Unforgiven

by Anne Calhoun

  “Ris.”

  “Hmmm?”

  “We need to get the mantel.”

  The wedding was just days away, pushing her back to the wall. “I know.”

  “Tomorrow. After we finish Mrs. Carson’s house.” He paused, but she didn’t say anything. “It’ll make for a long day but we don’t have much time left.”

  “I know.”

  “You won’t be alone. We’ll do it together.”

  He needed this as badly as she did, she realized. He needed to repair what he’d destroyed. One way or another, they both needed Brookhaven restored. But then what?

  18

  THEY WORKED THE next day in near silence. She’d expected a steady stream of chatter intended to bolster her resolve, pointing out what she could do with a finished house. Turn it into a bed and breakfast. Sell it. Offer tours to summer visitors headed for the nearby towns of De Smet or up the interstate to North Dakota. But once again she’d underestimated Adam. From the moment her alarm went off, he limited his comments to questions about the job, double-checking measurements, clarifying next steps, getting her lunch order. Just like yesterday, she completed more than twice the work in half the time.

  “That’s it,” she said after she shot the last nail into the new siding. She looked around the messy side yard. “Let’s get this cleaned up and under a tarp again. I’ll pick up the leftover siding next week.”

  He stacked the few remaining lengths of siding on the pallets while she walked around to the front door and knocked. Mrs. Carson opened the door, dressed in polyester slacks and a navy sweatshirt decorated with appliqued pumpkin vines. “I’m all finished,” Marissa said. “If it’s all right with you, I’ll come back next week to get the unused siding and the pallets. I’ve got another job to get to.”

  “That’s fine,” Mrs. Carson said. She held out a check carefully written in old-fashioned penmanship. “I’ll get you the rest next month.”

  “Sure,” Marissa said. She folded the check and put it in her pocket, then trotted down the cement steps to the sidewalk. Adam stood by the driver’s door. “What was that about getting you the rest next month?”

  “She’s on a fixed income,” she said. “I let her pay me in installments.”

  “You’re a pussycat, Brooks.”

  “For good people, you’re right,” she said.

  “I can drive if you’re tired,” he said.

  She walked right up to him, then tipped her head back and looked up at him. He stood there, arms folded, feet braced, shoulders as wide as the window, trying to make this as easy as possible for her. But she had to do this herself. “I’ll drive,” she said.

  This time she took the county roads, avoiding the interstate and a procrastinating coffee run. When she turned onto the road leading to The Meadows, the familiar fear crawled up her chest cavity, sharp-spiked tail swishing in her belly, claws hooking in her ribs, breathing cold ice on her heart and lungs even as her pulse skyrocketed out of the red zone. When the sagging white mailbox appeared in the distance, she focused on the silk-gray horizon, called up the memory of the Resolute slicing through the water, and gunned the engine as she jerked the wheel to the right and steered her truck into the two parallel ruts that served as The Meadows’ driveway. Overgrown weeds brushed the undercarriage as they bounced toward the house. Adam white-knuckled the door handle, but she braked to a halt just before she hit the rotting steps.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said when his seatbelt locked, then exhaled and looked over at her. “You okay?”

  Her blunt-cut nails dug into her palms as she took stock. The fear, the paralyzing fear sat frozen between her diaphragm and her throat, as if shocked into immobility. “I feel like I kicked what I thought was a solid wall and found it was rotted through.”

  He considered her, his hazel eyes alight. “So you’ve got one foot in the wall.”

  “So to speak.”

  “Let’s kick that motherfucker all the way to the ground.”

  She gave a sharp laugh. The demon-fear inside snarled, but curled its claws more tightly around her ribs. She let go of the steering wheel and shoved her door open, stepping into an ice-tinged wind out of the north. Winter was coming. Come the weekend, Brookhaven would be complete and Delaney and Keith would marry.

  Searching the wood for the least rotted path, she climbed the front steps, Adam hard on her heels. “Does it look like Brookhaven inside?”

