Page 3 of The Party Line

“How were they different?” I asked.

He just shrugged and changed the subject. “A tornado demolished our old house in 1950 while I was still in the army. Nobody had lived in it for years, but it was my childhood home, and I missed it when I got back from the army. I moved in here with Granny and never did get around to finding my own place. Mr. Evans hired me to help him with his oil well business. He sold off all that just before he died. My granny still cleaned the house until Gracie made her retire. She died a year after that. Gracie kept me on the payroll, and I helped her out with yard work and whatever else she needed done until we were both sixty-five.”

That didn’t sound like it could be connected to the secret, but I filed it all away to think about later.

“Why did they move? Did Davis’s mama get a better job?” I wondered if leaving Ditto had something to do with the secret.

“Granny didn’t know, but it wasn’t long after that when the missus left Mr. Evans and went to live with her friend up in Oklahoma. When I asked Granny about it, she just told me to mind my own business,” Jasper said.

“Did you?”

“Yes, ma’am. I still don’t poke around in other people’s business,” Jasper said with a smile and pointed up to the sky. “Look at that beautiful sunrise with all the pretty colors. It comes up in the east just like it does every morning. That’s one thing we can depend on that never changes. It’ll never disappoint us, and it’ll come up in the mornin’ and go down in the evenin’ sure as shootin’. You goin’ to church with your mama tomorrow?”

“I guess I am,” I said with a sigh.

Aunt Gracie had taken me to church every Sunday morning until I graduated from high school and went to Austin. Mama worked the morning shift in those days, but she always went to the evening church service. That meant I had to sit on a hard oak pew twice on most Sundays. After I left, Mama had Sundays and Mondays off, so she and Aunt Gracie went to the morning services and seldom attended in theevening. And me? Well, Sunday became the day for doing my laundry and catching up on sleep.

“You do know that God don’t live in a church house building?” Jasper’s statement came out more like a question. “If we look at nature, we can see him.”

“Butyougo to church,” I reminded him.

“Yes, ma’am, I do,” Jasper said in a serious tone. “I like the singin’ and the fellowship. I’d be glad for you to go with me if you want. You might even drive me into Poteet for a hamburger afterwards.”

“What time?” I asked.

“It starts at eleven, so we need to leave about a quarter till. I go to the little church only a couple of miles down the road.” He motioned to his left with a wave of his hand.

“Then I’ll pick you up at that time,” I told him.

“That’ll be good. I don’t drive anymore. I had one fender bender too many, and Gracie wouldn’t let me get my license when it came up for renewal. She drove both of us until the day she went on to heaven to meet up with Davis.”

“When did Davis die?” I asked.

“We both enlisted right out of high school. Four years later I came home, but he didn’t.” His voice quivered, so I didn’t ask any more questions.

He stood up, picked up his cane, and headed across the porch. “Have a good day, Lila.”

I pushed up out of the chair and took a step toward the house. “You, too, Jasper.”

“I’m glad you decided to live in Gracie’s house. Seems fittin’,” he said before he disappeared inside.

I kicked off my flip-flops so I could feel the soft green grass beneath my feet—something I hadn’t done since I was a child—sucked in the cool morning breeze, and enjoyed the smell of spring that filled the air as I crossed the yard from the little house to the big one. I exhaled and then took another deep breath, and that time I got a whiff of ripestrawberries. “Bless the Broken Road,” an old song by Rascal Flatts, popped into my mind. I sang the lyrics off-key and out of tune as I made my way to the back door, leaving the cool grass behind for the wooden porch. The lead singer said that he blessed the broken road that led him home. Of course, it was a love song, and he was glad that all the roads he had traveled had brought him home to his soulmate. I wasn’t sure the universe had a person like that in store for me, but I was glad for the peace that washed over me that Saturday morning.

I left my flip-flops on the back porch and went upstairs to my new office, and when I reached the foyer, I could have sworn that I heard Aunt Gracie say, “Turn off the kitchen light. Electricity ain’t free, my child.”

With a smile, I turned around and went back to obey her. At least it was daylight and I didn’t have to grope around for the wooden spool on the end of the cord. I was crossing the foyer when I noticed the arrangement above the credenza. I stopped and studied the collage Aunt Gracie had made of my school pictures, from kindergarten all the way through my senior year. It had hung there in the foyer for more than a decade, but that morning I really looked at the photographs.

“Hmmm ...” I studied each of the twelve pictures lined up around the one in the center, which had been taken my senior year. “I wonder if there’s a picture of my father hidden away somewhere. I must look like him because I certainly do not look like Mama or Aunt Gracie.” I giggled out loud at the crazy thought that went through my mind. “And I dang sure don’t look like George Strait.”

I have to admit that in the past I did wonder if my birth father—maybe George Strait—was the third thing, but then I remembered that party lines were done away with years and years before my mama was even born. I still had hopes that a file with CLASSIFIEDwritten in red letters was hiding somewhere in the house, and maybe when I found the thing, there would also be something about my father in it. Mama said that he left town before I was even born. She had looked so sad that I was afraid she would cry if I asked about a picture, so I didn’t.

Maybe the file is hidden behind something,I thought as I continued to stare at the picture. Something that was out in plain sight all the time—like the photograph right there before me. I removed the frame from the wall and turned it over. Nothing there, and the only thing behind where it had been hanging was a perfect rectangle of Wedgwood blue wallpaper sprigged with tiny white flowers, which had not faded like the rest of the foyer walls. There wasn’t a piece of paper, a file, or even a safe hiding behind the picture with a secret combination, like maybe the numbers in Aunt Gracie’s birthday. Not even a tiny cabinet that I could open and find a journal inside.

“It’s got to be here somewhere,” I muttered as I hung the picture back where it belonged and went on up to my office.

Aunt Gracie’s gravelly voice popped into my head.Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead.

“Does that mean that one person still knows?” I asked out loud.

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