Her Quiet Legacy

Chapter 3

A copy of an originalInstead of arriving home at ten minutes after nine, I breached the incline to my mountain hideaway an hour late for the ultimate time. Julia’s call rattled me, muddying the usual routine which corrected mishaps in my timetable. I went through my series of actions without relief. Locking and unlocking the truck seven times led to walking back and forth to the porch steps in equal number. The security light strobed on and off with my activity. But by the time I’d unlocked the front door for the seventh time, my hands shook, and the keys fell to the lobby floor with a loud clang. I squatted in frustration, resting one knee on the floorboards while I fought for equilibrium. The roundness of one key in particular drew my attention, my fingers smoothing its worn edges as I kept my eyes closed. It helped, the familiar sensation of the smooth metal soothing my soul. The key to Julia’s house. I inhaled and exhaled seven times before rising.

Seven.

The number of completion or divine fulfilment.

Something I would never achieve.

“Enough now.” I spoke to myself out loud, my voice echoing in the empty house. They were Mother’s words, her familiar cadence a balm to my battered soul and the only constant in my turbulent childhood. She’d tried to help me cope, strategising structures to carry me into adulthood. The education system left her no choice. Her pleas for assistance were disregarded. Anyone capable of labelling me as a dot along the sliding scale of a behavioural spectrum declined. I didn’t throw desks or disrupt other children. Silent and friendless, I presented no obstacle to others’ learning and sucked up information like a sponge. I became one of life’s Grey Men, invisible but dangerous.

The rounded key slipped through my fingers and a fast wrist action caught the bunch in my open palm. The bothersome evening threatened to fry the tentative synapses which kept me connected to reality. It dictated evasive action. I rose to my feet, not needing to switch on the overhead light. The satisfying clicks of my cowboy boots against the floorboards dulled as I crossed the doormat and snatched another key from the dresser.

The front door closed behind me and I locked it once. “No more, Jack,” I repeated, terminating the number seven’s hold on my actions through a sheer act of will. My truck still cooled on the driveway, a random click issuing from beneath the bonnet. The fingers of my left hand caressed the new key as I strode to the detached double garage which crowned the hill. The man who built it thought me foolish for blocking the panoramic view from the ground floor windows of the house. He said I’d regret it, but I proved him wrong each day. I ate and slept in the renovated 1950s house, but I spent my life in the building disguised as a garage.

The ground floor housed my gym. I enjoyed owning my own equipment, able to work as little or as much as I pleased. Thirteen years in the army demanded peak physical condition, but I’d resented the sweat stained plastic and hand prints decorating everything at the public gyms. I’d spent too many years feeling dirty in my own skin.

The Wellington builder installed a bathroom at the rear of the structure and learned after the first few weeks not to question my plan. I paid for his flights, his food and his time, allowing him the free use of a granny flat behind the main house. The previous owner had secured planning permission for a similar structure but never followed through on the design. It was the reason I purchased the house after leaving the army. I paid the builder in cash, dug the holes for the footings and hired any heavy equipment required from a haulage firm in Hamilton which delivered to the house. The town gossips didn’t notice my project or make it the subject of their speculation. A bank of well-placed trees hid the structure from across the river and an automatic gate at the bottom of the three-kilometre driveway meant it remained my greatest secret.

I hung all my keys on their peg next to the door and flicked on the lights. A satisfying click sounded as the fluorescent strips paused before lighting up across the ceiling, powered by a generator hidden in the bushes behind the garage. Lifting my phone, I made a call to the power company. The woman who answered yawned before speaking. “Welcome to Zenith. I’m Bobby. How may I help you?”

I cleared my throat. “I live at 250 Hakarimata Road. I registered my bills to Dexarn. The power supply to my property is out again. I have a generator, but I’d like you to fix the issue, please.”

“I’ll just check to see if there are any other reports.” Her voice gained a sing-song quality as she got into her stride. A keyboard tapped in the background. “I’m seeing nothing yet. Can you estimate when it happened?”

I ground my teeth against her mouth-breathing, the sound amplified in my ear by the connection. “I arrived home a few minutes ago and the front gate worked, but it has a back-up battery. The house is out, but I just heard the generator start.”

