The House on Honeysuckle Lane

by Mary McDonough

  “Maybe,” Rumi said, pulling her cell phone from her pocket. “Yikes, I have to go. I’m doing the dinner shift at the Angry Squire and the wait staff gets a meal around four. My friend told me we’re getting lamb chops tonight, and I’m totally psyched.”

  “Enjoy it,” Emma said.

  “I will. I totally love lamb.” And then she colored, ever so slightly. “Sorry, Mom,” she said. “I didn’t mean . . .”

  Andie laughed. “No worries. Be careful driving. And I’ll keep an eye out for your scarf.”

  “What? Oh,” Rumi said. “Right. My scarf. Thanks.”

  Rumi said her farewell, leaving the Reynolds sisters alone again.

  Emma sank into the big armchair her father had loved. “Mom was only in her midsixties when she died. These days that’s ridiculously young. It makes you think. There’s never any time to waste and yet all of us do it.”

  “Mom seemed older than her years, didn’t she?” Andie asked thoughtfully. “After Dad died she seemed to age overnight. She wasted away, lost the will to live.”

  Emma nodded. “A prolonged death from a broken heart. I know that sounds dramatic, downright Victorian even, but now more than ever I think that’s what really did Mom in. Andie? Do you think Danny knows about Mom’s first engagement?”

  “No idea. But I don’t want to be the one to tell him.”

  “Me, neither. I have a feeling it wouldn’t sit well with him. I think Danny always saw Mom as some sort of perfect shining creature, someone a bit above the rest of us ordinary mortals. But maybe I’m wrong.”

  “No. I suspect you’re right about that.” Andie sighed. “It’s odd. Mom assumed she had a right to know every little thing about me. About us all. And here she was, keeping this huge secret.”

  Emma shrugged. “All mothers assume they have complete rights to their kids. Even when they know they don’t, not really, they still can’t help but presume. Perfectly normal, I’d say.”

  “Maybe it’s normal, but I don’t like it. I’ve never felt I had the right to know every detail of Rumi’s life. I truly value a person’s ‘space,’ to use a tired old expression. I know it can read at times as lack of concern, but it’s not at all. It’s respect.”

  “I know,” Emma assured her sister. “I never thought you didn’t care, Andie.”

  “Thanks. You know, I guess it’s not really a big surprise, Mom breaking off her first engagement to marry Dad. They were so obviously mad about each other. But why tell Rumi and not one of us?”

  Emma thought about the question for a moment. “Because Rumi would have less emotional stake in the knowledge?” she suggested. “Mom guessed that Rumi wasn’t going to react like we would have, demanding to know why she hadn’t told us about it before.”

  “Maybe.” Andie shook her head. “I wonder who he was. I wonder if he’s still alive. Rumi didn’t say if he was much older than Mom, but he might have been. I wonder if he’s been carrying a torch for Caroline Carlyle all these years or if he’s been happily married. Anyway, maybe Mom was ashamed of what she did and wanted to keep it all a secret. And then, when she knew the end was near and that it didn’t matter anymore what she’d done forty years in the past, she decided she could safely tell someone and Rumi was an obvious choice. She was there.”

  “I wonder what Mom’s parents thought about her breaking her first engagement,” Emma said. “I can’t believe they were happy about it, not the William and Martha Carlyle we knew, however slightly. And yet they treated Dad well enough. And I never heard Dad say anything against them, not that he would in our hearing.”

  “I guess the Carlyle clan saw Dad’s real worth,” Andie said, “just like Mom did. Dad was pretty hard to resist.”

  “He was.” Emma sighed. “It must have taken Mom a lot of courage to defy her parents by choosing her own husband, and someone not at all from her social set.”

  Andie laughed. “Here I was thinking my mother was a woman who excelled at the expected—which of course she did—when she was really so much more. She was a person who stood up for what she wanted.”

  “And for what she believed in. Remember the time in high school when my English teacher told us to choose a novel to read over the Christmas vacation and I chose A Clockwork Orange? Ms. Tobin told me I had to choose another book because A Clockwork Orange was too mature for me.”

