The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope - By Rhonda Riley Page 0,167

steeply behind it. Water dripped from the eaves onto a tub of blossoming red geraniums. An old hound loped up, barking, then sniffed us without much interest. Adam knocked again, but no one answered.

Farther down the same winding road, we found the second house on our list. An older version of the first. H. HOPE was hand-painted on the mailbox. A tall, old man on the porch pushed himself up from his chair as we pulled off the road. He was stooped and rail-thin, in faded overalls. A halo of wispy, gray hair wafted around his head. Raising one hand to shade his eyes against the morning sun, he glared at us as we walked up the gravel path. Nothing about the old man’s narrow, hollow-cheeked face resembled Roy Hope.

Adam paused at the bottom step.

The old man cackled and slapped his leg. “I’ll be goddamn. Look who the cat dragged in!”

Adam and I exchanged grins. The old man obviously recognized him. Adam stepped up onto the porch and took the hand the old man offered.

As soon as Adam was within arm’s reach, the old man’s eyes narrowed and his hand fell away from Adam’s. His puzzled glance bounced from Adam to me and back. “Roy?” he whispered.

“No, sir.” Adam shook his head and motioned me forward. “I’m Adam and this is Evelyn. We’re looking for Roy. Are you related to him?”

The old man’s eyes darted back to me, with surprise. “Well, you don’t look like yer from around here.” Then he pointed at Adam’s chest. “But this one sure is. Can tell that just by looking. Dead ringer for Roy. Are you his boy? Don’t recall him having a boy.” The old man shuffled sideways, tottering so badly that I dashed up behind him to steady him, and Adam grabbed his elbow. The old man folded himself into a rocker and offered me the porch swing.

Adam sat down in the remaining chair across from me. “I’m not his son, but I’d like to find him. Say hello. It’s been a long time.”

The old man stared past us and offered nothing. He blinked his rheumy eyes rapidly and I noticed one of his hands shook.

I touched his arm. “The ‘H’ on the mailbox—what’s that for?”

“Hoyle. Hoyle Hope. But everybody calls me Toot.” He laughed, then slowly bent over, picked up the cup sitting next to Adam’s chair, and spat tobacco juice into it. “Not allowed to spit off the porch anymore. Took a tumble last year.” He straightened up and looked Adam over. “Roy coulda used a son. Those two daughters don’t have a grateful bone between them. Hardly ever visited him in the hospital.”

Adam leaned in closer. “Roy’s in the hospital?”

Toot’s head wobbled on his thin neck. “No. He’s past that. Resting down yonder. The cemetery behind the post office. ’Bout two years now. Car accident. So drunk he forgot that mountain roads curve. His brother, Everett, was with him, died on the spot. Roy hung on for weeks. What’d you say your name was?”

Adam and I locked eyes for a moment. An odd expression swept across his face, reminding me of the time the nurse mistook him for Gracie’s husband. His hand moved up toward his chest then fell limply at his side. His head bowed. My heart skittered.

We listened politely to the old man’s stories about Roy. Twice he looked quizzically at Adam and asked his name again. “Who was your momma?” he asked once. Adam was uncharacteristically unresponsive. The old man seemed to lose interest in his own questions. His gaze drifted back to his spit cup.

After a few moments, we returned to the truck. Adam picked up our list of addresses, slid it into the folds of the Kentucky map, and stuffed both into the glove compartment.

Silently, we drove into town. It didn’t take long to find the grave. But the old man was wrong about the date. Roy had been dead ten years.

A decade. I’d been imagining him aging like me, gauging Adam against that image, and all the while, he was gone.

Beside me, Adam exhaled a long, shuddering sigh and leaned against Roy’s tombstone. I remembered the X-ray of his chest, the pale spread of the organ that gave him his voice. He blinked up at the surrounding hills. “This is a strange place.”

I looked around me at the nondescript little town and recalled what Sarah had said about never knowing what colors others actually saw. What, I wondered, did he hear, what did