by J. R. Ward
Why hadn’t he called, she groaned. She would have changed.
Mike waved and then smiled, his bearded cheeks stretching wide at something the man next to him said. “Hey, Frankie. We just came from the airport and I figured I’d take a chance that you’d be here. Karl Graves, meet Frances Moorehouse.”
As she shook hands, she could feel herself being assessed. The man’s grip was strong, his eyes direct, his smile on the chilly side.
“I apologize for the intrusion,” Graves said, his English accent clipping the words into place. “But may we trouble you for a tour?”
“Certainly.” She smiled at Mike, but he was looking at his car keys while he turned them over in his hand. “Well, let’s go. Are you thinking of summering here?”
Because the Englishman didn’t look like the year-round type. Not in the slightest.
“Perhaps.” Unlike Mike, the man’s eyes were all over White Caps. “I live in London but the base of my business is moving to the States.”
“What do you do?”
“I own some hotels.”
She laughed ruefully. “So you know what it’s like to deal with guests and their demands.”
“Yes, I know something of it.”
Mike hung back as she gave the tour. She started with the rooms of the first floor and Graves seemed legitimately impressed by the hand-carved moldings around the high ceilings and the wide-planked cherry floors. And he knew his stuff when it came to architecture. He talked intelligently about the Federal period and the house’s infamous architect, Thomas Crane.
“It’s unusual to see a Crane this far north,” Graves said as they went upstairs. The man’s hand lingered on the thick mahogany balustrade when they reached the landing. “Tell me, do you still have the original plans?”
“There are two sets. One is here. The other is in the National Gallery in D.C.” She took a left at the top of the stairs and went lake-side. “Lincoln’s bedroom is over here. He spent three nights with Charles Moorehouse the Third in August of 1859 just prior to announcing his candidacy. Lincoln’s thank-you note is framed and hanging on the wall. In it, he mentions the view and the island which you can see to the north—”
She opened the door and stopped dead. Her grandmother was kneeling on the floor, swinging a butcher’s knife over her head. Dressed in a peach gown, she was sprinkled with plaster dust and gravely serious.
“Grand-Em!”
Frankie rushed forward as her grandmother heaved her arms and buried the knife in the wall. Before Grand-Em could lift the thing again, Frankie disarmed her.
“I beg your pardon,” was the indignant response. “Give that back!”
“What are you doing?”
“That’s none of your concern. This is my room. I shall do what I wish in it.”
What she wished, evidently, was to make one hell of a hole in the wall, and for a frail woman of eighty, she had a good start on the job. There was a four-inch cavity in the plaster and Frankie could see through to the wall joists.
“Maybe we should leave you two alone,” Mike said.
Grand-Em looked over at him. With fragile dignity, she pushed a length of white hair back from her face and assumed an expectant look, as if she were waiting to be properly introduced. In her day, ladies did not speak to persons unknown and waited for someone else to make acquaintances.
Which gave Frankie a shot at getting the men out of the way.
“Thank you, Mike,” she said, getting to her feet. “Please feel free to look around. I’ll meet you both on the lawn in about ten minutes.”
“Take however long you need,” the banker said.
Frankie shut the door behind them and hid the knife in the top drawer of the dresser. She wished she could have spared her grandmother the shocked curiosity on their faces, although she couldn’t really blame Mike or that Graves man for being spellbound. The sad reality was that Grand-Em looked out of her mind, sitting on the floor in an ancient, faded dress with dust in her frizzy white hair and a knife over her head aimed at the wall.
As Frankie went back across the room, her eye caught an old, grainy photograph of her grandmother. She’d been in her early twenties and was sitting in an Adirondack guide boat on the lake, holding a parasol in one hand. Long ago, people had visited White Caps just to see if the rumors of her beauty were lies and exaggerations. Back then, she’d been talked about in whispers for things a woman wanted to be known for. Not because she was old and crazy.
Grand-Em reached forward, starting to paw the plaster with her bare hands, and Frankie quickly stilled the knobby fingers. Her grandmother’s skin felt dry and flimsy and there were red spots that had been rubbed raw by the knife handle.
