Monarch Manor

by Maureen Leurck

  No way, I’m Sherlock, I sent back.

  You’re cute, was the reply.

  I set my phone down and relaxed back against my pillow. I put the prayer card on my nightstand and closed my eyes. Yet sleep didn’t come for hours later, as the questions from the card haunted me every time I started to drift off.

  CHAPTER 11

  AMELIA

  Amelia was brought out of her wistful contemplation on the veranda by Jane screeching. Again. This time, all it took was one lone, slightly off-center teacup to set her off. Long tables, covered in freshly pressed cotton tablecloths, lined the front of Monarch Manor’s yard, with gold spindle chairs placed at each setting. Mary’s best china, bought in London several years ago, was on each table, a white teacup with etched pink flowers neatly placed to the side of each plate. At the front of each place setting was a folded pink place card, with names such as Mrs. Charles Wacker scrawled on the front by a calligrapher. Down the center of each table were pink roses in silver vases lined up in military precision.

  Everything was perfect. Except for one place setting.

  “We may as well just cancel the luncheon,” Jane hissed to Amelia after she came down from the veranda and onto the lawn. Jane grabbed her arm. “Why do these things always happen to me?”

  “Stop,” Amelia said as she shrugged her sister’s arm away, rubbing where there would certainly be a bruise later. She followed her sister’s trembling finger to the place setting for Mrs. David Whittingham, the mother of the groom.

  “She’s already noticed that the handle of the bread knife isn’t pointed at exactly eleven o’clock. She said”—Jane straightened her spine and held her head at an angle, her wide-brimmed white hat tilting on her head—“ ‘I hope this oversight isn’t any indication of how the rest of the festivities will occur.’ ” Jane slumped her shoulders forward and sighed. “It’s already a disaster.”

  Amelia leaned over the table and straightened the teacup, so that it was in line with the others. “Fixed. Now, please, worry about something important.” She gave her sister a wry smile before Jane pursed her lips and walked over to a gathering crowd of admirers in long white dresses and white gloves.

  Amelia tapped at the sweat already forming on her hairline, under her own straw hat. She took a deep breath, trying to gather the strength to have meaningless conversations while politely nodding. The traditional pre-wedding bridal luncheon was something she would have happily skipped, had she not feared that her mother would string her up should she miss it. It all seemed so pointless—why have an event for everyone to socialize when the entire evening would be spent socializing and catching up? It felt like one more opportunity for the guests to enjoy free food and drinks while the parents of the bride spent more money.

  There were so many other things to think about, worry over. Plan for.

  She walked over to the table with refreshments, her heels sinking in the grass, and a maid poured her a glass of lemonade. “Again, pink,” she said when she saw the sticky sweet liquid in her glass. “If I never see pink again before I die, then . . .” She stopped, and exhaled slowly.

  “You’ll what?” Margaret Cartwright, Amelia’s mother-in-law, appeared at her side and Amelia startled, nearly spilling the pink lemonade down her printed dress.

  Amelia hadn’t been alerted of her arrival, despite Alfred promising to send word when she arrived. “Excuse me,” she said as she put down her glass and patted her dress. “I was just remarking how beautiful the pinks are in the wedding. How it complements the roses in bloom on the property.” Her hands shook and her throat closed, holding back all her words and cracking her composure.

  Margaret narrowed her eyes. “Yes. Of course you were.” She sighed as she scanned the crowd of women gathering on the lawn. “One more day to endure, I suppose. It’s nothing like the Dickerman wedding from last season. Now that was something to talk about.”

  Amelia nodded, her body loosening as she clasped her stomach so as to avoid a snicker. She had heard that a guest had far too many brandy cocktails and tripped on the front lawn, staining the front of her white silk skirt. She heard that the bride’s mother had fired the gardener the next day, citing uneven terrain for her guests.

  She should have fired the waiter who kept making the guest those drinks, Amelia had thought.

