A Darker Shade

by Laura K. Curtis

  “Dunno,” Henry said. “Suppose it’s from the crows. There’s always been crows at the Rest.”

  We slammed into a pothole and I was thrown back into my seat. So much for conversation.

  The road wound deeper into the country and the woods closed in around us, the birches with their white trunks like ghostly sentinels among the evergreens and fiery-colored deciduous trees slowly dropping their leaves. A child of concrete and glass, I had never lived outside of a city. In my experience, nature was carefully bottled up in parks and zoos, constrained by walls, gates, and cages. Here it edged so close to the tarmac that it seemed ready to break through, as if at any moment we might take a blind curve and find the road buckled by the gnarled roots of giant trees.

  I shivered as Henry turned off the road onto a private drive. As we broke from the trees, a single bird of prey circled overhead. Henry had spoken of crows, but this was a hawk, or even an eagle, its wingspan as large as my arms, and as I watched it swooped, a dark and deadly shadow, on some hapless prey. But then the car bumped to a stop and my attention was pulled to the house.

  No English country manor this. The house rose up from the ground in a swift, vertical shear. An abundance of peeling gingerbread decorated narrow windows, and separate mansard roofs over a taller tower and two stepped-back bits made it look as if it were tilting forward, hunching over. A slightly sagging porch ran along the front and right sides of the house, and a wing stuck out perpendicular to the left side, held up by hefty columns. Before it, a brick patio was set with cast iron furniture. A wide window took up two-thirds of the wing. Movement flickered briefly behind the glass and I started. But the moment passed and the front door opened and a black-clad woman stepped out, drawing my attention.

  Here we go. For a moment, fear knifed through me and I wanted to run. But this was the job of a lifetime. The job that would return both me and Ali to the paths we had been on before cancer stole our mother and slashed our dreams. Whatever might happen, I would succeed; I had no other option. I pushed open the car door and climbed out.

  “You’re Maloney Allworth?” the woman asked. Her steel-gray hair was knotted behind her head with a few wisps fluttering out to soften her round, lined face. But no such softening showed in her cool, assessing eyes.

  “Molly, please. No one calls me Maloney.” I held out a hand and she took it, her grip firm and steady.

  “I’m Mrs. Vogel, the housekeeper.” She focused over my shoulder. “Bring her things in, Henry.”

  He hefted my duffel out of the back of the Volvo.

  “That’s all you brought?” Mrs. Vogel frowned.

  It was everything I owned. “I don’t need much.”

  Mrs. Vogel sniffed as if to say you don’t fool me, girl. “Come along, then.”

  The atrium had the same run down elegance as the outside. The center hall extended up all three stories, with narrow, precipitous staircases and balconies on each level looking down over the parquet floor. The rails and balusters were worn but gleamed with the shine of real wax. Dark wood panels extended midway up the walls, with slightly stained, butter yellow wallpaper above the chair rail.

  Paintings hung everywhere. Pastoral landscapes, beautiful but eerie, with indeterminable light sources. In each, the earth cracked open—sometimes in a corner, sometimes at the center—spilling unnatural hues of electric blue, neon orange, blood red.

  “Mrs. Marianne painted those,” explained Mrs. Vogel.

  “I’ve never seen anything like them.” It was the most diplomatic answer I could come up with. In truth, the paintings gave me the creeps. The whole house did. There was no denying that the place had a certain faded glory, but for a child who saw ghosts, it must be a nightmare. Even I could feel the presence of generations. Nathaniel Prescott should have taken an apartment in town, a clean, new one, without the history this one had. But of course, he wouldn’t see it that way.

  “Liza’s upstairs,” Mrs. Vogel said. “Mr. Prescott will be home shortly. He had to run to Boston last night for a meeting.”

  “And the others?”

  “Mrs. Jennifer and Hailey are in town shopping.”

  The front door burst open and a man strode in. He stopped in the middle of the hallway, his black eyes scraping over me in a single encompassing glance.

