Chapter 9 - The Empty House
On the seventh day of my stay at Arthur Greer’s house, a moving van pulled into the driveway of 412 Elmwood Lane.
It was not a local company from Newark; it was a long-distance carrier out of Columbus. Four men in gray uniforms began carrying furniture out through the front door: the mahogany dining table where Diane had hosted the historical society, the French provincial armchairs from the parlor, the gilded mirrors from the entryway.
I stood on the sidewalk across the street, wearing a pair of dark jeans, my combat boots, and an olive-drab field jacket stripped of its insignia.
Thomas Vance walked out onto the porch, carrying two cardboard boxes labeled Books - Study. He looked smaller than he had a week ago, his shoulders hunched, his steps shuffling and uncertain. When he saw me standing by the Abernathy fence, he set the boxes down on the porch rail and walked slowly down the lawn.
He stopped at the curb, six feet away, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his corduroy trousers.
"We’re moving to Florida," he said, his voice flat, devoid of affect. "Naples. Diane has a sister down there."
"I know Aunt Brenda," I said. "She’s as mean as Diane is."
A faint, bitter grimace crossed my father’s face. "Probably. But nobody in Naples watches Channel 6 News from Columbus. Nobody down there knows the name Vance."
"The internet exists in Florida, Dad."
"I know," he sighed, looking down at his shoes. "The church board met on Tuesday night, Emily. They asked Diane to step down from the choir and the advisory committee. The historical society revoked her charter membership yesterday morning. Mrs. Henderson wouldn't even sell her a loaf of sourdough when she went into the bakery on Thursday. The whole town... it’s like she’s a ghost that everyone’s trying to ignore."
"She made me a ghost for four years, Dad," I said. "She just has to live with the house she built."
He looked up at me, his eyes wet, red-rimmed, pathetic. "Will you... will you ever come down? To see us? Once the dust settles?"
I looked past him, at the front door of the house where I had spent the first eighteen years of my life.
In the second-floor bay window, the sheer white curtain twitched.
Diane Vance was standing there. She wasn't wearing her cashmere sweater; she was dressed in a dark traveling coat, her face partially obscured by the glass. She didn't wave. She didn't look away. She stared down at me with the cold, dead hatred of a defeated monarch looking at the rebel army occupying her courtyard.
"No, Dad," I said, meeting my mother’s eyes through the glass. "I won't be coming to Florida."
"Emily, please... you only get one mother—"
"That’s a lie, Dad," I interrupted, my voice sharp and final. "You get the mother who earns the title. Diane Vance resigned from the position on the night I left for basic training. What you have up there in that bedroom is a stranger who shares twenty-three of my chromosomes."
I reached into my pocket, pulled out the small key to the front door of 412 that I had carried on my dog-tag chain through forty-eight months of desert deployments, and dropped it into his open hand.
The brass was cold against his palm.
"Take care of yourself, Thomas," I said, using his first name for the first time in my life. "Try to drink less. The Florida sun is hard on a liver."
May you like
I turned my back on the house, on the moving van, on the woman behind the second-floor curtain, and walked away.
Behind me, I heard the faint, metallic rattle of the key hitting the bottom of my father’s pocket, followed by the slow, dragging sound of his slippers retreating up the driveway.
