The Tidewater Sisters: Postlude to The Prayer Box (12 page)

“Mrs. Poole? Iola? I didn’t mean to scare
 
—”

A rustle in the faded velvet curtains by the bookshelves made me jump, breath hitching in my chest as I drew closer.

A black streak bolted from behind the curtain and raced away. A cat. Mrs. Poole had a cat. Probably the wild, one-eared tom that J.T. had been trying to lure to our porch with bowls of milk. I’d told him to quit
 
—we couldn’t afford the milk
 
—but a nine-year-old boy can’t resist a stray. Ross had offered to bring over a live trap and catch the cat. Good thing I’d told him not to worry about it. Letting your new boyfriend haul off your landlady’s pet is a good way to get kicked out of your happy little home, especially when the rent’s overdue.

The glass doorknob felt cool against my fingers when I touched it, the facets surprisingly sharp. “I’m coming in . . . okay?” Every muscle in my body tightened, preparing for fight or flight. “It’s just Tandi Reese . . . from the cottage. I hope I’m not scaring you, but I was wor
 
—” The rest of
worried
never passed my lips. I turned the handle. The lock assembly clicked, and the heavy wooden door fell open with such force that it felt like someone had pulled it from the other side. The doorknob struck the wall, vibrating the floor beneath my feet. Behind me, the cat hissed, then scrambled off down the stairs.

Picture frames inside the room shivered on the pale-blue walls, reflecting orbs of light over the furniture. Beyond the jog created by the hallway nook, the footboard of an ornate bed pulled at me as the shuddering frames settled into place and the light stopped dancing. By the bedpost, a neatly cornered blue quilt grazed the floor, and a pair of shoes
 
—the sensible, rubber-soled kind that Zoey, with her fourteen-year-old fashion sense, referred to as
grandma shoes
 
—were tucked along the edge of a faded Persian rug, the heels and toes exactly even.

The feet that belonged in the shoes had not traveled far away. Covered in thin black stockings, they rested atop the bed near the footboard, the folded, crooked toes pointing outward slightly, in a position that seemed natural enough for someone taking a midday nap.

But the feet didn’t move, despite the explosion of the door hitting the wall. I tasted the bile of my last meal. No one could sleep through that.

The bedroom lay in perfect silence as I stepped inside, my footfalls seeming loud, out of place. I didn’t speak again or call out or say her name to warn her that I was coming. Without even seeing her face, I knew there was no need.

Gruesome scenes from Zoey’s favorite horror movies flashed through my mind, but when I crept past the corner, forced myself to turn her way, Iola Anne Poole looked peaceful, like she’d just stopped for a quick nap and forgotten to get up again. She was flat on her back atop the bed, a pressed cotton dress
 
—white with tiny blue flower baskets
 
—falling over her long, thin legs and seeming to disappear into a wedding ring quilt sewn in all the colors of sky and sea. Her leathery, wrinkled arms lay folded neatly across her stomach, the gnarled fingers intertwined in a posture that looked both contented and confident. Prepared. The chalky-gray hue of her skin told me it would be cold if I touched it.

I didn’t. I turned away instead, pressed a hand over my mouth and nose. As much as the body looked like someone had carefully laid it out to give a peaceful appearance, there were no signs that anyone else had been in the room. The only trails on the dusty floor led from the door to the bed, from the bed to what appeared to be a closet tucked behind the hallway nook, and past the foot of the bed to a small writing desk by the window. Whatever she was doing up here, she didn’t come often. What was the lure of this turret room at the end of the upstairs hall, with its gold-trimmed walls painted in faded shades of cream and milky blue? Did she know she was approaching her last hours? Was this where she wanted to die? Where she wanted to be found?

Could I have helped if I’d checked on her sooner?

The questions drove me from the room, sent me into the hall, gasping for air. I didn’t want to think about how long she’d been there or whether she’d known death was coming for her, whether she’d been afraid when it happened or completely at peace.

Truthfully, I didn’t want anything more to do with the situation.

But an hour later, I was back in the house, watching two sheriff’s deputies walk into the blue room. The deputy in back was more interested in getting a look inside the house than in the fact that a woman had died. For some reason, it seemed wrong to leave them alone with her body. I felt responsible for making sure they gave what was left of her some respect.

