The Family Plot by Cherie Priest
The woods were crawling with paths, trails, and rutted roads, and Saint Elmo was a straight shot down the hill. A straight shot that meant jumping a gully or two and climbing over some vintage military earthworks, then navigating around a couple of boulders. She imagined there must be easier routes, but a touch of minor, solitary adventure wouldn’t be the end of her. If anything, it was a pleasant distraction.
The canopy above shook cast-off rain as the wind picked through it. Last night’s water and wind had pulled down much of the flame-colored foliage and left it glistening damply on the forest floor.
Before long, she found the asphalt road without any lines painted on it and followed it down to an intersection where the tiny street pinched down to one lane … then went slinking beneath the Incline’s tracks. The tracks themselves disappeared into a layer of cloud cover that squatted across the mountaintop, spilling over and dripping down, but not quite reaching the little valley below.
On the main drag nearby, morning traffic crept in from Georgia. It was stop-and-go up through the blinking light at the pedestrian crosswalk, and then sluggish as hell out of the neighborhood and into the city. It was just as well that Dahlia hadn’t taken one of the trucks.
She strolled past a wee strip mall that looked a hundred years old, a burrito joint, the Incline station, a restaurant, and a flower shop—everything still locked up for the morning.
Dahlia’s phone said it was barely seven thirty. Only the coffee shop was open, and it hadn’t been for long.
Inside, the atmosphere was warm and noisy. Someone was grinding beans, and someone else was steaming milk. Two or three customers waited ahead of her, so she took the time to check her e-mail, catch up with a couple of messages from her dad, and start a game of solitaire on her phone before a girl with thick glasses and a nose ring took her order.
“Tall coffee, black, please. One of those egg and cheese croissants, too, and do me a favor and throw in a cookie, while you’re at it.”
She could grab something for Brad before she headed back, but first she wanted to hang out for a few minutes—eat her breakfast and wake up good. The hike down the hill had gotten her blood flowing, and coffee would get her brain in gear. Between the exercise and the caffeine, she might actually be ready to tackle another workday with Bobby underfoot.
She struggled to keep from thinking about how mornings used to be, when Bobby would come over to her house on the weekends. She’d let him and Andy cook breakfast, and she’d clean up. They’d empty the Netflix queue. She’d smoke her one weekly cigarette. Be lazy as hell, just that one day—because nobody was ever game for church.
None of it was real anymore, not the house and not the husband, and not the amicable family atmosphere. Could be, she was rose-tinting it in retrospect. Maybe it was never really that idly pleasant, and it wasn’t worth mourning.
She shook off the memory of scrambled eggs bubbling and Marlboros sizzling.
The high-pitched squeal of the milk steamer rang in her ears again, and the cash register pinged. Chairs squeaked on the tile floors. The bell on the door rang, and rang again. She let the new noises wash away the old ones. It worked a little better than the water at the Withrow house.
Dahlia sat down at a corner table and put her phone away. She took a sip of coffee, pushed her plate aside, and withdrew the photo album from her bag. She ran her hand over the cover, partly thinking that this was none of her business—and partly feeling like everything in the house was her business, because her father had paid for it and this was her job, to recover all the things worth recovering.
She flipped the cover open, and was greeted with the musty smell of old paper. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant, but she wrinkled her nose and slipped her fingers inside the cover. Someone had put a bookplate there, declaring ex libris but not naming anyone in particular. She mumbled, “Someone didn’t care too much about their libris.”
She was too far away to be talking to the house, but no one was sitting close enough to accuse her of talking to herself. Dahlia took a bite of her sandwich, and another swig of coffee.
The black paper was as light and flaky as a butterfly wing. There weren’t any photos attached to the first page, to the right of the open cover with its blank bookplate. She turned to the next one. A photo fell out, shedding the tiny black corners that had kept it in place. She caught it, and put it back where it belonged, though it wouldn’t stay there. All the glue was shot, and all the small corner pieces rustled around like so much confetti.
