Chapter 10
“C uzco?”
“It’s in Peru,” I said.
“It’s just an idea. I wouldn’t go until everything around here has settled down more, anyway.”
“I think we’re doing ok,” Marc said cautiously.
We both stepped down from his truck and into Caleb’s driveway, and Sir hopped after me.
I praised him for waiting so nicely.
“The well is a problem, though,” my cousin continued.
I had also been afraid of that, and we’d been waiting to hear from the drilling company.
“I hope it’s not going to be expensive.”
Marc’s face told me that yes, it was going to be.
“We’ll see. I never heard you talk about Peru before.”
We walked toward the barn, me in the new boots I’d gotten that were much better at jobsites than my sparkly heels had been.
We were going to work together for a long time so I’d bought a good pair so I’d be prepared.
“It doesn’t have to be Cuzco,” I explained, “although that does look very interesting. I was thinking about travel in general.”
“It’s a long distance away. Have you ever gone anywhere by yourself?”
“By myself?” I thought back and remembered traveling to North Carolina to party at the university in Chapel Hill.
I’d gotten a ride with some people I’d kind of known from a former job in Chattanooga, but had then been stranded the next day when they’d driven back to Tennessee without me.
I’d woken up late wearing someone else’s shirt and covered in what I’d hoped was my own vomit.
There had been another trip, too.
“I flew to California,” I reminded him.
My parents had paid for my first rehab out there, so I’d gone by myself after they’d walked me to security at the airport and then waited until the flight took off to make sure that I didn’t come back out.
I had only blurred memories of that miserable place, mostly just awful smells and the sounds of crying.
“Peru’s a lot farther.” Marc sounded concerned.
“Why don’t you ask Aria to go with you?”
Because everyone had more important things to do, that was why.
Aria and the rest of my family had responsibilities of their own, like careers and companies, spouses and partners, and kids who needed them.
I had my job with Marc but he’d be ok without me for a while.
I had Sir but I imagined that he’d be happy to stay with anyone who had cheese in their fridge.
I could pay for his upkeep and while he’d be happy to see me again, I doubted he’d miss me much while I was gone.
“I think I would like traveling by myself. I think,” I added.
I also thought about how my parents would react to the idea, and I knew it would be with a whole lot of worry.
“Again, I’d plan it all out with you in advance, so I wouldn’t leave you shorthanded.”
“I know you wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t mind getting away, too,” Marc said, and sighed.
“Look at that mess.” He walked off toward a pile of construction debris near the barn and I continued toward the house with Sir.
He was doing a good job of staying with me but once we were near the front steps, I told him to go ahead and he ran at top speed.
It was warm today and Caleb had opened the doors while he worked on packing his office, so the dog ran right inside, too.
As nice as the weather was, though, I still shivered as I looked into the hallway where Sir had disappeared.
I decided to stay outside with Lara-Lee Woodson’s big desk, which I hadn’t looked into since the day that we’d tumbled off this porch.
The broken gap in the railing now had a two by four nailed across it, and the desk was covered by a dusty tarp.
I pulled that back and tugged at the top again.
My grandfather, my mom’s dad that I had never met, had owned a desk a lot like this one, and it had sat in my nana’s living room for years before she gave it away to her brother in McMinnville.
Hers, of course, had been neat and functional, and I’d loved to put up the top and then let it crash back down, the slats rattling.
She hadn’t enjoyed that as much.
I pulled hard and the top of Lara-Lee’s desk snapped back, also with a loud noise.
“It’s just me,” I called into the quiet house, in case anyone was worried.
But this place really did seem to absorb sound and there was no answer.
I started to move around piles of papers and documents, sorting the bills and invoices, the letters, and the reminder notes.
Those were from Lara-Lee to herself, it seemed, lots of “to do” lists with folded-over, yellowed tape at the top.
She must have stuck them around this desk and removed them when she’d completed the tasks.
But why had she kept them at all?
Why had she saved this electrical bill from three years before, which was marked “paid” at the top in the same cramped handwriting that I recognized from all the notebooks she’d piled around her bedroom?
