Keepers Of The Gate

by E. Denise Billups

  “Sure,” Twyla says, wondering if he’ll ever use the dumbwaiter. But the grinding metal sound always grates on Charlie’s nerves.

  “Oh, Cora is snowbound, so I’m the cook today. I made Tessa’s Three-Sister Soup for lunch, and there’s a basket of Cora’s crusty fry bread on the counter if you guys are hungry,” he calls over the balustrade.

  “Thanks, Charlie,” Jayson replies, stepping back and admiring the tree.

  Harrison strolls toward the stairs, avoiding Twyla’s eyes and says, “I have work to catch up on in my room. I’ll grab a bite to eat later.”

  “Thanks for helping with the tree,” Charlie’s voice echoes from the second floor.

  “Enjoy the soup,” Harrison says, jogging up the stairs.

  “Thanks, man. See you at dinner,” Jayson replies to Harrison and strolls toward the stairs. He waits until both men are far enough and sits beside Twyla on the bottom step with a quick kiss. “Why were you so harsh with Harrison?”

  Harsh… Embarrassed her hotheadedness came at an inappropriate moment, she grins sheepishly. “It’s complicated,” she says, picking pine needles from his man bun and sweater. “I’ll tell you later. So, you’re on a first-name basis with my dad now?” she asks with raised brows and a wry twist of her lips.

  “BFFs and future father-in-law,” he says, raising his hand toward a loose lock tumbling across her lips.

  Twyla catches his resinous fingers before they glue to her hair. “I love the smell of pine but not that much, sticky fingers,” she says, undoing the hair bun she’s worn since her shower.

  Jayson sniffs his hands, rubs the sticky balsam resin between his fingers, peering at her taut face. “I see you’re upset, so I won’t pester you until you’re ready to tell me what Harrison’s done, Mrs. Sundown… Twyla Sundown. I love how that sounds.”

  “Shh,” she hushes, glancing back and upward. “Someone might hear.”

  Jayson stares up at the second-floor balcony, lowering his voice. “You know, many of our people still use the matrilineal family system. The mother’s surname, not the father’s carries importance. I’ve always admired Iroquois customs. Women were men’s equal, not subservient,” he says, trying to lighten her sour expression. “Grooms left their clan and moved into the bride’s clan longhouse…” he adds with a faraway gaze. “So different from the modern culture.”

  Twyla lifts her brows with a slight smile, recognizing his attempt to distract her thoughts as he does whenever she’s upset. But it’s not working today. “Well, I guess I’ll keep the Newhouse name, as Grams did. Twyla Ferguson Sundown Newhouse. God, that’s long,” she says thoughtfully. “If we’d lived during those times, our marriage might not have happened. Clan mothers decided who their sons and daughters married.”

  “Nah, I’d win your clan mother’s heart,” Jayson says with self-assurance.

  “And I’d make sure you did,” Twyla replies, wrapping her arm around his neck. She recalls Grams’ longhouse matrimonial sketch, wondering how she knew they’d marry. Did she see a vision? It’s the only way she could have captured Jayson’s exact likeness.

  The grandfather clock chimes once from the parlor.

  “It’s one o’clock already? Time moves fast at Twilight Ends,” he says, rising from the stairs. Twyla hooks her hand in his jean pocket, pulling him to the step again. “I’m sorry for being so crabby. This is your first time at Twilight with my family, and I’m not going to let Harrison spoil it,” she says, leaning over with a quick kiss.

  “If Harrison’s in the wrong, you have every right to express your anger, as you always do,” he says, reaching over and scooping Twyla into his arms with a twirl.

  “Jayson, no, stop it. I’m dizzy enough,” she says, trying to suppress butterflies tickling her core. Rippling laughter burst from her throat, squelching Harrison, and the alarming vision from her mind a lightning moment.

  “Let’s check out Charlie’s soup and get some food in your body,” he says, carrying her from the pine-scented Grand Hall into the aromatic kitchen.

  21

  Soup and Secrets

  The aroma of spicy soup and honey-glazed ham hits Twyla’s nostrils and goes straight to her grumbling belly, reminding her of the last thick bite of chicken sandwich shared with Jayson at midnight. When Jayson lowers her to the floor, she ambles to the refrigerator, removes a bottle of water, and swallows a thirsty gulp.

