Page 4 of Cursed to Love (Cursed to Love #1)
CHAPTER FOUR
Friday, September 7
B lake walked into his mom’s house and stopped when memories assaulted him. Since moving into his own house, he’d been back, usually weekly. The difference this time was that his mom wouldn’t be coming out to greet him.
Without the greeting, he looked around and spied the small ding in the front mantel over the fireplace that he, Jake, and Cade had made while launching their toy cars off a track they’d covered the room with.
The side wall didn’t look like it had ever been anything but smooth, but he could still picture his dad teaching him how to patch the hole in the drywall made by a hockey puck. A smile tugged at the corners of his lips as he remembered his dad spreading the putty on the wall. His mom had been furious, and although his dad told them to take the game outside next time, he’d leaned down and whispered in Blake’s ear, how to catch the puck next time.
A cool breeze hit the back of his neck, pulling him out of his memories, and he turned, noticing he’d left the door wide open. Blake shut the door and turned back around. Movement caught his eye, and he glanced over to see Cade on the stairs.
His brother descended the final stair. “I thought I heard you.”
“Yeah, got caught going down memory lane.”
“Good ones?”
Blake grinned. “The hockey puck.”
Cade frowned in confusion before looking where Blake pointed. “Right.” He chuckled and gestured to the hardwood floor at the base of the stairs. “Remember that?”
A gouge about four inches in length was barely visible in the wood. That mishap led to his dad teaching them how to sand floors. He also taught them to move all the furniture out of the way before wrestling. During one match, they’d knocked over a small credenza and pushed it along the floor. A handle had broken off, but not before it put a groove in the hardwood.
“I think we learned a lot about construction from Dad teaching us to repair what we broke.”
“Like replacing a window because you couldn’t throw a baseball?” Cade teased.
“Hey, that wasn’t me. That was Jake.” It had totally been Blake, but he was sticking to his story because that was the pact he’d made with his best friend. Blake had taken the blame for the window they’d broken at Jake’s house, so it had been Jake’s turn to shoulder the blame at his house. Good friends were like that and so was family.
And as the eldest in the family, he and Cade had a job to do.
“Ready for this?” Cade asked.
“No, but we don’t have a choice.”
“We do. I’ve had a company coming in and cleaning the house for the last month. We can continue to do that, while I hire another company to clear everything out and then put the house on the market. None of us will ever have to step foot in here again.”
“Mom wouldn’t have wanted that.”
“No, but she’s not here to argue about it.”
Blake walked to the couch in the living room and flopped onto the big cushions. They looked like someone had fluffed them recently. He ran his hand over the arm of the couch, remembering when his mom had bought it. His dad had died about six months earlier, and his mom wasn’t coping well. Then she decided that the old couch had to go, along with Dad’s favorite recliner. She announced at dinner one night she had purchased a living room suite, and it would be delivered the next day. After dinner, he and his brothers had moved the old couch and Dad’s recliner to the garage.
Blake looked at Cade, where he’d taken a seat on the arm of the loveseat. “I don’t think I ever asked. What happened to Dad’s recliner?”
“Jake’s parents have it at their cottage.”
“I didn’t know.” He wasn’t sure what else to say.
“You were busy with college and keeping the company running. I’m guessing, out of sight, out of mind. Besides, it was years ago. When winter came, Mom couldn’t park in the garage because it was full of furniture. I convinced her to donate the living room set, but she wouldn’t part with the recliner. I mentioned it to Kelly.” He grinned. “I was still calling her Mrs. Young back then. Anyway, since Ian was Dad’s best friend, I don’t think he wanted to get rid of it, either. He said keeping the recliner at the cottage would be like having a little visit with Dad every time they went up there.”
He heard the roughness in Cade’s voice and knew they had to get moving or they’d end up like a couple of old seniors in a nursing home reminiscing. He wasn’t emotionally ready for that.
“Where should we start?”
“You sure you want to?” Cade eyed him. It was a look he’d pierced Blake and his brothers with all their lives, making them confess to things they didn’t want to. He expected it worked well for him in court.
“Still no, but I think we should.”
“What would you think about packing up her clothes and personal things and leaving the house as is until Gage comes back?”
