These Sheltering Walls: A Cane River Romance (8 page)

            Tom
said nothing for a moment, just looked down at the asphalt between them. “I
won’t tease you anymore about it. I’m sorry I forced the issue.” His voice was
subdued and he looked up, all laughter gone from his eyes. “But just because
you’re comfortable in your solitude doesn’t mean that you’re meant to be alone
forever.”

            “I’m
not hiding from the world. I’m out of my house, talking to people all day,”
Gideon said.

            “You
know I don’t mean chit chat,” Tom said. “We were created to love one another,
Gideon. Deeply, unconditionally, the way God loves us.  We were made for it. Even
if it’s only one or two others. Don’t forget that.”

            He
wanted to say it was easy for Tom to say, safe in his vow of celibacy, but he
nodded, opened the car and slid behind the wheel.

             Tom
stepped forward, putting his hand on the door before Gideon could close it. He
looked resigned, as if knowing his next words would be too much. “I know it’s
scary, the thought of being rejected. But if we don’t take chances, what are we
even doing here?” he asked.

            Gideon
looked up at his friend and wished, for the tenth time that week, that he
wasn’t Gideon Becket, but some other man who had not lived through decades of
viciousness and despair. “I’m not afraid of being rejected, Tom. I can already
predict that part of the story.”

            Tom
stepped back, letting Gideon close the car door. When Gideon turned the corner
at the end of the block, he could see Tom standing there still.

“Lie to me, but in your own way,
and I’ll kiss you for it.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

            “There
you are!” The voice took a minute to penetrate Henry’s thoughts. She turned,
dread making her limbs heavy.

            Kimberly
Gray was trotting towards her, long dark hair flying behind her, one slim arm
raised far over her head in greeting. It took a pro to walk in three inch
stilettos but somehow Kimberly managed a mincing jog, her skin tight red dress
hobbling her stride. Henry glanced around, grateful the street was almost deserted.

            “How
did you find me?” she asked.

            Kimberly
came to a stop in front of her and adjusted the chain of her purse over her
shoulder. “Well, that’s a real fine greeting. I expect more from my niece.”

           
Lie.

            “I’m
sorry,” Henry said and leaned forward, letting herself be hugged and kissed.
She could feel Kimberly’s lipstick on her cheek and resisted the urge to wipe
it away. She felt dowdy in her old jeans and T-shirt but she pushed the feeling
aside. She wasn’t going to wear a nice dress to work in a cobwebby basement.

            “That
sweet old man in the bookstore told me you were headed to the Finnamore place.”
She looked around. “He said you were meeting someone.”

            Henry
felt panic rise in her throat. “Actually, I’m going to sort some old papers.
It’s really not interesting. Can we meet up for dinner later? We can try that
new Thai restaurant on LaRose street or we can go to The Red Hen.”

            Kimberly
brushed her hair back over her shoulder and beamed. “I’ll come with you. I love
old papers.”

           
Lie.

            “Really?”

            “Oh,
honey, it’s so boring back at your
mamere
’s. Every time I visit, she
invites her bridge group and the St. Augustine’s Women’s Auxiliary and I can’t
turn around without having to sign an autograph. Ellie Costa keeps hinting at
an invitation to my Malibu beach house and Lana Rae Jepperson wants me to get
her daughter into movies, as if I can make directors hire anybody I choose.
Everybody wants something from me.”

            Henry
bit back several responses. “I’m sure it’s difficult to be so famous.”

            “It
really is. You’re so lucky that you were raised by Lisette in a little sleepy
town, away from Hollywood types. You had the best childhood anybody could ask
for.”

            Memories
of Lisette washed over Henry, memories of her tight expression when Henry was
sick, of her sharp tongue when Henry had trouble in third grade math, of her
undisguised anger when another relationship failed because the man wasn’t ready
to take on the responsibility of someone else’s child.

            Henry
looked at her watch. “I have to go. I’ll be back in―” The rest of her
sentence faltered as she saw Gideon walk around the corner. He raised a hand in
greeting, his expression sliding from friendly to guarded to curious.

