2010
My father, Rainie, and I head to the new house late in the afternoon after I get home from work. I’m not excited about going.
I fell asleep easily last night, but that red-haired woman came to me in a dream. She carried a gun and it was clearly me she was after. When I woke up, I had to get out of bed and walk around the quiet house until the image of her—the memory of her—was gone, or at least had faded. Then at the office this morning, I constantly looked over my shoulder. I keep wondering if I might one day soon read about a murder in the paper, a murder I could have somehow prevented.
We approach the Main Street intersection. I turn left onto Main and drive past the Round Hill Theater, where my middle school boyfriends and I used to make out in the back row, and the Food Lion, where I worked one summer a lifetime ago. Then I make a right onto Round Hill Road. We pass some newer developments, those clots of homes that seem to spring from the ground overnight, erasing trees and cornfields. That’s why Jackson and I’d been excited about Shadow Ridge, where the developers required the builders to retain so many of the trees.
The new granite entrance signs have been installed since my last visit—SHADOW RIDGE ESTATES in gold script on a dark background. Embarrassingly ostentatious, I think, as I turn onto Shadow Ridge Lane. The first house I see—the first house anyone would see as they drive into this developing neighborhood—is the old Hockley place. Buddy Hockley refuses to sell to the developers, who would like to squeeze two more houses into the wide lot where the big white, red-roofed house stands. The house is ancient, and although it couldn’t be more different from the style of house I love to design, I think it’s beautiful. There’s something appealing about the broad porch with the rockers that look like they’ve been there forever. It’s an inviting “come over and have a glass of sweet tea” sort of porch. But the Hockley house is an abomination to everyone else who is having a house built on Shadow Ridge Lane.
I’ve heard that Buddy Hockley is terminally ill now—I don’t know with what—so I’m sure the developers are ready to pounce on their heirs, whoever they might be.
I’m so used to seeing only a dusty old dark blue pickup in the Hockley driveway that I’m actually startled to see a white sedan behind it. An aide? A visitor? A grown child?
“Does Buddy Hockley have children, Daddy?” I ask as we pass the driveway.
My father seems to be studying the white car as well. “Buddy had a daughter but she passed a few years back,” he says. “Wife passed too. Only family left besides his mother is a sister, Eleanor—Ellie—but she lives in California. Left when she was young and never came back.”
“Will Daddy be at the new house?” Rainie interrupts our conversation from the back seat. My heart cramps at her question and I can’t answer right away.
My father reaches over to touch my shoulder. He gives it a squeeze. Be strong, he’s saying.
“No, honey,” I say. “Daddy won’t be there. Remember I told you that he’s in heaven?” It breaks my heart that she still doesn’t get it that Jackson is gone for good. It breaks my heart that she’ll never get to know him, and that he’ll never have the chance to see his little girl grow up.
“Oh right. I forgetted,” Rainie says, without the slightest hint of pain in her voice. “I wish he’d come back though.”
“So do we, honey,” I say. “And I know he misses you as much as you miss him.”
Both sides of Shadow Ridge Lane are lined with white construction vans, and the sound of hammering and drilling and sawing cuts right through the car windows. I am sick to death of the sounds of construction. The houses are in various stages of completion, and—not counting the Hockley house—there will be nineteen altogether, eight on the north side, ten on the south, and one at the very end of the street. That is ours. Or, I guess, mine. It’s an undeniably stunning house—a sleek wood-and-glass Frank Lloyd Wright–inspired contemporary, finished and waiting for the furniture to arrive on Saturday. I wish the furniture would arrive next year, instead, when we’d at least have some neighbors to get to know. I have such a love/hate feeling about our “dream house” now.
“I think you should take out some more trees.” Daddy eyes the land around the house as I pull into the newly paved driveway.
I have to admit that the trees look oppressive. Before, I thought they would embrace the house. Now it looks as though the house has slipped inside a deep green cave.
No one should have put a house there. Isn’t that what the woman said? Weird Ann Smith?
“Maybe,” I answer my father.
Outside the car, I reach for Rainie’s hand, but she runs ahead, hopping along the new sidewalk that runs from the driveway to the front door. Daddy and I catch up with her there, and I tap in the code to unlock the door.
