The Widow's House

by Carol Goodman

  But I did belong here, I could tell her now. I’d finally found where I belonged.

  That realization brought me fully awake. I was in my bed in Riven House—alone. The sound I was hearing was Jess limping around the rotunda, heading toward Minnie’s Mourning Room. He must have woken up with an idea and gone to write it down. Riven House was good for him and now I’d be able to make sure he could stay here. Once Monty knew I was his daughter he’d want us to stay for good. And someday, when Monty was gone . . .

  I squelched the thought. Even if Monty was thrilled that I was his daughter it didn’t mean he was going to give me Riven House. I wasn’t even sure I’d want it. The house was probably encumbered by debts and liens . . . or whatever old houses were encumbered by. Riven House had the feel of a place that was encumbered with more than just financial losses.

  There was enough moonlight coming through the window that I didn’t have to turn the bedside lamp on to find my way to the bathroom. I wouldn’t need to even if there were no moon, I thought, because I knew this house. Knew the feel of the hardwood floors under my bare feet and the wavy patterns the moonlight made streaming through the cockled glass windows. I knew how the rotunda would look lit up in the moonlight and how the painted apple blossoms on the library doors would be shimmering in the silver light. Moonlight was spilling through the house, cleaning it of the bloodstains, making the house whole again. My being here would make it whole again.

  In the bathroom I stopped and looked out the window over the lawn and toward the pond. The grass was covered by a rime of frost that glittered like spun sugar—like those Christmas decorations Elizabeth Foley had written about in her diary. Poor Elizabeth! Had she figured out that Alden Montague was her sister’s son? Or did she die thinking she’d handed her sister’s child over to his murderer? As I turned away from the window I saw her handing the baby over to Bayard, his hands bloody . . .

  There was something red lying in the tub: a dark spatter on the gleaming white enamel that I knew I’d scrubbed clean last night. I crossed the few feet to the tub, the bathroom tiles icy under my feet, and peered over the rim. No, not blood. The dark splatter was a piece of patterned cloth. I picked it up and held it under the moonlight. It was a handkerchief embroidered with flowers and the initials MNM. Minerva Noyes Montague. Minnie’s handkerchief here in the tub where she had miscarried and then years later bled to death. It wasn’t embroidered with flowers; it was stained with blood.

  IN THE MORNING I saw that the handkerchief wasn’t stained with blood but with some kind of red ink. I was tempted to show it to Sunny to see what she thought it meant, but she was in a frenzy getting ready for the parade and I was no longer sure that she was an unbiased witness. She might use it as a reason not to tell Monty he was my father.

  So I hid the handkerchief in my dresser and got ready to go to the parade. Jess said he’d stay home. He told Monty that his ankle was bothering him, but I guessed he was too annoyed with Sunny to want to see her reveling in her success.

  She did, indeed, revel. I watched the parade from the front porch of the library with CJ Brennan, who provided a running commentary of the participants. “Here’s the 4-H club,” she announced. “That’s my niece Sadie leading her alpaca, Pippa. And here are the volunteer firemen carrying Sunny’s skeletons.”

  The loose-jointed skeletons strutted down the street in front of each dark-clothed fireman. It was a brilliant juxtaposition of brawny men—and a few sturdy women—in their red fireman caps and the white-boned, grinning skeleton puppets. Although I’d seen the puppets hanging in Sunny’s barn, it was something else to see them in action. Witches swooped over the heads of the crowd on their broomsticks, piloted by women in flowing dresses. I recognized my eighth grade English teacher, the clerk from the Village Hall, and a philosophy professor from Bailey.

  The witches were followed by a horse-drawn wagon filled with bins of apples, pumpkins, and squash. A white-garbed figure floated over the wagon. I thought I recognized the witch puppet Sunny had called Griselda, only she had changed since I saw her last. She wore a wreath of apples and apple blossoms and her cheeks were rouged with bright red circles. A woman dressed in white and wearing the same kind of wreath rode in front of the wagon, waving to the crowd like a beauty pageant queen. A white-haired man, also dressed in white and a straw hat, sat beside her. With a start, I recognized Monty—and the wreathed woman beside him as Sunny.

