I don’t press him for more conversation. Instead, I start to sit in the green floral easy chair positioned in front of the television, take stock of the video collection and the slipper collection beneath it, briefly ponder when he ran electrical lines down here to the root cellar that’s far enough from the house that he definitely had to intentionally run electricity to it, and decide I don’t actually want anything near that chair unless I was already planning on burning it.
I loved Uncle Tony.
I did.
And I know he had his own wants and needs and hobbies. God knows I’ve found some interesting things while I’ve been cleaning out the house to turn it into a home for Junie and me.
Nothing too out of the ordinary. Thirty-year-old canned goods and a collection of herbal remedies for various ailments, from high blood pressure to impotence, in one of the kitchen cabinets in the bunkhouse, which, yes, was a weird place to find them. Stacks of muscle car magazines, which is the most anti–Uncle Tony thing I’ve ever seen, tucked in among the various leftover items that didn’t sell during the estate sale and that I asked to be saved for me to look through in case I found something I wanted to keep for sentimental reasons.
A horseshoe collection in the barn, which I am 100 percent regarding in a new light right now.
Seashells, even small seashells, that he filled with candle wax in another missed cabinet in one of the bathrooms.
A stained glass portrait of what I think was a bear and a llama in a compromising position behind a door in the original cabin.
We all live our lives and have various interests, right?
But I’m not so certain I needed to know that Uncle Tony had a foot fetish.
“Did you two hang out here a lot?” I ask Flint.
“No.”
“Occasionally, then?”
“No.”
“When one knows this exists and shows up on a person’s doorstep demanding solo access to clean out the previous owner’s belongings before seven a.m. on a Sunday morning, the current occupant is entitled to ask questions.”
“Found it by accident. One-time thing. Gingersnap’s fault, actually. Stopped by to drop off pastries for Tony one morning, found the cow mooing like she lost her best friend right outside the door that I’d never noticed before, knocked, let myself in, found . . . this, and I never came back. Never told Tony I found it. Forgot it existed until I caught a kid with something that sparked a memory yesterday.”
I believe him.
His skin turned the color of a beet about the moment he realized he wasn’t getting access to this root cellar without me, and it hasn’t wavered since.
If he were any other man, I’d say it was adorable.
But with this man, I am totally keeping my guard up.
Especially with how much I still want to give him a hug.
I take a sip of coffee and do a slow turn again, taking in the foot posters, the abstract foot art, the foot sculptures, mostly in the box at Flint’s feet now, and the labels on the videos—beach feet, boot feet, bed feet—once more.
And while it’s mostly feet, that’s not all it is.
“Did he ever date?” I ask.
Flint gives me a hard look.
Utter sadness floods me. Grief for a man whose family cut him out and who clearly felt like he had to hide who he was despite living in such a welcoming community like Hell’s Bells.
I haven’t met a single person who hasn’t had a story about Uncle Tony and the times he did something nice for them.
Uncle Tony was exactly the kind of man you’d want to win the lottery. He did so much good with his winnings over the years. He left his house to me on the hunch that I’d need a safe escape and specified in his will that, while I got Wit’s End and all physical possessions in and on it, every last dime in his bank account was to be split among his favorite various charities around the country.
“Do you think he ever wanted to date?” My throat’s starting to clog, and I can barely get the words out.
“Hard to believe in love when it’s used as a weapon,” Flint mutters in response.
God.
No wonder they were tight.
Mom always told me Uncle Tony was the black sheep of the family because he was a carefree hippie who didn’t put in the hard work. That if a man’s crowning achievement was winning the lottery, he wasn’t the best role model.
I’m slowly realizing just how lucky I was that she was willing to send me out here for a few weeks those summers I was in high school, because I’m certain my grandparents shunned him for entirely different reasons.
I know he grew up in different times, my grandparents, too, but that doesn’t make me any less sad for him. If anything, it makes me more sad.
I clear my throat and gesture around us, desperate to not wallow in how much being thrown out of his family must’ve hurt my uncle. “This reminds me of a secret room I wasn’t supposed to find when we took down the wrong wall in a house in Indianapolis during season two. The husband regularly hosted swinger parties when his wife was out of town.”
Flint’s lips part, and he shifts a glance at me that suggests he thinks I’m making it up.
“You wouldn’t have seen that episode. It never aired. Even if the producers hadn’t nixed it on the spot for the fact that we were a family-friendly show, the husband had a total shit fit, like it was our fault he was keeping a secret from his wife, and threatened to sue us if we didn’t get off his property immediately. No idea if they ever finished that reno, but I know she got the kid in their divorce.”
He stares at me.
I shrug. “I’ve seen things. Also, the best part of being considered the ditzy, airheaded, stupid comic relief on a dumb reality TV show is that no one ever suspects it was you who secretly paid for her private investigator who got the pictures of the other things he was into that were not okay. Secret sex room? Whatever. Have your fetishes. Digging up the hundred-thousand-dollar gambling debt he’d racked up in questionable crowds so that she’d have cause to get the kid in the divorce? You hear that? That’s the sound of justice, and I fucking love it.”
He gapes at me for another second. Then he cracks a grin, and oh my God, is he adorable.
No, Maisey. No. He’s a pompous ass who thinks he’s the hottest thing since a forest fire and who also thinks he knows everything. He is not adorable.
“You ever tell Tony that?” he asks.
“I have never spoken those words aloud. Congratulations. You caught me in a caffeine deficit and now know my biggest secret. Tell anyone and I’ll go justice on your ass too. Don’t test me. I will find all the things.”
He shakes his head, still grinning, and lifts a particularly colorful butt plug. “Like this?”
“Like that. Which would be an absolute piece of art if I didn’t know exactly what it was.”
He chuckles. “About five years ago, he caused a massive fuss in town. Gertie at the general store got a load of these. Thought they were lamp pulls missing their chains. Tony bought the whole box, and not five minutes after he departed with the lot of them, someone told Gertie what they actually were. Spread like wildfire that Tony bought the whole box. About the time they started debating if anybody was gonna tell him, I noped out of the whole conversation.”
“They thought he was an innocent old man who had never heard of sex before and didn’t want to tell him?” I feel like Junie, rolling my eyes now.