Which, for the record, isnoteasy given what’s awaiting us in the root cellar. I use my coffee tumbler to gesture to a poster hanging toone side of the ancient television with the built-in VCR player. “I hope you appreciate how much I’m pretending I have no idea what all of this means and how much I’m assuming you have no idea either.”
Flint’s been quiet and reserved in a far more unusual way since I got my coffee and we headed back behind the original log cabin, deep in the backyard of the more modern house that Junie and I live in, like he’s regretting the little bits that he shared and wants to take them back, lest I use them against him.
His hooded eyes shift in my direction for a fraction of a second before he goes back to clearing one of the shelves that should have been used for things like canned green beans and bags of potatoes, but which Uncle Tony had other uses for.
I don’t press him for more conversation. Instead, I start to sit in the green floral easy chair positioned in front of the television, take stock of the video collection and the slipper collection beneath it, briefly ponder when he ran electrical lines down here to the root cellar that’s far enough from the house that hedefinitelyhad to intentionally run electricity to it, and decide I don’t actually want anything near that chair unless I was already planning on burning it.
I loved Uncle Tony.
I did.
And I know he had his own wants and needs and hobbies. God knows I’ve found some interesting things while I’ve been cleaning out the house to turn it into a home for Junie and me.
Nothing too out of the ordinary. Thirty-year-old canned goods and a collection of herbal remedies for various ailments, from high blood pressure to impotence, in one of the kitchen cabinets in the bunkhouse, which, yes, was a weird place to find them. Stacks of muscle car magazines, which is the most anti–Uncle Tony thing I’ve ever seen, tucked in among the various leftover items that didn’t sell during the estate sale and that I asked to be saved for me to look through in case I found something I wanted to keep for sentimental reasons.
A horseshoe collection in the barn, which I am 100 percent regarding in a new light right now.
Seashells, even small seashells, that he filled with candle wax in another missed cabinet in one of the bathrooms.
A stained glass portrait of what I think was a bear and a llama in a compromising position behind a door in the original cabin.
We all live our lives and have various interests, right?
But I’m not so certain I needed to know that Uncle Tony had a foot fetish.
“Did you two hang out here a lot?” I ask Flint.
“No.”
“Occasionally, then?”
“No.”
“When one knows this exists and shows up on a person’s doorstep demanding solo access to clean out the previous owner’s belongings before seven a.m. on a Sunday morning, the current occupant is entitled to ask questions.”
“Found it by accident. One-time thing. Gingersnap’s fault, actually. Stopped by to drop off pastries for Tony one morning, found the cow mooing like she lost her best friend right outside the door that I’d never noticed before, knocked, let myself in, found ... this, and I never came back. Never told Tony I found it. Forgot it existed until I caught a kid with something that sparked a memory yesterday.”
I believe him.
His skin turned the color of a beet about the moment he realized he wasn’t getting access to this root cellar without me, and it hasn’t wavered since.
If he were any other man, I’d say it was adorable.
But with this man, I am totally keeping my guard up.
Especiallywith how much I still want to give him a hug.
I take a sip of coffee and do a slow turn again, taking in the foot posters, the abstract foot art, the foot sculptures, mostly in the box atFlint’s feet now, and the labels on the videos—beach feet, boot feet, bed feet—once more.
And while it’s mostly feet, that’s notallit is.
“Did he ever date?” I ask.
Flint gives me a hard look.
Utter sadness floods me. Grief for a man whose family cut him out and who clearly felt like he had to hide who he was despite living in such a welcoming community like Hell’s Bells.
I haven’t met a single person who hasn’t had a story about Uncle Tony and the times he did something nice for them.
