Final Rights (17 page)

Harland
stood in stunned silence as Leland disappeared from view.
Once the check clears the bank? Does he
think I would write a bad check? How dare he . . .
Harland tried to shake off his indignation
at the way Leland had spoken to him.
He’ll
do the job. That’s what I wanted, and that’s what I got. The end justifies the
means.
Even as the note he
had written at Ellie’s command continued to haunt him, Harland hoped the old
adage would hold true in this case.

A
week later, Leland stood in the lumberyard, selecting wood for his upcoming
projects. He meticulously inspected each piece for grain and texture, enjoying
the distinct patterns and subtle color changes.

For Harland’s job he
needed cherry. Common and plentifully available in the Eastern United States,
Harland had chosen it for its rich, warm hue; tight, wavy grain and satiny,
lustrous finish. It would not be painted, like most doors, but left its natural
color and sealed with varnish, highlighting Harland’s design. When Leland found
a perfect plank, he put it back in the bin. He methodically searched out those
with tiny defects, faults almost imperceptible to all but the most highly
trained eye, and he laid them out in a pile.

Once he had accumulated enough of the
slightly flawed specimens for Harland’s project, he moved on to the heart pine.
It would blend with the floors in Ellie’s house beautifully, its warm color
ranging from reddish brown to pale yellow, adding to the appeal of the
exterior. For her house, he chose only impeccable samples with gently curving
grain and just the right amount of black sap staining. The heart pine would be
fashioned into an impressive door to grace the entrance to the house he had
built for her. It would be a much refined rendition of Harland’s design, and
the workmanship would far outshine that on Harland’s house. Everyone who
happened by would see that Ellie finally had the best work he could produce,
better than anyone’s money could buy.

While paying for and loading up his
purchases, he tried to explain away the misgivings he felt in the pit of his
stomach as a case of indigestion.

TWENTY-NINE

2004

The
whirlwind encounters in the library finally ended with a plan. Cally, Sally and
Tate would share dinner at a local restaurant where they could talk without the
interruption of Sally’s family. On Sally’s recommendation, they found a table
at Anntony’s in the Grove Arcade. Tate loved the ornate Arcade and the outdoor
seating at the restaurant, even though she found the food there disappointing.
Still, the menu took a distant second to the opportunity to spend time with
these two fascinating women.
 

“Okay, I have a question before anything
else gets discussed,” Tate said as they took their seats. “Cally and Sally? Is
that why you were best friends—because you have almost the same name?”

The two women broke into laughter. “They
called us the Bobbsey twins,” Cally said. “We were inseparable.”

“We lived around the block from each other,”
Sally added. “So our back yards joined and from the time we could crawl, we
were like little homing pigeons. We just wanted to be with each other all the
time.”

Cally chimed in. “One time when we were
maybe 3 years old, we were playing in the back yard and crawled under a big
bush, curled up together and fell asleep. Our mothers were frantic looking for
us. They even called the police because they thought we’d been kidnapped!”

The two reminisced some more while Tate
sipped a glass of chardonnay. Dinner arrived just when Sally asked the question
she had waited most of her life to have answered.

“What happened to you, Cally? Why did you
disappear from Asheville?”

Cally’s face tightened and her eyes began
filling with tears. “Damn, I’m not going to cry again.” She took a deep,
grounding breath and squeezed her eyes closed while she willed the tears away.

“Truth is, I just don’t
know, Sally. Something happened, something bad. I never knew what. I asked Mom
countless times and she always said ‘It’s better you don’t know.’ Whatever it
was it scared her. I came home from school one afternoon, and she had packed up
most everything we owned. What wouldn’t fit in the car got left behind. A week
later, we were in Los Angeles, sleeping on the couch at her cousin’s place. She
would never talk about it, and she would never come back, no matter how much I
begged her. Finally I just gave up, and eventually I pretty much pushed away
all memories of this place and all the people here. Thinking about them was
just too painful.”

Sally and Tate listened intently as Cally
poured out her tale. With the words came the pain and frustration, and most of
all the deep, untouched sadness. Cally had been torn away from everything she
loved for reasons she had never understood.

