The House on Persimmon Road (29 page)

A sudden whooshing noise inside her head caught her by surprise. It grew to thunderous proportions until her ears ached with it. Her fingertips were buzzing, her scalp tingled, her spine felt exposed. She was suspended and sucked through a gurgling wash of warmth. Her limbs jerked in every direction. Her tongue floundered inside her mouth. She was on a journey…moving so fast she feared her soul couldn’t keep up. Now she was tumbling, now sprinting forward, now sliding, now rocking. Oh! She couldn’t see! She had the sensation of being at sea and she was convinced she was going to be violently sick.

Something snapped and she felt herself being hurled across the room. The chair crashed against the opposite wall with a thud. She banged her head. Law! She was being shot straight into the deepest hereafter! She saw stars. Millions of them, a kaleidoscope of colors like nothing she’d ever seen before. Especially with her eyes closed.

Finally she was still. Fear held her immobile, transfixed. The heat she felt was incredible. She cried. Law! She had done it wrong. She had been cast into the deepest reaches of a place she never thought to be.

She fought to open her eyes and, at last succeeded, only to discover that her eyes refused to focus. With lives of their own they went round and round, in tempo with the ceiling fan. Ceiling fan? Ceiling fan!

She wished the roaring in her ears would subside. It interfered with her concentration. She closed her eyes. She was again suspended, but without the rocking sea this time. The sense of dreadful heat leveled off into a warmth more bearable and, when she once again opened her eyes, her vision was clear. The ceiling fan was clearly that. She recognized it. Tucker had installed it. Justine had argued with him. Argued that if it fell it would destroy her computers, not to mention her own head.

With hope and trepidation Lottie looked down and surveyed her immediate self and gasped.

She took a breath. Then another. She held her hands before her face. She had blunt, worker’s hands. They were freckled and had blue veins. She turned the palms toward her eyes. Last time she looked she’d had calluses galore. Now she had none.

She touched her face, her arms, her abdomen, her legs. Her heart beat with a steadiness she could feel with her hand.

She stood up and took a step. After so many years of weightlessness, her limbs felt leaden. Gravity pulled at her. The floor beneath her was cool.

She was scared to think, scared to admit she had extended herself. But she had! She had! She tugged on the borrowed stockings and shoes, and walking with a motion cats spend years trying to perfect, she took herself into the bathroom to stare for long minutes at her reflection in the mirror.

A few minutes later she placed her hands on her Bible. She let Him know her whereabouts. She wanted as much of His attention and help as He could spare now, seeing as the next step would be to present herself to Justine and the family.

She had not met another human being face to face in more than a hundred years.

A chill swept up her spine. Suppose they refused to accept her?

She stepped out onto the back porch. Sound and smell crashed over her. Music and laughter, a myriad of voices came up from the barn, no single word clear. She heard chickens squawk, birds at evening song, crickets. The aroma of good, rich food being cooked over an open fire made her mouth water. She could smell mowed grass, the very earth itself.

She was back. Really back. She’d rest for now and introduce herself when there weren’t so many strangers around.

She smoothed the gray silk over her hips, treasuring the feel of it.

They just have to accept me, she thought again. And this time the thought was as much a plea as prayer.

Pip shook Justine awake. “Mom! Get up!”

She opened one eye and glared at the bedside clock. Eight ten. “Too early. Give me another hour,” she murmured drowsily.

“Mom, damn it! Get up!”

His frantic tone was edged with an undercurrent of insistence. She turned her head and focused on her son. “Did you just curse? What is it?”

“We’ve got company in the kitchen.”

Justine reached behind her and poked Pauline. “Get up Mother, Evelyn must be wanting breakfast.”

“Surely not,” Pauline murmured and dragged a pillow over her head.

“It’s not Mrs. Ellison,” said Pip, dancing across the room. “You’re in for a surprise, Mom. Wait’ll you see!”

Still partially in the grip of sleep, Justine sat up. “Who?” she asked, but Pip was already out the bedroom door. She could hear his bare feet slapping down the hall.

A surprise visitor in the kitchen? In the middle of a stretch Justine froze. Her pulse rate accelerated. The only surprise visitor that could excite Pip like that was Philip! Her belly tightened with a cold sick dread. Dear God, why now? When she finally had her life on track. Why would he show up now to undo what she’d built for herself, for the children? A life that promised more happiness and security than she had ever known in marriage to Phillip.

