Damon Read online

  Some people were mean enough to tell me that Mama’s condition was hereditary and could strike at any time.

  I believed them every time they said it.

  Mama continued to mumble, “He’s in the house. I can see him,” even after she’d fallen asleep.

  I walked over to the window and looked out, just to be safe. My stomach clenched and my heart did a whirl when I saw a man walking around the back yard.

  It was Damon Jennings, ignoring my insistence that he wait until I got off work.

  Well, I was annoyed. Between him and Kenny, they had almost scared my mother to death. Not to mention the fact that he was trespassing. I didn’t like his audacity. I didn’t like being left out of the adventure.

  Not wasting a second, I marched out the back door and strode across my plush, freshly mown lawn - calling out to him when I saw that he was working on destroying the little rock pond I was building.

  “Hey!” I yelled, hurrying to a jog when he flung my carefully placed rocks through the air. “What are you doing?”

  He stood up, dusting his hand on his jeans. He actually smiled and held up a hand in greeting!

  “That’s my rock pond!” I yelled, although he stood right in front of me and could hear me clearly.

  He looked down and winced, then looked at me apologetically. “It is? Sorry.”

  “Sorry? I told you to meet me at four-thirty.”

  He nodded and glanced around for the large, flat rocks he’d thrown. “Well,” he said, “you were busy, so I didn’t want to bother you.”

  I watched him while he gathered the rocks and began tossing them haphazardly around the border. I would have to start over from scratch.

  “Why are you destroying my property?”

  “Didn’t this used to be a birdbath?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, maybe. Why?”

  “I buried something here. A little dump truck.”

  “And so you were just gonna tear up my rock pond and dig up my yard?”

  “I thought this was the rubble.”

  Ah, what an asinine excuse! I looked down at my rock pond and tried to imagine how he saw birdbath rubble, with the rocks stacked nicely around the perimeter, and a plastic-lined hole in the middle.

  He just hadn’t cared what he destroyed.

  Giving him an annoyed glance I knelt down and tried to restore my artistic creation. “Why did you bury a dump truck?”

  He watched me work and shrugged. “I was a kid. It was a toy. I thought it would jar my memory if I found it.”

  I wasn’t feeling very sympathetic. “Well, you’ll just have to leave it if it’s under here. I’m almost done with this and I’ve been working on it for a full week.”

  He turned and slowly walked away, looking slightly distressed as he gazed at every detail of my back yard. “Maybe it was here,” he said. Then he gave my meticulously pampered lawn a severe kick with his heel. Dirt and grass flew.

  “Stop it!” I yelled, jogging toward him, still clutching two rocks. “What’s wrong with you? This is my lawn.”

  He stared at me blankly then looked down at the horrid gouge in my beautiful Kentucky Blue grass. When he looked up, I could tell he didn’t know why I was upset.

  “Take a look around, man,” I said. “What do you see?”

  He did, and then nodded at the gray showing through the white paint on the siding of my house. “Your house needs painting.”

  “I know that,” I said with all the patience I could muster. “Forget about that, I’m having it painted next week. See how I have everything set up just right? My garden over there, my pond here, my gazebo there, and the flagstone walkway I laid myself. You wouldn’t believe how much time I spend to keep my grass looking like this. I crawl around on my hands and knees plucking blades from the old grass. Get it? I’m going for a look here, ya know? And you’re messing it all up.”

  He nodded, lips pursed, and looked as if he understood. “I can see that,” he said.

  “Good. So don’t mess it up. This is my place, my own special place. The inside of my house looks like a thrift shop but I want this out here to be nice. My front yard is off limits, too. When people drive by I want them to think everything is happy and under control here. I live in a small town and people talk. I’m trying to improve my image.”

  He nodded, continuing to stare at the house. “Yeah sure, I can relate,” he said.

  “Well… good.” I let out a long, cleansing breath. “Sorry I came unglued.”

  He turned and pointed to Corky’s saltbox beyond the property line. “Who lives there now?”

  “Nobody. Corky died and his kids haven’t done anything with it yet. I think they’re rich and just don’t care. His son pays me to go in once a month to dust and vacuum, and I mow the yard while I’m doing mine. I don’t think it’s for sale.”

  “No, I don’t want to buy it,” he said. “I need to go inside.”

  I had a key to the house but wasn’t sure it would be a good idea to take him inside. “Why?”

  “I think I spent some time over there.”

  I had almost forgotten that he had actually been here years ago, with me. He’d put a spider on my face. Not surprising. “How long did you stay here?”

  “Don’t know. It seemed like a year or two, but it might have been months, or weeks.”

  “You lived with your grandfather?”

  He nodded vaguely. “Sometimes.”

  “He’s dead now?”

  “Yeah, last year. Heart attack all of a sudden. One minute he was standing there talking and the next he was on the floor. He died before the ambulance could get out.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. So why are you coming back here now?” What’s the big deal about this boring little town, I wondered.

  “I need to know something,” was all he would say.

  I could see from his faraway gaze that he was searching for answers to questions that truly haunted him. I couldn’t begin to imagine, but I could understand.

