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She blinked at him. “Yours? Don’t tell me you bought this awful old spot?” She wanted to ask him where he got the money, but she didn’t.
“You remember old man Nelson I used to work for?”
“How could I forget? You missed a hundred weekends with Eddie and me because you were his slave.”
“Yeah, well, it paid off.”
“He gave you this?” She looked at him as though to say, What was second prize?
“Gave me?” Ty said. “You have to be kidding. That man never gave anything to anyone. His whole family despised him, and when he died he left them nothing. He gave everything he had to the church. He said they deserved the money more than his lazy kids did.”
“Nice man.”
“No, not a nice man, but what no one knew is that on his deathbed he gave me something.”
“In gratitude for all the years you gave to him? I remember seeing you on Sunday morning so tired you couldn’t stand up because you’d been digging or doing something for him until ten at night—and this was when you were just twelve years old.”
Ty shrugged. “He paid me for every hour and I always needed the money.” He was silent for a mome
nt, still looking at the old buildings with love.
“So?” she said. “What did he give you?”
“Information.”
She saw that he was teasing her, drawing out what he wanted to say to make her beg him to tell her. It was a game they’d played all their lives. Ty used to make her and Eddie ask him about something until they were ready to pummel him.
“I give up!” she said. “What did that awful old man tell you?”
“That the state is planning to put a road through here.”
“Here?” Faith asked, looking about the place.
“They’re going to put in a major highway that will link the two Interstates.”
As she thought about it, she knew it made sense. All her life she’d heard adults complain about having to drive around the lake and across side roads to get to the big highway. There had always been a rumor that the state was going to put in a new road but…“I’ve always heard that,” Faith said. “What he told you wasn’t news.”
“Yeah, but old man Nelson had a date and a map. It’ll start next year, and I own a lot of the land where they’re going to put the road. The contracts have been signed.”
She could no longer contain her surprise. “You bought land?” she blurted. “How?”
“With you and Ed gone, I had nothing to do but work. And with Dad and my leaching brothers gone, it didn’t cost much to support Mom and me, so I saved what I could and put it in land.”
She watched him shrug as though to say that it was nothing, but she could almost see all that he’d done these last four years. He must have worked without stop on weekends, holidays, and into the night.
She thought about what he’d done and wondered why he’d given up so much of his life in the pursuit of money—but she knew why. He’d done it for her. She couldn’t help glancing at his jeans. If she knew anything about him, she was sure that in his pocket was a diamond ring. An engagement ring. It wouldn’t matter to Ty that they hadn’t seen each other for years. Nor would it matter that she’d been dating other men, and she was sure that he’d been out with lots of women in that time. Ty had made up his mind about the two of them long ago and he was sticking with it.
Part of her thought that if she had any brain at all, she’d tell him about her and Eddie right now. But she didn’t do that. Instead, she smiled. “Okay, so show me and tell me everything. If you leave anything out, I’m going to start quoting poetry.”
She saw the tension leave his body. He grabbed her about the waist, lifted her up and twirled her about. “You’re still my girl!” he said. “You always have been and always will be. Come on!” He put her down, then grabbed her hand and began to pull her through waist-high weeds toward a dilapidated old house that was a quarter of a mile from the garages.
It was a two-story farmhouse, tall and big and in need of major repairs. He pulled her up on the porch as she picked briars off her shirt. “Watch that board,” he said when she stepped to the side of the door.
He didn’t need a key as the door was swollen shut, but he knew how to open it by pulling up on the doorknob, then shoving hard. He had to hit the door with his shoulder three times before it opened, and when it did the doorknob stayed in his hand. “Have to fix that,” he mumbled as he went in ahead of her. She heard some rustling of feathers—birds living in the house—then he came back and held out his hand to her.
Inside, the house was dirty and some kids had spray-painted their names on the walls. Faith recognized the names of kids they’d gone to school with. She nodded toward one. “I could believe he’d spend his spare time vandalizing an old house.”
Ty ducked his head when she saw his name painted on a wall. Grinning, he led her through the house.
