Chapter Three

“You hear me, Miss? Yer on private property,” the deep voice twanged. He repeated himself as I opened my eyes enough to glimpse the shotgun barrel pegged against my head.

“Uncle Edgar, I think she’s pregnant,” croaked a much younger voice with the same accent.

“How’d you guess that, Caleb?” the older voice ribbed the younger one. “She looks like she ate a beach ball whole and snacked on a watermelon.”

"Or five." The younger one laughed.

Jeez, thanks, guys. Way to make a girl feel special. “Yes,” I answered.

“Yes, what?” The older voice taunted as the man it belonged to turned his head to look at me. He was probably only a handful of years older than me, maybe his early forties, and had graying ash blond hair, blue eyes and a bulbous nose. His leathery and freckled skin showed the relentlessness of a sun that had been unkind to him. Dirt covered his unbelted jeans that hung loosely around his hips.

“Yes, I’m pregnant. And yes, I know this is private property.” I wanted to move from the painful position in which I rested, but was hesitant because of the gun.

“Why you up here, Miss? Y’ain’t got no business here.” His tone was no-nonsense as he withdrew the gun from my forehead. The barrel still pointed at me but I had some breathing room.

“Look, Ed, er Sir, I’m not sure where the property lines begin and end, but I think I’m on what was my husband’s uncle’s property. He passed away a few years ago and left it to my sister-in-law. I don’t mean to be any trouble,” I said, batting my eyes. Six months ago, the flirtation probably would have worked like a charm. Right now, I had serious doubts.

Edgar shifted his stance and relaxed his left arm, lowering it to his hip, but still not putting away the rifle. “What’s the uncle’s name?”

“His name was Burt. Burt Harris. I only met him twice but he was a real character, quite cantankerous,” I answered.

“So that’s what you foreigners call bein’ an asshole?” Caleb asked, while I stifled a laugh and Edgar elbowed him in the ribs. Caleb harrumphed, brought his hand to his ribs, and winced as he massaged his side.

“Yeah, he was a grumpy, old man,” I agreed. And he had been. Sue had remarked a number of times that he’d never gotten married because there wasn’t a woman stupid enough to put up with his chauvinism. But through the years, his chauvinism must have subsided in part; Sheila had ended up the owner of the cottage.

Edgar stretched out his hand, probably so rough from years of hard labor, to help me into a sitting position. “Name’s Edgar. Edgar Ward. And this here’s my nephew, Caleb Puckett. We live about a mile from here. We’re your closest neighbors since the Leary’s left two years ago. Area’s pretty empty since the coal mines shut down.”

“Nice to meet you, Edgar and Caleb,” I lied. “I’m Lily Goodwyn. Luc’s my husband.” Edgar's scrutinizing stare unnerved me to the point that I felt an immediate distrust towards him.

Twigs crunched and a boisterous ad-lib of “In the creek and through the woods to Uncle Burt’s house we go” was being sung off key by Luc and the girls in the distance. I let out a small sigh of relief and my shoulders relaxed.. As the three of them came into view, Edgar took a step back and slung the rifle over his shoulder. He smiled.

“Edgar?” Luc asked as he pulled Maggy off his shoulders and lowered her to the ground. Edgar gave a nod. “It’s got’ve been twenty years since I last saw you. How’ve you been, brother?” He shook Edgar’s hand and noticed Caleb. “You’ve got to be Mindy’s boy.”

As Luc and Edgar reminisced about old times of playing army in the woods together, I walked over to the girls, eager to put distance between Edgar and me. I also wanted to hear about their adventure at the creek. Rosabel had Maggy gathering sticks to build a “tree house,” while she attempted to construct the house on the ground.

“Oh, Rosy, a tree house is up in the trees,” I explained to her.

“No, Mommy, our house is being made out of trees, so that makes it a tree house,” she countered. “Daddy said he’s gonna make us a tree house, but we want to make one first so he’ll know how we want it.”

I observed them as they built their tree house out of twigs no thicker than a pencil. Maggy searched for the sticks, bringing them one at a time to Rosabel, and Rosabel stabbed them straight up into the ground until a makeshift fort in the shape of a circle with just enough room for Maggy and her to sit down in was formed.

I glanced over as I heard Edgar ask how Sheila was doing.

“She passed away in June, Edgar. A drug overdose,” Luc replied to a shocked Edgar.

“Ain’t no way that prude died of a overdose,” Edgar said as he eyed me in the background.

“I know, but her blood toxicology report came back positive for oxycontin. There wasn't a note and I'm beginning to think she had us all fooled, including her daughter.”

