“Shoot,” I said with real disappointment as I shook my head.
“What? They didn’t have any pink ones?” he asked with a laugh.
I shrugged. “Maybe, I just forgot to look.”
“Well, I’m sure we can find an extra pair for you somewhere around here, but put them on your shoppin’ list.”
“Sir, yessir!” This time, I saluted him the proper way.
“Good Lord!” he grumbled. “If you weren’t so damn cute, I would’ve fired you a long time ago!”
As soon as we entered the guest room, I noticed two men working demolition—each on opposite sides of the room. Ryan approached the man closer to us, who was covered in fine white dust. The man pulled down his breathing mask and smiled at both of us.
“How’s it goin’?” Ryan asked as he leaned onto his knees and inspected the nearly bare wall. The man had half of one wall completely stripped down to the studs. Ryan ran his fingers across the rough surface of one of the studs, dipping his fingernail into what looked like honeycomb in the wood. “Termites?” Ryan asked his worker.
The man pointed at a few of the studs. “Yeah, but looks like it’s old damage. Ain’t come across nothin’ new…yet.”
Ryan nodded as I stepped over the pile of debris on the floor. Glancing down, I recognized large pieces of drywall; the remains of aged flowery blue wallpaper; and what looked like whitewashed wooden boards. I reached down and picked up one of the boards, which was maybe a foot long by a foot wide. I wasn’t sure why it caught my attention, but I flipped it over all the same, only to find a very aged and yellow newspaper clipping attached to the back of it. The heading of the newspaper was torn, presumably from when it was ripped off the wall, but I could make out that the rest of it was an advertisement of some sort. There was a torn image of a horse and beneath that, the words: “Use Jona’s Salve to Keep Your Horse in Good Health!”
Realizing its significance, and that I was uncovering a historic time capsule, I couldn’t help thinking there was probably a whole lot more of it behind the façade of the wall. I felt my anticipation growing. “Wait!” I called out to Ryan as he started for the other side of the room, to talk to the other man on demolition duty. When he turned to face me, I excitedly held up the newspaper clipping. “Look!”
“Ah, this one used newspaper too?” Ryan asked, wearing an expression of mild interest as he faced both the men in the room.
The one nearest me nodded. “Found quite a few glued to the wall beneath these stubborn-ass boards!” The man held his crowbar up like he was ready to dig back into the wall again when I stopped him short by stepping in front of him. My attention, however, was on Ryan.
“You can’t just go in and demolish this room if there are ancient newspapers on the walls!” I protested. “That’s sacrilege!”
Ryan shook his head. “Peyton, it was a common practice hundreds of years ago to use newspapers as insulation. I’ve come across this situation countless times.”
“And you just trash them?” I asked, my mouth agape in horror.
“The newspapers are usually so torn up by the time we’re finished, we have no choice,” Ryan answered, not particularly bothered by the fact. “And homeowners rarely want to take the time to salvage somethin’ that usually is already illegible, owin’ to its age.”
“Oh my gosh,” I continued, shaking my head as I turned back to the pile of debris. “I can’t even fathom that,” I continued as I bent down and started rifling through it, separating out the pieces of antique newspaper as I came across them. Ryan wasn’t exaggerating—most of the newspaper was reduced to mere scraps, thanks to the demolition. I glanced up at him and frowned. “These newspapers represent moments in time that will never exist again,” I said in a hollow voice as I looked at the fragments of a bygone era surrounding me. “And time is so fleeting.” I glanced up at Ryan again and shrugged. “Maybe that’s why I always found history so fascinating and why I decided to major in it.”
Ryan nodded and then offered me a hearty smile. “You believe in preservin’ the past.”
“I do,” I agreed as I continued rummaging through the pile. At the bottom of the mound, I recovered a full page that was safeguarded by the wooden board it was attached to. Pulling it free from the wood fibers, I smoothed it out against the floor and found myself gazing at the portrait of what appeared to be a policeman.
If I had to guess, I would have deemed the article as dating from around the early twentieth century—the image just didn’t appear older than that. There wasn’t a title or a date accompanying the picture that might have given me an indication of the year it was printed, but judging by the officer’s somewhat contemporary uniform, I figured the article couldn’t have been that old.