Blake widened his eyes at his brother. “Is there something you haven’t told me?”
“No, but I know you’ve been working on Gage for years, trying to get him to move back home, and I think you may be close to succeeding. Which I expect is the reason we still don’t have a VP of commercial operations because you want him in the position.”
“About that.” Blake rubbed his hands over his face, needing a second to regroup. “I’ve decided to promote Henry into the position.”
“Our senior electrician?”
“That’s the one. He says Mike is ready to move up.”
“And what happens to Henry when you finally get Gage to come home?”
Blake smirked. “Henry will retire. He said he’s been considering it, and doing the VP job will be a change of pace for a while and give him some more money to add to his retirement account. He’s going to give me a year.”
Cade nodded as if processing the information.
After a minute, Blake stood, ready to get on with their task. “Let’s deal with Mom’s personal stuff and leave the rest. Besides your cleaning crew coming in, we can set up a schedule for all of us to check on the house once a week. When I think Gage is ready, I’ll let him know the house is available.”
Cade nodded again. “And tell him that it’s been empty too long and it’s expensive having someone checking on it all the time. That we need someone in it.”
They headed up the stairs. “I always knew you were devious.”
“Not devious. Strategic.”
Blake gave a short laugh. “Right, you keep thinking that. But I’ll use your strategy if I need it.”
At the closed door to their mom’s room, they both hesitated. Knowing it wasn’t going to get any easier the longer they waited, Blake pushed open the door and walked in. His mom’s floral perfume hit him like a hockey puck to the chest. He didn’t even know the name of the scent, just that it was “Mom.”
Trying not to dwell on it, he did a visual inventory of the room. “You want the dresser or the walk-in closet?”
“I’ll take the dresser.” Cade pointed to some flat cardboard boxes leaning against a wall. “I put some in the closet already, so you can get started.”
“Three categories? Keep, give away, throw out?” They’d been through this before. Although last time they’d helped their mom sort through their dad’s stuff, and now they were the ones making the decisions.
“Sounds good. I left you some garbage bags and packing tape too.”
“Thanks.” Blake emotionally braced himself and walked into the closet, the light already on. The space wasn’t as big as some in newer homes, but it was big enough and his mom had filled it.
He looked at his watch—his dad’s watch, one of the three his grandfather had passed down. His dad gave it to him on his eighteenth birthday, two months before he died. In the twelve years since Blake had come to terms with his dad’s death—least as much as anyone could—the watch didn’t usually bring up memories. To him, it was just a great piece that kept time.
Being in his mom’s house surrounded by memories was getting to him. He had to look at his watch again, because the time hadn’t registered the first time.
It was after one in the afternoon since he and Cade had decided to work at the office in the morning before coming to their mom’s. Determined to get it done before the sun set, he grabbed a box and put it together. After taping the bottom, he put together a few more and labeled them with the thick, black marker sitting by the boxes. He had to appreciate his brother’s efficiency.
Starting with the shoes, hoping that it would be the easiest place to start, he placed most of them in the giveaway box. One pair, his mom’s favorite slippers, went in the garbage bag. Looking back at them, he hesitated. Each year his dad had bought his mom a new pair of slippers for Christmas. He hadn’t been the most romantic guy, but he’d loved his wife fiercely. Since his mom’s feet were forever cold, his dad said buying her slippers every year meant he always had a present for her he didn’t have to think about.
Blake stared down at the slippers as he held the bag in his hand. They were the last pair his dad ever bought. By the looks of them, his mom had worn them until they probably no longer stayed on her feet. He couldn’t imagine being so attached to something as ordinary as slippers because someone bought it for him.
Turning away from the bag, he grabbed the next pair of shoes. Black and shiny with really low heels. He dropped them into the giveaway box, then paused. He hadn’t grown up around little girls playing princess or pretend, but he’d seen Jake’s sister do it, and she had a little girl. Her daughter wasn’t old enough to play dress up yet, but she would be one day.
Picking up another box, he put it together, labeled it as dress up, and put the shiny shoes in the bottom. By the time he finished with the shoes, there were three more pairs in the box.