“Mother! Get up. Now! We’ve got problems. Philip’s here!”

“You handle him, dear. I’m not up to a scene this morning.”

“What kind of mother are you?”

“A sleepy one.”

“But I may need moral support!”

“You don’t,” Pauline muttered. “You have the backbone of a mule.”

Justine frantically shoved her arms into her robe and finger-combed her hair.

In the kitchen Pip was sitting at the great old dining table…alone.

“Where is he?”

“It’s not a he, Mom, it’s—”

Wearing Agnes’s apron over Pauline’s dress, Lottie stepped from the pantry with a jar of Coffeemate. She smiled at Justine. “Mornin’.”

“—a she,” Pip finished.

Justine took a breath and gathered her wits. “Your father’s not here?”

“Why would Dad be here?”

Legs suddenly rubbery, Justine slid into a chair. Lottie poured coffee and put the cup in front of her.

Trying to make the mental adjustment, Justine looked over at Pip, down at the coffee, then up at the plump, white-haired, elderly woman. “Who are you?”

“Lottie Roberts.”

The coffee aroma penetrated Justine’s brain. Absently she took a sip. “Roberts? Are you any kin to Milo?”

“By marriage.”

Justine smiled slightly. Lottie Roberts was somewhere not far from sixty, with very white hair that was pinned into a bun at the back of her neck. She had a round face and eyes so faded they seemed almost colorless. Her mouth lifted at the corners as if ready to break into a smile. Yet there was something else, and Justine tried to peg it. The woman looked so grandmotherly and old-fashioned she seemed of another age. Milo, she knew, was a certifiable eccentric, probably his wife was too. Had to be, Justine mused, if she was capable of walking into a neighbor’s home uninvited. Not to mention perking coffee and serving it as if she were the lady of the manor.

“Did Milo send you over here for something?” she asked tactfully.

Lottie scoffed. “No.”

“Does he know you’re here?”

Lottie thought that over. “Like as not, he suspects, I reckon.”

Justine noted the apron. Milo put a price on everything she asked him to do. Maybe he was hoping to put his wife to work. “Are you looking for a job?”

“Ask her where she lives, Mom.”

Lottie shot him a withering glance. “Pipe down, you.”

Pip put his hand over his mouth and watched his mother. His eyes gleamed with Machiavellian delight.

Baffled, Justine pursed her lips. “I’m being tricked into something, right? Okay,” she said to Lottie. “Consider the question asked.”

“Here,” came the firm reply.

“Here? You mean here, as in Alabama?”

“Here, as in this house. This is my house. Elmer built it for me.”

Justine took a long draught of coffee. It was too early in the morning for her intuition to be working. The last of Tucker’s guests had not left until the beer ran out and mosquitos swarmed. Washing up took another hour or so. No thanks to Agnes who was loopy on scuppernong wine or Pauline who discarded paper napkins and called herself done. Justine considered she must’ve missed the clue to enlightenment. She just didn’t get it.

“So, who’s Elmer?” she asked of Lottie Roberts.

“My husband. He got hisself kilt in the Red River Campaign.”

“That’s a Civil War battle,” Pip said. “She told me.”

“I’m game. What’s the joke?”

“No joke, Mom.” Pip was grinning.

“Go back to square one. You just said you were married to Milo,” Justine put to Lottie.

“I said kin by marriage. Milo’s a distant cousin to Elmer—real distant by now, I reckon. I ain’t one to marry the likes of Milo.”

“I’ve rented this house with an option to buy it, and the price has been set,” Justine said in case the woman’s reason for dropping by was to up the price.

“Suits me,” Lottie replied.

Pauline ambled in with a towel over her arm and cosmetic bag in hand. She stopped in mid-step and stared at Lottie, who stiffened perceptibly. Then Pauline’s breath caught audibly in her throat. “That’s my gray silk!” She turned to Justine. “That woman is wearing my dress. And… and … those are my silk stockings from Harrod’s. Look! There’s the trademark on the heel.”

“I just borrowed them,” said Lottie.

“Thief!” said Pauline.

“Mother!”

“And those are my yard shoes,” said Agnes, clutching her robe at the neck and watching from the doorway.

“I needed shoes to accommodate my bunions,” Lottie replied with dignity.

