26. Cary

26

Cary

E van scrubbed the bedroom floor three times before deeming it clean enough… for now. I disassembled the guest room bed, and he helped me carry the pieces up. After moving the frame at least seven times—more like a freaking dozen, but who’s counting?—he finally settled on putting it where we’d placed it the first time. If I’d known him longer, I was sure I’d have given him shit about that.

We brought the mattress up next, and I helped him make the bed. I had several old blankets I’d inherited when my grandmother passed. Mom was living in Florida with her new boyfriend in a fancy motorhome, so she didn’t have room for any of Grandma’s old stuff.

To me, all that stuff was as much home to me as any building I’d ever lived in. The blankets weren’t what you’d call pretty, but they were clean and warm. I was confident the blankets would keep Evan warm enough to be comfortable up here, even on the coldest and foggiest Oregon coast mornings.

Next, we went through the other bedrooms looking at furniture until he decided on a ratty-looking chest of drawers, but the drawers glided in and out easily. He asked if I minded if he painted it, and I just laughed. “It came with the cottage, and I would’ve tossed it, so do with it what you want. It’s yours, after all.”

That seemed to satisfy him, so we searched for other useful pieces for his bedroom. “This sweet old rocking chair came with the place too,” I told him when we entered the guest room at the back of the second floor. “It creaks and all, but it’s comfortable. I was going to put it on the front porch now the weather’s warming up, but if you’d like it in your room, we can take it up there.”

Evan sat in it and smiled. “I remember one of the few houses we lived in had a similar rocker. I spent hours in that old chair reading or watching TV. Yeah, this is perfect. Maybe I can use that old trunk too, for a footrest.”

“Sure,” I said and looked at the trunk. I hadn’t done anything with this room. As I’d said before, it wasn’t a priority, so I hadn’t looked through the trunk. When I opened it, I immediately knew I’d stumbled onto something important.

Evan came over, peered into the chest, and gasped when he saw the name written on a piece of paper on top of the belongings inside. Inez Garland .

“No, Cary, is it possible? Do you think these are Inez’s things?”

I shrugged. I didn’t know what to think. I’d seen enough unexplainable coincidences to know things tended to happen for a reason when we needed them to. I stepped back and let him rummage through the trunk. I lifted the old rocking chair up and took it to his room, giving him space.

When I came back, Evan was kneeling by the trunk, crying. He looked up at me as I approached and handed me an old black-and-white photograph. He pointed at the bottom of the old cardboard frame the photo was mounted in, and it read: Inez and daughter Lydia Garland.

It had to have been taken shortly after Lydia was born, but you could clearly see the baby’s and her mother’s features. I looked down at Evan and knew they were definitely related. “You look like her,” I said, kneeling beside him, and he nodded.

“I’ve got her eyes and nose. So did my grandmother and dad. I’d never seen a picture of Grandma this young,” he said, pointing at the baby in the photo. “I-I can’t believe we stumbled onto this.”

I put my hand on his shoulder. “I can. It was meant for you to find, especially now. Come on, I’ll help you take it upstairs.”

Evan nodded, and after wiping his eyes, we hauled the trunk up to his newly painted space.

“Evan, I know the bathroom up here works, but it’s still a mess. Feel free to use the one on the second floor. I’ve painted it and replaced the old toilet, so I know it’s decent.”

He nodded, but I could tell he wanted to spend more time with the contents of the trunk, so I made my excuses and headed out to do chores on the estate I’d neglected the past few days. There really wasn’t that much work for me to do this time of year, though. The grass hadn’t started growing again, so I didn’t have to mow. There were no customers or guests to mess things up or leave trash lying around, but there were always things requiring maintenance in a house of this age.

I didn’t do extensive repairs, but I’d been hired not just to keep the spirits at bay, but also to manage the small things.

So, while giving Evan space, I took the golf cart up to the manor and chipped away at the never-ending list of to-dos that never seemed to get any shorter.