Gingerly, she straightened the images so she could see them in order.
At the top left was a very old shot, from the early 1880s—or so she guessed from the clothes. A man and a woman sat in a studio, straight backed and wearing neutral expressions. They were youngish, maybe thirty years old. The woman held a baby wrapped in such a profusion of lacy clothes that only its round little face was visible. Along the bottom, right across their knees in ink that’d faded to a rusty brown, someone had written, “Francis and Mary, with baby Judson.”
Two more photos followed at five-year intervals, both of them missing Francis. Perhaps he’d taken the pictures himself, or he’d died somewhere offscreen. There wasn’t much evidence either way, for he never appeared again.
On the next page, Dahlia found a wedding photo. Baby Judson was all grown up, gone tall and lanky. His bride wore cascades of lace and a veil that draped across her shoulders, pooling in the chair. It must’ve cost a fortune.
“Judson and Eleanor, 1899.”
Beneath it, another picture—taken no more than a handful of years later. Eleanor appeared much the same, but now she stood with two small children beside her, a boy and a girl. They were posing stiffly in a patch of grass, perhaps on the lawn of the house itself. Nothing was written on the picture or beneath it, but a third image showed three children together: the boy, the girl, and a toddler, sitting in a line on the steps of what looked like the Withrow front porch. They were identified in different handwriting, using a pencil that was scarcely legible against the black paper. “Abigail, Buddy, and Hazel.”
A long black shadow stretched toward them, a man with his legs slightly apart, his arms bent. “Oh. The photographer.” It was probably Judson. He was backlit by the sun, so he’d joined the picture by accident.
Dahlia took another bite of sandwich, chewed it, and chased it with more coffee. The next few pictures featured mostly the same five individuals, aging with every turn of the page. A few stray cousins were introduced, but never more than once. Judson and Eleanor became older and heavier, and their children grew taller.
As the next ten years went by, the photos became less formal, less precisely composed. Personalities cracked through the sepia.
Dahlia decided that Judson was formal and stern, fair but stubborn. In one washed-out image, he wore a military uniform, but the image was in such a poor state, it was hard to say what kind. He held himself like a man with money—a man who expected his family to uphold certain standards of decorum. Eleanor may or may not have agreed, but she was dressed beautifully in every image. “Quite the fashion plate,” Dahlia breathed into her beverage.
Eleanor smiled softly, showing no teeth. She always looked at the camera, never her children.
The farther Dahlia browsed, the more confident she became that something had been wrong with Buddy. Something about his blank face and permanent squint … was he blind? Mentally delayed, somehow? He often stood apart from the rest of the family, though his little sister Hazel sometimes held his hand, as if she was trying to keep him close, or draw him in to the circle.
By her preteen years, the oldest girl, Abigail had developed a classic case of resting bitch face. She’d turned out pretty, but her mouth aimed down at the corners. Her eyebrows had a permanent arch that suggested that whatever you were saying, she didn’t believe it.
Hazel was more of a mystery. The youngest and smallest, she came off as the quiet, bookish type. Or was Dahlia making up details, in the absence of
The croissant sandwich was almost gone. Dahlia popped the last chunk into her mouth, and turned the page with the two fingers that had the least amount of breakfast grease on them. She stopped chewing and almost choked, but caught herself; then swallowed too hard, too soon.
She coughed into her hand.
Abigail, 1915.
She would’ve been about fifteen or sixteen years old, in that awkward space between being a girl and a woman, and her clothes showed it. She was wearing a long, light dress that was not exactly a child’s, but not from her mother’s wardrobe, either.
Dahlia had seen that dress before. She would’ve sworn it on her own mother’s grave.
In just a flash, yes—just a pattern of fabric billowing in the breeze, out of season. Was it yellow? Everything was yellow in a photo that old. She ran her thumb over the image, smudging away a dusting of black paper. The dress’s fabric had a pattern to it, something small. She couldn’t suss out the details, but she knew it must be covered in flowers.
