The Ghostly Hideaway (20 page)

Candy was busy stuffing her face and she didn’t even
take time to agree.

“I’ll bet I know what the ‘secret ingredient’ is in
this, Lydia." Penny was stuffing her face, too. “It’s black walnut
kernels, isn’t it?”

“You got it that time, Penny. Along with equal parts
of white and brown sugar. Do you really like it?”

“I love it.”

“It’s even better than I remembered it, Mama, and I
remembered it a lot. I tried to make it a few times but it wasn’t
as good as yours was. Now I know why. It needed brown sugar,
too.”

The ladies hurried to straighten up the table and
pile the dirty dishes in the kitchen so they could open the gifts.
Johnny insisted on handing out the presents and he chose them
carefully so that only one person would be opening a gift at a time
and everybody could watch. Chrissy and Johnny had put the gifts
they had given each other back in the boxes and re-wrapped them so
everyone could see them. Everyone agreed the necklaces were
beautiful. Of course, everyone was surprised with the gifts
Grandmother had bought for each of them.

“Mama, how did you know to get something for us? You
seemed really surprised when we came?" Janet was curious.

“Oh, that smart-aleck over there,” she pointed to
Johnny, “said he was going to get something for you and we could
give them to you when you came. Of course, I didn’t know when you
were coming but it sounded like a nice idea even if you didn’t get
them until February. Oh, I just thought of something! Your being
here now isn’t going to keep you from being able to come back for
the wedding, is it?" She knew how important it was to Johnny for
his parents to be there for the wedding.

“We’ll have to be here for the wedding if Sean is
going to be best man and Kathleen is going to be a bridesmaid."
Bruce commented with a twinkle in his eyes. “But we couldn’t afford
to make two trips, so I guess you’re stuck with us until after the
wedding. Can you put up with us for that long, Mama?”

“Oh, it’s Kleenex time again. I’m going to cry for
sure. That’s the most wonderful news yet." Lydia blew her nose
noisily.

“Wow, I’m glad to know it’s good news. You had me
worried for a minute. We say we’ll be here for more than a month
and Mama immediately begins to blubber. We’re looking forward to
it, Mama. We love you.”

When the hugs had been hugged and the tears all
wiped, Penny spoke up. “We want you to come to the house for dinner
at least one evening during that time. We definitely want to know
Chrissy’s other family, too.”

“Sure, I’d like to show the engineer my workshop.
And I’ve got a sick chicken that could use a veterinarian’s touch.
And, Sean, I’ve got this tooth right here—. “Everybody laughed so
hard Ed had to stop.

“We’d better get back to these gifts because there’s
a couple I need to give out before dark. I think this is your last
one, Grandmother. It’s from Bruce and his family and me and
Chrissy. Open it, quickly.”

Lydia tore open the envelope and looked at the
contents blankly. “Well, I’m sure it’s wonderful, but what is
it?”

“It’s a round trip ticket to Ireland, Mama. We
arranged for Johnny and Chrissy to use our house for the first week
of their honeymoon. Then, you and we are going back to Ireland to
help them celebrate the second week. I want you to see why I fell
in love with my adopted country. There are castles with moats,
crumbled monasteries, and city walls, Galway Bay, as in the song
you used to sing me to sleep with and all the other things that
make it special. Please say you’ll come, Mama.”

“What would happen to my cows and chickens and
flowers? My pipes would all freeze. I’d love to do it, but there’s
no way I can leave in the dead of winter. Maybe I could make it a
little later in the spring.”

“I’m not trying to talk you out of going, Lydia, or
into it either. We’d miss you a lot; but if you want to go, I’ll
take care of your livestock and your plants and everything. I don’t
mind in the least.”

“There, Grandmother, now you don’t have an excuse
not to come." Kathleen was truly looking forward to her coming.

“Oh, well, I don’t know. Well, okay, I’ll do it. I
said I was going to live the rest of my life. By Henry, I’ll go,”
Lydia announced.

“Alright! Now can we go outside for a few minutes?
I’ve got something out there that I can’t bring inside.”

Everybody put their coats on and they were soon
assembled on the back porch.

