Child of a Rainless Year

by Lindskold, Jane

  Domingo’s tone told me, as I knew he had intended it to, that he also liked Mikey Hart. I felt unaccountably relieved. It wasn’t like Domingo was the most normal fellow I had ever met, but he seemed a good judge of character.

  Mikey huffed slightly as he followed me up the stairs into the kitchen.

  “Domingo is a fascinating fellow,” he said. “I’d wondered about him for a long time.”

  “He’s done well by Phineas House,” I said.

  “Better, maybe, than either you or he know,” Mikey said cryptically, and something in his tone told me I’d be wasting my breath asking for clarification.

  Today I invited Mikey to sit with me in the library. For one thing, the family Bible with its odd version of a family tree was there. For another, the chairs were really very comfortable. I had gotten over my childish feeling that the room was “Mother’s office.” Now it was simply another room, one more useful than most.

  I offered Mikey a deep leather armchair, and seated myself in its mate. The desk remained untenanted, except by my memories of Colette. Mikey had carried in his own glass of tea, and now he set it on a sandstone coaster on the table beside him.

  “Last night,” he said, “I recounted a lot of history. Today, if you don’t mind, I’d like to start by explaining why you were placed with the Fenns, rather than left here.”

  “Sounds good,” I said. “I hope you’ll also explain something about the extraordinary conditions you placed on the Fenns. I know that Aunt May lived in fear you’d come and take me away.”

  “Not too much fear,” Mikey reminded me. “It wasn’t enough to stop her from being nosy.”

  “True,” I admitted, “but you have to admit, those were extraordinary conditions.”

  “Perhaps, perhaps not. We had two reasons for setting those conditions, Mira. Both were intended to protect you.”

  “Oh?”

  “You heard what I told you last night,” he said, and for the first time since I had met him he seemed impatient. “If the Fenns had investigated your past too closely they would have learned that your mother had done time in a mental hospital. That would certainly have prejudiced them against you. They might even have learned that your grandfather died under rather odd circumstances. Gossip about the less attractive aspects of the Bogatyr family history was at its height for a year or so after Colette’s disappearance, while the investigation was most active.”

  I made an apologetic gesture. “I understand. I really do. Before you explain your second reason, I wonder why it was so important for me to be adopted outside of the family. Until I got here, I thought that maybe I didn’t have any family left, but now it seems that I must have had family. If I may be blunt about it, you and the other two trustees were family, if somewhat distantly connected.”

  “I think you already know the answer,” Mikey said, “but if it helps, I’ll spell it out. If anyone did make Colette disappear—murdered her, kidnapped her, led her astray in some fashion—then the likelihood was fairly high that whoever did it was family.

  “Even your maternal line—your grandmother Chantal’s family—was suspect. Chantal resented not inheriting more of her husband’s estate. That resentment could have been passed down. Once Colette was out of the way, well, you were the only one left. Chantal’s family would have known that your father’s siblings were both dead. Nikolai had alienated himself from his cousins by his resentment of his own daughter, so it wasn’t like there were tremendous Pincas family reunions.

  “We had to be uniformly suspicious, even of each other. There’s a reason there have always been three trustees, you know. As Caesar and his buddies knew too well, in a triumvirate it’s harder to violate the basic contract. Anyhow, in the end, we decided that placing you with an unimpeachably neutral family was the best course of action.”

  “Thank you,” I said with what simple dignity I could manage. “Both for the explanation, and for doing so well by me. I’m beginning to understand better what you said last night about the time of Colette’s disappearance being one of turmoil. You didn’t just mean on whatever level of all that liminal stuff, you meant within the extended family as well.”

  Mikey nodded. “It was a bad time, everyone looking at everyone else sideways, people making snide hints, and trying to shift blame. The thing was, Colette vanished so completely. I know you did some looking into the police side of it. Matters weren’t much better from our end.”

  “I can see that,” I said. “Can you bear one more question interrupting your organized presentation?”

  Mikey grinned. “That’s the first time anyone has called me organized in a long while. Someday I’ll have to introduce you to my wife, just so you can tell her that. Go on.”

  “How did you know Aunt May was nosing around?”

  Mikey looked thoughtful. “Frankly, we paid a handful of people here in Las Vegas and in a few other places to let us know if certain circumstances occurred. One of these was a fellow in the post office who sorted the mail. He was asked to look out for letters going to the police, local paper, and a few other places postmarked from Ohio. He was our most useful source—and interested enough in a supplemental income to divert those letters to us.”

  “He missed a couple,” I said smugly. “Aunt May got clippings from the Optic. What if she had phoned?”

  “We’d paid a few people at the police and paper as well,” Mikey said. “Our interest was pure and above suspicion. We were your trustees after all, and had let a few people know in confidence that we feared that whatever had happened to Colette might happen to you as well.”

