Sleep rarely comes easily on the wings of anguish and questions. While Evan’s rhythmic breathing was a sure indication he had left his worries and concerns at the door of Bob and Mae-Jo’s guest bedroom, I resorted to shallow breathing followed by the occasional sigh. My mind raced, bouncing between wonder at why anyone wanted to vandalize the big house and why anyone—particularly my own husband—wanted to tear down what remained of downtown Cottonwood. My thoughts spun out of control all night, first going room to room as I’d done with my camera, asking myself what in that particular room could be so important—both before vacancy and after.
Having eliminated any and all possibilities, my thoughts moved to the town and what I could do to salvage it. Electricians could be called in, drywallers, painters, carpenters, roofers.
Then I began to wonder who, already in town, might have the credentials or experience we’d need to renovate Cottonwood. This led to less immediate issues. A city government for one, with a mayor, city manager, and city clerk, perhaps its own police station or sheriff’s office. If enough people moved here, we’d once again need city utilities rather than depending on service from the county.
We’d need to develop a mission statement.
City ordinances. No doubt Karol had this under control already and it surely wasn’t my job or responsibility. Still, tonight it was on my mind, as real a challenge as the man lying in bed next to me.
I thought perhaps I could contact the National Register of Historic Places and see if the big house qualified for nomination. Mother, I decided, would be ideal for heading this. All I had to do was mention it ever so casually in conversation and she’d be all over it. I smiled at my ingenuity.
Then I frowned. I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling for long moments, having the realization I was thinking in terms not of being here but of living here. Permanently. Somehow, inexplicably and without warning, the soul of me had left Atlanta and Druid Hills, the people who called me “friend” and those who pretended to be. My work, my career, my employers . . . I was separate from them all. The only glitch to this thought was my husband, who I knew would just as soon have a leg amputated as leave the opulence of Druid Hills, his standing at the country club, and his partnership with Everett. Unless, that is, I meant more to him than all those combined.
I shifted, and the box springs creaked. I touched Evan on his shoulder with my fingertips—ever so lightly—but he didn’t move nor did his breathing change. I drew my hand to my lips, curling the fingers toward my palm, then squeezed my eyes shut against what I now knew to be true. I had, over the past few weeks, truly come home.
In my heart, lying there in the still and silence of the country bedroom in a rural home, I could hear an echo of my footsteps—clomp-clomp-clomp, thump-thump-thump—as I walked down the wide space of the hallway in the big house the day Uncle Jim died. I pictured myself walking the planks of wood along the wraparound porch as I’d done the day Aunt Stella left for Doris’s home and the new life she would have there and the lights from Uncle Bob’s store flickering as they’d done thousands of evenings before and would, no doubt, continue to do. I heard the squeak of hinges on the old glider at the end of the porch and the smell of burning leaves and the green and brown of foliage thick as the summer’s air. The familiarity of it all resonated within me.
What do you have in mind? I lifted a silent prayer.
Like Uncle Jim, I wasn’t what one might call a religious person, but I knew God personally. I’d gone to church my whole life. As a child, regularly. As an adult, semi-regularly. I knew all the Bible stories. I knew John 3:16 and the Twenty-third Psalm. And I knew the presence of God better than both of those.
Maybe it was the church service tonight and on Sunday. Maybe it was the love wrapped around Miss Melba’s sweet potato soufflé and caramel cake. Or the easy way the preacher had of presenting a sermon, the way he leaned against the podium as casually as if he were waiting for a bus. Being in that sanctuary—twice now—felt like home. And the big house felt like home.
What do you have in mind? I asked again. Even as I prayed the words I felt my body grow heavy with exhaustion as though God answered, “For you to sleep now and leave the rest to me.” My eyes fluttered open, then closed again, the lids heavy and determined. I was slipping, finally, to sleep.
And my last thought was that it was no wonder. I had, after all, finally come to understand—truly understand—why I was here. This time in Cottonwood was more than me renovating a house. God was renovating me.
Aunt Mae-Jo and I left the house before Evan and Uncle Bob had gotten out of bed. We met in the kitchen as the world changed from midnight blue to ashen gray, had a cup of coffee, jotted a note on a pad of paper so as not to alarm our husbands, then quietly walked out of the door and into Aunt Mae-Jo’s Mercury Marquis. The engine hummed and heat met cold as a plume of smoke circled the car. Mae-Jo switched on the defrost, allowed it to do its job for an impatient half minute, then swiped the windshield with the wipers and we were on our way.
