“I mean it. I’m sorry. You were helping me, and I was being a shit.”
Emily finally met her eyes, and June smiled in response, her eyelids lowered. “I’m going to have to make it up to you,” she said, her voice low. She scooted a little closer on the couch, her face inches away. Emily caught the scent of almond and leaned nearer.
“And how are you going to make it up to me?” she whispered.
June smiled coyly. “I can think of a few things.”
Emily kissed her, and a moment later, June had her hands in Emily’s hair, pulling it roughly. She stopped kissing her with a hiss of pained pleasure, her body instantly hot and trembling. June kissed her throat and then nibbled it, making Emily’s blood sing in her veins, and she threw her head back for easier access.
“Oh, God, I’m so sorry,” a voice said.
They both flinched and jerked apart, and Emily saw a stranger standing in the doorway to the sitting room. He turned away, but June called out to him.
“No, wait! Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said, standing up. “We shouldn’t have—”
He turned back, holding up his hands, his face red. “No, please, don’t worry about it. I should have knocked.”
The three of them shared awkward glances, and then, as if on cue, they all burst out laughing.
“Christ, what an introduction,” June said, holding out her hand.
He came into the room and shook hers. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sorry to interrupt.”
June laughed again. “I’m Juniper Friend, but call me June.”
“I’m Christopher Wu—Chris.”
Emily stood up and shook his hand. “Emily Murray.”
His gaze traveled back and forth between them, and he squinted. “You’re the art historian, right, June?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re an English professor,” he said to Emily.
She hesitated. Technically, she wasn’t, but she said, “Right again.”
He seemed pleased to have remembered correctly. “Well, judging from the list I was given, I’m the only nonacademic attending this summer.”
“You’re a botanist?” Emily asked.
He shook his head and then shrugged. “Not really, but in a way. I studied history, botany, and gardening. Well, actually, I came by gardening through my parents. I should say I studied history and botany in school. I’m a landscape historian.”
“Very interesting,” Emily said.
He laughed. “You might be the only person I’ve ever met that responded that way.”
“Well, you’re going to be in a houseful of nerds, and we all have our hobby horses no one else knows a thing about.”
He smiled. “The celebrated ivory tower.” He clenched a fist in victory. “At last! I’ve made it!”
June threw her head back, laughing fully, and Emily saw Chris flush as he watched her. She wasn’t surprised—she knew herself that making June laugh was one of life’s most precious pleasures. And, despite the embarrassment of being caught together, at least he would know that June was already taken.
“Would you like a drink?” June asked.
He shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. I don’t drink very much. Not because I can’t—alcohol doesn’t sit well with me.”
“How about club soda? Water?”
“Sure—club soda. With lime, if you have it.”
As June fixed his drink, Emily watched him check out the room, obviously curious. He paused at the sight of her camera and equipment.
“I’m sorry,” he said, taking his drink. “You must have been working. I can go get unpacked if you want to get back to it.”
June threw Emily a quick glance, smiling. “No, it’s fine. We were taking a break.”
“Is that what you kids call it these days?” he asked.
June laughed again and swatted his arm. “You’re a riot. I’m glad one person out here has a sense of humor. The rest are sticks in the mud out here in the sticks.” She winked at Emily.
He raised his eyebrows. “That so? I’m looking forward to meeting Mark Somner. I’ve read quite a lot of his research. There’s a lot of crossover with what I do and architecture, actually.”
“How interesting. So tell me, what exactly does a landscape historian do?”
He grinned. “If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me that…no, that’s not really true. No one ever asks, because my job sounds deadly boring. But of course, I wouldn’t do anything else. To put it simply, I work with historical homes and estates, restoring old gardens. I’ve designed some gardens myself, but generally an historical estate will hire me to help restore or, in some cases, replant old gardens based on original designs.”
June and Chris sat down on the sofa together, and Emily was forced to sit in the armchair nearest June. Neither one of them seemed to even acknowledge her or attempt to include her in their conversation. It nettled her a little, but she was also used to this kind of treatment. It was easy to forget she was in the room.
“Where’s the most interesting place you’ve ever worked?”
He paused. “Well, I did a lot of training in Europe, actually, and now I work there for the most part. After college, I started with a few years at Versailles, one at Hampton Court Palace, and most recently at the Schönbrunn in Vienna. I actually still work there, technically, but I’ve taken a leave of absence to do a study here for a month.”
“Oh,” June said, frowning. “So you’re not here all summer?”
He smiled and shook his head. “No. But don’t worry—you’ll be sick of me by then.”
“I doubt it,” June said.
Emily had watched this exchange with growing concern. June had turned her body toward him on the sofa, her back to Emily, and Chris leaned toward her. Their arms—June’s left, his right—were almost touching. She had never been a jealous person, and she certainly knew that what was happening was completely innocent, but she also couldn’t help but feel a deep sense of misgiving. Chris was incredibly handsome—striking, in fact, more so even than Jim. He was trim and fit, with gorgeous cheekbones and thick black hair. Considering that he’d probably been in the car all day, he was dressed well, almost dapper in fact. With his self-deprecating humor and charm, he was also easy to like. He and June looked good together, natural, in a way.
