The House Guests Read online

  The librarians exchanged shrugs. The second librarian, as pale as the other was dark, answered. “I’ve lived here all my life, but I can’t remember a single Blair, except maybe one who came from somewhere else and ran the State Farm agency for a while. Mary Blair? Marilyn?” She looked at the other librarian, who shrugged. “Maybe ten years ago?”

  Savannah hadn’t smiled this much in months. “Mom left like twenty years ago.”

  Will stepped closer. “I think she might have been related to some Harts, too.”

  The woman in red was nodding now. “Now those we’ve had plenty of. Harts all over the place.”

  “Good people, the Harts,” the other woman said. “They been farmers, preachers, teachers. One Hart was a war hero. We lost him just about the time you’re talking about. Young man named Roger. My daughter went to school with him, which is why I remember. A nice boy, too. He died in Afghanistan sometime right around then.”

  “That’s so sad,” Savannah said without missing a beat. “He’s probably buried in Arlington Cemetery?”

  “No, he’s buried right here. Just outside town. Which way’d you come in?”

  Savannah pointed and the librarian explained they’d passed the cemetery a few miles from town.

  “I don’t suppose you have newspapers from that time?” Will asked. “I doubt she’s related to this Roger, but she’d be interested.”

  “We might find a Blair or two,” Savannah added.

  The librarian in red took over again. “The Blayney Independent was still being published. We have all the issues on microfilm, but somebody digitized the paper copies we had from 2000 to 2005. Who was that again?” The librarians consulted each other, and the first woman nodded. “Yep, high school journalism class did it for a service project. We don’t get much call for it, but it’s there. You could check on one of our computers. I’ll set you up. You’re supposed to have a library card, but since you’re from out of town, you can just show me your driver’s license.”

  “While we’re at it, how about phone books?” Will pulled out his wallet so she could note his information. Savannah was impressed.

  The library was small, but one wing had six computers, two of which weren’t being used. The second librarian settled them at one and helped them get to the Blayney Independent site, while the first went to retrieve phone books. “We do close at six. You’re staying in town tonight?”

  “We haven’t decided,” Savannah said. “We thought we’d make it to Atlanta today, but there was so much to see along the way. We’ll look for a place to stay near here and head that way tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Your parents won’t worry?”

  “We stay in close touch. And they don’t get to Atlanta until tomorrow, either.”

  “My, they seem to have raised two considerate, levelheaded children. If you want a place to stay, the Sinclair Motor Court just beyond town is cheap and clean. You’ll be safe there. Just call ahead and explain the situation and tell ’em I sent you. They won’t get fussy that way.”

  Savannah thanked her. When the woman was gone, she pulled up a chair beside Will, who was already starting a search.

  “Sounds like we have a place to stay tonight,” she said.

  “I thought we’d sleep in the car.”

  “This was my doing, and I brought plenty of cash. But no hanky-panky.”

  He looked at her like she’d lost her mind. “Ew.” He made a face.

  “Well, I don’t think of you that way, either.”

  Will clicked on the magnifying glass to enable the search function and typed in Hart for the first issue. There were six separate results. He and Savannah scanned each one. Two were ads for Hart Backhoe and Dump Truck Services. Two more mentioned a cafeteria worker named Rose Hart at a local elementary school, who had received an award for saving a student with a peanut allergy.

  “That poor kid sure lived in the wrong part of the country,” Savannah said. “Good old Rose.”

  The last two Harts were high school students. Roger Hart was not among them.

  “Try Blair before you go to the next issue,” Savannah said.

  He did, with no results.

  The first librarian arrived with a stack of local phone books. Savannah thumbed through them noting the addresses of half a dozen Harts and the absence of Blairs.

  “Here’s a Blair,” Will said. “Ted Blair, from Austin, Texas. He was in an accident out on the highway. Sounds like he was just driving through on his way somewhere else.” He was quiet a moment as he kept looking. “Hey, here’s a couple of hits for Roger.”

  Savannah pulled her chair closer and read the text. “‘He received an award for participation in the U.S. Army Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps at the high school.’”

  “That makes sense since he went right into the military.” Will found another mention in a list of graduating seniors. “There he is, but my mom was two years younger. So she’s not listed.”

  Savannah was beginning to wonder if that was the only reason.

  The biggest success came with a slightly different version of the article about Roger’s death, complete with the same grainy photo in black-and-white.

  Will quietly read it out loud and paused at the end. “His birthday is tomorrow.”

  Savannah sat back. The online article hadn’t listed a birthday. “Talk about being here on the right weekend.”

  “He would have turned thirty-six tomorrow. Mom’s thirty-four.” He paused. “I’ll be seventeen in a couple of weeks.”

  Savannah hadn’t realized his birthday was so close. “When?”

  “The twenty-sixth. Roger was only a little older than me when he died.”

  “We should take flowers to the cemetery or something.” Savannah knew that was inadequate, but she didn’t know what else to say.

  By the time six o’clock arrived, they had done what they could. Savannah had noted addresses for Harts. Will had found nothing more of interest.

