Family Skeletons Read online

  Chapter Seven

  Sunny was headed for the shed in the backyard in search of a ladder to climb into the attic with when she heard Jonathan’s truck returning. But instead of driving around to the back as he usually did, he parked in front and sounded the horn. When she walked around, she spied him standing at the rear of the SUV with its door down. His arms were wrapped around something big, and he was looking up at the porch.

  “Oh, there you are,” he said, jerking his head her way. “Can you open the front door?”

  As she got closer, she realized the object he embraced was a portable TV.

  “Sure.” She took the three stairs in two steps and held the door open. When he backed up, the TV’s cord dropped to drag along the dirt. “Hold it,” she warned. She jumped to the ground, stooped to pick up the cord and tucked it between his elbow and the television. “Let me guess. Monday night football.”

  He grinned and mounted the stairs, his head craning around the set so he could see each step. “I got a good deal. It was a discontinued floor model.”

  “We’re not going to be here very long,” she said doubtfully. “I’m not complaining—I like the idea of a TV to pass the evenings—but how much use are you going to get out of it?”

  “I want another one at home. I hadn’t gotten around to shopping for it yet, and this seemed like a good time.”

  She followed him into the house and pulled the screen closed. “Do you room with someone, too?”

  “No. I’ve got my own place.”

  He carried the set into the parlor while she thought that over. “One person needs two TVs?”

  The faded and scarred end table that belonged next to the overstuffed chair was now against the wall just inside the parlor door, and that’s where Jonathan put the TV. The lamp and phone that used to be on the end table had found new homes on the coffee table in front of the sofa. She’d passed by the room several times today but hadn’t noticed the new furniture rearrangement.

  Gee, Sunny, I’d never noticed how observant you are.

  “I’ve got one of those wide screens in the living room,” he explained. He stepped back, surveyed the set, then moved back and adjusted its position. “And I want a smaller set for the bedroom.”

  If you had company in bed, you wouldn’t need a TV.

  “We don’t have cable,” she reminded him.

  “An antenna is still on the roof, and the wire’s over there in the corner.” He nodded his head toward it. “So a television was in here at one time. I also bought a digital converter box. I should be able to work it out.”

  “Yeah, there was a TV in here.” With the help of a dolly she’d gotten it outside to the dumpster, but she hadn’t been able to heave it up and get it inside. The driver of the truck that picked up the dumpster was nice enough to take it anyway. “It was the first thing I tossed. Completely dead.”

  But she hadn’t been careful disconnecting it, she remembered, and she hoped now that she hadn’t killed the antenna wire. She decided not to mention that possibility.

  He glanced at her. “How long before dinner?”

  “How long do you want?”

  “Couple of hours?”

  “Okay. Need any help?”

  “No, thanks.” His eyes were studying the wall behind the set, the floor between it and the corner, then he frowned up at the ceiling.

  Cars, football, and TV hookups. Doesn’t take too much to keep a man happy.

  Jonathan was good at estimating the time it would take to complete a task; evidently he’d had some practice at this kind of thing. He had five minutes left when he called her, and familiar music sounded at the same moment she heard her name. Evidently Sunny hadn’t killed the antenna wire. She found him in the middle of the room, gaze on the set and remote in his hand. She went to stand next to him.

  Yep, he’d caught an I Love Lucy episode. Together they watched Lucy as she sampled an energizing vegetable brew that carried an alcoholic content. From the look of him, Jonathan was also enjoying Lucy’s wide-open eyes, slurred speech and limp elbow on the counter as the brew took over. This segment was filmed before either of them had been born, yet it was more entertaining than much of the new fare presented each fall. The episode was interrupted for a run of commercials.

  “Your time’s up,” Sunny told him. “If you don’t want dried meat and overdone veggies, we need to eat now.”

  With the remote he switched the power off. “When you use this, make sure you return it to the top of the set so we can always find it.”

