Chapter 16. Birds of a Feather
BIRDS OF A FEATHER
WHITNEY
When I woke from my nap, I couldn’t stop thinking about the Carmichaels. Had they been honest with me earlier in the day? Or had they been lying through their perfect teeth?
The two wore sparkly sequined mini dresses, Bess in purple and Tess in pink.
Coordinating streaks adorned their pale hair.
Heavy stage makeup made them look a few years older than their actual age at the time.
They strutted the stage in ridiculously high heels, singing songs of teen angst and melodrama.
A boy they had a crush on who’d failed to notice them.
The heartache of a breakup. The betrayal of a frenemy.
The elation of that first kiss. The songs were cheesy and overwrought, but thirteen-year-old me would have known all the lyrics and sung them in the shower if the album hadn’t been released a decade before my adolescence.
By then, Taylor Swift had far surpassed the Grace Notes in sales and popularity, and I sang her songs instead.
Some artists, such as Amy Grant, had managed to cross over between pop and spiritual music.
I’d heard that Jessica Simpson, who had grown up singing in her church choir, was discovered singing at a church camp and signed to a gospel record deal.
Unfortunately, the record company folded before her album was released.
Her father raised the money to release the record independently.
Jessica attempted to get another gospel deal, but religious music publishers found her curves and pretty face to be off-putting.
She’d been shunned for being sexy even though, at the time, she didn’t flaunt her appearance.
She realized she’d have to shift gears, and turned to pop music.
Sony was fine with her sex appeal and signed her to a music contract.
Bess and Tess had gone in the opposite direction from Jessica Simpson, starting with pop music and trading it for religious songs.
I wondered why they’d decided to switch.
Maybe they feared that, like many teen idols, their shelf life would be limited and no one would take them seriously as artists once they became adults.
Or maybe their tastes and interests had simply changed as they’d grown up to become wives and mothers.
Maybe sales of their debut album hadn’t been high enough to land them a second pop record deal.
Whatever the reason, they’d segued into Christian rock and gospel by their early twenties.
Collin returned to the house, and I closed my laptop. I’d done enough sleuthing for one day. Time to spend some time with the man I loved and assemble our baby’s crib.
While he grabbed a bite to eat in the kitchen, I set things up in the garage, laying the wood out on a clean tarp along with the equipment we’d need.
A tape measure. A speed square. Wood glue.
Sandpaper. Clamps. Screws and an electric screwdriver.
I made sure my table saw, jigsaw, and miter saw were also at the ready.
I’d carefully measured and cut most of the wood by the time Collin joined me, dressed in an old, paint-splattered pair of my coveralls.
He ran his gaze over the materials. “How can I help?”
I lay a rectangular piece of medium-density fiberboard on my workbench, pulling it forward until a third of it hung over the edge. “Hold this board in place while I drill a couple of holes in it.”
He did as he was told, but asked, “What’s this piece for?”
“To support the mattress. The finger holes will make it easier to install and remove.”
I drilled the first hole, testing it with my index finger to make sure it was big enough, then turned the wood around to drill a second hole on the other side.
This task done, we set the board aside and started on the frame.
Again, Collin held things in place, sometimes assisted by clamps, as I glued and screwed various pieces of wood together to give the crib structure. We started on the side panels next.
As I bent down to affix one of the slats to the siderail, Collin asked, “Do you think I’ll be a good dad?”
Holding the wood glue poised for application, I looked up at him. His face was as tight as his grip on the wood. “You won’t be a good dad, Collin. You’ll be a great dad.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“The fact that you’re worried about it.” I was paraphrasing advice given to me by Colette when I’d expressed similar insecurities about my pending motherhood. “If you can handle hardened, homicidal criminals, you can handle a baby.”
“The baby scares me more than the criminals. Maybe we should sign up for a parenting class.”
“Can’t hurt,” I said. “And speaking of hurt, I’d like to do one of those birthing classes where they teach you how to breathe through the pain until the epidural takes effect.