As far as I could tell, the man was sitting (the article was ripped just above his hips) and his hands might have been clasped in his lap. He was facing the camera, and even though the clipping was incredibly old and faded, it was still very obvious that whoever this officer was, he was exceedingly handsome. He wasn’t smiling, but there was an echo of something flirtatious in his eyes. The longer I studied him, the more I wondered whether it was a “come hither” expression in his gaze, or a cold, calculating one. It completely depended on whether I imagined the person taking the picture to be a woman or a man. Regardless, he looked like he was in his early thirties maybe, and his clean-shaven face revealed a square jaw, high cheekbones, a pronounced but symmetrical nose, masculine eyebrows, and penetrating, large eyes. I couldn’t make out whether his hair was dark or light as it was eclipsed by the modern-looking officer’s cap. His shoulders were broad and his neck thick. His officer’s jacket was dark, maybe navy, black, or charcoal gray. Three metal buttons appeared on either side of his collar, and his badge shone on his left side, along with a nameplate above it. I strained my eyes to make out his name, but failed.
“What did you find?” Ryan asked as he approached me. I glanced up at him and offered him the newspaper. After studying it for a few seconds, he handed it back to me. “Hmm, cops back then looked pretty similar to today.”
I nodded and, gazing at the image again, felt myself zoning out on the officer’s eyes. That was when I remembered there was probably a whole minefield of undiscovered history still behind what remained of the walls. I darted over to the wall and shoved my hand behind the drywall that was still intact.
“Bloody hell, Peyton, you’re gonna snag yourself on a nail!” Ryan objected.
“I’m fine,” I answered absentmindedly, fingering the edge of a piece of paper attached to another board. I glanced at Ryan and beamed. “There’s more here!”
“Peyton,” he started and shook his head. “If we lollygag around with this, it’s goin’ to push your job out even longer!”
As soon as I recalled the officer’s eyes, I shook my head emphatically. It was a bizarre reaction I had to him—but I knew I couldn’t allow whatever existed beyond the walls to be further damaged. There was a calm certainty that took over me—an absolute assurance that I needed to make sure nothing else beyond the walls was damaged. It almost felt as if a foreign being was somehow in control of me. But of course, that was ridiculous.
“I don’t care,” I said with finality as I turned to face the men in the room. “I want these boards removed carefully.” I was quiet as I continued fingering the brittle pieces of newspaper when something dawned on me. “Ryan, these weren’t used as insulation.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because they’re single sheets of paper, not entire newspapers.”
Ryan approached the wall and inspected it before taking a step back and nodding at me. “I think you’re right. Ordinarily, we find whole newspapers wadded up and shoved into the recesses of the wall.”
“But these are stuck to the boards, which tells me that someone posted them on the wall and then boarded them up later,” I finished.
Ryan cocked his head to the side before nodding. “Could be.” Then he sighed as he apparently
realized what a behemoth undertaking he now faced. “Peyton, are you sure you want to bother with this?”
“Yes,” I answered immediately before offering him a big smile. “I can help.”
He shook his head, but his eyes settled on what was remaining of the wall. He was quiet for a few seconds before he faced the man nearer him. “The best way to do this is to remove the drywall first. Just be careful that you don’t go very deep. When you’re down to the whitewashed boards, lemme know.”
The man nodded as Ryan faced me again and expelled a pent-up breath. “Lunch is on you,” he said with a slight smirk, while poking me in the upper arm with his index finger.
“So what do you know about my house?” I asked Ryan, reaching for a French fry on his plate, before smiling apologetically for mooching it.
He cocked a single brow at me but smiled all the same. I thought lunch being on me meant that I’d buy all the guys lunch, but I’d come to find that Ryan had only meant him. It was just as well because I enjoyed any alone time I could get with him. I felt like there was definitely something between Ryan and me, but I wasn’t sure exactly what “it” was—just casual, innocent flirtation or something more?
On Ryan’s suggestion, we piled into the Scout and I drove us to the French Quarter, where we tucked into a tiny, deli-like restaurant called Johnny’s on St. Louis Street.
