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"Romantically involved for Haille meant sneaking behind some boat house."
"Jacob!" Aunt Sara said. "Shame on you speaking of the dead that way, and especially in front of young people."
"I'm sure they've heard a lot worse," he said, glancing at me and then at Aunt Sara. "I'm just sayin' how it was."
"There's a time and place for such talk and you know it's not at the dinner table, Jacob Logan," she insisted.
He turned a little crimson at the reprimand. The tension was so thick, it felt as if we were sitting in a roomful of cobwebs. Yet I thought I knew the underlying purpose to all these questions about Kenneth and me.
"I'm sorry I'm a burden to you, Uncle Jacob," I said. "I know you would like Kenneth Childs or someone to admit to being my father so he would have to look after me," I said firmly.
"Well that isn't my whole reason, but it would be the right thing to do, wouldn't it?" He looked across the table at Aunt Sara. "The Bible tells us to suffer the children. It means our own, Sara."
"She is our own," Aunt Sara said. "God brought her for a purpose, Jacob," she retorted with more grit than I had seen or heard in her voice since first coming to their home. She looked as if she would heave a plate at him if he uttered one syllable of disagreement.
Uncle Jacob just grunted and mumbled about being finished. He left the table.
I helped clean up and while I washed the silverware and dishes, Aunt Sara told me not to mind anything Uncle Jacob said.
"What he says today, he regrets tomorrow," she told me. "He's always been like that. That man has swallowed more of his own sour words than anyone I know. It's a wonder he doesn't walk around all day with a bellyache."
"He's not completely wrong, Aunt Sara. People shouldn't have children and then leave them for someone else to look after. Even though you've been more of a mother to me than my own mother, she shouldn't have just dumped me here," I added. Aunt Sara's eyes filled with tears. She turned to hug me.
"You poor child. You never think of yourself as being dumped here, understand? And don't you ever think of yourself as being an orphan, Melody. Not while I have a breath left in my body, hear? We've both got holes in our hearts and we're plugging them up for each other," she said and kissed my forehead. I hugged her back and thanked her before going upstairs. Cary poked his head through the attic trapdoor as soon as I reached the landing.
"Want to see the model I just finished?" he asked.
"I promised May I'd play Monopoly with her."
"So, you will," he said. I looked toward May's doorway and then hurried up the ladder into the attic.
The attic hideaway wasn't much bigger than my room. The biggest piece of furniture up there was the table on which Cary worked meticulously on his model ships. Above the table were shelves filled with the models he had completed over the years. There were also a small sofa and some boxes and sea chests sharing the space.
Cary knew a great deal about ship building from studying the historical models he had completed. There were Egyptian, Greek, and Roman models, even Chinese junks. He had clipper ships and battle ships, steamships, tankers, and luxury liners, including a replica of the Titanic. His newest model was a nuclear submarine.
"Look," he said drawing me closer. Carefully, like a surgeon operating on a human heart, he snapped off one side of the submarine and showed me the interior. I couldn't believe the details, even down to tiny lights.
"It's beautiful, Cary. All of your work is tremendous. I wish you would let more people see it."
"I don't do it for people. I do it for myself," he said sharply. "It's almost like . . . like why Kenneth painted those portraits of your mother."
The smile left my face and I thought again about Kenneth's proposal for me to become his model. I wondered if I could confide in Cary, or if he would get so upset about it, he would do something to stop me. In my mind I still saw the whole thing as Kenneth's way to