Badly Done, Emma Lee

by Leah Marie Brown

  An elderly couple cross the street, waving to Knightley when they recognize him in the car. They are each holding multiple leashes, a pack of West Highland terriers at their heels.

  “The Swinbrooks,” Knightley says. “They have a farm just outside the village where they breed champion West Highland terriers. Do you like dogs?”

  “I’ve never had a dog.”

  He looks at me as if I said I was related to the Kardashians—shocked and a bit horrified.

  “Is that true?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tragic, that.”

  I am about to protest at his melodramatic choice of words when I remember something James Corden said in Very British Problems, a series on Netflix about British culture. Corden said his countrymen care for their dogs more than people. I assumed he was joking—I mean, he is a comedian. Now, I wonder. The crosswalk clears of people and pets, the light finally changes, Knightley shifts his car into gear, and we continue down High Street, past a clinic and a child care center.

  A church with a brick turret and steeple stands at the end of High Street, flanked by a cemetery and neatly clipped green space, with a war memorial and wooden benches. It looks like a scene from an episode of Grantchester. As if on cue, the church door opens and a man in a black suit and a stiff white collar steps out.

  “A vicar!”

  “Vicar Ethan Parsons,” Knightley says. “You will meet him tonight.”

  “This is just like Grantchester.”

  Knightley chuckles. “Ethan Parsons is no Sidney Chambers. He spends his free time in the garden cultivating his roses, not solving murders in smoky jazz clubs.”

  “You’ve watched Grantchester?”

  I would not have pegged Knightley Nickerson, with his bespoke suits and swanky London cocktail parties, as someone who watched cozy mysteries on Masterpiece.

  “I’ve read The Grantchester Mysteries by James Runcie, the series the program is based on.”

  “Of course.”

  Books. Of course. I make a mental note to download The Grantchester Mysteries and Charlotte Brontë’s novels. I hear Manderley’s scolding voice in my head: Lord knows you are smart, Emma Lee, but when it comes to literature, you are intellectually starved, practically anorexic. Consume something!

  Knightley turns right at the end of High Street, drives over a bridge spanning the river, and makes the first left after the shops, turning on a quiet residential road running parallel to the river. We pass a row of stone duplexes with glossy black-painted doors and flower boxes at each window and then single, detached cottages. Knightley pulls onto a gravel driveway—the last driveway before the road ends.

  “Here we are,” he says, switching off the engine. “Welcome home, Emma Lee.”

  I look out the window at the thatched-roof cottage.

  “Are you sure this is my aunt’s house?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “It’s stone. I always imagined it would be wood. Why else would it be called Wood House?”

  Knightley’s lips quirk. “I believe the cottage is named after the man who built it, Alistair Wood. Though your aunt was rather fond of Jane Austen’s novels, something she shared in common with my mum, so perhaps Wood House is named after Emma Woodhouse.”

  My cheeks flush with heat and I make another mental note: download a book about the history of Northam-on-the-Water.

  “Of course.”

  We climb out of the car. Knightley lifts my suitcases out of his trunk and I follow him down the drive until we reach a gravel path leading to a low stone wall with a wooden gate. I unlatch the gate and push it open.

  Winter Hastings, the lawyer who handled the execution of my aunt’s will, said the man living next door maintained the keys to her cottage and acted as caretaker in her absence. Isabella offered to pick up the keys and give them to Knightley because she said my aunt’s neighbor doesn’t like people visiting his home. He’s a massive germophobe, actually. There is supposed to be a key to an old Jaguar stored in the garage, though Winter Hastings warned it might not be operable.

  Knightley puts my suitcases down on the front step and fishes a ring of keys out of his inner suit-coat pocket.

  “The keys to your castle, milady,” he says, handing me the ring. “I hope you will be very happy here.”

  “Thank you, kind sir,” I say, taking the keys.