Johnny had disappeared but he came from behind one
of the buildings with two beautiful blond puppies with ribbons
pasted hastily on top of their heads. “This one’s name is Dandy."
He pointed to the one with the blue bow. “This one’s name is
Brandi." He indicated the one with the pink bow. “Brandi belongs to
Candy and Dandy belongs to Andy.”

The twins stood there for a moment with their mouths
open and their eyes wide. Then they rushed forward and began to
wrestle with the dogs. They giggled uncontrollably as the pups
washed their faces with long wet tongues. Finally, they calmed down
a bit.

“Johnny, do you mean these are our dogs to keep
forever?”

“Can we really have them and take them home to be
our dogs?" Then they turned to their Mom and Dad. They nodded to
the kids and they were in seventh heaven.

“You still have one more Christmas gift at home from
Mom and me,” Ed said. “I built them each a doghouse so they can get
in out of the weather and stay warmer. Your Mom made them some beds
to put in so they could lay on them instead of the cold
ground.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you.”

“This is the best Christmas ever.”

And the entire group agreed wholeheartedly.

Johnny had seen a New Years’ Eve celebration
advertised in the
Owensboro Messenger
and he was wondering
how he could manage for him and Chrissy to go. The tickets were
fifty dollars each and they would probably go quickly. Only a
hundred tickets would be available since Red Lobster had a limited
amount of space. The place would be closed to the public and only
couples could attend. They insisted the guests had to be sixteen or
older but, of course, drinks would be served only to those at least
twenty-one. They had spent most of the few days after Christmas
getting everything squared away—all the gifts put away and putting
away almost all of the decorations at both places. The young people
had walked back and forth between Chrissy’s and Johnny’s homes and
had enjoyed playing in the snow. On Wednesday, Johnny and Chrissy
had spent nearly the entire day addressing and mailing their
wedding invitations. There had been a lot of consulting with their
respective Mom’s to get all the addresses they needed; but they had
finished all of them and they were all on their way. They had
bought fifty and had sent forty-two of them. Now Johnny felt they
were due some fun. He had been wracking his brain to try to come up
with blind dates for his siblings so they could all go to the end
of the year party. Bill Weedman had a daughter who would be about
the right age for Sean and Frank Tinsley’s brother could be
Kathleen’s escort. He made some phone calls and invited them over
for a visit to meet his family and his fiancé and his plans worked
out perfectly.

Ed had been talking to Bill about possibly joining
forces and bidding on a job in Hartford. He knew Johnny would be
out of the country for a while on his honeymoon. And the job really
needed at least two experienced cabinetmakers to do it properly.
Johnny believed the friendship would be furthered by the social
interaction between Bill’s daughter and Ed’s partner’s brother.

At last, it was all set: Phillip Tinsley would
escort Kathleen and Sean would squire Paula Weedman and with Johnny
and Chrissy, the six should have a night to remember. It was agreed
that none of their group would be drinking at all since most of
them were underage. They knew they could have just as much fun
without drinking anyway and no one would have a hangover in the
morning.

As soon as the plans were concluded, he called Red
Lobster and made the arrangements. Sean and Kathleen never realized
that Johnny had set up the whole thing so they would have dates and
he and Chrissy could have a night out.

They did have a fantastic evening. The price of the
tickets entitled them to a full meal starting with a salad and
their famous garlic and cheese biscuits. They had their choice of
any seafood entrée on the menu from shrimp to lobster, to crab, or
clams or salmon or tilapia or even rainbow trout. They all declared
it was the best seafood they had ever tasted. The desserts were
absolutely sinfully rich and delicious and the portions were
generous enough that almost everybody went home with a ‘to-go box’
full of leftovers.

They had live music and had cleared an area in the
middle of the restaurant to serve as a dance floor. When the band
took breaks, they turned on the karaoke machine and they had a load
of fun with it, too. At a few minutes before midnight, they started
singing “Auld Lang Syne” and at the stroke of midnight, everybody
was kissing and toasting the New Year. The O’Reilly-Wroe group
toasted with their champagne glasses filled with ginger ale but
hearts still intoxicated with love and feelings of companionship
and good cheer.

When the doors were unlocked at twelve-thirty,
Johnny, Chrissy and their group went home. Both Kathleen and Paula
spent the night with Chrissy and Phillip crashed on the couch at
Johnny and Sean’s place. Of course, Johnny and Chrissy would have
preferred other sleeping arrangements but they had at least been
able to spend the evening together.