  “I do remember that,” Andie said.

  “Mom went ballistic. Well, in her usual refined way. She went to the school and told Ms. Tobin and the principal that the administration had no right to censor her daughter’s reading. And in the end I got to read what I wanted to read.”

  “Did you like the book?” Andie asked. “I have to admit I’ve never read it.”

  “Hated it. Had nightmares for months. But I appreciated Mom sticking up for me and my intellectual freedom.”

  “There certainly was a lot about Mom that was admirable,” Andie said. “It’s just that . . .”

  “It’s just that what?” Emma asked.

  Andie sighed. “I know it’s ancient history and that I should let it go. My spiritual training alone should be enough to remind me that clinging to what is gone—and everything goes at some point—is a terrible, self-imposed form of suffering and anxiety. Still, I can’t help but wonder. If Mom was courageous enough to defy her parents’ wishes, why couldn’t she have been more understanding about my leaving Bob?”

  “I don’t know,” Emma admitted. “Do as I say and not as I do? For that matter, I wonder how she would have felt about my breaking off my relationship with Ian, the man she probably expected me to marry.”

  Andie smiled ruefully. “Another thing we’ll never know.”

  “Like why Mom kept evidence of our failures as well as of our triumphs.” Emma picked up another yellowed piece of paper from the box of old schoolwork and tore it in half. “Sorry, Mom,” she said. “But some things are best left forgotten.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Daniel put a small bowl of sea salt on the kitchen table, next to a pepper grinder and a dish of butter. He enjoyed setting a table with the staples of a good meal; the simple task gave him great satisfaction.

  “Where are Anna Maria and the kids this evening?” Andie asked, as she took a seat.

  “They’re at her parents’ house,” Daniel explained, “visiting with some of the Spinelli cousins. Gabriella’s youngest daughter has a birthday right about now. I always forget the exact date. I’ve never been good with dates. Except for my wedding anniversary. Anna Maria doesn’t let me forget that, or her birthday.”

  “Smart woman,” Emma said, unfolding her napkin and laying it across her lap.

  Daniel brought a platter to the table on which rested a whole fish covered with herbs and garlic. He had already put out a hefty wilted spinach salad with dressing on the side and a crusty baguette he had baked that afternoon.

  “This looks amazing, Danny,” Emma said, “but you don’t have to keep feeding us. I know you’re particularly busy this time of the year.”

  Daniel shrugged. “It’s my pleasure. Feeding people is what I do. I left the bacon out of the salad, Andie. It should be fine for you to eat.”

  Andie smiled. “Thanks, Danny.”

  “You two are never going to stop calling me Danny, are you?” he asked as he took his seat at the table.

  Emma laughed. “Not likely.”

  Daniel sighed dramatically. “I guess I’ll just have to bear with you. So, Emma, you’ll take Mom’s silver serving platters to the Shelby Gallery for evaluation tomorrow?”

  “It’s on my schedule for first thing.”

  “Great,” Daniel said. “And don’t forget the kids’ school pageant the evening of the seventh. Sophia is playing Mary.”

  “We know,” Andie said with a smile. “You told us that at least three times.”

  “I just don’t want you to forget. This is a big night for her, and for Marco, of course, even though he’s only playing a shepherd. It’s not a speaking part, but ma
ybe next year.”

  Emma smiled. “So, it’s safe to say you’re a proud daddy? And ambitious for your kids.”

  “Of course.” And then Daniel frowned. “But don’t think I’m one of those pushy parents. I mean, first and foremost I want my children to be happy. And I want them to learn that not everyone wins all the time. Failing every once in a while is the only way to really learn. Though my opinion puts me in the minority these days.”

  “I agree with you,” Emma said. “Trophies for every kid at every game. It really is an odd notion. Where’s the challenge?”

  Daniel shook his head. “There is no challenge. I remember when I was in sixth grade I tried out for the junior basketball team. I didn’t make the final cut and remember feeling seriously upset about it. I really thought I should have been chosen. I remember going to Dad and asking him to go to the coach and try to convince him to let me on the team.”