Justine stood up. “Mrs. Roberts. You admit you stole those things? But how did you—? When? Why?”

“While I was betwixt and between my own clothes fair rotted away.”

“Betwixt and between?”

“She means while she was cruising the ozone, Mom.”

“She means…” Goose bumps erupted along Justine’s arms and legs. She sat back down with a thud.

“This ain’t goin’ a bit like I planned,” Lottie told them one and all.

“Because you got caught!” Pauline cried. “Justine, call the police. Your father always, but always, had the servants checked out.”

“Wait a minute, Mother,” she said shakily. “There’s more here than meets the eye.”

“That’s how it used to be,” said Lottie. “Now you can see me, hear me…”

The adult faces were wearing expressions ranging from skepticism to outrage. Lottie sighed. She retrieved her Bible from a shelf in the pantry and laid it on the table in front of Justine, then quickly leafed the pages. “That’s me and Elmer,” she said pointing to Elmer B. Roberts wed Lottie Mae Wilks. The date, February 2, 1844, was written in an elegant spidery script. “We never had no issue and Elmer was kilt ninth of April, eighteen hundred and sixty-four. Howsomever, you’ll note there ain’t no buryin’ date fer me.”

“She’s escaped from some lunatic asylum,” said Agnes.

“I’m as sound of mind as you. More. I ain’t the one with unnatural purple hair.”

“Or jail,” insisted Pauline. “She’s probably a kleptomaniac.”

Lottie had no idea what a kleptomaniac was, but it didn’t sound nice. “As soon as I can get me some clothes, you can have these back. They’re too immodest fer my taste anyhow. Don’t cover up near enough leg.”

“Don’t you get it?” Pip said. “Lottie’s our ghost. She’s been here all the time. She moved the chair, she—”

Lottie was insulted. “I weren’t never no ghost.”

“Of course you weren’t,” Justine said and shot a warning glance at her son. Thief or not, the woman was sweet faced and seemed harmless enough, but you could never tell. They were arresting grandmothers these days for dealing drugs and child molesting. She didn’t want anything said that might turn Lottie Roberts’s pleasant demeanor into one of pathological rage.

“Good morning,” said Evelyn Ellison. “Am I interrupting a family conference or something?” She gave Pauline a pointed look.

“Sit,” said Lottie. “I’ll git your coffee.”

Justine jumped up. “No, no. I’ll get it. Mrs. Roberts, why don’t you sit down while we thrash this out.”

“It don’t appear seemly for me to be a guest in my own home.”

“Just for today,” Justine suggested, pasting on a smile. The queer old thing was unglued, suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. As soon as the opportunity presented itself, she was going to send Pip to find Milo to collect his wife, or cousin, or whatever.

Evelyn sugared her coffee. “Is everything set, then?” she asked Pauline.

Pauline cleared her throat. “Justine, dear, you can handle all this on your own can’t you? It’s not like you have the problem you thought you did when you so rudely pushed me out of bed—which would be far worse than…” She gestured toward Lottie. “However, I do expect that my dress will be cleaned and returned to me.”

“I ain’t walking around naked,” said Lottie.

“I’m sure we can find you a dress or two,” Justine said soothingly. “Now, what were you driving at, Mother?”

“Evelyn’s invited me and I’ve decided to accept. I’m moving in with her.”

“What!”

“I’ve been trying to tell you for days, but you’ve had your head in the clouds.”

“You can’t just move out!”

“I can.”

“But how will you live? What will you do for—”

Lottie got up and started breakfast. Fried bacon and toad in the hole, she decided, taking the fixings out of the fridge. She pinched the centers out of bread slices, cracked eggs into the holes, and set them to toasting nicely in a skillet while bacon sizzled in the microwave. Modern inventions were wonderful, she thought. ’Course, store-bought bread was fair lacking. Come Thursday, she’d set her own to rising.

“Now don’t upset yourself on my account, Justine. Everything is worked out. Evelyn has this lovely old home on Government Street, and she just rattles around in it by herself.”

“Pauline will be so much company for me,” beamed Evelyn. “And, she’s just vicious at cards.”

“Remember the man who wants to buy the Japanese sculpture? He’s agreed to five hundred dollars for the privilege of first refusal.”

“Mother, that won’t last you around a corner.”

“I have a job, too.”

“Your jobs are like one-a-day vitamins,” snickered Agnes. “You have to have one every day.”