“Like I told you before when we were talkin’ about your Great-Aunt Myra, I don’t know much about her or your house,” Ryan answered as he took an enormous bite of his catfish po’boy, chomping it for a few seconds before wiping his mouth with a napkin and taking a few sips of his Coke. He smiled and asked, “Are you gonna dive into that or what?” before motioning to the alligator sausage triple-decker po’boy I’d ordered.
“I’m still deciding,” I answered honestly. I’d never had alligator before, but Ryan convinced me it was the be all and end all. As for a triple-decker on Texas Toast? Yep, that was his idea too—promising he’d finish whatever I didn’t.
“Dive in, girl!” he said with a laugh, hiding his fries behind his gigantic hand. “Or else you’re cut off from my fries.”
I eyed my side salad forlornly before frowning at him. Then, taking a deep breath, I picked up my alligator sandwich. “Here goes!” I took a bite and after a few chews, realized it was actually pretty tasty. Heavier than chicken and more like the consistency of steak, it wasn’t scummy or moldy at all, as one might expect of a swamp-dwelling creature.
“So?” Ryan asked, leaning toward me.
I finished my mouthful and sipped on my iced tea. “It’s actually not bad.”
“Not bad as in…good?”
“I don’t know. Let me take another bite.” I held the sandwich up to my lips, but before I took a bite, I added, “While I’m chewing, you can tell me what you do know about my house.”
“So demandin’!” he teased me with a laugh before taking a deep breath. “I’ve lived on Prytania Street for, oh, ten years now.”
“You bought your house when you were twenty-six?” I asked, surprised.
“Peyton, your mouth is still full,” he pointed out with a shake of his head and a put-on wince.
“Sorry,” I managed with a sheepish smile, my mouth no less full.
He chuckled before remembering my question. “I’ve been doin’ construction since I was twenty, an’ luckily for me, I was good at it. So, yes, to answer your question, I bought my house when I was twenty-six.”
I sipped the last of my iced tea through the straw until it snored when it encountered the ice cubes. Ryan raised his brows at me, but I just smiled and mooched another of his fries. “I’d love to see it sometime.” I was suddenly struck with the notion of how completely refreshing it was to be able to be as candid as I was right now, to be able to be silly and flirty. They were feelings that had been foreign to me for years. And now, as I laughed and played with Ryan, I felt like I was coming into my own again, relearning what it felt like to be Peyton Clark.
“You always have an open invitation. You should know that.”
“Why should I? It’s not like you ever invited me…,” I said with a shrug as I stole another fry and used the last of his ketchup. He smiled and, grabbing the bottle, squeezed out another red mound on the corner of his plate. I plopped the fry in my mouth and moaned with pleasure. “These fries are so good!”
“Mouth full!” Ryan chided me.
“Blah,” I waved him away.
“Well, I apologize for not invitin’ you,” he started, while intercepting my attempt to steal a long and especially doughy-looking fry, plopping it into his own mouth with a smug smile.
“Hey!” I swatted his upper arm, feigning offense as he finished his mouthful.
“It never actually crossed my mind that I hadn’t invited you over,” he continued. “But I would like it known that you, Peyton Clark, the most stubborn woman I’ve ever met, with the worst table manners I’ve ever seen, are always welcome at my home.”
I laughed and couldn’t stop the blush across my cheeks. Sometimes he just said things that made me melt. “Thanks, Ryan.”
“And as to what I do know about your house,” he started, reaching over to grab my alligator sandwich with both hands. “I’m guessin’ you’re finished with this since you haven’t touched it in the last five minutes?”
I just nodded. “Let’s switch. I’ll eat the rest of your fries.”
“Deal,” he answered, taking such a huge bite of my alligator triple-decker sandwich that only two-thirds of it remained.
“Jeez, careful you don’t swallow your hand!”
He waved me away in the same way I had earlier. Then, once his mouth was empty, he continued. “For the entire time I’ve lived on Prytania Street, Myra owned your house.”
“And you said you stopped in to check on her a handful of times?”