  “What happened?” Andie asked, spearing a piece of spinach and chopped egg.

  “What happened was that Dad said no, flat out. He said he was sorry I was disappointed, but that if the coach had thought I’d be an asset to the team he would have chosen me. He told me that I’d just have to accept that I wasn’t a good enough player and that if I wanted to be chosen next time, I’d have to practice harder and more often.”

  “Smart advice,” Emma said. “But not necessarily what a kid wants to hear.”

  “Exactly. I was really hurt and angry. I thought Dad was, I don’t know, rejecting me. I thought he just didn’t care about me.” Daniel shrugged. “Eventually I got over it and came to see that he was right in not going to the coach and making a stink.”

  “Dad loved you, Danny,” Andie said. “I remember him always going on about ‘my boy’ to anyone and everyone who would listen. He was proud to have a son like you.”

  A son like me, Daniel thought. What did that mean? Maybe his father had been proud of his son while he was growing up, but Daniel had never really believed that Cliff had noticed him until he had married, had children of his own, and started his business. Only then, when he had shown that he could equal what his father had achieved, had Daniel finally felt fully visible, fully significant to Cliff Reynolds.

  “Earth to Danny.”

  Daniel looked up from his plate and smiled at Emma. “Sorry. My mind tends to wander a lot these days.”

  “Where to?” Andie asked.

  “The past.” Daniel squared his shoulders, as if that gesture could create a barrier beyond which some of the more stressful memories of his younger years could not travel. “The pageant starts at seven-thirty,” he said, “but I’d try to get to the school by seven. Parking might be difficult.”

  “I’m surprised a public school is putting on a pageant with an obviously Christian theme,” Andie said.

  “Oh, that’s not the whole of it. There’s a tribute to Passover and Kwanzaa as well.” Daniel grinned. “I’m not sure how successful the kids’ singing will be, but I think that in this case they’ll deserve applause for the effort.”

  “And hoots and hollers,” Emma added. “Danny? Is there any more of the salad dressing? It’s delicious.”

  Daniel rose from his seat. “There is,” he said. “I’ll get it.”

  “Thanks, Danny.”

  “It’s my pleasure,” he said. And it was.

  CHAPTER 19

  Emma parked her Lexus in the municipal lot and walked the one block to the Shelby Gallery. The building was one of the many mid-nineteenth-century structures still standing in downtown Oliver’s Well. Emma looked up at the sign hanging over the door and for the life of her couldn’t recall what had been there before the gallery. A clothing shop? A card store? She shook her head. Another bit of the past lost to, well, to the past.

  A bell over the door rang pleasantly when she entered the gallery. The man standing behind the counter had his back to her, but at the sound of the bell he turned. Emma was stunned. It was the man she had seen the other morning in Cookies ’n Crumpets. And in the proverbial split second she realized that he had lost none of his inexplicable fascination for her.

  “Good morning,” he said. “How can I help you?”

  Today he was wearing charcoal-colored trousers with a dove gray tab-collared shirt. And yes, his eyes were definitely dark brown.

  “I saw you in Cookies ’n Crumpets the other morning,” Emma said, moving across the room of spotlessly clean glass display cases, antique standing lamps, massive armoires, and beautifully upholstered chairs. She put the box that contained the silver serving platters on the counter. “I was at one of the tables by the window.”

  With mock seriousness he said, “So you know all about my secret vice. The corn muffin with warm honey.”

  Emma smiled. “Yeah. Sounds like heaven. But I am pretty fond of their cinnamon buns.”

  “Either one is an indulgence, that’s for sure.” He put out his hand for Emma to shake. “My name is Morgan. Morgan Shelby.”

  Emma took his hand. It was a beautiful hand. “Emma Reynolds,” she said.

  “Of the Reynolds family on Honeysuckle Lane?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “I knew your mother,” Morgan told her. “Not well, but enough to pass the time of day. She had impeccable taste in clothing, if I’m not being too personal saying that. And she was very knowledgeable about antiques, especially English and American furniture and painting.”