I waited in the doorway of the blue room, letting the wall hide all but the view of her stocking-clad feet as the men stood over the bed. They’d already asked me at least a dozen questions I couldn’t answer: How long did I think she’d been dead? When was the last time I’d talked to her? Had she been ill that I knew of?

All I could tell them was that I was staying in her cottage out front. I’d used the term
renting
to make it sound good. The lead deputy was a thin, matter-of-fact man with an accordion of permanent frown lines around his mouth. He didn’t seem to care much one way or the other. He checked his watch several times like he had somewhere to go.

“Well,” he said finally, the floor creaking under his weight in a way that told me he was leaning over the bed near her face, “looks like natural causes to me.”

The younger man answered with a snarky laugh. “Shoot, Jim, she had to be somewhere up around a hundred. I remember when my granddad retired, Mama wanted to buy the altar flowers for church, to get his name in the bulletin, but she couldn’t. The pastor had already ordered the altar flowers that week, on account of Iola Poole’s birthday. She was turning eighty then, and that was back when I was in middle school. Mama was mighty hot about it all, I’ll tell ya. Granddaddy’d been a deacon at Fairhope Fellowship for forty years, and Mama wasn’t about to be having him share altar flowers with the likes of Iola Anne Poole. Our family helped move that old chapel here to start the church. Iola was just there to play the organ, and they paid her for that, anyway. It’s not like she was a member, even. Mama figured, if Iola wanted altar flowers for her birthday, she could put some at a church down in New Orleans, where her people come from.”

Deputy Jim clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Women.”

His partner laughed again. “You haven’t been down here long enough to know how things are. Stuff like that might not matter much up in Boston, but it sure enough matters in Fairhope. Believe me, if they could’ve found anybody
 
—and I mean
anybody
else who knew how to play that old pipe organ over to the church, they would’ve. That’s half the reason my mama pushed for that new band director at the high school in Buxton a few years ago; he said he could play a pipe organ. I never saw the church ladies so happy as the week the band director took over at Sunday services and they sent Iola Poole packing.”

“Okay, Selmer, we might as well get the right people out here to wrap this up.” Deputy Jim ended the discussion. “Looks pretty cut-and-dried. She have any family we should call?”

“None that I’d know how to find. And that’s a can of worms you don’t wanna open either, by the way, Jim.”

“No next of kin. . . .” The older man drew the words out, probably writing them down at the same time.

Sadness slid over me like a heavy wool blanket, making the air too stale and thick. I stood gazing through the blue room to the tall bay windows of the turret. Outside, a rock dove flitted along the veranda railing. What had Iola Poole done, I wondered, to have ended up this way, alone in this big house, laid out in her flowered dress, dead for who knew how long, and nobody cared? Did she realize this was how things would turn out? Was this what she’d pictured when she placed herself there on the bed, closed her eyes, and let the life seep out of her?

The dove fluttered to the windowsill, then hopped back and forth, its shadow sliding over the gray marble top of the writing desk. A yellowed Thom McAn shoe box sat on the edge, the lid ajar, a piece of gold rickrack trailing from the corner. On the windowsill, half a dozen scraps of ribbon lay strewn about. As the dove’s shadow passed again, I noticed something else. Little specks of gold shimmered in the dust on the sill. I wanted to walk into the room and look closer, but there wasn’t time. The deputies were headed to the door.

Hugging my arms tightly, I followed the men downstairs and onto the front porch. It wasn’t until we’d reached the driveway that I looked at the cottage and my stomach began churning for a different reason. With Iola gone, it would only be a matter of time before Alice Faye Tucker came to evict us. I had less than fifty dollars left, and that was from the last thing I could find to pawn
 
—a sterling watch that Trammel had given me. The watch was only in my suitcase by accident
 
—left behind after a trip to a horse event somewhere, undoubtedly in better times. If Trammel knew I still had it, he would have taken it away, along with everything else of value. He made sure I never had access to enough money to get out.

What were the kids and I going to do now?

