Authors: Mariah Stewart
“But when my mother was drinking …” He took a deep breath before continuing. “We’d know right away, as soon as we opened the front door. There’d be no Mom waiting for us and the house would be a mess. There’d be no snacks on the table and no dinner cooking on the stove. If my mother hadn’t already passed out, she’d be incoherent, often abusive and threatening, always angry and argumentative. She scared me but she terrified Wendy, my little sister. So we’d have to hide from her until our dad got home and could calm her down. Sometimes that took hours. Then he’d make dinner for us and we’d go to bed and pretend we weren’t afraid to go to sleep.”
His face was filled with so much pain that Ellie didn’t think she could bear it. She turned her body to his as if to block the memories from hurting him all over again.
“After a while, the uncertainty of it all, one day to the next, became the new normal. But my dad never stopped loving her, never stopped believing that one day she’d get herself straight and she’d be the girl he’d fallen in love with and we’d all live happily ever after.”
“Cam, you don’t have to …”
Ignoring her protest as if he hadn’t heard, he drew closer to the foundation. “One day it all just seemed to boil over. She was always angry when she drank, but this one day, she was beyond anger and beyond reason. And she had a handgun. I never did find out where she got it.”
Ellie wanted to slap her hands over her ears, didn’t want to hear the rest, hoped he’d stop there, that that would be the end of the story.
“She was sitting in the kitchen when we got home from school, a half-empty bottle and the gun on the table in front of her. She waved the gun at me and I knew something bad was going to happen. I panicked and grabbed Wendy and took her into my room and we hid in the back of my closet. When my father came through the back door about twenty minutes later, we thought we were saved. Wendy and I got up and I opened the closet door, and then we heard the bang. My mother shot him in the chest, point-blank range. And then she came looking for us.”
“Oh, my God, Cameron.” Ellie gasped at the horror of it, could almost picture the scene in her mind.
Cam’s voice was surprisingly calm, but there was immense sadness in his eyes.
“Wendy and I huddled in the back of the closet and I had my hand over my sister’s mouth to keep her from screaming. She’d gone stone still and quiet when we heard the gunshot but I was afraid that any second she’d understand what had happened, and she’d start screaming. I knew right away what my mother had done, and I knew that sooner or later, she was going to find us, and she was going to kill us, too.”
He paused for a moment, as if reliving that terrible night.
“And then, there was a miracle. The doorbell rang. Lilly Cavanaugh had heard the shots and she called the police, then she ran across the street and rang the doorbell. My mother didn’t answer it, but Lilly started talking to her through the door. As soon as I heard her voice, I knew we were going to be okay. A few seconds later, I heard the police sirens coming closer and closer. And then we heard one last gunshot.”
“Your mother …”
Cameron nodded. “When she realized she wasn’t going to get to Wendy and me, she shot herself.” Through the growing mist, Ellie could see Cam’s eyes starting to well. “Miss Lilly rang that doorbell knowing that my mother could just as easily turn that gun on her, but she didn’t care. She knew we were in there and that we were in danger, and she did what she had to do to create a distraction before the cops arrived. She said later she’d have found a way to knock the door down, if she’d had to.”
“She saved your lives.” Ellie stated the obvious. No
wonder he took such care of her house—Lilly’s house. No wonder he spoke of the woman with such love.
“Miss Lilly saved us in more ways than one. She took Wendy and me home with her and went through all the red tape so that we were allowed to stay with her and Mr. C. until my aunt—my dad’s sister—could find a place for us to live. She found a house here in St. Dennis, and the Cavanaughs helped her to get a mortgage, helped her to find a job. They were our lifeline. We wouldn’t have survived without them.”
“Cameron, how old were you when this happened?”
“Eight. Wendy was five. She had just started kindergarten.”
“I can’t imagine what a nightmare that must have been for you. I’m so sorry for what you went through. But thank God there was someone there for you. I’m glad it was Lilly,” Ellie said softly. “I’m glad that my house was a sanctuary for you and your sister. I’m glad that you’ll be buying the house when it’s time. It should be your house.”