  “The footprint and structure are similar,” Marissa said absently. “The difference is in the interior layout. Imagine if Brookhaven’s movable walls were permanent, making little rooms. Then imagine those rooms ornately decorated to within an inch of their lives.”

  “A typical Victorian.”

  “Exactly.”

  She rapped at the front door, waited, then rapped again. Eventually she heard the shuffle of slippered feet against wood. The door opened, and in the doorway stood a tiny, slender woman with a puff of white hair and clear blue eyes. She wore faded blue slacks, slippers, and a thick yellow cardigan buttoned over a turtleneck.

  “Hello, Mrs. Edmunds,” she said.

  “Hello, Marissa,” she said, her gaze unclouded and unblinking. “Come in, please.”

  They stepped into a house so cold she could see her breath. Whatever heat remained from summer had dissipated into fall’s coldest air, swirling like water around the wood floors. Without a word, Mrs. Edmunds led them through a music room and a library to the family parlor at back of the house. Dominating one wall was a mantel nearly identical to the missing one at Brookhaven, but without the vast space of Brookhaven’s great room, the massive piece hulked over the room like Devils Tower over the surrounding plains.

  “We’ve had no wood rot,” Mrs. Edmunds said clearly. “No termites. It’s sound.”

  “May I?” Marissa asked.

  At the tiny woman’s nod, she walked to the windows and drew the curtains. Gray light seeped into the room, dulled by both the thick layer of clouds that threatened more rain and the caked South Dakota dirt partially obscuring the view of the land around the house.

  Adam stepped up beside her and ran a palm over the wood. “Good color,” he said as he transferred years of dust and dirt to his cargo pants. “Dimensions match?”

  “Not exactly. Design elements from Brookhaven showed up in all of Henry Dalton Mead’s later houses. He varied size and shape, played with details, but in The Meadows he replicated Brookhaven’s mantel almost exactly. He wrote in his journals that the mantel symbolized the family, hearth and home,” Marissa said. “I think he was as obsessed with Brookhaven as I am. If I take it all, I hope I can fit the pieces into what’s left of Brookhaven’s mantel.”

  “I’m glad you came to take it,” Mrs. Edmunds said, her gaze moving fondly over the woodwork. “My son and his wife insist I move into an assisted living facility.”

  “They don’t want The Meadows?” Adam asked.

  “They want the money the land will bring,” she said. “Every few months a lawyer shows up and makes me an offer. I always refuse. I don’t care about money. I care about The Meadows. But I can’t take care of the house anymore.”

  For the first time her voice shook, just a little, before she cleared her throat.

  “I’m so sorry,” Marissa said. They waited while she pulled a crumpled tissue from her sweater pocket with trembling fingers and dabbed her eyes. Adam stood quietly by the fireplace, not flinching or shifting, his rock-solid presence holding the fear at bay. “We never discussed a price,” she began.

  “It’s yours, my dear,” said Mrs. Edmunds.

  “Mrs. Edmunds,” she said carefully, “a mantel like that would bring thousands of dollars at auction. It’s a piece of South Dakota history, and an example of Art Deco interior design. I can’t take it for nothing.”

  “The mantel goes with you as my gift, or it gets bulldozed with the rest of the house. My children don’t want their heritage. I’ll give it to someone who appreciates it.”

  In the
clear, crisp words Marissa heard the backbone of settlers, a woman who’d buried her husband and two of her children, a proud woman who had nothing left but a house her family didn’t want.

  She swallowed hard, first her pride, then the lump in her throat. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I’ll take good care of it. I promise.”

  “I know you will,” she said.

  “I’ll get the tools,” Adam said.

  “I’ll get them,” she said. The fear was shifting inside, swinging its barbed tail like a cat on the hunt, preparing to pounce on her throat.

  Adam reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze. “Stay inside,” he said.

  “Your husband?” Mrs. Edmunds asked.

  “No,” she said.

  Mrs. Edmunds gazed at the woodwork, a heartbreaking failure creasing her soft face. “I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me,” she said, and shuffled off.

