15. Chloe
Lonnie lived in one of the most beautiful houses in Colville. It wasn’t very big—few houses around here were—and it didn’t have many modern upgrades—a serious drawback in the heat of the summer—but the home sat on a huge patch of acreage near the top of Crystal Falls. On cold, clear nights, you could hear the cascading water from the back porch.
To be fair, you could also hear the teenagers who went there to party and drink when boredom offered no alternatives, but you couldn’t have everything in this world.
“Chloe!” Lonnie came out to greet me the moment my station wagon rambled up the drive. She looked well, all things considered, if a little thinner than the last time I’d seen her. My visits to Pepper’s grandmother didn’t happen as frequently as I would have liked, so I was never sure what to expect. Her cancer wasn’t an aggressive kind, and she’d had several successful surgeries on her neck, but she was under no illusions about how precious her last remaining years were. “Please tell me you brought your brothers and sister with you. I have a Kentucky butter cake inside that needs to be eaten. Theo’s the only one I trust to do the job right.”
“Theo would eat the quills off a porcupine’s back if you gave him the chance,” Pepper said. She slid out of the passenger seat and joined me as I made my way up the steps.
“No, he wouldn’t,” I countered. “He’d turn them into darts or throwing stars and terrorize the whole neighborhood.”
As soon as I reached the top step, I found myself engulfed in a hug so strong that I found it hard to imagine Lonnie not standing on the same porch offering the same comfort for the next three hundred years.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t help you out with Noodle’s accident,” she said. “That poor kid. What was he doing, running through the forest without looking where he was going?”
I was glad she hadn’t yet let me go. The longer I went without answers about what was going on with Noodle, the worse I felt. Jasper’s mystery was turning out to be the much easier one to solve.
“I don’t know,” I said. “He won’t talk about what happened. All he’ll say is that he’s sorry for being a bother.”
“That’s a Sampson for you.” She clucked her tongue and started ushering me inside the house. “Always running full speed at the wall and then apologizing when they don’t do anything but break their own backs in the process.”
“I don’t run full speed,” I protested. “In fact, I don’t run at all. I used to get last place in the mile in gym all the time. Ask Pepper.”
“Since I know very well that my grandma is talking in metaphors, I’ll do no such thing,” Pepper said. She took one look at the tidy, welcoming front room—and one deep inhalation of the sweet scent of baked goods—and relaxed. Today was obviously one of Lonnie’s good days.
“What wall have I ever apologized to?” I demanded.
“The wall of life,” Pepper was quick to respond.
“The wall of honest feelings,” Lonnie added.
Pepper went again. “The wall of ambition.”
So did Lonnie. “The wall of other people’s mistakes.”
Pepper held up her hand for a high five. “Oooh, good one, Grandma.”
Lonnie chuckled as she playfully swatted her granddaughter’s hand. She let her palm linger there and laced their fingers. An ache filled my throat at the sight of such easy, nonchalant warmth between the two women. I’d always been intensely jealous of the bond they shared, and of the bond the whole Pakootas family seemed to have with one another. Although I had plenty of siblings to go around, Pepper was an only child—not that there was anything only about it. She had heaps of relatives. Aunts, uncles, cousins, people who weren’t related to her by blood but who were as tightly bound as if they’d all shared a womb… Pepper couldn’t walk anywhere in town without being accosted by someone who claimed kinship with her.
That kind of network—of people who loved her, of people who cared—was something I’d never known. It was as if she’d been born with a safety net stretched tight underneath her. She could run off a hundred different cliffs in the woods, but no matter how hard she fell, she’d never touch the ground.
I, on the other hand, had never known my father, and any grandparents I might have had were lost by my mom’s inability to maintain a healthy relationship for longer than a few years at a time. From the moment of my birth, my mom had been my only safety net—a wispy, unreliable thing with more holes than support.
Somewhere in there was another metaphor about how one person couldn’t be a safety net alone, how they’d eventually get spread so thin that they were reduced to a bundle of loosely tied threads, but I wasn’t about to examine it too closely. Lonnie and Pepper could discuss the details after I was gone. For now, I was going to keep stretching, give my brothers and sister something to hold them aloft, however flimsy I might be.
