The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope - By Rhonda Riley Page 0,104

any of that in you. You were always sensible. You did the right thing.”

“Momma, I never wanted lying . . .” I heard the words come out of my own mouth and didn’t know what I would say next. I wanted so much to tell her about Addie, to have her with me in that secret.

She grimaced in what I took to be pain but then realized was shame, a thing I’d never seen on her face. “I wanted to tell you years ago. Many a time I came near. But I didn’t have the courage, Evelyn.”

Apprehension blossomed in my chest. “Momma what do you know? Tell me.” I took her hand.

“Forgive me, Evelyn. I would have told you, but Robert always said we should let sleeping dogs lie. So the dog just lay and the years passed.” Her face twisted in genuine pain. She pointed to the bottle on her bureau. “Give me another one of those morphine pills.”

After she swallowed, she eased back onto her pillows again and looked out the window. I waited, my throat tight, my heart clattering.

She slapped her palms down on the covers so hard I jumped. “There was this boy . . . a man really, but he couldn’t have been much older than me—twenty-one, twenty-two at the most. They were putting in the new sidewalks and parks downtown. Building the new Piedmont Hotel. Things were hopping around here before the Crash and the Depression.

“Your daddy was courting me then. Growing up in the same town, he’d always been around. But he’d begun to be around more. Making eyes at me. Walking me home from work. Not serious courting. The Starnes boy was doing the same. But I liked your daddy best. He was sweet on me. I could see it in his eyes. I’d never seen him around any other girls, and I knew that whatever was going to happen would be slow in coming. Things weren’t like they are today, but even for those times your daddy was a slow mover, a shy one.

“I was only seventeen, but I’d been a spinner at the mill since we left the farm. I earned more than my brothers and had to work, we needed the money. But I thought a hotel might be better work. So one day, I ran over to the Piedmont right after work to see if they would be hiring women help. Outside, the hotel looked finished, but inside the walls were bare, no mantels, no trim, no lights. A man stood inside the front door, holding some blueprints up to the dying sunlight. A fine-looking man. Dark hair, smoothest skin. And tall—six three, maybe six four. He looked up from those blueprints, and I felt like somebody had slapped me awake.

“I didn’t get a job. But a few days later, when I walked past the Piedmont on my way to the drugstore to get headache powders for Momma, he walked partway with me and introduced himself. Ben Mullins. He talked about places I’d never been. He seemed more of a man than the teenage boys hanging around. He was a carpenter from Raleigh. After the Piedmont job, he was going to work on a big hotel in Atlanta.”

She paused and took a deep breath. Fatigue filled her face, but her voice rang stronger, more determined.

“Well, Evelyn, the upshot of what you really need to know is that I slept with him.” She stopped again to register my surprise.

Why, I wondered, was she telling me this? What did any of this have to do with Addie or Adam?

“We snuck into his room—the first room finished in the hotel. If you went up the back stairs his room was the first door on the second floor. Fancy pink wallpaper on the walls, a nice room.

“He smoked and talked, asking me questions and laughing at some of my answers—but not in a way that put me down. There were books in the room, some open on the bed. He didn’t touch me. When I left, he kissed me on the cheek, gentlemanly. ‘Come back whenever you want. It’s lonely here.’

“I went back as soon as I could get away. One thing led to another and we were on his bed. Afterward, he was all apologetic. He went out and brought pie back to the room for me. I came to his room only one other time.” She’d been looking out the window as if something outside drew her words out of