  Yet Jane thought the gesture was glamorous, a glittering display of power. Firing a servant over something that was clearly not his fault. Real power, power over other people, could only come with that kind of wealth. The kind of money that scared other people into believing whatever it was you wanted them to think, whatever it was that they should believe.

  Amelia tried to swallow, wondering if Margaret had asked about John, about where he was, about where he should be. She turned toward her, ready to ask one of her practiced questions about a new Monet they had purchased, but instead she saw Margaret staring at someone. She followed her gaze across the lawn, to where a handsome man with a swoop of brown hair stood, frosted drink in hand, smiling in her direction. She couldn’t help but twist her mouth into a smile before she thought better of it. She lifted a gloved hand toward him, and he started across the lawn.

  “Oh my,” Margaret said, one hand at her throat in mock surrender. “Just who is that?”

  “Matthew Cottingsley. An old friend.” It was the truth, but so much more was left unsaid. The way they ran through the lawn of Monarch Manor when they were kids, daring each other to find another toad. She and Matthew collected them in metal pails that they took to his family’s estate, Cottingsley Glen, and then released them close to the pond on the property. His summer tutor, Miss Olverio, hated the sound of the toads as they closed out the day and the dusk fell into the night. Matthew had hated the way she made him sit on the stuffy porch each morning, the one built erroneously on the south side of the house, without so much as a breeze from the lake. It became the punishment porch, a place to idle away the mornings under the watchful and often in-motion ruler of his tutor. Amelia and Matthew would watch from outside as she paced around in her room, throwing her hands up as the toads croaked away in a disorganized symphony for hours.

  As the chorus would die down, she would lean out her window and yell, “Finalmente!” They never knew if she saw them down there, giggling, running back through the maple tree woods to Monarch Manor, but they both secretly hoped she did.

  “Amelia, finally.” Matthew moved toward an embrace, but after he saw the way her eyes widened he stopped and took her hand. “So good to see you.”

  His touch was like a favorite dress, one she wasn’t sure would still fit but always did. A relic of the past, which would always fit against her. Amelia’s eyes darted from Margaret to him, her heart beating against her sundress so hard she was sure they could see her chest quiver. “And you as well. How was your trip into town?”

  “Long,” he said, and for the first time she saw the crinkles around his eyes and the lines on his forehead.

  How long has it been? So very long. Too long. Too late.

  He ran a hand through his hair, the thick brown locks brushing against his forehead. “Yours?”

  She nodded, slightly tilting her head to the side. “And each day leading up to the event is longer than the last.” She heard how breathy her voice had become, how she sounded like a child again. But Matthew always made her feel that way, like the past was something she could touch, feel, hold. Like her soul was bright and untouched by all that she had felt. With him there, at Monarch Manor, it felt as though she had dipped a hand into the well of her childhood and pulled out a few shimmery drops of magic.

  He smiled. “I can only imagine how crazed Jane has become. I remember the year she had her sixteenth birthday, and how she ordered all of us to dress in stark white suits.”

  “Ah, yes. And then you and several of your friends drank too much champagne and slid down the hill into the lake.” She laughed. She could still see her sister’s red face, veins popping out of her neck, a crooked finge
r pointing toward them, before she screamed so loud it woke up the children at Havighurst, three estates down the road.

  “I don’t regret a thing,” he said. He looked at her intensely, their eyes meeting briefly, and her stomach dropped at the memory. The night of the party, she had escorted the boys into the dairy barn and handed out towels and fresh clothes. Matthew had been the last to arrive, and the barn was empty, save for the two of them. As she had handed him his towel, her hand had brushed his chest. He brought his hand up, his fingers lightly resting over hers. In that moment, everything changed.

  It was like the first time she noticed how beautiful the hydrangeas along the south lawn looked in the morning. They had always been there, yet she had accepted them as a normal part of the garden. It wasn’t until she was older that she truly saw them for the first time, the way their blooms exploded against one another and their heart-shaped leaves framed them like a fan. Her mother told her the gardeners had added food to the soil to make them bloom, to reach their full potential.

