“Oh, I don’t know. I was probably seven or eight. I don’t even remember the name of my parents’ friends. You know what it’s like when you’re little, what you remember. For me it was the donuts and the swimming hole. Oh, and there was also this one house in West Rutland, right down from the quarry. My mother called it the marble house, because it was on Marble Street and it had a marble base. We knew when we passed it we were almost to our friends’ house.”
Gaylord nodded. “I think I know the house you mean. Actually I handled the sale of that house.”
“It was sold?” he asked. Even to himself he sounded like a disappointed child. “Well, I guess that stands to reason. I have to tell you, I had this whole pipe dream going when I drove up here yesterday. We’d move to Rutland and I’d buy that old house I used to love when I was a kid.”
“Sold a couple of years ago. But it was a mess, you wouldn’t have wanted it. The buyers had to put in everything new. Heat, wiring, septic. And they paid way too much. Not my place to talk them out of it, though. I was acting for the seller.”
“Well, you’d have to expect to put some money into an old house like that. I remember how run-down it looked,” said Jake, recalling Betty’s childhood assessment of the place. “Of course, to a kid it doesn’t say ‘run-down.’ It says ‘haunted.’ I was a big
“Haunted.” Gaylord shook his head. “Well, I don’t know about that. A lot of plain old New England bad luck in that family, maybe. But I don’t know about any actual ghosts. Anyway, we can find you another old Vermont haunted house in the area, no shortage of them.”
He had Jake write down a few of the agents he worked with, then he spent a few minutes rhapsodizing about a Victorian up toward Pittsford that had been on the market for nearly a decade. It sounded delightful.
“But does it have a wraparound porch like that West Rutland house?”
Gaylord shrugged. “Don’t remember, tell you the truth. Is that a deal breaker? You can always add a porch.”
“I’m sure you’re right.”
He was running out of ideas and on his last nerve. He also had pages of notes, by now, on commercial properties in Rutland, Vermont, that he couldn’t have cared less about, and he was the proud possessor of a folder of state policies and programs and completely unneeded brochures about home buying, and also a useless list of Realtors with the William Gaylord, Esq., seal of approval, as well as printouts of listings for old houses in and around Rutland. Outside it was getting dark and still raining, and he was facing a long drive back to the city. And he still knew nothing more than when he’d come in.
“So,” said Jake, making a show of gathering up the papers and recapping his pen, “I suppose there’s no way of buying back that house from the new owners? I wouldn’t say no to updated septic and electricity, actually.”
Gaylord looked at him. “You’ve really got a thing for that place, don’t you? But I’d say no. Not after all the work those people have put in. If you’d come along three years ago I had a very motivated seller, I can tell you. Well, technically
“Georgia?” Jake asked.
“She was going to college down there. I think she just wanted to start over somewhere, make a clean break. She didn’t come back for the closing, not even to clean out the house. With everything that went wrong in that family, I can’t say I blame her.”
“Sure,” said Jake, who blamed her enough for the both of them.
As he was passing Albany the phone vibrated on the seat behind him. Anna. He pulled off onto the shoulder to take the call. From the moment she spoke he knew there was something wrong.
“Jake. Are you all right?”
“Me? Of course. Yes. I’m all right. What is it?”
“I got a horrible letter. Why didn’t you tell me this was happening?”
He closed his eyes. He could only imagine.
“A letter from whom?” he asked, as if he didn’t know.
“Some jackhole named Tom!” Her voice was shrill. He couldn’t tell if she was afraid or angry. Probably both. “He says you’re a crook and I’m supposed to ask you about somebody named Evan Parker who’s apparently the real author of
He felt the panic, pressing hard against his chest, liquifying his arms and legs. Here it was: the thing he’d spent all this time trying desperately to prevent, unfolding in the breakdown lane. He couldn’t believe it still surprised him that another wall into his private life had been breached. Or that he hadn’t prevented it from happening.
