Page 18 of The Night the Lights Went Out
She was standing in the middle of the kitchen, trying to figure out if she’d be able to slip to her room without his seeing her from the front door, when she heard the knock on the screen door and then Wade Kimball’s voice calling through it. “Good morning, Merilee. It’s Wade. I’m here to build those shelves.”
“Damn it,” she said under her breath. He’d said he’d stop by on the weekend, but she’d assumed—incorrectly, it appeared—that he would call first to set up a convenient time.
She spotted Sugar’s bib apron hanging from a peg on the wall and slid it over her head. “Hang on,” she said as she tied it behind her, Colin already racing ahead to open the door.
“Hey there, sport,” Wade said in greeting to her son. When he looked past Colin and saw Merilee, his eyes didn’t register shock or revulsion. He was either very polite or needed glasses.
Crossing her arms over her chest, she said, “I wasn’t expecting you so early.”
He looked surprised. “I said I’d be coming this weekend. It’s the weekend, right?”
“It’s eight o’clock Saturday morning.”
“Exactly,” he said, moving through the doorway. “Carpentry is my hobby, which sadly gets postponed to the weekends so I can work my day job the rest of the week. If you’ll just show me what you want done, I promise to stay out of your way.”
Resigned, Merilee led him into the front room, which they used as their family room. It had wide-plank pine floors covered by soft cotton rugs and comfortable sofas. Everything was well-worn but loved, the bookshelves overflowing with older books, including an entire shelf dedicated to bird-watching. These were the oldest, the covers tattered and torn, the pages well read, with turned-down corners for easy reference.
“Here,” she said, pointing to the space between the rear wall and the back of the couch. “We had built-ins in our last house, so I couldn’t take them with me. But I need a place to keep my collection.”
“Your collection?”
She nodded, always a little embarrassed when explaining it to other people. “Yes. I collect antique maps. Nothing really expensive or rare, but ones I find interesting for whatever reason. They’re mostly smaller ones—I’ve never had room for the really big ones. I have a few I’ve framed, but the rest I keep rolled up and in archival-quality storage boxes. I need the shelves for those.”
He studied her for a moment, and she found herself squirming under his scrutiny. “That’s a lot cooler than my baseball cap collection; that’s for sure.” He smiled and she relaxed slightly. “What makes a map collectible?”
She shrugged. “Geography, mostly. Like if it’s a place I’m familiar with. I like to see how things have changed. And I’m partial to the hand-drawn ones with pictures and sketches on them. It’s almost like looking at old letters or diaries from another time.”
“So you like old things? Or you like change?”
His last question was a little too close for comfort. Turning her back on him, she led him toward a stack of boxes she’d piled in a corner of the room. “Here are all the boxes, to give you an idea of dimension. I’m thinking something wide but short, so that it fits behind the couch. And I’d like to have a little extra space so I have room to grow.”
He took a measuring tape from his tool belt. Pulling out the tape, he held one end toward her. “Hold that right by the leg of the couch.”
He took several measurements, jotting them down on a small pad he kept in his belt. “You know, Sugar has some old maps. They belonged to her grandfather, I believe, and show all the land that used to belong to the Prescott family since the Civil War. Pretty impressive. Just about everything you see in a twenty-mile radius once belonged to them—including the land where the country club and golf course are now.” Wade sat back on his heels. “My grandmother, Willa Faye, is Sugar’s best friend, which is how I know all this, but every time one of Sugar’s brothers would sell some parcel of land, Sugar would put a big black ‘X’ on one of her maps and go into mourning.”
“That’s pretty sad. But what about her nieces and nephews? Didn’t they want to hold on to any of it?”
“You’d think with five children there might be grandchildren, but there weren’t. Not sure what happened to the youngest brother, but I know one of them died in the war. The two oldest fought in Europe, and when they came back went a little wild. Took to all sorts of bad habits. Mostly horses. Never got married—too busy hanging around with the wrong sorts of women, according to my grandmother. The kind of women you spend money on but don’t necessarily marry is how she put it. And nice women from good families were kept a good distance from them.”
“So you don’t know what happened to the youngest one—Jimmy?” It mattered to her, Merilee was surprised to find. She had such a clear picture of him, it seemed as if she knew him, and she wanted him to have a happy ending, even though from what Wade had just told her, it didn’t seem likely.
Wade shook his head. “You can ask Sugar, but she might not answer. She’s pretty closemouthed about her childhood—wasn’t easy with her being the only girl and her mother pretty much out of the picture. Sugar had to grow up real fast during hard times. It’s amazing she turned out as nice as she is.”
Merilee made a face, making Wade laugh. “I know she seems crusty at first—that’s just her nature, probably from having to deal with four brothers her whole life. But once you get to know her, you get to see how big and loyal a heart she really has. My grandmother once told me that Sugar would do absolutely anything for someone she loved. Anything. I’ve never had to test that theory, but I believe it.”
“Yes, well, I guess I’ll have to take your word on that. Why don’t you finish up your measuring and figure out what you’ll need in materials to write up a quote, and I’ll go and throw on some clothes.” She turned to leave.
“Oh, sorry. I thought you were already dressed. You should have told me.”
She faced him, indicating the oversized T-shirt and apron. “Really?”
He shrugged. “I’m a guy. Besides, I was probably too focused on that green dot of dried toothpaste on your chin. You might want to wash that off if you decide to leave the house.”
Trying to think of something to say and coming up empty, she turned again and headed back toward her bedroom.
When Merilee emerged from her room fifteen minutes later, she heard adult voices coming from the front room. She found Sugar running what looked like a dust rag over the coffee table, while Wade sat on the window seat with his pad of paper and a calculator. Sugar didn’t even bother to look embarrassed at being caught dusting in her tenant’s house and kept on with her work, interrupting herself only to say “Good morning” before resuming her task.
Merilee paused for a moment, listening for the children. “Have you seen Lily and Colin?” she asked.