  “Simple,” I said. “So simple.”

  “Simpler then than it would be today,” he said, “what with machines sorting the mail, and Internet connections for research. We might never have gotten wind of Maybelle’s interest if she’d been able to read articles on line. If she’d contacted someone, though, we still might have managed to learn what she was doing. Humans remain the eternal weak point in any secure system.”

  “Good,” I said. “I’m actually glad in a way. I hated the idea of Aunt May’s letters merely being tossed in the circular file. Now, to backtrack, you said there were two reasons for setting those conditions on the Fenns—conditions that included asking them to change their name. One was that you were protecting my reputation.”

  “The other was we were protecting you personally—your continued physical existence,” Mikey said without the least trace of melodrama. His matter-of-factness on such an issue made my skin crawl. “As I mentioned before, we didn’t know who to trust. We decided to trust no one. We even did our best to remove from Phineas House anything of yours you did not take with you.”

  “That’s why the nursery was stripped!” I said.

  “That’s why,” he agreed. “I’ve told you that one of the uses liminal space can be put to is scrying. Scrying works better for some people if they hold something that belonged to the person they’re investigating. We did our best to move you into protective custody—on all levels. Again, if the Fenns had decided to ask questions or take you to Las Vegas to find your roots or something …”

  “That would have ended any protection you could have given me,” I said, finishing the thought for him. “But why did you trustees drop out of my life so completely? I mean, as time passed, so did the risk. Uncle Stan gave me information on my inheritance when I turned twenty-one. Why didn’t you?”

  Mikey raised his hands as if to physically stop the flow of words. “Those questions have very different answers. To answer the first, we didn’t drop out of your life. We regularly reviewed how you were doing, both with the Fenns, and by more objective means. We saw copies of all your report cards, your health records, even talked to your teachers or neighbors, when we could do so without arousing suspicion. Your Uncle Stan practically demanded we inspect your financial standing.

  “We didn’t stop with those annual reviews,” Mikey went on a trace smugly. “Edgar Carney made a point of making visits t
o see things you had done. Remember when you won first prize in that art show when you were in high school? Ed went to that. He went to school plays, to public recitations. We picked him because you were showing an interest in art, and he had one, too, enough that he could tell us you had real talent. He also told us that you were stepping on that talent, that you could have been a professional, but for some reason chose to teach instead. Do you mind telling me why?”

  I looked at Mikey, rubbing my hands against my brow as I remembered. “Edgar Carney himself was partly to blame. I saw him twice, both times looking rather intently at my art. One time was at that show you mentioned, now that I think about it. Nine isn’t so young that I hadn’t wondered about why I’d been taken from my home and placed with strangers. I’d even come up with something like the protective custody theory on my own—though I thought Colette was involved with criminals rather than …”

  “Sorcerers? Wizards? Practitioners of occult arts?”

  I nodded. “But seeing Mr. Carney wasn’t the main reason I ‘stepped on’ following a career in art. From the time I was small, I’ve always felt funny about my interest in art and color. I thought—knew—Colette wouldn’t like it. I guess Mr. Carney’s interest just gave me an excuse to follow my own inclinations to hide my art. I couldn’t leave it entirely, so I turned to teaching.”

  “Fascinating,” Mikey said. “Colette didn’t like you doing art?”

  “She didn’t know I did art of any kind,” I corrected. “I hid my interest from her. I sensed she’d disapprove.”

  “Let me think on that,” Mikey said. “That’s very interesting, very interesting indeed.”

  Mikey rubbed his hands across his pudgy face, the flesh moving under his hands like modeling clay, but falling back into its usual lines when he dropped his hands back into his lap.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Travelling takes a bit out of me these days. I’m not as young as I was.”

  “Who is?” I said. “Let me make coffee, and, as I promised, you can tell me what you intended, rather than answering my questions.”

  “Those questions haven’t been completely useless,” Mikey insisted, following me into the kitchen. “Some of your questions anticipated matters I had planned to bring up.”

  When I had ground the coffee beans, I shook them into the basket of the coffeemaker.

  “So, go on. Or are you done?”

  Mikey shook his head. “I’m not done. It’s just, the next item on my agenda isn’t merely a background report.”

  “Go on.”

  “We have discussed your desire to find Colette. I think that’s a valid and important issue—and one in which you may have more luck than anyone else.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. You are her daughter. No matter how you feel about her, that creates a tie. Also, while Phineas House may have resisted or blocked other attempts to trace Colette, it does not seem inclined to block you.”

  No. I thought. You actually think it’s encouraging me.

  “Colette was a very dominant personality, so much so that you may have forgotten you have another parent.”

  “I haven’t,” I said dryly, “though I think Colette did.”

