The Shadow Constant Read online

  With no crowbar handy, she was left punching holes the size of the hammer head into the wall. Since it didn’t calm her, the physical activity wound her up, her brain wandering to the last conversation she’d had with her most recent boss at the mechanical design company. The problem was that her brain might wander to someplace, but it didn’t wander away. When she hit a potent memory, it was like having a video playing on the wall of the room. She re-heard conversations word for word. To this day, she could conjure the look on her mother’s face as they’d stood in the kitchen, Kayla holding an ice-filled towel against her bloody lip as her mother looked at her sadly.

  Upon finding the high school quarterback harassing a boy at his locker, Kayla had pointed out that using the term “fag” often indicated homophobia. Many men acted out because of a deep-seated fear that they themselves were gay, which usually started with unwanted attraction to other men.

  When Kayla cited the current psychology, he’d turned on her and punched her in the mouth. He’d split her lip, knocking her backward into a nearby locker and earning her a goose egg on the back of her head, too. The subsequent stumble and fall had garnered a handful of bruises. She was beaten up from every angle. The kid he’d been harassing had disappeared immediately. And Kayla had wound up first in the office of a principal who had never quite figured out what to do with a girl who was far too bright for special ed, and far too socially inept to ever fit in. Then she’d found herself in her kitchen with her mother looking at her, not as enraged at the boy who had hit her as she was frustrated with her own inability to help her daughter to learn when to speak up and when to shut up.

  Though her lip was unsplit now and she had no outer bruises, she felt just as beat up. Her jeans were old and getting rapidly older. Her throat was dry from the dust, though her face sweated beneath her gear. Unlike Ivy, Kayla had not tied her hair back and she could practically feel it tangling as she hefted the hammer again and tried to find release in burying it into the wall. Again, she fell short of satisfaction.

  She considered going off to find a crowbar so she could make some real headway taking down the wall. But the only one she knew where to find was in the other room with Reenie and Evan and Ivy. And the last thing Kayla wanted to do was remind them that she’d wandered off on her own and no one was watching her. So she stuck to the sledgehammer, punching holes in the wall and seeing again that last conversation with Mr. Williams.

  “Kayla, you need to incorporate fewer measures into the machinery.”

  She’d put emergency stops at every workstation along the long conveyor belt system she’d designed. “Why?”

  “Only the supervisor needs the override.”

  “No, safety dictates—”

  “One stop meets all the OSHA requirements.” He’d begun frowning at that time.

  “But any employee should be able to override the line at any time if necessary. They do it at Ford.” At many companies really. He should have known that. Maybe he did.

  He’d tipped his head like she was a small child. “They’re building cars. We’re designing a cookie factory.”

  His analogy sucked and was simply wrong on many levels. But she’d learned not to tell people that. “Can you explain why we shouldn’t put in the extra safety stops?”

  Kayla had learned through the years that if she knew why something was important, it was suddenly easy to implement. And if she had no idea why something was necessary, she was just as unable to make it happen.

  But Williams had said only, “I don’t have the time to explain it to you.”

  More confused than she had been when the conversation started, she hadn’t monitored her mouth. What had come out was, “Is that because you won’t take the time? Are you insulting my IQ? Or maybe it’s your intelligence that’s at issue . . . are you not smart enough to explain it?”

  Kayla buried the sledgehammer into the wall again. The problem was that she didn’t know how to get past it. She lived a logical life, she worked logically, spoke logically, hell, she was even beating up this wall logically, placing holes every eighteen inches on center. Thus, she wanted a logical fix to her problems.

  With Williams, she didn’t know what to do differently to not wind up in the same trouble the next time. The obvious answer was: don’t run at the mouth. But she also knew if she didn’t get an explanation she would have gotten fired for not taking out the safety measures she believed were necessary and Williams didn’t want. She simply wasn’t capable of putting out a harmful product.

  Williams’ next words had been to the point. “You’re fired, Reeves.”

  She knew her rights. She could have fought it through HR, but then she’d have to tell the world what she’d said to him. That she’d questioned his intelligence. She’d have to highlight that she had no understanding of what to do or say in many situations. And she knew Williams would have fought back . . . mean. As it was, he’d given her two months severance—as though he knew he was in the wrong, but he wanted her gone.

  Swinging the hammer into the wall and making yet another unsatisfyingly small hole, she sighed. She’d planned to wait a week, goof off, and then tell Evan. She’d made it three days before she was stir crazy without a job. That day, she’d gotten up in time to go to work—just like every day—she’d showered, dried her hair, put on sunscreen and added lipstick because her mother had told her to wear it every day but had only convinced her when she shared the skin cancer prevention benefits of wearing it. Then Kayla had been halfway through her cereal, facing another hair-pullingly boring day, when she’d caved and called Evan.

  Her brother had said the worst possible thing he could say: maybe this was an opportunity.

  Kayla was not neurotypical, but you didn’t have to be to know the old “opportunity” line was complete crap. Then Evan told her that he and Reenie were making plans, but he wouldn’t say what. He just asked her to sit tight and not job hunt for a few days.