Chris was talking about his plans for his study at Gnarled Hollow, and Emily focused back in as he finished. “So anyway, the gardens here are very small, but from what Mrs. Bigsby—Ruth, that is—told me, they’re in the original design from when they were planted, with many of the plants grown from parenting clippings and vines. It’ll be very interesting to see them and the old greenhouse. You don’t find many formal gardens in this part of the world, and I’m curious to see what they decided to plant and grow.”
He glanced at his watch and then stood up. “Anyway, I’ll let you two get back to work. I want to unpack and maybe take a swim later. It was a hot ride here with this weather.”
“Oh God, I’d love a swim, too. It’s sweltering in here.” June cocked her head. “That reminds me. How did you get here?” She gestured at the front window, and Emily saw what she meant—there was no car outside. “We, uh, might have greeted you more properly if we’d heard you coming.” June glanced at Emily, her cheeks reddening a little.
“I rode a bike in from town. I took it with me on the bus when I came up here from New York. Little did I know the house was ten miles out. I should have hired a cab.”
“I’m happy to go swimming with you, if you don’t mind,” June said.
“Not at all. I heard there was a steam room out there, too. I know it sound funny, but a steam on a hot day is really great.”
June and Emily shared a look. “You don’t want to go in there.”
“Oh? Why?”
Emily shook her head. “Believe me. You just don’t.”
“It’s…defective,” June said, meeting her eyes.
Chris’s face fell. “Oh, really? That’s a s
hame. Well, anyway, the pool will be nice. When can you go?”
“Half an hour?”
“That’s fine. I don’t have a lot with me, so that should be enough time to unpack a little and get dressed. You wanna come too, Emily?”
She shook her head before thinking better of it. “No. But you guys go ahead. I want to get back to work.”
“Oh, that’s right, the Lewis papers!” Chris said, hitting his forehead. “Ruth mentioned them. You’ll have to tell me all about them at dinner. Sorry I didn’t ask earlier.”
“’S okay.”
After getting directions to his room, Chris left the sitting room. June held back, watching him leave, then turned back to Emily. Her face crinkled in concern.
“Are you okay? You seem, I don’t know, upset or something.”
Emily shook her head. “No. I’m fine.”
“Are you sure? Are you embarrassed about what happened earlier? I mean, when he walked in on us?”
She managed a smile. “No—that’s fine. It’s funny, really.”
“Okay. But I don’t like leaving you here alone. I’d feel better if you came along, even if you don’t get in the water.” She paused. “Oh. Is that it? Are you afraid of going to the pool after what happened?”
That wasn’t it at all, but she leapt at the excuse. “Yeah. I know it’s stupid—”
June put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s not stupid at all. I’m sorry for even suggesting it. Do you want me to stay with you?”
She wanted that more than anything in the world right now, but she’d never admit it. For one, she didn’t want to seem needy, and for another, it would ruin June’s fun, and she wouldn’t have that.
“No, June, really. I don’t mind at all. I might lie down for a little before dinner, anyway. I’m really hot.”
“Yes, you are,” June said, grinning at her stupid joke. “Okay—I’ll leave you be. But if you reconsider, please come. I can’t imagine we’ll be gone that long, but if you get lonely, come anyway.”
“Okay.”
“Do you mind putting this stuff away for me?” June asked, waving at the photography equipment. “Just back in the cases. I’m going to leave it down here, for now, until I finish up on this floor, but I don’t want it all lying around, either.”
“I can do that,” Emily said.
June kissed the tip of her nose. “Thanks. You’re a peach.”
She watched June race upstairs and then turned back to the equipment, sighing. She didn’t mind helping. In fact, despite her fatigue, she would have gone on working all afternoon and evening, had they not been interrupted. She did mind feeling left out but knew she was being stupid. Both of them had invited her along, after all. So why didn’t she want to go?
She finished by the time June and Chris came back downstairs. Both of them could have been swimsuit models. June took her breath away. She was dressed, surprisingly, in a modest one-piece, but somehow on June it was far sexier than any bikini would have been. It was solid red and contrasted nicely with her skin and hair. June had said she liked to swim, so it might be some kind of racing suit. Emily made herself look away and saw Chris grinning at her, as if he’d read her mind. She blushed, embarrassed to be so transparent.
“Are you sure you want to stay?” June asked again.
“Really, it’s no problem to wait if you want to get your suit,” Chris said. He had washboard abs, and despite her own preferences, she had a hard time not staring at them as he talked.
“Or you can come and sit with us as we swim,” June offered, giving her a knowing stare. She thought, Emily remembered, that she didn’t want to go because she didn’t want to get in the water.
“No, really, you guys go ahead. I’m going to rest for a while.”
They finally let the subject drop, and Emily watched them walk side by side outside, first past the front windows and then around the side of the house. June’s face was lit up with laughter before Emily lost sight of her, and Emily had to fight a sickening sense of disappointment and dread after they disappeared.
