Mother was proud when I told her of John’s commission with Colonel Phinney, and I believe Father to be pleased, too, in his own way. News of the militia’s battles against the king’s armies had made Mother afraid for us, but finally seeing me in person has again set her mind to rest.
And I know I ought not to say it, but it was an adventure, was it not? You mustn’t think me wicked for saying so. But it was so good to be free of this place, if for only a while. You know as well as I the menace of the woods and the contagious gloom of the ancient oaks.
You must think me foolish to revert to our childhood fears. But what am I to complain about without regiments of British Regulars at my door? You have only yourself to blame, my dear Kathy. You spoil me with bright frocks, bustling cobblestone streets, and nothing less than revolution itself, so this is what you must expect of this provincial relation from now on.
We had a wonderful time, did we not, dear sister? I already miss you terribly. Think fondly of me, and I shall pray daily that God will keep you and your dearest John safe and happy.
Your Bess
5
The Crofts was Charlie’s house, but the forest was his home.
He ran through the trees and he imagined himself as Hickory Heck running from his old life in the city. The trees here were shorter than the buildings Charlie was used to, but they made him feel smaller than any skyscraper ever had. They made him imagine a world beyond the one he knew.
At first, Charlie had been afraid of the emptiness. The land here was as wide and spare as the city had been tall and crowded. But that was before he had learned what to look for.
After running away from his family, Heck had wandered through the mountains for three days until he came to the tree where he dug out the burrow that would become his home. Before then, he’d slept between roots and alongside boulders, and some of the trees he passed along the way had been taller and older and thicker than the tree he eventually chose. But when he found the right one, he knew it. This was just how Charlie had felt when he first laid eyes on the clearing in the woods to the east of the lake.
He liked to sit on the stump in the center of the clearing. The breeze there carried a collection of scents: the faint rot of wood from the stump he sat on, moss from the green carpet that covered it. There was a hint of stale water from the nearby lake and of blooming grass from fields to the north.
Dad once saw a picture Charlie had drawn of this place, and he had called it a faerie circle, but Charlie didn’t know why. He had never seen faeries there.
Even on a day as nice as today, there were no faeries. There was the angel, but the angel lived on the other side of the lake. Here there was only the forest and the air and the earth. The sound of branches playing on the wind and roots stretching in the ground was a conversation he listened to through long afternoons. This was where he had learned to be still.
Mom and Dad believed that he spent hours here playing alone, but they were only half right. It was a game of a sort, though not one they would have recognized or approved of. And while he was by himself, he wasn’t always alone.
When he reached the clearing, he sat on his stump and waited, as he did each day. It was not long until he felt the gaze of something just out of sight burning into the back of his head. He had not yet been fast enough to see the one who watched him, but Charlie was patient. In time, he was sure, he would catch sight of the stranger in the trees.
Charlie often tried to imagine the eyes that followed him from the forest. It could be anything, Charlie told himself, and his heart thrilled to the thought of it. The world here was as alive as it was in the pages of Hickory Heck. There were beavers up at the lake and groundhogs in the fields. There were snakes under the rocks and frogs by the shore. There were deer in the grasslands and mountain lions in the caves.
But Charlie felt certain that his watcher in the woods was something else entirely.
6
Exton, with its brightly painted Victorians and handsome shops, was two valleys but an entire world away from Swannhaven.
Embroidered banners strung along lampposts announced an annual dance festival, and the outdoor seating areas for the town’s restaurants bubbled with the conversations of patrons. When Ben picked up his books from the bookstore on its main street, tourists and locals alike basked in the warm summer light.
Ben would have enjoyed his time in town, if not for the ugly task ahead. He chose a pay phone across from the bank to call his mother. His dread grew with each coin he thumbed through the slot.
“Hello?” She’d had a nice voice once, but years of liquor and smoke had left their scars.
“It’s Ben, Mom.”
“Ben?” It was early evening, but Ben got the impression he’d woken her.
“Yes. How are you?”
“I’m fine. I got a little place not too far from the beach. Can walk to work, and they let me pick all my shifts. And I—oh, you were just being polite, weren’t you? Asking me how I was.”
“I’m glad you’re okay.” She rarely slurred her words, but there was a thickness to her voice that he recognized well. “The lawyer says you haven’t signed the papers from Grams’s estate.”
“Oh, Benj. It’s just too hard. I look at the papers, all ready to sign, but then I think that if I sent them off, then your sweet Grams would really be gone.”
A lie, and not a convincing one. Mom and Grams had rarely spoken over the last decade, and Ben doubted that any conversation they might’ve shared would have left either of them eager for another.
“Well, there would still be the money.”
“It is a nice sum, that’s true,” she said.
Ben grimaced as she coughed wetly into the receiver.
“But then I think of that house she had and all the nice things she had in it, and I wonder what happened to that. Still had that land upstate, too, I imagine.”
He was surprised she knew about the farmstead.
“She had expenses at the end,” he told her. “The assisted-living facility, hospice, the medications, the aides, the funeral. If she’d ever run into trouble, Ted or I would have helped, but you know how she was. She’d never want to burden us.” He couldn’t resist adding a note of insinuation to his voice.