“Thank you for all those old Harlequins, by the way,” Lonnie said as she let go of Pepper’s hand. We followed her to the kitchen, where the promised cake glistened in a buttery ring in the center of the table. She cut us both generous slices and placed them in front of us. “I’m in the middle of a really good one where the heroine is pregnant and has amnesia, and she has to be saved by a retired Navy SEAL who does repo work. It’s called Pregnesia.”
Laughing, I held up a hand. “You can stop making things up. I’m not falling for that one. There’s no way that’s a real book.”
“It is! I’m only about halfway through, but I’ll finish it tonight. I can’t put it down.”
“Lonnie!” My outburst was slightly muffled by the mouthful of cake I was trying—and failing—not to spray across the kitchen. “That can’t be true.”
“Oh, it’s true,” Pepper said. “It was a hot commodity a few years back—I think it was when you were away at college. I couldn’t keep it in the bookmobile for longer than a few hours at a time.”
Pepper moved across the kitchen to the wall of bookshelves along the far wall. Since both Lonnie and Pepper had devoted themselves to the librarian career, their book hoard was an impressive one.
“Wasn’t there another one you liked with an even more outlandish title?” Pepper asked as she scanned the spines, most of which were worn with repeated use. “Blackmailed by the Prince’s Wanton Waitress or something like that? I swear it was here when—”
I was too busy shoving more of the Kentucky butter cake in my mouth to notice Pepper’s sudden halt. And then I was too busy enjoying the way it practically melted on my tongue to realize what that halt meant.
“Uh, Chloe?” she said, her voice sounding as if from afar. “Want to come here for a second?”
“If this is about the collection of erotica your aunt Raylene gave me, I don’t want to hear it,” Lonnie said. “What I choose to read in my own free time is—”
“It’s not that,” Pepper said. She pulled a book from the shelf and rejoined us. In her hand sat a black hardcover with faded yellow flowers across the front. I recognized it almost at once. Especially since it still bore the ancient stickers from when it had been a part of the library system. “Grandma, is there something you want to tell us about this copy of The Haunting of Hill House?”
The moment Lonnie’s eyes went soft, I knew we’d found more than just a book. It was the same light that had flooded Jasper’s when he’d talked about Catherine—the same light that no amount of time seemed able to erase.
Oh, to be the sort of woman who inspired that kind of sentiment after sixty years. To know that no matter how much the world changed, a memory could carry that much weight.
“That old thing?” Lonnie said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “It’s older than your father. I barely remember what it’s about anymore.”
“It’s about a girl who visits a haunted house and gets sucked into it forever,” I said. “And about a pair of star-crossed lovers who read it together back in 1960.”
Instead of trying to fob me off, Lonnie laughed. The sound was as rich and delicious as the cake, and so much more precious because I knew it had an expiration date.
“So you know about that, do you?” she said as she lifted the book from Pepper. She ran a hand reverentially over the cover as if smoothing away its rough edges. “Did Jasper tell you?”
Instead of answering, I tossed her a question of my own. “I wasn’t aware that you and Jasper knew each other.”
She glanced at me over the top of a pair of bright-pink readers. “There are all of twelve people in this town over the age of eighty, Chloe. Of course I know Jasper, the miserable old codger. He was as unpleasant back in his youth as he is now, if that’s any consolation. The world has never known a more determined grouch.”
This was so much in line with everything I knew to be true that I laughed. “I wish you’d have said something years ago. The boys have lost several dozen Frisbees and soccer balls in the past six months alone. Jasper steals them the moment they touch his precious grass.”
“That sounds about right,” Lonnie agreed.
“If you knew Jasper, then you knew Catherine, too, right?” Pepper asked. “And about their love affair?”
“Ah, now Catherine is something else,” Lonnie said, once again with that softening around her eyes. “She was the light to his dark, the sun to his moon. To be honest, I never really understood what she saw in him, but I suppose that was the whole point.”
“The point of what?” I asked.
