A Darker Shade

by Laura K. Curtis

No wonder she was upset. Such a dream would certainly have freaked me out. “That’s terrible. I can understand why you’d be angry, but stop and think for a second. Does that sound like something I would do?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Hailey, be honest.”

  “Okay, maybe it was a dream. But you stay out of my room.”

  “No problem. I promise, I won’t spy on you in your sleep.”

  On my way down the stairs, I wondered whether Hailey, who had been through her own share of loss, had ever seen a therapist. Dream interpretation was far from my forte—I’d had only a brief introduction to it in my psych classes—but I imagined a specialist would have interesting things to say about the image of the swaying woman.

  With the office door in front of me, I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, reorganizing my thoughts to focus on Liza instead of Hailey.

  Despite the sun shining outside, the ballroom was little brighter than it had been the night before. Heavy, emerald velvet drapes at each of the tall windows kept the space gloomy. On the far side of the room, a trio of long-necked chrome floor lamps, shockingly modern and out of place now that they were lit, illuminated Nathaniel’s desk. He did not look up even when I stepped into his spotlight.

  Cords trailed down from his ears, bright white against the tan of his skin. I reached out to touch his shoulder, then hesitated. I never touched my employers. My clients, old and young, absolutely. Physical contact was part of the job. But they were not the ones paying the bills. I clenched my fingers together for a moment, then waved a hand through his field of vision. He pulled the earbuds from his ears and glanced up at me.

  “Ah, Miss Allworth. What can I do for you?” He gestured to one of the web-backed office chairs and I seated myself.

  “I need to talk to you about yesterday’s trip to Portland.”

  “What happened?” His eyes narrowed and his voice roughened.

  “Nothing. Nothing like that, I mean. Nothing bad. I think Liza had a pretty good time, though it’s hard to tell because I haven’t spent enough time with her yet to read her moods.”

  “So then why this meeting?”

  “She wanted to buy this.” I drew the book from my bag and handed it to him.

  He scanned the cover, sharp lips curling into a scowl of distaste.

  “And you agreed?” Ice flaked from the words and prickled the skin of my cheeks. “Did I not make myself perfectly clear on this subject? I will not have you encouraging my daughter’s descent into superstition!” He yanked open a drawer, shoved the book inside, and slammed it shut. “If you cannot follow that simple rule, you can pack your bags and Henry will drive you to the bus this afternoon.”

  Cold sweat beaded along my hairline at the threat, but indignation heated my blood and tinged my words with acid though I tried to keep it out. “I did not say I was planning to encourage her. But in my opinion, pretending she doesn’t have these beliefs is a mistake. You can’t ignore them. You have to help her face them.”

  “And that New Age tripe, that’s how you plan to help her face her delusions?”

  “It’s not the method I’d have chosen, but since she picked it I’m willing to go along. I told her when I agreed to buy it that she couldn’t read it without me, that we’d do it together, and only if you allow it.”

  He leaned back the chair tilting beneath his weight as he bounced thoughtfully for a few seconds. “So you abdicated. ’Sure, honey, I’ll do what you want, but only if mean old dad says it’s okay?’”

  I flushed. I hadn’t considered that aspect of the conversation.

  “All right,” he said at last. He retrieved the book from its drawer and handed it to me. “But I’ll expect a report after every session.”

  “You could join us.” The words popped out of their own accord and as soon as I heard them I wished I could suck them back in. His disdain and disbelief would not help Liza.

  “No,” he said slowly and I had the uncomfortable feeling that he could read my reservations in my face. “I’ll leave that to you. At least for now.”

  When I left the office, I heard Hailey chattering in the dining room, with Matt’s deep voice providing counterpoint. I peeked inside and saw that Liza, too, was eating. Her eyes met mine then shifted to the bag on my shoulder. I tapped the bag and nodded. A little twitch of her lips showed me she understood.

  Before I could make my escape, Matt caught sight of me.

  “Molly! Come in! Did you get a chance to talk to Thane?”

  “I did.”

  “Great. Then you’re free. Since the sun’s out and it’s warm, or warm for Maine in October, we’ve been making plans to show you around the property. Right, girls?”

