The Peach Keeper (9 page)

It was those slow months leading into spring when many transplants got restless and decided to leave. Willa had seen it happen time and time again. Rachel had lasted here more than a year, but Willa could see how hard the cold months were on someone as hyper as she was. Willa was dreading this coming winter. She was afraid she was going to lose Rachel to it. And Rachel and her coffee and chocolate were the only things making life here bearable, the only things she really looked forward to now that the restoration of the Madam was almost complete and she didn’t have an excuse to drive up Jackson Hill every day to see how it was going.

“Willa, look,” Rachel said at about four o’clock that afternoon, when they finally had a quiet moment in the store. Willa turned to see that Rachel had stopped restocking the snack case at the coffee bar, and was looking out the window. “Tall, dark, and rich is heading this way.”

Willa looked up to see Colin Osgood walking by the store window, heading for the door.

“Oh, crap. Tell him I’m not here,” she said, and turned to the storeroom behind the counter.

“What is the matter with you?” Rachel called after her.

Willa disappeared, closing the door behind her, just as she heard the store bell ring.

What was the matter with her? That was a good question. But it was hard to explain, especially to someone like Rachel. The winters were tough on Willa, too—maybe even more so, because she knew she
couldn’t leave. That was the big difference between Willa and Rachel, between Willa and all the other transplants. Her grandmother was here. Her father’s house was here. Her history was here. Sometimes she would lean against the front counter, chin in hand, and stare at the snow, craving something else, something different from life, which made her feel that nervous pull in her stomach, like how she would feel when weeks would go by in school after she’d promised herself she wouldn’t do anything stupid again. The feeling would just get worse and worse, until she found herself hanging a rope of leotards out the dance tower window at two in the morning, just so everyone coming to school would think that a group of dancers had gotten stuck up there and had to tie their clothes together and climb out naked.

That’s why she wanted to stay far, far away from Colin Osgood. No one,
no one
, had ever said that she’d inspired them before. No one had ever said they’d admired her for what she’d done. It went against everything she’d been told, everything anyone who had ever suffered through high school wanted to believe, that if you just tried hard enough, you could actually get away from who you used to be. But not for the first time, she found herself wondering: What if who she was then was her truer self?

She heard voices out in the store. The timbre of Colin’s low voice, Rachel’s laughter.

Then, suddenly, the knob to the storeroom was turning. Her back was to the door, so she instinctively pushed against it. But he had the advantage of more
strength and momentum, and it was a losing battle. She gave up and stepped out of the way, letting the door fling open.

Colin reached out and caught the door before it hit the wall, then looked at her strangely. It had been a long day, and her hair felt about two feet thick, so at one point she’d taken a bandana from stock and used it to push her hair away from her face. Completing today’s lovely ensemble were jeans, platform sneakers, and a T-shirt that read:
Go Au Naturel! Au Naturel Sporting Goods and Café, Walls of Water, North Carolina
. It, of course, had a coffee stain on it. “Why were you leaning against the door?” he asked.

“I told you you wouldn’t see me if I saw you first.”

“I didn’t think that meant you would literally hide from me.”

“Not one of my finer moments,” she admitted.

He was wearing khakis and loafers. His aviators were tucked into the collar of his light blue T-shirt. He looked so put-together and in control of himself. This was apparently the unique power of all Osgoods—their ability to make her feel slightly out of control.

“What do you want, Colin?”

“I want you to come up to the Madam with me,” he said. “There’s something I want to show you.”

Okay, that got her attention, but then, he probably assumed that it would. “I can’t. I’m working,” she said. To prove her point, she picked up a box of paper cups and inched past him through the doorway.

“It won’t take long,” he said, following her across the store to the coffee bar. “We found something on the
property today, and maybe you can help us figure out who it belonged to.”

“I doubt it. I don’t know anything about that house,” she said. And it was true, unfortunately. Her grandmother had never talked about her life there. She handed the cups to Rachel, who was giving her a very juvenile you’re-talking-to-a-boy look. She turned around and found Colin closer than she’d expected. “What did you find?”

