Promises to Keep - Ann Tatlock [88]
“Oh yes, Mrs. Anthony. I love it. I love the whole idea of influencing young lives, helping to shape young minds. When the kids grow up and get back to you years later and let you know that you made a difference in their lives . . . well, there’s just not much that’s better than that.”
Mom nodded, took a sip of her coffee, gave me a small grateful smile. As long as Lyle Monroe didn’t plan to live with us, Mom was happy. We were glad to have Tillie to help out around the house, but one Monroe under our roof was all that we could manage.
chapter
37
As soon as Lyle Monroe got a room at Miss Charlotte’s, Tillie decided to take him some warm clothes, fresh linens, and a lemon meringue pie. Mom gave Tillie the use of the car, and on a wintry mid-January evening she and I headed out to Cisco Avenue on the northern edge of Mills River.
“I’ve never been up this way,” I mentioned. I peered out the window at the once elegant houses that now looked old and weary.
“No, I’ve never had reason to come up here much myself,” Tillie said. “This used to be where the rich folks lived, but now it’s more or less gone to seed. Most of these old houses have been divided up into apartments, and some of them have just plain been abandoned. See that one over there, how it’s all boarded up?”
I nodded. “Too bad. It looks like it was a pretty place once.”
“It was. Plenty of beautiful houses around here, once upon a time. The house where Lyle’s living now belonged to Charlotte Ramsey’s family for several generations. She was a Bigelow originally, and they were one of the oldest families in Mills River. The house became hers when she married Richard Ramsey, and that’s where they lived till he went off to war and got himself shot down over Germany. He left poor Charlotte a childless widow.”
“She never got married again?”
“No, she never did. But she wanted to keep that big old house of hers, so she turned it into a boardinghouse. Pretty smart of her in the long run, since there was a housing shortage after the war. Plenty of young newlyweds looking for a place to live, so her rooms were always full. Still are, far as I know, though she has the reputation of running a tight ship. No drinking, no bad language, and no mixing with the opposite sex if you happen not to be married. One infringement of the rules will get you kicked out fast as greased lightning.”
“She sounds pretty strict.”
“Strict but fair. I’ve known Charlotte a long time. She had the makings of a good mother, had she been so blessed. As it is, she’s kind of a mother hen to all her boarders, no matter how old they might be.”
A slivered moon had risen and a light snow was falling by the time we reached Cisco Avenue. I was captivated by the old gas lamps, now electric, that cast dim circles of light along the street. Snowflakes tumbled through each glowing circle, and I thought of dandelions casting off their pods in the wind.
“The snow looks pretty,” I said, leaning closer to the passenger side window.
Tillie nodded as she parallel parked in front of a large brick house with a wraparound porch. “Well, here we are. This is Charlotte’s place. Now listen, the north side isn’t the safest part of town, Roz, so just keep your wits about you.”
“Why’d you bring me here if it isn’t safe?”
“Well, I don’t mean that it isn’t safe exactly. I just mean, if anything were ever to happen in Mills River, this is where it would happen. Though, of course, it’s not going to happen. Then again, if it did happen and we got mugged or assaulted or something unthinkable like that, I suppose it would give Captain Strang something to do, since there’s so little crime in this town. Think of the taxes we pay while our officers spend most of their time writing traffic tickets and rescuing cats out of trees. But then again, I like it that way. Don’t you?”
Tillie looked at me and I looked at her, and after a long while I said, “Sometimes I think you’re really strange, Tillie.”
“And you’re entitled to your opinion,” she replied. “Now, help me by carrying the pie while I grab the bundles