  Both girls nodded but Hailey’s petulant expression didn’t lighten. She hadn’t gotten over her dream yet. Fair enough, I hadn’t entirely gotten over my own.

  “I’d love to see the property. How big is it?”

  “Officially, about eight acres. But it’s backed by greenbelt so there are no neighbors to speak of.”

  “The isolation drove our last tutor crazy.” Hailey put in. “Stark, raving bonkers.”

  “Hailey—” Matt tried to interrupt.

  “She attacked Uncle Thane,” the girl continued. “Went after him with a knife.”

  I clamped my lips shut over the gasp trying to escape. The file Sandy had given me contained no such incident. Had he concealed it from her? Or had she left it out to make the job more attractive to me? After all, if the money was good for me, it was good for her, too. And supplying a caregiver for a difficult case would raise her profile. How many people were manipulating the situation at Rook’s Rest to their own ends?

  “Are you going to go nuts?” asked Hailey.

  “Hailey! For God’s sake!”

  I ignored Matt’s outburst. “I sincerely doubt it. I’m a pretty stable person. If I get lonely, I’ll write letters to my family.”

  Matt seized on the change of subject. “Do you have a big family?”

  “Big enough. My little sister is at college in Missouri. I need to write to her at least once a week anyway, or she worries, especially since the cell coverage here is so bad.”

  “What’s she studying?” asked Matt.

  “Pre-med.” A little swell of pride washed through me at the words. My job, this job, would make Ali’s dream come true.

  “You just have one sister?” asked Hailey.

  “She’s my only sibling. But my Aunt Nadya and my Uncle Bo live in Hartford and they’ll want to hear from me. And their children, Milosh and Walther. We’re very close.”

  “Russian?” asked Matt.

  “Romani. Eastern European descent, though that side of the family has been here for several generations.”

  Hailey straightened up in her seat. “You’re a Gypsy?”

  “Rom,” I corrected her. “Gypsy is fine when it’s used within the community, but it’s considered rude for outsiders to use it. It comes from ‘Egyptian’ and only the uneducated believe that the Rom came from Egypt. Plus, here in the U.S., when you feel you’ve been cheated, you say you’ve been ‘gypped,’ which isn’t a kind thing to say about a whole group of people. You can see why the Rom don’t like being called Gypsies.”

  She shrugged off my explanation. “Did Uncle Thane know that when he hired you?”

  “I can’t imagine why it should matter.” In fact, I had a good idea of why it mattered. Ali’s background was helping her pay for college. She’d won a scholarship for an essay she’d written on being Romani and the grandchild of a Holocaust survivor. Plus, checking the “other” box for ethnicity on her application put her into a different category. She hadn’t wanted to do it—we were, after all, Caucasian—but the way I saw it, that box was about whether you were a persecuted minority, and we absolutely were. After all, every positive has a negative, and I was always careful never to reveal my heritage to my elderly clients. No matter how liberal they appeared, sooner or later when they discover
ed my heritage, they accused me of stealing from them. I’d even been fired over it once.

  “Does my mom know?”

  “You’ll have to ask her.”

  Hailey looked at her uncle. “I think we should keep it a secret, don’t you, Uncle Matt?”

  Matt’s blue eyes clouded over. “Not a bad idea, Hails. You know your mom can be a bit rigid in her ideas.”

  Hailey nodded and my head pounded. Minutes earlier, I’d have sworn the girl wanted me gone. Now she seemed to be my ally. I shrugged off the discomfort as much as I could and suggested we all meet in the atrium in half an hour to go exploring.

  I returned the book to its hiding place, pulled my warm fleece sweatshirt from its drawer, and made sure the girls had made at least a token attempt at tidying the bathroom. They had not, which made me a few minutes late to meet them downstairs. Cleaning up was not on the curriculum advised by Hailey’s boarding school, but it was absolutely on my educational agenda.

  “Come on!” Hailey called as she saw me at the top of the stairs. “Let’s go!” Rocky danced impatiently at the end of his leash and Matt grinned. Liza kept her head bent, her hands in the pockets of her Barbour jacket. Whether she wanted to go outside or not was anyone’s guess.