Lonnie flipped open the cover and turned the pages until she reached a section somewhere in the middle. The moment I caught sight of the writing, I felt my heart take flight. Stifling the urge to snatch the book out of Lonnie’s hands, I let her read the passage aloud.
“‘It is my second morning in Hill House, and I am unbelievably happy. Journeys end in lovers meeting; I have spent an all but sleepless night, I have told lies and made a fool of myself, and the very air tastes like wine.’”
The cadence of Lonnie’s voice was so soothing that I could have listened to her read for hours, but I was dying to know what the margin notes said.
“And?” I prompted.
“And I’m not done yet. Hold your horses.” She cleared her throat and kept going. “‘I have been frightened half out of my foolish wits, but I have somehow earned this joy; I have been waiting for it for so long.’”
“Grandma, now you’re just being mean,” Pepper said. “We don’t care about the book—we just want to know what kind of naughty things Jasper and Catherine wrote to each other.”
This time when Lonnie peeked over the top of her glasses, it was to glance at her granddaughter instead of me. “They didn’t write anything naughty. Do you really think Catherine would’ve given me this copy if they had? This is romance, child. Pure, unadulterated, real-life romance.”
“Then let us read it already.” Pepper grabbed the book and, sensing that her grandmother was likely to fight back, tossed it to me. “Make a run for it, Chloe! Save yourself! I’ll distract her until you get to the good parts.”
Even though I knew she was joking, I scooted a little out of the way before I picked up where Lonnie had left off.
You are happy, Eleanor, you have finally been given a part of your measure of happiness.
I hate to say it, C, but I’m starting to feel like we might be cursing ourselves with this book.
How do you figure?
Because I’m happy. Because I’ve finally been given my measure of happiness. And considering how this book ends, I’m not sure that’s a good thing.
Hmm. Interesting. Did you spend an all but sleepless night last night?
You know I did. You were there.
Shhh. I’m trying to be philosophical. Did you tell lies and make a fool of yourself?
I’m not sure about the lying, but the second part is true. I started reading that Psycho book you told me about, and I’ve never been so scared in my whole life. Why do you like thedark stuff so much?
I can’t help it. It matches my true nature. But you’re getting off course: What about the air? Do you find it tastes like wine?
No, but your lips do. Does that count?
“I thought you said this wasn’t naughty!” I squealed. The idea of Jasper reading a book he didn’t like for the sake of a woman—and of Jasper telling someone her lips tasted like wine—was almost too much for me. “Did Jasper and Catherine really spend the night together? Before they were married? In 1960?”
Giving a sad shake of her head, Lonnie clucked her tongue. “Lord save me from the youth of the world. Every generation thinks they invented sex and everything that goes along with it. If that’s the case, missy, then how did you and Pepper come into being? Or those many siblings of yours? Immaculate conception? The Great Spirit?”
Although I did my best not to imagine the various ways in which my siblings and I had been conceived, I couldn’t stop a sudden image of my mom’s face from flashing through my mind. It was never very far away since every line of Trixie’s beauty had come from that woman. The flawless skin and gorgeous smile, a body that seemed to mold itself to current trends without the least bit of effort.
A stunner, I’d heard my mom called more than once. A hot piece of ass, also (unfortunately) more than once. An absolute waste had been another common refrain from my childhood, a beauty like that on a woman without the common sense God gave a cow.
I sometimes caught a glimpse of that face in the mirror, though it was more like a trick of light than any of my actual features. I could see her lingering under the surface, but only briefly, and usually when I was too distracted to remember to put up my guard.
“I don’t know all the details of what happened between Catherine and Jasper, so it’s no use asking me,” Lonnie said, forestalling me from making the attempt. “I remember their love affair as being very fast, very hot, and very catastrophic. The best ones usually are.”
This compelled Pepper to put up a protest. “Grandma! You were married to Dada for fifty years before he passed. How can you say that?”
She tsked and waved her granddaughter off. “Your grandfather was a good, solid man, but he never wooed me in the margins of a book. I think the most he ever wrote was a note reminding me not to forget to pick up a bag of potatoes on my way home from work.”
