The Restoration of Celia Fairchild - Marie Bostwick Page 0,23

on myself, the whole front of his shirt was wet.

It was embarrassing to fall apart like that, especially in front someone I’d just met. And this was the second time I’d lost it in front of Trey Holcomb. He probably thought I was an emotional basket case.

“Sorry,” I sniffled.

“That’s okay. You had to get it out sometime,” Calvin said. “And don’t worry, I’ll send you a bill for the dry cleaning.”

“It’s a polo,” I pointed out. “Wash and wear.”

“I know,” he said, and patted my shoulder. “I’m sending you a bill anyway.”

Even at the lowest moments of my life, Calvin always finds a way to make me smile.

“Sorry,” I said again, looking at Trey. “I haven’t seen my aunt in so many years. If I’d known . . .” I pressed my lips together. I was not going to cry again. “I should have stayed put and hammered her door until hell froze over if I had to. I should have made her let me in.”

At that point I was talking to Calvin, but it was Trey who answered.

“Even if you’d known what was happening, I doubt you’d have been able to stop it or get your aunt to change. Hoarders are hard to treat.”

I didn’t like hearing the word hoarder applied to Calpurnia, lumping her in with a whole sector of humanity she had nothing in common with apart from this strange malady. It made her seem smaller somehow.

“Sorry,” Trey said, hesitating a moment before going on. “Of course, I never met your aunt. But several of my clients have been through court-enforced clean outs. It was traumatic for them and fairly pointless. Most filled the place back up within a few months. The only time I’ve seen it work is when the clean out is very gradual and overseen by therapists who specialize in hoarding, and sometimes not even then.

“Unless your aunt understood she had a problem and was willing to cooperate, there probably wasn’t anything you could do. Most hoarders think that other people are the problem. That might explain why your aunt shut you out. Maybe she thought that if she opened the door, you’d try to take away her things.”

“But how could she not know? Why would she choose to live like this?”

“I don’t know,” Trey said, sounding as if he wished he did.

Calvin had been moving about the room while Trey and I were talking, quietly shuffling through stacks of papers, deliberately but cautiously lifting the lids off boxes and examining the contents, probably searching for dead cats. Now he walked to the window and peeled back a sheet of newspaper that had been pasted to the pane.

“Maybe they can tell you,” he said, peering through the grimy glass.

I joined him at the window. It was hard to see but I could make out a clump of people standing on the sidewalk, just outside the gate, looking toward the house.

Calvin squinted. “Looks like the neighbors have come calling.”

Chapter Eight

Felicia Pickney threw her arms out wide when I opened the door, beaming a smile. “Celia, sugar! You’re home!”

Felicia belonged to that particular subset of older southern women I have always admired, the gracious, upbeat, energetic, well-spoken, well-traveled, intellectually curious set who give the impression of finding everyone they meet hugely interesting and somehow make you believe they might be right. Never devoid of pearls, lipstick, a sweater set, and a smile, they all tend to look like retired high school Latin teachers. In Felicia’s case, it was true.

She’d taught an entire generation of Charleston’s youth to conjugate the verb tenses for love in a Low-Country drawl. But the oversized red eyeglasses she always wore emphasized the spark of delight in her eyes and hinted that the woman who wore them might be a lot more fun than her impeccable manners and otherwise conservative wardrobe suggested. And she was. Felicia might have been the only teacher of dead languages in the country whose classes always had a waitlist. The annual toga/garden party she threw for graduating seniors and Latin alums was considered a very hot ticket.

With Trey and Calvin following in my wake, I wended my way through the totally trashed courtyard. Felicia opened the gate and climbed over the tangle of rusted bikes and broken pots to meet me halfway.

“It is so good to see you,” she said, giving me a good hard squeeze before placing her hands on my shoulders and looking me in the face. “But dear Calpurnia . . . such a