Chapter 1 – Vale
HAPPINESS IS A HOT GEORGIA SUMMER
VALE
It’s late June, the third week into my summer vacation.
I’m eighteen years old with all kinds of ideas for what this summer will be, but my Gramps has other ideas of course.
“Hard work is what your generation doesn’t understand.
Someone has to teach you, and since your parents are off saving the souls of nonbelievers, I’m the only one you have.
You’re going to succeed in life if it’s the last thing I do. ”
Gramps is still mad at my mother. She gave up her dreams to marry the pastor of the Flaming Righteous Church.
Gramps doesn’t have a problem with religion, he has a problem with how my father forcibly removed his daughter from medical school so she could do God’s work.
He’s mad because my mother was kept away from her family for being deemed nonbelievers.
Gramps says that’s the hallmark of a cult.
I don’t actually believe in my parents’ religion, but it affects every aspect of my life outside of Silver Springs, Georgia.
It’s hard to leave it behind, even harder not to hear my father’s words echoing inside my brain every time I do something he’d deem evil, which is almost everything because I’m female.
I don’t want that life. I don’t believe in their uptight beliefs or the way they force those beliefs on others. I’m not an atheist though. I know there’s something out there, I just don’t know what it is yet. In my opinion, not knowing is just fine, even if I have to hide that fact from my parents.
What I want is freedom from my upbringing, freedom from my parents, and eventually I’ll get it. I want to live out fantasies denied me. Most of all, I want to be free, free to make my own decisions, free to do whatever it is I want.
That’s why I’m grateful for the summers I’ve spent with my Gramps in Silver Springs.
It’s the safest place because my parents aren’t here, and they never will be.
Not once had they shown up while I was with Gramps.
Without the threat of them, I’m able to breathe for a little while, to live in peace.
I don’t have to worry all day about my simplest actions.
Or about my father exorcising my demons with his hands wrapped around my throat, stealing the breath from my lungs.
I don’t live in constant fear of stepping over some perceived line.
Living without that fear is something I hold precious in my heart.
I’ve needed these summer breaks to survive.
Unlike my parents, Gramps wants me to know who I am, what I like, what I don’t like.
He tries to broaden my horizons. He wants me to experience life and to be happy.
During our summers together, he’d play music he didn’t like just so I could figure out what I liked.
He’d buy records from the flea market and play them in his office.
When I’d played punk records for hours on end in his office, he hadn’t gotten mad—though he did move the record player to my bedroom where he wouldn’t have to hear “Blitzkrieg Bop” one more time.
Then, when I fell in love with the universe as a child, my Gramps had a platform built onto the screened-in sleeping porch connected to the old master suite on the top floor so I could study the stars.
Grandma and Gramps had bought me my first telescope after a trip to the U.S.
Space & Rocket Center. It wasn’t allowed in my parents’ house and immediately found its way into the trash when I got home.
My time was better spent on my knees, in prayer, not gazing at the stars, my father had told me.
So I stopped bringing my telescopes and equipment home.
They stayed with Gramps for safekeeping.
I’d learned my lesson. I learned to shut down when I went back to them.
I wore a disguise whenever my parents were near.
They didn’t know me at all. It was safer that way.
But every year, I’d look forward to the summer and the freedom of staying up late and staring at the stars from my own little observation deck.
Gramps is the best man I’ve ever met, and I respect him.
He never pushes me too hard or too quickly to be something I’m not.
And though he’s overprotective in some ways, like with his “no dating policy,” he understands my lack of freedom at home.
I have very few responsibilities here, and he lets me get away with almost anything as long as I let him shape my moldable mind.
Mostly, I’m to read a list of books he advises and do a few chores.
Other than that, I’m free. I get to hang out with friends, and I’m even learning to drive.
Gramps has been teaching me for the last three years—four if you count the go-karts we used to zip around the neighborhood in back before his hips started hurting.
Even though my parents had told us no when I wanted to get my license the summer I turned sixteen, it was the first thing Gramps asked me about when I got off the plane in Atlanta this summer, “When are you going to take your driving test?”