            “What
have we here?” Kimberly asked, smoothing her dress over her hips. Henry could
hear the appreciation in her voice. She could never resist a handsome man, and
what Kimberly wanted, Kimberly got.

            Gideon
stopped in front of them, looking from Kimberly to Henry and back. 

            “Is
this your friend?” Kimberly asked.

            “I―
no,” Henry blurted.

            Gideon
raised an eyebrow at her.

            She
sighed. “Kimberly, this is Gideon Becket.” She assumed she didn’t need to
finish the introduction. Everyone in the country knew the woman by sight.

            Kimberly
held out a hand and beamed. “So nice to meet you,” she gushed. “I think I’ve
only met one of Henry’s friends before. That girl from your high school class,
the one with the curly red hair. What was her name? Penny? Patty?”

            “Patsy,”
Henry said.

            “Such
an interesting woman. Always going on about which insects are native to the
area and which are invaders.” Kimberly brushed back her hair, letting it fall
along her back like a glistening waterfall. “Well, I’m glad to see you with a
man. I was starting to think you were against them on principle.” She let out a
little laugh, as if to prove she really meant no offense.

            Leaning
close to Gideon, Kimberly looked up at him from under her lashes. “Maybe you
can convince my niece to spend a little less time on dead people and a little
more time on making some live friends. History is real nice but all we have is
the here and now. That’s what my yoga instructor says.”

            Gideon
let out a sound that was a combination of cough and laugh. Henry shot him a
look. It was probably very funny to him to see Kimberly Gray, standing there
like a red stop light, displaying the figure that made her famous and spouting
nonsense. Henry knew she was ridiculous, but she didn’t want anyone mocking
her, either.

            “We
need to go. I’ll call you when I get back,” Henry said and turned to head back
down the sidewalk. She hoped Gideon would take the cue and follow her because
although she knew where the Finnamore house was, she didn’t have a key.

            “It
was nice to meet you,” Gideon said.

           
Truth.

           
“I’m
sure we’ll see each other again,” Kimberly said, giving a tiny wave, fingers
wiggling. “My niece can cook us some of her famous jambalaya.”

            He
caught up with her in just a few steps and Henry didn’t look back to make sure
Kimberly was gone.

            “Famous
jambalaya?” he asked.

            “I
can’t cook. I don’t know where she got that idea.” For some reason, that small
fact made her more angry than Kimberly’s other comments.

            He
laughed out loud and she turned in surprise. She was so used to his usual
expression that she almost stopped walking just to look at him.

            “Well,
I can cook, so if you get roped into hosting a dinner, we’ll just do a
switcheroo and no one will know the difference,” he said with a wink and Henry
decided there was no way she was putting Gideon in Kimberly’s man-eating path.

            They
reached the wide porch stairs and looked up at the dilapidated older home. It
would have been a beautiful building, if it wasn’t on the verge of being
bulldozed. 

            “Since
there isn’t any electricity, we have to use oil lamps for light. I also have a
few head lamps, if you’d rather use those, but I find them distracting as I
move around,” he said.

            Henry
let out a slow breath. She was so thankful he wasn’t going to say anything more
about Kimberly. Maybe they could both pretend she didn’t exist.  “Do you think
anyone will buy it?” she asked.

            “No.
The amount of work to be done is more than the house is worth. Only someone
with a real love of the area’s history would buy this place, and they’d also
have to be prepared for a long course of repairs. It’s not livable.”

            Henry
noted the three stories, gabled windows and wrap around porch. But as beautiful
as the bones were, the roof was rotting and the front steps sagged suspiciously
at one end. “And it’s too out of the way for a bed and breakfast, probably.”

            He
nodded. “Maybe so. It seems the businesses do best along the waterfront, like
By the Book. I admire how Alice has kept all the original fixtures.”

            “Have
you ever been upstairs?” As soon as she asked the question she almost cringed.
It sounded as if she was hoping for a chance to invite him into her apartment.

            “No,
but if it’s anything like the store, I bet it’s a wonderful example of
preservation.”

            He
didn’t seem to think anything of her comment. Henry felt herself start to
relax. There was something about Gideon’s conversation that was almost
soothing. He spoke with an utter lack of subtext while Henry felt her entire
life was an exercise in decoding the meaning beneath someone’s words.

