Page 21 of Shake the Habit

“There’s a good boy,” Caleb told him. “Good dog. How are you, Kayleigh?” He looked at me. “I guess the answer is, ‘You’re fancy.’”

“I’m all right,” I said. “I went to visit my aunt Paula up on Signal Mountain and she gave me some of her ersatz jewelry.” I gestured to the five necklaces, the screw-on earrings, and multiple bracelets that I wore. “Do you know what that word means?”

“Fake?” he suggested, and I nodded.

“I told her you’d know, and she said that she’d figured that you were smart.”

“Why would your aunt have an opinion about me?” He walked down the steps. “Let’s go for a walk.”

He meant without a leash, which put the fear into me, but I nodded and decided to give it a try. “Aunt Paula knew your mother.”

Caleb looked at me sharply. “She did?”

I nodded again. “They went to school together, except your mom was ahead by a few years. She said they were both spinsters.”

“What else did your aunt tell you about her?”

I repeated the information as we went across a field and through a few rows of trees that looked sadly stunted. “She said that Lara-Lee was very smart and pretty, too, but she wasn’t interested in other people very much.”

“That’s an understatement. She hated people,” he told me. “She hated everyone.”

“Except her son,” I added, but he didn’t answer until I asked, “Why was she like that?”

“I always thought that something must have happened, something that embittered her. It’s surprising to hear that she was the same way in her youth, too.” He sounded very surprised, almost shocked.

“My aunt Paula isn’t the friendliest person either,” I consoled him. “She loves being standoffish, but there’s also another side to her. Like how she wanted me to visit and she liked Sir so much, and she gave me so much stuff. The back of my car is full.”

“Is that all hand-me-downs?”

“She suggested that I get a house and fill it. She showed me your former family home, too. Do you still own that place?”

“I do. There were renters in it, the same couple for the last twenty or so years, but they moved into assisted living. It’s sitting empty now.”

“It looks neglected but someone could fix it up for you.”

“Someone like Marc McCourt of Coops Creek Construction? Here, I’ll help you.” He took a big step over a muddy ditch and then reached out his hands to assist me as I jumped across it, too.

“Marc would be able to take it on after he finishes the barn project.” The demo would start on Monday, and my cousin and I were both very excited about it.

“Will you be here while he’s working?”

“No,” I said regretfully. “I’ll have plenty to do in the office. I mean, I could…” I looked over at him. “You’ll probably be busy in your own office.”

“There’s always plenty for me to do, too,” he agreed, and dashed my hopes that he’d been angling to see me. Well, we both had to work, like Aunt Paula had advised. She’d told me to find a career and I thought about that. When I’d graduated from high school, my goal had been “fun” and not “professional advancement,” or even “supporting myself.” For the last several years, it had seemed like the day-to-day was hard enough to accomplish without also worrying about my future, and the jobs I’d done hadn’t had any longevity. Was I going to be a waitress for the next forty years? No, definitely not, because I’d been fired after a month due to my terrible performance.

We talked about the barn project but as with all my conversations lately, the topic soon turned to my dog. I hadn’t yet told Caleb about the pot roast and I did that now as we kept walking.

“Hell,” he groaned. “Do you need a new mattress?”

“I flipped it for now, but it’s disgusting. I was so angry at him when it happened and he didn’t care at all, not even when my mother told him that she was disappointed. That’s about as bad as she gets with punishment.” My father didn’t go much further, either, no matter what their daughter had done.

“Once, when I was about twelve, I got in the most trouble I ever caused in my life,” he mentioned. “My mother made me go cut a switch.”

I stopped dead. “No! Did she really?”

He nodded. “Yes, she did. I was shaking as I brought it back to her, and then she swished it through the air a few times and stared at me as she did it. I can still hear the sound.”

“Did she use it?”

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