The dress fit Abigail funny. Either she wasn’t wearing it correctly, or it wasn’t the right size, or … something.
Dahlia leaned down closer, wishing for a magnifying glass—and nearly fell out of her chair when her phone rang. The ringtone brought her back to the present, to the coffee shop, to the foot of Lookout Mountain. She fished out her phone and checked the display.
Her throat hurt from the bite she’d gagged on, and her voice was thick when she answered, “Hey, Brad.”
“Hey, yourself. Got your note. Any chance you could grab me some coffee?”
“I was already planning on it. Are Bobby and Gabe up and around yet?”
“Gabe’s up. He’s still in the bathroom. Don’t know about Bobby.”
“You have my full permission to find him and kick him awake. I’d love to see everyone up and dressed by the time I get back. We’ve got a lot of work to do, and the sooner we get started, the sooner we can knock off for lunch.”
“How far away are you?” he asked.
“Just down the hill. I’m almost finished here, so I’ll head back in a few minutes.” She asked if he needed any food, sorted out a few particulars, and closed out the call—then gathered up the photo album and stuffed it back into her bag. Since the line had cleared out and no one else was waiting, she went directly to the register to grab something for Brad, as promised.
She put in her order, and pulled out her wallet.
The cashier with the nose ring looked down at Dahlia’s chest. “Music City Salvage,” she read.
Dahlia looked down and realized the company T-shirt was peeking out from the top of her flannel. “Yup, that’s us.”
“You’re here about the Withrow place, right?”
“Uh-huh.” The register chimed and offered up a price. Dahlia picked out a few bills and handed them over. “You ever been there?”
“Not … officially,” she said conspicuously. “Not by invitation, or anything.”
“You like poking around in old places?”
Nose ring girl nodded. “Hell yeah. I don’t bother anything,” she added quickly. “Or steal anything. But I like to look around, take pictures. You know.”
“Actually, I do know.”
The barista pulled out a to-go cup with a recycled cardboard sleeve around it. “I got some really weird shots out there a couple of years ago. Me and some friends had the bright idea of checking it out on Halloween. A place that old, it’s got to be haunted, right?”
Dahlia didn’t answer that one. She just handed over the money in trade for the cup, then dropped her change into the tip jar. “Where are the…? Oh, I see them.” The airpots were on the other end of the counter.
“We got some recordings, too. Voices, that kind of thing. My boyfriend caught this sound on his phone—it sounds like a baby crying. So creepy.”
“Well, me and my crew are staying in the house for now, so don’t scare me too bad. We’ve got to sleep in that place.”
The girl shuddered. “How long will you be there?”
“A few days. My dad’s bringing a trailer on Friday, so we’ll head back to Nashville when everything’s wrapped up. The real demo starts after we leave. We’re just taking out the good stuff—the things people want, if they’ve got an old house of their own.”
“Like the tubs, windows, that kind of thing?”
“Yeah. That kind of thing. Anyway, thanks for the coffee, and stuff.”
Even the secondhand rain had quit altogether, and a thin vein of blue sky showed through the clouds. Dahlia hiked back through the neighborhood and up the hill again, balancing the coffee and her messenger bag, watching her step over fallen logs and along damp-slicked roads that weren’t half so well paved as they ought to be.
She made it back in twenty minutes.
Brad greeted her at the door. He was wearing a bathrobe over his clothes. She handed him the coffee and didn’t say anything about the bathrobe, but her stare made him defensive. “It’s cold in here.”
“It’s not that cold. And it’ll be warmer in an hour—or whenever we get started.”
“I’ll swap this out for a sweater before we get to work. I packed a hoodie. And see?” He did a little two-step, showing off a pair of jeans. “Work pants.”
“I’m very proud of you,” she said, strolling past him into the kitchen—where Gabe was assembling breakfast from the bags they’d left out or stashed in the fridge. No one really wanted to open the fridge, which smelled like ass. But that’s where the sodas were, so he braved it anyway, fishing around until he found the right color and flavor of energy drink to kick-start the day. He pulled out two, and left one on the counter.