I bit my tongue. Even though the case was closed as far as the police and coroner were concerned, I still had my doubts and Jessa remained adamant that her mom would not abuse drugs.

A moment of silence followed and the two told Caleb about the time that Mindy, Sheila, and they had snuck out of the house to attend a concert. Uncle Burt had been the one to discover them missing and he’d been waiting on the porch, shotgun in hand, when they returned. Burt had been furious, and that was the last summer Sheila and Luc had come to stay with him without their mother in tow. Each time I looked over, I was met with Edgar’s stare.

After a few minutes, their conversation moved to catching up on each other’s life and Caleb sauntered over to us. A smile spread across his face and lit his eyes as he watched the girls playing in their tree house.

“That’s a really nice tree house you got there. I should show you my tree house sometime. I’ll bet you could gimme some pointers to make it better,” he said to them. The girls ate it up that he would seek out their advice and listen to them as they told him the importance of having a princess room in a tree house.

Caleb was a good-looking kid. He was probably sixteen or seventeen and had dark hair and golden hazel eyes that exuded kindness. He looked strong and had a certain charm about him that I was sure resonated quite well with the girls.

He tapped me on the shoulder and I jumped. I gave a crooked smile to him once I realized that it wasn’t Edgar who’d touched me. “Miss Lily, I wanted to 'pologize about earlier. We didn’t mean to scare you. It’s just that Uncle Edgar’s been on edge lately. Says we gotta protect our home. Lotsa intruders these days,” he said earnestly.

“Yeah, because a sleeping pregnant woman is such a danger to this neck of the woods.” I wished I could take it back after I’d said it, but it was how I felt.

He took a step backward and raised his hands to the height of his shoulders. “Look, I just wanted to ‘pologize. I done that. I don’t mean to pick a fight with you. I just wanted us to be on a clean slate. Are we okay?”

I didn’t have a problem with him, but I wasn’t going to forgive the adult in the situation--the one who should be apologizing--so readily. After a few seconds of awkward silence, Caleb called out to his uncle that he was going to go home, and a few minutes after that, Luc and Edgar wrapped up their conversation.

I hobbled the entire way back to the cottage as Luc rambled on about life here during the summers of his childhood and how he’d had a huge crush on Mindy only to be rebuked by her at every turn. The last time he’d seen her was the night of the concert. She’d become pregnant and run away from home shortly after that. She was only fifteen at the time.

The girls tripped over each other with exhaustion as we trekked through the woods. Luc scooped Rosy into his arms and I carried Maggy piggyback style for the last few hundred feet of the walk; they were asleep within seconds of being off their feet.

Back in the safety of the cottage with the girls tucked into bed, Luc said, “Hey, I want to show you something. You remember Mom and Uncle Burt talking about the secret room here in the cottage?” The look of befuddlement on my face registered with him because he added, “You know, the one that was part of the Underground Railroad?”

I remembered a little about it, and nodded as I attempted to kick the shoes from my swollen feet. My ankles--now cankles--and feet felt like hamburger. I answered, “I think I remember Sheila talking about that. Downstairs, right?” I grunted as I bent to pry off the shoes.

“Don’t take them off yet, Lily. I want to show you the room. Not sure what we’ll find down there, so it’s best to leave them on. Let’s go.” He scooped up a flashlight and opened the door to the basement, shining the light in search of a switch. He found it, but no light came on, so he grabbed a bulb from the cabinet and stepped into the darkness, following the path carved by the flashlight.

I waddled closely behind him and steadied myself against the wall since there was no handrail on the opposite side. With each step, the rickety stairs creaked more loudly until we reached the bottom. My stomach lurched as I inhaled the dank air.

“You okay? It smells pretty nasty down here.”  He found the light and began to twist the bulb into place. He walked over to the switch and flicked it on to reveal a room covered in mildew.

“I’m fine,” I said. I covered my mouth to stifle the gagging. “Can we go back upstairs now?” I wasn’t going to be fine for much longer. I could feel the four cookies’ attempt to ascend my digestive tract. Mind over matter.

“I want to show you the room first. It’s a part of history,” Luc boasted, clearly in no mood to impart empathy on my pregnant body.

“I didn’t realize that history was going to reek; this is torture.”

“We’ll hurry, Lily. You just never know when this kind of room might come in handy and I want you to know how to use it,” Luc said as he patted the wall in search of the entrance to the room. When he found it, he pressed a stone, which popped open the door’s crevice. He promptly closed it, saying, “Come here, I want you to do this.”