  She nodded dutifully. “Yes, Jonathan.”

  “And you can no longer operate the lamp with the wall switch. You’ll have to turn it on manually.”

  “Okay.” She didn’t ask why. Ryan loved long, technical explanations that drove her to distraction. All she needed to know was how to turn something on and off, and the remote was right there on top of the TV.

  “And—”

  “Jonathan, there’s nothing worse than well done London broil. Get a move on.”

  Carrots and scalloped potatoes accompanied the slab of meat. She usually added thinly sliced onion to the potatoes, but tonight they were plain. She’d added nothing to anything and was determined to eat everything exactly the way it was.

  He cut a bite of meat and looked thoughtful as he chewed. He speared a few carrot slices and sampled them. He ate a forkful of potato, then put his fork down and stared at her. She ate quietly, aware of his gaze but not looking up.

  “Have you made your point, Sunny? Are you going to be back to normal by tomorrow?”

  She tried to put innocence in the look she gave him. “What’s normal?”

  After a long stare that she refused to return, he got up to get salt and pepper then liberally sprinkled each over the food on his plate. “I wish to hell I knew,” he said under his breath.

  You’re a bad influence on him, Sunny. You’ve taught him how to swear.

  After dinner he again gave her a wide berth, though he only went upstairs this time, not all the way to Castleton. She was rinsing the broiler pan when he turned the bathtub faucet on. Not getting even half enough water to rinse the sudsy pan, she made a face and turned the spigot off. He couldn’t have waited another thirty seconds?

  She dried the dishes in the drainer, cleaned the table and stove, even wiped off the handle of the refrigerator. Finally the bathtub was full enough to suit him and he turned the faucet off.

  “Thanks,” she muttered, finished the pan and put it away, and headed down the hall to sample the new TV. She punched the set on with the remote and checked the newspaper listings while waiting for it to warm up. Cat purred around her ankles, probably waiting for her mistress to sit down so she could jump into her lap. The kitten had enjoyed the London broil, cut up into tiny pieces, even without seasoning.

  Sunny looked curiously at the TV. It wasn’t doing anything. She retrieved the remote, lined it up exactly with the set, punched it off and then on again and still got nothing. Well, it was an ancient antenna up there. The breeze may have moved it just enough it’d lost the signal.

  She flicked the wall switch to turn on the lamp so she could read, but that didn’t work either, and she swore under her breath. He’d only spent two hours in here today and now nothing worked. Maybe he was one of those fiddlers who didn’t know how to fiddle.

  Impatiently she again picked up the remote. While she waited for the TV technician to get through with his bath and undo whatever he’d done to the lamp, she could at least get a head start on troubleshooting. Try to get reception on other channels, check the audio, play with controls. She punched up the volume, and then sheepishly remembered him telling her that the lamp had to be turned on manually. That problem would only be a problem if she had to admit to him that she’d forgotten something so simple. Nope, it wasn’t necessary to advertise that momentary lapse. She turned to reach for the lamp’s switch and the sudden blast of sound behind her jolted conscious thought right out of her.

 
; With a loud yelp she jumped and came down hard on Cat’s tail. The animal screeched then lit out for the hall by way of the coffee table and knocked the lamp over. It clattered to the floor, made a couple rattling spins before it shattered, and the crescendo behind her continued. She whirled toward the TV. Color, action, sound. Lots of sound.

  Feet thundered down the stairs. Jonathan grabbed the newel post and swiveled around, on full alert and gaze flitting everywhere. He skidded to a stop in the parlor doorway, stared at her, and she stared back. Soapy water drained down a muscular chest and hairy legs. Bare chest...bare legs...bare everything.

  “Are you okay?” His gaze again shot to the closed front door, down the hall, back to her. “What made you scream? What happened?”

