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“The big white one? That’s the Ellis house,” she says when I nod. “I believe George Ellis left it to his only grandson when he passed three years ago, but the grandson only moved in this past January. Henry. That’s his name.”
“Can confirm,” I say, bagging her plant food in the canvas tote she’d brought with her. “Do you know much about him? And before you get any ideas, he’s too old for me, and even if he weren’t, I’m asking because he hated me on sight, and I’m wondering if you might know why.”
“That’s unfortunate,” she says. “I can’t imagine a man with functioning eyeballs hating you on sight.”
“Miss Lily, you charmer.”
“Just a truthteller.” She winks before growing slightly more serious. “I don’t know much about Henry. I know George and his wife, Marley, went to visit their daughter, Henry’s mother, up in Richmond when he was young. They were there over Christmas, and, well . . .” She sighs. “Marley passed pretty suddenly. I was never clear on what happened, but I got the feeling it was an aneurysm. We had the services here. That would have been at least twenty-five years ago. The daughter, Marie, would come to visit once a year or so, but always by herself.”
I frowned. Interesting.
“Anyway, Henry teaches at Jefferson. Anthropology, I believe. He keeps to himself. I ran into him at the market not so long ago, and he was kind. Sorry to hear you’re having a rough go with him.”
“It’s not your fault. I’ll figure it out.”
“I assume you’ve already spoken with him?”
“Yes, ma’am, but I make him angry even when I’m apologizing.”
“Are you apologizing to keep the peace or because you actually did something worth apologizing over?”
I give her a tight smile. “A little of both. I accidentally painted him.”
She winces. “Ah. I can’t see a man like Henry taking that well.”
“He didn’t,” I confirm. “But he was mad from the moment he saw me on the sidewalk looking at the house last month, so maybe he’s just wired grumpy.”
Miss Lily collects her purchase and pats my hand. “Christmas is coming. I’ve yet to mark one where a miracle hasn’t occurred. Between the holiday, your pretty face, and darling Evie, Henry doesn’t stand a chance.”
I laugh and wave as she leaves the store, but my smile fades as I consider her info. I got barely anything new from Miss Lily, and if she knows that little, it means there isn’t much to know.
Still, the man didn’t appear on the planet fully spawned from nothing. There has to be more to him, but I can’t even do a social media search on him because I don’t know his last name. Ellis was his mother’s maiden name.
I puzzle over this through the afternoon, and when our part-timer, Gary, comes in to close, I make quick work of getting him set up for his shift. Then I call Lisa to see if she can get Evie from afterschool care because I’ll be about twenty minutes late getting home.
The library beckons. We don’t have internet at the house yet, and my data is nearly maxed for the month, so I’ll make use of the public computers. And if I happen to stumble across the New Release shelf and end up bringing home an armful of books that I definitely have no time to read but will read anyway, OH WELL. Life is full of risks.
Maggie, my favorite librarian, waves at me from the circulation desk. She isn’t that much older than me—maybe thirty? We’ve developed a friendship of sorts over the last two years because it makes sense to stay on the good side of the dealer for my and Evie’s reading addiction.
“We got a book on seahorses, so I set it aside for Evie,” Maggie says. “I can hold it until Wednesday.”
“She’ll love that,” I answer. “I’ll bring her in tomorrow to check it out.”
I could bring it home, but using the library’s self-checkout station is one of Evie’s great joys in life. She’d been nearly euphoric when we’d gone to Walmart in Roanoke and she discovered the self-checkout lane there.
The branch has two computers open, so I settle down and log in. Then I go straight to the site I’d learned to use exhaustively when I was in school: Rate the Prof. I’d avoided a couple of professors with bad reputations that way, and I’m hoping Henry has made enough of an impression on his students to show up in this database.
I narrow the search to Jefferson University and type “Henry” into the search bar and frown. I should have asked Miss Lily for his last name. It returns two options, and thanks to one of Miss Lily’s nuggets, I know I’m not looking for Henry Westland, professor of composition, but the other Henry listed, Henry Hill, professor of anthropology.
Henry Hill? Seriously? He sounds like a character in one of Evie’s old picture books. I smirk as I imagine the story.Henry Hill is such a pill to all the folks on Orchard.
Oh, that has a nice bounce to it.To live beside this Grinchy Scrooge is nothing short of torture.
His students, it seems, would disagree. He only has a half-dozen ratings on the Professor Grades website, not surprising for less than two semesters at the school. But they all speak well of him. I read through them, noticing a couple of patterns. “Strict but crazy-smart. Funny sometimes.” “High standards but great lectures. Stealth sense of humor.”
Almost every review contains some version of this. I mull that for a moment or two, and I’m about to do more digging when I catch sight of the time on the screen. If I’m going to accidentally check out a stack of books, I’d better do it now to get home before Evie gets antsy.
Ten minutes later, I’m on my way with a heavy grocery bag of books because it’s easy to choose ten that fast if you judge them by their covers. I’ll do more investigating tomorrow when I bring Evie back with me. She can search out the nextWarrior Catsseries, and I’ll check out Henry Hill the Pill’s bio on the Jefferson website.