  After that moment, Matthew would never simply be her childhood friend again. She knew their childhood together, their closeness, their friendship, was their own food in the soil in which they were planted.

  The memory of their intimacy made Amelia’s cheeks turn pink and she looked away, fanning her face with her hand.

  “It’s such a warm afternoon,” she said quickly, keenly aware of Margaret’s presence. She took a quick breath, steadying her voice, before she held a hand out toward her mother-in-law. “Please, meet Margaret Cartwright.”

  Matthew took Margaret’s hand and bowed his head slightly. “Pleasure to meet you.”

  There was a long silence, in which Margaret’s mouth curled upward like a marionette, a signal that her internal recording was turned on and anything that was said would be stored for later use.

  “Where’s your handsome boy?” Matthew’s voice broke the silence, a tiny pebble rippling against a smooth lake surface.

  “He is playing on the south lawn with his cousin Emily, Eleanor’s daughter.” She shifted uncomfortably, watching Margaret out of the corner of her eye before she squinted toward the lawn, but she saw that it was empty. She whipped her head around, searching the lawn for any sign of the children, but it was only adults milling around. She took a faltering step toward the water, her pulse quickening as she searched the rocks, looking for John’s tiny frame.

  He knows not to go in the water.

  He knows.

  “Do you want me to search for him?” Matthew said, his hand at her elbow, as he took a half step toward the lake.

  “No, no. Thank you. I’m sure he’s inside, tormenting Alfred.” She gave him a shaky smile before she turned and quickly walked toward the house, her ankles wobbling against the tree roots and uneven spots in the grass.

  * * *

  “And do you see this here? This is the beautiful fairy who grants wishes to the toys. She’s the one who makes them Real. She knows when a toy is loved so much, when it’s so special, that nothing can ever be done to it. She—” Amelia heard her mother’s voice break, and she swallowed hard. She stood outside the nursery, after having scoured nearly the entire estate looking for John. She startled one maid who was arranging roses in vases in the parlor, who wordlessly pointed upstairs.

  She had heard her mother’s voice reading The Velveteen Rabbit as she walked on the polished oak floors. She began to tiptoe, listening, careful not to step on any creaking spots. She still knew the floors well, from when she and Eleanor would sneak out under the cover of darkness, strip off their nightgowns, and go for a midnight swim beneath the stars so numerous and bright, it looked like a carafe of milk had been spilled across the sky.

  When she heard her mother’s voice tighten with emotion, and she could no longer speak, Amelia stepped into the doorway. She saw that while her mother knew John couldn’t hear the words she said, she had pointed to the pictures and gestured with her hands. Amelia had read the book to John so many times, despite it being published the year before, that John remembered everything in the story. When her mother didn’t look up, Amelia cleared her throat.

  “Oh!” Mary put a hand to her chest and smiled, eyes closing briefly. She closed the book and patted John on the head before carefully standing, fanning out the skirt of her dress before she rose.

  “I was looking all over for him. I suppose I should have thought to look in the most obvious of places,” Amelia said as she smiled at John. She watched as he took the book, opened it back up, and began to trace the pictures with his pointer finger.

  “I’m sorry if I frightened you. He was sitting alone at the luncheon, looking wide-eyed as you always did when your father and I had one of our big parties. He saw me, and walked over and grabbed my hand.” Mary looked over at John and raised her eyebrows. “It was wonderful timing, since I was able to avoid a conversation with Mrs. Bartlett about her prestigious home award . . . twenty years ago.”

  Amelia laughed. Mr. Bartlett had built their summer home as a gift to his wife and insisted it be done in time for her birthday. Apparently, the construction took longer than expected, so he borrowed a circus tent from his friend the circus man P. T. Barnum to tent the house so the work could continue throughout the snowy winter. It was all worth it, as Mrs. Bartlett never failed to mention at a social event, since Ladies’ Home Journal awarded it one of the most beautiful country homes in America. Nearly twenty years ago.