  Jayson saunters straight to the simmering pot on the stove and inhales the savory broth. “This smells divine.”

  “And it’s yummy, too,” Twyla says, realizing he’ll need several dishes to satisfy his bottomless stomach, a ravenous appetite matched by a fast metabolism. “I’ll get the bowls and spoons.”

  Twyla closes the fridge and pauses when a slight noise agitates the room. She glances at Jayson near the gas range, then turns her gaze to the far corner and back door, listening to the blizzard. Was it the wind? No, it was distinct voices and laughter. Just then, a powerful gust howls around the walls and windows, assuring her it was storm noise.

  Twyla ambles across the spacious kitchen toward the cabinets and, as she does, she senses a flux, a flow as if she’d moved through a fine mist. Gasping, she ducks when the bright overhead lights dim and the ceiling drops in height. Stunned, she clutches her chest, peering wide-eyed at the ceiling. Dried herbs and baskets appear, hanging from wall-to-wall wooden beams. At once, Twyla sees what Grams and Mom sensed for years. She peers at Jayson’s arching backside as he savors a spoonful of soup from the stock pot, receding into a distant backdrop to the transposing scene.

  Smells of nutmeg, cloves, lemons and the plummy tang of sherry suppress the honey-glazed ham and spicy soup. The same spices Cora uses for mini mincemeat pies, but none are cooking in the oven today.

  Light from two narrow wood-framed windows and a fire illuminates the dim space. Door-covered cabinets reconfigure to open shelves lined with copper pots, pans, jars, and stoneware. Indistinct chatter flows from the center of the scullery. Twyla stills her breath, straining her ears to hear voices of a colonial era. Is it Mercy and William Dox’s rustic cabin?

  A voice breezes past her ear. Fabric rustles beside and behind her. Twyla stiffens, closes her eyes, sensing a woman in her space. Her inflection changes as she moves, a fine filament extending toward two distinct women’s laughter in the center of the room. The subtle chop of knife on wood beats in the middle of the kitchen, a blade’s swift hack and scrape of steel, pushing cleaved portions aside.

  Another voice sounds from the spiral staircase adjoining the kitchen. When Twyla opens her eyes, the stairs fade to a narrow doorway. A woman dressed in an ankle-length dress and white coif bonnet moves toward the large fireplace that looms above her frame. She leans over, removes the lid from a cast-iron pot above a low fire. The sweet scent of strawberries escapes before she replaces the top. Her image wavers toward a small beehive stove built into the hearth’s corner. She turns and calls, “Garrentha,” then vanishes. A woman’s familiar tone rises with a distinct laugh. Silver hues move around the space as female chatter congregates, evocative of a transistor radio’s low static frequency, then fades.

  Grams?

  It was her voice and laugh. Twyla reaches out to grasp Tessa’s essence with tears welling in her eyes. Although it was a vision, her voice sounded so close, so tangible. She wipes her eyes, not wanting Jayson to see her cry. Who were the other women? Garrentha. The woman called the name that was on Grams’ sketches.

  The white stone walls of Twilight Ends emerge again, brightened with silver light pendants and shiny modern appliances. A black stone hearth surfaces through the red-brick fireplace centering the kitchen.

  Ancestors taking over the kitchen. Is this what Grams meant?

  Twyla leans into the counter, stares at four granite islands, which appeared as a long wooden table moments ago. As old-world fixtures vanish, copper and stainless-steel pots and pans reappear on overhead racks and shelves around the room. She glances toward the ind
ustrial stainless-steel double door refrigerator and stainless-steel oven beneath the large steel hood as they emerge from colonial remnants. A bright red 350 degrees displays on the range, set to bake the honey-glazed ham. Twilight’s modern kitchen completes in her eyesight.

  The spiral stairwell emerges with 21st-century wall sconces along her favorite stairs. The twisty passage recalls the hyperactive child she was, tireless from dawn to dusk. She’d race from the bottom to the top, circling the narrow spiral until she grew tired and collapsed in the third-floor tower room at the top of the stairs. A conical library and reading room, a place she spent many hours reading her favorite books.

