Page 9

Story: Gothictown

Chapter 8

T he first week Billie’s was open was pure insanity, the second, only one degree less, and the third was only an average amount of bonkers. By the fourth week, things were going so smoothly that I started to feel suspicious. Could we really be hitting our stride so soon? The growing population of Juliana would seem to say yes, forming a line at our door even before opening each day and then again around lunchtime.

I worked hard to remember names and faces, particularly those belonging to the customers from Juliana’s original families. There was Bonnie St. John, the woman who worked at city hall and had handled all our paperwork for the house and café. There were the Calhouns, Ray and Darlene, who owned the lumberyard outside of town. Dr. Belmont St. John, Bonnie’s cousin and the local internist who treated every condition from the sniffles to heart disease. Doc Belmont always brought his dog with him, a brown-and-white English cocker named Birdie, who waited patiently for him outside while the doctor ate.

Ox Dalzell, of course, was always around, as well as Agnes Childers, a widow in her eighties who owned whatever commercial real estate the Minette family didn’t and who, with her collection of headscarves and jeweled pins, gave off major Grey Gardens vibes. She always brought her own silver flask of some kind of herbal-infused gin. Toby Minette, Dixie’s adult son, looked like an overgrown fraternity boy straight out of The Official Preppy Handbook .

I left the door that connected the restaurant kitchen with Jamie Cleburne’s shop unlocked, and one morning, sometime during the second or third week, he appeared and claimed a stool at the bar. He ordered a flat white, toasted everything bagel with cream cheese, and a side of turkey bacon. To my surprise, he bowed his head before eating, saying a prayer. It was old-fashioned yet endearing in a certain way.

I watched him out of the corner of my eye. I really didn’t have the mental space to deal with the well, but the issue wasn’t going away, and somebody had to deal with it. Peter said Jamie had never gotten back to him, but for a host of reasons, the main one being the appreciative way Jamie always looked at me, I had a sneaking feeling that I might get a better response from him than my husband had.

When he was almost done with his meal, I took a deep breath and approached him. “Hey Jamie, I hate to bother you—”

He glanced up at me, those blue-green eyes knocking me off balance once again.

I hurried through the explanation. “You wouldn’t know anything about a well at our place, would you? Not the one that the house is connected to. One that Silas Dalzell dug for crops or livestock that might not have been capped properly. They told me you or your dad might know a well company that could handle it for us.”

“That’s interesting.” He shook his head. “But no, I’ve never heard of an uncapped well there.”

I guess he hadn’t gotten Peter’s message.

“Major told us about it when we moved in. I wondered if he was just repeating something Dixie told him to keep him from wandering.”

His expression changed. “Oh. Well, maybe. Major does wander. But there could definitely be an additional well on any of these properties. On the other hand, old George Davenport might’ve dreamed it up and told Dixie. He was a little batty toward the end.”

I furrowed my brow. “Yeah, I heard that. Just in case, you wouldn’t happen to have the number of the company you used, would you?”

“Actually, my dad handled all that, but I could ask him.”

“Thanks.”

He slid off the stool and turned toward the door. Before leaving he looked over his shoulder. “Best breakfast I’ve had in years.”

I beamed, probably warming to the compliment more than I should, then self-consciously erased the grin. This was a small town with a longtime hierarchy cemented in place. Jamie Cleburne might be able to get away with flirting with every woman in sight, but I most certainly could not.

He returned the next morning with the phone number for Childers Wells—“One of Agnes’s grandsons,” Jamie said. I called, but got a recording. I left a message that day and for three or four days after, then decided to let the matter rest. I was frustrated but reluctant to mention it to Jamie. I’d already asked for enough favors. I’d just find another company.

After that, Jamie came in every morning for his bagel, turkey bacon, and flat white. He always did the silent prayer, and after he finished his meal, he’d typically have another cup of coffee and chat with me whenever I worked the kitchen window. He told me all about his growing up in Juliana. He was forty-two years old and an only child. His mother had died a decade ago, but his father was still alive. As a result of a recent stroke, his father was in a wheelchair and had a full-time housekeeper who cooked, so Jamie said I shouldn’t expect to see him much in the café.

Jamie had been the star quarterback at Juliana High School, he told me, then played at Auburn University. After graduation he’d taken over the family antique business. He’d traveled all over Europe, western and eastern, stocking the shop, but he’d never been tempted to move away from Juliana. He’d been married, once, briefly. A woman from the D.C. area who hadn’t taken to small-town life. She hadn’t taken to Jamie either, apparently. She’d moved home even before the divorce was finalized.