  “I simply feel it is important to remind you that your father—whoever he is—should not be forgotten. I’m not saying you should try and trace him …”

  “Let me guess. It’s already been done. No luck.”

  Mikey grinned. “That’s right. However, we’ve no idea why Colette vanished when she did, but it is not impossible that your father had something to do with her disappearance.”

  “He kidnapped her, you mean?”

  “Or she fled him. Or, even she chose to go somewhere with him, rather than remaining here. The last seems unlikely. If Colette had known she was going away for an extended period of time, she would have taken things she valued.”

  “Like her jewelry or the kaleidoscope collection,” I said.

  “Actually, I was thinking of you,” Mikey replied gently. “Whatever her failings as a mother, Colette did value you.”

  I didn’t answer. Childishly, I wanted to deny the truth of this statement, but I couldn’t. The problem was, I couldn’t deny that I felt my value had been more in the line of an ornament or accessory, rather than as a person.

  Mikey went on. “So, what are you going to do?”

  I turned sharply from where I had been getting coffee cups out of the cabinet.

  “Do?”

  “Are you going to look for Colette? Go back to Ohio? Stay here in Las Vegas, and paint Phineas House into the paean to color you have denied yourself all your life?”

  That last hit me like a physical blow. I’d thought I was responding to the House. Had she been responding to me? I tried to remember when Domingo said he had undertaken his ambitious project. Was it before, or after, I had learned I owned Phineas House. Before, surely.

  But what if the House had sensed my impending return? It had been constructed to be a hub for liminal space. What was more liminal than time? Past, present, and future shift with every breath, every second, every heartbeat. Might Phineas House have sensed my coming as wild animals sense the shifting of the seasons?

  Might it … my heart froze in my chest at the thought … . Might it have done something to make me come? Uncle Stan was not young, so easy to create a ripple in probability and make an older man have an accident. The police had been so vague about the cause of the accident.

  “Mira?” Mikey said. “What’s wrong? You’ve gone all pale.”

  “I just had an unpleasant thought,” I said, setting the mug on the counter with incredible care. I feared to speak my thought aloud, but a perverse sense of defiance made me do it. “What would Phineas House do to get itself a human focus again? You’ve already said you thought it might push me to go after Colette. Would it do something to make me come here? Uncle Stan tried to get me to take over managing my estate when I turned twenty-one. I refused. It was, well, it was too much like putting Colette in her grave. I couldn’t do it.”

  “And Stan Fenn continued to administer the estate for you—including Phineas House.”

  “Which I didn’t even know I owned.”

  As he had once before, Mikey looked up at the ceiling, as if there he might see the House’s face.

  “Mira, I don’t know, but I don’t think the House is capable of doing such a thing. For one, you are among those it is meant to protect. Harming your parents would not be protecting you.”

  I poured the coffee with a hand I forced not to shake. “Unless the House is still protecting Colette, rather than me, and got tired of waiting. After all, I’m not young. I have no children. What would happen when I was gone?”

  “I’d wondered about why you’re not married,” Mikey said, almost diffidently. “You’re a very nice woman, very sweet, and not at all unattractive. Is there a reason you haven’t married?”

  I started to give him all the usual reasons—never the right man, bad luck, too busy—but what I said cut through all the deceptions, even those I’d made for myself.

  “I couldn’t, not without knowing more about myself. You protected me, Mikey, but you also robbed me of a past. There were things I just couldn’t bring myself to talk about, not to anyone … That made a barrier I’ve never gotten beyond.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mikey said. “It must have been very lonely.”

  Again, I couldn’t say the polite things. I remembered he had mentioned having a wife. Did he have children, too?

  “Yes,” I said, bluntly, coldly. “It has been very lonely.”

  Mikey looked uncomfortable, but had the wisdom to change the subject.

  “Mira, on this issue of what Phineas House did or didn’t do, may or may not be capable of, don’t make it worse for yourself. There is one way to resolve some of this uncertainty. Find Colette—or at least find what happened to her. Then you’ll know who the House serves. You’ll know if you have enemies. You’ll know things you can’t learn from
me for the simple reason that I don’t know them.”

  I set the coffee mugs on the table, and looked down at him.

  “Finding Colette has always been one of my goals. However, I don’t have the least idea how to go about it.”

  Mikey lightened and sweetened his coffee, the spoon clinking with metronomelike regularity against the sides of the cup.

  “There are,” he said, almost hesitantly, “the kaleidoscopes.”

  “The kaleidoscopes,” I repeated. “I figured out that they must have something to with scrying. That’s what I was trying to do when I found your note. Are you suggesting I scry for Colette?”

  “Something like that,” he said. “However, to be completely honest. I don’t know what you have access to.”

  “You mean, you don’t know about her collection?”