Moose and Goose

Chapter Sixty-five

Kacey slows her cinnamon-tinted Ford Elite toward a black buzzer, and white gate, then lowers her window. On the gate reads McDaniels Manor in gold, and through the bars, Judith admires the shrubbery and men in coveralls, trimming them with hedge clippers.

She leans out of her window, and when she mashes the black button with her thumb, a low buzz bursts from the speakers. Kacey rests her arm on the windowsill.

"Hello," a soft voice greets her. The woman's accent resembles one from southern Italy – Catania province, to be exact.

"Hi, Cara, it's Kassandra. I left to pick up a friend," she explains. "Could you open the gate?"

Judith and Kacey watch the gate slide to their left, and when it's three-quarters of the way open, she drives along the curved, stone path.

Judy watches the white men in dingy attire and boots shaping the hedges bordering the side of the driveway. A white woman in black coveralls sprints from the white stairs to her door when she stops at the closed garage.

"Miss. Kassandra, I'm sorry I wasn't here to park for you. I had to help in the kitchen." Her fear-laden voice makes Judith furrow her eyebrows at Kacey.

"It's okay, Carolin," she assures her, and they remove their seatbelts. The ladies exit the Ford Elite, and Judith shuts her door, then sprints around the trunk to follow her. The woman sits behind the wheel and closes the door as the pair ascend the castle-like steps.

"Do y'all beat your slaves or something?" Kacey whips her head to her with a raised brow. "I mean, she nearly fell over for you when she saw you driving."

"Oh, her." She lets out a dry laugh and shakes her head. "No, I don't know what her deal is. I think she just had bad experiences working with the people before us, and now she thinks we're all a bunch of evil rich people."

"No offense, but your Mom sounded – evil," Judith tells her, and they stop at the tall double doors. Kacey takes the silver handle and tugs it.

"Well, I promise you, she's not. She hardly talks, honestly, but she hates when I swear, so," she trails off, lowering her head and gnawing the corner of her bottom lip.

She stares at Judy's clogs as she steps into the foyer, then she shuts the door behind them.

"But welcome to my humble abode," she monotonous says, extending her arms in presentations of the luxuries around them.

Stepping into the grey mansion, Judith didn't have any expectations. Seeing the grounds, as they passed through, full of workers tending to vegetation under the autumn sun with their sweaty foreheads gripping their oily hair, she felt as if she were passing through a plantation.

Entering her home reminded her of her first trip to the White House. She was ten years old, it was nineteen seventy, and she was learning about the Vietnam War. While everyone in her class fawned over Richard Nixon, she gazed around at the portraits, the shiny floors, the staff, and the sculpture of Abraham Lincoln. However, his likeness was more startling than mesmerizing in her eyes.

"Where is everyone," Judith asks. She hears voices not far from them, but as she scans the foyer, she only sees white men and women wandering around with dishes and chairs. Kacey takes her hand and guides her through the main entry. "And what's going on?"

They turn left at the fork — marching toward the spiral staircase resembling one leading to a palace's tower — and she gazes through the glass on the kitchen's doors ahead, watching the staff scramble to prepare dinner.

Kacey releases her halfway up the narrow stairs and smiles at the growing wonder in her dark browns. Judith's hands trail the cinder blocks on either side of them as if she needs an indication that everything is real.