Cissy.
Dead all these years.
I wiped at my face, surprised to find my eyes moist.
The knock came again, harder.
“Hold on!” I yelled, and then kicked myself for this mistake. I should have kept my mouth shut and the insistent visitor would have probably gone away. Because of where my home was located and the lack of a real driveway, I usually didn’t get much in the way of visitors, just the usual poll workers every four years trying to save their candidate, or religious missionaries intent on saving my soul.
One more knock.
Damn it.
“Coming!” I yelled out, and later I realized too late that I should have never answered the door.
CHAPTER THREE
I opened the door and a man and woman were standing on my granite steps, both smiling widely at me. The man was in his fifties, with a closely trimmed white beard and bright blue eyes. He wore khaki slacks, a flannel shirt and open blue cloth jacket, and a tweed cap on his head, and there was a bulging manila file folder under his right arm. His companion seemed to be about the same age, though she looked colder, wearing a down jacket and a bright, multicolored knit cap even though it was probably in the low fifties. Her steel-gray hair fell across her right shoulder in a thick braid.
“So sorry to bother you,” the man said, still smiling. “Do you have a minute?”
“Barely,” I said, holding onto the doorknob, thankful for the support. “If you’re on a religious mission, congratulations and no, I don’t want to hear any more. If you’re selling something, I can’t think of anything you have that I might want to buy.”
The woman frowned but her male friend wasn’t giving up. “My name’s Dave Hudson, and this is my wife, Marjorie. We’re neither selling nor preaching. We’ve come all the way from Albany, doing some genealogical research … and my”—he raised his head to look up at my house—“I’m so thrilled to see this structure standing. You’re Mr. … Cole, correct? The magazine writer?”
“That’s right,” I said. “And I’m sorry, I’ve just gotten home from the hospital. I’m not really up for a talk.”
“Dear me, dear me, I’m sorry,” he said. “It’ll just take a minute. You see, my grandfather was once stationed here, at this very same house. Though it does look different from back then.”
“He was with the Coast Artillery?”
“Nope, later than that.”
“I’m sorry, there was nothing after the Coast Artillery shut down, except for a radar station looking for Russian bombers, back in the fifties. And this place had been abandoned by then. Before the Coast Artillery used it for officers’ quarters, it had been a lifeboat station, back in the mid-1800s.”
Marjorie rubbed her hands together and looked like she wished she were back home, among the charms of New York’s capital city, rather than here on this particular stretch of the chilly New Hampshire seacoast.
“Well … hate to correct you,” Dave said, “since you’re the current owner, but there was a time right around when the artillery station was being shut down that this was a facility for Navy corpsmen, during the Korean War. They did training at the old hospital in Exonia, and this was where they were put up. My grandfather was stationed here.”
My hand was starting to lose its grip on the doorknob, and my bladder was sending alarm bells that a bathroom visit was urgently required.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Maybe I’m being dense, but I don’t see how your grandfather being stationed here has anything to do with genealogical research.”
Marjorie said, “David …”
“Just a sec, just a sec,” he said. “The thing is, there’s always been a rumor in the family that granddad was a bit of a tomcat, and that he met up with my grandmom here, and well, you know. This was the place where my dad was probably conceived. Isn’t that funny?”
“Hilarious,” I said, and my bladder was now sending emergency signals to my brain. “Look, I don’t mean to be rude but—”
“I know, I know, and I appreciate your time, but all I’m asking is for a quick tour of your house, take a few photos, a few measurements, and—”
I shook my head. “Not today, please. Maybe in a couple of weeks.”
Dave stepped forward as I started to close the door, and the folder under his arm slipped out and fell to the rocky soil. Papers and long sheets with scribbled notes flew around. Marjorie swore and his face went red as they both scrambled to retrieve the papers.
Dave squatted down, grabbing them before they could fly, and Marjorie bent over and grimaced—it looked like her back hurt or something—and I felt guilty, but more than that, I really, really had to go to the bathroom.
“Please,” I said, shutting the door. “Two weeks, all right?”
And through a lot of hard work and some swearing, I made it upstairs just in time.
At one P.M. I was back on the couch, rereading the section of Smithsonian that I had read earlier, when there was once again a knock at the door. It didn’t sound as harsh as before, so I didn’t bother looking through the peephole before opening it up.
A young, tired-looking woman was there, dressed in black shoes, black slacks, and light blue down jacket with frayed sleeves, carrying two bulging plastic bags. Her face was red from the blowing wind and her blonde hair was cut short, like some sort of rich aristocrat from the 1920s.
But there was nothing about her demeanor or clothing that said rich.
“You Mr. Cole?”
“I am.”
“I got a dinner for you, all prepaid. I was told you just got out of the hospital and if you’d like, I can come