The next order of business for them was to make
final decisions about who would be in the wedding party. Chrissy
had asked Paula Weedman to be one of the bridesmaids. She had
called her Aunt Genny’s house and talked to both Mattie and Emily
Parsons and they had been quite pleased that she had wanted them to
be in the wedding. They were almost the same as her mother’s
sisters; she was a little older but when Aunt Genevieve had adopted
Penny at the age of eleven, she became a foster sister to Aunt
Genny’s kids. And, of course, until she and her family had moved to
Kentucky, Chrissy had almost grown up with them. Chrissy had grown
more and more fond of Kathleen and she had decided to ask her to be
maid of honor instead of just a bridesmaid. Of course, Andy would
be the ring bearer and Candy would be the flower girl.

Sean would be Johnny’s best man and he had asked
Phillip Tinsley to be a groomsman. Two more friends from
Fordsville, Paul Trent and Steve Bernard had said they would be
honored to be in his wedding. With that, the wedding party was
decided. One other change had been made; the wedding had originally
been planned to happen at Chrissy’s house; but with more people
planning to come than they had anticipated, they had decided to
have it at the Fordsville Baptist Church at two o’clock on
Valentine’s Day. And so their invitations had indicated. Her colors
were set with maroon and a harmonizing pink for the attendants and
Johnny in black and Chrissy in white.

On January 9, Grandmother and the O’Reillys came to
dinner at Ed and Penny’s house. After a most pleasant dinner,
everyone retired to the family room and Johnny and Chrissy
explained the complete arrangements they had made for the wedding.
When the full list had been read and they asked for approval, doors
slammed upstairs three times. Janet was really startled.

“What on earth was that?” she asked. “Isn’t
everybody down here?”

“Everybody is down here. But when we asked for
approval, I guess the ghosts decided we needed theirs, too. Uncle
Cliff and Aunt Lorraine who lived here before us called this their
‘Kentucky Hideaway.’ We’ve begun calling it our ‘Ghostly Hideaway.’
We’ve been totally unable to explain away logically more than a few
of the things that have gone on here. Since we became accustomed to
the noises, they don’t bother us anymore, so we decided to just
co-exist and forget it. It sure was startling at first, though."
Penny tried to explain their ‘other’ residents. “After all, they
were
here first.”

At any rate, the wedding plans were all approved and
Janet and Penny made plans to go dress shopping the following
day.

Ed went out to pick up the mail from the mailbox
right after they left. Going through the mail, he found an envelope
addressed to Johnny but in care of Ed at Ed’s address. The return
address was from a sheriff back in North Carolina but from
neighboring Stokes County rather than from Fairmont. Ed couldn’t
figure what it would be; he’d give it to Johnny as soon as he saw
him.

While they were gone, Ed got a call from his friend,
Bill Blass, in North Carolina. He had called to tell him that the
trial date for the Norman Jones case had been set for January 25.
The prosecution thought they had a slam-dunk; the girl he was
accused of raping had already picked him out of a line-up, as had
several others who had been in the bar the night they had left
together. Jones’ attorney had said they would be ‘mounting a
vigorous defense.’ But nobody had figured out what kind of defense
he could possibly ‘mount.'

Ed thanked him for calling and asked him to continue
to keep him updated. If the trial hadn’t been very close to the
time for Chrissy’s wedding, he would probably have gone to see the
outcome for himself. He still found it exceedingly hard to
associate the things Norman Jones had done with the man he had
grown up with, worked with and called ‘friend.’ Nevertheless, there
could be no doubt that he had tried to burn his home with him and
his family still in it.

He was telling Penny about the call when she got
home. “You know, Penny, when the wedding is over and the kids have
left on their honeymoon, we could go for two or three days and
maybe see some of our old friends in Fairmont. The trial would
probably still be going on and we could see some of that, too. With
the visit and the trial both, it would be worth making the trip,
don't you think? Lydia had said she wouldn’t be leaving until a
week after the wedding. We could maybe get Bruce to come down and
take care of our stuff until we got back just as we will theirs
while they’re gone. What do you think?”