Riddle Me This?

Chapter 7

Sweat dampened my face. I kept my eyes on the dash in front of me, told myself it was from the way the sun streamed into the truck and overwhelmed the air conditioning. The heat was why I was sweating, why I couldn't feel cool. Liar. You're nervous.

"Ready?" Matt asked me.

"I guess." I popped the door open, hopped out of the truck, and stopped short. The roof, the windows, the porch, and even the gravel front walk, all the same as the only other place I'd seen it. This was the same house in the photo of Gavin and Maggie. "Um..."

"Looks familiar." Matt's door clunked shut.

"Just a little." How close were they? Mildred knew his son, at any rate. A movement in the window, the edge of a curtain falling, caught my eye. Was Mildred watching, since she knew to expect us? "I guess...now or never, right?"

"Right."

I let my breath out and climbed the steps, pressed the doorbell, and waited. Not two seconds passed before the door pulled inward. Mildred Barnes was short, maybe half a foot shorter than my five feet nine inches, and her dark skin wrinkled along the sides of her face, right where laugh lines would be. She smiled, the creases her eyes around her eyes deepened.

"Hello! You must be Anya. Come in, please." She turned around, beckoned me to follow, and kept talking. "Y'all have a seat. Can I get you anything to drink?"

"No thank you." I stepped into the cool house, watching the tiny woman shuffle to her living room. The thick shag carpet in her house, deep brown and still soft, muffled our steps as we followed along.

"Well all right, then. Sit down, sit down." Photographs of landscapes covered the wall, some new and some old. She smiled widely at Matt. "And what's your name, honey?

He cleared his throat. "Matt Dobken."

She nodded. "Well, nice to meet you."

A photo hung on the wall above a faded armchair. It looked like it might have been Grandfather Mountain, covered in green against a vivid blue sky. "I like that picture there."

She looked back at it and settled down in the chair. "Thank you. My granddaughter does some photography sometimes. She took that one last summer." Then she gestured at the couch again. "Have a seat and go ahead with whatever it was you wanted to ask me."

I lowered myself onto the flowery print sofa, and the cushion sank deep as Matt sat beside me.

Mildred's sharp, dark eyes could have been staring straight through me. She smiled.

How do I start? "Well..."

Mildred didn't wait for me to speak. "My daughter told me that you think I knew your great-grandfather."

The answer croaked out of my throat. "Yes." I swallowed. "Elijah Dupree."

Mildred nodded slowly. "I did know him. Quite well, in fact. His father and my parents were good friends, a long time ago, though he was quite a bit older than them."

His father. Should I fake it? She didn't know why I was really here. "Who was his father?"

"His name was Gavin Dupree." She coughed. "He owned a lot of land back then, farmed most of it." Her sharp gaze found me again, waiting for me to press further.

Guess I'll have to ask the right questions. "What happened to the land?" I was prodding further, just like she wanted. Spooky. She's been waiting to pass all this on, but why?

"He got rid of it." Her eyes flicked to Matt now, and she stared at his face for a few moments. Did she see what I had seen in Matt's eyes when we stood in the dark the other night? "Mr. Dupree gave the land to my parents on the condition that they follow a particular set of instructions."