Meg saw the warning look her sister was firing across her bow. "Gee ... no, I'd better not. I have to get the dollhouse settled in."
Allie slipped her arm through Tom's and chirped, "See you all later, then."
Wyler extended his hand to Uncle Billy and said, "Nice to see you again, sir."
Uncle Billy, surprised no doubt that Allie was seeing someone with old-fashioned manners, said, "You betcha. And by the way," he said to his niece, "how'd that interview go in Boston?"
"They want me," Allie said with an elegant shrug of her off-shoulder top. "But it's too far away from ... where I want to be," she added, giving Wyler the kind of look that made men leap over tall buildings.
They left, with Allie carefully avoiding Meg's wide-eyed look of surprise, and Meg was left to control her rage as best she could. She'd brain Allie when she got back. She hadn't known that they wanted Allie. So Allie'd thumbed her nose at Boston. Boston! The best possible choice! Not too far for the family, not too close for Allie. They'd talked about Boston constantly during the last year. Boston was it, as far as Meg was concerned. Maybe a job as guest representative wasn't the moon and the stars. Maybe the pay was piddling. In fact, Allie had come back unenthusiastic. But to turn it down because of the location. Boston was perfect.
Boston was as far from Chicago as you could get.
****
"Well, it can't stay in the sitting room, that's for damn sure." Everett Atwells didn't know much about decorating, but he did know that normal knickknacks didn't run four by five by two-and-a-half feet.
"I know, Dad," Meg said, smiling at her father's consternation. The house could've been a horse, as far as he was concerned. "I've been cleaning out the back shed; it will fit in there."
"And a filthy mess you've made of yourself, girl," he said, surveying his smudgy offspring. "So, what're your plans? You gonna run an ad, or just bring in someone to auction it?"
"Dad! I'm not selling it!" Meg said, scandalized.
"Well, what the heck else can you do with it? Give tours?"
"I don't know. But it stays. At least for now."
"Okay, noodle." He leaned over and kissed the top of his daughter's head. "You know the situation best."
The situation. That would be their financial situation, of course. Precarious at best, terrifying at worst. This year was better than some but worse than most. It was interesting, the way her father assumed that the proceeds from any sale of the dollhouse would go into the general pot. In his mind it was one for all and all for one. But then, anyone who'd ever been there on Chicken Pie Night would know that.
She tapped the deck of cards sticking out from his shirt pocket. "How'd you do tonight?"
Instantly he reached behind for his wallet. "Ten bucks. Are you short?"
She laughed and shook her head and sent him on his way. It was late, eleven thirty, but Meg was too tired to shower, so she brewed herself a cup of tea and went out to the sitting room to just ... look, for a while, at her inheritance. Comfort had managed to recover the purloined pillar; Meg rolled it between her fingers, clucking softly over Coughdrop's teeth marks in it, and fitted it gently into place on the miniature veranda.
It was designed to slip in easily, a nice little feat of engineering. The whole thing was so beautifully, enchantingly constructed. Meg would've liked to turn on its lights, but apparently she needed a transformer, and that was arriving with the furnishings. Tomorrow. She felt as impatient as a new homeowner waiting for moving day.
She and Paul had never quite managed the down payment on a home of their own, of course. At one point they were almost there, and they had gone to Uncle Billy for the rest of the money. But he'd just shaken his head and said, "Don't like the house; don't like to lend."
Well, everyone knew Uncle Billy was tight as the bark to a tree. But Meg had embarrassed Paul by convincing him that they had a chance, and he never quite forgave her for it. She smiled, remembering Paul's fierce pride. How he'd hated working in Uncle Billy's hardware store. And yet she'd never have met him otherwise. When they moved to Trenton, she hoped Paul might be happy with his new job as a contractor, but the recession had nipped those hopes in the bud.
Finally, when he landed the job at the boatyard in Southwest Harbor, his life turned around. He loved working on boats, loved everything about them: their exactness, their beauty, the wonderful freedom they promised. "Better than the bike," he decided, which astonished her. The Harley- Davidson had been bought with down-payment money. It was a dumb thing to do, but he'd been so unhappy.