  She said nothing. He stepped into the room and reached toward the TV, probably for the remote that wasn’t there. It wasn’t on the coffee table where she’d put it, either. Then he found it in the wreckage of the lamp, picked it up and turned off the blaring television.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” he said, returning the remote to where it belonged. The all-knowing male shook his head at the shortcomings of the unknowing female. “I know exactly what you did. If you’d listened when I tried to explain, you would’ve understood that the wall switch now operates the TV, not the lamp.” He added something that sounded like, “Save me from,” but that was all she caught.

  He looked at her and she looked at him, but she wasn’t looking at his eyes.

  It was his turn to jump.

  “I—oh, I—hey—uh...” He looked madly around as if for a foxhole to dive into. She handed him the newspaper. He covered himself with it, circled around her and backed out of the room. He ascended the stairs with all the dignity a naked man in his position could muster. Three steps from the top, he must’ve realized that since he was walking away from her it was his backside he should be shielding with the newspaper.

  The bathroom door closed.

  Sunny realized she was standing in the puddle he’d left on the hall’s hardwood floor, yet she couldn’t exactly recall leaving the parlor to track his exit. She should mop up the water before it spread to the parlor rug. She also needed to clean up the broken lamp pieces and apologize to Cat. But she remained still, gaze glued to the closed bathroom door.

  Is that what hung like a horse means?

  Chapter Eight

  In deportment, on a scale of one to ten, Jonathan was an eleven.

  When he appeared downstairs after his bath, he seemed somewhat stilted, but Sunny had already figured out he’d been born that way. Wearing a sea green sport shirt that very closely matched the color of his eyes, along with dark slacks and polished black shoes, he stood in the parlor doorway and waited to meet her eyes.

  “Excuse me,” he said formally.

  “Of...course,” she said.

  He then entered the room and settled in the other armchair to watch the action film Sunny had found. He sat ramrod straight, never looked her way, and absolutely no comment, wiseass or otherwise, occurred to her.

  The image of a naked and magnificent male was imprinted in her memory cells. Nothing either of them could do about that. But also impressive was his instant reaction when he’d heard her scream. With no thought for anything other than that something was wrong downstairs, down he had come.

  As she sat there and watched the few minutes of movie in between the several minutes of commercials, her respect for him grew. Odd, but she could think of very few men, other than Ryan, whom she respected. And none, other than Ryan, she’d ever felt she could count on.

  She swallowed hard and realized she’d lost the thread of the movie. It was disconcerting to discover how unaccustomed she was to thinking about issues of trust, and how accepting she’d been to having so few people in her life worthy of it. The kind of single-mindedness that brought a man stampeding down the stairs when someone screamed was close to incomprehensible to her.

  It was silly, if one wanted to look at it from a clinical angle, that Jonathan had come racing to her rescue because the TV had startled her after she’d jacked up the sound. Yet it still made her feel...funny inside. Quivery, unsettled, wistful. Yeah, funny. The word fit.

  * * *

  Early the next morning they got back to work. The trapdoor that allowed access to the attic was located in a recess off the upstairs hall, and Jonathan carried the stepladder they’d found in the shed up the stairs, while Sunny let Cat outside to roam. The kitten was lightning-fast, could climb anything, and Sunny didn’t want to contend with the animal while they explored the attic.

  Nor did she want the cat to decide she liked it up there and not want to come out.

  The ladder was in place when she joined Jonathan. Though he wasn’t exactly sloppily dressed, neither was he his usual natty self. He wore faded, serviceable chinos she could tell he’d actually done physical work in. Though they looked clean, they were permanently soiled. Evidently he worked on his truck himself and had packed his workpants just in case. Her jeans were the oldest she owned, one leg torn at the knee and the hems frayed.

  She noted that the trapdoor was laid back as she ascended the stairs, so he’d already been up there, but he was politely waiting for her before proceeding further. As she climbed toward him, the image of him at the bottom of the stairs in all his glory crossed her mind. She just let it cross and took hold of the ladder.

  “I should go first,” he said quickly.

  She paused and looked at him. “Why?”

