“I know this is hard,” I said, peeking at Sammy in my rearview mirror. “Remember that you asked me to look into it for a reason. Alyssa needed a grown-up to help her.”
Sammy relented and peeled his gaze from the passing trees. “I know you’re doing your best. I just thought I could help her too.”
“You are helping her,” I said. “By telling me what you know about her. For now, though, we’ve got different business to attend to. Do me a favor? Reach into the side pocket of that camera bag and grab the little piece of paper in there.” Sammy did as told and extracted the Post-It note that Della had written all the photography sites on. “What’s the first thing on the list?”
“Brighton Park,” Sammy read off. “Ooh, if we go to Brighton Park, can we get sausages at Stan’s?”
“We sure can.”
Sammy and I spent the rest of the afternoon scouting locations around Falconwood. In Brighton Park, I got a few decent shots of the kids’ playground, the community clubhouse, and Stan’s Sausage truck, where Sammy happily chowed down on a bratwurst that was easily twice the size of his foot. Thankfully, it was too cold for kids to make use of the playground, so the snow from yesterday was perfectly preserved on the bright yellow slides. The clubhouse was similarly coated in snow. I took idyllic shots of the outside before asking the manager for permission to shoot the inside. Sammy played ping pong against the wall in the recreation center while I snapped pictures of the community room, gym, and indoor pool. A few families made use of the amenities, so I asked them if they would be willing to have their pictures on the Falconwood website. They all eagerly agreed, so I took several photos featuring smiling kids and their picture-perfect parents.
After Brighton Park, we hit the library and the town square. The library was one of the first buildings to be constructed in Falconwood, back in the 1800s, which made it rather historic. It had a plaque on the front door to share the details of its construction. Sammy read it aloud in a hilarious imitation of “an important old man” as I took pictures of the library’s historic front porch and swinging bench. In the town square, I made sure to highlight the storefronts as well as the small ice skating rink that was full of kids blowing off their after-school energy. Then I brought Sammy to the Black Cat Café to warm up with a hot chocolate and take a few extra photos of the inside. Mason heartily consented to being featured on the website and put so many marshmallows on top of Sammy’s hot chocolate that the kid started bouncing off the walls. As Sammy flicked sugar packets across the café and blew paper balls out of straws, I beckoned Mason over.
“First of all,” I said, gesturing to Sammy, “that’s your fault. Second, do you know where this garden thing is? Della said I should photograph it for the website, but I’ve never heard of it.”
Mason squinted at Della’s neat cursive. “Oh, the Garden of Marble. It’s one of Falconwood’s well-kept secrets. A lot of the locals plan weddings and other parties there. It’s a few miles north of here. Make a right on Dean Road, go down a bit, and take a left at the ivy-covered wall. There’s no sign, so you’ll have to keep an eye out.”
“Thanks.” I folded up the note and slipped it back into my pocket. “Come on, Sammy. Let’s get this show on the road.”
I drove past the entrance to the Garden of Marble twice before I finally saw the driveway. It was hidden behind the ivy Mason spoke of, and the mirrors of the car pulled the plants away from the red brick wall surrounding the property. It had been a while since anyone had been through here. Apparently winter weddings weren’t all that popular in Falconwood. Once inside, a hedge at least ten feet tall separated the parking lot from the actual Garden of Marble, keeping it a complete mystery. I parked the car in the first spot and helped Sammy out.
“This place is creepy,” Sammy said. The sugar crash was hitting him quickly. He wobbled toward an opening in the hedge, the only sign of an entrance to the garden.
“You think this is creepy, but the Abram Mansion isn’t?”
“What are we doing here?”
“Taking pictures, like we did around town,” I said, slinging my camera bag over my shoulder. “Do you think we’re supposed to let someone know we’re here before we go in?”
There was no booth at the entrance to the garden or any information on whether or not this was a ticketed experience. Sammy tiptoed to the gap in the hedges and peered inside.
“Whoa,” he said. “Come check this out, Peyton!”