The woman was a slob, I thought, but I didn’t say it out loud this time.
I’d been remembering how the front door had slammed when I’d insulted her before.
Not that she was listening, but it hadn’t been a nice thing for me to do, especially not with her son around.
I kept sorting and straightening, enjoying the warmth of the day and listening to the work happening in the barn.
No one was yelling or upset, and it went on steadily.
It sounded like music to me.
After a while, Sir padded back out onto the porch and nosed my hip to say hello before he lay exactly in the spot where I would trip over him if I moved at all.
I didn’t enjoy being at this farmhouse, but things seemed peaceful now.
There wasn’t even a breeze to blow things around, which had also happened the last time I’d been out here and looking at this crap.
I finally forced enough order onto her mess that I could access the little drawers and slots at the back of the desk, which I’d also loved to play with as a kid.
I’d taken my nana’s ring and put it one of the drawers, I remembered, but I had forgotten what I’d done with it afterwards and she hadn’t thought that was very fun game…
yeah, maybe I hadn’t been the brightest child.
The first small drawer at the back of Lara-Lee’s desk was full of slips of paper, which turned out to be mostly gas station receipts.
I thought so, anyway, but a lot of them were so old that the print had faded away.
The second drawer held expired credit cards, car and health insurance cards, and even old library cards—one was for the library on Signal Mountain and her signature on it looked like a young girl’s, a lot rounder and with more curls than the other examples that I’d seen of her handwriting.
But the contents of the third drawer made my jaw drop.
It was stuffed, absolutely to the brim, with chocolate bar wrappers…
his mother had kept a stash of candy hidden in this desk!
Caleb had told me how he’d sucked eggs because he was so hungry.
No treats, he’d said.
No cake, no ice cream.
No candy! But she’d been having it, the sneak.
“This is terrible!” I told Sir.
“She was off in the barn eating chocolate and she didn’t share with her son.”
He picked up his head.
“I do share with you,” I reminded him.
He’d even had a little bite of ice cream at my birthday party, but that had been from my dad.
“Let’s see what else she was hiding.” I did find more wrappers and every time that happened, I got even angrier until I was cussing under my breath.
One little drawer, though, was stuck.
I tugged hard on the metal knob but it didn’t move, and jiggling didn’t help.
Neither did more cussing.
Sir suddenly stood up but when I looked, his tail was wagging.
It was because Caleb was coming to join us, and he smiled when he saw me.
“Hello, Kayleigh. It’s nice out here,” he said, “nicer than inside.”
“Hi! Are you done taking your computer apart?”
He nodded.
“Just about. I need help with one of the monitors I have clamped onto the desk, though. What did you find in there?”
“Oh, just, um, nothing upsetting.” I didn’t want him to know about the candy wrappers.
How would it have felt to realize that while he was going hungry, his own mother was hiding food from him?
I quickly closed those drawers but then pointed to the one that was stuck.
“I can’t get this open.”
Caleb pulled it, too, with the same result: it stayed shut.
“I can find a screwdriver,” he said, but I wanted to get him away from those wrappers.
“No, that’s ok, it probably just has more old receipts inside. It looks like she saved everything.”
“I’ll bring out a garbage bag and we can toss stuff,” he said, picking up a faded paper and peering at it.
“This is from the previous century. This gas company doesn’t even exist anymore.”
“We don’t have to do it right now. Let me help you with your computer.” The sooner we did that, the sooner we could go.
Sir took the opportunity to walk tightly at my side as we entered the house, bumping against my knee down a hallway that wasn’t that wide to begin with and making it much more difficult to move.
I didn’t mind feeling him there, though.
With Caleb’s office now mostly empty, the house was even darker and more of a creepy time capsule.
“If you can go behind the desk and hold the monitor so that it doesn’t fall, I’ll get underneath and loosen the clamp,” Caleb directed, and I squeezed myself back there and carefully held the screen as he crawled somewhere around my feet to unscrew where the arm held it steady.
“Ok…no, Sir, you can’t help with this. You’re a good friend.” I heard his muffled laugh.
