Gen was well acquainted with shrugs like that. “Well, don’t worry. Aspirin is something I have plenty of.”
This answer was a nod.
She tried again. “Are you hungry?”
That turned him around, produced a halfhearted smile. “Starving. But I’m not at all sure I’m dressed for the occasion.”
Gen stopped a moment, considered the view. Agreed. She wanted to smile in return and couldn’t. It was just too much. The sight of those arms, and knowing somehow that they had held her. That terrible scar she knew had killed him...
She looked up to his face and wondered how to tell him that the last thing she wanted to do was go searching around in the attic. She’d never known the women who had given her their names and customs. In the same vein of ignorance that seemed to run through her family, she’d never thought she needed to. Now that she knew better, she suddenly didn’t want to. She was afraid. Somehow, whatever waited for her in the attic had everything to do with who faced her in the living room. She was sure of it.
In the end, she managed a smile of sorts. “You’re right. Unfortunately, I doubt you’d fit into anything of mine, and the only other clothes available are stored in trunks that date back at least fifty years.”
“Your husband?”
“Died about five months ago.”
Rafe ducked his head a little in embarrassment. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean...”
Gen offered him a smile. “It’s all right. Really. We’d been... estranged for a while. How ’bout that aspirin, and I’ll go hunting upstairs for you?”
He had no choice but to follow her toward the kitchen. “He didn’t leave any clothing here?”
Already reaching into the cabinet, Gen smiled. She just couldn’t see Rafe in the surgically tailored three-piece suits and Izod shirts and Dockers and Topsiders Michael had worn in Atlanta. They would have suffocated the man, sucking the very vitality from him. She saw him in hard-worn jeans and T-shirts, a sport coat thrown on if it really became necessary. Whatever Rafe really was, he wasn’t a banker.
“No,” she said as she offered him pills and water. “Michael never stayed here. He only visited twice, once when I got the place and once about a week before he died. He didn’t like idle hands or sea air.”
“You stay here alone?”
“Annie and I. It’s my family’s home. Passed down through the women, kind of, only my mother never really wanted it. So I took it.”
Aspirin still in hand, Rafe looked up toward the front of the house, where they could just see the view. “I’m glad.”
Gen looked the same way, saw the same wild ocean and sand, the gnarled live oaks and hoary Spanish moss, envisioned it at its best, with seabirds in flight, gulls and terns and herons, the dolphins that sometimes came to call, the sunrises that were straight out of an impressionist painting. She thought of what she would have lost without it all, and she found a smile.
“Me, too.” And with that she turned back to the task at hand. “Now, you see if you can scrounge up something to eat in here, and I’ll go up and try and find something in a size... tall. Okay?”
He nodded. And Gen did the last thing she wanted to do. She went in search of her ancestors.
The attic was reached by a little ladder that pulled down from the ceiling of her bedroom. Gen had known all along that it was there. The workmen who had redone the house for her had reported on the pile of unused furniture and storage chests that resided in the dim, low-ceilinged space, but Gen had never had even the slightest inclination to go up and wade through it all. History had never been a topic of interest to either side of her family. Her father, when asked, had laughed and said that he came from a long line of horse thieves. Her mother had simply said that she came from a long line of plain, hard-working people. No kings or visionaries or warriors. And Gen, never so much a curious child as an obedient one, had never thought to search further.
Like her parents, she had spent most of her time concentrating on the present and future. Schooling, career, marriage, family. Her history was tucked away in the attic, where it belonged. She kept it out of some kind of respect, but that didn’t mean she wanted to try on old hats with ostrich feathers and pretend she was visiting the queen. Which meant that she was climbing into unclaimed territory.
It was hot up here, close, with frail, uncertain lighting from a single bare bulb and the constant complaints of the house overhead. The rain spattered against tin like ricocheting bullets, and the wind probed weakened corners for entry. Shadows ruled in the musty room, giving Gen the creeps.
The workmen hadn’t lied. There were probably some valuable pieces up here, the detritus of over a hundred and fifty years of collecting by the various O’Shea’s Seven Oaks that had occupied this site over the decades since that distant O’Shea ancestor decided he could make a go of this isolated place.
But Gen was only looking for trunks, boxes, anything that might hide apparel that would fit a man of Rafe’s size. Suddenly she wished she knew a little more about her family. It would at least be helpful to know whether any of them had been his size. Or almost his size. For all she knew, the men married to the various O’Shea descendants had all been jockeys.
Gen stood where she was for long minutes, trying desperately to get up the courage to open even one of the old steamer trunks that cluttered the floor. There was an old bicycle up here, a hat tree and three very old hunting guns. Hatboxes and baskets, all tidy and untouched, as if deliberately put away for good along with their owners, so that the next occupants wouldn’t be touched by them.
Gen was genuinely spooked by the place, especially knowing that she’d lived within ten feet of it off and on for the past six years. No wonder she had strange dreams in this house.
She should have come up here. She should have laid more claim to her heritage than saving it for a summer home. Well, she’d do better for Annie, she swore. That is, if she ever got the nerve to look at it now.
“Gen?”
She jumped at least a foot.