  “Is she supposed to be—”

  “The Apple Blossom Queen,” CJ said. “I wondered if you had told her about your research, but she told me that she got the idea from Monty. She said she wanted to turn a figure of . . . let me see if I can get this right . . . patriarchal objectification of women into an archetype of female empowerment. And look . . .” CJ pointed to the crowd bringing up the rear of the parade. “They’re giving out apples!”

  A dozen little girls dressed in long white dresses and wearing apple wreaths were carrying baskets full of apples that they were giving out to the crowds. One came running up the steps of the library to hand an apple to CJ.

  “Look at me, Auntie Cee, I’m an apple princess!”

  The girl turned to me and I shuddered. Her cheeks had been rouged the same red as the apple in her hand and her eyes made up to look like a child beauty contestant’s. I took an apple from her, forcing a smile. I felt suddenly ill. I muttered a hurried excuse to CJ and fled, pushing my way through the crowds, toward the municipal lot where my car was parked. The crowd swept forward, though, and I found myself trailing the apple cart. I could see the back of Sunny’s head. She was leaning toward Monty, whispering something that made Monty laugh. The little apple blossom girls rode in the cart, their rouged cheeks and made-up eyes making them look like dolls—

  They were dolls—or puppets rather—papier-mâché facsimiles of the apple blossom girl. Sunny had reduced the figure of Mary Foley—my grandmother—into a meaningless grinning dummy. Sunny making herself the Apple Blossom Queen and Monty her king was a grotesque parody of Bayard Montague’s abduction of Mary Foley. My ears were buzzing with the noise of the crowd and I broke into a cold sweat as I tried to break free. If I didn’t get some air I would drown. I stumbled and started to go under—I would be trampled underfoot, a sacrifice to the great pagan goddess—

  Someone grabbed my arm and yanked me up and out of the stream of people. I looked up and saw Dunstan. He led me to a bench next to the municipal lot, sat me down, and made me put my head between my knees.

  “Breathe, Clare,” he said, just as he had when I got panic attacks at pep rallies and Fourth of July parades. I never had done well with crowds.

  When the ringing in my ears stopped I sat up and Dunstan handed me a water bottle. “Okay?” he asked after I had taken a long gulp.

  I nodded. “It was just the crowd and those dreadful puppets.”

  Dunstan laughed. “Yeah, Sunny kind of went off the deep end this year. She asked Corbett’s to donate the apples, which we were happy to do, but when I saw my niece got up in that outfit . . . well, it seemed kind of wrong.”

  “I’m sure Sunny thinks she’s celebrating the harvest, but given what happened to Mary Foley—”

  “It’s like she’s celebrating statutory rape.”

  I looked up at him, grateful that he understood. No wonder he had always guessed my moods so well—we were related! “I’m sorry about yesterday. About what Jess said to you.”

  “Hey,” he said, “if I were in his place I’d be jealous too—wait, I was in his place and I expressed myself in manure.”

  I laughed. “Still, he shouldn’t have said those things. He was in pain and on Vicodin—”

  “Ah.” Dunstan nodded. “No wonder he didn’t want to take the blood test. I shouldn’t have come down so hard on him. It was just . . .”

  He looked away. “When I heard there’d been an accident at Riven House my first thought was that it had been you. And if it were you . . .” He looked back at me, the look in his eyes far from cousin
ly. “If I thought for a minute he had done anything to hurt you, Clary, I’d kill him.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Dunstan offered to drive me back to Riven House but I convinced him I was all right to drive. I wasn’t, but I knew that if Jess saw me arriving in Dunstan’s police car it would set him off again. I clenched the steering wheel and took deep breaths to steady myself but when I turned onto River Road and saw the apple cart in front of me I broke out in a cold sweat. I had to follow behind it all the way to the Riven House gate, watching Monty and Sunny waving at cars passing in the opposite direction that honked at them as though they were cheering on a newlywed couple. It took all my willpower not to bump them with the Subaru’s fender, but the thought of those papier-mâché dolls rolling off the back of the pickup made me nauseous.