  “Do you promise not to touch anything?” I asked. “That house doesn’t belong to me.”

  He looked at me hopefully and stuffed his hands into his front pockets. “How’s this?”

  He was teasing, I could tell, but I had to get serious, so he would understand. “I’ll go get the key. Stay here.”

  I jogged, fearful that he might try to follow me. Only three people had been in my house in the past year: the sheriff, James Eddie, and two EMTs, when Mama cut herself up with a fork.

  More than enough visitors for me.

  For a sheriff, James Eddie had a big mouth, and so did the EMTs. People had stared at me for two weeks after the incident. And worse, some people had wanted to hear the details.

  Kids already called Mama a witch, so I didn’t like to fuel the flames. Every time there was a new incident, they called me a witch, too.

  I couldn’t have been gone but thirty seconds, yet when I returned Damon was already over at Corky’s, walking slowly around the back of the house, touching things.

  Running, I beat him to the back door, before he tried to jimmy the lock with a pocketknife or something. I couldn’t have guessed what he might do next. He obviously didn’t hear much of what I said.

  Entering the house, he stepped on my heels and mumbled, “Sorry,” before squeezing past me to lead the way.

  I followed him around the house, taking the opportunity to do some dusting, since he was so slow. He had to stop and look at everything. Yet nothing in particular. And he would often stop and slowly sweep his gaze through the air. He was trying to dredge up memories from so long ago.

  Memories from my own childhood were gone. I’d tried to put some images together over the years, just like Damon was doing now, but I’d done such a good job blocking them out that they were buried under concrete. As far as I knew, I had simply appeared on this planet at about age eight. I had fairly clear memories from second grade on, but before that… nothing. Dr. Sanderson told me that it was common for ch
ildren to block out traumatic events, and my childhood had been one long traumatic event with Mama’s crazy episodes.

  “Remember anything yet?” I asked.

  He’d been behaving so well, and not harming anything, that I had let him go upstairs alone, and now he was returning, stopping to look out the front window. He must have been giving himself a headache the way he was frowning.

  “I stayed here sometimes. With an old man.” He glanced at me. “This Corky, or whoever. He made me stay in the living room and wouldn’t let me go outside or play, or anything. I just had to sit there,” he stared furiously at the worn old blue and white sofa, “on that couch.”

  “He was kinda… gruff,” I said. And he had been. Everybody had called Corky ‘that mean ol’ bastard.’ “People said he couldn’t be killed. His son is just nearly as mean. He pays me on time, though, so I don’t care.”

  I hated it when I caught myself gossiping. I tried hard not to do it, but everybody else did it, and it was hard to resist sometimes.

  “I wonder why he left me here,” Damon said.

  “Maybe when your granddad and my grammy went out?”

  It still gave me shivers to think about it, but I was learning to deal with the idea. My sweet grammy had had a boyfriend.

  “What about your mother?” he asked. “She was there, wasn’t she? Why didn’t I stay with her?”

  “Well, my mother has medical problems. They wouldn’t have left you with her.” Not even if they were desperate. “Gram didn’t even leave me with Mama until I was thirteen. And then I was in charge. It’s weird they would leave you with Corky, though. Gram always left me with Aunt Cynthia. She used to live with us. Or Mrs. Jarvis next door. Maybe they were both gone that day.”

  He stared at me with a sad frown. “I don’t suppose your grandmother’s still around.”

  “No, she got sick when I was seventeen, died a year later. She smoked like an Alaskan chimney in the dead of winter.”

  He nodded, as if expecting this bad news.

  “But you know what,” I said. “I have tons of boxes with her stuff in them down in the storm cellar. There’s bunches of pictures.”

  He nodded, seeming especially interested, but then he said, “Come upstairs. I want to show you something.”

  I don’t know why I was wary of going upstairs with him, we were already alone in the house, but I felt strange about it. Probably because I was growing increasingly aware of how attractive he was.

  He grew on me somehow. At first glance, he was okay looking. Second glance he was pretty good-looking, and now he was so handsome I wanted to take a picture of him so I could stare at his face for hours.

  It was his eyes. The depth of emotion and knowledge inside them. The long lashes and the sympathetic downward slant at the corners, the peaked eyebrows. And his mouth, the way his bottom lip was fuller, and how his lips curled upward slightly at the corners. And the muscles in his faintly stubbled jaw that ridged and moved as he ground out some deep, dark memory.

  I also liked his dark blond hair, just curly enough to give groups of strands wild twists. Just long enough to make him seem a little untamed. He routinely raked his hair out of his face. I liked that, too. It gave me shivers when he did that.

  So I wasn’t sure I should go upstairs with him, where there were beds. I sometimes had trouble controlling myself around men with long, strong, artistic fingers and muscled forearms.

  Especially one with firm buns, long legs and powerful thighs. And he had to have been wearing jeans that fit just right.

  But he didn’t seem to have sex on his mind. He stared at me like I’d just started barking. I realized he was waiting for a reply and I was staring at him like a star-struck groupie.

  “Sure, okay,” I said. “Lead the way.”

