Wild Orchids Read online

  I took another breath to quieten the turmoil the memories had raised and glanced at Newcombe. He was frowning, seeming to think about what I’d told him. I didn’t see any need to tell him that my father had moved us repeatedly over the years. Sometimes he’d receive a letter or a phone call, his face would turn white, and I knew that within forty-eight hours we’d be on the road again. Over the years I’d lost friends and places I cared about because of my father’s constant moving.

  As I watched the road ahead, my mind full of my own thoughts, I began to fear that Newcombe was going to try to get me to reveal more than what I had—which, for me, was a tremendous amount. After all, he wrote books about his own life so now maybe he’d want to take mine apart. But he didn’t. Instead, he grinned and said, “Okay, now tell me the story with drama and fireworks.”

  Just weeks before, I’d been embarrassed to find out that he’d heard me tell a story, but things between us were more relaxed now, so I let him have it. I forgot about reality and the involvement of my parents and told him my devil story in the most grisly way possible.

  I had never had a more attentive listener. When I glanced away from the road to see if I was boring him, he had the wide-eyed look of a three-year-old sitting at the feet of a storyteller. The telling took me nearly forty-five minutes, and when I finished, we were silent for a while. Newcombe seemed to be thinking about what I’d told him. Finally, he said, “Devil stories are rare. I’ve read a zillion witch and ghost stories, but I’m not sure I’ve ever heard one in which someone was believed to have loved the devil. Not just seen him but loved him. And a pressing.” He went on to tell me that piling rocks on top of a person believed to be a witch was an old form of punishment called a “pressing.”

  After a moment or two, he lightened the air by telling me what he’d done so far to discover the origins of the devil story. From the moment he told me about a librarian hanging up on him—him, Ford Newcombe—my mouth dropped open and stayed down there. I must say I was impressed when he told me how he’d bought a house over the phone.

  Isn’t it the dream of every minimum wage person in the U.S. to be able to buy a quarter of a million dollar house just like that? I’d never lived in an “owned” house. My dad and I went from one rental to another, one job after another. He’d managed a bowling alley, sold tires, been night manager at a dozen groceries. It wasn’t until I was nine that I realized my dad was moving us around so often because he didn’t want to be found.

  I must say that it was good to be able to live vicariously through Ford Newcombe’s chutzpah and his money. “You bought the house and the contents?” I asked.

  “Turn south at the next junction,” he said as he drained half a bottle of cola. “Yeah, and it’s your job to go through all the junk in the house.”

  I knew he was testing me so I just smiled and said, “Be glad to.”

  “Unless your husband…”

  When he trailed off, I knew he wanted to know if I’d left before or after the I do’s. “It’s still Miss Maxwell,” I said. “So you want to tell me about wages, benefits, and hours?”

  I don’t know what I said that made him angry, but I could see his face start to turn red.

  “Job description,” he muttered, as though I’d said something vile.

  I’d had all I could take from men in the last few days and I really didn’t care if he dropped me and my bags at the side of the road. I knew from experience that there were always jobs to be had. “Yeah,” I said as I turned south, and there was belligerence in my voice. “Job description.”

  As he looked out the window for a moment, I could see his reflection in the windshield and damned if he didn’t smile a bit. Maybe he was so used to people fawning over his big successful self that he liked it when people didn’t bow down to him.

  Finally, he said, “I don’t know. I haven’t written a book since”—he paused and took a deep breath—“for a long time so I don’t know what I need in the way of an assistant.”

  “There are a lot of women who’d agree with you on that one,” I said before I thought, then glanced at him in horror.

  But, to my relief, his eyes crinkled up and we both laughed.

  “I’m not the monster you’ve probably heard I am,” he said, and explained that most of the women who’d worked for him had marriage, not typing, on their minds.

  It was easy to be flippant and think that, of course, he’d be pursued since he was rich and unmarried, but I too well remembered my father in the same situation. Not rich, but unattached. Maybe some of the women Newcombe had fired deserved it. Maybe…

  For a while he munched on his cheesy things in silence, then I said, “You want to give me a job description?” and that made him laugh again. “And where do I live?”

  It turned out that—dare I stereotype and say “like a man”?—he hadn’t thought of where his assistant was to live. When he said, “I guess you’ll live with me,” I shot him a look that told him what I thought of that idea.

  He tried to get me back by looking me up and down, obviously finding me wanting. “You don’t have to worry,” he said.

  I’m sure he meant to put me down, but it made me laugh instead. He may be rich and famous, but I was the one who was in shape.

  Turning away, he shook his head for a moment, as though to say that he’d never before met anyone like me, then he wadded up his empty cheese-poison bag and said he thought the house was big enough for us to live together and not get in each other’s way.

  “I don’t do domestic,” I said. “I don’t cook or clean anything. I don’t do laundry.” I almost said that I didn’t iron shirts even if they’d been run over by a tractor, but I decided that might be too much.

  He shrugged. “If they have a pizza parlor or a diner I’ll be fine. You don’t look like you eat much anyway.”

  “Mmmmm,” was all I said to let him know that my eating habits were none of his business. It was my experience that if you talked about food to a man he thought you were coming on to him. Men seemed to go from food to body to “you want me, I know you do.”

  “So what exactly am I to research?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said, honesty in his voice. “I’ve never done this before. I’ve spent the last two years reading local ghost stories and trying to put some of them together. And it’s been difficult trying to get to primary sources, especially since I’ve not had a lot of help.”

  I bit my tongue on his last bit of whining. “So now you want to know about this pressing. Have any idea exactly when it took place?”

  At that he gave me a look.

  “Right,” I said. “I am your primary source. But I really have no idea when it happened or even if it did.”

  “Based on the attitude of the librarian, it did.”

  “Or maybe she was tired of people asking about it. Maybe it’s like Amityville and the residents are sick of people asking about that house. Or maybe she’s just afraid that her sweet little mountain town will be overrun by people with swastikas carved onto their foreheads, looking for the devil.”

  “Mmmmm,” he said, giving me the same non-answer I’d given him. He scrunched down in the seat, his long legs looking as though they’d disappeared into the motor, and put his head back. “When you get down to a quarter tank, pull over and I’ll drive,” he said as he closed his eyes.

  I drove in silence for a long time and I enjoyed it. I thought a little about Kirk and what he’d done to me, and thought maybe I’d someday break my vow of silence and ask Newcombe if he knew how I could go about recovering the money Kirk had stolen from me. But mainly I thought about how to research a story no one wanted to discuss.

  As the wide interstate stretched before me, I tried to remember everything my mother had told me about the pressing. So very much of my early childhood was a blur, but if I concentrated, I could remember the two incidents that had changed everything. My mother had gone from reading me a bedtime story to telling me that people who loved the d