  I followed them as far as the fork in the drive and then drove up to the house. I knew there’d be a celebration at the barn but I was in no mood for it. In no mood, either, for the delivery van from Hudson Gourmet parked under the apple tree beside the boot hall door.

  “You’re in the wrong place,” I told the delivery boy—a gawky teenager who had the hawk nose and close-set eyes of the Brennans. “The party’s down at the barn.”

  “Mr. Monty said up at the big house,” the boy said, jerking his chin at Riven House.

  Mr. Monty? The big house? I was about to ask him what century he thought we were living in when my cell phone pinged for a text message. Who could it be? I wondered. I hadn’t gotten a text in months.

  I took the phone out and was amazed to see it came from Monty’s cell, which he hardly ever used and certainly never texted on.

  Put the champagne on ice! Big celebration tonight!

  “What the hell?” My sentiments were echoed by Jess, who’d appeared at the boot hall door holding up his cell phone.

  “Someone must have shown him how—” I began. Both our phones pinged again. Another text from Monty, this one containing a picture of a champagne bottle.

  “An emoji?” Jess asked, dumbfounded.

  “One of Sunny’s helpers must be texting for him.” I looked back at the delivery boy. “Let me guess, you have some champagne for us?”

  “A case,” he said, reaching into the van. “Dom Pérignon. And food. Where do you want me to put it all?”

  Jess helped him bring the boxes through the boot hall and into the kitchen while I unpacked. There were roast squabs, quiches, salads, and a cake from the fancy French bakery in Rhinebeck.

  “And caviar!” Jess exclaimed. “The really expensive stuff!”

  “I guess Monty is throwing Sunny a party to celebrate the parade.”

  “Nah, this is something else. I think Sunny must’ve told him that you’re his daughter and he wants to celebrate. That’s why he got all this prepared food, so you wouldn’t have to cook for your own celebration.”

  “I don’t know,” I said doubtfully. “Why would Sunny tell him?”

  “So she could confess that she kept you from him thirty-five years ago before you told him. That’s why she wanted to wait until after the parade.”

  I thought of Monty leaning his head down and Sunny whispering in his ear. Had she been telling him, then spinning a story that excused her lying to him thirty-five years ago? I could imagine her finding a way to use her grief over Anya as an excuse for keeping another child out of Riven House.

  “. . . the important thing,” Jess was saying, “is that all this shows how thrilled Monty is that you’re his daughter.”

  “I suppose,” I said, trying to repress the smile tugging at my mouth. “I guess I should set the table and get this all laid out.”

  “No way,” Jess said, “I’ll do that. You go up and get dressed. Put on that green dress that you wore to my KGB reading last year. The one that shimmies over your hips.” He grabbed me by the hips and pulled me to him. I gaped at Jess, equally amazed that he was offering to set a table and that he recalled an item from my wardrobe.

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “I could help you and still have time to dress.”

  “I’ve got this,” he said, giving me a little push to send me on my way, his hands lingering on my hips. “Take your time. Have a good long bath.”

  I’D AVOIDED THE bathtub since I’d found it full of bloody water, but the idea of a long soak sounded good. My muscles were sore from the tension I’d felt in the parade. You carry your anger in your shoulders, a chiropractor had once told me reprovingly, as if I might have carried it in some chiropractor-approved ergonomic handbag instead.

  I rinsed out the tub, scrutinizing the enamel for any traces of blood, then turned on the hot water tap. The hot water would run out before it filled and end up just warm enough by the time it was full—if Sunny hadn’t used up too much hot water this morning. If there were going to be four of us living here I should talk to Monty about getting a new hot water heater. He seemed to have enough money to splurge on champagne and caviar.

  But then maybe he would think me asking for home improvements now was presuming on our new relationship. I didn’t want him to think I expected money from him because he was my biological father.

  I poured bath salts in the tub and swirled them around to make them dissolve, breathing in the crisp scent of rosemary and mint—better than the cloying smell of apple blossoms for covering the metallic tang of blood. I’d hang rosemary and mint in all the closets, I thought as I stepped into the tub, and sew sachets for the drawers. In the spring I’d air out the whole house and talk to Monty about repairing the broken windows in the attic and having the skylight cleaned. Riven House would be like new again. Even houses should have second chances, just as Jess and I were getting a second chance.

