The House on Harbor Hill Read online

  Delilah startled when she realized who the woman was: Tracey Walters.

  “I may develop properties for a living, but I wouldn’t do a thing to change Harbor Hill,” Teddy continued. “Well, maybe a few renovations here and there, but that’s about it! I certainly wouldn’t knock it down or try to make it into something it’s not. I would—”

  “Would you excuse me?” Delilah said. “I see someone I need to speak with.”

  He blinked in surprise. “Oh, yeah. Sure, I’ll follow up with you some other time.”

  She nodded before rushing after Tracey, who was joining one of the checkout lines. As Tracey began to load groceries onto the conveyor belt, Delilah tapped her on the shoulder. Tracey turned and looked at her quizzically.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  “Hello, Ms. Walters. It’s nice to see you again.”

  Tracey’s look of confusion stayed in place. She tilted her head. “I’m sorry. Do we know each other?”

  “Mommy, can I please get some Lucky Charms?” her son asked.

  “Excuse me,” Tracey muttered to Delilah before turning to face her son. “I said no. When I say no, I mean no. So stop asking, okay?” She then turned back to Delilah and gave an apologetic smile. “You were saying, ma’am?”

  “I was saying it was nice seeing you again. I’ve been waiting to hear from you. My name is Delilah. I’m . . . I’m the one who sent you the letter.”

  Tracey’s smile fell. The openness in her big brown eyes was abruptly shut, like a window blind pulled closed. “Oh.”

  “I didn’t mean any offense by that letter,” Delilah insisted, her confidence faltering under Tracey’s reaction. She hesitated before placing a hand on Tracey’s forearm. “I’m sorry if it . . . it came off that way.”

  The bearded man in line in front of Tracey grabbed a grocery bag off the counter and walked away with receipt in hand. The cashier looked at Tracey expectantly and leaned forward to remove the yellow plastic divider in front of the groceries on the conveyor belt.

  “How’re you doing today?” the young woman asked as produce slowly made its way to the scanner.

  “Fine,” Tracey said, then gently pulled her arm out of Delilah’s grasp.

  She didn’t turn her back to Delilah exactly, but she was no longer looking at her as she loaded her groceries. Her children continued to stare. The baby tore her teething ring from her mouth, letting a thick line of drool slide over her plump chin. The boy looked at Delilah with guileless fascination.

  “If you don’t mind me askin’, do you like where you live now?” Delilah persisted over the beeping from the barcode scanner. “If so, that’s fine. That’s good. I’m . . . I’m glad that you do.”

  Delilah didn’t want to be too eager, to scare her off, but she was hungry—so hungry to end the loneliness.

  Tracey paused as she placed a can of Chef Boyardee on the conveyor belt. An expression crossed her face at Delilah’s question, the same one that had been on Tracey’s face at the Chesapeake Cupcakery a few weeks ago. It was the frightened, cornered look. Delilah knew it well. She had seen it enough times in her life that she could spot it a mile away.

  “No, I don’t,” Tracey answered honestly, “but I’m moving out soon.”

  “We got kicked out,” the boy piped, leaning against the side of the cart and bouncing on his tiptoes in his mud-plastered tennis shoes. “I don’t wanna change schools again, but Mommy said—”

  “Caleb!” his mother barked at him, making him lower his eyes, shamefaced.

  Tracey continued to load groceries, this time angrily slamming them onto the belt.

  “Please . . . at least see the house,” Delilah said. “Have a look around to see if you like it. I’ve got plenty of bedrooms. You can even take one for yourself. You don’t have to share it with your children, unless . . . unless you want to. You can have a bedroom next to the room where the kids would stay. It wouldn’t be—”

  “Thank you, but no thank you.”

  “I’m not crazy!” Delilah shouted.

  In response to her declaration, Tracey stopped unloading groceries from her cart and furrowed her brows.

  “I’m not crazy,” she repeated in a softer voice.

  Tracey glanced down at Delilah’s feet. Delilah followed the path of her gaze, embarrassed to realize she was still wearing her fluffy, pink bedroom slippers.

