect cover story—it’s natural to want to find out the history of an old house. These people will fall over themselves regaling me with anecdotes. The Delaneys were the most important family in the county. Trey Delaney is still one of the richest men. Certainly he owns the most land. I’m really looking forward to meeting him.” He tried to keep the sarcasm out of his voice, but Giselle knew him too well.

“You should never have promised Maman you’d avenge Aunt Michelle. You want to destroy the Delaneys for Maman, but in the end, I think you are the one who will suffer. The kind of hate my mother carried around corrodes like acid. It ruined her life, and in the end I think it contributed to her death. I know you’re still angry that you can’t fly big jets any longer, but don’t transfer your anger to the Delaneys. That’s a whole different issue.”

Paul laughed. “Don’t psychoanalyze me, Giselle. I don’t blame the Delaneys for that. Nor for the fact that Tracy walked out on me because she couldn’t take looking after an invalid, nor for the pain in my shoulder. I blame them because I grew up without either a mother or a father.”

“Stop it! Maman and Dad loved you like a son.”

“Of course they did. And I loved them both. But having your aunt and uncle take you in isn’t quite the same thing as growing up with the man and woman whose genes you carry. In my case I didn’t even know who’d donated half of my genes until a few months ago.”

“I have a very bad feeling about this. Not for those Delaneys, but for you.”

“Who said revenge is a dish best eaten cold? After thirty years it’s damned near frozen.”

“What if you like them? The ones who are left, I mean?”

“I’ll try not to let that happen. If it does, I’ll deal with it.”

“Please call me every night or e-mail me. I want to know everything that’s going on.”

“I promise. I love you, Giselle. Regards to Jerry.”

“Good night, mon frère.”

He put the phone back in its cradle and lay back on the bed.

“Scamoglio,” he said, and laughed. “Who knew?”

At least Ann was enthusiastic about something other than Botox injections in her forehead. He turned the sound up on the TV, moved to the floor and began the exercises to stretch and strengthen his right shoulder and arm. He must be getting better. The tears from the pain didn’t begin to run down his cheeks and into his ears for a good five minutes.

“GRAM, WE’RE STARTING the Delaney restoration job tomorrow morning,” Ann said as she reached for another ear of sweet corn. “It’s going to be fabulous.”

“Pass the butter to your daughter, Nancy,” Sarah Pulliam said.

“She does not need any more butter,” Ann’s mother said shortly. But she passed it anyway. “Mother, you are a great cook, but does the word cholesterol mean anything to you?”

“Hush. The girl has no meat on her bones as it is.” Sarah turned a concerned face to her granddaughter. “I wish they’d tear that old Delaney place down and salt the earth it stands on.”

“Whatever for? I love that house.”

“Ann, honey, I firmly believe that old houses take on the character of the folks who lived in them,” her grandmother said, and slid the platter of barbecued pork chops closer to Ann. “Nobody who ever lived there has been happy, starting with the Delaney who built it.”

“I know Mr. Delaney lost his only daughter, Gram, but half the people of west Tennessee lost children to the yellow fever. Whole families died sometimes.”

“He wanted a houseful of children. Adam was the only child who survived. Delaney’s poor wife had half-a-dozen miscarriages trying to get him more. Wore her out and killed her in the end.”

“Mother,” Nancy said, moving the pork chops away from Ann, “unless you’re a whopping lot older than you’ve been saying all these years, there’s no way you could know all that.”