            “The
apartment is a dream. My fireplace mantel is two hundred and twenty years old
French cherrywood. Alice said it survived a hurricane on the trip over. She
knows the names of the Creole freemen who laid the brickwork. The floor is hand
hewn quarter oak from a grove north of the city.” She couldn’t help smiling as
she remembered the first time she walked into the apartment. “Living there is
like touching history.”

            He
looked down at her, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “You touch history every
day.”

            “Yes,
but it’s a whole different experience when I make my coffee in the percolator
on the fifties stove and brush my teeth in the tiny water closet and do the
dishes in the old porcelain sink.” She pushed up her glasses. “It’s not all
luxurious accommodations, of course. I can’t tell you how many cold showers
I’ve endured since I moved in.”

            “I
can’t say I’m a fan of cold showers,” he said, starting around the back of the
house. “The basement entrance is over here.”

            She
followed him down a narrow flight of cement steps and watched him unlock a
narrow door which had green paint flaking off in long strips. He turned the
brass handle and the door didn’t budge.

            “Watch
out,” he said, putting a hand out behind him. She dutifully moved to the side
and watched him take a step back and ram his shoulder against the thick panel a
few feet above the knob. It unstuck with a crack. “Sometimes the door is a bit
stubborn, so you may have to give it a little help.”

            Henry
cleared her throat. “Does it ever stick when you’re inside?”

            “Yep,”
he said, letting it swing all the way open. He turned, as if realizing what she
must be thinking. “But it doesn’t take much, just a tug.”

            She
glanced from Gideon’s shoulder to the door frame. She was no frail twig but
that had been more than a tug. “I’m feeling a real Cask of Amontillado vibe
here.”

            He
tensed. “I’ll let you go in alone if that would make you feel better.”

             “Oh,
I’m not afraid you’re going to seal me up behind a fake wall. I’m worried about
being trapped in here and no one noticing that I’m gone for months and months, and
when they find me I’ll just be a skeleton holding some old letters.”

            “I’m
sure you’d be missed much sooner than that,” he said, his lips turning up at
the corners. “Come on in and I’ll show you around.”

            She
stepped inside, inhaling the smell of damp stone and cool, stale air. The light
from the door illuminated a long table, a chair, a scanner and boxes. Many,
many boxes.

            “Wow,”
she breathed, walking toward them. Her mind couldn’t grasp how much Cane River
history was contained in the dank, musty basement. She turned in a circle,
trying to take it all in. Gideon set a hurricane lamp on the desk and lit the
wick, carefully setting the glass back in place. “But how do you run your scanner
if there isn’t any electricity down here?”

            “Extension
cord,” he said, pointing toward a bright orange cable that snaked along one
wall and out a casement window. “It’s plugged into the neighbor’s external
outlet. Mr. Ferraux has been very happy to lend a hand when needed.”

            “Couldn’t
you bring a few electric lanterns down here if you’ve got that cord?”

            “Hm,
you’re right. But it wouldn’t be nearly as authentic, toiling away by
candlelight, knowing my eyesight was slowly failing from the strain.” After lighting
a second lamp on the desk, he looked around. “If you’re really worried about
being stuck in here, just remember the door swings inward.”

             “Will
that help me?”

            He
took out his keys, walked back to the old oak door and pointed toward the
hinges. “These are ancient and it would take some muscle, but here, watch.” He held
up a key, gently jimmied it under the pin that held the hinge together, and
started to wiggle it around. After a few moments, a larger space appeared, and
he grasped the top of the pin and pulled. “You remove the pins, and the door
would open from the other side.”

            “Hm,”
she said. The top hinge was about a foot over her head, and she didn’t think
she had the strength to yank a dirty pin out of the place it had sat for so
many years.

             “Try
it. Work on the bottom hinge.”

            Henry
wanted to laugh and wave it away, but then she thought of being stuck in the
basement took his key. Crouching down, she worked the key into the space
between the pin and the hinge, just as he’d shown her. Grabbing the top, she
tugged and at first, it didn’t move at all. Then she imagined herself trapped
down there, without anything to eat, no bed, and no bathroom.