Twenty minutes later we were in Raymore and inside the storage unit.
“Good land of the living,” my aunt said, looking up and around at the stacks of furniture and boxes of items I’d pulled from Aunt Stella’s. “Who knew this much stuff was in one house?”
I pointed an index finger toward the metal ceiling as I turned sideways to shift between two rows of boxes. “And the barn. Don’t forget the barn.”
“Heavens, no.”
I disappeared from her sight and neared the desk. “It’s a big house, Aunt Mae-Jo. That’s why they call it the ‘big house.’ ” “And too much house for Aunt Stella, I always said,” she called over the top of the boxes. “I told Bob years ago they should knock that top floor off—goodness knows they never went up there—and just have the bottom half of the house. Doris always slept in the back bedroom, even when she was a teenager, and except for when the whole family came in, no one knew that second floor existed.”
I found the desk and said so.
“Keep talking; I’ll find you.”
I heard her inching toward me, and I laughed as I began pulling the drawers from the desk. Other than old ledgers, a few fountain pens, some rubber bands that crumbled between my fingers, paper clips, and the like, there was nothing of any seeming importance.
“When I married Bob, back in ’59,” Aunt Mae-Jo said from beside me, “Mr. Nevilles was dead already. Mrs. Nevilles too, though I remember them both, of course. Everyone knew everyone in Cottonwood, same as they do now.” She reached down and touched one of the dusty leather-covered ledgers, tapping it with her pink-tinted nails. “Jim was running the farm—had been since he married Stella—and to my knowledge he never used the barn as an office. I would see him, sometimes, coming out of the dining room, and Bob would say, ‘What are you up to, Uncle Jim?’ and he’d say, ‘Oh, just going over a few of the books.’ ” Mae-Jo paused. “Can’t you just hear him saying that?”
I smiled and nodded.
“I never really thought about it, but now I wonder just where it was he was working at. There was never a desk in the dining room.”
I looked at Mae-Jo, locking my eyes with hers. “The butler’s pantry. There were always ledgers and almanacs and calendars and things like that in there.”
“But the butler’s pantry is no bigger than a minute.”
I shrugged. “Maybe he brought the books to the dining room table. Then put them back.” Something tugged at my memory. Uncle Jim, looking around the formal dining room, hands on hips, muttering, “Waste of space, this old room. If I’d built this house I’d-a left this room off the plans.”
“Hmmm . . . ,” I said.
“What?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. Just a memory knocking.”
Aunt Mae-Jo began pulling the drawers out of the desk.
“What are you doing?”
She set the drawers—which smelled of dust and cedar— one at a time, on top of the desk, emptied the top one, and then flipped it over to reveal its bottom.
“What are you doing?” I asked again.
“Looking. If someone was trying to find something, it’s because it was hidden. Bottoms of drawers are a good place for hiding things.”
I frowned, but I joined her in her efforts. “I have a feeling our culprits thought of that already.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
When the third drawer had been emptied and flipped and nothing of any interest was discovered, we both silently began refilling them. Aunt Mae-Jo touched my hand. “Wait. This isn’t a ledger,” she said, picking up a small book. “This is a daily journal. Desk journals, we used to call them.” She flipped the book open to expose the handwriting I had come to recognize as belonging to my great-grandfather. “Back then, businessmen and even housewives kept a daily diary of things they did, meals they cooked. They didn’t try to express their feelings like people do today. It was all about what had to be done or what got done. Nobody cared how you felt about the fleetingness of life.” She waved her hand in the air for effect, and I laughed lightly. “Farmers used them for recording plantings, harvestings, that kind of thing.” She handed the book to me. “You can start reading on the way home in the car.”
I looked down at the book. “I wonder why the men didn’t want this, though. Maybe it wasn’t what they were looking for. Obviously the financial ledgers weren’t.”
Mae-Jo gathered the ledgers. “Then we’ll go over them with a fine-toothed comb. Who knows but what those men— whoever they are—didn’t underestimate Mr. Nevilles?”
“You think this has to do with my great-grandfather?”
“What I think is this: one, they went first for Mr. Nevilles’s desk. So it only makes sense that it has to do with him. And whatever it is or was, it wasn’t buried with him. Two, I’m hungry, and you get to buy me breakfast. I’m not picky. McDonald’s will do just fine.”