The Strange Story of...

The Strange Story of Tom Hartford

          For six months out of every year, I go to stay with my Uncle Thomas in London, England. I know what you're thinking: What kind of parents of any sixteen-year-old girl would send their daughter away for six months? Well, let's just say that my uncle is the only one to keep up my family's generation long business, and that parents wanted me to learn it. But I'm getting ahead of myself, as usual. I should probably start from the beginning: my official "training" started when I was twelve years old...

        ---

      "And right up here is where you'll be staying." Uncle Thomas led me upstairs, holding my bulging duffel bags over his shoulder, though I'd offered to carry them myself. I hadn't known what to think when my parents had told me to pack for six months in England. I had basically taken everything out of my dresser drawers and shoved it into two medium-sized bags. 

      Uncle Thomas, or simply Tom, as he told me to call him, lived in a townhouse shoved between a pizza place and a laundromat. It had two stories and an attic. The first story was made up of the front room, the bathroom, the kitchen, and Tom's extensive private library. The second story was his "private floor", where I was pretty much banned from. Which left me with the attic, which was a cot, a tiny nightstand, an ugly lamp, a window that wouldn't open, and about twenty years' worth of dusty, archaic garbage. Quite the dream room, right?

    That first day, I was furious with my parents for sending me there. Tom lived in a neighborhood that was ninety percent old people and ten percent even older people. He was four miles from the nearest library, eight miles from the nearest movie theater, and the grocery store was so far that he paid someone to shop for him to spare himself the trip. He didn't have a car, and had sent a taxi to the airport for me. When I asked him why, he told me to quit asking stupid questions. It looked like the next six months would be pure boredom. Until that first night. 

    I had just eaten dinner. Well, "eaten" probably isn't the right word; I had swallowed my uncle's food and managed to keep it down. He had cooked a soup that was noticeably thick and an...irregular shade of green. I had asked him what was in it, and he had simply said it was a secret recipe. I didn't tell him I'd seen him add, among other things, seaweed to the pot. 

   I was contemplating six months of boredom and bad food when the door bell rang. "Nora, get the door!" My uncle was in his library, and had simply glared at me when I asked if I could go in there. 

   "Cora," I mumbled under my breath. He still hadn't gotten my name right. Over the past four hours, I had been called Nora, Lora, and Flora. Along with being self-centered, my uncle was a little scatter-brained. 

   I opened the door. A very-worried looking man was standing there, and seemed surprised to see me. 

   "Hello," he said, "who are you?"

    "Cora Hartford."

    "Hartford? Oh, yes, yes, you're the American niece. I should have known." He gave me a strained smile. It was clear he had something else on his mind. "Is your uncle home?" 

    "Um, yeah. Just a sec." I turned around and yelled for Uncle Tom. I didn't expect him to come as fast as he did. The way he'd treated me all day, I'd assumed he wouldn't rush for anyone, especially not strangers at night. But he couldn't have gotten to the door faster if he'd been shot out of a cannon. 

    "Archie?" he asked. He clearly knew the man.

    "Hello, Thomas." 

    "Another disturbance?" I saw my uncle's shoulders sink. Whatever the 'disturbance' was, the thought of it clearly exhausted him.