“What’s going on?” Frankie asked gently.
Grand-Em’s sparse brows sunk low over her milky blue eyes. Smoothing the palms of her grandmother’s hands, Frankie asked again, “What were you doing?”
Grand-Em looked at the wall. “I can’t seem to find it.”
“What are you looking for?”
“My ring.”
“Which one?”
“My first engagement ring.”
Frankie turned over the old hands and touched the little diamond in the plain gold setting. “But it’s right here. Right where it should be.”
“No, no, my first one. The one that Arthur Phillip Garrison gave me.”
“Grand-Em, you were never engaged to someone named Garrison.”
“True. But he asked me to marry him. In 1941. I told him no because I found him not exactly trustworthy, but he was quite sure of himself and left the ring with me. I had to hide it from Father because he would have made me marry him. Poor Arthur. He died not long afterward. I kept the stone because it was announced in his obituary that he was engaged to another woman. Given everything she was dealing with, I figured she wouldn’t have wanted to know about me.”
Frankie shook her head. If the story had come out even two years before, she might have been tempted to believe it. But Grand-Em had started to get her life’s history mixed up, assigning events to her own past that were borrowed from the lives of others. Last week, she’d declared that her husband had been elected to the Senate and that she’d lived in Washington, D.C. on Pennsylvania Avenue. This was after she’d seen a biography on R.F.K.
God only knew who Arthur Garrison was or where she’d picked his name up.
“Grand-Em, why don’t we go find Joy?”
“No. No. I must finish what I started. I hid the ring from Father in the wall.”
Frankie gently tugged on her arm. “Come on, now—”
“I will not!” Her grandmother pulled free. “This is my room.”
“This is a guest room. Your room is in the back of the house.”
Grand-Em’s eyes popped wide open as hysteria reddened her pale cheeks and tightened her hands into fists. “Are you suggesting I live with the staff?”
Frankie tried to stay calm. “Don’t you remember—” Now that was a stupid thing to say. “Let’s go find Joy.”
“I have work to do here.”
“There’s nothing in the wall, Grand-Em. There’s no ring except the one on your finger.”
“Are you suggesting I’m crazy?” she said softly.
“No, I—”
“You’re going to put me away! You’re going to let them take me!”
Frankie tried to keep her voice level. “No. Never. This is your home.”
“I’m not going to get shut away like some insane person!”
With a violent lurch, Grand-Em shot to her feet but she got caught in the skirts of her dress and pitched forward at an alarming angle. She let out a cry and Frankie lunged forward, grabbing her just before her forehead made contact with a marble-topped bed stand. But instead of feeling saved, Grand-Em obviously assumed she’d been captured because she fought harder. Frankie was able to hold her so that she couldn’t hurt herself, but took a lot of kicks in the shins before the struggling finally stopped. When Grand-Em
fell still, she let out a soft sob.
“I promise to be better. I just don’t want to go,” she moaned. “Please don’t send me away. I am lost…even when I am home. What will happen if I am somewhere unknown?”
Frankie held her tightly, feeling the small body underneath the yards of old silk. “I promise. I promise you won’t have to go away. Please don’t worry.”
Grand-Em put her hands to her face, as if trying to compose herself. She was wheezing raggedly, her chest moving in and out like a bird’s.
“Let’s sit down,” Frankie said. She helped Grand-Em up to the bed and eyed the phone on the stand, wondering where Joy was. At times like this, Frankie wished she had her sister’s way with their grandmother. Maybe if Joy had been the one to walk in, she could have stopped Grand-Em without spurring an attack.
Frankie knelt down and regarded her grandmother with concern. Grand-Em was still shaking and gasping for air. It could have just been the remnants of the panic attack, but maybe it was the harbinger of something more dangerous.
“Are you having trouble breathing? Does your head hurt?”
Grand-Em looked down and a tear rolled down her hollow cheek.
“Shhh.” Frankie stroked her grandmother’s white hair, smoothing the waves. “Let’s just catch our breath for a moment.”