“He put his head on my chest,” he called up to me.
“Silly guy.” A piece of my hair had drifted and was brushing against my neck, so I blew at it from the side of my mouth.
“Are you pinned?” I asked.
“Almost. His head must weigh thirty pounds. Ok, I’m going to loosen up the clamp.” The monitor rocked.
I held it carefully and also tried to wipe off the tickle on my neck against my shirt.
When we were done here, I would go with Caleb back into town and help him set up the office he’d rented in the old bank building that I’d told him about.
He’d gone to check it out and had decided that yes, he would be more comfortable in a place with adequate lighting, heat and air, and no terrible memories.
“I don’t know why I didn’t leave here before,” he mentioned, his voice a little muffled by the desk and by Sir.
I shrugged but kept hold of the screen.
“Sometimes I get stuck in ideas,” I answered.
“As soon as I moved to your house up on Signal, I realized that I’d believed that I had to live close to my family because they would worry if I was farther away. But now, I think they’re ok with the distance. I could move back to Chattanooga, where I used to have an apartment or I could be on Lookout Mountain, near Cassidy. Why not?”
“Why not?” he echoed.
“But you like where you are, don’t you?”
“I definitely do,” I assured him.
“But I could go somewhere else! And I was just telling Marc that I’d also enjoy going to Cuzco, like we saw in the video.”
“Just you, by yourself?” he asked.
“Well, I couldn’t take Sir out of the country, and I think he would be miserable on those long flights.”
“As would everyone else in the entire air…hell.” There were a few thumps and Caleb crawled back out.
“I have to go get some pliers. It’s a little loose, though, so you can’t let go.” He looked at my arms. “Are you all right there, holding it?”
“There’s no weight, and I’m only keeping it from crashing forward. I’m good,” I assured him.
“Wait, take it for a second.” He leaned over the desk to steady the monitor, his chest in my face, and I was finally able to rub away the tickle on my neck that had been driving me nuts.
“Ok, now I’m really good.”
I hummed a little under my breath as he walked out.
“I think I’ll sing,” I told Sir.
His beard brushed lightly against my leg beneath the desk.
“How about a little Loretta Lynn, my namesake?” I looked around at the dark corners of the room.
It was like a cave in here now that Caleb had removed all his extra lighting, and I couldn’t hear anything of the construction even though the barn really wasn’t that far away.
I couldn’t hear Caleb, either, wherever he’d gone in the house.
“You know what? I think that I’ll sing ‘Keep on the Sunny Side.’ Cass, Aria, Amory, Aubree, and I used to perform it as a quintet for our Grandma McCourt. There’s a lot of good advice in this song.”
I felt his whiskers again and I bit my lip and looked at the door.
Why was it taking Caleb so long to find a damn tool?
I cleared my throat and started off.
“There’s a dark and a troubled side of life, there’s a bright and a sunny side, too.”
My voice had cracked and I stopped.
“What do you think, Sir? Do you like that one so far?”
He never talked back, which was a bit of a letdown.
But he usually made some kind of noise, like a huff or a snort.
“Sir?” I cleared my throat again.
“Caleb?” I called. “Caleb!”
It was so quiet.
I wanted to leave, but I couldn’t let go of his nice monitor.
Marc, who admired expensive computer things, had told me that he bet it went for more than a thousand bucks, just this one piece of glass and plastic!
If I let go, it might fall and break.
I heard myself breathing faster, like I was running.
“Sir?”
Something brushed against my leg again and I froze.
“Sir?” I repeated, but he still didn’t make any sound.
And then the idea entered my mind that it wasn’t my dog touching me.
It wasn’t my dog touching me…
what was it? What—who was under the desk?
“Sir? Caleb? Caleb! Caleb!” I screamed his name and then I did hear the front door open, and feet running—human and dog.
The two of them burst into this dark tomb.
“Kayleigh? What’s the matter?”
“Something’s touching me! Something’s touching me!” I kept yelling.
He reached over and took his screen and I rushed out from behind that stupid desk so that I could see underneath.
There was nothing there.