  Nathaniel Prescott was as angular and forbidding as his house. Dark hair swept back from a tall forehead in a sharp widow’s peak and bony shoulders poked through his heavy wool coat. I knew from the packet that he was only thirty-five years old, but already fine lines fanned out beside hollowed eyes and fine silver threads shot through his dark hair and shone even in the dim light of the foyer.

  “My God,” he said. “You’ll never do. I’ll have Henry pick you up.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Those eyes pinned me. “I am sending you back.” Each word was punctuated with a period, as if he were speaking to an idiot and I repressed a snarl. Never show emotion, never let them see your spine. That was my Aunt Nadya, who’d taught me how to get on in the world when I shifted from conqueror to conquered. “I don’t see how I could have made myself clearer to your boss, but apparently she didn’t take me seriously.”

  “We have a contract.” I squared my shoulders and kept my tone calm despite the pit of panic that had opened beneath my stomach. “It’s not my fault you don’t like the look of me. You approved my qualifications and agreed to employ me. You signed the contract.”

  He could break it. I wasn’t so naive as to believe a man with his kind of money couldn’t get out of anything he wanted. But damned if I’d let him do so without at least giving me a chance.

  Sharp lips thinned into a straight line. “And when you decide to run? Do I hold you to your end of that contract?”

  My end. The end that said I would pay Sandy’s fees out of my own pocket.

  “I won’t run.” But I wanted to. Already. And the job had not even begun. I was accustomed to dismissive employers, snobby ones, desperate ones…working in care, I’d seen all kinds of families. Some were grateful for the help, but many resented having to ask for it and took their frustrations out on the very people they’d hired to ease their burden. I understood Prescott’s reaction but not my own sick feeling that the house stank of psychological rot. There was a festering here, hidden behind the wallpaper and beneath the carpet. My mother would have felt it. Aunt Nadya, on the other hand, would tell me to buck up, that it was nothing a bit of bleach couldn’t take care of. She’d never had any patience with her sister-in-law’s superstitions, and had done her best to stomp them out entirely once we moved north to live near her.

  A squeak above from above drew my attention to the second floor. A child sat on the top step, watching us through owl’s eyes. Dark hair hung in long, untamed ropes around her face and she was perched to run. I remembered Ali at that age, her hair in braids that fell below her shoulder blades, her bright eyes curious, and my heart thumped. If I abandoned this child, I would be abandoning my own sister; my salary kept us together as my mother wanted, as we wanted.

  I glanced at Prescott to see him staring up at his daughter as if he could, by sheer force of will, compel her to meet his gaze. But her eyes, as dark as her father’s, remained fixed on me. Her lips parted and all of us in that hallway held our breaths. Would she speak? Her eyes slid to the side as if someone had called her, and she rose and darted away into the shadows.

  “My daughter,” said Prescott. “Your charge, should you stay.”

  I swallowed. “I’m staying.”

  Chapter 2

  “We don’t use the third floor at all,” Mrs. Vogel explained as she led me up the creaking stairs. “All the bedrooms are on the second. The master is down the end behind us.”

  Despite the size of the house, the hallways were narrow, and were I inclined to claustrophobia, I would have had a panic attack just standing there. Heavy paneled doors lined both walls, and the hall turned off to the right at the end

  “That’s the acces
s to the new wing,” Mrs. Vogel explained. “Where the playroom is. You can see it when you’re standing outside the house. The one with the big window.” Where Liza had watched my arrival. “That’s where you’ll have your study time. Your room and Liza’s are on this side, with a connecting door. Hailey’s is down the end, with a connection to her mother. Bathroom is across the hall from you, next to Mrs. Jennifer. You’ll share it with the girls.”

  I tried to imagine why anyone would have built a house with so many attached bedrooms, but despite my love of literature I hadn’t read much about architecture. Perhaps one had been a nursery? Plenty of books discussed those, but only younger children needed nurseries. Didn’t Liza resent having a series of strangers only a door away? And how did Hailey feel about having a room that connected to her mother’s? In fact, why had her mother decided that living in the middle of nowhere was a good idea for her teenaged daughter? Until I’d seen the place, I hadn’t appreciated the warning Sandy was trying to give me. How would a fourteen-year-old find friends in a place like this? My stomach twisted. I had been so caught up with Liza’s situation I hadn’t properly considered Hailey’s.