” I had nothing against natural childbirth, but I’d banged my thumb with enough hammers to know that, if I could prevent myself from experiencing pain, I wanted to do it.
“I’ll sign us up.”
By the end of the evening, we’d finished assembling the crib and sanding it smooth.
Collin ran a hand over it. “Perfect workmanship.”
“All it needs now is the paint.”
He gave me a warm kiss and a big smile. “Leave that to Daddy.”
Gail and I met at the barn Monday morning.
I parked my SUV next to her car, then retrieved two sawhorses and a small piece of plywood from my cargo bay.
The ground had dried, though it was rough and rutted from all of the vehicles that had driven over it when it was muddy.
Tyler Yee. Me. Tyler’s killer. Deputy Swisher.
I carefully picked my way over to where Gail stood waiting in the doorway.
While the barn door where Tyler Yee had bled out still lay on the ground, the heavy rain had washed away all traces of his blood. It had soaked into the soil, joining the bones of Wobbling Womble and the blood, sweat, and tears of the people Womble had enslaved.
Like Buck had earlier, Gail offered me an out. “If Tyler’s murder has changed your mind about remodeling the barn, I’ll understand. I won’t hold you to it.”
“I appreciate that,” I said, “but I’m more determined than ever to give this barn a new identity.
” Its history was important and would never be forgotten, we’d make sure of that, but we needed to look to the future, too.
I set up the sawhorses and placed the plywood atop them to form a makeshift table just inside the door.
“Did you bring the survey? I’ll need to make sure our work doesn’t interfere with any easements. ”
“Got it right here.” She pulled a manila envelope from her purse and handed it to me.
I opened the envelope, pulled out the survey, and unfolded it, spreading it across the plywood.
A telltale dotted line and the abbreviation “U.E.” indicated a utility easement running alongside the driveway and up to the pole at the end with the wires that connected to the barn.
A drainage easement ran along the riverbank.
Such an easement was typical, and necessary for stormwater management and flood control.
To my surprise, though, there were no demarcations indicating an easement along the gravel road that ran outside the back fence of the Victory Garden property.
I pointed to the road through the open barn door. “I’ve assumed that gravel road was a utility easement, but it’s not noted on the survey.”
“It’s not for the utility companies,” Gail said.
“It’s one of those mandatory easements. The next property over has no county road access, so my grandparents were required to let the farmer who owned it cross their property to get to his fields.
The farmer installed the gravel on his easement and maintained it. It’s been in place forever.”
Before deciding that flipping houses was more in line with my skills and interests, I’d planned to obtain a real estate license and become an agent.
I had prepared for the exam, so I was familiar with the concept of an “easement by necessity.” Such an easement existed when a parcel of real estate was landlocked.
The owner of the landlocked property had a legal right to traverse an adjacent property in order to access their own.
The party benefitting from the easement, meaning the owner of the landlocked property, had the obligation to maintain the easement.
The owner of the property that was burdened by the easement was not allowed to interfere with its use.
In other words, nothing could be built or planted upon the easement.
Easements by necessity ended if and when the necessity ceased, meaning the property was no longer landlocked.
The easement would end, for example, if the owner of the landlocked property bought another adjacent parcel that had road access.
The easement would also end if a new road was built that allowed access to the formerly landlocked property.
The fact that these easements could come and go was why they didn’t appear on surveys.
They weren’t permanent and could be swept away like that morning mist the Grace Notes had sung about during the church service yesterday.
Now that we’d finished reviewing the survey, I folded it up and returned it to the envelope so we could discuss rehab options.
I spread the preliminary blueprints for the loft apartments across the plywood and went over them with Gail.
“These plans incorporate two horse stalls per unit, one stall for the kitchen and one stall for the living space. The bedroom would be upstairs in an open loft that spans both stalls. It’s a simple concept that will require a minimum of materials.
The design will keep the cost down while still being attractive and trendy.
We thought maybe you could call them The Haylofts. ”
Gail’s lips spread in a grin. “That’s a perfect name.”