I shivered and ran my hands up and down my bare legs, because I had felt it.
“There was something touching me and at first, I thought it was Sir, but he wasn’t even in here,” I said.
“He left before I did, when I was holding this for you. I heard Marc calling me and we went outside, and the front door must have blown shut.”
But there wasn’t any wind today.
“There was something touching me,” I echoed.
“It was so quiet and I felt it.”
“Uh, ok.” He looked at me, eyebrows drawn down.
“When I unscrew this, it might to be too heavy for you to hold. Can you and Sir go get Marc?”
“I don’t want to leave you in here alone.”
“Kayleigh, this is my house.” Now he sounded slightly annoyed.
“I’m fine.”
Right.
“Sorry. It was probably a spider,” I said, and I did run out to get my cousin.
The door was open and sunlight streamed in the yard outside, but it didn’t reach too far into the rooms. The roof of the porch seemed to block it and the windows were probably filthy.
I hurried out into the sun and over to Marc, with Sir jogging happily along beside me.
“What’s the matter with you?” my cousin asked, peering at my face.
“Nothing! Go help inside,” I ordered.
“Please.” He strode off and we looked around the barn before we walked back toward the trucks.
Caleb was just carrying out that last monitor, which really didn’t seem very heavy at all.
Pets were, fortunately, allowed in his new office building, so Sir and I were able to help with unpacking, too.
My dog’s primary job was to steady my nerves.
I had been really scared, although now I could see that I’d worked myself up into it, just like when I’d been a kid and had thrown angry fits about one thing or another.
My Lord, my parents had been saints.
“I don’t need to do everything right now,” Caleb finally said, which was good because my arms were tired.
It seemed that all the running we’d been doing hadn’t really worked to strengthen my upper-body muscles very much.
“It’s such a nice office. We should get some plants for you,” I offered as I looked around.
It was very sunny, very light, which was good for growing things.
I believed that it was also better for people.
“I can water them from a bottle I’ll carry around, rather than drinking the liquid myself,” he suggested—and for the first time since I’d had the problem in the farmhouse, he smiled at me.
“I’m sorry about what I did before,” I said.
He sat in the bed of his truck and Sir effortlessly jumped to join him, so I climbed up, too.
“You were really scared,” he said.
“I’m sorry. I’m sure there was a moth or a spider or something, and I talked myself into it. I don’t usually do that,” I promised.
“I’m not fearful. My mother was worried when I moved into my apartment alone, since it was the first time I’d lived by myself, but I was fine. I like it better with Sir, though.” He huffed and put his heavy chin on my leg.
“I like it better with you, too,” I added to Caleb.
Because, really, it was a lot more fun now that he’d moved up on the mountain with us.
It was odd when I came downstairs for coffee and I’d run into him as he sat shirtless in the kitchen.
Odd, but lovely, too.
“I lived alone for a lot of years,” he mentioned.
“My last roommate was when I was in college, and since then, I’ve been on my own.”
“It must be an adjustment to have me and Sir around,” I said.
“It’s funny to hear someone else in the house. I can hear you singing,” he explained.
“Sorry.”
“No, I like it. I like having dinner together.”
“We’re really bad at cooking,” I pointed out.
“The family leftovers are great, and your aunt Paula invited me over on Saturday to teach me. She and I have been texting,” he said.
“What?”
“She thinks that one person in the house should be proficient in the kitchen, and you’re a lost cause so it’s down to me.”
That did sound like Aunt Paula.
“She’s a really good cook,” I had to admit.
“I hope she teaches you how to make her white cornbread.”
“I’m already on it,” Caleb assured me.
“Besides our diet, I like riding to work together and we can do that more now that I won’t have to go all the way out to the farmhouse.” I nodded and shivered a little.
“Are you sure it was just a spider and imagination?”
I nodded again, now feeling embarrassed.
“I’m sorry.”
“I was glad to leave,” he told me.
But for him, it was the memories, and I had scared myself into thinking…
what? I was being attacked by moths?
“We can go back together and finish sorting your mom’s stuff,” I offered.