How does someone survive that? How do
you go on when you lose everything?
As
Tate puzzled about these questions, she noticed a clutching sensation in her
solar plexus. It spread slowly through the center of her body, a constriction
progressing from her stomach up the path of her esophagus to her throat where a
huge lump formed, restricting her breathing. She felt light-headed and
unfocused and realized her own eyes were filling with tears. Through the haze
she saw Cally and Sally staring at her.

“Are you all right?” Cally asked, as she
reached over and took Tate’s hand. “Tate?”

In a flash, Tate remembered. She knew only
too well how someone can survive what Cally had. She had done it herself. The
memory of her brother’s sudden death flooded her with grief. She wanted
desperately to collapse into it, to fall in a heap into her bed and cry for two
weeks like she had back then, twenty years ago. But Tate didn’t cry anymore.
She no longer allowed grief and despair to swallow her whole. And she certainly
would not do so now, in a public place in front of two strangers.

Tate took a gulp of
water and forced herself to breathe. The constriction eased, her head cleared,
and she pulled herself out of the steep dive into emotional turmoil.

“Yes, I’m okay,” she lied. “I just had
something stuck for a moment.” That part was not a lie.

Over
dinner, the old friends shared other memories. Tate listened quietly most of
the time, enjoying their laughter and joining in only enough to conceal her own
pain. They shared desserts and coffee and then decided on a last glass of wine.
Throughout the meal, Tate was aware Sally seemed a bit on edge, like she was
holding something back. She wondered if Cally had noticed.

Sally opened the discussion about the past
again. “Cally, I think I know why your mother left,” she began hesitantly.

“Really? Tell me!” Cally’s excitement lit
her face up for a moment before she saw the grim countenance of her old friend.
“Oh! It’s bad, isn’t it? Just like I always thought.”

“Yes, it’s bad. Maybe it really is best not
to know, like your mother said.”

“I
HAVE
to know! Sally, please tell me. No matter how bad it is, it can’t be worse than
all the stories I’ve made up about it my whole life.”

“I’ll tell you, Cally, but not here. Let’s
go back to my house. We can sit in the backyard, and I’ll tell everyone to
leave us alone.”

“I think that’s my cue to take off,” Tate
said. “I’ll leave you girls to it.”

“
NO!
Please come with us, Tate,” Cally pleaded.

“But I would feel like an intruder. We just
met.”

“
Maybe we
just met, Tate, but I feel like I’ve known you all my life. You know my
grandfather, and I have so many questions about him that we haven’t gotten to.
I’m not letting you go until I get answers to all of them.”

Tate had told Cally in
the briefest terms what she knew about Leland as they left the library earlier
that day. But there was much to be shared, and Tate had plenty of questions of
her own. She agreed to continue on to Sally’s house with her new friends.

Tate’s decision to spend the rest of the evening with them
pleased Cally greatly. Her attraction to Tate had sprung up almost
instantaneously when they met only hours earlier at the library.

How could she not be
attracted to her? If Cally had noticed only Tate’s physical characteristics,
she would have seen a plump, medium-height woman who appeared to be in her
early 50s
—
much younger than her
actual age of 58
—
a
woman completely unpretentious about her appearance. Tate seemed totally comfortable
in jeans and a t-shirt, like she wore them every day. No make-up or jewelry
save a large silver and turquoise bracelet on her left wrist, and no watch.
Cally couldn’t imagine going without a watch, given that she slept in hers and
took it off only when showering.

Surveying Tate with only
an academic interest, Cally would have taken note of her shoulder-length,
naturally wavy hair—a shining mass of wash-and-wear chestnut brown tinged with
sun streaks. She could not see Tate’s eyes from that distance, but she expected
they would be intense and beautiful.

But, Cally was not an
objective observer and Tate’s physical appearance was not the source of the
profound impression she made on Cally. Every movement of Tate’s body conveyed
self-assurance. Her resonant voice suggested courage and resilience. The power
of her gaze seemed magnetic, and when she’d wrapped her arms around Cally and
held her tight there in the library, it had been like sinking into a familiar
and safe place Cally had never known existed. But now, having rested there
briefly and been deeply nourished, she had no desire whatsoever to leave.

