Lover's Knot (10 page)

Now he wished, as he had so many times, that he had left work last month when Kendra needed his help. One decision, and his life had changed forever. One, careless, self-absorbed decision.

He was finished here for the night, even if no one was waiting at home for him.

He gathered papers into his briefcase and saw the white foam container with the extra sandwich. He gathered that, too, and headed for the elevator.

Outside, the sky was turning dark and the night turning cool. He walked across the street to Gene’s Beans and peered into the alley beside it. The ginger tabby was scrounging behind the Dumpster, only its ragged tail visible.

“Hey, old man,” Isaac said. “I brought you something.”

The cat ignored him, but when Isaac opened the container and placed it on the ground, the smell of tuna told the tale. The cat quickly backed away from the Dumpster, turned and approached warily. Isaac moved slowly away from the container and watched as the cat devoured the food. As hungry as he clearly was, the cat never lost sight of Isaac as he ate.

“You know,” Isaac said, “I can relate to your life, but I won’t bore you with the details.”

The cat finished the sandwich; then he carefully licked his front paws. He was still vigilant, though, keeping Isaac in sight at all times.

There was nothing left to say. Not to the cat, anyway. Isaac crossed the street to the garage.

Kendra was swinging the weed cutter through the second row of Leah’s garden when Manning Rosslyn arrived. She was expecting him, so the sound of his car didn’t worry her. She greeted him after he stepped out of a white pickup that had
Rosslyn and Rosslyn, Historic Restoration, Architectural Renewal
lettered in black and gray on the doors. Twilight was just beginning to descend.

“Mrs. Taylor?” They shook hands.

“Kendra,” she said, wiping perspiration from her forehead with the back of her hand. “And you’re Manning. Thanks for coming.”

“Glad to do it. How did you hear about me?”

She explained about Helen. “When Helen says jump, we jump, right?”

He grinned. He was a large man, maybe as old as seventy if, as Helen said, he’d been sweet on Isaac’s mother. But he looked younger. If he’d played sports in high school or college, most likely he’d been a halfback for some lucky team. His hairline had receded, but what was left was gray, with some traces of brown. He had pleasant features, dark eyes that crinkled at the corners, sun-spotted skin. He wore a polo shirt with Rosslyn and Rosslyn embroidered on the pocket, dark jeans and muddy work boots.

She liked him on sight, guessing, at the same time, that this was a man who usually got his way. Most likely the good-old-boy facade covered iron determination, an excellent combination to get things done in this neck of the woods.

“I do what Ms. Henry tells me, same as everyone else hereabouts.” He spoke with the accent common to central Virginia, remnants of a nineteenth-century Scottish heritage. She could identify the “about” that sounded like “aboot.”

“Well, come see the house and we’ll talk as we go. I told you I’m interested in the barn up the road. I see it’s still for sale.”

He walked beside her toward the porch. “I contacted the owner. It’s yours if you want it. If you don’t, I’ll probably take it off his hands. I’ve had a good look at it. Not all the wood is worth saving. It’s a mixture of chestnut, oak, poplar, some spruce. Beams in the ceiling are cedar. Too bad it was stripped of its siding, got some rot started—but I think we can salvage most of it.”

“Did he give you a price?”

“We negotiated. He’ll let us have it for under ten thousand, exact number depending on when we come and get it. He’s not being unreasonable, but taking it down and hauling it here will add to that number. Let’s see what you want to do with it first.”

With a visitor standing there, Kendra felt awkward reaching the porch her usual way. She’d been in the garden a long time, though, waiting for Manning, and her left leg felt too weak to negotiate the steps.

“Feel free to take the stairs, but I get up this way,” she told him. With an effort, she pulled herself up to the edge of the porch and managed to swing her legs over, helping with her hands.

Manning watched her. “No matter what we decide today, I’ll send my son over tomorrow to put up a railing. Nothing fancy, just something to get you up and down a little easier.”

“Zeke Claiborne was going to do it, but he’s been out of town. Sam Kinkade offered to find somebody at church next week. Elisa warned me not to let Sam anywhere near the place with a saw and nails.”