  “We should have asked if they had high school yearbooks!” Savannah couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of that. “I bet they did.”

  “We can come back tomorrow.”

  Only as it turned out, they couldn’t. When they turned in the phone books and asked about the yearbooks, they were told the library was closed on weekends that month.

  “Shortfall in the county budget,” the librarian in red told them. “We’re the first thing they cut.”

  They thanked both women for their help, promised they would be careful on the road and went out to the car. On the way Savannah motioned for Will to stand in front of the library for a photo. “To remember today by.”

  He didn’t look happy, but the setting sun was positioned just right to beam down on him like a halo. When she told him, he laughed and she caught the photo at exactly the right moment.

  “I’ll send you this one,” she said, after she checked it. “You actually look half human.”

  “What would I do without your love?”

  She made a face. “Since there’s still light. Some of the Harts in the phone book lived along Satwiller Road. I found it on Google Maps. We could drive that way and see what it looks like.”

  “This feels like a wild-goose chase.”

  “Let’s give it a try. Then we can eat and I’ll call the motor court.”

  Satwiller Road was only five miles from downtown, a long, windy road lined with cotton fields and acres of trees that Will identified as pecans and maybe peach. Gardens were freshly plowed in front of brick or frame houses. The light was fading and there were no Harts on mailboxes.

  “Is it weird to think your father might have lived out here?” Savannah asked as they headed to the diner.

  “You want to know what’s weird? My mom made it sound like the Blairs had been in Blayney practically forever, like a big clan of feuding Hatfie
lds and McCoys. But those librarians didn’t know any Blairs, and no local Blairs showed up. Wouldn’t the kind of feud my mom told me about be news? People arrested maybe, or at the very least remembered? She said both families had lived here for generations.”

  Savannah had been mulling that over since they left the library. “Maybe the feud seemed like a huge deal to her and your dad, and their immediate families were still hanging on to bad feelings. But maybe nobody else in town really knew or understood.”

  “That doesn’t say a thing about why no Blairs are showing up.”

  “Maybe we’ll find out more when we ask around tonight.”

  Unfortunately they didn’t. They ran into more dead ends, and after a fried chicken dinner with crowder peas and corn bread, after they had checked into the motor court and were both trying to fall asleep on opposite ends of a stuffy dormitory-style room, they didn’t discuss what was beginning to seem obvious.

  They might leave Blayney tomorrow afternoon knowing as little as they had when they drove out of Tarpon Springs that morning.

  * * *

  By the time they got to the cemetery the next afternoon, they hadn’t learned much more. The morning clerk at the motor court, who had been every bit the gossip they’d hoped for, didn’t know any Blairs, but she, too, remembered Roger Hart.

  “He was such a fine boy,” she said. “From a good family, not one that put on airs or walked around with noses in the air, if you know what I mean? They were down-home folks, and we were all broken up when Roger was killed.”

  “I guess the Hart family had been here for generations?” Savannah asked.

  “Well, there have been Harts here awhile, sure. Good solid folk who just do what they have to. I’m not all that sure he was related. He was a town boy, and most Harts lived out in the country.”

  After checking out, they’d walked around town again. Nothing else had turned up, and while Savannah had wanted to buy flowers for Roger’s grave, even the downtown grocery store was closed for the morning. They headed to the cemetery empty-handed.

  She was beginning to realize how far her imagination had carried them with very little payback. Roger Hart had lived here. They’d known that. Roger Hart had died in Afghanistan. That, too, was a given. All they were really taking away from this trip was the absence of Blairs in Blayney, and questions about the so-called feud.

  The medium-sized cemetery was divided by a circular road around most of the grave sites, which, like a pie, were divided into eight sections by narrow paths. The site was well tended with neatly trimmed grass and shade trees. Simple headstones appeared to be clustered in family groups.

  They weren’t alone, but the sky was clouding over, and Savannah guessed that most visitors had already come and gone. The few people she could see were some distance away.

  “I thought maybe the veterans’ graves would all have flags. I don’t see any.” Savannah started down one of the paths, gazing at headstones. She stopped in front of two graves, John and Sylvia Grady, and at their feet the smaller grave of baby Jesse. She no longer saw this trip as an adventure.

  “I think they only put flags on veterans’ graves on special days, like the Fourth of July or Veterans Day,” Will said. “Let’s stay in the same section, but take different sides, fan out and come back together until we finish it.”

  The idea was as good as any. She wondered how many other tiny graves she would encounter. She thought of Gen, who had willingly given up her own baby to be raised by its father, and realized she could more easily imagine how Sylvia had felt than how her own mother had coped. Neither of her parents had ever discussed their feelings.

  They were walking through the third section, nearing the point of the triangle, when she noticed Will had stopped in front of a marble headstone not far from a maple tree. She waited, and when he didn’t move away, she walked along the path between rows of graves and joined him.

  “Find something?”

  He nodded. She had a feeling speaking wasn’t on his immediate agenda.