When the shaking stopped, Frankie asked whether she was feeling better and got no response. Leaning forward, she put her face in the line of her grandmother’s vision. “How are you feeling?”
Grand-Em blinked and then narrowed her eyes. She reached out and touched Frankie’s face. “I know you. You’re Frances. My granddaughter.”
Frankie grabbed the frail hand, pressing it urgently into her cheek. “Yes, yes, I’m Frances.”
The brief periods of lucidity never lasted long, so what needed to be said had to be spoken fast and clearly. It had been over a year since the last time Grand-Em had recognized anyone. Even Joy.
“Grand-Em, listen to me. We’re not going to send you away. Not ever. We love you. You’re safe.” Frankie couldn’t say it enough. “You’re safe. You will never end up in an institution.”
Grand-Em’s eyes were full of sorrow. “But of course I shall. Someday you will have to send me away and you must know that it is okay. Every once in a while I remember who I was and that tells me how far gone I truly am.”
Frankie reached for the phone. She kept hold of her grandmother’s eyes as if that could keep her tethered to reality long enough for Joy to get upstairs.
“Joy, come quickly. I’m in the Lincoln bedroom.”
“Joy is here? How lovely.” Grand-Em looked down at herself and then over at the hole. “What a mess. Who could have done—oh, it was me, wasn’t it.” Distress flared and then was resolved. “I was looking for my ring. Because someone is getting married.”
Demented purpose started to replace the clarity and Frankie put herself right in her grandmother’s face. “Grand-Em. Look at me. Stay with me. Don’t you go yet, do you hear me?”
Grand-Em laughed, a short burst of breath that left her lips in a smile. “Your sister and I may look alike, but you and I, we share the same heart. We are both the fighting kind, aren’t we? That was why I married your grandfather even though Father hated it. I married a gardener for love and I was never sorry.”
Joy burst through the door. “What’s wrong?”
Grand-Em clapped her hands triumphantly. “She is getting married and needs my ring. Now, if I can just get back to what I was doing….”
Frankie could only shake her head as her sister took in the hole in the wall and all the plaster mess.
“When is your ceremony?” Grand-Em asked as Joy sat beside her.
“But I’m not getting married,” Joy said tenderly. “Besides, what would Granddad think if someone else were to wear your ring? I don’t think he’d like that at all.”
“No, not this one. The one Arthur Phillip Garrison gave to me in 1941….”
Frankie watched as their grandmother drifted back out into the lake of madness.
“She came out of it,” Frankie whispered to Joy. “I didn’t want you to miss the opportunity.”
Thank you, Joy mouthed while nodding at Grand-Em. “Well, Arthur Garrison must have been handsome. Why don’t we go to your room and change? I just finished ironing your pale yellow gown and I think it would be perfect for a sunny day like today, don’t you?”
As her sister led Grand-Em out of the room, Frankie looked out a window and saw Mike Roy and that Graves man down by the lakeshore. Mike was pointing up, behind the house, towards the mountain. Before she went to join them, she moved the dresser over next to the bed and put the lamp on top. It was a great way to cover the hole without having to pay someone to fix it.
AN HOUR LATER, FRANKIE watched Mike and the Englishman disappear down the driveway. She really wished she could erase their whole visit and start all over again.
When the screen door slapped shut behind her, she knew who it was without turning around.
“So who was that guy with the beard?” Nate walked up to her, a paper bag in his hands. His smile was big and easy, as if the whole kiss-on-the-ladder, spurned-date thing hadn’t happened.
“A friend.” Because after all Mike Roy had done for her, he seemed more than a banker. “Where are you headed?”
“Up the mountain for lunch. You want to join me?” He joggled the bag. “Got enough for two in here.”
She opened her mouth to say no, but thought of the plumber in her office and the jungle of weeds in the garden. The last thing she wanted was to be alone with her thoughts because replaying the scene upstairs would be the inevitable result. Besides, it had been a long time since she’d been up the mountain and some physical exercise sounded like a good way to blow off steam.