The ad to sell the Harley was still running, and Meg was still pregnant, the weekend Paul lost control of the bike on the Park Loop Road.
After that: no bike, no boat, no house, no baby, no Paul. Meg went numb, and then she went home, because — as Cornfort had so simply put it — "home is where they have to take you in." When she got there, she found Allie in a mess and Comfort overwhelmed with the job of caring for twins. Somehow the three of them managed to survive. Nowadays Meg, at least, was content. Maybe not joyful, but content.
And now, at last, she was a homeowner. The irony was that the dollhouse was probably worth as much as some starter home outside of town. She'd told her father that she wasn't going to sell the dollhouse, and she meant it. Maybe what she needed was a piece of Alice's mushroom, to shrink herself down to fit inside.
Meg stood up and stretched wearily, then circled the exquisite shingled structure, still holding her half-drunk cup of tea. The house wasn't the same without its interior lights lit, no doubt about it. It was like a jack-o'-lantern with no candle, a Christmas tree with the plug pulled out. And yet even now — she could feel it; it wasn't her imagination — the dollhouse had an undeniable presence. Something, somehow, was beckoning to her from within. Call it magic, call it soul; the house had it.
She just didn't know what to do about it.
****
The dollhouse was still in the sitting room and Meg was still in the back shed preparing the site when Allie came in to invite her sister to, of all things, a séance.
"Gee, I'm afraid you're too late," Meg said dryly. "I just signed up for AT&T's Reach Out program."
Allie picked up a broom and poked her sister in the behind with it. "I'm serious. Julia's having a séance at the Elm Tree Inn. Actually, they don't call it a séance; it's a 'darkroom session.' It turns out Julia Talmadge has a friend, some college pal from Wellesley, who channels. You know — who has one of those spirit guides helping her get in touch with the beyond? The friend lives in Philadelphia, and every Tuesday night she and a dozen friends get together to peek on the other side of the veil."
"Tarot must be too down-to-earth for them," Meg quipped good-naturedly.
"Meg! We're really lucky to be asked. Normally the group is closed to outsiders."
"What's this channeler person doing so far from Philadelphia?"
Allie held the dustpan while her sister swept a mound of dirt onto it and said, "Julia told me one of the group happened to visit Acadia last summer and got strong psychic vibrations in the park, especially near Thunder Hole. So the group's taken over most of the Elm Tree Inn through the weekend. And tonight they're going to test the spiritual waters around here."
"I see. Kind of a New Age group tour. Well, I hope a spirit or two obliges them," Meg said. "Maybe they should just stick to whale watching." She shook her head thoughtfully. "I wonder how they can afford this junket? I mean, it's definitely cheaper to go to church."
"Different strokes for different folks, Meg. Julia says three or four of them are wealthy widows looking for their husbands."
"Gee. Why settle for old when you can afford new?"
"Meg!"
"I know, I know," Meg said without contrition. "Sour grapes." She sighed and took another sweep with her broom into Allie's dustpan. "But some of these women make wealth look so ... natural. It's like magic money just falls from the sky on them."
Allie cocked her head up at her sister. "What about th
e dollhouse, Mrs. Hazard? Didn't that fall from the sky?"
Meg sucked in her breath and blushed to the neck of her dark blue T-shirt. "God, you're right. I keep forgetting I'm an heiress."
"Don't worry; no one around here will ever let you do that. So what about it? Wanna come?"
Meg wrinkled her nose. "I don't think so. I'm due to visit Orel Tremblay in an hour, and the taxpayers' committee is having a meeting this afternoon. So I won't be able to move in until tonight — move the furniture in, I mean," she said quickly.
"Okay, then. I'll drag Tom. He's never been to a séance."
"You're just looking for an excuse to hold hands," Meg teased, but there was a brittle edge in her own voice that surprised her.
"You laugh," Allie said with a woeful look, "but a séance is about what it will take. I've never seen anyone look so interested and do so little about it. I thought he was going to kiss me, that night we had the full moon. Everything seemed so right. And yet — nothing."
"I remember that night," Meg said quietly.