They stood close together while a cold rain fell around them, soaking them to the skin. Finally, she tugged at his hand until he turned and they headed back to the last house on the street.
“You didn’t have to tell me,” Ellie said when they were back inside, “but I’m glad that you did. I’m so sorry that you and your sister had to witness such terrible things.”
“I didn’t tell you so you’d feel sorry for me.” He looked horrified at the thought. “I felt like I wasn’t being honest about myself and my relationship with Lilly and this house. I felt like I was deceiving you,
and I thought you deserved better than that. I wasn’t lying to you but I wasn’t being up front with you, either.”
Ellie took their wet jackets into the kitchen and left them on the backs of two chairs. To her surprise, Cam followed her and knelt next to the tool bag he’d brought in earlier.
“I guess I left the sander in the truck. We need it to go over that wall before we paint,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
Before she could react, he was almost to the front door. Ellie went into the hall and watched in disbelief as he disappeared through the doorway, stunned that he could go from discussing the fact that his mother had murdered his father—and apparently had intended to kill him and his sister—to sanding her kitchen wall.
“Seriously, Cameron?” she muttered. How could he make such a leap?
Maybe he’s thinking he said too much. Maybe he wishes he hadn’t said anything at all
. Ellie could understand that. She knew what it was like to feel every day that she had to live down what her father had done.
And let’s face it, what had happened to Cameron and his sister was so much worse than what had happened to me
.
So okay, she got it. If he wants to talk about plaster, they’d talk about plaster.
He returned a moment later, the sander in his hand.
“The sandpaper’s pretty thin, but I don’t have another piece with me, so it will have to do. I think it
will be okay, though, because you did a damned fine job on this wall, Ellie.”
He ran his fingers over the plaster. “A damned fine job.” He looked over his shoulder at her. “Are you sure you’ve never done this before?”
“Positive.”
“I have guys on my crew who aren’t this meticulous. I could sure use you next week. I can think of three jobs I could put you on. Anytime you want to make some extra money, you let me know. I’d hire you in a minute.”
“I don’t have any experience.” Nor did she have any money. The offer definitely turned her head.
“You can get experience, but not everyone has as good an eye as you. There’s barely a scratch on the wall.” He stood back and took a long look, then nodded. “Yeah. Anytime, you let me know and I’ll put you to work.”
He slipped on a mask, handed one to Ellie, then turned on the sander before she could respond.
The idea of working, of getting paid for what she was doing here for free, did have a certain amount of appeal, she thought as she watched him smooth first his hand, then the sander, over the plaster. She could use the money, and besides, it could be fun. She hadn’t really minded the scraping—had actually liked the physical work—except of course for the fact that she hadn’t been able to raise her arms for forty-eight hours. But if she did it more frequently, wouldn’t her muscles get used to it? And as an added bonus, she’d get to look at Cameron all day.
It was something to think about.
He turned off the sander. “Where’s your vacuum cleaner? I’ll need to clean up the plaster dust.”
“I’ll do it.”
She pulled the old vacuum out of the hall closet, trying to think of a way to get back on the topic of his childhood and the time he spent living in this house and his relationships with its occupants. His story was so tragic it was surreal. That he had survived—in no small part thanks to a member of her own family—that he had lived here, in this house where her mother had lived, where she now lived, seemed meaningful to her in ways she had yet to explore. She had so many unanswered questions, but how to broach the topic again if he’d turned his back on it? Obviously the memories were still very painful for him, and yet he’d gone out of his way to share this part of himself with her. All of which left Ellie feeling very confused.
She brought the vacuum cleaner into the kitchen and plugged it in, then ran it as far up the wall as she could reach. Cameron took it from her hands to finish up the area nearest the ceiling, then turned it off and dragged it back into the hall.
“Ready for paint?” he asked.
“Sure. Walls first, right?”
“Right.”
They found the can of Brackenridge Cream and divided the paint into two smaller containers. Ellie started on the cutwork at the bottom along the baseboard, Cameron on the door surround. She set up her iPod on the counter and selected what she thought would be good music to paint by.