Nate lowered his voice. “And don’t worry about the height phobia thing. That’s only planes, balconies and bridges. Well, ladders, too, evidently. Otherwise, I’m one tough character.” He pounded his chest. “All man.”
Frankie smiled up at him. “Then come on, Tarzan. Let’s hit the trail.”
As they started out, she thought it was hard not to be impressed by the guy. In spite of his fear of heights, he’d managed to fix the gutter after all. Still, she hoped if he ended up channeling his inner handy-man again, he’d keep to the ground.
Frankie led him down the driveway and across Route 22. The way up the mountain started with a rough road that had a bright orange “No Trespassing” sign right next to it. It was hard to know whether the notice functioned as a deterrent or merely helped tourists find their way, but Frankie had never minded if people wanted to hike the trail.
“Can you drive all the way up?” Nate asked as they each settled into one of the grooves in the road.
“Only part way.”
The dark forest surrounded them, the trees a cool, protective shield, the ferns and grasses a lovely green carpet. The air smelled like pine and earth and she felt the tension leave her body.
Just as they hit the trail proper, the road broke off to the right. Nate stopped while she went ahead.
“What’s over here?”
“The graveyard. But there’s not much to see.”
He started down the road.
“Nate? Let’s just keep going, okay? Nate?”
There was no answer, just the sound of his boots cracking an occasional stick, so she cursed and went after him. When she came up to the familiar stone pylons and the gate that was made out of unshucked cedar branches in the Adirondack style, she stopped. The barrier kept the cars out although pedestrians could easily walk around it and go inside, as Nate had. The only time the heavy arm was swung open was for burials or regular maintenance and there was an old, ratty chain with a fresh Master lock hanging at one side.
Putting her hands on the top rail, she felt the rough scratch of the bark against her palms. Ahead, in a flat grassy plain, there were some twenty gray slate headstones, lined up in rows. There were no showy angel
s or Christ figures, no templelike artifices. Just stones marking when people had checked in and out. Frankie knew she would be buried there, and so would her brother and sister and Grand-Em, of course. But after that, who else would? She wasn’t in a big hurry to get married and start a family and neither was Alex. Who knew what Joy would do.
Nate paused in front of a grave. “This one is dated 1827. Is it the earliest?”
“No. That was Charles Moorehouse’s second son, Edward. The first, Charles, Jr., died in infancy—1811.”
He touched the weathered, lichen-covered slab. “Edward died young. Fifteen, was he?”
She nodded and Nate moved on. He seemed to take care not to step on the ground in front of the stones, as if he didn’t want to trample on the dead. She didn’t know, though, whether the coffins had been buried in front of or behind the markers. When her grandfather had died, she’d been too young to remember much of anything. And when her parents had been laid to rest, she’d been down at the house. The day she’d finally gone up to see where they’d been buried, some two years later, the grass had all grown in.
She supposed that had been the last time she’d walked around the gate.
A part of her wanted to join Nate, she realized. To wander around, look at the inscriptions, remember faces from black-and-white pictures that hung on the walls or were protected in leather-bound albums. But she knew sooner or later she would come to two headstones that would make her hurt so she stayed away from all of them.
Her parents had died in a May storm out on the lake, and the beautiful spring day when they’d been buried was a memory clear enough to have Frankie coughing away a lump in her throat. The sun had been thoughtlessly bright, the sky a cruel and lovely blue. The birds had been in the trees and there had been buds everywhere you looked. Worst of all, there had been boats out on the lake, skimming across docile waves. Watching them go by, she’d wondered why some lives got to go on while others were stopped in the middle.
Right before the service, Frankie had told Joy and Alex that she had to watch over the B & B, and would stay at the house. It hadn’t been the whole truth and she’d had a feeling they knew it. The thing was, she’d been afraid of making a fool of herself by bursting into tears. Up until the day of the burials, she’d only had one crying jag. It had kicked off when she’d opened the back door that terrible night and found two local cops on the other side. The men were standing in the rain with their hats off, looking at their shoes. Her father had been gone in the storm for two hours by then, her mother for a little over an hour.