The question gained weight and muscle as the afternoon passed. The coroner’s van had just left when Zoey and J.T. came in from school. I didn’t even tell them our new landlady had died. They’d find out soon enough. At nine years old, J.T. might not make the connections, but at fourteen-going-on-thirty, Zoey would know that the loss of the cottage spelled disaster for us. The minute we reemerged on the grid
 
—credit card payment at a motel, job application with actual references provided, visit to a bank for cash
 
—Trammel Clarke would find us.

I slipped into bed at twelve thirty, boneless and weary, guilt ridden for not being honest with the kids, even though it was nothing new. Outside, the water teased the shores of the sedges, and a slow-rising Hatteras moon climbed the roof of Iola’s house, hanging above the turret like a scoop of vanilla ice cream on an upside-down cone.

How could someone who owned an estate like this one end up alone in her room, gone from this world without a soul to cry at her bedside?

The image of Iola as a young woman taunted my thoughts. I imagined her walking the veranda in a milky-white dress. The moon shadows shifted and danced among the live oaks and the loblolly pines, and I felt the old house calling to me, whispering the secrets of the long and mysterious life of Iola Anne Poole.

I
T’S AMAZING HOW ENDLESS
a week can be when you’re wondering if you’re about to be living in your car. Iola Poole’s house had been quiet for days
 
—no sign of Alice Faye Tucker, sheriff’s deputies, or any family members or friends. I’d slipped into Bink’s Village Market on Fairhope Inlet twice now and looked for a funeral flyer among the notes taped to the front of the counter, but I hadn’t seen Iola’s.

It was as if she’d never existed at all, but of course I’d found her in the blue room, and that meant that sooner or later our time in the cottage would end. I had no idea what I’d do when it happened. After weeks of looking for work around the Outer Banks, I’d figured out that between the hurricane damage and this being the off-season, no place was hiring, and even if they were, a woman with no references and no past history to offer isn’t too tempting. The last official job I’d had was riding Trammel Clarke’s show horses, and that was before one of them hooked a toe on the top rail of a jump at a grand prix event and cartwheeled to the ground with me on board. A botched surgery and a long recovery had led me down a dark hole I was still trying to climb out of.

No matter what it took now, I had to keep moving forward. I might’ve fallen short in the mothering department over the years, but I’d always promised myself that Zoey and J.T. wouldn’t have the kind of life my sister and I had. If it came down to scrubbing streets with a toothbrush, I was going to find a way to take care of us and keep Trammel out of our lives for good. He’d already done enough damage.

If worse came to worst, Ross had said that we could move into his place, as soon as he was back in town. He had a saltbox house on Ocracoke, but most of the time he stayed in beachfront rental homes his father owned. He did light repair work and maintenance on them when he wasn’t gone delivering long-haul orders for the family lumber company. Meeting Ross at Frisco Pier was one of the good things that had happened since we’d been here. But I’d picked up on the fact that Ross wasn’t too much on kids in general. Zoey and J.T. would grow on him over time, but I knew better than to rush things.

It was probably too much to hope that we could keep Iola’s cottage until a job came through, but as each day came and passed, I grew slightly more optimistic.

When I heard car doors shutting outside on the seventh day, I felt the ax tipping over my head again.

We were going to end up at Ross’s, like it or not. He was due back from a long haul tonight. I’d have to pack what we had in the cottage and be ready when the kids came home from hanging out at the beach with a boy Zoey had met at school.

Anxiety hit me like a wave striking shore, dragging me out to sea in bits and pieces. More than anything I wanted to pop an OxyContin to tamp it down. But when we left Texas in the middle of the night, I’d made a promise
 
—no more pills and no more Trammel Clarke. So far I’d held true on both.

I stepped out of the cottage with a greeting and a big smile, to make it look less like we’d been squatting there on purpose. Growing up in the family I had, I’d learned so much about delivering the kind of smooth story that could hide all sorts of ugly truths underneath. The lines I’d been crafting all week rehearsed themselves in my head.
After she passed away, poor thing, and I didn’t hear from anyone, I wasn’t sure what to do. I hated to just leave the place unsupervised and her cat with no one to take care of it. We’ve been keeping an eye on things
 
—putting out food and water. The cat comes and goes from the house, so there must be a pet door somewhere, but I couldn’t find it. The night after she died, I was worried because the cat was locked inside, but then the next day, he was out in the yard again. I thought we should look after him anyway, poor thing. I hope that’s all right. . . .