  I try not to react when his fingers touch mine, but my hand shakes as I slide the key into the lock of the heavy, scarred wooden door. I fumble with the key for several seconds, turning it to the left and right and left again, before I hear the tumblers turn. I pull the key out of the lock, lift the iron handle, push the door open. The powdery, perfumed scent of fresh-cut roses greets me as soon as I step through the door, and I notice a crystal vase filled with flowers on a table in the foyer. A small card is sticking out of the flowers. I step closer and read the welcome message scrawled on it in Isabella’s neat hand.

  “Your mother left me flowers,” I say, pressing my nose into one of the blooms. “She’s so thoughtful.”

  “She is excited you are here,” Knightley says, depositing my suitcases in the foyer. “She asked me to tell you she had someone stock the refrigerator and make the house ready for your arrival, but if you need anything, just ring her.”

  “Thank you.”

  There is an awkward pause as we stand in the quiet cottage, trying to determine the best way to say good-bye. Do we hug? Kiss cheeks? Shake hands? Slap each other on the backs?

  “Right,” Knightley says, clearing his throat. “Would you like me to start a fire for you before I go?”

  I look over my shoulder, at the fireplace in the living room, imagine Knightley Nickerson on his knees in his beautiful suit, arranging logs.

  “I’m good,” I say, even though the damp cold has seeped down straight to my bones. “Thank you, though.”

  “I will be back to pick you up tonight, around six.”

  “Six. Fab.”

  He turns and walks out the door. Just like that. No cheek kissing or hand shaking. Not even a slap on the back.

  I close the door and count to three before running over to the window. I stare out the small rectangular panes of glass, watching as Knightley Nickerson strides down the path, his dark head held at a proud angle, the muscles of his broad shoulders visible beneath the checked fabric of his expensive suit.

  If he looks back at the cottage, it means he likes me.

  I hold my breath and count his strides.

  One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

  He is going to look back.

  He walks down the path and through the open gate.

  He doesn’t look back. He doesn’t like me.

  I let out my breath in one loud, violent exhalation. I am about to step away from the window when Knightley stops, turns around, and looks back at the cottage. At the window. Where I am standing, gawking like a lovesick schoolgirl. It happens so fast, I don’t have time to move away.

  He doesn’t know I am standing at the window. How could he know? It’s not like he can see me. The window is very small and the room is dark.

  Knightley smiles.

  Oh my god! He sees me! He sees me creeping at the window, like some weird, thirsty creeper.

  Great! This is the second time I have humiliated myself in front of Knightley-flipping-Nickerson and it’s only been three hours since he picked me up at Heathrow. Wait! Make that three times. First, he catches me accosting some strange man. Then, I thrust a box of candy at him while referencing his genitalia. Now, he catches me creeping on him. He must think I am a nasty girl, a thirsty, nasty, red-rubber-boot-wearing creeper of a girl.

  I should be embarrassed, but all I can think is, He likes me. Knightley Nickerson likes me.

  Chapter Nine

  Emma Lee Maxwell’s Facebook Update:

  Did you know when two people are in love and stare into each other’s eyes, their heartbeats synch? Isn’t that romantic? Sigh.

  Once Knightley climbs in
to his car and backs out of the driveway, I collapse onto the overstuffed velvet sofa, kick off my boots, and take in the living room. The focal point of the room is the fireplace, made of honey-colored stone with a wood mantel stained the same color as the dark, rough-hewn beams crisscrossing the ceiling. The fireplace is flanked by floor-to-ceiling built-ins, the shelves loaded with leather-bound books and framed photographs, grainy black-and-white shots that illustrate my aunt’s colorful life. Besides the velvet sofa, there are two armchairs, a pair of antique Chippendale side tables, and a large, tufted ottoman serving as a coffee table. A stack of glossy coffee-table books is arranged atop the ottoman, along with a silver tray and a porcelain tea set. The scarred wooden floor is covered with a thick Persian rug. Oil paintings in tarnished gilt wood frames hang on the walls, portraits of people long dead, a pinch-faced elderly man in a periwig, a pretty girl in a starched Elizabethan ruff, and a dashing soldier in uniform, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword.

