The Hideaway

I sat in the chair and ran my hands up and down the armrests. Under me, the cushion gave way just enough to create a scoop of soft leather. I picked at a stray cat hair stuck in the seam of the cushion.

A gorgeous old buffet table stood next to the chair under a bank of windows. It had slim drawers on the front and carvings of vines and leaves snaked up its curved legs. Sunlight glinted off the table’s surface, despite the layer of dust. A closer inspection revealed a small key engraved along the edge of one of the drawers. I smiled—the key was becoming a familiar sight—and ran my fingers across the indentation.

Major stuck his head into the room. “What’s the order of business today?”

I stared at him. We hadn’t spoken more than a few polite words since the conversation at the dinner table my first night at the house.

“Put me to work,” he said. “I don’t like to see these other people working on the house while I just sit here. Makes me uncomfortable.”

“Okay, I was about to move some of these older pieces of furniture outside to take to Goodwill. I won’t do much before talking to Dot and Glory, but some of these things are useless.” I gestured to an orange plastic love seat. I loved refinishing things, but I couldn’t do much with spray-painted plastic.

“I’ll give you permission myself. You can’t imagine what it’s like to have to look at some of this stuff every day. I’m no decorator, but even I know when something’s ugly as a three-eyed cat. And I don’t like cats.”

Together, we moved the most offensive pieces outside. While carrying a bulky coffee table to the driveway, he cleared his throat. “Glory tells me I’m not good with apologies,” he said. “The other night at dinner—”

“It’s okay, I understand. If I were in your position, I’m sure I’d feel the same way.”

“I was just caught off guard.” He grunted as we backed down the front steps with the table. “The four of us wouldn’t have been able to take care of this house for too many more years on our own, anyway.”

“I don’t know about that. Y’all have been here so long, the house is a part of you.”

“It’s a part of you too, even if you don’t live here.”

We set the table down and surveyed the furniture we’d amassed in the driveway.

“Who’s going to want that old thing?” Major pointed to a side chair with springs exposed and fabric hanging off the back.

“We’re keeping that one.”

“You’re getting rid of a perfectly good coffee table”—half upholstery, half glass, there was nothing good or perfect about it—“but you’re keeping an old busted chair?”

I smiled. “It’s ugly now, but just wait.” Whenever I saw chairs like this at an estate sale or garage sale, I couldn’t snatch them up fast enough. As long as the wood wasn’t too banged up, it was the easiest thing to refinish and recover. I regularly picked up chairs like this one—stuffing pouring out, ugly fabric, scratched wood—for less than fifty dollars and sold them for a few hundred. I wasn’t going to sell this one though. “It’ll be your favorite chair when I’m done with it.”

Major snorted. “Doubt that.”

He continued shuffling things around outside while I sat in the gravel next to the frayed side chair. Using a pair of pliers I’d found in the kitchen, I ripped the staples out of the upholstery and carefully pulled off the tattered fabric, laying the strips down by my feet. I’d already decided to reupholster it in a cool graphic print to downplay the fussy Rococo design carved into the wood. After a while, Major paused in the shade, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Of course. Just thinking of Mags. She talked about going down there to visit, you know. She even looked into buying an apartment so she’d have a place to stay.”

“In New Orleans?” It wasn’t difficult to imagine Mags meandering through the little streets and alleyways of the Vieux Carré with her flowered hats and ponchos. But still—Mags in New Orleans?

Major nodded. “Especially if bad weather was coming. If there was even a hint of a hurricane out in the Gulf, she’d keep that darn TV on the Weather Channel all day long.” He turned a chair around so it faced me and sat down. “I don’t know if she actually would have gone down there. I can’t imagine her anywhere but here.”

I smiled. She probably would have fit right in, making friends with George the jeweler, Allyn, and all the other misfits.

“She hated being so far from her only family,” Major said. “She figured if you weren’t coming this way very often, she could go to you. Then at least you couldn’t blame your lack of visiting on distance anymore.”

I sighed. “It wasn’t the distance so much as—”

“I know, I know, your shop. I’m just calling it like I see it.”

“Thanks. That hurts,” I said. But he was right. Regardless of my reasons—the still-sore memories of my parents, my suffocation at the hands of small-town life, even my childish embarrassment of Mags and her friends—it had been a mistake to allow so much time to pass between visits. The phone calls hadn’t been enough, even if they were as regular as clockwork.

“Just speaking the truth, young lady.” He folded his handkerchief into a tight square and stuck it in his pocket. “But it’s water under the bridge. You’re here now, and wherever Mags is, I’m sure she’s happy you’ve come.”

He sounded confident, but I wasn’t so sure. What kind of ungrateful granddaughter would I have been if I’d ignored Mr. Bains’s summons to come to the reading of the will? If I’d stayed away from the funeral? If I’d come back to collect Mags’s things long after Dot and the others had moved out?

It hurt to admit it, but those were my first thoughts on the streetcar after talking to Mr. Bains. Of course, they were fleeting—I knew I’d return to Sweet Bay, regardless of whatever memories waited for me. And now, back at the house I thought I’d left for good, I no longer yearned to leave. New Orleans still beckoned, but Mags—the one I never knew—beckoned too.

Later that day, I went into town to buy a few items for Bert.

“Teriyaki? What in the world for?” Major asked when Bert asked me to pick up a bottle for him. “You getting adventurous in your old age?”

“I don’t want Sara to think all I can cook is chicken, butter beans, and cornbread,” Bert said. “She’s used to better things in New Orleans. I’ve never made an étouffée, but I can make a good roux. In fact, scratch the teriyaki and pick up some shrimp. We’ll have gumbo instead.” Bert was hunched over a battered church cookbook, thumbing through pages.

“Bert, I’d eat a wooden chair if you cooked it,” I said. “I’m sure whatever you whip up will be delicious. Don’t make something special just for me.”

“Go ahead and pick up shrimp and teriyaki,” he said. “Maybe I’ll combine the two and come up with something new.”

Major wrinkled his nose. “Just stick with chicken and butter beans. You’re good with those.”

I laughed and grabbed my keys. Outside, the air was light and breezy. I inhaled—cut grass, salty air, and the faint scent of coconut. I smiled. Close by, someone was sunbathing on a dock.