I joined him at the hedge, looked in, and let out a surprised gasp. The Garden of Marble stood up to its name. It was equal parts nature and stone. Statues of all shapes and sizes were placed in a meticulous pattern, each one decorated with beautifully tended vines and flowers. The low hedge maze offered visitors a footpath through the garden that took you past the best places to view each statue. The middle of the maze was kept open, like an aisle for a wedding. At the very end, a statue of Aphrodite waited under a vine-covered archway, the perfect place to take your vows.
Sammy pranced off, dragging his fingers lightly across the tops of the hedges as he went. I followed after him, worried he might cut himself on a hidden thorn. The flowers in bloom were perennial, meant to withstand the harsh winter weather, though I found the remnants of Easter lilies along our path to the first statue. From the looks of a few different dead flowers, the garden was designed to bloom no matter the season. Sammy stopped at the first statue and attempted to read the plaque below it.
“‘Moon in Winter’ is an abstract form by Samuel B. Kross—we have the same name!—commissioned in 1998 by the Falconwood Board of Art for the Winter Fair,” Sammy said, doing his best with the big words. “What’s a board of art?”
“It’s a collection of people who decide what to put in a garden like this,” I explained, “though I’m surprised a town as small as Falconwood ever had one.”
“Falconwood used to be bigger.” Sammy stroked his chin with his thumb and forefinger, examining the statue with a narrowed eye. “At least, it used to be more important.”
“How do you know that?”
“Alyssa told me.”
The sculpture—Moon in Winter—was crafted out of steel despite the garden’s title. It featured a huge orb that appeared to be floating above the hedges, though if you looked from just the right angle, you could see the support piece that kept the moon aloft.
“They used to have parties here,” Sammy went on. He reached up to touch the support beam, as if to make sure it was actually there. “I remember now. Alyssa told me her favorite statue was right in the middle.”
“Which one? Aphrodite?”
He shook his head. “Not in the aisle. In the middle of the maze.”
With Sammy in the lead, we worked our way around the Garden of Marble, pausing briefly at each statue to determine if it was the one Alyssa spoke about. We passed busts of Falconwood’s famous historical figures, nude statues so intricate that I covered Sammy’s eyes, and more abstract sculptures that needed hefty help from the imagination to make any sense. At last, we reached a statue that jogged Sammy’s memory. It was simple and beautiful, featuring a full-figured woman holding a newborn infant in her arms. Though she looked down on the child with obvious love, the woman’s stone expression also carried grief.
“Is this it?” I asked Sammy quietly, as if to refrain from disturbing the woman in her moment of pain.
“Yes,” Sammy said. “It’s sad, isn’t it?”
The sculpture was titled “With You, Always,” but unlike the other sculptures in the garden, the plaque did not tell us who created or commissioned the piece. As I studied the infant’s closed eyelids and slack fingers, I realized Sammy had grasped the point of the sculpture before I had. The mother’s grieving expression suddenly made sense: her son was stillborn.
“Yes, it’s very sad,” I replied. My voice cracked. Why was this Alyssa’s favorite statue? Death was a concept not many children her age fully understood. Then again, Sammy had immediately understood the sculpture as soon as we walked up to it.
Maybe kids had a better understanding of life and death than the rest of us did.
Sammy walked up to the statue and dusted the snow off the infant’s head and the mother’s shoulders. Then he planted one kiss on the mother’s forehead and another on the baby’s. When he climbed down, he took my hand in his.
“I don’t think you should take pictures here,” he said. “We should go now.”
“Whatever you say, Sammy.”
After dropping Sammy off at Theo’s—with no mention of the Garden of Marble to his mother—I swung by Della and Basil’s airstream to pick Ben up from his first day of work. Since Ben and Basil were working late in the greenhouse, Della invited me inside for a cup of tea, the leaves for which she’d grown and dried herself. As the kettle boiled on the stove, she sat down at the tiny table across from me, groaning as she massaged her knees.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
“It’s this weather,” she said. “The cold makes my joints ache, especially when it’s too windy to go hiking. Movement keeps you healthy. Remember that as you get older. How’d your first day of photographing the town go?”