She’d just dipped her brush into the paint when
Cam said, “You know, there are several little hidden compartments around the house. The one in the living room is only one of them.”
“You know where they all are?”
“Well, I know where some of them are. I don’t know that we ever found them all.”
“Lilly showed you?”
Cam nodded. “She was in her sixties when Wendy and I stayed here, but she still had the best sense of fun of anyone I ever met. She loved surprises and she loved all the little quirks in this house.”
“I really wish I’d met her.” More and more every day, Ellie realized.
He looked about to say something but hestitated.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing. I’m sure she would have liked you a lot, that’s all.” He dipped his brush into the paint. “Anyway, about those little compartments. Sometimes Lilly’d leave little treats in there for Wendy and me. She used to buy these chocolate oranges that had slices wrapped in orange foil. Every once in a while she’d put two in there, one for each of us.”
“She sounds like a very thoughtful person,” Ellie said. “I like what I’ve learned about her from her journals and from what I hear from the people in town.”
“I’ve never met anyone else like her. You’ve heard the expression that someone was ‘the soul of kindness’? That was Lilly. After everything that had happened, coming here to stay was like walking out from a long dark tunnel into a sunny day. There was never any drama with Lilly. No threats, no violence, no ramblings. There was structure and there was consistency.
There was kindness and there was love. Not that my mother was always unkind, or that she didn’t love us,” he hastened to add. “I think she did, when she could. But she was caught in the grip of something that was relentless, and that something always trumped everything else in her life. I think she’d planned all along to kill herself, but maybe she just lost track of time. Then we came home and my dad came home and things just spun out of control from there.” He painted a long strip of color on the wall. “Hal Garrity was chief of police back then, and he told me once that he believed that she’d planned on just taking herself out, that when Dad came home and saw her with the gun, he might have tried to take it from her and he was shot accidentally. When she realized what she’d done, maybe she decided she didn’t want to leave Wendy and me alone, so she was going to take us out, too. We’ll never know for sure, but given the alternative, I like his version better.” He smiled wryly. “It’s probably pure fiction, but I like it better.”
“I do, too.” Either way, Ellie didn’t like thinking about a mother who would deliberately hunt down her children to coldly murder them.
“It’s hard enough to know that your mother was an alcoholic murderer, without remembering that you were one of the people she wanted to kill for no apparent reason.”
“But she didn’t,” Ellie reminded him, “and she probably could have.”
“She heard Lilly at the door and she heard the police cars coming—”
“And she probably would have still had enough time to … to do what she’d set out to do, but in the end, she chose not to. Not much consolation, I imagine, but still.”
“Still.” The brush in his hand made several more long smooth strokes along the wall. “Anyway, I just thought you should know. I didn’t feel right not telling you. I wasn’t sure how you’d react, but I felt it was important. Some situations call for full disclosure, and this is one of them.”
“Because?”
“Because of the way I feel about you.”
“About me or about my house.” She sat back on her heels and looked up at him.
“I thought we already agreed that when you’re ready to sell the house, I’d be the buyer.”
“We did.”
“So that’s a nonissue. That’s going to happen when you’re ready.”
“I’ll be ready by spring,” she told him. “I’m thinking May at the earliest, June at the latest.”
“And then what?”
“What?” She looked up at him.
“What will you do after you sell the house? Where will you go?”
“I have no idea.” Ellie turned her attention back to the job at hand. “I haven’t thought that far ahead.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Why?”
“You’re just so organized and methodical about everything else, it seems odd that you don’t have a plan.”
She could have said that the burden of living a lie, of not being herself, was proving to be greater than she’d anticipated. Or, she could have said that she didn’t know where she could go where she’d be accepted for who she was. Or that she felt more like her true self after living here as someone else, and how confusing was that? How to explain that she’d never felt so relaxed, so free, as she did over the past month, that inside, she felt more like Ellie and less and less like Ellis, and she was all right with that?