  Why he said that, Kayla had not understood. Something big was up, because Evan wasn’t paying attention. He definitely knew better than to tell someone with Aspergers to just “sit tight” and not do anything for the next several days. Kayla figured he had asked Reenie to marry him or that Reenie was already pregnant. Both those thoughts wigged her out more than she cared to admit.

  So she’d pulled up her “things to do when I’m bored” list that she and Evan had made when she’d first moved here for the job. She assigned herself an outing each morning and another each afternoon, stopping in at her apartment for meals from her own pantry. The first day, she ran part of the Emerald Necklace, a long green trail through the city. But it freaked her out and she marked it as “done.” She hit the zoo that afternoon, marked it as “done-do again” and went back the next day, too. The Westside Market was too many people, too much noise, and too everything and she didn’t stay long, but she’d thought that might be the case, so she had a backup plan in place. Next, she drove to the Submarine Memorial and spent the rest of the day quietly touring on her own.

  Five days later Evan called back.

  He wasn’t marrying Reenie—though it was still inevitable that he would.

  Reenie wasn’t pregnant. What Reenie was, was a Hazelton. Or her grandmother had been. Her grandfather had brought the Carroll name and some money into the family, but recently the family had fallen onto hard times again. “Hard times” in the twenty-first century South meant that Reenie’s cousin, Roy Weems had fathered three kids by three different mothers, two of the babies born only a month apart. And now he was in jail on some assault charge. His older brother, Billy, died in a motorcycle accident five years earlier with no children. According to the deed, Roy’s current jail time meant he was no longer fit as proprietor of the rotting plantation, not that he’d ever been fit. But this left Reenie as the most direct descendant and thus the new owner of Hazelton House.

  Kayla wasn’t sure why Reenie hadn’t been first in line. Kayla had no great love of her future in-law, but she was ju
st as direct of a descendant of Charlene Hazelton Carroll as the guys had been. Reenie didn’t have a penis or the Hazelton name. But Roy and Billy didn’t have the name either, and now they both had jail records. No matter how Kayla felt about Reenie, the woman had managed to live a straight, solid life.

  The sledgehammer swung again with a heft of her now-aching shoulders, and she produced the last of the second row of holes. The wall still stood and, in fact, could be completely repaired with some mesh and spackle. All that time and swinging and she’d done it no great damage. She hated taking down drywall without a crowbar. Honestly, looking at the wall, she was pretty sure she’d proven it couldn’t be done, unless she was going to go with brute strength and aim for the studs. But that’s not how they were doing this one, not in a historic home built in the 1700s.

  Each space between studs now had a high hole and a low one. Each hole was just the width of the hammer head, except for one low spot about halfway down the wall, where she had the bright idea to bury the head, then use it to pull back on the drywall. It had worked, leaving a nearly two-foot gap in the wall, but it had been way too much work.

  Kayla gave up and went looking for the crowbar.

  2

  Back Parlor, Hazelton House

  Evan looked up as Reenie came back into the room. “Did you get it catalogued?”

  “Yup!” Reenie smiled, and he knew the letters were put away and written into her findings notebook, with date, location, and any identifying info. Reenie had probably saved a full page for these. They weren’t like the armoire in the second upstairs bedroom—she’d dubbed that empty and slated it for cleaning and polishing. No, these needed to be read through, and he was pretty sure how Reenie would be spending the evening and probably late into the night. He’d fall asleep not getting any while she read about what other people did a hundred years ago, rather than doing anything herself.

  “Do I get to read them?” Ivy glanced sideways at Reenie. Ivy was the art history major; she was the one who would know the most about the letters. But Reenie held the strings, and on Ivy she held them tight.

  Reenie’s smile dimmed a bit. “I should have them read by tomorrow.”

  Evan stayed out of the exchange. The two of them interacted merely as professionals, even though they lived on the same plantation. Ivy, obviously, was the expert. Reenie was the owner. He and Kayla were owners, too. It had been their money that had dug Reenie out of the back taxes on the place three months ago. It was their money they had all been living off, their money that paid Ivy’s salary, meager though it was.

  Kayla wandered back in—she didn’t look at anyone, not in the face, but that wasn’t unusual. Bending, she picked up the hand-sized crowbar at his feet, then walked back out with it. He’d been intending to pick it up again, and Reenie’s eyebrows-up, say-something! expression conveyed that she understood that.

  He frowned and walked across the room for the second handheld prybar.

  Reenie was overexpressive, and he wondered if that was part of the draw—that was often an exact counterpoint to Kayla’s sometimes-blank countenance. But he didn’t say anything.

  Ivy, too, looked at him, a small shrug asking if she should follow Kayla. He gave a subtle shake of his head, though he could have simply said so out loud. Even if Kayla could hear him, she would ignore it. She was never sure if people were talking about her; it had bothered her when she was younger, but together they’d helped get her through high school by having her remind herself that it likely wasn’t about her, and what did she care anyway? So now, he could talk about her pretty much any time he wanted and unless he specifically said her name within earshot, she wouldn’t even pay attention. In fact, sometimes even within earshot she still didn’t hear him, she’d be so buried in her own thoughts.

  So he turned to Ivy, “I think I was unclear when we hired you.”