June never laughed like that with her.
Chapter Eleven
Emily conjured up a thousand imaginary scenarios to explain why Chris and June were gone so long. Rather than nap, as she’d claimed, she spent the time pacing the ground floor of the house, looking at the paintings and out the windows. There were, strangely, no windows from this floor that revealed much beyond the nearest side of the gardens. The library’s windows were high and small, and the ones in the kitchen were slightly angled away from the gardens, so she was unable to watch for their return. Hours seemed to pass, but the clock consistently showed her that it had been only ten or fifteen minutes since she last checked the time.
“You’re being ridiculous,” she told herself. And she was, but she couldn’t help it. Her stomach kept dropping when she pictured the two of them together, swimming around and showing off their beautiful, athletic bodies to one another. She’d almost convinced herself to head out to the pool when she heard the telltale pop of the gravel road beneath tires. Mark and Jim had returned.
She went into the kitchen and watched Mark park his huge sedan next to the carriage house. Only June and Emily could fit their cars inside. Mark hadn’t been happy about this discovery and had bought a tarp in town to cover his vehicle. She watched him and Jim struggle with it, and when they started walking toward the house, she opened the back door and waved.
Mark waved back, grinning, and Emily saw that he was holding several long, heavy cardboard tubes under one arm and a thick, large leather book under the other. Jim was likewise burdened, holding three more leather books, and she walked out to help them.
“Jackpot!” Mark said, still grinning broadly.
“What is all this stuff?” She took the leather book from him.
“I’ll tell you when we get inside. Let’s go in the dining room, since that’s the only table big enough for the blueprints.”
“You found them?”
Jim laughed. “We discovered everything, and I mean everything.”
They set all their findings down on the far end of the dining table, away from where the four of them usually ate. Jim’s face was a little red with exertion, and he fanned it a few times with a hand.
“Man, do I miss air-conditioning. Who knew it would be so god-awful hot out here in the woods.”
Mark wiped his face with a handkerchief. “And it’s only early June. I can’t imagine what it’ll be like in a month.”
“So, tell me what you found,” she said. The large books were old, giving off the musty scent of decayed leather and paper.
“Let me show you the plans, first,” Mark said. He took off the plastic end of one of the cardboard tubes and shook out a wide roll of paper.
“I didn’t know they made plans like this back then,” she said as he unrolled it.
Mark and Jim pinned down the corners with two empty cups and two clean saucers.
“They didn’t,” Mark said, laughing. “Not like this, anyway. I found the original plans and scanned them. Then I blew them up and printed them so I could see them more clearly. The originals are in one of these books.”
She leaned down closer to examine them. The first one he’d unrolled was a very clear rendition of the front, back, and sides of the house. She noted slight differences—the windows seemed smaller in these plans, but the house was recognizable.
Mark was grinning at her. “Notice anything different?”
“The windows, for one,” she said. She looked back down at it, frowning. Something else was different, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. She shook her head. “I’m not sure what else.”
He smiled and held up a finger. “Wait a minute, and I’ll get my own sketches. Maybe then you’ll see it.”
He left the room and came back a few minutes later, holding a large drawing pad. He flipped through it and opened it to his rendition of the front of the house. She took it from him and looked back and forth betwee
n the plan on the table and his sketch. Again, she could see a difference, but she couldn’t pinpoint what it was.
“I can see and not see it,” she said, handing the drawing back to him.
“What about you, Jim?” Mark said, holding out the sketchbook for him.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Mark. Just tell us what it is.”
Mark laughed and turned the page in his pad before giving it back to her. This sketch consisted of a detail of the ground-floor windows at the front of the house, and underneath, she saw numbers. Ten windows stretched across the front of the house in his drawing, and when she counted, twelve were on the blueprint.
“Bizarre,” she said.
“It’s like that on all sides of the house,” Mark said, flipping to the next page.
Emily counted the ones in the blueprint, and he was right. In his drawings, every side of the house showed two fewer windows than in the plans. “Did the plans change later?”
Mark shook his head and took the sketchbook from her. “No, and that’s the strangest thing about it. If they decided to make the house smaller, it would be in their interests to submit the correct plans. Tax payments were based on the size of the house, and these plans,” he tapped the one on the table, “show a much larger house. Two more windows don’t seem like a big deal, but it would actually mean much more space on every floor.”
“That is weird,” she said. “Why would they do that?”
Mark shrugged. “It’s a complete mystery. Jim and I also found the builder’s notes here, which is pretty rare, so maybe I’ll discover why things changed when they built it, but it’s definitely odd.” He grinned. “But that’s not the only evidence that the house is different from the plans.”
He picked up a second cardboard tube, shook out a second blueprint, and he and Jim rolled it over the top of the front plan and weighted it down. This was the plan for inside on the second floor, where the bedrooms were now. This time, Emily saw the difference immediately. She looked up from the plans into Mark’s grinning face.
“What the hell?” she asked.
“Right?”
Jim bent down to examine it and then frowned. “The rooms are completely different.”
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