  When he appeared not to have a ready answer, she grinned. “Ah, chivalry. It rears its head.” That was nicer than asking him if he really thought he was more capable than she. Because of course he did.

  He frowned, but she caught a look of sheepishness behind the frown.

  “I can handle my own spiders,” she told him. She climbed into the dark hole, waved one arm above her to search for the chain to the light bulb, took another step up and waved again, came in contact with it and yanked.

  “Not much wattage,” Jonathan said dubiously, watching the swinging bulb.

  “We can always get a bigger bulb. Uh, stronger, I mean? Brighter?”

  “I get the idea.”

  Wattage, Sunny, wattage. He already said it.

  She eased over to sit on the edge of the attic floor, checking first for anything that might be crawling there, then maneuvered her way off the ladder and into the attic proper. The attic was A-shaped, perhaps six feet high in the center and tapering to about five feet in height at the walls. Its circumference was slightly less than the size of the house itself, and it was chock full of stuff. This was going to be a job and a half.

  She turned back. “Your turn.”

  His head quickly appeared in the opening. The initial drudgery she’d felt regarding this chore had been replaced by a sense of adventure that he apparently shared. Possibly because they were sharing a heretofore unexperienced experience.

  The bulb was still swinging, distorting their shadows. She could do without that part of it. It was just a little too creepy. She stood upright and stepped back, allowing him room.

  “We’ll both have to stoop to get around near the walls,” she said. “But even you should be able to stand up straight in the center.”

  Then she turned in a slow circle, taking inventory. “Old suitcases and trunks, boxes, lots of them, some small pieces of furniture—” Her breath caught in a gasp.

  “What?” He whirled her way.

  “Ohh.” She felt deflated as the sudden shock receded. “It’s a dressmaker’s dummy.”

  He chuckled. “Headless and armless. Not too pretty, is it, especially with that weird, swinging...” He grabbed the bulb’s chain and held it, and the shadows stilled.

  “Thank you,” she said formally.

  “You’re welcome,” he said, imitating the same staid manner she’d used. Then, making her grin, he switched to the flippant way she usually talked. “But I remind you that you said you could take care of your own spiders.�
��

  “So what do we tackle first?” she wondered aloud, gaze wandering from box to crate to piece of junk. “You want to get back down there, and I’ll hand stuff down to you?”

  “Maybe we should do that the other way around,” he countered. “You’d have the wall and stair railing to help support the heavier pieces.”

  Yep, that handy dolly wasn’t going to help her out up here. “Okay,” she said. “But that means you’re on your own when you get to the spiders.”

  He slanted a sideways glance at her. “Sunny, I find it happening more and more often that I get a terrific urge to put you in your place.”

  Did that have a sexual edge to it, Jonathan?

  Don’t go there, Sunny.

  “So what’s first?” she asked. “Once we get rid of the lighter stuff, the furniture will go faster.”

  “Agreed.”

  Her eye caught a dismantled crib leaning against the wall behind a dusty duffel bag. Its position indicated it was one of the last pieces stored. “Must’ve been mine,” she murmured.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Nothing.”

  Well, that was an excellent opportunity you just blew, Sunny. Are you a coward or an idiot, or both?

  Oh, shut up.

  She grabbed the duffel bag. It was surprisingly light, so she also took the garment bag that lay over the top of a trunk and placed both pieces next to the trapdoor. “I’m going down with these. You can hand me down whatever comes next.”

  The hall quickly became littered with boxes and bags. They laughed over several paper bags of used Christmas wrap, folded neatly and then stored away to disintegrate over the years.

  “Sunny, I think I just found something,” he hollered down to her. “It looks like an authentic Victrola. It’s even got the trademark of a dog listening to a gramophone.”

  “Yeah?” She grinned up at the opening.

  “It’s a cabinet, covered with an old sheet. Let’s take it down last. We’ll have to take special care—oh, there you are.”