“It still hurts to think I couldn’t afford the airfare to get to the funeral,” she sighed into the receiver, her turn to make an oblique recrimination. There was something else in her voice, too. Her tongue seemed slowed by age as much as by alcohol. She was getting old, Ben thought to himself. A pang sounded in a dormant part of his heart. My mother is getting old. “And it would have been a chance to meet my grandchildren, too. How many do you have now?”
“By the time the house sold, the market had already collapsed,” Ben said. He knew it was important to stay on topic. “And no one is ever going to buy that land upstate.” In her will, Grams had made clear that she wanted her grandsons to sell the old homestead. She’d never been one to saddle others with her problems. “The farmhouse there is just a ruin. She’d didn’t leave us much.”
“You went up there, then? Way the hell upstate? I always wondered about that cursed place. The stories she’d tell about it would frighten the sleep out of me for days at a time when I was a girl. Demons in the wood and devils at the door.”
Ben hesitated, but just for a moment. He knew she’d said such a thing only to get him to ask her about it. He would give her neither the satisfaction nor the leverage.
“Plus the hospital fees. And the lawyer’s fees keep piling up, all charged against the estate.”
“Oh, yes? Some lawyer fattening his bank accounts with fees. They add up, don’t they? Guess they’ll keep right on adding up until I finally fix my John Hancock to these papers.” The age had fallen from her tone, and the thick-tongued singsong of her voice formed into something with more bite. Suddenly she was again the fearsome woman who’d raised him. Ben could almost feel her bourbon-scented breath on his cheek. “But it’s curious that Grams didn�
��t leave more to me, isn’t it? Instead, she left it to her grandsons, who so fiercely kept me, her only child, from her in her last days. And she was so vulnerable at the end. So suggestible. I wonder what a court might make of that if I decided to contest the will. It would be interesting to find out, wouldn’t it? And all the while, the lawyer’s bills keep piling up.” Ben could practically hear her smile through the receiver. “A scandal, isn’t it? People think life is expensive, but draw it out long enough and the cost of death could bury anyone.”
In his time Ben had thought of his mother as a drunk, a liar, a grifter, an addict, and on occasion a plague cultivated in the deepest pit of hell. She was so many terrible things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. For just a second he’d forgotten that, and now he had a feeling of sick certainty that it was going to cost him.
—
The sky’s glow had dimmed by the time Ben returned to Swannhaven. When he reached the village’s valley, the woods along the sides of the broken county road were thick with shadow. Just as well, because the twilight matched his mood.
The negotiations had begun high, but in the end Ben could live with the amount they’d settled upon to put the issue to rest. Though his and Caroline’s accounts were not so flush as they’d once been, it seemed a small price to pay to conclude the matter and to be rid of his parasitic mother a while longer. A net win, he told himself. Not that this rationalization made him feel any less manipulated.
The few village buildings he could see from the road looked deserted, except for the Lancelight, with its modestly lit sign. While the single meal that the Tierneys had eaten there had not been pleasant, the food itself had been surprisingly good. The waitresses’ old-fashioned uniforms had lent the place an appealing retro feel, and the swollen pies under the counter glass had been perfectly browned.
Ben’s lunch had been early and light, and the memory of those pies made his mouth water. Caroline preferred that they prepare their own food, but she also talked a lot about building relationships with the villagers. And as a rule Ben preferred not to return home in a mood as bleak as the one he now found himself in. Their delicate domestic equilibrium demanded a certain level of affability on his part. A detour before heading home might put some space between him and that phone call.
The Lancelight’s parking lot was empty except for two tired-looking Toyotas. When he went inside, there was no one but an old man at the counter.
He stood just inside the doorway for a moment, waiting for someone else to materialize. The old man turned to him and then looked away, more interested in the coffee at the bottom of his mug. Ben coughed into his hand.
As he was about to leave, a woman burst out of the kitchen, tying her apron behind her as she walked.
“Knew that wasn’t Old Billy coughing,” she said. “He’s got that nasty old smoker’s hack.”
Ben guessed she was in her sixties. She wore a loose blouse that billowed behind her as she walked.
Old Billy muttered something into his drink that Ben couldn’t catch.
“If I’m a nag, you’re the sorriest ass I ever laid eyes on,” the woman replied. She turned to Ben. “Look at you, all proper. We don’t stand on ceremony here, sugar. Sit it down wherever you like.”
He stole a glance at the name tag she wore on her blouse.
“Lisbeth,” she said, noticing his interest. A smile deepened well-exercised lines around her mouth. “I’m the owner. Make the girls wear the tags, so I figure I should, too.” She leaned back, appraising. “I feel like I know you, honey; now, why is that?”
“I was in here once, with my family.”
Lisbeth hummed and slid her mouth to one side. “Mostly local folk around here; don’t see many blow-ins.”
“Actually—”
“You’re the one they talk about.” She slapped the top of her ample thigh. “Tierney. You’re up at the Crofts.”
“That’s right,” Ben said.
“My, you’re a young fella. Didn’t expect that. Was just asking myself the other day when you’d come down and visit. What took you so long?”