“Pretty well.” I offered her my camera for her to take a look at the pictures. “Sammy and I hit a few of the places on your list. What do you think?”
She browsed through the pictures, nodding her approval. “You’ve got a good idea for this stuff, unless Sammy set up your shots for you.”
“A few of them,” I admitted. “We also went to the Garden of Marble, but Sammy didn’t want me to take pictures there.”
The kettle whistled, and Della returned my camera to steep the tea. “You were alone, weren’t you? That place whispers if you’re alone.”
“It whispers?”
“You didn’t hear it?” She placed a spoonful of tea in a handmade strainer, then lowered the strainer into the pot. “Places like that garden talk to you. It’s like everyone who’s ever passed through there leaves a word or a phrase, like the statues collect voices to use for themselves.”
I suppressed a shudder. “Have you seen the statue of the mother and her child?”
“With You, Always.”
“I was wondering if you knew who made it or commissioned it,” I said. “There was no information on the plaque, and it looked familiar to me.”
She swirled the pot with a practiced gesture to coax the flavor from the tea leaves. “I suppose you might have come across its image at the mansion. That sculpture was anonymously donated to the garden, but people always assumed Percy Abram was the one who commissioned it.”
“Why would he have commissioned a piece like that?” I asked as Della poured the tea. It filled the air with the warm scent cinnamon and cloves. When she set it in front of me, I let the steam wash over my pores. “I didn’t know he was into art.”
“It wasn’t one of his main interests,” Della said, sitting across from me again. “But that sculpture was installed in the garden shortly after rumors swirled that his wife Penelope had had a miscarriage. They were expecting a son. It was early on in the pregnancy, but both Percy and Penelope were devastated.”
I swallowed my voice with a sip of tea. With the assumptions I’d made about Percy and Penelope’s relationship, I couldn’t help but wonder if it Penelope had lost the baby due to natural issues or if Percy was somehow at fault. Before I found the courage to ask Della, Ben and Basil returned from the greenhouse. Ben’s pink cheeks were smudged with dirt, and he carried a legal pad covered with cramped notes. His harried expression didn’t match Basil’s look of elation.
“First day in the books!” Basil announced, patting Ben on the back. Ben stumbled and caught himself on the back of my chair. “I might have overworked him, Peyton. My apologies.”
Ben took a sip of my tea and replied, “It’s no problem, Basil. Really.”
I could hear the exhaustion in his voice, so I gathered my camera and coat. “Thanks for everything. I’m going to get this one home.”
“Wait a minute.” Basil ambled off to the ‘office,’ a pull-down desk near the back of the airstream, and came back with an envelope. He handed it to Ben. “That’s for your hard work.”
“Already?” Ben asked. “Shouldn’t we do this every two weeks or so?”
“Think of it as an advance,” Basil replied. “A gesture of good faith. Today went well. I’m looking forward to working with you in the future.”
I helped Ben into the car as Della and Basil waved from the airstream. Once we’d pulled away from their little plot of land, I asked Ben, “So how did it really go? Because you look like you just buried a body.”
Ben leaned his forehead against the window and closed his eyes. “I don’t know if this is going to work out, Peyton. Basil just talks and talks. I don’t think he knows what he’s saying half the time. The notes I took? I have no idea what they say. Every time I tried to ask a question, I got an answer that made me think of a hundred new questions. That guy is senile, I’m telling you.”
We drove through the town square. It was twilight on a Friday night, and all of Falconwood’s teenagers were out for a night on the town. They loitered up and down the sidewalks, nursing iced coffees despite the dip in temperature. As we cruised past them, I saw a gaggle of boys wearing Falconwood High letterman jackets. They tossed a football between them while a group of girls looked up and giggled.