  She looked down and read “Roger Sawyer Hart, 1983-2002.” And under that: “Beloved son of Matthew and Theresa Hart.” Farther below, attached to the headstone, was a small bronze medallion featuring a flag folded into a triangle with the word Veteran at the top and U.S. Army at the bottom.

  Will swallowed hard. “I read that when a soldier dies, an honor guard conducts a ceremony and plays taps at the funeral. Afterward they fold the flag the way it’s folded there and present it to the next of kin.”

  Savannah took his hand and squeezed it, dropping it after a moment because she suspected he might need it to wipe his eyes. “I remember how I felt when it was my father in the ground. Like the bottom had fallen out of the world.”

  “I wonder, you know, would he be proud of me? Or would he think I didn’t measure up?”

  “Why would he think that? You’re, like, perfect. Smart and nice. Sometimes too nice, but I bet college will take care of that.”

  He gave a strangled laugh. “Or you will.”

  “He would love you.”

  “I missed out on all the dad stuff. My mom tried to fill in, and she did a great job. But it wasn’t the same.”

  Amber had devoted her life to raising Will when surely she’d had other plans before Roger died. And she was a great mom. Savannah didn’t question that. But she did question how honest Amber had been. Because while Roger Hart was lying in the ground at their feet, just the way they had expected him to be, nothing else Amber had told her son rang true anymore.

  They were still standing quietly side by side when she heard footsteps and turned to see a middle-aged man in jeans and a dark jacket over a dress shirt coming toward them. He wore a ball cap and dark sunglasses. The man seemed focused on Roger’s grave, and she only had enough time to whisper: “Company. Let me do the talking.”

  Will looked surprised and turned, but by then the man was almost on top of them. He stopped a few feet away. “I’m sorry. Did I give you a scare?”

  Savannah smiled. “No, but hardly anybody’s here today, so I was surprised.”

  “I won’t ask if you knew Roger. You’re way too young for that.”

  She made up a story. “We’re doing a school project on the war, you know, in Afghanistan. And Will here thought it might be a good idea to get a photo of the grave of a soldier, a real one, who died there. We just found it. Did you know him?”

  “He was a fine young man. The kind you hope your daughter will marry.”

  Savannah felt a chill run up her spine. “Would you mind telling us about him? We were going to look him up online. But it would be great to talk to somebody who knew him.”

  He seemed pleased, almost as if talking about Roger was a way to honor him. “Rog was a smart boy. I always thought he ought to go to college before he joined the service. But you know, 9-11 changed everything for a lot of young men. He signed up right away. They sent him to Afghanistan, and of course, he was so young, with no skills, no technical education to keep him off the front lines. Anyway, he fell quickly.”

  They stood in respectful silence. Finally the man put out his hand. “Peter Drake.”

  They both shook hands with him, and Savannah gave her full name. Will only gave his first, but Mr. Drake didn’t seem to notice.

  “You know, today is Roger’s birthday,” he said. “I mean, if he’d lived. I come here on this date every year if I’m in town. I travel for work, but I try to be here.”

  “You must have been close to him,” Savannah said. “I mean, to try so hard to come to his grave.”

  “He was quite a young man. But, of course, my daughter was the one who was close to him. They were going to be married. For a while she was the one to visit on his birthday, but a few years after Rog was killed, she met and married another fellow and moved to California. So I come here to honor him and to pay tribute to his service t
o our country.”

  Savannah hadn’t breathed during this recital of facts. Now she gulped in air. “Your daughter? He was your daughter’s fiancé?”

  “Quite a coincidence you came today, isn’t it?”

  “Definitely,” Will mumbled.

  “I’m curious,” Savannah said. “Is his family still in town? Because I wonder if they would let us interview them. Unless you think it would be too painful.”

  “They moved away not long after he died. I think being here was too much of a reminder. And every time they saw my Lucy, they were reminded all over again of the wedding they never got to see.”

  “I can imagine,” Savannah said, although her imagination had officially been stretched to the limit.

  “They were quite a couple,” Mr. Drake said.

  Will was silent, so Savannah continued the conversation. “It’s such a small town. I bet they knew each other for practically forever. Unless one of them moved here later.”

  “No, they were friends starting in sixth grade, and it just grew from there. By the time they were in high school, it was pretty clear how it would end. Lucy started saving for their wedding when she was a junior. Awful, awful shock for her when the news came.”

  Savannah understood more about shock than she had an hour ago. “I’m so sorry. It’s all terrible.”

  Mr. Drake smiled sadly. “Would you like to see a picture of them? It’s like a little piece of our past that’s still precious, despite everything that followed. The photo was taken the day they got engaged, right before he left for boot camp.” He gave a little laugh. “He still had his hair that day. He sure looked different with a military haircut.”

  “I’d love to see it,” Savannah said.

  “So would I.” Will sounded as if he was choking on the words.

  Mr. Drake pulled out his wallet, opened it and dug deep behind a couple of credit cards in one of the slots. Finally, he took them out and then felt around until he was able to tug out the photo.

  He started to hold it up, as if reluctant to hand his precious memento to a stranger, but finally he held it out to Savannah.