The Mulberry Tree

“And what would you know about being fat?” he asked, and there was a hint of suggestion in his voice.

“Nothing.” Her blue eyes were dancing with laughter. “I wouldn’t know anything at all about diets, or the endless frustration of hours of exercise with no food but still no weight loss. Nope. I don’t know a thing about being fat.”

Laughing, she went back to the house, and Matt followed her. Minutes later, he was seated at the table in the living room and having his first bite of the peach cobbler. “What—” he asked, unable to complete his sentence.

“Oh? You mean, why does it taste different from other peach cobblers you’ve had?”

Matt could only nod.

“Cherries and vanilla. Add a little of each, and it brings out the flavor of the peaches. And I put crushed almonds in the crust.”

Matt told himself that he would not, could not, burst into tears. He pointed at his plate with his fork. “Where? How?” he managed to say.

Bailey looked down at her hands, clasped on the table. She was eating nothing, just finishing her glass of wine, and she looked as though she was considering how much and what to tell him. “My husband had a cook and a gardener, and I spent a lot of time with them,” she said after a while. “I learned from them.”

Matt sensed that she was telling about one percent of the truth, but that was better than no truth at all.

It was when he was halfway through the cobbler that the Idea came to him. An Idea with a capital letter. Bailey was sitting silently, looking toward her right at the big, blank brown wall on the far side of the living room, and he almost slipped up and told her that there was a stone fireplace hidden behind it.

“So what do you think of this house?” he asked.

He watched her give a sigh of relief that he hadn’t asked another question about her past.

“Awful,” she said. “When I was told that Jimmie had left me a farmhouse, I imagined something cute, something with a fireplace and a porch. A big, deep porch with rocking chairs on it. Instead, I get this thing with twenty bedrooms and those bathrooms. Have you ever seen anything like them in your life?”

His plate clean, Matt wiped his mouth, drained the last of his wine, then stood up. “I have to get some tools from my truck, then I want to show you something. All right?”

“Sure,” she said, a puzzled look on her face.

As Matt left the house and walked to the road, he told himself to take this easy and cautiously. He knew that he’d have one chance, and if he messed it up, he’d blow it forever. As he opened the toolbox in the back of his truck and took out a crowbar, he closed his eyes for a moment and thought of Patsy’s meat loaf and this woman’s pigeon and peach cobbler. With cherries in it. And almonds in the crust. With an expression of absolute seriousness, as though he faced the most important moment of his life, he strapped on his tool belt, gripped his crowbar, and strode back to the house.

Inside, he saw that she’d removed his plate from the table. For a moment he stood in the kitchen doorway, watching as she put a big pot of jam in the refrigerator. “Ready?” he asked, and she followed him to the front door.

“When I was in school studying to become an architect, for a project, I took measurements of this old house, drew it as it was, then remodeled it on paper. The assignment was to keep the same footprint, but to change the interior.” Kneeling on the floor, Matt ran his hand along the bottom of the paneling. The only light in the dark room was from the open doorway. “It was Christmas, and I wanted to give Rick and Patsy time alone, so I spent a lot of time over here. And as I measured and began to really look at this house, I began to want to see what it had originally looked like. I could see that this paneling”—he said the word with a sneer—“had been added long after the house was built, so I began to inspect it. I pulled boards off the walls, looked under them, then nailed them back in place. Ah, here it is,” he said as he found a handhold under the dark wood, then inserted his crowbar in the opening. “Do you mind?” he asked before he pulled.

“You can do whatever you want to that stuff,” she said with great sincerity, then jumped when one side of the paneling came away with a loud sound of nails being dragged through wood. Within seconds, the whole sheet was off, and Matt set it to one side.

He turned to her with a smile of triumph, but all Bailey could see was the backside of the paneling in the next bedroom.

“You don’t see it,” he said, sounding disappointed.

“Sorry,” she replied.

“See that?” He pointed to what looked like some sort of post against the outside wall.

“Yes,” she said slowly.

Matt lifted his foot, gave a kick to the back of the thin paneling in front of them, and sent it crashing to the floor of the empty bedroom. Then he turned to her as though to ask, Now do you see?

“Two rooms made into one,” Bailey said. “Nice.”

Matt put his hand on the big upright piece of wood he’d pointed out before. “Do you see what this is?”

“A post of some sort, I guess.”

“Right.” He was smiling at her. “Now, what kind of structures have posts?”

“Mailboxes?”