“Cash will make quick work of it.”

Kendra dusted off her jeans. “Cash. The perfect name for a businessman.”

“John Cashel Rosslyn, son from my second marriage, so he’s still a youngster like you. He goes by Cash. Says he doesn’t have to take credit for anything that way. As sons go, he’s not the worst in town.”

She smiled at the way he downplayed the pride in his voice. “If he’s too busy, I’m managing this way. But I appreciate the offer.”

“He’ll be here. Let’s see what we’re up against. It’s too dark for a real assessment. We’ll just do a quick one tonight.”

“I gather you’ve seen the place before.”

“Sure have.” He didn’t elaborate.

“Dabney Higby did some work for me. He took off the old siding, re-chinked the logs.” She opened the door into the living room.

“I hope he saved the wood.”

“There’s a pile way in the back, where the driveway ends. He hauled anything with no value to the landfill.”

“I know Dabney. He’s not much of a preservationist, but he’s not the worst, either. You wanted the logs exposed?”

“The wood siding was covered with sheets of asphalt, patterned like bricks. It was coming loose, and it was ugly.”

“He chinked the logs?”

“It seemed important.”

“Did he do anything with the foundation?”

She was beginning to worry. “Not that I know of.”

“See, the biggest problems these old places have are poor foundations and settling. If we have to jack it up or level it, it’ll have to be re-chinked. And I would have used something authentic, or more authentic. Truth is, though, this house isn’t ever going to make the historical register. There are a lot of older, better cabins in the area. First part, where we’re standing, that was most likely just built as a hunting cabin. Ms. Spurlock—she’s the woman used to own it—she built the second cabin and turned it into a dogtrot when she moved here in the thirties. Easiest way to give her and Rachel, her daughter, a little more room.”

Kendra was glad Rachel’s name had come up. “I still want to preserve it.”

“I’m all for saving anything valuable, but don’t save this because you think you ought to. Nobody would fault you for tearing it to the ground.”

Kendra didn’t want to explain why she wanted to preserve the cabin. Until she told Helen about Isaac’s relationship to Leah and Rachel, she didn’t want anyone else to know.

“The thing is, I also want more room, more light, more air.”

“Then you need to think of this as a work in progress. History? What day in history would you go back to, anyway? Take down the second part? Dogtrot’s a part of the history here, just like the two-room houses with central fireplaces the Germans from Pennsylvania built.”

She was really beginning to like him. “So you’re saying if we add on, use those barn logs, we’re just continuing the history.”

“You’ve got it. So let’s look at it that way. What do you want here? What would give you the room you need and make you happy? That’s what everybody else who ever lived here had to decide, too.”

She knew what she missed. A real kitchen, with room to move around, room for friends to gather and eat. A master bathroom with a tub she could relax in. And she wanted a great room, with windows looking over the river. The view from that end of the dogtrot was spectacular.

She told him, and he nodded.

“How about this ceiling? I feel like I’m bending over,” he said.

“I know. It’s low here
and
in the other part, yes.”

“It’s false. I expect somebody put up this cheap old beadboard sometime in the forties or so to make the place easier to heat. If you still want to go to all that trouble, I can knock out the ceilings for you. We could turn this room and the one across from it into studies or bedrooms, make the dogtrot an entry hall, use the barn to build a great room looking over the river, with a master bedroom on one side and a real bathroom off that.”

“We’ll need a new well if we’re going to use all that water. The one here is easily exhausted.”

“Cash’s a dowser.”

“You mean he walks around with a forked stick and finds water?”

“I’ll guarantee his work. Never seen him fail. And you’ve got a river out there. There’s bound to be good water nearby.”

“You really think all that’s possible here?”

“Give me about half an hour to poke around. I’ll come back in when I have a better idea.”

She busied herself heating a rotisserie chicken and mixing up a salad to go with it. She hadn’t expected to have time to get to it, but she had finished eating by the time he returned. It was nearly dark outside.

“What you’ll have, when we finish, is a house that looks like it’s been standing here a good while, but one with everything you said you wanted. Won’t be cheap.”

“Money’s not a big issue.”