  Because of the phantom voice, she had been in such a rush to leave the house she hadn’t changed into the black Crocs she kept underneath the bench next to the front door.

  “Well, I’m forgetful—but not crazy.” She laughed. Tracey didn’t join her.

  “That will be $114.58, ma’am! Will that be cash or credit?” the cashier asked.

  “Credit,” Tracey said, pulling out her wallet.

  Watching her, Delilah noted that Tracey’s purse looked old and worn. Though it was an expensive brand, with the emblem prominently displayed on the front flap, the inside seam was ripped. The strap’s thread was unraveling. She then looked at Tracey’s face as the younger woman handed a credit card and a discount card to the cashier. She noted that her eyes were puffy and bruised. She looked like she had gone through quite a few sleepless nights.

  “You wouldn’t have to pay,” Delilah whispered to her. “You could—”

  “I said no,” Tracey answered firmly, glowering at Delilah. She then pursed her lips and took a deep breath. The glower disappeared, though her gaze was unwavering. “Thank you very much for your offer, Ms. Grey, but I don’t need your help. I’m doing fine. Really.”

  “Uh, ma’am,” the cashier interjected, holding up the credit card and waving it back and forth in the air. “I’ve tried to run this through twice, and it isn’t working. Do you have another card?”

  Tracey turned and stared at her. “Are you sure?”

  “Yep.” The cashier turned the computer screen toward her. “The card was declined.”

  Tracey stood silently for several seconds, as if contemplating what to do next. She finally opened her wallet and dug through it again. “No, that’s my only card, but I’ll . . . I’ll pay for it in cash.” She rifled through all the bills in her wallet. Her lips moved as she counted them once, then twice. She looked up. “All I have is eighty-two dollars. Can you . . . can you take some of the stuff off of my bill, please? Sorry.”

  The cashier’s polite veneer disappeared. She grabbed the microphone over her cash register. “I need manager assistance!”

  Her high-pitched voice echoed over the supermarket’s loud speaker, making several patrons in other lines turn toward their lane and stare at Tracey.

  “What do you want to take off?” the cashier said with a loud sigh.

  “The juice boxes.” Tracey reached for the grocery bags on the counter. Delilah noticed her hands were shaking. “The chicken legs and the ice cream bars.”

  “No, mommy!” Caleb whined. “Not the ice cream! You said I could—”

  “Caleb, please . . . not now!”

  The boy pouted again.

  “You’re still short twenty-five bucks,” the cashier said, leaning her elbow against the counter and tossing her hair aside.

  Tracey stared at the bags of food again and then the conveyor belt. As she did, the young cashier rolled her eyes. “Lady, we don’t have all day.”

  Delilah watched as a flush of red creeped into Tracey’s cheeks, as the young woman bit down on her bottom lip.

  “This isn’t necessary,” Delilah said, rushing forward. She reached into her tote bag and pulled out her wallet. “I’ll pay. Here!” She then held out six crisp twenties to the cashier.

  Tracey shook her head. “No! No, I can’t accept—”

  “Please, let me do this . . . so that your son can get his ice cream,” Delilah said, smiling down at Caleb.

  “Please, Mommy! Please?” he cried.

  “So is she paying or what?” the cashier asked, pointing to the plastic bags.

  Tracey stared at Caleb. Her shoulders slumped
before she turned back to the cashier and gave a barely discernable nod.

  After the groceries were paid for, Tracey walked out of the line. She paused to whisper “Thank you” to Delilah.

  “It’s fine, sweetheart,” Delilah said, waving at her.

  “Ice cream! Ice cream! We got ice cream!” Caleb sang as he danced and twirled behind his mother while they walked toward the automatic doors.

  Delilah watched them leave, feeling as if some grand opportunity had eluded her.

  “Just the cantaloupe then?” the cashier asked, yanking Delilah’s attention.

  “Oh!” Delilah turned and looked at the lone cantaloupe in her basket. “Yes, that’s . . . that’s it.”

  A few minutes later, Delilah emerged from the grocery store. She pulled out her keys, adjusted the wide brim of her hat, and started to walk toward her car.