But my father had warned me before I left, promising no end of punishment if I went against his rules. I have nothing left to take away but my weekly calls to Gramps, and they’re what got me through the long weeks locked in my bedroom, so I can’t break their rules, not if it means losing him.
There are only two houses left in the historic district on Hudson Street, and they sit right next to each other in a lonely neighborhood at the edge of the “boonies” as my best friend Kat calls it: Gramps’s and the house next door.
The rest of the neighborhood, where once beautiful Victorian homes used to stand, is now just large, vegetation-covered lots, with tall, spindly pine trees dressed in silvery-green Spanish moss that dances in the breeze.
Those lots always reminded me of some postapocalyptic world, one where most of the humans are gone, and nature is a silent beast, sleeping underground and waiting for its perfect moment of sunlight and dew before bursting to life and taking over once again.
Gramps’s house stood like the last bastion of humanity fighting off an intimidating forest with manicured lawns and brightly colored flower beds. It isn’t scary for me though. I like the peace, and how it muffles the existence of nearby town.
The other house, however, had once been a grand Queen Anne, but after the previous owner passed, some thirty years ago, it’s sat abandoned.
With no family, it went up for auction several years back, making my grandfather worry that the neighborhood would be developed, but even after someone bought it, it’s still sat empty.
The decorative spindles had long been broken and splintered, and part of one cantilever had caved in, leaving pieces hanging morosely.
The clapboards had aged to dark brown, and the rot was covered in the green algae that builds up in humid climates.
Even with all that damage it was beautiful.
Some of the kids in town said it was haunted, and I found myself staring up at its second-floor windows, at how dark they were, and wondering if the ghost there was friendly or something more sinister.
I didn’t really believe there were ghosts in there, but I’d seen enough horror movies that it made me anxious, so I stopped looking at those darkened windows for fear that one day there would be something there, looking back.
I’d hoped someone would finally move into the big house, then, last year, Gramps told me about the construction crews from New Orleans that came to restore it.
With a little work, it’s now the prettiest house in Silver Springs.
Grand it is once more, painted in varying shades of bright white, robin’s-egg and navy blue.
Witch’s caps of gray slate with bronze finials at the tips stand tall over the gabled roof.
The decorative spindles are back in all their delicate glory.
Garlands wrap around the front, and the paintwork is so detailed I can’t wait to see it up close.
They had manicured the front lawn in bright green turf grass with flower beds of contrasting deep red roses.
The color of the roses pop against the delicate blue of the lacy clapboard.
The eye’s drawn to the intricate facade, the inviting bay windows.
I long to see the interior, knowing it’ll be just as spectacular as the painstakingly revived facade.
“I think they’re here.” I’m jerked away from my childhood memories by an excited Gramps.
I jump off the porch swing and watch as the movers close up their trucks. One by one, they drive onto Hudson Street like good little soldiers in a row, not even offering a wave when Gramps nods his head toward them.
One person stays behind, a man we’d seen before but who hadn’t introduced himself. He stands out like a sore thumb. Where the movers wore white coveralls and gauze slippers over their work boots, this man wore dark, fitted suits, no matter the temperature.
Today, the man had parked behind Gramps’s old, powder-blue Mustang, so Gramps dons his hat and leaves the porch to greet him.
They chat for several minutes while I watch a Carolina wren searching for insects amongst the hydrangeas in the flower bed.
I look up just as the stranger hands Gramps a large gold envelope.
Just like that, he’s gone, turning left onto Hudson Street and heading for the highway in town.
Once again, the house next door is empty of life.
“What was that about?” I ask.
“He’s a lawyer all the way from New Orleans.
He wanted me to pass the key along to the owner.
Their flight was delayed, and he couldn’t stick around.
He didn’t want to leave the keys on the porch.
Didn’t think it was safe. Who would steal it out here?
” he says flabbergasted, taking offense to the lawyer’s insinuation that the neighborhood isn’t safe.
It’s the safest neighborhood in Georgia—we’re the only ones in it.