“I’m glad you like it,” Juniper said. “I was a bartender once. In college.”
“Oh?” Emily had a hard time picturing this woman—a lady if there ever was one—inside some dirty bar.
Juniper laughed. “For a summer. It was awful. But it paid for a study-abroad trip, so it was worth it.”
“Where did you go?”
“Italy. Florence, mainly, but Rome and Venice, too. It was wonderful. All that art…”
Her eyes grew distant, and she stared out the window, clearly remembering the trip. It was hard not to stare at her.
“Have you been abroad much?” Juniper suddenly asked.
She shook her head and then shrugged. “A little. I did a semester in London in college. I’ve been back a few times to visit friends. I went to Paris for a few days. Not much besides that. That’s the problem with studying American literature, I guess.” She laughed to cover her embarrassment. She didn’t want this woman to consider her some kind of rube.
Juniper didn’t seem to notice her discomfort. Her face was grave. “That’s a shame. I think you’d love Italy.” Juniper peered at her closely. “You actually kind of look Italian—a lot of women over there are petite like you. Are you? Italian, I mean?”
Emily shook her head, almost reluctant. “Irish.”
Juniper’s expression cleared. “That explains your complexion.”
“My pallor, you mean?”
Juniper grinned. “I wouldn’t say that—pale, maybe, but not pallid.” She stepped closer. “And gray eyes. Pretty.”
Emily flushed and looked away, too embarrassed to acknowledge the flattery. She turned her attention to her drink and the window. Juniper’s car was still parked in front of the house. When she’d heard the car’s engine on the road, she had raced downstairs, flinging open the front door before Juniper had even parked. She’d been so happy simply to hear another person that she hadn’t thought how she must have appeared when Juniper finally got out of the car. Desperate, maybe.
“How long did you say you’ve been here?” Juniper asked.
“A couple of days. I got here Tuesday.” It seemed longer. Thinking back on the last two days, Emily could hardly believe it had been less than forty-eight hours since she first saw the house.
Juniper shivered dramatically. “I can’t imagine how you stayed here on your own.”
“Oh?” Emily’s heart rate picked up. Maybe she knew something. “Why?”
Juniper shrugged. “Oh, no reason. I just hate being by myself.”
After Juniper had gotten out of her car and they’d introduced themselves, Emily had helped her find her bedroom—the one closest to hers, in the end—and given her the penny tour of the house. She’d been rattling on about it, answering questions about herself, and asking almost as many. If Juniper had noticed anything strange about the manic way she was behaving, she hadn’t let on. They’d finished in the sitting room, and Juniper had immediately offered to make cocktails.
“So how is it?” Juniper asked. “The house, I mean. It doesn’t look like a haunted house, with all of these windows and sunshine, but it is in the middle of nowhere. Have you heard any bumps in the night? Seen anything strange?”
She opened her mouth to reply and then closed it. What should she say? After the first evening, with the mystery woman in the window and the doors closing on their own, things had calmed down. She’d thrown herself into the Margot Lewis papers immediately—the same evening she arrived—and hadn’t stopped since. She found the library too confining and dark and had carried the journals up to her bedroom, where the light and space were better. After a deep sleep her first night, she’d worked all day yesterday. Except for the occasional sensation of being watched, nothing had happened after the doors had closed on their own. Until this morning.
After her experience with Mrs. Wright, she wanted to hedge her bets, so she lifted her shoulders. “Nothing really happened. Nothing that can’t be explained, anyway.”
Juniper’s eyes lit up, and she leaned closer. “But something did?”
Again, she shrugged, unable to meet Juniper’s eyes. After a long, awkward pause, Juniper laughed. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to pry. Forget I asked.”
She stared at her, suddenly desperate to tell her everything, afraid now that she might not get another chance, but Juniper had looked to the side, out the front window. She was squinting against the sun, as if trying to see far away, and then Emily heard it, too. A car, somewhere in the distance. The sound was very distinct on the gravel road on this side of the gate—a kind of popping snap in addition to an engine.
“That’s strange,” Emily said. “No one else is supposed to be here until Monday.”
“Maybe they decided to come early.”
Emily couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed. Having met Juniper, she’d already begun to look forward to the next couple of days on their own. She was suddenly hot with shame and glanced at Juniper again to see if she’d sensed her thoughts. She was still watching the driveway.
The car appeared a moment later and paused at the far side of the lawn, just as Emily had done when she’d first seen the house. A moment later the car started again and drove around the lawn and parked behind Juniper’s SUV. She and Juniper got up and walked into the foyer. Emily had found a heavy umbrella stand she used to prop open one of the double doors for the sitting room, and it was working. So far, the door stayed open.
Juniper opened the front door right as two men climbed out of a large sedan. Both of them stretched, and Jim, whom Emily recognized immediately, jumped up and down a couple of times as if to wake up. Both men spotted them simultaneously, and Jim broke into a broad grin.
“Emily Murray, as I live and breathe.” He waved a hand in front of his face and then laughed. “I saw your name on the list of guests this summer and almost didn’t believe it.”