He built his own house on the Cleburne family property, which was just outside town, past the mill. Between the Cleburne house and Jamie’s cabin lay a twenty-eight-acre lake of clear, spring-fed water—Jamie’s father’s pet project. The elder Cleburne had tended to it carefully over the past decade, planting native vegetation and carefully introducing the right species of fish until it was a fisherman’s paradise. No one was allowed to fish there, except family and invited guests. There were numerous NO TRESPASSING signs around it, Jamie laughingly told me. Even the most brazen local poachers had spread the stories of old James Cleburne, sitting watch on his porch all night with binoculars and a twelve gauge for anyone who might dare to go night gigging.

One morning, after his premeal grace ritual, Jamie caught me watching him. I busied myself filling condiment bowls, but when I turned back to him, he sent me a wry grin.

“Force of habit,” he said. “The prayer.”

“I like it. It’s nice. Everybody around here does it, don’t they?” I’d noticed other customers, the locals, mouthing what looked like the same, silent words.

He nodded. “We all might attend a different church, but somewhere back in our history, the town elders decided we should all say the same grace. Keep that ‘one for all and all for one’ feeling alive, you know?”

“Yeah. Where do the Cleburnes attend services?” I asked.

“We don’t, actually. Neither do Mayor Dixie or Ox Dalzell.”

“Any reason?”

“Are you kidding me?” He laughed. “You’re telling me you haven’t noticed? We all worship Juliana around here. What’s the point in going to church?”

I laughed ruefully. “I hear you. Sometimes I think I worship this place. I’m here enough.”

He took a bite of his bagel. “You don’t hear me complaining.”

I smiled. “Can you teach me? The prayer?”

He looked incredulous, then touched. “Really?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Okay. Fold your hands.”

I did.

“For food that stays our hunger . . .” he intoned. “For rest that brings us ease.”

I repeated the words.

“For homes where memories linger, we give our thanks for these.”

I looked up. He was studying me closely, his eyes soft. The expression on his face was unguarded and something I could only describe as tender. For a brief moment, I had the wild urge to touch his face, the line of his jaw. To stroke the silken blond beard with my fingertips. I shook it off.

“And then you always . . .” I grabbed the gold chain around my neck. I had noticed that everyone who said this grace in the restaurant always reached for their necks or wrists before or after.

He fingered the silver chain around his neck. “A lot of us have charms that stand for Juliana.” He laughed. “Go ahead, you can say it. It’s a little nutty.”

“I don’t think so. It’s obviously very meaningful to you all.”

“Did I just hear a y’all come out of your mouth?”

I laughed. “I don’t think so. ‘You all’ is definitely not the same thing as y’all.”

His smile was as seductive as they came. “If you say so, Ms. Hope. You’re the boss.”

I laughed again, blushing uncomfortably, then made a dumb excuse to head back into the kitchen. I told Falcon he was relieved for the time being and squared myself in front of the flaming stove. I needed the wall of searing heat to clear my head.

* * *

Occasionally, a blond woman named Alice who had delicate features and a gold hoop through her nose would join Jamie at the bar. She always ordered two lattes and a fruit plate. She was one of the Tiltons, I learned, one of the original families. Alice was a third-grade teacher at the elementary school and lived in a bungalow near the Methodist church. She and Jamie were dating—casually, I was told by a couple of the servers who seemed to be in the know. Still, every time she joined him at the café, I found myself, like some kind of insecure adolescent, dialing up my own charm to eleven.

All in all, business was good. The restaurant’s numbers weren’t at New York levels, but they were promising. Occasionally good enough that waiting customers started to block the entrance to Cleburne Antiques, and I heard that Jamie came out and asked them to relocate to the other end of the block. At the end of each day, I was bone-tired, reeked of smoked salmon and hickory bacon, the bluegrass-gospel mix we played all day earworming itself incessantly through my head. Still, I felt the kind of exhausted elation I hadn’t felt in years. Every afternoon after I’d lock up, I’d retrieve Mere from Lilah’s, and we’d drive back to the house while she described weeding the beet patch or polishing quartz rocks in rapturous detail, and I realized something. She was as happy as I was.

Peter was a different story. Getting his Georgia certification hadn’t been a problem—the board had reviewed his credentials and awarded it immediately, also allowing him to keep his license to practice in New York—but he wasn’t himself. In addition to his single-minded determination to find the well, he hadn’t been sleeping. From our first day in Juliana, I’d been waking up all hours of the night to an empty bed. I’d found him more than a couple of times on the wraparound porch, staring out over the land, jaw tight and eyes wary.

I started finding him at various spots around the house at all hours of the day, curled up, fast asleep. Several times, when I’d come home from work, I found him on the porch, head thrown back, snoring softly on one of the rocking chairs. He fell asleep on the sofa before dinner and then after, in Mere’s bed, a copy of Ribsy splayed facedown across his chest.