“I’m not in a rush. Isn’t Sir’s class tonight?”
“It’s the last one before graduation. I’m going to make him a cap and gown for that,” I said.
The dog’s eyebrows raised and he huffed again, but he would agree to wear it when he saw how good he looked.
“We could even have a party for him.”
“You didn’t want a birthday party for yourself, but you’re interested in a dog’s graduation?” Caleb laughed behind his knuckles.
“I’m not going to invite the whole family. Maybe just my parents and Aria,” I said.
I wanted to give my mom and dad something nice.
There was so much they were going to miss and that I’d already ruined for them, but this was a way I could show a little appreciation.
“I’ll make a cake,” I decided.
“I’ll write ‘Congrats Sir’ on it and maybe I’ll try to pipe out a picture of a piece of cheese. I’ll decorate the house with flowers like my cousin Prue does, because she’s so good at it. I’ll spend a long time on my hair so that it will turn out well, really well.”
“Can I help with this? Not your hair, but the food portion?”
“I would love that!” I told him.
“You know what would be good? If you could make a big bowl of punch.” We would need a set with matching cups and a ladle, but Aunt Paula would definitely have that.
“Uh, ok.” He paused.
“I can’t think of the last time I even saw a punch bowl.”
“If you make it instead of me, they’ll all be sure that no one doctored it up with liquor.”
“They wouldn’t think that about you,” he said quietly.
He was wrong, and based on my past behavior, they were right to doubt me.
But doing things like planning a party would help to demonstrate that I was also an adult—no, not as good as Aria and Cassidy, but maybe getting there.
Because I really had changed.
I nodded, doing a mental affirmation.
I had! A nice cake would be a good step to show them.
After a quick dinner, Sir and I got ready to go to his class.
It meant me putting on jeans (in case of falling) and my running shoes (in case of squirrels if we practiced walking in the neighborhood).
He really was so much better but there was no reason to take unnecessary risks.
When I came back downstairs, Caleb was waiting at the door with the dog’s leash in his hand.
“I thought that I’d go too, if you don’t mind,” he told me.
“That’s great! The teacher is always wanting the whole household to be involved. And we’re kind of a household, now,” I added.
It was a little like being Sir’s parents, wasn’t it?
We were kind of his mother and father, and here we were going to school with him.
I smiled all the way to the church rec room where the class was held, and I introduced Caleb to the other participants, dog and human.
“And this is the instructor, Neal,” I told him.
“Neal, this is Caleb.”
“Hello,” the teacher said, extending his hand.
“I love having Kayleigh here.”He smiled at me.
“Is that right?” Caleb asked, and Neal laughed.
“She makes the class a lot more appealing. Let’s get started.”
One person not having fun in the class: Caleb.
My nana had a word for when I’d acted in the same way, a behavior that she really disliked.
“Don’t be sulky, Kayleigh Lynn,” she used to tell me.
Caleb frowned, didn’t speak, and stared balefully at the teacher for the duration of the class.
He got nothing from it, as far as I could tell, and he didn’t even seem to notice that Sir was (by far) the sweetest and best-looking student.
At the end, he quickly collected the leash and the dog and I followed him out, glad it was over.
“You didn’t like it,” I said as we climbed into the truck.
That was stating the obvious.
“I didn’t like the instructor. Does he always flirt with you?”
“He’s that kind of person.”
“No, he wasn’t coming on to me or to anyone else there. Just you. Has he asked you out yet?”
“In a way, but I said no,” I answered.
“What does ‘in a way’ mean?” he immediately questioned.
“He asked if I would go out with him when the class was over. But I said no,” I repeated.
“I think he likes Sir.” The dog leaned against me.
“You’re squishing me,” I told him.
“Sir, come over here,” Caleb ordered.
“It’s not about the dog, Kayleigh.”
“Neal is a very good trainer,” I said.
“Sir has learned so much. I told him no, I wasn’t interested, and that was the end. Was that why you were acting so sulky?”
“Was I being sulky?”