  “Has Hailey always been home-schooled?” I asked.

  “Oh, no. They were living in Boston when Mr. Daniel died. But the tragedy was very hard on the poor child, so they moved up here with Mr. Nathaniel. She’ll go back to school next year once she and her mother find their feet again. This is just for one year.” She opened a door to let me into the bedroom. “You can set your bag down and I’ll take you to Liza.”

  I had a mere moment to admire the elegance of the room that was to be mine. I could take in only the heavy, canopied bed that dominated the space, standing on a giant tapestry-style area rug beneath it before Mrs. Vogel urged me down the hall and into the new wing. Thick, tweedy carpet covered the playroom floor, a concession to the needs of active children, I imagined, as I had not seen it anywhere else in the house. A low bookcase ran beneath the wide window, forming a bench, its single shelf stuffed with books shoved in every which way. Shadows clung to both ends of the bench where it ended beneath steep eaves. From one, a cluster of dolls stared at me, sizes ranging from about six inches to nearly three feet tall. I’d never been a fan of dolls, and an uncomfortable shudder ran over me at the sight of all those blank, unblinking eyes.

  Opposite the dolls, scrunched into the far corner of the bench, hiding beneath the eave, deep in shadow, sat Liza.

  “Come say hello to Miss Molly,” Mrs. Vogel said.

  The girl blinked a couple of times, then unfolded herself and came forward. She held out a hand and I took it, feeling her long, bony fingers cold against my skin.

  “I’ll be downstairs if you need me,” said Mrs. Vogel. “Dinner’s at seven and everyone’s expected to be prompt. Mrs. Jennifer and Hailey will be back before then, though, so you’ll have a chance to meet them.” Her duties discharged, she made her escape.

  I took a deep breath. The room smelled of all the raw wood in the exposed beams and unfinished shelving, overlaid with a fair amount of dust. If we were going to be spending our days here, I’d be scrubbing it down it myself.

  “Well,” I said to Liza, “I guess it’s just you and me. I understand you may not feel like talking to me yet, but I hope you don’t mind if I talk to you. Before this, I lived with my little sister, my aunt and uncle, and two cousins, so I’m not used to the quiet.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “It’s dusty in here, don’t you think? My aunt and uncle clean houses and before she died, my mom helped them out. I’ve been cleaning houses all my life, it seems like, so I’m a little picky. Do you think you could help me try to put this room in order? You don’t think Mrs. Vogel will be upset if we clean in here, do you? She won’t think we’re criticizing her housekeeping skills?”

  Liza didn’t answer, but I’d seen a spark behind the dark, watchful stare when I mentioned my mother. Let her chew on it for a while. Maybe she would ask me an actual question at some point.

  “I’m supposed to be doing a bit of cooking, too, according to my contract, but I’ll tell you a secret.” I looked her up and down. “Yes, you look as if you could keep a secret. So here it is: I don’t know how to cook. My sister and I ate a lot of really basic food. Mac and cheese out of a box, rice and beans, stews and soups. I don’t think that would make your dad happy. So I am going to have to go to town and buy a couple of cookbooks. Unless there are cookbooks here? Do you know?”

  She squinted, then very slowly shook her head.

  “You don’t know, or there aren’t any?”

  She shook her head again. I wasn’t going to get a word out of her so easily, but the head shaking was more than I’d expected. When Sandy had said “uncommunicative,” I’d pictured a child who actively refused any overture, not simply one who did not speak. I could work with nods.

  “Okay. We’ll have to go shopping, then. I hope you’ll come with me so we can pick at least one that has recipes that appeal to you.”

  Liza shifted on her feet, eyes making that same sideways slip I’d noticed earlier, then darted over to the window to peer outside. I followed.

  A shiny Range Rover was pulling up in front of the house. How had Liza heard it when I’d noticed nothing at all? She put her hand on the window, laying it flat against the glass. A blonde girl exploded from the passenger side door, her hands full of shopping bags. The driver followed more slowly, also blonde. She reached into the back of the vehicle and withdrew a cane and a single bag before following her daughter—for, surely, these were Jennifer and Hailey Prescott—into the house. A moment later, Mrs. Vogel came out, started up the SUV and drove it out of sight.

