The final article was about Ellie joining the civil rights organization SCOPE. It’s the last few lines of that article that stick in my mind as I listen to Miss Pat malign her daughter. Eleanor Hockley had a long history of good deeds in Round Hill, the article said. When she was eleven, she nearly lost her own life when she tried unsuccessfully to save a Negro girl who’d fallen into Little Heaven Lake.
The imagery was horrible. I pictured the little girl being sucked under that murky black water. I’m going to get my property fenced off from that lake if it’s the last thing I do.
“Last night, I came across some newspaper articles my husband must have found as he researched Hockley Street,” I say. “I saw—”
“Why would your husband do that?” she asks. “Research Hockley Street?”
“Because we were moving there,” I say. Maybe she hasn’t made the connection that I’m her new neighbor. “I live in that house at the end of—”
“Oh, right.” She shakes her head. “I hoped I’d be dead by the time all that building nonsense started.”
“It’s very noisy, I know.”
“Tell your husband to come talk to me,” she says. “I can tell him anything he wants to know about Hockley Street, as well as some things he’d probably rather not know.”
My chest squeezes tight. How I wish I could send Jackson down the street to talk to her! “I’m afraid I lost my husband in an accident earlier this year,” I say.
“Oh. Right. Sorry.” She scratches her temple. “Ellie said something about that. How old was he?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“Mine made it to forty-five,” she says.
“Oh, that’s still young,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
“I blame that on Eleanor, too,” she says, and I have the feeling Ellie couldn’t win with this woman, no matter what she did. “She dragged our family down,” she says, smacking her palm on her thigh. “You don’t put other people first. You put your family first. It’s her fault Brenda got widowed at twenty years old and lost her baby. It’s her fault her father—my Danny—killed himself. That’s not a girl who loves her family. That’s a girl who loves herself.”
I’m completely in the dark. “I didn’t know that’s how your husband died,” I say.
“Went out in those woods right where your house is now and shot himself in the head. Took us two days to find him.”
Oh no. My hands grow damp on the steering wheel. Why hadn’t anyone told me? Had Jackson known? Did he keep that from me, too? That, and the little girl who drowned in the lake?
“My daughter never cared about me,” Miss Pat prattles on. “Why should I care about her?” She points to the small parking lot in front of a brick medical building. “This is it,” she says. “Just turn in here.”
* * *
When I bring Miss Pat home an hour and a half later, Brenda greets us on the porch.
“Thank you, thank you!” she calls to me as I help Miss Pat up the porch steps. “You saved us.”
“It was no trouble,” I say as the old woman and I reach the top step. I raise my voice as Mrs. Hockley reaches for the handle of the screen door. “It was nice chatting with you, Miss Pat!”
She waves without turning around, and Brenda helps her open the door. “You go on in, Mama, and I’ll be in in a minute,” she says. Once she sees the old woman safely inside, she turns to me.
“Did she talk to you?” she asks. It seems like an odd question.
“A bit,” I say. “She told me how much she adores you. I guess you’ve been the daughter to her that Ellie couldn’t be, since she lived so far away.”
“Well, I adore her, too,” she says. “My mother died when I was thirty and Miss Pat moved right in to fill that spot for me.”
“How did you make out at the dentist?” I ask, to be polite. Her tooth is not what’s on my mind.
“Need a crown, but at least my tooth’s no longer killing me.” She smooths the shorter side of her white hair behind her ear. “Is your little girl doing okay?” she asks. “I hope she’s not too traumatized by the other day. That was so weird.”
“I’m the one who’s traumatized by the other day,” I say. “I’m still mad at myself for not keeping a better eye on her.”
“Well, you don’t expect strangers to be wandering around a neighborhood like this one, do you.”