"He absolutely fascinates me, Meg. I've never met anyone else who's had the willpower to —"
"— resist you?"
"Yes, that. I feel like a piece of candy during Lent. I don't know what he's waiting for. He seems to've drawn some line for himself that he just won't cross. He wines me and dines me — well, he seltzers me and dines me — and seems up for anything I want to do. He laughs at my jokes. He tells plenty of his own. He'll stroke my cheek or caress my shoulder, but that's as far as it goes. Do you think maybe his wound's a little higher than he's told us?"
Meg laughed out loud. "Now, you have what I call a healthy ego," she said, hanging up the broom. "Did it ever occur to you that there might be other reasons for him not to be throwing himself on you?"
Allie emptied the dustpan into a waste basket. "He's not still in love with his ex-wife, if that's what you're thinking," she said quickly. "That I know. She's remarried and lives in California and he seems okay about it. He said she always wanted to live in the suburbs anyway, and they don't let you do that if you're a city cop."
"There are other possibilities, Allie. Maybe there's a girlfriend. Maybe you're too young. Maybe he doesn't like flings. Maybe he's gun-shy. Maybe you're too pretty. Maybe he's afraid to come near."
Of all the reasons that Meg rattled off, the last was the one that, wouldn't you know it, managed to sink in.
"Afraid? Of what? It's not like we're Mafia. Who would scare him off, anyway? Dad? Not in a million — you! Meg! How could you?" Allie cried, flinging the dustpan to the floor. It bounced with a jarring, metallic clang, a call to arms.
Meg sighed and bit her lip. All their lives they'd fought this battle of Meg-knows-best.
"Allie, listen to me; I did not scare him away," she said, taking her sister by her arm. But Allie yanked it free and turned away from her.
"Okay," said Meg. "Be that way. All I told him was ... all I said was ... oh, hell, I don't remember exactly. But basically it was to go slow because you were dear to us. Is that so awful?" She held her arms up in a gesture of frustration, then let them flop to her sides.
Allie ran her hands through her long black hair, apparently toying with the thought of tearing it out. She turned to her sister in a blaze of violet-eyed fury. "You don't get it, do you, Ms. Corleone! This is serious. Tom Wyler matters. No one else does. No one! And right now that includes —"
Allie bit off the finish, turned, and marched out of the shed, slamming the door on her sister.
Meg stood there, shocked. This was new, this fierceness. Meg and Allie had arm wrestled over many things in her life, from curfews to colleges. But Meg had never seen such hostility in her sister's eyes before. It sickened her to think that they were being driven apart by someone who didn't even exist for them two weeks ago.
This one is different, she remembered Allie's saying on the night he arrived. God, how could she have known so fast? How could anyone know? Obviously Tom Wyler wasn't rushing into anything. Whether it was because he wasn't interested — ha! — or whether it was because Meg had scared him off, he was definitely taking his time.
And that was fanning Allie's interest into a blaze the size of the Bar Harbor Fire.
****
When Meg finally got the call from Orel Tremblay's nurse that he was alert enough to see her, it was late in the afternoon. In ten minutes she was standing on his front steps, a pot of red geraniums in her arms, knocking gently on his door. The nurse let her in; immediately Meg knew that something had changed. She could see it in the sad smile on the nurse's face, hear it in her muted footfalls as she led Meg into the darkened room where the old man lay dying.
That he was dying, she had no doubt. He'd lost more weight: his cheeks were pale and sunken under the white straggle of beard that had been allowed, like his front lawn, to grow unchecked. His hospital gown hung loosely on his wasted body. It seemed hard to believe that his collarbone, so clearly outlined, would not pierce his skin. There was so little left to him. If she had wanted to, Meg could've counted every bone in his hand.
And his eyes: they seemed to see her, and yet they didn't. He was focused on something else now, something that he alone could see hovering at the foot of his bed.
"Mr. Tremblay," she said with infinite tenderness, "I've come to thank you. For your gift. I ... I know what it means to you. I understand."
He didn't turn to look at her, but only moved his head in a whisper of a nod.
"I believe your story, Mr. Tremblay. I won't stop until I prove it's true."