The others were watching them, clearly confused, and Emily forced a laugh. “Nice to see you too, Jim.”
“Hello,” Juniper said, holding out a hand to him. “I’m Juniper Friend. You can call me June. Everyone does.”
Emily felt a stab of betrayal. June hadn’t suggested that Emily use her nickname.
“Hi, June. Nice to meet you.” Jim shook her hand. He used his free hand to push his sunglasses on top of his shaggy, blond head, revealing the rest of his handsome face. While Emily would call Jim more of a colleague than a friend, she had been around him socially enough at various conferences and gatherings in their field to know that he was something of a ladies’ man. At one Modernist Studies meeting a few years back in Las Vegas, if she remembered correctly, she’d seen him head back to his room with no less than four different women on different nights. Emily glanced at June to see how she’d react to him, but she seemed simply friendly, not interested.
Jim’s face fell, but he quickly recovered. “Oh, sorry,” he said, sweeping his hand toward the other man, “this guy is my old friend, Mark Somner, architect-historian extraordinaire.”
Mark walked around the side of the car to shake hands. He was a little older than the rest of them, perhaps in his late forties, the hair gray around his temples. He was black and enormously tall and broad, his hand so large it encircled Emily’s completely. He had a short beard and a stylish pair of thick-framed glasses.
“So very nice to meet you both,” he said, his voice low, quiet.
“Mark and I decided to head up together a few days early,” Jim explained. “I was already in New York, visiting my sister, and he’d already offered to drive us here. I was going to go to a concert this weekend but decided to sell my tickets instead. So here we are.”
“How do you two know each other?” Emily asked.
The men shared a glance, and Jim raised an eyebrow. “Friends of friends, I guess. My sister married an architect, and I think we met at a party. We’ve known each other for years. When Ruth asked if I had contacts with anyone in architecture, I knew Mark was the guy.”
“This house i
s incredible,” Mark said. He walked away from them a little and stood looking up at it. “It’s not at all like I expected. How is it inside?”
“Bright,” June said.
“Big,” Emily added, and everyone laughed.
Jim grinned. “Well, let’s go inside and get acquainted, and we can let the expert get his first look at the place. I detect a note of gin in the air, and I can’t say I’d mind a little tipple myself.”
“I think that can be arranged,” June said, grinning.
Emily’s heart sank. June seemed to be flirting with him after all. She swallowed her hurt, ashamed of herself, and made herself say, “She makes the best gin and tonic I’ve ever had.”
“With a name like Juniper, one would hope so!”
At this joke, June let out a long, pealing laugh, her head thrown back. Emily kicked herself for not making that joke earlier.
Jim seemed to take this laugh as due credit, his face bright and grinning as he watched June. He gestured dramatically at the door. “Shall we? Mark and I’ve been on the road all day.”
Emily started to follow them inside but paused, waiting for Mark, who was lagging behind. He’d walked some distance away and was standing in the center of the lawn, staring up at the house. Emily saw something strange in his expression, but he shook his head a moment later and walked toward her.
“It’s funny,” he said as they went inside.
“What?”
“I could have sworn I saw…” He shook his head again and met her eyes. “It’s only the four of us here so far, right?”
Emily’s heart leapt, and she stopped in the doorway to the sitting room. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason, really. I thought I saw someone. Up in the corner room on the second floor.”
“What’s this?” Jim asked. He held out a cocktail for each of them.
Mark took his and drank half of it at once—a small mouthful for a man his size, Emily supposed. “I’m sure it was nothing, but I thought I saw someone in the window upstairs. A woman.”
June and Jim glanced at each other and then back at Mark. Already, there seemed to be something between them. Emily’s stomach dropped with disappointment, and she looked away quickly and back at Mark. “I’ve seen her, too.”
All three of them were turned to her, and she swallowed before continuing. “The first day I was here. In the same window. That’s my room, actually.”
“You never said!” June said, seeming put out. “You said everything had been normal.”
Emily shrugged. “I didn’t know how to tell you. I didn’t want to sound—”
“Crazy?” Jim laughed and held up his free hand. “Sorry. But really, how could someone be here? How could she get in? Have you seen her again?”
“No. And I haven’t heard her, either. I only saw her that one time, the first time I saw the house from the lawn.”
Mark’s eyebrows were low, his face pinched with concern. He lifted his palms. “I’m not sure what I saw, really. It was brief—a glimpse of a woman’s face, or what I thought was a face. It could have been a trick of the light.”
June sighed and grabbed Emily’s hand. “Don’t listen to the skeptics, Emily.” She pulled her over to the sofa, and they sat down next to each other, their legs touching. June put a hand on her knee, and Emily jumped. “Tell us everything that’s happened. I knew you were hiding something earlier.”
The men had taken the two armchairs across from the little table in front of them, and Emily glanced around at them. Mark seemed interested, solemn even, but Jim’s face was a mask of incredulity. June’s expression was open and attentive, and Emily decided to look at her as she told her story.
