WALL MEN Read online

  Like a switch has flipped, I watch the muscles in her face relax. All signs of life evaporate like a wisp of steam.

  This can’t be happening. She can’t be gone.

  A bolt of lightning strikes just outside the window, and thunder explodes, rattling everything in the room. The ground tremors beneath my feet.

  Holy shit. Was that an earthquake?

  My gaze slowly returns to the face I’ve known my entire life, and suddenly, I don’t recognize it. Grandma Rain is at peace. And one thing everyone knows? She was never at peace.

  “Goodbye. I love you.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Marvin. Enough. Can you just answer my question?” Standing alone on Grandma’s front porch with its massive water-stained pillars, I hold my cell phone to my ear and look out at the dense forest surrounding the property. The maples are beginning to turn red, meaning winter will be here soon. Not good for selling real estate. Not good for me. Which is why I need Marvin to bring his A-game. Marvin is one of three local Realtors. He’s the least stupid.

  “Will you be able to sell River Wall Manor quickly?” I ask.

  “You betcha, Miss Norfolk. We’ll have someone out to do the appraisal by the end of the week and have the place listed and sold by the end of the month.”

  I’m not convinced. “You’re going to have to place ads and be aggressive on social media. This is a two-hundred-year-old estate. Not a lot of people will want to take on such a huge project.” The main house needs new wiring, plumbing, and a roof. God only knows the termite situation. Most of the windows are single pane and riddled with dry rot. Heating is a mess because half of the mansion still uses fireplaces. Some of the smaller bedrooms have space heaters—incredibly dangerous considering the wiring was installed by my great-great-grandfather. Don’t quote me, but I’m fairly sure electricity has made a few advances over the last century when it comes to safety.

  Then there are the grounds—one hundred and fifteen wooded acres that include a family cemetery, pond, barn, and the creek that turns into a raging river when the rain comes or the snow melts. Maintaining the old stone floodwall is essential.

  I honestly can’t think of one thing here that doesn’t need replacing, fixing, or a full-time employee to manage, but it’s the sort of grand historical home that could be beautiful again if put into the right hands.

  “Miss Norfolk, I already have several interested buyers lined up. It’ll sell.”

  And I have oceanfront property in Arizona to sell you. Marvin is blowing smoke. “Thanks, Marvin. Keep me posted.” I end the call, tormented by what I’ve always known I’d have to do when the time came: Sell off two centuries of family history. But I can’t afford the inheritance tax or the upkeep on this massive estate that includes the servant’s cottage, where Bard lives, and a guesthouse, where I’ve lived most of my twenty-eight years. The main house has ten bedrooms, twelve bathrooms, two kitchens, a ballroom, study, two dining rooms, and a parlor. And the brutally cold winters make it all impossible to keep warm.

  I hate winters here. After a few months, you start to feel like Mother Nature is punishing you just for fun.

  The only nice thing about that time of year is how the pond freezes over. I used to ice-skate there with my parents when I was little. Summers were always my favorite, though. We would camp in the forest on the property, catch fireflies, and make s’mores.

  A cold wet nose on my hand jars me from my thoughts.

  I look down at Master, Grandma’s black-and-white Great Dane. “I just fed you. No begging.”

  He sits and stares up with his expressive brown eyes.

  “No. I don’t care if you miss her. I’m not going to let you eat away your sadness.”

  Master lets out a grumble and walks across the porch to his ratty old bed covered with random branches and things he’s dug up. He plops down and whimpers. It breaks my heart.

  “I miss her, too.” And leaving here will only make things worse. Once the estate is sold, I’ll pay off Grandma’s debts, give some to Bard so he can find a new place to live, and with the five dollars left over, I promised myself a really cheap bottle of tequila.

  I inhale the cool autumn breeze, savoring the woodsy smell and scent of damp grasses lingering in the air. Maybe it’s nostalgia talking, but I am going to miss it here—the solitude, the feeling of being insulated from an ever-changing world. I’m going to miss it all.