“Yes,” I said, but I was remembering other things my nana had told me about jealousy: Caleb wouldn’t have acted sulky unless he cared.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I didn’t mean to be an ass. It was unbelievable how unprofessional that guy acted. His job, what everyone paid him for, is to work with all the dogs but he wasted everyone’s time giggling over you. If I were another participant in the class, I’d tell him that I want a refund.”
“Oh, well, I guess that is annoying,” I agreed.
As a person who worked on earning money for investors, it did make sense that he’d look at the situation through that lens rather than the jealousy angle that I’d been imagining.
We went the rest of the short distance home in silence, where Caleb said that he was going to take Sir for a walk.
“It’s really dark,” I noted, but he thought they’d be fine and I shrugged.
Fine. I settled on my couch to look up flights to Cuzco and thought about who might take Sir, and for how long.
I researched dog boarding rates and also figured out how I could force my relatives to take money for watching him, which they would try to refuse.
Everything added up and it would be an expensive trip—and not one that I’d be able to afford in the near-future, not with what I got paid and not with how much I was paying out for Sir’s expenses and for repairs on this house.
They walked for a while, and Sir took a big drink and went right to his soft pink bed when they got back.
“He tired you out?” I asked sympathetically, and his tail wagged but his eyes stayed closed.
I heard Caleb moving around in the kitchen before he joined me.
“I’m sorry for how I acted,” he told me right off.
“It’s ok,” I answered.
“I just wanted you to like the class and see how well Sir was doing.” His tail swished once in response to his name.
Caleb sat next to me.
“I did see, and he was great.”
“Neal may be too focused on some dogs over others, but he’s a good trainer.”
“You’ve also put in a lot of work, because I know how much you and Sir have been practicing what you’ve learned. You must have done better in school than you told me.”
“No, I really didn’t,” I said.
“I think, maybe, if I’d put in time with academic stuff like I do with dog stuff, I could have gotten better grades.”
“I bet you would have done very well. You could go back, if you wanted.”
“I could,” I agreed, thinking about it.
“I never even considered college, but I could. Thank you for saying that.”
“I mean it,” he told me.
“I think you’ll do well in whatever you want to…uh, hell.”
“It’s just nice to hear,” I said, wiping off my cheeks.
“I barely graduated. Barely, with the absolute minimum, and I like to think that I could have been a real student.”
“Why did you do poorly? You must have been as smart back then as you are…hell.” He got up and fetched some paper towels from the kitchen.
“Thank you,” I said again, and used them.
“I did poorly in school because I was wild. I paid attention to boys and to the next party, and that was about it. I didn’t listen to anyone who told me to knock it off and settle down. I was terrible.”
“How bad could you have been?”
“Awful,” I assured him.
“That’s why I ended up in rehab, twice.”
“I understand that. But you couldn’t have been thoroughly terrible, because a lot of people love you. When you walk in, they smile and come over to hug and kiss you,” he pointed out.
“You’re still best friends with your two cousins, even if you don’t see them as much. I understand that you had problems with drugs and alcohol, but that wasn’t the only thing in you.”
I thought for a moment.
“When I look back, all I can remember is how bad I acted, how I was rude and bratty and how I took so many risks.”
“Aunt Paula said that you were always her favorite.”
“What?” I turned to look at him.
“Really?”
“Really, and it wasn’t because I was already buttering her up to get the cornbread recipe. She told me that she’d always liked you so much, and she listed off a whole bunch of reasons why. She said you used to organize singing parties for your grandmother when she was sick and you would talk to her for hours. She said you were fun and she looked forward to when you and your parents would come to events because you’d always make her smile. She thinks you have spunk.”
“That’s also nice,” I told him.
“There’s are a lot of reasons why people like you. Come over here and I’ll tell you more,” he invited.
He opened his arm and I snuggled against him, and he kept telling me a whole lot of things.
Some were obviously from Aunt Paula but he added others that were his own opinions.
It was all very, very nice, and it almost made me forget that feeling of something touching…
but I didn’t think about that.
I listened to Caleb talk about all the reasons that maybe, I wasn’t as bad as I’d believed.