6. Chapter 6
“She went nuts when I tried giving her money. So I bought her a house instead.”
Jason Sr. had explained to Lindsey last Christmas from the study of his sprawling two-story home.
A home Lindsey Adams inherited.
She couldn’t see her name on the deed without going cross-eyed.
After getting back to Ohio, she’d spent one night at her apartment before Aldus Whitlock, the Young family’s attorney, broke the news: Jason Young Sr. left her his house and grounds in the will, and insisted she take up residence immediately while Whitlock contacted the boys.
Jase and Graham, who didn’t have a clue their childhood home had been given to Graham’s ex-girlfriend, Jase’s former…
Former what? Lover? The word had such a tacky connotation, and a distinct ring of truth. Lindsey had, briefly, been one of Jase’s many, many lovers.
It was hard to sleep in that giant house alone, and nearly impossible once Graham and his fiancée showed up two nights ago after meandering back to Ohio in the 1967 Ford Country Squire wagon they had all taken across the country a few weeks earlier.
Since the trip, Lindsey needed help from pinot noir to doze off and still woke in the middle of the night to stare at the ceiling, not thinking about where Jase was, what he was doing, or who he was doing it with until she fell asleep again. But at least it had been quiet.
Graham and Helen didn’t know the meaning of the word.
Last night Lindsey left the spare bedroom across the upstairs hall from where Graham was bringing his fiancée endless rounds of pleasure and curled up on a chaise lounge in the study, squinting at the tiny letters in an old Chaucer collection—definitely not thinking about where Jase was, what he was doing, or who he was doing it with—and finally drifting into a light sleep.
Up before the spirited lovers, Lindsey opened the blinds to take in the study in the daylight.
Last Christmas, Jason Sr. had welcomed her inside with a drink and a cigar.
Today the lanterns on the wall were dark, but the aromas of book bindings and old tobacco lingered.
She ran her fingertips along the spines of collector’s edition hard covers.
It gave her a small thrill to be surrounded by more books than she could probably read in a lifetime.
There were two chairs poised in front of the cold fireplace, and two more in front of the giant wooden desk.
She set her hands on the back of the chair she’d sat in at Christmas, when bourbon had given her the courage to look Graham’s dad in the eye and dispel all the lies her then-boyfriend had told him.
“I didn’t meet Graham online. Actually, he was meeting a woman from a dating app and she never showed. I was the bartender.”
Was still, until a few weeks ago, a bartender, not the journalist Graham had claimed.
“So what?” Jason Sr. had said from behind his desk. “I met my wife when she was just a waitress.”
It had been a relief to learn Lindsey’s profession, or lack thereof, didn’t offend the wealthy man, especially in a room paying homage to other writers who managed to put pen to paper.
Her own parents, unaccustomed to their children failing, never let her forget what a mistake she’d made quitting school before she became an “-ist” of any kind (mixologist certainly didn’t count), her father’s only daughter and only non-professional of his otherwise successful children.
Behind Jason’s high-backed leather chair on the other side of the desk was a shelf of ratty paperbacks.
His favorites, he’d told her. There was a narrow gap where Lovers Who Wander used to fit, a surprisingly spicy book Jason Sr. had given her, about a couple who traveled the US on a motorcycle.
She’d read it cover to cover twice, and a few of her favorite scenes, marked by pink tabs, five or six times.
The attention the author, a J. T. Woodridge who didn’t seem to exist online, put into detailing the road, the love, and the sex—especially the sex—was inspiration for the care Lindsey would put into her own novel, if she ever wrote one.
If she ever experienced the kind of love worth writing about.
She turned away from the paperbacks, only to meet with the judgmental bindings of hundreds of other books staring her down.
Who was she kidding? The most writing she’d done in years was recounting the sex—both real and imagined—after her first night with Jase.
She doubted smut was the kind of writing Jason Sr. intended for her to do in the red leather journal he’d given her, and it certainly didn’t make for great literature.
Cliterature on the other hand…
To the left of the desk, encased in a glass box, was a partially burned first-edition Moby-Dick and a gold plate engraved with, Graham, stay out of my goddamn study.
She left the judgmental books to tour the house as if seeing it for the first time.
She couldn’t get used to the sheer size or that a place with such intricate details—beams on the vaulted ceiling in the den matching the mantel, quartz countertops, hardwood floors, wrought-iron lanterns lining every hall—belonged to her.
After arriving with the keys and deed, Lindsey had sipped red wine in front of the cast-iron fire pit on the patio, letting the bombshell of her inheritance settle in.
The next day the housekeeper, Mrs. Aldridge, walked Lindsey from room to room, explaining the particulars she’d need to know if she officially moved in.
The location of the breaker box in the darkest corner of the basement, the instructions above the ancient washing machine to advance it from the wash cycle to rinse, the drawer in the kitchen below the landline telephone where Jason kept important phone numbers: landscapers, plumbers, bourbon importers, Rocky’s Pizza.
Jason Sr. had arranged for basic maintenance (not including his usual monthly bourbon stipend) to continue as long as Lindsey owned the house, funded by a separate account that would be put in her name if she decided to stay.
There was also an account set up to keep Mrs. Aldridge comfortable for the rest of her days, which was currently paying for her well-earned month-long vacation.
The kitchen and dining room to the left of the entryway was strewn with dishes and smelled of last night’s pizza.
Pristine cabinets and stainless steel appliances aside, the mess reminded Lindsey of the frat house where one of her college boyfriends had lived, and would definitely be the starting place of her cleaning crusade.
In the den beside the dining room, Lindsey ran her finger along the mantel, the one spot in the house still clean as a whistle.
Facing the hearth sat two plush leather sofas, and on the far side of the den was the alcove leading to the back entrance, Mrs. Aldridge’s residence in the in-law suite, a bathroom, the study, and the sprawling primary suite.
On the first tour, the housekeeper had ushered Lindsey past Jason Sr.’s bedroom with a nod and ”You already know what’s in there.”
And who wasn’t in there anymore.
Lindsey hadn’t gone inside since she came to choose the suit Jason would be buried in and found Mrs. Aldridge hysterical in a pile of sheets she was trying to remove from the bed.
Slowly opening the door, Lindsey found the cream-colored sheets still clinging to a corner of the giant adjustable monstrosity Jason had called the Jetson bed.
One bedside table was covered with orange medicine bottles and on the other sat a weathered copy of The Alchemist and a half-full glass of water.
A glass of water. They really had left this room exactly as it was the day he died.
She heard a door shut upstairs. The lovers were awake, and Lindsey didn’t want to be around to say good morning.
She collected the sheets from Jason’s bed and the clothes at the bottom of his hamper, her mind drifting back to Christmas instead of focusing on the smells that reminded her of death.
Her conversation with Jason Sr. in his study had sealed her fate long before she ever laid eyes on Jase Young, his oldest son.
“Why do you suppose it’s taken Graham so long to bring you around?” Jason had asked. At the time she had been dating Graham for more than six months and they’d only just introduced each other to their families.
“He probably hasn’t made up his mind about me,” Lindsey had replied.
“Have you made up your mind about him?”
He seemed really interested in her answer, and since they were being honest, she’d said, “No, not really.”
He’d laughed and choked on cigar smoke. Clearing his throat with bourbon, Jason had said, “You know, I have a son you should meet.”
His throaty laugh. A tip of his glass. And a promise.
Not a promise, a warning.