She hissed through her teeth, and I yanked the phone away from my ear. “Ah, I’m sorry Sir, but I think it’s just you. There’s a charge for visits relating to a single property. We have a crew in your area. I’ll dispatch them now to at least administer a temporary fix. They’ll check the junction box on the boundary, but I’ll ask them to call if they need access to your property. Is it okay to give them this contact number?” She mouth-breathed again as she read from the caller ID unit to confirm my contact details.

“That’s fine.” I exhaled, knowing the engineers would find the problem at the junction box they’d replaced less than six months earlier after a season of unnatural surges and outages. It’s why I’d invested in the generator. Bobby closed out the call after assuring me the engineers would text or call with their inspection report. She promised they’d add the surcharge for the visit to my next power bill. Unless their equipment proved faulty, which she doubted.

My body pulsed, aching for the satisfaction of exercise, and I obliged it. A cupboard at the end of the room disgorged a clean tee shirt and shorts, socks and trainers. Relief filled my chest as I stripped and folded my clothing into a neat pile and set it on a shelf. My tan cowboy boots slipped into place next to it, the left sole butted against a stray twenty-cent piece. I removed the cravat at last, smoothing out the creases and pressing it into a square. It had done its job, hiding the tracheotomy scar which marred the skin at my throat. A jagged knife wound in my left pectoral rose like a pink and white craggy mountain of ruined flesh. The army field medics aimed for survival. They weren’t plastic surgeons.

Fourteen kilometres later, I slowed the treadmill to a walk and hit the weight bench. Silence hissed around me as I subdued the compulsions raging through my brain, beating them into submission through exhaustion. My biceps bulged as I lifted the bar, my lips moving in whispered counts as I stilled the monster in my soul. The wind blew across the mountain as the evening progressed, throwing leaves and twigs at the roll doors at the end of the structure.

My phone vibrated on the floor, and I almost dropped the weight bar onto my head. I remained lying down as I answered the call. Moving leaves and the roar of a passing car formed the backdrop for the engineer’s baritone. “Hey, mate.” He shouted into the phone, forgetting his surrounding noise didn’t affect my hearing.

“Hello.” I kept the greeting short, not wanting a long explanation for the fault.

“It’s a horrible bend and I know the last engineers moved the pad-mounted transformer on your boundary higher, but it’s possible a truck clipped it with a wing mirror again. The casing is hanging off and rain is going into the unit. We’ve made it safe for now, but another crew will come back tomorrow morning and replace it. The management might need to think again about where to site it if it gets hit again.”

“Thank you.” Rain pounded against the roof of the structure, and I wrinkled my nose, sparing the unfortunate man a moment of pity for his commitment to duty.

He ended the call at the same time as a shout coincided with the squeal of wet tyres. I heard the words, “b****y truck almost hit me!” and pursed my lips.

Hours passed unnoticed, and I only checked my wristwatch as I smoothed shower gel over my forearms. The big hand marked the three, but the short hand grazed the twelve with a lengthy caress. “Thursday.” My voice echoed back to me from the tiles, and I crossed my arms over my chest to push the hot water from my shoulders. The awfulness of Wednesday had passed beneath me without notice and moved aside to allow the emergence of a fresh new day. My heart lightened, and I dried and dressed myself in clean underwear from the cupboard. Julia’s intrusive phone call nipped at the edges of my resolve, and I pushed it aside with an aggressive mental shove. I couldn’t allow her to affect my hard-won state of calm. Not now.

I took the twenty-cent piece from the shelf and turned it in my fingers. Like the key to Julia’s house, I’d smoothed its edges through constant contact. Despite my aching arms, I reached around the side of the cupboard as though preparing to haul it forward out of the way. Instead, the coin slipped into a metal slot between its back panel and the wall, causing a gratifying click. The Wellington builder had signed a non-disclosure agreement in his crabbed hand, but it hadn’t proved necessary. He died in a car smash six months after finishing my building and returning home. His alcoholism hadn’t hindered his competency in the same way it affected his driving.

The planning officer had shrugged at the finished structure and signed the paperwork to legitimise it in the council’s Land Information Management system. But he hadn’t seen its beauty behind the ugly roll doors and boxy, cedar wood facade.

The cupboard swung forward to reveal the Wellington builder’s greatest work. I fixed the cupboard in place and stepped onto the ladder leading to the lower level. He’d called it a panic room. It offered the exact opposite to me.

Chapter 4