Jodi rolled her eyes, then kissed my cheek and got out. I knew she would if I put it that way; it made practical sense, sure, but more importantly, it told her I didn’t doubt her courage, just my concentration.
There was one really sticky moment when the earth near the top of the gouge started to give, but I gave her the gas and bounced clear before I could get dragged sideways. With only a couple of minor scratches to the side panels, I made it to the far side of the road. “YEEAH! Try ‘n’ stop a Slade that way, willya? Ha!” I shook the crowbar at the silent woods. “Okay, honey, you can come on over. Walk around the way I drove.”
“Walk? You need sidewalks here, Clint! This isn’t walking, this is an obstacle course!” Despite her complaints, Jodi was making her way through the woods at a respectable clip. She’d done hiking before. “I—yow!” Her figure seemed to vanish into the earth.
“Jodi!” I shouted in horror. Damnation, I should have made her take the crowbar! I had the whole car to protect me!
“Calm down, Clint!” Relief flooded me as I saw her rise back into sight, brushing leaves and dirt off. “I was just being a schlemiel and looking at you instead of where I was putting my big feet. Honestly, you worry like my grandmother.” She emerged from the forest and got back into the car. “Well, so much for my perfect grooming.”
“Don’t worry none about that.” I dropped the crowbar back into the bag and put the car in gear. “It’s their fault for not watching for the slide and preventing it.” That wasn’t true, of course, if it was really what I suspected, but either way the family wouldn’t blame Jodi for not looking her best. And as far as I was concerned, she’d look as good in jeans and a dirty T-shirt as in a formal gown.
There were no more incidents on the way up. We crested the last hill, came around the much smoother bend that led to Slade’s Hollow, and came down through the woods into the open. “Whoa!” said Jodi involuntarily.
I couldn’t repress a grin. “Yeah, y’all expected a couple log cabins and an outhouse, didn’t you? Admit it, the Slades don’t have a half-bad spread.”
The Slade House really is something of a mansion, even if it is more spread out than up. Every generation adds a room or two somewhere, sorta like Lord Valentine’s Castle. We try to keep a sort of style to it, but you can still tell where one generation left off and another started. The main part used for living these days was a massive mansion whose architecture was natural-looking logs and hewn stone—sort of a magnified version of what the earlier stuff had been, but if you knew anything about building you could tell that this thing hadn’t been raised up by two farmers and their families; serious construction work had gone into the three-story, semicircular building.
“The original house is that small squarish part, off-center,” I told Jodi, pointing. “That’s where Winston Slade put his house back in 1802. It’s used mostly for storage now. The funny addition over there is our generator shed, and on the other side’s storage for tools, stuff like that. Got farm equipment in the barn there, even though we don’t use it all that much—don’t have to do much farming, so it’s mostly just for the family.”
“It’s a mishmash all right, but pretty, you know? And this valley!”
“Yeah, the Hollow’s pretty. One reason old Winston chose it was because it was already clear for building; figured it was a sign and built his house smack in the middle of the Hollow, on this little rise. And here we are.”
I killed the engine and got out, Jodi doing the same on the other side. Our feet barely touched the ground before the front doors burst open and the Slade clan came running out, Mamma in the lead as usual. She was wearing her best dress, which was a pretty lace-embroidered blue and white affair that she’d only had to let out a size or two since she got married to Father and which set off her complexion and dark brown hair. There still wasn’t a trace of gray in that thick hair. Either she just aged well or used dye that no one caught her at, but no one would have the guts to ask her.