Although it’s only late afternoon and the walls are more glass than wood, the house is indeed a bit dim inside. I flick on the lights and take a look around. The first story is completely open, the ceiling high. I can see all the way to the kitchen from where I stand. Unobtrusive shelves divide the dining area from the living room, the kitchen from the great room. The walls have now been painted a pale taupe. The new hardwood floors, a rich toffee color, are incredibly beautiful and warm the open space exactly as I’d hoped they would. It’s been two weeks since I’ve been in the house and it looks like it’s ready and waiting to be filled with furnishings and family. The architect in me is proud and amazed at what Jackson and I created. The widow in me can barely move.
“Let’s look around,” Daddy says, as if perplexed as to why I’m just standing there lost in thought in the foyer. His voice echoes in the emptiness. We walk through the great room with its spectacular copper-fronted fireplace. The wall of floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the wide deck is the rich deep green of the trees. I remember Jackson saying he couldn’t wait to see that wall of windows in the fall when the leaves would wash our entire downstairs with color. I wish he would have the chance.
The hand-painted art-deco tile backsplash has finally been installed in the kitchen and it looks even better than I imagined. I know the whole downstairs is absolutely stunning, yet I can’t feel anything. I don’t care about pretty tile. I just want my husband back. I draw in a long breath, doing my best to keep the tears at bay.
We head up the open staircase from the great room to the second story. It’s slow going with Rainie, but she hangs on to the railing and doggedly works her way up. When we reach the last few steps, I keep my eye on her, wondering if she understands how that staircase took Jackson from us. But she seems to have no idea how the stairs altered her life, and once she reaches the top, she cheers with the achievement of climbing them. Daddy laughs, and I shake off the horror of memory and join him.
We explore the four large bedrooms, the massive closets, the four bathrooms. I remember the hundreds of hours Jackson and I spent picking out floor tiles and fixtures for those bathrooms. Everything smells of new wood and paint. Rainie knows from our last visit which room will be hers, and she chatters about where she’ll put her dollhouse, where her bed will go. Downstairs again, we cross through the great room and outside to the huge deck. We are absolutely, utterly cocooned by trees, so much so that the construction noise fades into the background and we hear mostly birdsong.
“You’ll have plenty of shade in the summer,” Daddy says. “How far back does your property go?”
“Pretty far,” I say. “Jackson and his construction buddies put this circular trail in”—I point to the stepping-stones at either end of the deck—“and he said the property goes all the way back to a little lake, but I never walked that far with him.”
“You’ll want to fence it off,” Daddy says, nodding toward Rainie. “That lake might be small, but it’s deep.”
“Oh, you know it?” I ask.
“Oh, sure,” he says. I shouldn’t be surprised. After a lifetime of living in Round Hill, he knows every inch of it.
“I’ll get some estimates.” I study the trees and for the first time, I notice an enormous oak in the distance. “That tree.” I point toward it. “That must be the biggest tree in the neighborhood.”
Daddy follows the trajectory of my arm. “Yeah, that tree’s been here forever,” he says. “The Hockley kids used to have a tree house up in its branches. I hung out there as a kid myself sometimes.” He looks a little nostalgic and I smile. I like the idea that this land had once been my father’s playground. It makes it feel safe and familiar. That fact and the sweet scent of the forest give me courage about living here.
“Hey, Rainie,” I call to my daughter, who is trying unsuccessfully to catch a blue-tailed skink that’s running around on the deck. “What do you think of our cool new house?”
Rainie stops chasing the skink. She stands still on the deck, looking up at the house. She stretches her arms out wide. “I think it’s the beautifulest house in the whole world,” she says, her tone so serious that Daddy and I both laugh. I look at my father and he reaches out to run the backs of his fingers down my cheek.
“Everything’s going to be all right, Kayla,” he says. “You’ll see.”
I’m relieved when we leave the house. As we drive back to my father’s, I feel trapped. Rainie and I have no choice but to move into the house. Our old house is sold and we can’t stay with Daddy any longer; he needs to empty his house for the new owners. Maybe I could put my new house on the market and rent something until I find a house small and cozy and safe for Rainie and me, but the thought is painful. The Shadow Ridge house was our baby, Jackson’s and mine. As ambivalent as I am about moving into it, I don’t want strangers to live in it either.