He closed his eyes; they stayed closed. She had a moment of sinking panic, until a tear slipped away from under his eyelid and trickled across his cheek, along his ear. And then he opened his eyes again, and turned his head to look at her, and tried to say something through another glaze of tears. But the words wouldn't come. He turned back to stare at whatever it was that Meg was still too alive to see.
She lifted a chair as if it were made of spun glass and placed it gingerly next to his bed. Then she took his bony, silken hand in both of hers, and held it until the sun went down, and a little beyond. Only once during that time did she speak. After the nurse looked in and took his pulse and left, Meg whispered to him, "It's safe with me. I promise."
She felt a pressure under her hand as if a tiny bird, a finch, perhaps, had fluttered its wings there. And when he died, she thought she heard the soft, quick flutter of that same bird pass close.
Chapter 8
Tom Wyler didn't have the faintest idea what to wear to a séance. Dark and formal? Light and casual? He settled on a tie and blazer, but then he took off the tie. And then the blazer.
If word got back to the precinct that he'd sat around a table holding hands with a bunch of flakes, he was dead meat for sure; the guys would never let him hear the end of it. Not that he had any great grudge against psychics. The Boston P.D. had used them in their hunt for the Strangler, and so had L.A., when they'd run out of leads in the Hillside case.
He thought of Meg Hazard and her burning need to know the truth about her grandmother. Too bad she'd decided not to come tonight. Granted, the séance route was a little serendipitous, but it was one way for Meg to get her answer: summon the lady and ask her herself.
He came out of his room wearing chinos and a polo shirt and whistling a half tune, only to find that everyone was already gathered in the grandly furnished parlor of the Elm Tree Inn. The Sunset Room, as Julia Talmadge liked to call it, had a different look now that its three bay windows were walled in by drapes; tonight it seemed more claustrophobic than cozy. The side buffet, normally covered with an array of wines and cheeses before dinner each evening, was covered instead with lighted candles, some in brass holders, some in silver, some in crystal.
A dozen candles burning, and not a bite to eat. Already he was disappointed.
He smelled a smoky something that at first he thought was pot, and wondered whether he was going to have to bust them all right then and ther
e. But it turned out to be some pungent herbal incense. Terrific, he thought. A bunch of Native American wannabes. It was going to be a long night.
Still, there was Allie, beautiful and somehow appropriate in a simple blouse of diaphanous white that she wore over a long black skirt. Her hair was pulled back in a twist, leaving a halo of ebony around the pale perfection of her face. She wore surprisingly red lipstick.
"Hey there," he murmured when she came up to him with an amusing, vampy smile. "How did I ever let you talk me into this?"
"Oh, we'll have fun," she whispered. "You'll see."
Wyler had no doubt that she was right. Everything Allegra Atwells chose to do had a fun quotient built into it. Her energy was as boundless as her imagination. It was incredibly flattering that she expected him to keep up with her on either front.
He was introduced to the company. Besides Allie and Julia, there were a dozen others scattered around the room. Their leader was named Zenobia and was the innkeeper Julia's age, about sixty. The rest of the group, mostly women, ranged in age from twenty to seventy. Everyone was relaxed and comfortable with one another; obviously they were old hands at this.
The oldest guests were in the softest seats. The middle-aged ones were standing or sitting in rush-seated chairs, while several of the limber ones had plopped down on the red Persian rug that dominated the room. Zenobia suggested that Allie pull out the bench from under the grand piano and sit there. Wyler was told to take up a position between her and a potted palm. He noticed that the others formed a vaguely circular pattern, and that he and Allie were positioned outside it. Well, whatever worked.
"I can't believe your sister is skipping such a quick and easy way to find out if you-know-who is guilty of you-know-what," he murmured in Allie's ear.
Allie didn't think much of his irreverence; a sharp elbow in his thigh made that clear to him. "Don't make fun; you remind me of Meg. Be more open to things, why don't you," she said in a scandalized mutter.
Okay, so he was acting like a high-school dufus. It was a defensive reaction, of course; he was embarrassed to be there. Chastened, he settled down and decided to give Zenobia — first name, last name, he hadn't a clue — his undivided attention.
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