“Well, first it was the face in the window. A younger woman—maybe in her twenties, early thirties. White, dark hair.” She glanced at Mark, and he nodded as if in agreement. She turned back to June. “Of course, the housekeeper said I must have imagined it, that no one could get inside without a key, but the thing is, the front door was unlocked.”
“What did the housekeeper say about that?” Mark asked.
“She claimed it was impossible. She locked the door when she left the day before.”
“She would say that,” June said, rolling her eyes. “What else happened?”
Emily hesitated. It was one thing to tell them about the face in the window—Mark had seen it, too. The rest of it, however, was a little harder to describe. She met June’s eyes, and June smiled at her, giving her courage to go on.
She swallowed. “Next it was the doors.”
“What happened with them?” Jim asked.
“They closed on their own.”
Jim laughed and leaned back in his chair. “I can think of a million explanations for that.”
“Which doors closed, Emily?” Mark asked, ignoring him.
“The ones to this room,” Emily said, pointing, “and the other double doors into the dining room. That’s why I have the umbrella stand there.”
Mark got to his feet and walked over to the door to the sitting room. The double doors swung inward from the middle. Mark leaned down and moved the umbrella stand, and all them sat there, silently watching. Nothing happened.
“Strange,” Mark said, swinging the door experimentally. “It’s weighted here on the edge, so it should stay open.”
“So the wind closed it,” Jim said, rolling his eyes. “Give me a break.”
Mark shook his head and then pulled the second of the double doors, leaving both open. “We’ll leave these like this for now. Then we can see what happens.”
“You’d have to do the same with the ones across the hall to make it a true experiment,” Jim said.
Mark gave him a level stare and then did as suggested before sitting down across from Emily and June again. Emily couldn’t help but stare at the doors for a moment, and when she glanced at June, she saw concern there—pity, almost—and realized this had been a mistake. She shouldn’t have said anything about the doors or the woman in the window. They were all going to think she’d lost her mind. She could give a damn what Jim thought of her, but she liked Mark instinctually. As for June…
“Go on, Emily. You’re holding back.” June gave her hand a quick squeeze, and Emily couldn’t help the rush of happy heat that flashed through her.
“Well, it was quiet after that.”
“What was quiet?” Jim asked. “The house?”
“Give it a rest, Jim.” Mark frowned. “Let Emily finish.”
Jim looked as if he might object, but he sighed and went back to his drink.
“It was quiet,” Emily said, “until this morning.”
“What happened this morning?” June asked.
What had happened? Emily wondered, and not for the first time. She had gotten into bed last night, closing the canopy around her. She’d made the mistake of skipping that step her first night and had been woken very early yesterday by the incredibly bright sunlight streaming into her room at six that morning. Last night, she’d been sure she shut it—certain of it. She remembered using her reading light before she turned it off, the one that clipped onto her book, and feeling like she was inside a cozy little tent in the woods. She’d gone to sleep, and then what? Had she gotten up in the middle of the night?
The others waited for her to continue, and Emily laughed nervously. “The canopy on my bed opened on its own.”
There was a long pause. Now even June looked skeptical. Once again, Emily kicked herself. They were going to think she was, in fact, insane.
“You can’t be serious,” Jim said.
Emily sighed. “You’ll see when you go into your own rooms. The curtains on the windows don’t block the light. All the beds have canopies—at least mine and June’s do, so I’m assuming yours will, too. Last night I made sure I closed the canopy. When I woke up this morning, all three sides of it were wide open.”
“You didn’t hear them open?” June asked.
Emily shook her head. “That was the worst part. T
hey’re pretty loud and heavy, and I’m a light sleeper. I should have heard something.”
The others shared a glance before looking at Emily again, as if waiting for an explanation. She held her hands up. “That’s it. That’s all that happened.”
“Christ,” Jim said, getting to his feet. Everyone jumped at his curse, but he didn’t apologize. He walked across the room to the little bar and poured himself another drink—straight gin. He turned back to them, smiling broadly. “You really had me going there for a minute, guys.” He laughed. “Damn! You’re a fast one, Emily. I leave you alone outside with Mark for what, two minutes? And the two of you come up with this? I’ll give you both credit—you’re good actors.”
June was looking back and forth between Mark and Emily, plainly confused, and Emily went hot with anger. She jumped up, hands clenched, and Mark touched her arm. She met his eyes, and he shook his head, almost imperceptibly. Her anger died. Perhaps he was right. Maybe letting Jim believe this was all a gag was better. After all, she had to work with him this summer.
Jim set his drink down on top of the record player and clapped. “So. Are you two ladies going to show me around this place, or do I have to do it on my own?”
June threw Emily one more probing glance and rose. “I’ll show you. It’s a big house, but not so big you’ll get lost. You’ll need your key if you want to get into your room.”
Jim turned to Mark. “What say you? Want to get our stuff in and poke around a little? Get the lay of the land and all that?”
“Sure.” Mark got to his feet. “Give us the grand tour. Let me grab my bags and the keys.”
Gnarled Hollow Page 4