He told me not to worry, that he just needed to get in the rhythm of his new schedule. He was accustomed to the frenetic, horn-honking, exhaust-spewing energy of the city, he said, then joked that his body didn’t know what to do with so much serenity and quiet and wide-open space. Still, I wondered if he shouldn’t make an appointment with Dr. Belmont St. John, the old internist, so the man could run some tests. He said he’d look into it.

The last time I’d woken up alone in our bed, it was from a murky but disturbing dream that fled my memory the second I opened my eyes. The clock said two-thirty in the morning. I made some chamomile tea and brought it out to him on the front porch. I sat beside him and rubbed his back. The muscles in his back were tight and knotted, but he didn’t lean into my touch. It was almost like I wasn’t there.

“Can’t sleep again?” I finally asked.

He just shook his head.

“You know, every time I lie down, this unbelievably maddening song from the playlist at Billie’s plays over and over in my head. I was even dreaming about it, just now, I think.”

Peter said nothing.

“It has this, like, insidious quality that just really drives me . . .” I attempted a smile in his direction. “Anyway, Finch and Libby and Susy absolutely swear the regulars love their old hymns, so in it stays, I guess.”

“Where the fuck is it?” he said between clenched teeth, as if I hadn’t said a word. “All I’ve found out there is trees and vines and that shitty creek running through the woods.”

The tone of his voice made my stomach clench. The well. He was talking about the well again. I couldn’t deny the feeling of dread that settled over me. Not because I was worried about Mere—at this point, I truly believed if there really was a well, it was so deeply hidden she’d never find it—but because Peter’s obsession with it was starting to feel like a red flag I shouldn’t ignore. Like he was really worried about something else and was sublimating.

“I know it’s been frustrating—” I began.

“Have you heard from the well company Jamie recommended?” Peter let out a huff of frustration, raked his fingers through his hair.

“I left them a bunch of messages, but nobody’s called me back yet.”

“Ask him if there’s another company.”

I hesitated. “I don’t want to bother him, Peter. He’s already done so much for us.” For me . “I was going to work on it myself. I’ve just been so busy, I haven’t gotten around to it.”

He was silent.

“What did you mean about the creek being shitty? Is something wrong with it?”

He stared out across the field. He looked so haggard, so empty. “The water looks dirty. Like rusty or something. I don’t know. There aren’t any fish in it.”

“Huh. Maybe the water around here is bad. Jamie Cleburne’s dad probably knows something about that. He’s had to do all that work to get his lake right.”

“So you and Jamie talk about his father’s lake, but you don’t want to tell him his well company won’t return your calls?” His eyes looked hollow.

“He’s a customer, Peter. I don’t want to make it awkward.”

“Does he understand how dangerous an uncapped well is?”

“Don’t get mad at me,” I said.

“I’m not mad at you. I’m just . . .” He looked annoyed, not an expression I was used to being on the other end of. He rose, moved to the edge of the porch. The wind had kicked up, whipping around the eaves of the house, whistling tunelessly, joining the buzz of cicadas.

“This is not even an argument worth having,” I said. “There’s probably no well, and all of this is for nothing.”

“Why would they tell us there’s a well if there isn’t?” he asked.

“I don’t know, Peter, but no one seems overly concerned that we’ve got some kind of deathtrap on our property, and if anything happens, we could sue them for negligence or not officially revealing its existence and location. So . . . honestly, I’m not that worried about it.”

“It’s like they don’t want us on our own property,” he mused, like he hadn’t heard me. “Has Mayor Dixie said anything to you about moving? Like, suggested we look at other houses or anything?”

“No.”

“Maybe the groundwater’s contaminated. Maybe there’s a chance it could get into our well, and they’re afraid we’ll sue about that.”

I laughed. “Okay, now you’re being paranoid.”

“Don’t fucking laugh at me,” he snapped. “Something’s not right here.”

I blinked in surprise, sensing the change in temperature. The wind whooshed through the leaves of the old oak beside the house. It unnerved me. He picked at the flakes of paint on the column, letting them fall around his feet like snow. His jaw pulsed. It looked like he was grinding his teeth to dust.

“I’m sorry, Peter,” I said stiffly. “You have a right to your feelings.”

Now he laughed. “Spoken like a true therapist’s spouse. Oh God, maybe I really am just being paranoid. It just doesn’t make sense. And I can’t sleep, which means I can’t think. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m just so fucking tired.”

I wanted to mention Doc Belmont again, but I bit back the suggestion. Better to keep the peace. Let Peter come around to it himself.

“I’ll call Jamie’s father,” he promised wearily. “Mr. Cleburne. About the water in his lake and another well company. You just focus on the restaurant.”

“Peter—” I wanted to say something more, something that would bridge the gulf between us. That would make us a team again.

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. I just need to catch up on my sleep.”

