Page 2 of The Party Line

“Oh, there’s a secret, all right. Aunt Gracie knew what it was, but she didn’t tell anyone.”

“Then how did anyone even know therewasone?” I asked.

“Something happened when she was a teenager that upset her so badly that she wouldn’t come out of her room for a week,” Mama answered. “When anyone asked about it, like I did years later, she would get this look on her face that was frightening. I only asked one time because her expression scared the bejesus right out of me.”

“The look that would terrify the horns off Lucifer?” I asked.

“That’s the one,” Mama said with a nod and a shiver. “Rumor has it that when she came out of her room, she had words with her parents, but whatever was said stayed between the walls of this house. That’s when the gossip started about the secret. Poteet was already known for being the birthplace of George Strait and the best strawberries in the state, but they added the secret to the list.”

“She never told anyone?” I asked. “Not even Jasper?”

Mama shook her head. “Not sure, but if she told him, he’s never said a word, either. That would have been more than eighty years ago, and no one knows to this day what it is. How can you spend any nightsin this haunted house? It’s not easy for me to be here in the daylight.” Mama crossed the room and put her hand on the doorknob.

“The sun is coming up and ghosts don’t like daylight, so you are safe,” I told her.

She shook her finger at me. “Don’t tease me about something this serious.”

I outgrew my mother in height when I was in the fifth grade. That old adage about dynamite coming in small packages was what came to mind that morning. She had been a young mother at eighteen and raised me by herself, with help from Aunt Gracie. Mama’s dark hair didn’t have a gray streak anywhere, and she had that peaches-and-cream complexion that movie stars would die for. That was the good DNA from Aunt Gracie’s side of the family. The Evanses were known for never having gray hair and always having lovely skin. But she was Mama’s first cousin—three times removed—and by the time the Matthews’ DNA tainted what came from Aunt Gracie’s family, I didn’t get any of their good looks.

People often said I didn’t look a thing like her, and they were right. I am a tall redhead with pale skin that burns and freckles but never tans, and I have a curvy body that could weather an F5 tornado without needing even so much as a breath mint in my pocket much less a rock or two.

“Evidently, the superstition gene wore plumb out when it got to me, because I don’t believe in spirits and ghosts.” I opened the container and ate several bites of the cold vegetable soup as I carried it to the table.

“That’s cold, and it’s not a breakfast food,” Mama scolded me.

“Tastes good to me, but if you insist.” I put it in the microwave and hit the two-minute button. “There. It’ll be hot pretty soon, and you need to get to work. Those old coffee-drinking guys will be banging on the door for you and Madge to let them inside. Thank you for the breakfast. I could eat your soup three times a day and not get tired of it.”

Mama opened the door and took a step out onto the back porch. I could feel her relief when she was officially out of the house. She wavedfrom the other side of the old screen door. “You are welcome. Now that you are living close by, you can reap the benefits of your mother working in a café. You want to come watch a movie with me tonight?”

“Thanks, but no thanks.” I took the soup from the microwave and set it on the table. “I’ll be chained to the computer all day, so I’m going to take some time to sit on the porch, breathe in the fresh night air, and watch the sun go down. Want to come down here and have a beer with me?”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” she repeated. “You know how I feel about this place. I’ll be here at ten thirty in the morning to pick you up for church.”

“Call me when you get here, and I’ll come right out,” I told her.

She waved again, and then I heard the crunching sound of tires on gravel as she drove away.

Since I had searched diligently for the ghosts when I was a little girl and never found even a single one, I didn’t believe the house was haunted. The secret folks still talked about and had become as important as strawberries and George Strait—now that was a whole different matter. If it concerned Aunt Gracie, I wanted to know all about it.

I opened the drawer where Aunt Gracie had always kept the cutlery, grabbed a spoon, and had a nice hot breakfast. When the bowl was empty, I got a piece of bread and sopped up what juice was left. I tossed the container in the trash, washed the spoon, made a cup of coffee in the new one-cup-at-a-time machine I had given Aunt Gracie for Christmas, and headed to the back porch.

Jasper, Aunt Gracie’s lifetime friend, was sitting in an old wooden rocker on his porch, only twenty yards from mine. He waved and motioned me over. I held up my coffee, and he held up his to show me he had a full mug. I crossed the yard and set my mug on the tree stump that had been between the two rocking chairs for as long as I could remember and took a seat.

“Beginning of a brand-new day. It’s time to sit a spell to let the peace settle around you and reflect on life before you dive into your work,” he said.

“Amen to that,” I told him. “I’ve got a full load waiting for me today.”

He took a long drink and then said, “You shouldn’t work on Saturday. You need some time for the body to rest. Even God needed some downtime.”

“I’m still playing catchup from the days I used to live in Austin,” I said. “But this is the last Saturday I’ll have to put in hours.”

“That’s good,” Jasper said with a curt nod. He had aged well and could have easily passed for eighty instead of ninety-six. I used to try to count the freckles on his face, but after I got to a hundred, I gave up. One thing for sure, he had more than I did. His hair was once a dark chestnut brown, but now it was as white as Aunt Gracie’s bedsheets. When I was a little girl he had a beard and mustache that he kept expertly trimmed, but these days he was clean shaven.

“Gracie has been on my mind a lot lately. I sure do miss her. I figured I’d go before she did,” he said.

“Y’all were friends for a long time, so it would be normal for you to miss her.” I took a drink of coffee and set the chair to rocking.

“I can’t remember a time when we wasn’t friends,” he said with a long sigh. “Davis and me and Gracie were inseparable as little kids.” He stopped talking and rocked awhile before he continued. “Every day after school, we’d meet up right here in this yard and play all kinds of games. Davis and his mama lived in this house back then, and me and my grandma lived on the back of the property. Granny and Davis’s mama, Rita, both helped the missus with cooking, cleaning, and taking care of Gracie. When we was in high school, Davis and his mama moved to Poteet, and my grandma and I moved into this house. Gracie and I saw Davis at school every day, but things wasn’t the same after that.”

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