  I look over at Master. “Guess it’s time to get to work—figure out what to do with the stuff she collected. Right, boy?” Grandma has generations’ worth of books, silverware, china, and art. I’m sure there are a few good pieces in her collection, but most of it is “purely sentimental,” according to her. Then there’s her hoard of neglected antique furniture piled up in various rooms and too far gone to restore.

  I’ve decided I’ll keep the most precious family heirlooms and any photos, but everything else has to go before we show the place. Buyers will only see a mess instead of the potential.

  I head through the massive front door. Most of the white paint is chipped away, exposing the weathered wood beneath. Once upon a time, it matched the rest of the big white house. I suppose it still does. Falling all to hell.

  I pause in the foyer, where I used to saunter down the grand staircase, playing make-believe princess when Grandma would allow it. This was my castle. Now it’s an empty shell of echoes from the past.

  “How did it get like this?” I take in the dust-coated chandelier hanging over the white marble staircase, which is chipped and cracked. The hand-carved railing leans to one side. If you squint, you can almost imagine how beautiful it once looked. Every inch of this mansion was built by local craftsmen.

  “Lake…” says a deep, faint voice.

  My back jerks ramrod straight. I swivel on my heel, my eyes darting side to side.

  I just heard someone say my name, but that can’t be right. There’s no one on the property except Bard, and he’s in his cottage, packing for a trip to his nephew’s.

  After several heart-pounding moments, I decide it was the wind and the product of my tired brain. There’s no denying my mind is in a dark place, still stuck back in that hospice room, trying to accept that my last living family member is gone.

  A frigid gust of wind spirals through the foyer, picking up dust, encircling me.

  “God damn. What the hell?” I shut my eyes to keep out the dirt, my hair lifting from my scalp, floating in the air. A cold chill rips through my body, and I carefully back out the front door, unable to see where I’m going. I feel with my hand and manage to slam the front door shut.

  What was that?

  Still sitting on the porch, Master barks but doesn’t come near me. Maybe it’s because my entire body is coated in some crazy electrical field. The hair on my arms is like porcupine quills.

  Jesus. What’s happening? I turn and head for the stone path that leads to my house down the hill. My head’s spinning, and my stomach is in tight, painful knots. The acerbic heat of bile rises up my windpipe, and I force myself to swallow it down.

  I don’t know what that was. I don’t want to know. But it wasn’t natural.

  By the time I get to my cobblestone front walkway, the heebie-jeebies are gone.

  Did that happen? Or did I just have a panic attack?

  No. That was a dust devil. But dust devils don’t form indoors. They don’t leave a sticky static residue all over your skin.

  Fuck. I’m losing it. I go inside my cozy two-bedroom house, hit the deadbolt on my front door, and check all the windows to be sure they’re locked.

  CHAPTER THREE

  After last week’s unnerving incident, I haven’t entered the main house again, but there’s no avoiding it today.

  A crew is coming to clean out the attic, basement, and remove ninety percent of the furniture. Anything salvageable that I don’t plan to keep will be hauled off by Dave, my ex, who runs an estate liquidation company.

  Dave is who you call when your mult
imillion-dollar business goes belly up and that collection of rare wines just won’t fit in your new studio apartment above that massage parlor everyone knows gives more than just back rubs. He’s definitely slumming it dealing with my situation. But, hey, he owes me.

  The sad truth is that a much younger version of me used to care deeply for him. Then he cheated on me and proposed marriage as a perverse form of apology. While still with the other woman.

  How do I know? She paid a visit after finding out about me.

  What an asshole.

  Over the past eight years, he’s kept in touch—against my wishes—because he somehow manages to screw up every single relationship and comes crying back to me. “Oh, Lake, I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I think I just never got over you. Take me back, and I promise to be a better man.”

  He’s so full of it.

  Anyway, he swore over and over again if he could ever do anything for me, he would. So I asked him for this.

  Mistake?

  Probably.