“God, do you ever wish things were still that simple?” Ben asked, gazing at the high schoolers with a forlorn expression. “Growing up sucks. I peaked in high school.”
“Don’t say that,” I told him. “If you say it, you’ll start to believe it. How much did Basil give you anyway?”
As we cleared the town square and made our way into the dark woods that led to the mansion, Ben fished the envelope out of his pocket and took out a handful of bills. “Holy crap,” he said. “There’s a thousand dollars cash here.”
I nearly slammed on the brakes and made a U-turn. “What?”
He spread the bills out for me to see, counting them again in my line of sight. “Eight hundred, nine hundred, one thousand.”
“We can’t take that,” I said. “We have to give it back. Basil must have made a mistake.”
“He said it was an advance,” Ben countered.
Something kept me driving toward the mansion, even as my mouth fought against it. “Ben, this is practically charity. We can’t let them give us that kind of money.”
“Why not? I’m working for it.” He carefully put the money back in the envelope and tucked it safely away. “If he keeps paying me like this, we can resume renovations a lot sooner than we thought. Wasn’t that our goal to begin with?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Look, I’ll ask Basil to clarify what my pay is,” Ben said, patting my thigh. “I can have him put something in writing if you want, but if he insists on paying me like this, I’m not going to say no.”
I turned into our hidden driveway, thinking over our options in my head. As the mansion cast its shadow over the car, I caught sight of a little face in the attic window. Something about that face—always hiding in fear—caught my heart in a cage and squeezed tight.
“Fine,” I told Ben. “But this time around, I want a say in the renovations.”
16
It turned out Basil had purposely intended to pay Ben as much as he did that first time, and though I argued with Della that it was too much, the Gordons refused to give us any less. It wasn’t until Basil made the point that Ben was making almost the same amount of money for his last writing job that I finally gave up. We needed the money anyway, and if Basil was satisfied with Ben’s skills, there was no point in wasting any more of my breath. As a result, Jim and his crew returned to work on the renovations two weeks later, and they dove back in with a dedication I hadn’t seen since Sammy attempted to eat a whole bag of candy in the ten minutes it took his mother to order pizza from the closest pie place.
“Falconwood’s a bore, ma’am,” Jim told me one morning, covered in dust
as his crew excavated a portion of the mansion we’d yet to step foot in. “Not much work to do here. We’ve traveled a few miles to fix a roof and mend a bathroom, but it’s nothing like the project you got here. This is my dream job.”
“I’m glad you’re back at it,” I told him.
The only problem with the renovations resuming was that Jim preferred someone to be home at all times to supervise. Just in case something went wrong or he had a question about our wallpaper preference, he requested either me or Ben to be available during business hours. Ben and I had since worked out an arrangement. I took the morning shift at the mansion while Ben gathered information with Basil at the greenhouse. They both returned to the mansion in the afternoon, working in Ben’s study to put together ideas for the book while I went to pick up Sammy from school. Often, Della tagged along with Ben and Basil. While I was gone, she played maid around the mansion, cleaning up and putting our things away, as if she owed us a debt instead of the other way around.
“It’s no trouble,” she insisted one night after I’d returned from dropping Sammy off at Theo’s.
I was exhausted. We had spent the afternoon doing reshoots all over town, since the snow had melted enough to see the ground. Baylor, the man who recruited me for the job in the first place, was picky about how he wanted the photos for the website to look. Often, I left Sammy to explore the children’s massive section of the library while Baylor and I went through my pictures one by one. It was meticulous work. Baylor examined each picture with his nose so close to the camera, he fogged up the display with his breath. He had also tasked me with re-imagining the website, and I regretted ever mentioning that I’d maintained my own website a few years ago when I was photographing weddings and other events. He looked over every detail and link, obsessed over color schemes, and asked if I knew any graphic designers who could give Falconwood a logo that tourists would recognize “like Disney World.” Then, at the end of the day, he wrote me a check for twenty-one dollars.
The Haunting of Abram Mansion Page 21