  “Ms. Grey?” a voice called to her.

  Delilah turned to find Tracey standing with her son and daughter near the line of carts gathered several feet away from the supermarket’s entrance. The little girl was back to gnawing her teething ring. The boy was sucking on an orange ice cream bar. Some of it was dripping onto his T-shirt.

  Delilah smiled, feeling a lightness enter her at the sight of them. “Hello again! I thought you had left.”

  “I had planned to leave, but”—Tracey lowered her tired eyes—“before . . .before I left, I wanted to apologize to you if I came off as rude or . . . or if I seemed ungrateful about your offer.”

  Delilah walked toward her. “No apologies needed, honey. Really, I understand.”

  “You see, the kids and I do need a place to stay . . . to live, but . . . but . . .” Her words drifted off.

  “Why don’t you see the house?” Delilah asked, taking another step toward her, drawing close. “See if you like it. Stop by for dinner tonight. I’ll make something nice for you—for all of you!”

  Tracey hesitated again.

  “It’s just dinner. Nothing can be lost.”

  As Delilah held her breath and waited for Tracey’s answer, a family of five strolled by them. The mother barked orders to a teenage boy. A gaggle of girls also ran by, giggling and pointing at something in one of the adjacent shop windows.

  Finally, ever so slowly, Tracey nodded. “Okay. Why not?”

  CHAPTER 6

  Aidan walked into the kitchen, tugging his T-shirt over his head and down his torso. His dark hair was still wet from the shower he had taken minutes earlier. He’d lingered under the showerhead much longer than he’d intended, letting it blast his back and shoulders until the water went from steaming hot to tepid. But he’d needed that shower. He was sore and tired from the hours he’d spent doing yard work today in the hot sun, mowing the lawn and trimming overgrown bushes and the dying remains of hosta plants.

  He had come into the kitchen hungry and intending to make himself a roast beef sandwich and maybe crack open a can of soup for dinner, but he was met by clutter of grand proportions—pots and pans, strewn flour and potato rinds, cutting boards and bits of grated cheese. All of it was on the six-foot butcher-block island and granite counters. The smell of fried chicken, cheese and chives, and sweet potato pie filled the air, along with a sweltering heat from the open flames and oven. Stepping into the kitchen, Aidan felt as if he had just strolled into a sauna, minus the towel wrapped around his waist.

  Delilah closed the door of her stainless-steel fridge and turned to Aidan. She frowned and looked him up and down, framing her mouth with quotation marks.

  “Oh, no!” she said, shaking her head, sending her gray hair swinging. “You march right back upstairs and put on something decent . . . something better than a wrinkled T-shirt and pair of jeans.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her.

  “Go on!” She shooed him off as if he were an annoying fruit fly. “We’re having folks over tonight, and you need to be presentable.”

  He began argue with her, to tell her he was a grown man of thirty-four years and he could wear what he damn well pleased, but then she turned back toward the stove and began to stir a pot of mashed potatoes. She began to hum as she cooked.

  Aidan silently stewed like the dark gravy sitting on one of the burners. He glared at the back of Delilah’s head, then turned and walked out of the kitchen through the living room and back toward the stairs.

  “And put some shoes on while you’re at it!” she shouted after him.

  Aidan grumbled as he yanked his T-shirt over his head. He headed upstairs and back to his room to change his clothes.

  He supposed Delilah’s henpecking had something to do with the last time they’d lived together in this house, when he had moved into Harbor Hill at the age of eight. When his mother, Rosario, couldn’t be a mom—when she had her “bad days” and refused to eat or come out of her room—Delilah had been his mother.

  * * *

  Before Aidan and Rosario had arrived at Harbor Hill back in 1990 and stayed for almost eight years, they had hopped from place to place.

  Their journey began when Rosario was seventeen and he was still floating around in her womb, waiting to make his debut into the world. Rosario’s mother wanted her to reveal what boy had knocked her up, but Rosario refused. So her mother sent her packing with a suitcase filled with clothes, her pale pink rosary, and a baby blanket her mother had knitted for her when she was an infant.

