“Oh, sure. Think of all of the discoveries. In medicine, in cyberspace, in transportation, and electricity, and so on. I mean, you can’t go see them like you can a cathedral, but you sure can get the use out of them.”
“Hmm. Then I guess that wouldn’t have dissuaded Sam—even if I’d thought of it. Anyway,” I went on, “how was school?”
“Pretty good. The Key Club met this afternoon, and we’re trying to come up with a good fund-raiser. Probably end up doing a candy sale like last year and the year before.
“Oh, by the way,” Lloyd said, as if it were a matter of little import, “I’ll be going to school early a couple of mornings a week. Miss Turner asked me to help a freshman with algebra.”
I looked up. “You mean, like tutoring?”
“Yes’m, I guess,” he said, shrugging. “Just go over his homework with him and make sure he understands it.”
I glowed with pride at my smart boy, but refrained from expressing it. “I’ll make breakfast for you on those mornings.”
“No’m, that’s okay. All I want is cereal and peanut butter toast.”
Lillian rolled her eyes, then said, “He growin’ up, all right.”
—
When Lillian left after supper to pick up Latisha, her great-granddaughter, from after-school care, I adjourned to the library while Lloyd went upstairs to do his homework. I kept his room exactly as he wanted it, even though he also had a room at his mother’s house. Essentially, the boy had two homes: one with Hazel Marie and her husband, J. D. Pickens, PI, and the other with Sam and me. At one time I had wondered if such an arrangement would induce some sort of schizophrenic reaction in the boy, but Lloyd was as normal as you could want, in spite of how and by whom he’d been conceived. And completely unspoiled, in spite of his half of the huge inheritance left to him by Wesley Lloyd Springer, his father and my first husband.
After locking the doors for the evening, I sat on my Chippendale sofa in the library, flipping through a magazine and finding nothing that was remotely readable. Sighing, I wondered what Sam was doing. Then, recalling the time difference, I thought that he was probably asleep, resting from a strenuous day and preparing for another just like it. I’d told him to be sure to take some Advil or a similar medication for the sore neck he would most certainly get from craning it all day long at those soaring ceilings.
When the phone rang, I quickly answered it, hoping for something, anything, that would lift me out of the doldrums from which I couldn’t seem to free myself. Be careful what you hope for, you just might get it.
“Miss Julia?” Hazel Marie said. “I just learned something that’s upset me so bad I can hardly stand it.”
“What? What’s going on, Hazel Marie?”
“Well, you know the Cochran house? The one right beside us?”
When Hazel Marie and Mr. Pickens married, they had bought Sam’s lovely, old house. He no longer needed it, having found his permanent home with me. Located four blocks from us, Sam’s house sat on a large lot that ran from Jackson Street on the front to McKinley Street on the back, taking up a third of the block. The smaller, much less grand Cochran house and one other, the even smaller Osborne house—both Craftsman bungalows in style—were situated on the remaining two-thirds that faced Jackson Street. Two other houses, facing McKinley Street, backed up to them, one owned by an elderly couple, the Pickerells, and the other by the Winsteads, who’d raised three well-mannered and accomplished children there.
All the houses on that block, as well as those on the surrounding blocks, had been built long before any town planner thought to protect the area. Zoning had come late, well after the town had grown up around the cluster of historic houses.
Sam’s house, substantial but graceful in contrast to the Cochrans’, had been well built and well maintained. So that was one thing I could point him to as having stood the test of time.
“Yes, of course I know the Cochran house,” I responded to her question. “It’s been empty for a good while, hasn’t it?”
“Yes, and that’s the problem,” Hazel Marie said, her voice sounding strained. “Somebody’s bought it.”
“Well, I hope they fix it up. Do you know who it is?”
“I just found out, even though it’s obvious they didn’t want it known. Miss Julia, it was cut-and-dried from the beginning, and they took every pain to make sure that nobody would know until it was too late to do anything.
“I’m so upset,” she went on, “and wouldn’t you know it, J.D.’s off on another case.”
Mr. Pickens was a private investigator on retainer to a large insurance company, so he was frequently called away to look into suspected wrongdoings, like fraud, embezzlement, and other unsavory and illegal activities.
“Who bought it, Hazel Marie? I can’t imagine it could be worse than just letting it sit there unattended.”
“Oh, it could be worse, all right. A group—a nonprofit of course, that sits around making grandiose plans for others to carry out and pay for—they’ve bought it.”
That was a surprise, as was Hazel Marie’s use of the word grandiose. But now that her twin girls had grown out of the baby stage, she’d embarked on a self-education course, looking up a new word every day and using it at least once. Apparently she’d successfully completed this day’s task.
“What kind of group is it? I mean, why do they want a house?”
“For a group home!” she said, as if she were gritting her teeth. “A residential group home, Miss Julia, and they’re putting it in a residential, single-family neighborhood, and they’re going to fill it with homeless boys, along with houseparents, counselors, and who-knows-what-else. I’m just sick about it, and I know that as a Christian I shouldn’t feel that way. But these