“Welcome back, Dahl. Dad’s up, too,” he said before she could ask. “He’s in the shower, and he’ll be down soon. He said he’d be ready to get to work before you got back, but you know him.”
Brad took a manly swig from the mostly-still-hot coffee. “So, what’s the plan for today?”
“Today.” She took a deep breath. “We finish the second floor of the carriage house, and move on to the barn. There’s not much in there, I don’t think; we’re mostly parting it out. We’ll stash that stuff in my truck—all the surplus building parts, the wood and windows and whatnot. We’ll save Bobby’s truck for the antiques and fixtures, unless the balance tips too hard in one direction or another.” She leaned on the counter, recoiling when her elbow landed in something sticky. “After all that, if we still have daylight to burn, we’ll start on the inside of the house. It’ll take us forever to pull these fireplace mantels. It’d be nice to get a lead on them.”
Heavy, uneven footsteps on the stairs heralded Bobby, freshly showered. His hair was wet and his eyes were red. What bits of him weren’t blotchy from the hot water were pale as a fish. “I’m up,” he announced, like he didn’t quite believe it himself.
“What do you want, a cookie?” Dahlia asked.
Gabe grabbed a spare energy drink, and chucked it his way.
Bobby caught it with one hand. He popped the tab, and tossed his son a nod that was supposed to stand in for a thank-you. “I don’t know if we brought any cookies or not, but I’ll settle for this. So what’s the plan today?”
Gabe threw himself on that grenade before Dahl could snipe about him being late to the party. “I’ll fill you in over breakfast.” He frowned at his dad, not for being slow and wet, but out of concern. He asked, “Hey, Dad, are you okay?”
“Me? What? Okay? Yes, okay. Very okay.”
“You don’t look okay. You’ve still got some soap on you…” Gabe gestured at his neck.
“It’s just soap. It’s still okay. I just took a fast bath, because I didn’t want to hear about it from the boss-lady over there.”
Dahlia didn’t quite believe him
“Yeah, of course I did. The Pepto-Bismol suite, with all the ugly tile. By the way, it’s wet in there. We forgot to bring a shower curtain.”
“I know. I’ve put it on my list. But you didn’t … you didn’t go through my room? You didn’t use my bathroom?”
“Jesus, Dahl. We’re not twelve years old. I’m not trying to sneak around and read your diary. No, I didn’t use your bathroom.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” she protested. Then she wasn’t sure how far she should push, so she backtracked, and picked another path. “I was only thinking, I might hike down to the Walgreens over lunch and get a curtain for myself. I’ll get one for your bathroom, too, while I’m at it.”
Bobby belched. “Or you could drive. I know you’re a puss about the trucks, but it’s not a big deal. They get in and out of here just fine.”
“The weather’s nice. It’s not raining anymore, and it’s not very far. I could be there and back in less than an hour.”
“Or I could drive, and pick up whatever else we forgot to grab before we came. The whole trip would take fifteen minutes.”
She waved her hand, shooing the offer away for now. “Forget it. We can talk about it later. Me and Brad are going to gear up and hit that carriage house again. Let Gabe bring you up to speed, grab some food if you want, and come join us. Sooner rather than later, please.”
Before heading out, she left her bag with the photo album back in her room, and poked her head into the hallway bath. It was a sauna in there, but it wasn’t weird or dark. She didn’t see anything in the mirror, not even her own reflection.
“Come on, Brad. You ready for day two?”
“I took a fistful of ibuprofen. Once it kicks in, I’ll loosen up just fine.”
Most of the gear was still in the carriage house, piled on the first floor behind those oversized doors that neither opened nor shut correctly. “We probably shouldn’t leave the place unsecured,” Dahlia observed feebly, remembering yesterday’s promise to Gabe. She dragged the nearest door all the way open to let in the light.