  But the jerk owes me, and I don’t have anyone to turn to for this massive undertaking. River Wall Manor is about fifty miles southeast of Lake Erie and about eighty miles north of Pittsburg. It’s much too far from civilization to attract the high-end antique dealers from, say, New York. So if I want top dollar for any of Grandma’s trinkets—like her silver candlesticks from the late 1800s, it’s better to take everything to Dave’s warehouse in Philly and hold an auction.

  A knock at my front door tells me it’s time to face the emotional day ahead. How does one say goodbye to two centuries of family history? But Dave’s paying for the junk hauling, the cleanup crew, and the transportation of my valuables to his warehouse. All this for only a ten percent cut. A bargain.

  I wrap a red scarf around my neck, tucking it beneath my long hair. We Norfolk women are known for our cat-shaped eyes, high cheekbones, and straight black hair. In my opinion, we look a little witchy. I don’t mean we have warts and hooked noses, but our angular features give off a dramatic appearance under certain light. Then there’s the fact we are always named after things having to do with water—Rain, Storm, Lake, Snow, River—but that has more to do with tradition. According to Grandma, there’d been a drought the year after the house was built, and crops were failing everywhere. Then my great-great-great-grandmother was born, and they named her Rain. The next day, it rained.

  I don’t know if the tradition is cute and old-fashioned or just plain weird because, let’s face it, there aren’t a lot of words having to do with water that can be used as girls’ names. Monsoon? Wave? Glacier? Tributary? Much too weird. I think that’s how our tradition became a recycling of names, too: Rain, Storm, Lake, Snow, River. Repeat.

  I head through my cozy living room with the stone fireplace and deep maroon sofa. I love to paint watercolors, so I have a setup by the window overlooking the wildflower garden in front.

  From there, I also have a view of the mansion’s kitchen entrance around the back and the rose garden, totally overgrown with weeds. I used to spend hours there reading when I was younger—no TV to watch. But Grandma did have a library. Two, in fact. Her personal book collection in her study, which I was never allowed to touch, and the big library in the parlor. Or what used to be a parlor. At one point, that room was converted to accommodate my great-grandmother’s book collection. Now, it’s just a big room filled with moldy books that turn to toxic dust when you attempt to pick them up. Leaky roofs and books don’t go together.

  I open my front door to find Master on his leash and a scowling Bard in a red plaid shirt, jeans, and work boots.

  Confession: Bardolf, who just turned fifty, is twenty-two years older, but I’ve come to appreciate his looks more and more as he’s gotten older. He’s well over six feet tall and has the body of a man who enjoys outdoor labor—wide shoulders, thick muscled arms and legs, and some serious back muscles.

  Yes, I’ve seen the man chop wood shirtless. It is a sight to behold.

  As far as his looks go, the words “mountain man” come to mind, though I’ve seen a few photos in his cottage from before his beard days. Underneath that thick, wild beard is a strong jawline and fine cheekbones.

  But despite the bushy squirrel tail on his face, there’s no denying he’s a handsome man. His sapphire blue eyes and shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair make it hard not to stare.

  “Bard. Hey. I thought you were at your nephew’s house for another week.”

  “He’s an annoying, snot-nosed pussy. Got on my nerves.”

  I try not to smile. “He used a coffee machine, didn’t he?” Bard is completely old-school. He thinks any man who uses electronics has lost touch with his manhood. No microwaves, cell phones, or computers. No cars, only trucks. Only stick shifts. Above all, coffee must be made in a French press or a pour-over cone with water that is a precise temperature. He takes his brew seriously.

  “His coffee tasted like soulless piss,” he grumbles.

  “Not everyone has your godlike taste buds. Don’t hold it against him, Bard.”

  He grunts.

  “Okay, well, I’m glad you’re back. I can use some extra help cleaning out that big house.” I rub my hands together. “Ready to get down to work?”

  “The snow will be here soon. I have my own work to do,” he says in that deep serious voice that means he’s not negotiating. Pretty much his go-to voice.