  I soaked until the water cooled and the light coming in through the window turned violet. Then I got out and toweled off, wishing the rosemary-mint scent would stay with me. On a whim, I rinsed out my nightgown—a delicate batiste chemise I’d found in a trunk and bleached new—in the bath salts and hung it over the shower ring. I opened the window so that the breeze would dry it out. By bedtime it would be dry and still smell of rosemary and mint. Jess would love it.

  I put on the green dress that Jess liked. It did shimmy over my hips. I felt like water spilling down the steps of the rotunda as I came down the stairs, the marble cool through the thin soles of my ballet flats. I wasn’t holding my anger anymore, I was letting it spill out of me.

  Someone—Jess? Or Sunny, more likely—had lit votive candles in the niches around the ground floor of the rotunda. I followed the sound of voices into the library. A table had been set in front of the fireplace. I really should talk to Monty about renovating the dining room . . .

  “Ah, here she is, the real apple blossom girl!” Monty cried. He was seated at the table, his chair angled to be closer to the fire, but he stood as I came in—and so did Jess. Only Sunny remained seated, in a chair close to Monty’s, the firelight limning her hair so that she looked like a pre-Raphaelite sibyl. “You gave me the idea for the parade float. I told Sunny”—he turned toward her and smiled—“that if the apple blossom girl could be restored to Riven House she should be restored to village.”

  I smiled uneasily. He was waiting for my reaction, swaying slightly, the glow of firelight on his white suit making him seem frail and insubstantial. If I told him how much I had hated the float he’d be crushed.

  “It was something!” I said, too brightly, turning to Sunny. “What a lot of work you must have done to make all those dolls and costumes!”

  She smiled, her eyes shining in the firelight. “Doing the work of the muse is never a toil.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I caught Jess rolling his eyes. “No, I imagine not. Was it the muse who inspired you to dress up as the apple blossom girl yourself?”

  “Yes, at first I thought I was too old for the part, but then I realized that if you think of the apple blossom girl as a fertility symbol, then she is young in the spring, but on Samhain she assumes the face of the winter goddes
s—”

  “Is that what you are now?” Jess asked. “The winter goddess?”

  I frowned at Jess. He had a half-full glass of champagne in his hand. Mixing alcohol with Vicodin had apparently sharpened his tongue. But Sunny seemed unoffended.

  “Quite right,” Sunny replied with a tight smile. “Only I prefer crone. Monty, dear, you should sit. You know what your doctor said about standing in one place.”

  “That I’d grow roots or some such nonsense! I’ll sit when I’m dead. Right now I’m going to make a toast.”

  He poured a glass of champagne for me and motioned for Jess and Sunny to raise their glasses. “To all the goddesses in the room, of spring and youth,” he toasted me. “And winter and the silver years.” He tilted his glass toward Sunny. “And to the lucky bastards who get to enjoy their company.” He pointed his glass at Jess. “God knows I reveled in the former in my salad days and now as I approach the twilight of my years I count myself lucky to be surrounded by beauty of both varieties. I probably don’t deserve it . . .” He paused and I noticed that his eyes were shining in the firelight. I was alarmed to think he might cry. I wanted to tell him that I forgave him for not saving me from the Jacksons all those years ago, but I had to wait until he acknowledged me. “But hell, what man ever does deserve the love of a good woman, eh, Jess? And this good woman”—he swung his glass around to Sunny, champagne sloshing over its rim—“has conceded to me not once, but twice. In short, Sunny and I have decided to renew our vows and take up where we left off.”

  “Renew your vows?” Jess asked.

  Sunny laughed. “You’ve confused them, Alden. They don’t know we’re already married.”

  “Already married?” I asked. “But when? You didn’t say . . .” When I told you I was Monty’s daughter, I almost said.

  “Oh, way back in ’79,” Monty answered for her.

  “It was ’78,” Sunny corrected.