When we get to my father’s house, I sit on the bed in my childhood bedroom and have a one-sided talk with Jackson. I do this entirely too much. This room awakens all my early memories of him. Even though my personal things have been removed from the room—my yearbooks from high school and NC State, where Jackson and I met and became inseparable, the pictures of us at parties and concerts, when our future was wide open—the memories of our early years together still linger. They’re in the air of the room. In the walls. In my bed, where we first made love one night when my parents were out. It’s both painful and comforting to be in this room.
I remember our first big trip together. We drove ten hours to Pennsylvania to visit Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, that cantilevered concrete and steel house situated directly above a waterfall. We were two months into our relationship and that’s when I realized I had a passionate man on my hands—and not just in our hotel room. While I could appreciate the beauty of Fallingwater and the architectural skill that went into its creation, I would have been satisfied with an afternoon’s exploration of the building. Jackson, though, insisted on a two-day visit, examining every nook and cranny, peppering the docents with questions as he researched the technical details of the house.
“So is this your dream house?” I asked him that second day, as we stood in one of the building’s living areas.
He looked around him, not answering right away. That was Jackson’s style, I’d learned. He always thought before he spoke. “Yes and no,” he equivocated. “I’m fascinated by the inventiveness. By the skill. But the interior is a bit too cold. I’d like more warmth.” Then he pointed to the massive corner window nearest us. “But oh my God, the windows!”
“Totally agree,” I said. The enormous window framed the snowcapped branches of oaks and maples and fir trees. “I love how he brought nature inside.”
Jackson smiled at me, a smile that made me feel as though I was the only person in the world. “Exactly,” he said. “And when you and I design our house together, that’s what we’ll do. We’ll bring nature inside.”
I remember him taking my hand then as we continued strolling through the house, while my face heated up from his words. When you and I design our house together. I should have felt insulted by his presumption that we’d be together forever, yet I realized, in that moment, that being together with him forever was exactly what I wanted.
Now I sigh, leaning back against the headboard of my bed.
How would you feel if I sold the house? I ask him.
He doesn’t bother to respond. He knows I know his answer.
Still, I call one of my good friends, Bets, who also happens to be a Round Hill Realtor, just to test the waters.
“Oh, don’t even think of selling it, Kayla!” she says. “It’s so beautiful and you and Jackson put your heart and soul into it.”
“I know, but—”
“And there’s not much suitable on the market right now for you and Rainie to move into.”
“We could rent for a while,” I say.
“I think,” Bets says slowly, “when the worst of your grief is behind you, you’ll really regret it if you’ve let the house go, Kayla.”
I sigh. Intellectually, I’m sure she’s right.
“Think of Rainie,” Bets continues. “What a beautiful gift Jackson’s left behind for her. Plus, you’d take a big loss. The house is truly gorgeous, but—and I’m so sorry for saying this—people know what happened there. Everyone knows about Jackson’s accident. It was in the news and everybody knows. So for some people, the house is already—” She hesitates, then finally says the word I know is coming. “—already haunted. Forgive me for saying that, Kayla, but I know you want the truth from me.”
I wince. “Not really,” I say.
“I see this kind of situation all the time,” she continues. “People make rash decisions when they’re grieving. Please don’t do that. My advice would be for you to live in it for at least two or three years. See how you feel about it then. Those Shadow Ridge houses are only going to go up in value. Like crazy. You watch and see.”
“My house isn’t haunted.” I seem to be stuck on that word.
“Oh, I know that. I’m sorry. Poor choice of words,” Bets says. “Look, Kayla, I’ve got an appointment waiting. If you decide you do want to sell, call me. Otherwise, once you move in, invite me over for a glass of wine, okay? I can’t wait to see that house with your furniture in it.”
I hang up the phone. I’m glad I called her. Glad Bets is a friend who can give it to me straight. Still, I feel shaken. Bets is looking at my situation with her brain. I’m looking at it with my heart. She’s right, though. I need to think of Rainie. We created the house for her. For our family. I have no idea what the future holds for my daughter and myself. All I know is that, right now, Rainie and I are going to move into that house.