I nodded, but I wasn’t okay. We hadn’t settled anything. There was something between us, something I couldn’t put a name to or fight or even understand. I thought about that yellow crime tape at the mill. The song I’d been dreaming about ran like a golden thread through my brain. And now I remembered part of the dream I’d had tonight, right before I’d woken. It had been like Mere’s dream.

Children singing in the dark, led by the woman with gray braids.

I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling a sudden chill even in the warm night air.

Maybe there was something to Peter’s unease, at least on some level. I’d been on such a high from the restaurant’s success, I’d pushed everything that didn’t fit into my perfect picture—the crime tape, the weird dreams—into some out-of-the-way closet in my brain and locked the door.

But right now, it felt oddly like the world around me was trying to send a message. The sound of the wind fluttering the leaves of the oak and the eaves, even the buzzing of the cicadas, seemed to send a warning:

Beware . . .

* * *

In the days that followed, neither of us mentioned the well or our fight. On the plus side, Peter no longer went out on his reconnaissance missions. Maybe he had been right—Dixie and Major Minette didn’t want us exploring our own land—but it was clear we weren’t going to get anywhere arguing about it. I resolved to talk to Jamie again, but this time bring it up in a roundabout way. I decided I could do it under the guise of discussing my customers crowding the entrance to his shop.

A few days later, as we were closing for the afternoon at Billie’s, he appeared in the door that connected our spaces. I waved him over to sit at the bar, which I was wiping down.

“You’re closed,” he protested, looking around at the flurry of sweeping, rolling silver, and stacking clean dishes.

I poured him a water. “Not to valued neighbors.” He sat, and I grabbed a loaded plate from the expo window. “Also, I never discuss a beef without French toast. And mixed berry compote.”

“A beef?” He grinned. “I didn’t realize that was what was happening between us.”

Flirt.

I spooned a dollop of whipped cream on top of the berries. “I figured you’re probably mad at me. My customers have been blocking your shop entrance while they wait for a table.”

He shrugged and dug into the French toast. “True, but it’s not like my shop is getting stampeded.”

“Still. It’s not right. I should try to direct traffic elsewhere. Maybe I can put some benches across the street, near the statue.”

He snorted. “Good luck getting Mayor Dixie to agree to that. The town council thinks benches encourage vagrants.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Her words, not mine.”

“I haven’t seen any around.”

“Well, we’ve had our share of people struggling with poverty. Addicts and other displaced people. But since Dixie’s been mayor, she’s really tried to discourage it.”

“Sounds ominous.”

He’d already made it halfway through the French toast. “There was a problem a couple years back. Lilah Street’s oldest daughter, Wren.”

I felt a prickle up the middle of my neck.

“I heard she had a substance abuse issue,” I said carefully, “but nobody told me she was on the streets.”

He lowered his voice. “Oxy. Lilah finally had to ask her to get out to protect Temperance. Wren and her buddies hung around the square during the day, slept in one of the church basements. At least until Dixie had the sheriff shoo them away. After that, I think she actually ended up at the Dalzell-Davenport place.”

My hackles went up. Our house?

He must’ve seen my shock. “The house was empty after George’s family took him back to Orlando. I think Wren and her friends squatted there.”

“Oh.” It was all I could think of to say. I wasn’t about to tell Jamie the truth, that my husband was already feeling uneasy about our new home, so uneasy he couldn’t sleep. And that he’d started to lash out at me because of it.

“Just for a while. After a couple of months, she went out to California. She got a job on a weed farm. And the others left, too.”

I nodded. I had heard the basics of that part of the story from Finch and Falcon. I had no words. I couldn’t imagine having to leave Mere like that. It was unfathomable. Poor Lilah. Poor Temperance. What a shitty situation.

He shrugged. “Everybody’s got their struggles. I hope she’s clean and making herself happy.”

“It’s just so sad. For Temperance.”

He eyed me. “And a little disconcerting for you. That people were living in your house, I mean. On top of the situation with the well. You ever hear back from the well company?”

Relieved the conversation had finally headed this way, I perked up. “Actually, no. I left a few messages. I’m sure they’re just busy. I did wonder if you knew of another company that could handle it. It’s just that . . .” I realized he was looking at me intently, his gaze unwavering. “Peter’s really worried about it. You know.”

“Is he?” Say more , his eyes said.

But I wasn’t going there. “Yeah.”

“Sorry to hear that. I’ll ask around for you. See if we can find somebody.” He slid off the stool and turned toward the door. He waved at the staff still hard at work then looked back at me. “Meanwhile, I’ll ask Mayor Dixie about those benches. Can’t hurt to try.”

“Thanks.”

“And Billie?”

“Yeah?”

“Tell Peter not to give the well another thought. You don’t either. You’ve brought life to this space, to this town, and we are going to make sure you don’t regret it. Mere could not be in a safer place than right here in Juliana, I promise you that. You have my word.” He held my gaze for a second or two, then turned and walked out the door.