Carolyn McSparren - House of Strangers

“My mother, your grandmother, told me, Miss Nancy.She wanted to marry Adam’s son Barrett for a while. She was glad in the long run she’d missed out on him. A meaner man never lived. During the depression he foreclosed on half the farmers in Fayette County so he could acquire their farms cheap when they were sold on the courthouse steps. One of them tried to shoot him. Missed, unfortunately.”

“But the next generation was happy. Aunt Maribelle and Uncle Conrad doted on each other.” Ann said. She started to reach for the chops, but one look from her mother stopped her. “I mean, they seemed to have had a wonderful marriage. Everybody got along, even Aunt Addy.”

“You were much too young to see what was really happening. Two cats in a burlap bag. My sisters barely tolerated each other, and living in the same house didn’t help. When Daddy refused to let Addy go to the Conservatory of Music in Philadelphia, I really thought she’d die. She had real talent. She wanted to be a concert pianist. Instead, she wound up an old maid living in her sister’s house and teaching piano lessons to children like you. Daddy should have let her go.”

“Why didn’t he?”

“He always said that it wasn’t seemly for an unmarried woman to live alone in an apartment or a boardinghouse, but the real reason was that Maribelle was engaged to Conrad Delaney and demanded a society wedding. Daddy couldn’t afford both.”

“So Aunt Maribelle won?”

“Maribelle always won. Mostly because it never occurred to her she wouldn’t win. You have no idea how it galled Addy to have to live under her sister’s roof all those years. And Maribelle’s marriage to Conrad wasn’t quite the blissful union she tried to make everybody believe. Anyway, that has never been a happy house, and it will find some way to make the new owner suffer, too, you mark my words.”

On the drive back to town from her grandmother’s farm, Ann absently scratched behind Dante’s ears and thought over her grandmother’s remarks. Bernice had said more or less the same thing at the café that morning, but Ann hadn’t paid much attention. However, she couldn’t dismiss her grandmother’s concerns as easily. Sarah Pulliam was supposed to be fey. People said she had “the gift.”

As far as Ann could tell, that meant her grandmother could penetrate the facades behind which people tried to hide. Ann had suffered many times as a child because her Gram always knew full well who was responsible for knocking down the rose trellis or forgetting to feed the dogs. It wasn’t second sight. It was solid knowledge of the mischief Ann was capable of.

And Gram was the only person who’d warned her she’d be miserable if she married “that Travis Corrigan.” She’d definitely been right on that score.

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Paul slept later than he’d planned, stood under a hot shower to loosen his shoulder, stowed his bags in his car, grabbed a couple of sweet rolls and a paper cup of hot, bad coffee from the lobby of his motel and drove east toward Rossiter.

He’d planned to arrive before the workmen, assuming they showed up. He’d had enough experience with contractors and their crews when Giselle was remodeling her kitchen. Half the time they simply didn’t show—no excuses, not even a telephone call.

Not this morning. Overnight a large blue Dumpster had appeared outside his back door, and half-a-dozen pickup trucks festooned with equipment stood haphazardly on his front lawn. He could hear hammering and shouting before he even got out of his car. He walked up his front steps and through the open door.

A moment later he ducked as a man in overalls carrying a bundle of two-by-fours swung around the corner from the basement steps. He barely glanced at Paul.

“Hey, toss me that hammer, will ya?” a voice called down from the stair landing. “Right there on the tool-box—the claw with the blue handle.”

Paul looked around, found the hammer and made the mistake—one he still frequently made—of tossing it with his right hand. The pain made him suck in his breath. The hammer clattered to the staircase several steps down from the man who needed it.

“Sorry,” Paul said, and moved to retrieve it.

“Okay, I got it.” The man disappeared behind the stair railing. A moment later Paul heard the thud of the hammer against one of his balusters.

“Hey! Should you be taking that thing out? Won’t the banister fall off?”

The man reared. He was thin with graying hair and skin like old cypress left too long in the creek. “Yeah, I should be taking it off and no, the banister won’t fall down. All right with you?”

Chastened and feeling way out of his element, Paul went in search of Buddy.

He found him and a crew in the basement removing rotten joists and replacing them with good wood. Paul backed out without disturbing them.

At the rate they were going, the structural work could be done in a week. He hadn’t even talked to Buddy about any schedule, and he had no idea whether the plumbers came before the electricians or the telephone linemen or the utilities. He had a sudden longing to be sitting in his rented condo in New Jersey. But he’d sublet it.

He could take Giselle up on her offer of a bed.

No way. That house with two teenaged boys was considerably noisier and more confused than this one.

He needed an island of peace and quiet. Simply slipping out and taking up more or less permanent residence at the café next door seemed cowardly. Before the accident he’d have pitched in and at least swung a sledgehammer at the broken concrete of the parking area behind the house. Now he couldn’t even do that.

“You look like somebody’s poleaxed you.”

He heard Ann’s voice from behind him with a mixture of relief and happiness that surprised him.

A moment later Dante thrust his slobbery maw into his hand. “Next time you warn me about chaos I’ll listen to you.” He removed his palm from Dante’s jowls and rubbed it dry on the dog’s broad head.

Her gray-blue eyes danced and she grinned at him.

“You get off on this, don’t you,” he said.

“You caught me.” She turned away from him, her arms spread wide, embracing the entire house. “I adore helping old buildings spring to life again, and since I love this house, this job is pure joy.”

“It’s pure madness, is what it is.” He had to shout over the sound of at least three power saws and three or four hammers.

“Come on upstairs, it’s quieter there.” She slipped past him and then hugged the staircase wall to avoid falling through the space left by the missing posts. Dante sighed and trudged up behind her.

She walked into the back bedroom, held the door until Paul and Dante had cleared it, then shut it firmly against the noise. March had turned cool even during the day, and the caulking between the sleeping-porch windows and this bedroom left much to be desired.

“You’re going to freeze in that shirt,” she said practically, and perched her bottom on the nearest windowsill. “You still planning on staying here at night?”

He ran his hand over his forehead. “At this point, I have no idea. I’ve checked out of my motel, but I’m sure they’d take me back.”

“Work quits about five, so if you can stand the chill and the possibility of a cold shower—and if you don’t mind the occasional ghost—I don’t see why you shouldn’t stay here. Just don’t try cooking on that stove.”

“Buddy warned me about that.” He glanced at her. “What ghosts?”

“All old Southern mansions have ghosts.” She laughed. “Let’s see.” She began to tick off on her fingers. “There’s Deirdre Delaney who died in the last really big yellow-fever epidemic. She’s supposed to sit on the bottom step and cry.” She lifted a second finger. “Then there’s Paul Adam—the son of the man who built the house. It’s very confusing that every generation names the first son Paul. Fortunately each generation has a middle name starting with the next letter of the alphabet. That’s the only way to tell them apart.”