“We came in once,” Ben said again. “A couple weeks ago.”
“I’d remember,” she said, shaking her head. “Coulda been the week I got laid up with some bug. You get that fever that’s been going around?”
Ben shook his head.
“You’re not missing anything there. Now, you find a seat and I’ll get you some water. You want some coffee, too?”
“Actually, I was wondering if I could buy a pie to take out.”
“Just a pie? Baked some fresh last night. I think we have a cherry and an apple that haven’t been nibbled at yet. Let me get you a little slice of each so you can make an educated decision.”
“Oh, no, that’s not necessary.”
“Be my pleasure,” she said, heading back to the kitchen. “And if you like both of them, that’ll be a good excuse to visit again, won’t it?”
She was back a minute later with a full plate and a can of whipped cream. The cherries’ crimson juice slid toward him when she placed the plate on the table.
“Can’t eat whip myself,” Lisbeth told him. “I’m a bit of a health fiend, as you can see.” She clutched her bulging stomach and laughed.
Lisbeth slid into the bench across from Ben and asked how he’d decided to move to Swannhaven. Between mouthfuls, Ben performed the sanitized version of the story. In this fiction, Ben explained how he and his family been visiting the farmhouse that he’d inherited from his grandmother when they first learned that the Crofts was for sale. The thought of buying the place had occurred to him and his supremely dependable and entirely well-balanced wife at once. They’d set it aside at first, thinking it sheer lunacy, but it hadn’t gone away. It hadn’t gone away, and now here they were.
Without all the mental illness, bullying, and economic Armageddon, the whole thing sounded rather romantic.
“Now, why are you on your own?” she asked him. “Where’s your beautiful family? And I already know they’re beautiful, because you’re a handsome man, and in my experience, pretty people tend to stick together.”
“Oh.” Ben felt his face warm. “They’re back at the house. I’ve just been running some errands.”
“You lot must be busy up there, with that big house to whip into shape. They say you’re turning the Crofts into an inn?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Be nice to see it fixed up, that’s for sure. Some around here aren’t too happy about it. But houses are meant to be lived in, aren’t they? And in its day, that was one fine house. Who better than you to restore it?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say that.”
“You’re the Lowells’ kin, aren’t you?”
“My grandmother was a Lowell.”
“Then so are you,” she said. “Names are nice, but people around here know better than most that it’s the blood that matters. Lowells were one of the first to settle here, with my kin right alongside them. You know that?”
Ben shook his head.
“Then you’ve got some catching up to do. The Lowells were one of the Winter Families. And the Winter Families have done their living and dying together for the better part of three hundred years.”
“Winter Families?”
“Your grandmother never told you anything at all?”
“Not that I remember.”
“Well, it’s a long story. Probably better for another time.”
“You can’t tease me like that,” Ben said. Both pies had been good. Nothing remained on his plate but a trough of livid juice that thickened along the rim.
“Hard to know just how to tell it right. It’s the kinda thing that if you look at it straight on you may miss something. But once a month, me and a bunch of the other old biddies from the village meet at the church to talk about the village history and keep the flame of it bright and burning. We call it the Preservation Society. Truth is, half the time we spend chatting about whose cows are with calf
and which teenage lovebirds have most lately been caught tumbling in a barn. If you’re there, maybe we’ll have an easier time keeping to the matter at hand. Your family has long been an important part of Swannhaven, and now you’re back. Lost and now returned.”
“I’d love to learn more about the village,” Ben said. And it was true. At the very least, he wanted to learn more about the history of the Crofts.
“Well, sure you would,” Lisbeth said. “This is where your people are from.” She stood and smiled at him. “And, God willing, this is where your people will be from again.”
7
Ben had bought a book for everyone.
“Is this the one where she goes to India?” Caroline asked. She squinted at the back-cover copy.
“Look, there are boats, too,” Charlie said. He hefted his copy of The Book of Secrets over his head to show Ben the schematics of small floating platforms made from sticks and bark.
“We can play with them in one of the streams near the lake,” Ben said.
“For meditation and yoga or something?”
“I know where we can find bark like this, too,” Charlie said. “It’s like paper; Heck uses it to write his journal.”
“Everyone else seemed to like it, Cee,” Ben said. Bub was in his exersaucer, sucking on the corner of a board book about caterpillars. “I think Bub likes his.”
“What did you get for yourself?” Caroline asked Ben.
“Couple of things,” Ben said. “Picked up a copy of Connor’s new book.”
“For the uneven nightstand in Charlie’s room?” she asked.
The kettle clicked, and Ben seized the opportunity to turn away from her. She’d always had a problem with his friends. She thought they were snobs, and the feeling had been reciprocated. Most of them dated people in media or the arts, and at their dinner parties Caroline inevitably had been the only finance person in attendance. Everyone talked about the Observer and the Times; she read the Journal. Their coffee tables held copies of New York and Vanity Fair instead of The Economist. At first they’d treated Caroline politely and then like a curiosity, but things had gone south at about the same time as the economy.
House of Echoes: A Novel Page 4