  “Thank you for rescuing him, even if he rescued you right back,” Amelia said.

  Mary didn’t say a word but simply walked over to John and kissed his head. He looked up at her and smiled, reaching his hand upward. She clasped it and whispered, “Sweet angel. I will always be with you.”

  CHAPTER 12

  ERIN

  I felt like time stopped as the side doors of the school gym opened and the kindergarteners began to process out, toward the empty risers. The teachers went first, the morning group and the full-day group, smiling as they led the kids toward the stage. Each kid fell into step behind the one in front, sneaking glances out toward the crowd, where parents stood and waved frantically. I could tell that none of the kids remembered where they were supposed to go, as the teachers frantically arranged them, asking them to stand still and stop poking one another.

  The group of mothers in front of me nudged one another, their stylish patterned tops and leather earrings swaying back and forth. I realized with embarrassment that they must have been fellow kindergarten moms . . . and I had no idea. I had seen them walk in together, their hair curled around their shoulders, their nails painted shades of gray. They waved to the redhead in front of me, who gestured toward the empty seats next to her. They sat in every other seat, waiting for husbands to fill in the A-B pattern. And I watched as the husbands, too, appeared, dressed in expensive suits with large watches on their wrists.

  It had been so long—college, likely—since I had been part of a group. That I had people I could ask to carpool or to save me a seat at the recital. My friends faded away after Will was diagnosed, although I can’t say I was responsive before that, being overwhelmed with having twins, let alone twins with special needs. Will had no real friends, and I realized as I sat there I no longer did, either.

  Over the perfect blond waves in front of me, I saw Will come out of the door, his special ed teacher, Miss Ball, holding his hand, as she led him to the end. She put her hands on his shoulders, on the blue polo shirt that I had picked out for him, marveling that morning at how handsome he looked in it, and gently scooted him closer to the little girl on the end. Her yellow braids bobbing, she smiled at Will. I saw him study her face for a moment, and then he frowned. That familiar frown that signaled his anxiety pot was about to boil over.

  “Oh no. Oh no.” My ears started to ring and I looked at Luke, a white-hot chill running down my spine. He shook his head slightly, in what I’m sure he thought was a calming gesture, but I could see the fear on his face, too.

  I know
that look.

  “Why does your face look like that, Mommy?” Charlotte asked from her seat next to me. Her fall recital had been two days before, at our home elementary school, and they sang a song about spiders. Well, most of them did. Charlotte mostly twirled her hair and played with her dress.

  I didn’t answer her as I half-stood, ready to dart up to the stage and pick him up should he start to cry. Then would come the collapse to the floor, like all of his bones were removed, followed by the wailing. It was the sequence of behavior that usually meant we had to leave a public place.

  I was ready for a repeat, this time on a much more personal stage, but his teacher bent down and whispered something in his ear and his expression changed. The tension left his face, and while he slowly looked around the room with a wary eye I could tell that his nerves weren’t as elevated as they usually were.

  I sat back down, my spine straight, perched on the edge of my chair, ready to spring into action. Luke tried to put a hand on my leg, but I brushed it away. I didn’t need anything impeding my movements when I needed to rescue him (and the rest of the recital from being ruined). The piano started, and the first few lines of a kindergarten song, something about going for a walk to a pool, began.

  “Mommy, Mommy, this is the same one that I sang!” Charlotte whispered excitedly as she grabbed at my arm.

  “Yes, honey. I know,” I whispered. Charlotte had sung the song nearly every day, seemingly on the hour, every hour, for a month. I could perform it in my sleep, and I’m sure some of the neighbors could as well. But I hadn’t realized that it was the same song Will was learning at his school, maybe as part of a district-wide decision by the music department.

  “Come on, buddy,” I said under my breath as I watched Will stand silent, hands over his ears, through the first verse of the song.

  Charlotte grabbed my hand and squeezed tight. “Mommy, he looks like he’s going to cry.”