Page 25 of Mending Fences
“You wanted it to destroy the mansion?”
Daniel steered away from answering that question. “Were you in the house?”
“No, I had already moved into town. Grandma Mae told me I would inherit the house but must have never informed her lawyer. Uncle George let me stay until the end of the semester and graduation. He was trying to sell the property, the house was vacant when the tornado hit. Grandma’s was the only house destroyed in that tornado as it hit so far north of town.”
“It did take out most of the back fence, as I recall, as well as the archway and main gate.”
“Yes, you had no problem fixing that.”With a hideous chain link fence.Mandy hoped the bitterness she felt was not evident. How could he have neglected fixing the mansion? Boarding up windows did not constitute a fix in her book. Didn’t he know how rare a late-nineteenth-century home was in this part of the country?
Daniel opened his mouth to reply, but the waiter chose that moment to deliver their entrees.
He picked up his fork. “You loved that house, didn’t you?”
“Grandma Mae’s? Yes, but I love the memories more—working in her garden, watching stars from the gable room.”
“Don’t forget the Morse code window.” Daniel bit into his steak. The book in his grandfather’s library had been most helpful. At first they had used the lights in their bedrooms to communicate, but switching the light on and off fast blew Grandma Mae’s breaker, so Daniel acquired a pair of heavy-duty flashlights.
Daniel tapped his knife on the table. “Dash-dash-dot, dash-dot.”G-N—their code for “good night.”
“Dash-dot, dash-dot-dash-dash,” Mandy tapped back.
“N-Y. Not yet? You never did want to stop.”
Mandy shook her head. “I couldn’t stop if I didn’t think you were happy.”
“What do you mean?”
Too late Mandy realized what she would have to reveal. “You needed to go to sleep happy so you wouldn’t cry, or your grandfather wouldn’t let me play with you.”
“How did you know that?”
“The first time Grandma Mae took me over to the mansion, I met your grandfather. He said I could only play with you if it kept you from crying at night. Scared me to death.”
Daniel set down his utensils. “You never said anything about that.”
“Grandma Mae told me it should be a secret because big boys didn’t like to cry and asked me to do my best to make you smile.”
“Did she tell you why I cried?”
Mandy shook her head. “She said it was your secret and when you wanted to tell me, you would, and I was never to ask. I think Grandma Mae repeated that almost every day before I climbed the fence.”
Daniel shook his head. “You must have asked me every other question in the universe that summer, but you never asked that one. Do you know the answer yet?”
“That summer your mother died. Wikipedia solved that one for me a while ago.”
“You looked me up?”
“Hasn’t every woman over the age of ten?” Mandy wanted to return to their teasing.
“Why?”
She hid behind her napkin for a moment, wiping an imaginary crumb. “Because I wanted to figure out if Mr. Most Eligible was the boy I caught frogs with.”
“One and the same.”
“Are you sure?”