He shook his head. “Well, truthfully, it was more often than that. I would visit her about once a month to make sure the house was in order and she wasn’t in want of anythin’.”
“Nice work you did for her on the leaky roof, by the way,” I taunted him.
He held his hands up in mock defense. “Hey, she died five or six years ago and the house just sat there, empty, before it fell into disrepair. I had nothin’ to do with that leaky roof!”
“She died five or six years ago?” I asked, finding the news surprising. “I wonder why it only came to me recently?”
Ryan shook his head as if to say he didn’t know. “Maybe the courts had a hard time locatin’ you?”
I nodded, thinking that made sense given the fact that I never even knew I had a Great-Aunt Myra and my mom had been deceased for quite some time. Whatever the reason, all that mattered now was that the house was mine. “So you didn’t know much about Myra?” I continued. “Do you have any idea who that policeman pictured in the newspaper was?”
He shook his head. “No clue. I do remember Myra saying she’d lived in the house with her mother, who’d owned it since the thirties. I reckon those newspapers are about that old?”
“Maybe thereabouts or the twenties would be my guess.”
Ryan nodded. “As to the identity of your mystery cop, I have no idea. I guess we’ll have to wait and find out once we get the rest of those boards down.”
It was a mystery I couldn’t wait to solve.
I was so anxious to uncover the riddle regarding the newspaper clippings that I spent the majority of the evening pulling nails from the whitewashed boards in order to free up the pages behind them. Both of Ryan’s men who had been working demolition on the guest room were able to remove the remaining drywall on all four walls without upsetting the boards underneath.
As I busily pulled nail after nail from the splitting, aged planks of wood, my thoughts were mostly centered on Ryan Kelly. Despite my attempts to hide the obvious from myself—my undeniable attraction to him—doing so was pointless. There was no way I could fool myself into thinking that I was some sort of detached ice
queen who could control my wayward emotions as easily as flicking off a switch. I couldn’t. And even though I was convinced as a new divorcee, I shouldn’t have any interest in the opposite sex for at least a year, it was now obvious to me that I was simply deluding myself.
Try as I might, I couldn’t get Ryan off my mind. I genuinely cared for him and what was more, I hoped he cared for me…as something more than a friend. I mean, of course I valued his friendship enough that if he chose to see me in a purely platonic way, I could definitely deal with it. But that wasn’t to say I didn’t hope there might be something more.
I faced the wall again and realized I was finally pulling the nails from the last wooden board. Once I freed both nails, I pulled the board off the wall and discarded it into a pile in the middle of the floor, which was now nearly as tall as I.
Before Ryan’s men started removing the remaining drywall, I ransacked the two piles of debris on the floor to salvage whatever newspaper clippings I could find. My attempts didn’t amount to much—just a few tattered articles that were so ripped, they weren’t legible and probably would end up being thrown away. I couldn’t say I was that concerned, though, because as soon as I was able to remove the whitewashed boards on the wall facing me, I found my holy grail.
From floor to ceiling, and spanning the entire width of the wall, which had to be twenty feet, were yellowed newspaper pages still clinging to the boards beneath them. As I stared at the articles and images that had been meticulously excised a long time ago and were now displayed before me, my mind raced with the need to read and inspect each one. I took a few steps closer, suddenly irritated with the sun for setting. Now all I had to rely on was the overhead fluorescent lighting of a two-foot-long shop light. It threw garish shadows against the walls in some areas and was so exceptionally bright in others, it was like trying to read a blob of gray print in a blazing spotlight.
“What do we have here?” I whispered aloud, taking another step closer. My gaze was affixed to another picture of the young police officer. This one depicted him in a three-piece black suit and a tie. He was offering a smile and handshake to a beefy woman who resembled a large hen with her pointy nose, billowy cheeks, miniature chin, and beady eyes. The enormous plumes exploding from a comical hat perched precariously on her head completed the fowlish comparison. She was smiling coyly at the handsome officer, but I couldn’t make out the expression on his face as he was depicted only in profile. Above the image, the headline read: “Corporal Drake Montague Greets Guests at Gala Benefitting Charity Hospital.”