  The room is chic without being pretentious, which is how I would have described my aunt. Cultivated, but warm and welcoming. Sitting in this room, surrounded by her belongings, makes me feel happy. In her will, Aunt Patricia asked us not to waste time weeping at her passing. Instead, she wrote, remember the joy I brought to your lives and pay it forward by bringing joy into the lives of others. That should be my legacy, and yours. My sisters cried when Mr. Hastings read those words. I didn’t. Aunt Patricia’s words, her simple, selfless directive, freed my heart from the heavy burden of grief. Be happy. Be light. Lawd knows I miss my aunt and my daddy, but they would not have wanted me to sit around shredding Kleenex. They would have wanted me to get outta myself, think of others. So that’s what I have been trying to do.

  I wander around the cottage, checking in each room, opening every wardrobe. It might sound silly, but I have never lived by myself and I’m a little weirded out. I went from living with my daddy to living in the sorority house to living with my sister.

  I open the door at the top of the stairs, expecting to find a master suite decorated in the same sophisticated style as the living room, but that is not what I find. Not even close. To say my aunt went in a different direction with the décor of her bedroom would be like saying Kylie Jenner has had a little plastic surgery. Huge understatement. Huge. The bones of the room are the same—wooden floor, exposed beam ceiling, low, multipaned windows—but the plastic surgery has rendered it a completely different creature. Just as Kylie didn’t know when to stop with the lip injections, my aunt didn’t know when to stop with the florals. Floral wallpaper, floral drapes, floral bedspreads, a profusion of frilly floral pillows. It’s like an English country garden vomited all over the room. I like girly girl. I do girly girl. But the frenzy of floral might be too much frill even for me. Also, there are two twin canopy beds instead of one large queen. Odd choice for a master. So, I close the door and continue my exploration of the second floor in search of the main bedroom. I find a cozy sitting room with a flat-screen television hung over a small fireplace and two more bedrooms, decorated with the same amount of girly-girl enthusiasm, one in chintz, the other in powdery-pink toile. All the bedrooms contain twin beds. It’s like a sorority house for shabby but seriously chic sisters. I wish I had a few sisters to share my cottage. It’s a little lonely—and spooky—up here all by myself.

  I head back downstairs, determined to start a fire that will chase away the cold and make the empty house feel more like home. Several minutes—and books of matches—later and I’ve only managed to coax a wispy flame from the mound of wadded up newspaper, kindling, and logs.

  I stand up and brush the newsprint and ash from my hands.

  “Fires are highly overrated anyway,” I say aloud, tossing the empty matchbook onto the ottoman. “What I need is a good cup of tea.”

  The kitchen turns out to be one of the coziest, most inviting rooms in the house, with a low, exposed-beam ceiling and an old stone floor. There is a long rectangular table and upholstered parson’s chairs, and an antique cabinet filled with delicate bone china patterned with birds perched on branches. The cabinets are painted robin’s egg blue and there’s an iron stove, also painted robin’s egg blue. If Martha Stewart bought a cottage in the Cotswolds, her kitchen would probably look like this one.

  I pad over to the refrigerator and look at all the goodies Isabella left—a wedge of Somerset cheddar cheese, a bowl of pears that appear as if they were just plucked off their branches, a whole roasted chicken, a jar of clotted cream, all the fixings for a salad, a bag of artisan pasta, plump, juicy tomatoes . . . A cake plate sits on the counter beside the refrigerator, a tower of lemon-zested scones artfully arranged under the glass dome. There’s a basket filled with a variety of teas, ajar of honey, a cellophane bag of lumpy demerara sugar cubes, ajar of Nutella, and a loaf of rustic bread.

  I find a teakettle in a cabinet, fill it with water, and carry it to the stove. Only the stove isn’t like any stove I’ve ever seen. There are no dials.

  I set the kettle on top of the stove and pad back into the living room, pull my iPhone out of my purse, and snap a picture of the stove. My sister Tara is a chef. She knows how to make a gourmet meal on a campfire. True story: she made tender belly pork braised in sriracha and ale in the Memorial Stadium parking lot using only a camp stove. It was the best meal my sorority sisters and cheer squad ever had at a tailgate.