“This house has problems and not a lot of charm. No question. It’s going to be a mess for a while. No fun living here with us on the job. You’re still willing?”

“How much of a mess?”

“Somewhere along the way, we’ll move you out for a week or two. Then we’ll move you back in. But you’ll have to live with some noise and a lot of company.”

“For how long?”

“Well, you’re lucky. I’ve got two crews. Both of them were tied up, but one finished early and doesn’t have to start the next job until midsummer. The other was due to work over in Strasburg for a few months, but the bank pulled the loan. The owners’ll get their financing, but they’ll have to get back to the end of the line.”

“You mean you could start soon?”

“It’s looking that way. Two crews for a while, and if we have to take that barn down fast to save you a couple of thousand dollars, we might as well bring it in and get to work the moment we can.”

She had come to recuperate and find herself again. She had planned on solitude. Yet how could she pass up this opportunity? In the days between her call and Manning’s arrival, she’d checked his work thoroughly, even driven to three sites to talk to the owners. The praise was unanimous, but she’d been warned Manning was hard to schedule and a perfectionist who worked slowly. He was the right man for this job. Logic and intuition told her so. They also told her it was now or possibly never.

“Put me on the schedule,” she said.

“I’ll send Cash out tomorrow to build that railing. I expect he’ll want to see the place and form his own opinions. I’ll have him do all the things it was too dark to do tonight. And I’ll start putting together some plans for you. Your job is to think of everything you want. He’ll drop off a checklist and some books to look through. You need to think about decks, porches, fireplaces, laundry rooms…”

She tried to listen as he ticked off the possibilities, but her mind wandered. She imagined this house, part of a living history, opened to the beauty of the setting. A place where friends would come and fill the rooms, a place where she and Isaac could absorb the serenity, the magnificence, of the Shenandoah Valley and the river below them.

She and Isaac. A commitment to this house meant a commitment to living here for at least a part of each year. And what would that do to her relationship with her husband? The husband who despised this area and everything it represented.

Yet whose life did she need to live?

“So we’re agreed?” Manning asked.

She hesitated; then she nodded. “Sounds like the right way to proceed.”

“You don’t have to see me out, Kendra.”

“I’ll walk you to the porch.”

Outside, stars were beginning to light the sky. A moon hung low on the horizon, nearly obscured by the woods.

Kendra decided to prod a little. “Helen told me you spent a lot of time here as a teenager.”

“She did, did she?” He looked up at the sky, too. “Yeah, I was sweet on Rachel Spurlock. The way a man is sweet on a woman once in his whole life. I’ve been married twice, loved both of those women more than I thought a man should. But Rachel, that was something different.”

She was touched. She liked Manning more and more.

“I’d like to know more about this house,” she said. “I like history. I heard Rachel left town when she was still very young?”

“Rachel was a loner. I was about the only person she trusted. She never felt like she fit in here, even though she was pretty enough to turn the head of every man who saw her. But she took offense easily. Anyone looked sideways at her and she thought it meant something. She was head-strong, too. She thought her mother was trying to smother her. She wanted more from life than Toms Brook. Today she would have had a hundred good options. Back then, it was running away, or staying here and marrying me.”

“I didn’t mean to bring up a sore subject.”

“It worked out the way it was supposed to. She never would have supported my plans to spend hunting season out in the woods and holidays with our families. To go to church on Sundays, raise children. She wanted to see the world, did Rachel. And I guess she wanted to see it alone.”

Kendra wondered if some of Isaac’s restless energy had come directly from his birth mother. She’d always thought his need for activity came from his upbringing, the overseas moves from base to base, the cockeyed views of an alien world he’d glimpsed from the windows of Air Force housing.

“Well, I’m glad you stayed behind,” she said. “Look what you’re going to do with Rachel’s old house. You’re going to open it to the world beyond. I wonder what she would think. Or her mother.”

“Ms. Spurlock used to sit right there on an old cane-bottom stool.” He pointed back toward the river and the end of the dogtrot. “She’d shuck corn or snap beans or bundle her herbs to sell to anyone who wanted them. Looking at the river was her favorite pastime, one of the few times she rested.”