  Adam returned with her tools bundled into the sheets and tarps she’d brought to protect the wood from scratches and the rain, and laid them out on the floor. Marissa picked up a pry bar and went to the far end of the wall. He stood opposite her, each probing for a chink in the finely joined woodwork to jimmy the first piece of wood from the wall.

  “I’ve got one,” Adam said, his long fingers wedged in a panel at shoulder height.

  She joined him at the other end, and lifted her hand to his.

  “Feel that?”

  She felt both the gap between the wood and the plaster, and his hand, warm and rough and strong over hers. “Yes,” she said, and cleared her throat. “I feel it. Good find.”

  He stepped back to give her room. She closed her eyes and called up the sensation of rocking waves and sunshine, then wedged the end of the pry bar behind the flat walnut stile. It gave easily when she put her weight behind it. Adam caught the stile before it hit the floor.

  Their eyes met, hers wide, his calm and assessing. “Doing okay?” he asked.

  She could only nod. Each breath shrank the demon-fear, and each beat of her heart thawed a little more of the fear’s ice. Then she traded him the pry bar for the stile. “Your turn.”

  He hefted the thin metal tool, then stepped up to the wall. One smooth motion and the panel dropped free, into his hand. He considered it for a moment, then turned and handed it to her.

  Based on the look in his eyes, she wasn’t the only one facing down a fear. “Doing okay?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I am. Let’s finish this.”

  Once they had the start, removing the rest of the rails, stiles, caps, and shoes went easily. Adam used his greater height and arm strength to pluck the pieces from the wall, while Marissa numbered and wrapped the segments carefully and carried them to the truck. By the time they’d detached the mantel, laid it in the bed of the truck, and secured the tarps, it was nearly nine o’clock. She looked in on Mrs. Edmunds, sitting on a kitchen chair with a cup of tea in her lap, watching television.

  “We’re leaving, Mrs. Edmunds,” she said. “Thank you again.”

  “A house like this needs people in it,” she said, apropos of nothing. “Family, friends staying for long visits, servants. Fill that house with people, dear. Marry that nice young man and fill the house with a family. One person isn’t enough.”

  Heat rushed into her cheeks. “He’s not here forever, Mrs. Edmunds.”

  “Oh,” the elderly lady said. “What a shame. Good night.” She stared at Marissa for a long moment, then turned back to the television.

  Adam waited on the porch, feet spread, arms crossed over his chest as he stared into the night. “I’m starving. Kicking through walls is hungry work.”

  She joined him on the porch. The endless blackness rolling away from the single pool of light mirrored the feeling inside her. Emptiness. She’d lived with the anxiety and fear for so long its absence didn’t bring relief, but rather a vast void.

  What next? What do you do next, without this obstacle in your path?

  One step at a time. Next step: hang all this woodwork.

  “We can drive through somewhere on the way home,” she said.

  He held out his palm for the keys. She dropped them in his hand, and kept one hand on the truck as she checked the tarp before climbing into the passenger seat. Without an anchor, the slightest breeze might send her drifting into the blackness.

  The next thirty-six hours were a blur. They arrived at Brookhaven at ten with the paneling and half-full cups of coffee from the drive-thru run, and unloaded everything to get it out of the rain. Marissa ducked into her apartment and returned with sheets to use as drop cloths and her photo album. Laying out the pieces on the floor sapped what was left of her caffeinated energy.

  “Here’s a picture of the original woodwork,” she said, flipping through the pages until she found the right one.

  Hands on his hips, Adam glanced from the picture to the pieces on the floor, and from there to what was left on the south wall. The right-hand side took the brunt of his destructive energy. Panels were missing from the floor, up along the fireplace and over the mantel, and up a good portion of the chimney. The left-hand side was intact, although several larger panels splintered under attack by out-of-control teens wielding a pry bar and hammer.

  “So we’ve got to make this,” he said, pointing at the sprawling pieces from The Meadows, “fit onto that,” he pointed at the south wall, “by Saturday.”