  “When you’re ready to tell the truth ante tu mamá y Dios, then you can come back!” her mother proclaimed, before slamming the apartment door in Rosario’s face.

  But Rosario couldn’t tell the truth before her mother and God. She couldn’t lie and say the father was what her mother believed him to be—some pimple-faced, seventeen-year-old jock at Rosario’s high school or a bad boy in her neighborhood she had given her virginity to in the back seat of a Trans Am. Aidan’s father was really Michael “Mike” Aidan Jankowski, the Dominguez family’s married landlord. He had seduced Rosario over a period of months with costume jewelry, pepperoni pizza, and a small bottle of Lancôme perfume.

  If Rosario had told her mother the truth, Mike could’ve gone to jail.

  “I’m not protecting him,” Aidan overheard his mother explain to one of her friends one night when the other woman asked her why she would care if Aidan’s father went to prison. He was a grown man who had taken advantage of a teen girl. He should have been locked up, the friend insisted.

  “I just didn’t want that on my conscience. He has a wife and four kids to take care of, you know,” Rosario said.

  But that wasn’t the reason. Aidan knew the truth, even as a boy who didn’t know much else.

  His mother protected his father because she was and would always remain in love with that man. It was why she kept the empty bottle of perfume his father had given her during their “courtship.” It was why she made Aidan finally meet his dad, though he had protested and sulked.

  They met at an ice cream parlor with laminate countertops spotted with syrup stains and a waitress who had blond hair and black roots.

  Aidan thought his father seemed freakishly tall, though this was admittedly from the perspective of a nine-year-old. Mike had eyes as green as the mint chocolate chip ice cream that Aidan ate, and thick hair and a beard that were prematurely gray. It wasn’t that cold outside that day, but Mike’s cheeks were ruddy, as well as the tip of his nose. He looked like a forty-something Santa Claus.

  “So . . . how’s it going?” Mike had asked as they sat at one of the corner tables in the shop. He slapped Aidan on his thin shoulder with his wide, heavy hand.

  “Fine, I guess,” Aidan murmured as he toyed with the single cherry that topped his chocolate sundae. He then tossed the cherry into his mouth, stem and all.

  “You like school?”

  Aidan shrugged in response as he chewed.

  “You like sports? I’m big into baseball. Got season tickets to watch the Orioles. Maybe I could take you someday.”

  “I don’t like baseball.”

&
nbsp; “Football then?”

  Aidan shook his head.

  “How about basketball?”

  Aidan shook his head again, though that was a lie. He loved the Chicago Bulls with the same passion some boys in his class had for their crushes, and he wore his Michael Jordan jersey religiously. But he wasn’t about to tell his father any of that. His father didn’t deserve anything from him, including the truth.

  Unable to get past Aidan’s wall of silence, Mike leaned back in his chair, drummed his fingers on the tabletop, and peered out the ice cream parlor’s floor-to-ceiling windows. The awkwardness between them ended only when Rosario arrived a half hour later to pick up Aidan and take him back home.

  She hugged Mike good-bye, clinging to him longer than necessary. The hulking man was much bigger than her, so her tiny feet dangled several inches above the floor as she held him tight, looking like a small brown elf to his Santa Claus. She wept as she held him.

  Aidan refused to watch their emotional farewell. He mumbled a “Bye” over his shoulder and walked out the parlor’s door toward his mother’s sedan, slumping against the car as he waited for her on the curb.

  After they arrived home at Harbor Hill, for the rest of the afternoon Rosario stayed in her bedroom with the door shut, blasting her music at full volume. Even when Aidan knocked, she didn’t answer him. So he left her alone to indulge in her thoughts and her music. But Aidan eventually grew bored with hanging out in the yard and playing rounds of Super Mario Bros. He ventured back upstairs to his mother’s room to draw her out. By then, Rosario had switched from mariachi to sixties soul music—a lonely ballad by Sam Cooke. Aidan tried knocking again.

  “Ma!” he called over the music. “Ma! I’m hungry. Are you gonna make me dinner? Mami?”

  He knocked again, only to get silence in reply.