He leaned forward, tall and easy, and smiled down on her. “Come with me and find out,” he said seductively. He smelled intriguing, different from the sandalwood and patchouli she was used to—the National Street set was notoriously bohemian. Colin’s scent was sharp and fresh, both foreign and oddly familiar. Green, expensive.

She took a step back. “I can’t.”

“Are you saying you’re not curious at all?”

“Oh, she’s curious,” Rachel said.

Willa cut her eyes at her.

“Then come with me,” Colin said. “It won’t take long.”

It was too much to resist. She’d been wanting to see it for over a year, and now she had the perfect excuse, one that didn’t involve evening dresses, small talk, or Paxton Osgood. It did, however, involve Colin Osgood, his confusing motives, and some definite sexual tension. But he would be leaving in a month, so it wasn’t as if she would have to hide from him forever. “Rachel, hold down the fort,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

“Take your time,” Rachel said with a knowing smile.
“I’m forming some theories about cappuccino with one raw sugar.”

Yes, Willa just bet she was.

“She remembered my order,” Colin said as he stepped ahead of Willa and opened the door for her.

“She does that. I’ll follow you in my Jeep,” she said as she started to turn to where she’d parked farther down the sidewalk.

He grabbed her elbow. “That’s okay. I’ll drive us.” He pointed to the big black Mercedes in front of them. He clicked the key fob he was holding, and the lights flashed and the doors unlocked. She recognized this car. It was hard to miss. It belonged to his father.

He stepped off the curb and opened the car door for her. She sighed, deciding that arguing would only take more time, and got in. She was almost swallowed by the huge leather seats. Once Colin got behind the big wheel—there was something seriously overcompensating about this car—he put on his aviators and backed out. He smoothly maneuvered the car through the traffic on National Street, one hand on the steering wheel, the other on his knee.

After several minutes of silence, she turned to him and said, “Why are you going to be here a whole month?”

The side of his mouth lifted at her insinuation that it felt like forever. “I took some time off to help Paxton with the Mad am. And to attend the gala.”

“Where do you live now?”

“New York is my home base. But I travel a lot.”

Just then they turned the corner to the steep driveway
up to the Madam, and she stopped trying to make small talk. She’d never been beyond this point. She turned her attention away from Colin and watched the house as it got closer. Giddiness felt like her skin, her whole self, was stretching into a smile.
This is going to be something significant
, she thought.
No ghosts. This is going to feel like coming home
.

When he stopped the car in the luggage drop-off lane in front of the house, she couldn’t wait to get out. Something was off, though. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it. The wind blew in a sharp gust past her, sounding like voices in her ears. She turned in the direction of the wind and whispers. At the edge of the plateau, there was a backhoe at work and a few men in hard hats were standing around.

“The tree is gone,” she said, realizing what was missing.

Colin walked around to her side of the car. “The peach tree, yes.”

“It was a peach tree?” That surprised her. “I didn’t realize peach trees could grow at this elevation.”

“They can grow, they just can’t bear fruit. The springs are too cold here. Kills the buds.” He leaned against the car beside her.

“Then why plant a peach tree here?”

He shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. Paxton said it wasn’t in any of the old photos of the place, so it had to have come up after your family moved out. Since it’s not historical, and not fruit-bearing, she decided it could go.”

“How did you know it was a peach tree if it’s never
borne fruit? I don’t think anyone knew it was a peach tree.”

“I’m a landscape architect,” he said.

It was all starting to make sense. “Ah. You’re doing the landscaping. That’s why you’re here.”

“Yes. I drew up the plans, then contracted the work out before I arrived. My biggest contribution was finding a live oak to put on the property. I found a one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old one over in Buncombe County. It was being threatened by development, and the developer didn’t want to get into it with the environmentalists, so he agreed to split the cost with us in order to transplant it here. It’s been almost a year in the making, getting the tree ready. The highway is going to have to close on Tuesday just to move it here.” He turned to her and smiled. “You should come watch.”