  “Mercy Dox loved those stairs,” she overheard Grams say to Skylar one day in the kitchen. “She designed Twilight with her childhood home’s floor plan, an English manor,” she stated as if it were a well-known fact. Twyla wandered into the kitchen and sat in silence at the counter, listening to Grams reminisce over Mercy as if they were old friends. “It took several painstaking years to build the Queen-Anne Victorian. During the construction, Mercy lost her husband, William Dox, fell in love again, and remarried into the Newhouse family before completing the home.” Grams’ accounts were always vivid depictions, as though she’d seen the home’s erection.

  Did she just see Mercy Dox? And how did Grams know she loved those stairs? Mercy died years before her birth.

  Opening the cabinet and retrieving two bowls, Twyla inhales deep to center her senses before turning toward Jayson. A question strikes her mind as she breathes in. Were Grams’ descriptions so vivid because she was there? Did Grams time travel? Ridiculous. Twyla shakes her head with a snigger, but it’s the only explanation for the crude archery set and the sketches in the trunk.

  “What’s so funny?”

  Startled from her mental ramblings, she hadn’t noticed Jayson approaching.

  “You were daydreaming again,” he says, moving closer.

  Twyla stares up as Jayson’s chest meets her forehead. “It’s nothing.”

  Jayson lifts her chin higher with a loud smacker. “I can’t wait to kiss you every day and more,” he whispers, taking the bowls from her hand, leaving her craving their next intimate moment. Jayson turns his head with a wink.

  Twyla slaps his bottom, rapt with the sway of his firm bum in hipster jeans as he swaggers toward the stove. Narrowing her eyes, she considers revealing her visions, but she’s uncertain of what she’d seen. Were they revenants, visions or an anomalous confluence of time? Nonplussed, she thinks about the ghost in her bedroom, the changing corridor, the image in the Carriage House mirror and the morphing kitchen.

  Will Jayson believe Harrison is a reincarnation of the soldier who shot him during the war? That notion might be too hard to swallow for someone born outside the Newhouse family. Jayson’s open-minded and spiritual but knowing the man who injured or killed him in a past life breathes under the same roof might be too much to handle. No, she can’t tell him. She’ll talk to Skylar later.

  She sighs, wondering if this day’s done revealing past lives.

  “The spicy scent makes my mouth water,” Jayson says.

  Twyla shakes bothersome thoughts from her mind and walks toward the fridge. “That’s the aroma of home.” She glances at Jayson with an immediate realization. He’s her new home now. Two years ago, she never imagined another person could offer the same sense of security as her family. The only other person who does is Young George, whom she hasn’t seen in a few days. He’s always nearby and drops in for coffee or a bite to eat. She hasn’t seen Old George, either. They know the annual ritual and dutifully help raise the tree without asking.

  Twyla eyes Jayson, savoring a spoonful of soup from the pot again. “That’s Tessa’s special Three Sisters soup with beans, corn, squash, diced tomatoes, and onions. I believe Charlie used pork loin today. Cora forgoes the pork and uses chicken stock, but Charlie likes his red meat. And most days there’s a vegetarian version for guests when the inn is full or on special requests.”

  “I don’t mind the pork,” Jayson says, ladling the bowls full of thick soup and grabbing a basket of fry bread and cornbread on the counter. “I love Native-American meals. My mom prepares traditional dishes and typical American fare.”

  “Native-American cuisine is so mainstream – most people don’t realize it’s food our people consumed before the European settlers came. From what I see, we might as well call it American food,” Twyla says, peeking inside the fridge.

  “Are you kidding? Americans have adopted too many Native American customs without acknowledging their origins. The ignorance surrounding our culture is staggering,” he states with strong emphasis. “At the university’s last lacrosse game, I got into a debate with an undergraduate who swore Europeans invented the sport. The entire bench butted into the conversation, an angry mob. Many were just as ill-informed as the oblivious student,” Jayson says with irritation in his voice.

  “What the heck, I’m surprised. A fan of the sport should know its history. I was joking before about labeling native food American, Professor Sundown,” Twyla says, glancing around the refrigerator door, realizing her comment had irked him somewhat. “Do you want a salad?”

  “No, I’m good.”

  “Let’s take it to the private dining room near the fire,” Twyla says, grabbing a bottle of Charlie’s favorite Pellegrino mineral water.