  Text to Tara Maxwell:

  OMG! Look at this stove. It’s ancient. Isabella said Northam-on-the-Water dates to the Roman Age. I think this stove is from that era. What do I do to make it work? Pray to Vulcan, god of fire?

  It’s still early in Charleston, but Tara will be up. Her job as a food features reporter for WCSC, the Lowcountry’s news leader, requires her to wake up before the crack of dawn. While I wait for her response, I send a group text to Kristin and Maddie. Kristin talked Maddie into joining her in a thirty-day squat challenge. Yesterday was day one.

  Text from Madison Van Doren:

  If my thighs are going to ache this bad, it should be from doing something more enjoyable, like . . . Liam Hemsworth.

  Text from Kristin Carmichael:

  Liam Hemsworth? Really?

  Text to Kristin Carmichael, Madison Van Doren:

  What’s wrong with Liam?

  Text from Kristin Carmichael:

  I’ve heard Aussie guys aren’t very big . . . you know . . . Down Under.

  Text from Madison Van Doren:

  Whatev. I’ll take Liam.

  Text from Kristin Carmichael:

  . . . and I will take Orlando Bloom. Thank you very much.

  Text to Kristin Carmichael, Madison Van Doren:

  GTG. Happy squatting!

  Text from Kristin Carmichael:

  650 by the end of the month!

  My phone rings. It’s Tara. “Hello?”

  “That’s an Aga, you dork.”

  “What’s an Aga?”

  “The stove.” She laughs. “It’s an oil-operated stove and it is very expensive.”

  “So it’s not a Roman relic?”

  “No.”

  “There are no buttons or dial thingies. Do you know how to start it?”

  “Yes, and I am pretty sure it doesn’t involve praying to the god of fire.”

  I pad back into the kitchen. There are four square doors on the front of the stove. Tara tells me to open the top left door and then rattles off the instructions for lighting Aunt Patricia’s Roman stove, six steps that involve opening oil pipe valves and lighting a wick with a match.

  “Are you sure I’m supposed to use a match? I thought you weren’t supposed to light a match around gas.”

  “It’s oil, not gas.”

  “If this Roman stove explodes and I burn to death, I will not be waiting for you in the light. I mean it. Do not look for me in heaven.”

  “You’ll be fine. Just follow my instructions.”

  I switch to speakerphone and stare skeptically at the stove.

  “Do yo
u remember what I told you about the Kappa Kappa Gamma charity barbecue, when Kristin put too much charcoal fluid on the coals and fried her eyelashes and eyebrows clean off her face? I’m not gonna lie, Tara, she looked freakish. Like an alien. It took months for them to grow back.”

  “Are there any open containers of charcoal fluid sitting around the cottage?”

  I look around.

  “No.”

  “Then you’ll be fine.”

  With Tara listening on the line, I pretend to go through the steps for lighting the stove. I pretend to open the oil valves and flip a switch on the electrical control box. I pretend to turn a dial thingie and push a clickie button.

  “Now, you have to wait for the oil to reach the burner,” Tara says. “Give it about fifteen minutes, open the flap on the burner, and light the wick with a match.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it,” Tara says.

  “Easy-peasy.”

  “Lemon squeezy!” Tara chirps. “Gotta go. Text if you need the instructions again . . . or if you want me to order you an eyebrow pencil and some falsies from Sephora.”

  “Ha ha.”

  “Bye.”

  “Kisses.”

  I hang up and bend over, looking at the reflection of my eyebrows in the shiny copper teakettle. It has taken me years of dedicated plucking to achieve the perfect arch. Don’t laugh. Brow shaping is a delicate art. Overenthusiastic plucking at the ends results in stunted, comma-shaped brows, under the arches results in angry brow. Lord knows I love me some Michelle Obama, but the former FLOTUS was working some serious angry brows during the 2008 election season, harsh upside-down Vs that gave her a perpetual scowl.

  “Sorry, Earl Grey, you might be hot, but you are not worth the risk,” I say, carrying the teakettle to the sink and pouring out the water. “Brows over brews, baby.”