Blake moved onto the clothes hanging on the rod at one end of the closet. Some pieces conjured more memories and threatened to drown him, like the Christmas sweater his mom brought out on the first day of December every year, and the long coat he and his brothers bought for her the year after his dad died.
He decided it was time to be ruthlessly efficient. Taking each item off its hanger he gave it only a cursory look before deciding its fate.
An hour later, three boxes of dress-up clothes were stacked beside one to keep and eight to give away. With all the clothing finished, he was ready to move onto the boxes stacked on a shelf above the clothing rod.
“You ready for a break?” Cade asked from the doorway. “Here.” He offered a cold can of root beer to Blake. “I haven’t restocked the bottles of water yet.”
“Thanks.” He cracked the top and took a long drink. “Restock?”
“It’s hard to believe that Mom’s been gone a month already. I come over here every few days to make sure the cleaning crew locked the door and there’s no mail piling up. I put a case of water and some canned drinks in the fridge, so the motor wasn’t working to cool an empty space, and sometimes I stay and get a bit of work done because it’s quieter than at home.”
“I appreciate all you’ve done.” Blake looked at his brother, hoping he heard his sincerity.
Cade nodded, then tilted his chin toward the high shelf. “You want help with that? I finished the bedroom and bathroom. There wasn’t as much, and almost everything in the bathroom went in the garbage.”
“Sure.” He knocked back the rest of his root beer.
Cade picked up the garbage bag in the corner, about to put his empty bottle in it.
“Not that one,” Blake said, reaching for the bag.
“Why not?” Cade raised a brow.
Handing his empty can to his brother, Blake reached into the bag and pulled out their mom’s slippers. When it had come time to put more garbage in with the slippers, he hadn’t been able to do it. “Keeping old, worn slippers isn’t practical, but Mom always said?—”
“That sometimes practicality was overrated,” Cade finished for him as he grabbed a new garbage bag for the cans. “Why don’t you put the slippers in one of the keep boxes, so they don’t get thrown out?”
Blake opened a partially empty box and placed the slippers inside. Then, with silent agreement, they pulled down the boxes on the shelf and went through them. Most held more shoes and sweaters.
Cade pulled down one of the three remaining boxes on the shelf. “Those two boxes,” he said, lifting his chin to the last one, “hold all the stuff Mom collected while we were in school—artwork, trophies, that type of thing.”
Not sure he could handle going down memory lane again today, Blake took the boxes down and labeled them to keep, not opening the lids. “What’s in that last one?”
Cade sat on the bench and placed the box beside him. “I think it may be more things Mom collected from us, but I’m not sure.”
Blake sat on the end of the bench, on the other side of the box, feeling drained from the emotions that had flooded him all afternoon.
The final box was a banker’s box, like his dad used to store important documents in until Blake had everything scanned, and they went digital. Cade removed the lid, dropped it to the floor, and picked up an album.
Still weary of more memories but wanting to see the album, Blake picked up the lid and put it back on the box. “Put the album here,” he told Cade, tapping the lid.
Cade placed it on the box and opened the cover. The album was the old peel-and-stick kind. Blake didn’t recognize any of the people in the first eight photos. Judging by the clothes, he figured it was the 1970s. There were four pictures on the next two pages. “Is that Mom?”
“It sure looks like her. She’s what? Maybe mid-twenties? Could you have been born already?”
Blake studied the pictures. “Maybe. She had me two months before her twenty-sixth birthday, so it’s possible.” He pointed to a picture of their mom with another young woman. “That could be her sister. But Mom said Aunt Chrys died when I was a baby.”
Cade turned the page to more pictures of their mom with their aunt. “Does it seem odd to you that there aren’t any dates or names? Mom was a fanatic about that.”
“I hadn’t noticed, but you’re right.” Blake grinned at his brother. “Remember whenever we brought home something from school?”
Cade smirked. “How could I forget? ‘Put your name and date on the back,’” he said in a high voice, doing a pretty good imitation of their mom. “‘If you don’t put your name and date on it, I’ll never know whose is whose.’”
“And it wasn’t just stuff from school. Remember how she used to label everything—our clothes, photos, food in the freezer? She was so excited when Dad bought her a label maker.”
