The Memory House

“Where are you from, Eli?”

The question seemed to catch him off guard. His hand paused on the doorknob and his body went still. He focused on the closed door. “Knoxville. Is this locked?”

She reached into her pocket and handed him the key. The door screeched open and he stepped aside to let her enter. A gentleman’s action and one she duly noted just as she’d noted the way he held a fork and used a napkin and the way he’d remained standing until Valery was seated.

“You have family waiting there?”

Her back was to him as they entered the small space, but when he didn’t reply, she paused to look over her shoulder.

“No,” he said, and something in those mysterious eyes flickered. Family was not an easy topic for Eli Donovan.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’d do without mine. When—” She caught herself before it was too late. She’d almost said, When Mikey disappeared.

Talking about Mikey today seemed to be emotional quicksand and she did not want to suffocate in front of a perfect stranger.

“You have other sisters? Brothers?” He asked the question quickly as if he somehow knew about her son and couldn’t bear to hear the story again.

“Only Mom, Dad, Valery and me, but a pretty big extended family.” She didn’t add that her parents had been divorced for years but lived in the same town without killing each other.

“You’re not married.” Again, that terse comment as though conversation was a struggle. Was he naturally shy?

“Divorced.” A wound that didn’t throb anymore. David’s marriage to Cindy Bishop had ended that. Not that she hadn’t wept bitterly when he’d produced another son within a year. He’d forgotten Mikey the way he’d forgotten her. Clean sweep, put the past behind him and moved on as if they’d never lived together in the pleasant three-bedroom brick house on Sage Street. “You?”

Theirs was a casual conversation, nothing personal, a potential employer getting to know a potential employee.

“Never.” He gave a short, self-deprecating huff that made her wonder.

When she tilted her head in question, his gaze shifted from the rising stairs to the door leading into the carriage bay. “Up first or through the lower floor?”

“Let’s go up.”

“You should lead. I don’t know the way.”

She stepped around him, aware of his size and close enough to catch the earthy, outdoors scent of him. Her elbow brushed his jean jacket and the rough texture prickled the skin on her arms.

Disconcerted, she gripped the railing and started up. His movement behind her was quiet, but she could feel him there, a polite distance though still too close for comfort. She felt self-conscious, as if her hips were too wide and their sway meant something other than advancing up a set of narrow, rickety stairs.

At the top, a musty, dusty odor greeted them. Julia stepped into the open space. “We could make two bedrooms and baths up here, I think. Or perhaps a family suite.”

He regarded the crowded space with interest. “A lot of stuff up here.”

“I warned you. Valery poked around in some of it. Old trunks of clothes, discarded furniture, tools, anything and everything. It appears everyone who ever lived here left things behind.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Considering we’ve had no immediate plans to rehab the space, I hadn’t really thought about doing anything, but you’re right. To transform this into guest rooms, we’ll have to get rid of everything.”

“Or store it somewhere else.”

“Maybe I could have a sale.”

He hitched one shoulder. “Maybe.”

“First, we’ll have to sort through, I guess.”

“I can do that for you.” He gestured toward a battered vanity. “How old is this place?”

“Pre–Civil War, though I doubt any of the furniture is that old.”

She shoved a box out of the way to make a path to the dormers. A spider darted across her foot. She let out a squeak and jumped back.

A shiny boot, its relative newness out of sync with the rest of the man, obliterated the hairy creature.

Julia gave an embarrassed laugh. “I hate spiders. A neighbor boy used to torment me with them.” She didn’t know why she’d felt compelled to add that last bit.

“Probably plenty of them in here.”

“A joyous thought,” she said wryly. “And another reason I have avoided the carriage house.”

The corners of his mouth quivered like the stirring of a single leaf by a breath of air. His eyes lit and, every bit as quickly, dimmed.

Had he smiled once today? Did he ever? What weight could a man possibly carry that he rarely smiled? Even she had found her smile again.

“Mind if I look around?”

“Go ahead. That’s why we came, but if it’s all the same to you, I’ll stay right here.”

“Spiderwebs everywhere.” As if to prove the point, he waved his hand into a thick web strung between a stack of boxes and the wall and wiped the cottony mess down the sides of his jeans.

“Exactly.” She remained beside a stack of boxes piled on top of a bureau in need of repair. The bulky piece of mahogany had been here when she’d first arrived and, like so many other things, had simply been too much to deal with at the time.

The wooden floor creaked beneath Eli’s weight as he approached the windows. Thick, dusty cobwebs crisscrossed panes so dirty the sun barely penetrated the glass with a hazy, translucent light.

“Can they be saved?” she asked.

“The spiderwebs? Or the windows?”

A joke. The man had made a joke. Julia smiled. “Saving the planet does not include spiders.”