Sally still lived in Montford but not in the house where
she had grown up. Cally and Tate settled into the comfortable chairs on the
back deck while Sally brought out a bottle of wine and glasses. Tate realized
they were only a couple of blocks from the house on Chestnut. She’d have to ask
Sally about the place at some point and share with them what she had learned
recently.

Sally poured wine for each of them. Still
hesitant to cause her friend any pain, she asked again, “Cally, what I have to
tell you is going to be hard to hear. Are you sure . . .”

“Absolutely sure, Sally! I’m tough. I can
take it, whatever it is. Just spit it out.”

“Okay. I don’t think I
knew back then what everything meant. I was a little kid, just like you. But
eventually I put the pieces together.”

Sally had come home from school one
afternoon to find her mother very upset, though she wouldn’t say why. She kept
the doors closed and locked, which was unusual, and that evening Sally’s
parents excluded her and her brother from their huddled conversation. The next
day in school, Sally heard Ellie Howard had been murdered in her own home and
that her son, Clayton, was also dead. She wished so much she could be with her
best friend, but Cally did not come to school and Sally never saw her again.

Cally listened solemnly without
interrupting.

“Clayton was your father, wasn’t he?” Sally
asked.

“Yes. I didn’t know him
very well. He only came around once in a while. Mom always sent him away.”

“Then maybe you didn’t know he was a drug
addict. He had violent mood swings. My mother told me all this a long time
later.”

“You know, I figured that out myself quite
awhile ago.” Cally spoke slowly and deliberately, and Tate realized she was
exerting a great deal of effort to keep her composure.

“I remember Gamma Ellie keeping him at a
distance from me. I visited her and Gampa a lot, but if Clayton was around, she
would always send me home.”

Tate watched Cally closely. “I know this is
hard stuff to hear, Cally. How are you doing?”

“You know, I’m doing okay, Tate. It is hard
to hear, but it’s also a huge relief. I’ve spent my whole life wanting to know,
and now I do. I can finally figure out how to move on.”

“Well, I remember other fun stuff, too,”
Sally chimed in. “Want to hear some of that?”

“Yes, some fun stuff would be just the
thing.” Cally smiled and shifted to a more comfortable position.

“I remember the day you carved your initials
into that old fireplace at your Gamma’s house. We giggled the whole time. I
tried calling you Cat after that, but you insisted on Cally.”

Cally’s brows and
forehead puckered as she searched for the memory. When she found it, she
squealed with delight.

“Oh yes! My initials spell Cat, but I didn’t
like that nickname. Oh, I loved that beautiful old fireplace. Gampa made it,
and I spent hours sitting in the corner there and reading or coloring.”

Tate went on alert. “You mean Leland? You
had a fireplace made by Leland?”

“Yes, at their house. I loved it so much.
One day I took a nail and carved my initials into it. When he found out, I
thought he would be so angry. You know what he did?”

“What?” Tate asked.

“He took me out to his workshop, gave me a
beautiful piece of wood, a small knife and a chisel, and he taught me how to
carve.” Cally paused for a moment and savored her memory.

“Where is he Tate? You said you knew.”

“He’s out at Forest Glen Manor. I can take
you to see him tomorrow if you like.”

“I would like that very much.”

“You know, Cally, it’s strange,” interjected
Sally. “Your Gamma’s old house is gone. I thought they’d torn it down when they
destroyed that block of Cumberland to put in I-240. But I was driving over on
Maplewood the other day, and I could swear it’s now sitting over there. It
looks a lot different. It has white siding on it, and they’re working on the
inside. But I saw that old door, and I’m sure it’s the same house.”

Tate gasped. “That’s my place! Do you mean
to tell me Leland Howard owned my house?”

“Well, if it’s the same building, then he
not only owned it, he built it!” Cally said.

Tate turned to Cally and felt every cell in
her body crackle with electricity as their eyes met.