Chapter 1

 

After leaving my hometown, Cleveland, Mississippi, over fifteen years ago, I am moving back.  My grandmother, rest her soul, left me her paid-for house. The house has four bedrooms, one full bathroom, half bathroom, living room, kitchen and dining room. My grandparents lived in that house for over fifty years. My mother is the youngest of her sisters and brothers and I am the oldest of three girls. My mother didn’t want the house so my grandmother left it to me. 

 

When I arrived at the house, memories of my childhood flooded my brain. The red brick one-story home has one big double-wide window in the living room. My grandmother used to sit on the loveseat in the living room watching her soap operas and looking out of the window. She saw everyone and everything that went past the front of the house. I could still hear her voice telling me and my sisters, so and so passed by today. He should have been at work at such and such hour or she should have been at work at that hour. Oh, how sweet that woman was.  Enough reminiscing! It was time for me to get to work. The movers had delivered all of my furniture and boxes. They were not going to unpack themselves.

 

After I finished arranging the furniture the way I wanted in the living room, I took a seat on my recliner, lifted the foot rest, leaned back, and closed my eyes. I woke up to the doorbell ringing. I didn’t realize I had fallen asleep. I went to the door and looked in the peephole. There was a guy dressed in a uniform standing in front of the door. I didn’t open the door because I couldn’t see who it was. When he turned around to ring the doorbell again, I opened the door. It was the guy from AT&T. He was here to install my internet, home phone, and cable. 

 

“Good evening, ma’am! I am here to- Wait, Leigh, is that you? Leigh Searcy? Hey, it’s me Clint. We went to school together. We were classmates from Head Start all the way to the end of the eighth grade.  If I could recall, you, your mom and two sisters moved away the summer before our ninth grade.”

 

“Clint? Clinton Moore? Your father owned the only name-brand shoe store here in town. What was the name of the shoe store? Oh, it was Moore Shoes and More. Clint, you were the only boy in school that had the first pair of name-brand shoes before anybody else. I thought you were going to take over the shoe store once you graduated from high school. What happened? Why are you working for AT&T and not running your father’s shoe store?”

 

“Well, Leigh, a few years back my father became very ill. My mother had to quit her job to take care of him. My sister and I had to postpone going to college. We worked two jobs to help my mother with our father’s medical bills, mortgage, and living expenses. We tried for years to keep the store open while caring for our parents. In the beginning, the store was doing great. We were selling our merchandise online and in the store. We had double the income from what our father was making when he was still running the store. After a few years, the town gained three more shoe stores. That’s when our sales went down, way down. The competition was unbelievable. We lost the majority of all of our customers to the other stores. My father told us it was time to let the store go. He said it was time for him to hang up his hat. We all knew what that meant. My father told us to sell the store and everything in it. He told us to use the money to pay off the mortgage, his medical bills, and put the rest in the bank for rainy days. We tried to talk him out of it. There was nothing we could say or do to change his mind. He told us the store took care of his family when he was in good health and now it was time for the store to take care of the family when they needed it the most. By him being in his right state of mind there was nothing we could do legally to keep the store. So, my father sold the store. So now the only thing we have to do is maintain the everyday expenses.”

 

“Oh, I am sorry Clint. I didn’t know. If I did, I wouldn’t have imposed on your personal life.”

 

“No problem, Leigh. Well, let me do what I came here to do. We can catch up on things another day. The order states I am to install your internet, cable, and home phone. Where do you want me to put the main box? It will control everything in the house. Then after that, I can hook up the other box in the room you prefer. You have a four-bedroom house and you only ordered two boxes. Such a big house to be living alone in. So, I am assuming you are not married, no boyfriend, and no children.”

 

“You can hook up the main box here in the living room. And the other one can go in the room where I will be sleeping. Down the hallway and the first door on your left. The other rooms don’t need boxes because I do live alone. And no, I am not married, I do not have a boyfriend and no children.”

 

“Okay, Leigh, that’s good to know. I am going to get to work because I have one more job after yours. Oh, and by the way, I am sorry about your grandmother passing. She was a good person. Everybody here in town knew her.”

 

“Thank you, Clint, for your kind words about my grandma. I loved her dearly. I am going to go and finish unpacking in my bedroom. Whenever you are finished here, you can go ahead and hook up the box in my room. I should be finished by the time you are done in here.”

 

I left Clint and went into my bedroom. I grabbed the wardrobe box, opened it, and hung up all of the clothes in the closet. I then opened the other two boxes and placed all of the contents in the drawers. I went to my linen closet in the hallway, grabbed sheets, pillow cases and a comforter to make up my bed. As I was walking back to my room, I heard voices coming from down the other hallway. I placed the linens on my bed, turned around, and started walking towards the sound of the voices. As I got closer to the middle room, I realized the sound wasn’t coming from there. I kept walking towards the half- bathroom and the last room. The voices got louder. When I got to the bathroom I looked in; it was empty. The sound was coming from the last bedroom. I walked to the entrance of the door and stopped. “Clint, are you in here? Stop playing around. You said you have another job to get to after this one.”

 

As I started walking into the room, I heard Clint calling me from behind. I turned around; he was standing in front of my bedroom door. If he was up there, who was in here? I walked in the room, looked around and… nothing. No one was in here. I walked back to my bedroom where Clint was. He had finished installing the box. He laid the control to the television and cable box on the bed.

 

“I am all done, Leigh. I just need you to sign the paperwork and I will be on my way. What made you think I was in the room way down the hallway?”

 

“I heard voices and I thought it was you talking to someone on the phone, Clint. We are the only two people in this house, so I thought it was you. If it wasn’t you, then who was it?”

 

“I don’t know, Leigh.....