  “Bard, I’ve already explained; there’s no need to build up the firewood stores. The priority is cleaning the grounds and making it presentable to buyers.” They have to be able to envision the estate’s potential, and that’s hard to do when everything’s overgrown with weeds. “It’s okay if you don’t want to help with cleaning out the main house, but can you at least tackle the rose garden?”

  “Your grandma gave explicit instructions that no one but her is to touch the garden.”

  I release a puff of air, trying not to let my frustration build. I’ve already gone over this with Bard.

  “Grandma isn’t here,” I say, knowing that despite Bard’s lack of outward emotion, her death has hit him hard. He’s been working here for twenty-something years. My mom actually hired him. After she and my dad disappeared, Bard stayed around to help Grandma. Over the years their friendship grew—not in a romantic way—but as kindred cantankerous spirits who loath the outside world.

  I gently squeeze Bard’s stout arm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t need to say that.” He knows perfectly well she’s gone. “I’m only trying to point out that we have to do our best to clean up this mess and move on.”

  He stares defiantly with his intense blue eyes.

  “Bard? You do understand that I can’t keep the estate, right?”

  “I know nothing of the sort.” He folds his arms over his broad chest. It means he’s digging in his heels, and like a mighty oak, he will not be moved.

  I groan. “Then you tell me where I can come up with the money to pay the estate tax or fix the roof and replace hundreds of thousands of dollars of dry rot.”

  “River Wall Manor has survived for over two centuries.”

  How is that an answer? “Uh, yeah. And it has that many years of deferred maintenance.”

  “Every Norfolk who has lived here has found a way to keep the estate intact and away from the hands of outsiders.”

  “Bard, I can’t just make money magically appear. I need at least a million dollars to fix up this place, and let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that I had that sort of cash. What the hell am I going to do with this massive estate? I’m not going to live here all alone in that big house.”

  Bard’s crisp blue eyes twitch, and I know it means he’s about to lose his shit.

  He leans down, speaking in a low quiet voice. “You are never alone here.”

  Wonderful. I’ve offended him.

  Did I mention that he and I have a long intense history? It goes something like this: me not speaking to him for a few years, then him not speaking to me, and back again. W
e can never seem to find an equilibrium. There’s always tension, and our old wounds are never far, lurking just beneath the surface.

  “Bard,” I say softly, “I didn’t mean it that way. Of course, you’re here, too. You and Master, but—”

  He shakes his head. “I am not speaking of myself or the fucking dog.”

  “Sorry. Did I forget the mice? Or the owl in the attic? How about the possums hunkered down in the basement?”

  He stares like he wants to throttle me but doesn’t speak.

  “Bard, I don’t have time for this. If you have something to say, say it. Otherwise, I’ve got Dave and his crew arriving in five minutes, and there’s work to be done.” Work that is not going to be easy for me. Grandma’s things are in that house. Her clothes, her books, her life. Sorting through what she’s left behind is going to take every ounce of strength I’ve got. “And try to keep in mind that I’m doing this for you. You, Bard. You need something to live on.”

  “I don’t need your charity.”

  I shake my head. “Where’re you gonna live, huh? Because I’m selling this place. Accept it. I have.” I step outside, close my front door, and walk past him, heading up to the main house. Bard is a good man. Complicated, but good. So why’s he trying to make this so difficult? I’m doing the right thing here. For him.

  “Promise you’ll keep the estate when the money shows up,” he calls out.

  I continue walking up the stone path and glance over my shoulder. “Whatever.”

  “Promise!”

  “Fine!” I keep walking and throw my hands in the air, not bothering to look at him. “If a giant pile of cash shows up, I’ll keep this glorious wreck so you can live here all alone with nothing but your perfect coffee and cranky ass to keep you company.”

  By the time I get to the front of the mansion, Dave is pulling up in his electric blue Ferrari.

  I lack the words to describe how little I want to speak to him right now. Or ever.