  Jayson chooses the end chair in front of the fireplace, Papa Ian’s favorite spot, and draws a chair from the dining table for Twyla. Before she sits, he asks, “OK, what’s going on?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Earlier with Harrison?”

  What happened to waiting until she’s ready to talk? She senses from his inquisitive glances he’s just as eager to know as she is to share Harrison’s plan. “I’m sorry. I was a jerk earlier, but the real jackass is Harrison. He’s arrogant, acquisitive, and a menace to the Newhouse family.”

  Jayson leans over and drags her chair closer, placing his elbows on the table. He searches her brown eyes, and states, “Your annoyance with Harrison was more transparent than those windows and chillier than the storm. The moment you entered the Grand Hall, I sensed your anger when you kept throwing eye daggers in his direction.”

  Twyla sighs and falls back in the chair. “I’d never be so rude to guests, but Harrison Dox deserves it,” she says, irritated again. “And you,” she says, narrowing her eyes disapprovingly, “shouldn’t get too friendly with Harrison. The man is trying to steal Twilight from my family, just as his great-grandfather did years ago.”

  “What? How was I supposed to know? Charlie was OK with him helping with the tree.”

  Irritated, Twyla wiggles her warm feet inside the leather boots. She bends over, tugs them from her feet with immediate relief. “Charlie’s up to something. If Harrison hasn’t propositioned my parents yet, he will before he leaves. I’m sure they will laugh in his face.”

  “I’m confused. How can he take your family’s property?”

  “Harrison is contesting a will his great-grandfather made years ago. But we have legal documents proving the property belongs to the Newhouse family,” Twyla says, recalling the deed in the trunk and the testament Tessa gave Cristal.

  An acute weariness weighs on her mind. Her eyes grow heavy as if she hasn’t slept in days. If only she could take a nap, but she fears mental queries ricocheting around her brain will follow her to bed. “This has been a freaking crazy day,” she mumbles, leaning forward on her elbows. She drops her head in her hands and runs her fingers through her hair and scalp until her eyes stretch. Lifting her head, she catches Jayson’s worried expression. “I will tell you something incredible. You might think I’ve lost my mind. And if it hadn’t happened to me, I’d assume the same.”

  “Ah, I can tell your mind’s churning with whatever you’ve discovered.”

  “Churning nonstop with questions since I woke at the window this morning.”

  Jayson halts a ravenous bite on the cr
usty bread and frowns. “Didn’t your sleepwalking end years ago?”

  “Until last night. When I opened my eyes to the frightful storm, I thought I was dreaming,” she says, glancing at snow mounds around the bay windows.

  “That’s why your skin felt so icy?”

  “Yep. And my clothes were damp.”

  “I wondered why you changed before coming back to bed.”

  “Well, yeah, that was one reason,” she says with a wicked grin. Stirring the spoon around the bowl, she adds, “Maybe my clothes were damp because I sleepwalked into the snow.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “No, there’s no other explanation unless I showered in my clothes,” Twyla says, chuckling at the notion. “But the shower curtains and bathroom tiles were dry.”

  “I didn’t hear you leave the room or come back in.”

  “Ha! I could scream fire 10 times and you’d sleep straight through,” she says with a laugh. “You, my love, are a hibernating bear when you’re asleep.”

  “You know me too well. I am a deep sleeper. Hmm, a bear, well, at least I’m not a hard log, but warm and cuddly, Mrs. Sundown.”

  “Twyla Sundown… I’m getting used to how that sounds.”

  “Twyla Sundown is perfect,” Jayson says, lifting the spoon to his lips. “Well, sleepwalking outside may explain the puddles.”

  “No, my clothes were damp, not soaked, and the puddles ended at the bed, not the window. It was something else.”

  “What?”

  “This might sound crazy, but after I left mom in the family suite, I saw…” Twyla pauses, with the same uncertainty that prevents Skylar from revealing spectral experiences. Now she understands the angst of naysayers’ ridicule.

  “Twyla?”

  Jayson has never doubted her, ever, and he won’t now. “A ghost veiled in water. Well, what I assumed was a ghost, but it’s more complicated than haunts or spirits. The puddles came from her. When she hung the dreamcatcher on the wall, she left droplets on the bedspread.”