  Footsteps thundered up the stairs and down the hall and Hailey Prescott burst into the playroom. Blonde curls bounced around glowing cheeks and a bright purple tunic covered striped leggings. She was as different from her cousin as two children could be.

  “Ohmigod,” she said, “Liza, you totally missed out. I got the cutest outfits! And I got us a PlayStation game.

  “Hi! I’m Hailey!”

  It took a second for me to realize she was addressing me.

  “Hi, Hailey. I’m Molly.”

  She looked me over and I had the distinct impression she found me lacking. But someone had schooled her to politeness. “It’s nice to meet you. You’re going to be my tutor?”

  “I am.”

  “There’s a packet.” She rolled blue eyes so high they almost disappeared and I had to smother a laugh.

  “I know. I’ve gotten them before.” The packets were from home school authorities. They listed textbooks, lesson plans, resources. This would be my first actual homeschooling charge, but I’d taken on areas of instruction with younger children when I cared for them.

  “My mom has it. I think she’s afraid I’d rip it up if she didn’t keep it in her room.” Again the rolled eyes, this time accompanied by a deep sigh.

  “I’m sure she just wants to have a chance to go over it with me before you get started on it.” I glanced over to Liza. “We’ll have to come up with lessons for you, too.”

  “Oh, she has them,” said Hailey. “She’s way better at studying than I am. Aren’t you, Liza? Just ’cause she doesn’t talk, doesn’t mean she’s stupid.”

  Was that a tightening at the corners of Liza’s eyes? Had I heard an undercurrent of resentment beneath Hailey’s supportive comment? Or was I letting my imagination run away with me?

  “Actually,” I said, “I’m well aware that it doesn’t. We’ve already had a lovely conversation about cookbooks, haven’t we Liza?” I invited her to share the humor and imagined her lips lifted slightly at the corners when she inclined her head a fraction. “I only meant that I hadn’t seen a packet for her yet, either, and surely your mom isn’t afraid you’d rip hers up.”

  “Nah. But Liza doesn’t need a packet. She’s ahead for her age, so she does my packet with me.”

  “Well, that does make things simpler, doesn’t it?”

/>   An uneven squeak-and-thump walk announced Jennifer Prescott’s arrival. She shared all her daughter’s features, from the snub nose and wide blue eyes to the long neck and narrow shoulders. Jennifer, however, had a decidedly more subdued sense of fashion. A creamy sweater topped a gray pencil skirt. Where Hailey jumped about in bright purple high-tops with green laces, her mother wore low-heeled pumps. They presented an odd picture with her cane, but I could not imagine the woman in flats. Odds were, she’d been the stiletto type before the accident and this was as much of a concession as she was willing to make to her injury.

  “You must be Molly.” She switched her cane to her left hand so she could take my right in a no-nonsense grip. “I’m Jennifer Prescott.”

  Her visual assessment was more circumspect, but no less thorough than her daughter’s.

  “It’s nice to meet you.” I gave her my best smile.

  “Thane says you plan to stay.”

  Thane? It took a minute for me to connect the name with Nathaniel Prescott. “Yes, I do.” I remembered Prescott’s comment about running and looked her dead in the eye. “I realize I don’t look terribly hardy, Mrs. Prescott, but I am.”

  “Oh, please. Call me Jennifer. And I know better than to judge a book by its cover.” She shifted her gaze to the girls. “Liza, honey, I bought you a sweater. There’s already a nip in the air and I think it will look marvelous on you. Come here and let me hold it up to see whether it will fit.”

  In that maddeningly slow way that even after only a brief time in the house I understood to be an expression of displeasure, Liza obeyed. Stiffly, she stood before her aunt while Jennifer held up a blue and gray Fair Isle sweater. The colors were lovely, but the style suited Jennifer or Hailey better than Liza.

  “Perfect,” Jennifer said. “I’ll just tuck it into your sweater drawer.” She folded the sweater and put it back into the shopping bag. “You’re welcome, Liza.”