Since I’d watched Pepper’s grandparents live and laugh and love together, I knew this for the lie it was. I also knew that since his death a little over five years ago, she refused to poke too hard at the wound his loss had left behind. So when she gestured for me to turn the pages, I obeyed. It didn’t take long before I found another section with the writing.
“These others need your protection so much more than I,” she said. “I will do what I can, of course. But they are so very, very vulnerable, with their hard hearts and their unseeing eyes.”
It’s strange, isn’t it? To think that a hard heart could make you more vulnerable instead of less?
Not really. It’s the whole point of the book. The house kills those who don’t love it. The entire conflict is their inability to accept the house as it is, so it takes revenge.
Is this the part where you compare me to the house again? If you don’t love me, I’ll kill you?
You’ll kill me either way, C. I think we both know that.
A sigh escaped me before I could help it.
“Oh dear,” Lonnie murmured. “I recognize that sound.”
“I know,” Pepper said, grinning. “She’s got it bad. If Jasper were a hundred years younger, she’d probably steal him for herself.”
Lonnie pointed a gnarled finger at her. “Watch yourself, child. We aren’t that old.”
I pointed a finger of my own. “And I don’t have anything—good or bad. I’m just interested, that’s all. The Jasper Holmes I know is exactly like this passage here: a man with a hard heart and unseeing eyes. But Catherine saw the vulnerability. She knew exactly how to handle him.”
“You’re not wrong about that,” Lonnie allowed, her lips pursed with sudden thoughtfulness. “I’ve never seen anyone handle a man the way Catherine did Jasper. She took one look at him, decided she wanted him, and then didn’t stop until she had him on his knees. You two could learn a thing or two from her.”
“I know I can,” I admitted. “That’s why I’m trying so hard to piece together the rest of their story.”
I paused then, unwilling and unable to say the unspoken part aloud. The truth was, I was much less like Catherine than I was old, closed-off, hard-hearted Jasper. To know that someone had been able to tear down his walls, to force him to feel the love that every fiber of his being balked at—it meant something to me.
If I was being honest, it meant everything to me.
I knew I had to approach my next question carefully. If not for Lonnie’s sake, then for my own.
“If you knew Catherine back then, then you know what happened to her,” I said. The words felt oddly thick inside my mouth, but I gave each one the weight it needed. “Gunderson claimed Jasper killed her and buried her body in his garden, but—”
Lonnie’s bright peal of laughter interrupted me before I could finish. “Gunderson gets nine-tenths of his information from that wife of his. She’s the moderator on half a dozen different conspiracy websites. Don’t believe a word out of their mouths.”
“I don’t,” I said. “But Jasper was always so mean to us, and Catherine’s death was so sudden and tragic. It made a certain kind of sense.”
Pepper nodded along. “And I tried searching the microfiche for stories about disappearing women around that time, but there weren’t any. This place was kind of dull back in the fifties and sixties. All anyone ever seemed to do was clip coupons and hold sock hops at the radar base.”
“Wait.” Lonnie looked back and forth between the two of us, a heavy pucker drawing her brows. “What do you mean, her death was sudden and tragic?”
My own forehead mirrored hers. “Wasn’t it? I mean, any death is tragic, obviously, and since she was so young, I figured it must have happened out of the blue. Otherwise, why would Jasper have been so brokenhearted?”
“Chloe, honey, Catherine didn’t die.”
My whole body went still, and for the longest moment, I felt sure my heart had, too. “What do you mean, she didn’t die?”
Lonnie looked at me so strangely that I started to suspect I hadn’t spoken the question out loud. Pepper had to step in and repeat it for me.
“If she’s not dead, then what happened to her?” Pepper asked. “What are we missing?”
“You’re not missing anything,” Lonnie said with a tsk. “I never heard the whole story, but there was some sort of scandal with another man—one from the radar base. She gave me this book, told me to protect it, and left. That’s the last I heard from her.”
“What about Jasper?” I asked, feeling faint. “What about their tragic love story?”
A sad smile touched Lonnie’s lips. “It ended, child, as all things do. Their whole story was nothing but a brief, tempestuous chapter in a book that no one ended up wanting to read.”