“Come watch you plant a tree? Gee, you know how to show a girl a good time.”

That made him laugh. “It’s a lot more than that. Trust me. How can you own a sporting goods store and not like nature?”

Before she could answer, one of the men at the dig site suddenly yelled, “Hey, Stick Man!”

Colin turned his head but otherwise didn’t move from his relaxed position, leaning against the car. She could feel a ripple of tension go through him, though. In what she knew with absolute certainty was a deliberate maneuver, he stared at the man who had called to him, until it became clear he wasn’t going to yell back.

The man sighed and walked from the dig site over to the car. As he got closer, Willa recognized him as Dave
Jeffries. They had all gone to high school together. He’d been on the football team, and was still thick in the chest, though less from muscle these days. “What’s up, Dave?” Colin asked as soon as Dave stopped in front of him.

“Just after you left, we dug up something else.” He held up a heavy rusted cast-iron frying pan, still crusted with dirt.

Colin took it from him and studied it. “A frying pan?”

“Yep.”

“This just gets more interesting.”

Dave smiled when he saw Willa. “Willa Jackson,” he said, pushing his hard hat back. “I almost never see you around. Remember that time you programmed the period bell to ring every five minutes? That was great. We kept filing out into the hallway every five minutes, and the teachers kept trying to get us back into the classrooms.” He gave her an assessing look, then wagged his finger between her and Colin. “You and the Stick Man aren’t together, are you? Because you could give ol’ Dave a try if you’re lonely.”

“Tempting offer, Dave,” Willa said. “But no thanks.”

Dave laughed and punched Colin on the arm with what seemed like entirely too much force. But what did she know? Maybe it was a man thing. “Good luck,” he said to Colin.

As soon as he walked away, Willa turned to Colin and said, “Stick Man?”

“That’s what they used to call me in high school. Thanks to Dave.”

“Because you’re so tall?”

“That’s what everyone thought.”

She waited, then said, “You’re not going to tell me?”

He sighed. “Dave called me Stick Man because he said I acted like I had a stick up my ass.”

Willa was so surprised that she laughed without meaning to. She put her hand to her mouth and said, “Sorry.”

“Well, to be fair, it was true. I was a little rigid. It was how the men I knew acted, so I thought I was supposed to act that way, too. Guys like Dave loved to make fun of guys like me, guys who seemed to have no concept of fun. I can’t tell you how great it felt our senior year when everyone thought I was the Joker. They looked at me and thought,
Wow, I didn’t know he had that in him
.”

“I remember that feeling,” she said. Then, before they could get into another discussion about bravery, or her apparent lack of it now, she asked, “So, what did you want to show me here?”

He took off his sunglasses and hooked them on the collar of his shirt, then motioned for her to follow him up the steps to the front portico of the house. The place was huge, much larger than she’d imagined from a distance. It overwhelmed her. She’d spent so much time watching this place from a distance that it felt faintly surreal to actually be climbing the steps, to actually touch the columns.

“While digging up the stump of the peach tree today, we found some buried treasure. A suitcase and a fedora. And apparently a frying pan,” he added, giving the rusty thing a spin in his hand. “When they showed me
the fedora, it gave me chills, because every kid who has broken into the Madam for the past forty years has claimed to see a floating fedora in the house. My grandmother used to scare us by telling us stories of the ghost who lived here.”

“Did you ever see it?” she asked.

“I kept my eyes closed the one time I broke in here with my friends,” he said. “And I will deny that if you ever tell another person.”

She gave him an odd look. Who would she tell?

“What about you?” he asked. “Did you ever see it?”

“I never broke in,” she said.

“Are you kidding me? All the stunts you pulled, and you never once broke into the Madam?”

“I’ve never been this close to it before.” She actually reached out and touched the side of the house, as if to make sure it was real.

“Why not?”

She let her hand drop, afraid that she looked silly. “For the same reason everyone else broke in. Ghosts. My grandmother told me those stories, too.”