  “I’ve been up for twenty hours. Let’s catch a couple of hours of sleep,” she said through a yawn.

  “You go ahead,” Adam said. “I’ll sleep later.”

  His tone reminded her of how he sounded when he was thinking through an engine teardown and repair, the absent look on his face indicating he’d pulled up a mental schematic of the engine and was thinking through possible problems. He stood by the fireplace, hands on his hips as he considered the wall. When she hesitated, he turned to look at her. “Unless you don’t trust me to do this.”

  To fix what he’d wrecked. To repair what he’d destroyed. Defensiveness lay under the even tone, and she walked up to him and gave him a gentle kiss. “I trust you. I just want you to sleep, too. Your weekend’s busier than mine.”

  “I’ll be fine,” he said. His hand rose under her braids to massage her neck. “You got the panels here, Ris. Let me work at this for a while. Get some sleep.”

  She did, falling into bed fully clothed after she set her alarm for seven. She woke up alone, and made a pot of the Intelligentsia coffee before padding into the great room in her wool socks. Adam lay on his stomach, his cheek pressed to the hardwood, breathing deep and easy.

  In front of him on the floor lay a new version of Brookhaven’s gorgeous, fine-grained wall. He’d pried the rest of the woodwork off the south wall and interspersed it with the paneling from The Meadows, rearranging some pieces so the larger panels flanked the fireplace and the smaller ones, interspersed with medallions, rose above the mantel and drew the eye up, emphasizing how lofty the ceilings were, how expansive the room really was.

  He’d somehow been able to see what she couldn’t, that in order to make the pieces fit, she had to take down the rest of the wall and envision something entirely new, yet true to the house.

  Moving as quietly as she could, she set the cups of coffee down next to Adam, then sat down cross-legged beside him and sipped her coffee. Day spread through the room, the dull streaky light less illuminating the wood and the room than grudgingly sharing space with it.

  Either her presence or the aroma of coffee penetrated Adam’s brain, because his breathing shallowed, and he lifted his head.

  “You could have come to bed,” she said.

  With a grunt, he rolled over and bent his legs at the knees. “Easier to just lie down.”

  In other words, he’d worked until he dropped. “How long have you been asleep?”

  He glanced at his watch, rubbed his eyes, looked again, then said, “Twenty minutes. Plenty of sleep. Sleep’s for pussies.�
�� He looked at the now-blank wall, then at her. “I had to take the rest of the paneling off to make it work in my head. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” she said softly. He’d needed this, perhaps as badly as she’d feared it. Like her standing at the entrance to the yacht club, he stood just hours away from making right what he’d torn apart so long ago. The dove gray light lay on them as they finished the coffee, sitting in a companionable silence.

  His eyes were bloodshot but calm as his gaze skimmed her face. “Got your nail gun?” he asked.

  “Ready when you are.”

  He’d left the shoe pieces on. Marissa picked up the first rail and walked over to the wall. Adam hunkered down beside her and held the flat piece flush and steady. Thunk, thunk, thunk. Broad panels interspersed with stiles made for quick work, and before long, they were on their feet, working with small, detailed pieces. They stopped for a quick lunch of soup and sandwiches, then Adam hauled her ladders up from the barn.

  “I’m almost done with my to do list for the wedding,” she said, poised above him as she sent nails into the wood. “What about you?”

  “What about me?” He eyeballed the top of the mantel and reached for the level.

  She gave him a lifted brow. “How’s the speech coming?”

  “Fine,” he said shortly.

  “Want to run it by me?”

  It was his turn to raise eyebrows. “You want to hear what I have to say about the sacrament of marriage and lifelong fidelity?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  He tapped the paneling, indicating she should do her part with the nail gun. “You can wait until the reception, like everyone else,” he said. “Unless you won’t be around at all.”

  “I need to be available for the wedding planner, in case anything goes wrong.”

  “What is it with you and Keith?”

  “He said something he shouldn’t have . . .” She paused, then went on. “I lost my temper and took a swing at him.”