“Right? I think may have even more excited than Mom because he had something else to put in her Christmas stocking. Remember the year he individually wrapped ten label cartridges?”
“Dad was proud of filling up the stocking that year…” Blake let his words trail off, thinking about the bittersweet memories, and glanced back at the photo album. “Maybe there are dates on the backs.”
Carefully peeling away a corner of the plastic film, Cade tried to lift one of the pictures, but it was stuck.
Blake pulled his truck keys out of his pocket and opened the pocketknife attached to the ring. “Try this.”
“Thanks.” After almost a minute of gently prying the knife under the photo and wiggling it back and forth to loosen the glue, Cade picked up the picture. “It’s blank.”
“Well, it was worth a try. Do you want to look at the rest?”
“Sure. It looks like there aren’t many pages left.”
The rest of the pictures were more of the same. Some with their mom and her sister, and a few of their dad.
When Cade turned to the last page, Blake frowned in confusion, pointing at the lone picture on the page. “That’s Mom, her sister, and me. I don’t know who the little girl is, but that’s definitely you. I was seventeen months when you were born, and you look like you’re one or two in that picture. So unless I got it wrong and Aunt Chrys didn’t die when I was a baby, Mom lied to us about her sister’s death.”
“It’s starting to look that way.” Cade shut the album and put it on the floor before lifting the lid off the box and tossing it to the floor again. “Maybe there’s an answer in some of this stuff.”
The box held another album, two journals, and some papers wrapped in plastic. Cade passed the album to Blake and picked up one of the journals.
The album held more photos of his aunt and the little girl, but no more of him and Cade. Not great at judging kids’ ages, he guessed the little girl was about five in the last photo of her.
Blake put the album back in the box and picked up the second journal. “The photos were more of the same. You find anything?”
Cade shook his head, put the journal back, and picked up the papers. “Mom’s journal when she was a teenager. It just felt weird reading it.” He shivered; Blake understood—intimate details weren’t something he wanted to know about his parents.
Opening the second journal, Blake recognized his mom’s flowery cursive. He skimmed a few pages. She mentioned meeting their father and how handsome she thought he was. Fearing she might have described sex with his dad on the later pages, he closed the cover. “Maybe we could get Jake’s mom to read these, to see if there’s anything about Aunt Chrys.”
The corners of Cade’s lips twitched up with a laugh. “Find something you’re going to need to bleach your eyeballs for?”
It was Blake’s turn to shiver. “No, but I might have if I kept reading.”
“Got it.” Cade lifted his chin toward the journals. “I’ll let you give those to Kelly or Jake for him to pass them on to her.” He held up a piece of paper inside a plastic sheath, which looked old and brittle. “This is a letter dated 1924 and signed by someone named Martha.”
“What kind of letter?”
Cade frowned. “I’m not sure. There’s a lot of rambling, like the woman couldn’t focus. She talks about her love for George.”
“Are all those letters?” he asked, looking at the pile of papers Cade had placed on the bench.
“I don’t know. You want to read them?”
“No.” Blake didn’t want to read letters about undying love.
“Okay. I’ll read them later, but I won’t take them with me today.”
“You don’t have room in your vehicle?”
“No, I’ve got room. I’ll take all the boxes for Goodwill and drop them off. Then, I’ve got to pick up Malcolm from daycare and I don’t want to chance him getting into the papers. Now that he’s walking, he’s getting into everything. I’ll come back and get them another time.”
Blake gave his brother a sly smile. “Good. My birthday present will be perfect for him.”
Cade groaned. “He’s only one. Did you and Jake even listen to me about buying educational gifts?”
“Of course. It says educational right on the box. It’s good for cognitive thinking.”
It was also good for eye-hand coordination and hearing; it said so right beside the instructions for putting the drum set together. The same for the musical train Jake picked out. He and Jake had paid for the wrapping service, and while they’d waited, they had a good laugh, speculating how Cade would change the buying instructions for Christmas.
“We’ll see,” Cade muttered as they both stood and picked up some boxes.
Once the boxes were loaded and the house locked, Blake headed home. He couldn’t get over the fact their mom lied to them on more than one occasion. Would they find more lies when they dug into the old papers?