The Death of Perry Many Paws Read Free Page B

face. He wasn’t much older than me but the crinkles around his eyes indicated that he smiled a lot and found life to be amusing. He stuck out his hand. “I’m Cam Mack. You must be Tamsen Darby. Welcome.”
    I got my balance and shook his hand, smiling at his infectious grin. He gestured toward the library. “You can see why we need help.”
    I nodded. “What happened in here?”
    “Nothing. This is the way it always is. This is how my father liked to work. He died six months ago and we just closed the door. I finally convinced my mother that we needed to do something in here to protect the books and see if there are any papers or other things we should be taking care of. My mother doesn’t do manual labor and I didn’t want to do it by myself.” His attention wandered off me and to the disastrous library.
    “I’m sorry about your father. I can see why it would be difficult for you to do this alone.”
    He tore his eyes away from the room and returned them to me. “I try to get home most weekends but I’m in grad school in Boston and some weekends I just can’t make it. It’ll be good for my mom to have someone else living in the house with her in addition to getting this room sorted out. I’m glad you’re here.”
    I suddenly felt, for the first time, that I was glad to be there.
    The summer turned out to be life changing. I rarely saw Claudia and sincerely doubted that she felt any comfort by having my presence in her house. Her older brother, Franklin, who lived in a small gardener’s cottage on the property, came over several times a week and did the heavy lifting and cleaning for me. Although probably not much more than sixty, he seemed twenty years older. He shuffled when he walked and seemed like a man burdened with aching joints. Yet he was able to move the furniture around easily and climb up on the ladder to wash and clean without any problem. One day I came in and he was on the top of a ladder cleaning the chandelier and looked like a young man, totally engaged in what he was doing, almost enjoying himself. When he saw me, he darted back into his shell and aged twenty years. We rarely spoke. I was grateful for his help so respected his privacy.While he was busy cleaning, I was able to do the more challenging work of cataloging the books.
    There was one day, early in the summer, when we had a one-sided conversation. It was the first time he came over to help me. Claudia had brought him in, introduced him and left. We had stared at each other for several seconds and then he had made a growl-like sound and banged his hand on the desk, causing dust to fly all over the room and papers and books to tumble to the floor.
    “Room should never be allowed to look like this,” he muttered under his breath as he picked up the books and laid them gently back on the desk. “My father would be disgusted by what that man did to this room. This is what happens when you let someone other than a Behrends run the house. Never understood what Claudia saw in that Mack guy. Married beneath her. Claudia deserved better. Glad he’s gone.”
    I later asked Cam about his strange uncle and he had shook his head and smiled. “He’s always been an odd one. I know he disliked my father and felt my mom had married beneath her but I think Franklin felt that anyone who wasn’t a Behrends would have been beneath my mother. I know both she and Franklin tried to convince my father to change his name from Mack to Behrends so the name wouldn’t die out. My father indulged my mom in many ways but he held firm on retaining his name.”
    My favorite days were the ones when Cam was there and we would work side by side, chatting. I learned that he had a sister, Cassandra, who was six years older. He seemed to be comfortable with the fact that he was an accident. He stated matter-of-factly that his mother had lost interest in the whole mothering thing by the time he was born and, once he had outgrown his nanny, had spent most of his