The Last House on the Street(14)

I sighed. Leaned against him. He smelled like motor oil. I’d come to equate the smell with him and I liked it. “I’m just tired of seeing a wrong and doing nothing to make it right, that’s all,” I said. “I wish you’d give me some support.”

He tightened his hand on my shoulder. “How can I support you when I’m afraid you’re gonna get yourself killed?” he asked. “Or worse?”

“What’s worse than getting killed?” I asked, momentarily sidetracked by his question.

“Think about it,” he said, and then I knew. Rape. He meant rape.

“I’m not afraid,” I said. “I think I’ll be fine … if they accept me. The minister I spoke with wasn’t all that enthused about having me work with them.”

“What’s his name? I’ll call him up and tell him not to take you.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Have you really thought this through, Ellie?” he asked. “Some parts of Derby County have more colored than white. Would you really feel all right with them being the majority when it comes to votin’? They’d make laws that favor themselves. Before you know it, we’d be the minority.”

“I thought you said you weren’t a racist?”

“I’m just playing devil’s advocate.”

“I’m not going to tell Mama and Daddy until I know for sure SCOPE will take me,” I said, changing the subject. “But let me be the one to tell them. Okay?”

He laughed. “I promise you I’ll just sit back and watch,” he said. “With Aunt Carol gone, it’s been a while since we had a good fireworks show ’round here.”





Chapter 7



KAYLA


2010

My father, Rainie, and I head to the new house late in the afternoon after I get home from work. I’m not excited about going.

I fell asleep easily last night, but that red-haired woman came to me in a dream. She carried a gun and it was clearly me she was after. When I woke up, I had to get out of bed and walk around the quiet house until the image of her—the memory of her—was gone, or at least had faded. Then at the office this morning, I constantly looked over my shoulder. I keep wondering if I might one day soon read about a murder in the paper, a murder I could have somehow prevented.

We approach the Main Street intersection. I turn left onto Main and drive past the Round Hill Theater, where my middle school boyfriends and I used to make out in the back row, and the Food Lion, where I worked one summer a lifetime ago. Then I make a right onto Round Hill Road. We pass some newer developments, those clots of homes that seem to spring from the ground overnight, erasing trees and cornfields. That’s why Jackson and I’d been excited about Shadow Ridge, where the developers required the builders to retain so many of the trees.

The new granite entrance signs have been installed since my last visit—SHADOW RIDGE ESTATES in gold script on a dark background. Embarrassingly ostentatious, I think, as I turn onto Shadow Ridge Lane. The first house I see—the first house anyone would see as they drive into this developing neighborhood—is the old Hockley place. Buddy Hockley refuses to sell to the developers, who would like to squeeze two more houses into the wide lot where the big white, red-roofed house stands. The house is ancient, and although it couldn’t be more different from the style of house I love to design, I think it’s beautiful. There’s something appealing about the broad porch with the rockers that look like they’ve been there forever. It’s an inviting “come over and have a glass of sweet tea” sort of porch. But the Hockley house is an abomination to everyone else who is having a house built on Shadow Ridge Lane.

I’ve heard that Buddy Hockley is terminally ill now—I don’t know with what—so I’m sure the developers are ready to pounce on their heirs, whoever they might be.

I’m so used to seeing only a dusty old dark blue pickup in the Hockley driveway that I’m actually startled to see a white sedan behind it. An aide? A visitor? A grown child?

“Does Buddy Hockley have children, Daddy?” I ask as we pass the driveway.

My father seems to be studying the white car as well. “Buddy had a daughter but she passed a few years back,” he says. “Wife passed too. Only family left besides his mother is a sister, Eleanor—Ellie—but she lives in California. Left when she was young and never came back.”

“Will Daddy be at the new house?” Rainie interrupts our conversation from the back seat. My heart cramps at her question and I can’t answer right away.

My father reaches over to touch my shoulder. He gives it a squeeze. Be strong, he’s saying.

“No, honey,” I say. “Daddy won’t be there. Remember I told you that he’s in heaven?” It breaks my heart that she still doesn’t get it that Jackson is gone for good. It breaks my heart that she’ll never get to know him, and that he’ll never have the chance to see his little girl grow up.

“Oh right. I forgetted,” Rainie says, without the slightest hint of pain in her voice. “I wish he’d come back though.”

“So do we, honey,” I say. “And I know he misses you as much as you miss him.”

Both sides of Shadow Ridge Lane are lined with white construction vans, and the sound of hammering and drilling and sawing cuts right through the car windows. I am sick to death of the sounds of construction. The houses are in various stages of completion, and—not counting the Hockley house—there will be nineteen altogether, eight on the north side, ten on the south, and one at the very end of the street. That is ours. Or, I guess, mine. It’s an undeniably stunning house—a sleek wood-and-glass Frank Lloyd Wright–inspired contemporary, finished and waiting for the furniture to arrive on Saturday. I wish the furniture would arrive next year, instead, when we’d at least have some neighbors to get to know. I have such a love/hate feeling about our “dream house” now.