  “She was brought up to know about such things,” Emma explained. “Her family, the Carlyles, have been fixtures in Old Bostonian society since they came over from England in the early seventeen hundreds. My grandparents’ house on Beacon Hill was a veritable museum of antique glass and porcelain and furniture. In fact, we still have an original desk by George Bullock, the important Regency cabinetmaker.”

  Morgan smiled. “Ah, that explains a lot. Your mother was to the manor born.”

  “In a manner of speaking,” Emma said. “I don’t remember seeing you at her funeral. There were so many people . . . I was a bit overwhelmed.”

  “Regrettably, I was out of town at the time of your mother’s funeral. A command performance at an aunt and uncle’s sixtieth anniversary party.”

  “I hope it was enjoyable,” Emma said. “I mean, an anniversary party trumps a funeral, doesn’t it?”

  Morgan raised an eyebrow. “Sometimes. So, what’s in the box?”

  “Take a look. We’re in the process of sorting through my mother’s effects. I have to say it’s not as easy as I thought it was going to be.”

  Morgan carefully lifted the silver platters one by one from the box. “That sort of thing never is,” he said. “These are lovely. Solid sterling, not just plated. By Wilcox and Wagoner Silver Company, out of New York.”

  “They were a gift at her wedding,” Emma told him. “I believe they date from the early twentieth century, but I’m hoping you can tell me more.”

  “It will be a pleasure,” Morgan assured her. “I can tell you right now that Wilcox and Wagoner Silver Company sold to Watson Silver Company in 1905, and Watson continued to use this mark, but I’ll try to find out exactly when these pieces were made.” Morgan smiled. “But I didn’t mean to interrupt you. You were saying it’s not easy sorting through the possessions of a loved one.”

  “Every moment is interrupted by a memory,” Emma said. “At least, that’s how it seems. And some of the things my mother kept . . . well, I can’t understand why. Clearly they must have meant something to her, but for the life of me I can’t see what they might have meant.”

  “Like what for example?” Morgan asked, turning the largest platter over to look again at the maker’s mark on its base. “If that’s not prying.”

  Emma shook her head. “Not at all. Okay, there are all the silly novels my sister and I used to read when we were in middle school. Every single one is still in the bookcase in the den. And then there’s the stack of seed catalogues. There must be at least a hundred of them, all neatly filed by date of pub
lication. It’s not as if my mother was a hoarder or a lazy woman, so there has to have been some particular reason for her to hold on to what she did.”

  Morgan put the large platter carefully on the counter and shrugged. “The books brought back memories of her children when they were growing up. The catalogues help remind her of her annual gardens. Or maybe she simply enjoyed going through them for the pictures.”

  “Yes,” Emma said, “that could be it. Sadly, I’ll never know.”

  “As you might imagine,” Morgan said, “I have a lot of experience observing people and their attachment to objects. I can’t tell you how often someone comes in and tells me he’s been on a search for a table or a chest of drawers or a lamp exactly like the one his aunt or his grandmother had in her living room. Some of these people are so intense about recovering that bit of their past, as if once they get their hands on the object their memories will, I don’t know, come to life again. I mean, the good feelings associated with the memories.”

  “But you can’t revive the past, can you?” Emma said wonderingly.

  “No. But you can respect and even treasure it . . . if a reverence for what’s gone by doesn’t get out of hand and prevent you from living in the here and now.”

  “And,” Emma said, “from looking forward to the future.”

  Morgan smiled and picked up the second largest of the sterling silver platters, and as she watched him mentally assess the condition of the piece, Emma realized that she found it as easy to talk to Morgan Shelby as it was to talk to Maureen.

  “So, any further thoughts on Mom’s silver?” Emma asked.

  “Like I said before, the platters are lovely. And they’ve been kept in near perfect condition from what I can tell. It won’t take me more than a few days to complete an official appraisal.”

  “That’s fine,” Emma told him. “We’re not in a rush.” Though, she thought, my brother might argue that.

  Morgan nodded. “I’ll call you when it’s done. On another note entirely, would you like to go for coffee sometime, or a drink? Unless your holiday dance card is entirely filled?”