Aly's House Read Free

Aly parked in front of the old clapboard farmhouse, she looked briefly toward the space between two large pecan trees, a habit begun when the ancient pickup Marshall had driven in high school signaled that he was home. Today her automatic glance extended into a long stare of surprise. The black secondhand Ford that had replaced the pickup when he went off to college was parked between the trees.
    Marshall was home! But why? Finals at Wharton, Elizabeth had told her, were next week. And then, at last, he would graduate from the finest business school in the country. Perplexed, Aly remained behind the wheel of her new car and considered what could possibly have dragged Marshall away from his books at such a crucial time. She knew of no one who was sick or who had died. Could good news have brought him home to Claiborne? She hadn’t heard of any, but she certainly didn’t want to contribute a negative note by lugging in a basket of wash for Elizabeth’s ironing board. Not when she knew how Marshall felt about his mother having to do such work to make ends meet, especially for the Kingstons.
    Besides, she looked the mess she usually did. If she’d only known he would be home, she would have tried to do something to her hair, her face—worn something other than cutoff jeans and a T-shirt. Not that Marshall would have noticed. He never had. He had a special look for the Kingstons, a way of looking right through them, clear out to the other side, as if they didn’t exist. It was a type of disdain particularly nettlesome to Victoria, Aly’s older sister and Marshall’s classmate. “Somebody ought to take him down a notch or two.” Nobody ever did.
    But, Aly sighed, if she didn’t pick up the ironing today, her father would be deprived of his weekly supply of perfect shirts. She’d be sure to get that long look of silent reproof that she couldn’t stand. Maybe today Elizabeth had the ironing ready to pick up, and she could depart without any to-do. She’d leave the basket of wash in the car and bring it back tomorrow when Marshall was gone. Surely he wouldn’t be staying long, not with finals next week.
    Through the door’s oval pane of age-discolored glass, Aly saw Elizabeth coming up the breezeway that ran through the center of the house. Aly’s misgivings increased when she noted Elizabeth’s slow walk and bowed head, as if the weight of the thick, graying twist of hair on her neck were too much for her. Fear fluttered in Aly’s stomach. Ordinarily, despite the clumsy, brown oxfords she wore summer and winter, Elizabeth’s step would have been light, her saintly face alight with welcome for her Thursday visitor. Something must have happened to Marshall.
    “Elizabeth, what’s the matter?” Aly asked at once when the door opened and she saw the tired, red-rimmed eyes of her friend.
    “Aly—” Elizabeth spoke painfully. “I-it’s bad news.”
    “What kind of bad news?”
    “Tell her, Mother.” The voice, tense and deep, came from Marshall, who suddenly appeared beside his mother and glared down at Aly. Aly lifted an awestruck face. Tall and athletically slim, with eyes as richly dark as her mother’s sable coat, Marshall Wayne had always been the most handsome boy she’d ever seen. But between the glimpse she’d had of him last Christmas and now, maturity had added a new dimension, a force and power that almost overwhelmed.
    “You do not look at Marshall Wayne,” one of her friends once declared, “you behold him.” Beholding him now, noticing the hard new manliness of his features and form, she felt an odd sense of loss. He had gone, the boy who had grown up in this house. She would never again see the Marshall Wayne she had loved since the first grade.
    She tore away her gaze to ask of Elizabeth, “Tell me what?”
    But Marshall answered with a flash of clenched teeth, “Your father intends to foreclose on us. We got a notice from the courthouse. We have thirty days to come up with the money we