  He had pulled Ivy aside after the three of them had interviewed the only applicant to answer the ad they’d posted. He’d told her that there was another part to the job: keeping an eye on Kayla.

  Ivy had easily taken this on herself, and with Reenie’s mother-hen tendencies, Kayla didn’t get a moment to herself.

  Evan sighed. “She’s an adult. She just gets so focused sometimes that she forgets to eat or she won’t get any exercise. That’s all I wanted from you, Ivy, just an occasional check in on some basics. Kayla doesn’t need a babysitter; she doesn’t have to be followed like a child.”

  Reenie snorted. She was beautiful, round-faced and big-eyed, too buxom and curvy to quite fill the genteel Southern role she’d been born to play. And one of the things that never failed to grab him where it counted was that her façade would slip sometimes, and she’d snort or give a full, real belly laugh, say something completely off-color, be anything but poised. But now the snort led to an opinion.

  “I’d say she does need a babysitter. She can’t hold a job, she’s been fired from every one she’s ever had.”

  He shook his head, this was an old argument, and probably the reason he hadn’t married Reenie yet. He would, he knew it—hell, they owned property together—but he needed peace between the women in his life, and they didn’t have it yet. “She’s higher paid than either of us. She has plenty of savings. And you’ve been fired before, too. So have I.”

  Reenie stood up. “I was fired from waiting tables, not from a real job. And it was in college. She gets fired again and again and you support her.”

  She could have slapped him and done less damage. Evan staggered back a step as though from an actual blow. The pile of discarded lathe and plaster that he stepped into created an uneven ground that matched the emotional precipice she’d shoved him onto. He took a moment to get his bearings, then went ahead and blurted what had come immediately to mind.

  “You have no right, Reenie. Her money made this place possible, not yours. Your net worth is negative. She’s only at one-quarter share because she wanted each of us to have a bigger piece than she did, not because she was out of money. Yes, she’s handicapped in that she can’t read facial expressions and doesn’t always fit in socially, but you’re handicapped by your complete inability to manage your money or your time. You’re always late to everything. And you’re so focused on what looks right that you can’t think about what’s actually right. And I’m handicapped because I’m stuck between you two.”

  He dropped the crowbar, not caring that it would mar the antique flooring that was one of the only ones of its kind still in existence, and he stormed out of the room.

      

  Three days later, Reenie still wasn’t saying much to him. She used monosyllables here and there. She pointed. She frowned. And she always found she was needed in some room away from where he was working.

  He took his aggression out on the walls.

  There were ten walls in the house that weren’t original to the design. Not that there were any floorplans anywhere. In 1714, architects didn’t take blueprints to the courthouse and register the layout. In 1714, the town of Ebenezer had been the county seat of Effingham. Now Evan wanted to use the term ‘Effingham’ as an American-sounding swear word.

  Using the back of his hand he rapped on a wall. Suddenly, Reenie appeared.

  “This is added.” He gripped the sledgehammer that seemed to be his near-constant companion.

  “Don’t you dare damage that! There’s a bathroom on the other side.”

  He smiled. “Ivy would tell us to take it out.”

  Kayla’s face quirked Mona-Lisa like. “When Ivy owns a plantation house, she can stay true to the original century and pee outside. I want the toilet.”

  Evan couldn’t help but smile back at her. Reenie was a wonderful woman, but she couldn’t see past her own nose where his sister was concerned. Just because Kay didn’t fit her mold, Reenie couldn’t deal. He wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, but not like this.

  The thing was, Kayla didn’t fit much of anybody’s mold.

  Crow
bar in hand, she headed to the opposite side of the room, feet crunching on the spread plastic. Using a grease pen from the corner of her jeans she walked the wall and made a series of small marks. “Here. Take this one out.”

  The room had been divided into smaller pieces a century or so earlier. According to Reenie, records showed that the main building had served as a boarding house after the Civil War. These had likely been bedrooms for the boarders where a small ballroom had once been.

  Bracing his feet wide at just the right distance from the new wall, Evan pulled back on the sledgehammer. He was going for the studs. He’d swung this thing enough times over the last weeks that he knew exactly where to plant his boots. He knew to take a quick glance over his shoulder each time before he swung. And he knew that he needed to aim with his left hand occasionally leading or he was going build some very lopsided musculature.

  With a backward glance, he let fly.

  There was a thunk and a crack as he hit the stud. Just by sight, Kayla had found and marked all the hidden beams in the wall. With a rhythmic step and swing he took them out one by one, easing his frustrations with Reenie.

  Kayla came along behind him, prying away sections of plaster and the wooden strips that had formed the base for it. After the surface was cleared, they pried away the planks that had been nailed to the floor and ceiling to anchor the studs. Made a pile of dead pieces on a nearby tarp to be dragged out to the industrial-sized trash bin that was getting emptied weekly.

  Just as they threw the last piece onto the plastic, Reenie sauntered back in with a huge smile on her face. Apparently, she wasn’t too mad at him anymore. The notebook where she kept the documentation of everything they’d found was clutched in a firm hug. “That wall was a treasure trove.”

  He didn’t ask, and neither did Kayla.