I walked over to the wall and glided my hands over the smooth stones. After several tries, I found the correct stone, and a door with the dimensions about three feet tall revealed itself. I struggled to slide it open, but succeeded on the third attempt.

“Let me go first,” Luc said. Careful not to hit his head on the doorframe, he crouched through the door and ducked into the secret room with me following closely behind him. He slid the door closed behind me.

The room had a very tomblike quality about it, and I was scared for the second time within a couple of hours. The walls were cobblestone and the only furnishings were a toilet, sink, cabinet, a candleholder right by the door and a rope ladder that hung on the opposite wall. I assumed it led to another exit.

Luc walked over to the ladder, handed me the flashlight, and said, “Watch me,” as he ascended the ladder. Two steps into the climb, he pounded the wall with his hands until he felt the block give. He then pushed the block forward by jostling it on the sides. After several tries, the block toppled away from the cottage’s foundation and Luc climbed out of the hole and began to reseal the entryway against my very vocal objections.

“What are you doing, Luc?” I screamed. “I can’t climb that wall.”

“Then you’ll be stuck there until you do.” He continued to slide the block back into place, and the room grew more foreboding with each push.

“You aren’t carrying a bowling ball in front of you, Luc!” I screamed. “What the hell are you thinking? If I fall our baby could die! And how am I going to climb through that—if I even fit?”

“Lily, you need to know how to do this; I’ll give you three minutes to come out. You’re not some delicate flower that can’t withstand a little challenge. You’re a survivor. The world could come to an end and it would be you, Cher, and the cockroaches fighting over the earth. Now get out of this room like your life depends on it.” The room was pitch as Luc slid the block back into place.

I folded my arms, stomped my foot, and decided that three minutes was too long for me to be stuck in this godforsaken room. I plunked the flashlight into the candleholder and climbed to the third rung of the ladder. Gripping the rope as tightly as I could with my left hand, I reached for the block, but was about two inches too short.

I lifted my foot to the next rung but missed. My hands tightened around the rope as my feet flailed to find footing and my belly grazed the wall. “Damn it, Luc, I’m not one of your soldiers trying to find her way out of the battle zone,” I shouted as I found the rung, and climbed to the next step, where I easily reached the stone. I wiggled it back and forth and was able to move it forward little by little. Once the block toppled out onto the ground, I peered out of the opening and called for Luc. Of course, he was nowhere to be found.

I couldn’t shimmy my way through the opening, so I descended the ladder. As I stepped onto the bottom rung, two hands grabbed my underarms and Luc’s voice filled the room. “Lily, I’m so sorry. I realized how idiotic my idea was about two seconds after I sealed the door. If I’d opened it, I would have risked hurting you, so I came down here as soon as I looked in on the girls. Please forgive me.”

“It was pretty stupid, but at least I was able to open the door. If there’s ever some sort of apocalypse, I’m good to go as long as this house is still standing,” I said. “You’ll slide the block into place, right? I figure that’s the least you can do for me with your boneheaded suggestion."

“Yeah, I’ll take care of it,” he told me as we walked through the basement. “Oh, I forgot to mention that I invited Edgar and Caleb over for dinner tomorrow afternoon. I hope that’s okay since we’ve got enough food here to feed an army.”

“I wish you wouldn’t have invited him, Luc. He makes me really uncomfortable.”

“Eddy is harmless. He’s a little bit backwards, but he’s a good man.” He opened the door to the basement.

“I didn’t tell you this earlier, but Edgar pulled a gun on me. I was napping and I woke up to a gun being jabbed into my forehead. I don’t think he would have thought twice about pulling the trigger.”

“Lily, Edgar’s a great shot. If he wanted you dead, you would be, end of story. I’m telling you, you have nothing to worry about when it comes to him. He won’t harm you.”

“You haven’t seen the guy in twenty years. How do you know he’s okay?” I asked. “Point-blank range, Luc. There was no need for it.”

“You’re overreacting; he’s not a bad man and he’ll watch over things for us.”

“If you say so, but the man gives me the creeps. I don’t want to be around him. I’ll make dinner tomorrow, but if I come down with a sudden case of amoebic dysentery, well.”

“Lily, it’ll be fine. You’ll see that he’s okay. He’s just leery of outsiders. It’s not anything more than that.”

I wasn’t going to win this argument so it was pointless to stand in the kitchen trying to convince him I was right about Edgar. The good thing was that I’d have Carrie to act as a buffer. I walked into the living room and sat down on the sofa, pulling my out my laptop to check my email.

“Let’s take a shower, Lily,” Luc said as he extended a hand to help me up from the couch.

And so we did.