  Some opportunities were just too good to pass up.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Upstairs, Damon wanted to show me a picture hanging on Corky’s bedroom wall. The room was large with one sloped wall. Corky had loved all things sea-related and most of the decorations were of the ocean, boats and lighthouses. It had always reminded me of an eleven-year-old boy’s room. Even the large brass bed had a white bedspread with colorful fish on it.

  I’d dusted the silver frame a hundred times without really looking at the photo inside.

  In the black-and-white photograph, six people stood together in some unknown location. Damon pointed to one of the two women. “Is that your grandmother?”

  I leaned in closer to look at the woman in the black hat. They were all dressed like the Fifties, the women in straight suit sets, hats and long gloves. The men in loose suits, with greased hair, holding their hats.

  I’d never seen my grandmother in a hat, or looking so serious and dressed-up. But it was her, when she was in her early twenties.

  “That’s her. And, hey, that’s Chester and Bella Brewer. Chester still had hair. Are any of these your grandfather?”

  “Him,” Damon said, pointing to the man standing beside my grandmother. The man holding her arm!

  I took a good long look at the man bothering my gram. My first thought was yuck, because of his sleazy slicked-back hair parted in the middle. But then I noticed his face was rather pleasant. He was almost good-looking. Almost. But not as good-looking as Grampa Harvey had been.

  And where was my grandfather, anyway? He wasn’t in the picture. I looked at Damon, wanting to blame him entirely, although I knew I couldn’t. “My grandfather didn’t die until the late sixties, early seventies. I can’t remember exactly.”

  Damon took the picture off the wall and dropped it face down on the dresser. Then he began bending little tabs and took the back off the frame.

  I read around his shoulder, trying to ignore the heat from his body, and the seductive musky male scent wafting up to my nostrils. “Knoxville. 1959.” No names, no additional information.

  He replaced the back and then stood there, holding the frame. I realized he intended to steal the picture.

  “You can’t do that.”

  “Nobody else wants it,” he said. “It’ll get thrown in the trash.”

  That was true enough. Corky’s children had come and taken everything they’d wanted the day of the funeral. But I might have wanted it. I felt like a silly kid fighting over a found dollar. I had a hundred pictures of Grammy. But I didn’t have this one.

  This one where my sweet, dependable, sane Grammy was possibly cheating on her husband. In front of other people.

  I couldn’t believe it. And I knew I was jumping to conclusions.

  They had probably just been friends until after Grampa Harvey had died. And then what was she supposed to do, live the rest of her life in mourning?

  Yes!

  “Mama was born in 1962, and Aunt Cynthia was born, like, three or four years before that. Maybe Gram and Grampa Harvey hadn’t married yet. I don’t know what year they got married.”

  Damon stared at me, seeming completely uninterested in the possible affair between our grandparents. He only seemed to care about the stupid picture.

  “Well, okay,” I said. “But at least leave the frame. It looks expensive.”

  He shrugged and made no move to replace the frame. He intended to steal the whole thing, plumb outright.

  And I had let him into the house, which made me his accomplice.

  Now that he had what he wanted, I could see his thoughts changing course, and my thoughts were diverted, as well. He glanced at Corky’s tall high-backed bed, then at me. Not me, exactly, my breasts.

  He absently set the picture on the dresser and came at me. I might have moved if I hadn’t been so surprised by the radical change in him.

  I knew that look. I’d seen it from countless guys, countless times. He was thinking about sex now. And only sex.

  I could see myself reflected in his eyes, already naked and lying flat on my back on the bed.

  He glanced at the doorway then closed in on me, backing me against the wall. I wasn’t overly concer
ned. He didn’t seem threatening, only intensely interested. I couldn’t argue with that. Still, I knew I had only a few seconds to make up my mind.

  No way am I sleeping with him, I decided just as he tilted his head and closed his lips over mine.

  His kiss was firm and soft, heated yet almost sweet. He didn’t try to part my lips or grab me into his arms. He merely caressed my arm lightly and let the kiss fade naturally. His breath tasted like cherry cough drops.

  I stood shock-still and waited to see what he would do next, so I could make up my mind about him.

  He straightened and tenderly ran his hand over my hair, gazing at me with friendly eyes.

  Then he went for his picture and led the way back downstairs.

  Once we were outside, with Corky’s house safely locked again, he fell in beside me for the walk, lingering close enough for his arm to brush mine.

  How fitting, I thought, that I might be on the verge of having an affair with my grandmother’s lover’s grandson. The idea was sort of creepy, but also strangely appealing. I looked up at him and he smiled at me.

  All hope was lost for me in that moment.

  ***

  We left Corky’s and walked back toward my house. I kept my distance, still not sure what was going on, or how I wanted to act around him. He left me unsettled and a little confused. Kind of the same way I always felt when it came time for James Eddie and the EMTs to leave the house.

  “When do you want me to start on the house?” he asked.

  “What?”

  He nodded toward my house. “Painting your house. Do you want it white again?”

  “You want to paint my house?”

  “In exchange for the room.”

  I stopped walking so I could see his face. “What room?”

  “The room with the private entrance.”

  “That’s not a… that’s a storeroom now. That was my grandmother’s bedroom.”