  “Over that way is the pond,” Matt said as our little party rambled around the side of the house toward the expanse of the back yard. “This time of year, the ducks and geese are leaving because in November it freezes hard. It’s great for ice skating then, but not so good for the birds. In the summer, though, you can come down with a loaf of bread and the ducks will take pieces right out of your hand.”

  “You’ll like that, Rocky, won’t you?” Hailey said. The little dog, intently sniffing at a hole in the grass, paid her no mind.

  “In that direction, there’s an old structure and a covered over swimming pool. The kids aren’t allowed near it because it’s not safe.”

  “Why’d you have to tell her that?” Hailey grimaced.

  “Am I lying?”

  “No, but—”

  “No buts. That building was already shuttered when I was your age. It was just as tempting and just as forbidden for me as it is for you. And it’s twice as dangerous now as it was then.”

  Down an overgrown flagstone path littered with leaves and weeds I could see the outline of a little brick cottage. “Why hasn’t anyone torn it down if it’s been out of use for so long?”

  Matt glanced at Liza, who had wandered a few feet from us and was crouched down, poking at something on the ground. He lowered his voice. “Marianne loved swimming. Thane planned to renovate the whole pool section of the property for her. He got a new pool in—the old one was completely trashed, irreparable—and was in the process of bringing architects out to bid on turning the pool house into a guest cottage and studio as well when she…died.”

  A studio and guest cottage. Even though they already had the apartment over the garage. Perhaps it was meant to be a place for Marianne to live without entirely leaving her husband and child? Marital problems could explain both Liza’s emotional distress—children sensed such things no matter how hard their parents tried to hide them—and Nathaniel’s guilt.

  “Let’s show Molly the graveyard!”

  “Graveyard?”

  “It’s totally awesome.” Hailey was off, Rocky tripping along beside her, leaving the rest of us to follow.

  “It’s not as bad as it sounds,” Matt assured me. “It’s a small private cemetery. We used to dare each other to camp out in it overnight as kids. Even Linda, Thane’s mom, couldn’t remember anyone ever being buried there. The graves go back to the mid 19th century, but the most recent one with an actual date is 1937.”

  A low, wrought-iron fence enclosed the cluster of gravestones. Knee-high weeds and saplings choked away the grass and whatever flowers had once been planted there, but at least half of the stones remained upright. A thick canopy of old growth trees blocked the sun from much of the plot. Many of their leaves had fallen over the years, forming a thick, moldering carpet over the earth and weeds. A cold breath passed over my face and slipped beneath the neck of my sweatshirt. Goosebumps chased across my skin.

  “What are those?” I drew Matt’s attention to two lonely crosses, one of stone, one of iron, set outside the fence’s boundary. Liza had paused beside the stone cross and was running her fingers over its top.

  “They have no markings, or at least none we ever found as kids. I always assumed they were family members who for some reason or other couldn’t be buried in consecrated ground.”

  Eternity separate from their families. It was the cruelest thing I could imagine.

  Hailey walked through the small gate and brushed leaves from a stone cherub perched on a low granite platform. “This is my favorite,” she called. “Come see!”

  Before I could move, however, Rocky let out a yelp, broke free of Hailey’s hold, and darted out the open gate and into the woods. Was it my imagination, or were his eyes bulging more than usual? The hair along his back had gone up and although I took off after him as soon as I realized what had happened, I doubted he’d let me catch him. I had neither his speed nor his agility over the stony, uneven ground. What would happen if he escaped entirely? I cursed Matt under my breath as I ran. He’d brought the dog to two children with no experience in taking care of a pet.

  “Rocky!” Around me, I heard my own shout from the others like a perverse echo. Deeper, higher, fainter, sharper. “Rocky!”

  How would we find one small, mostly black dog in the massive, tangled, treacherous woods? And what would happen if we could not? Fear struck, cold and sharp—could either Liza or Hailey handle another loss just now?

  “Rocky!” Something skittered through the leaves nearby, but when I peered in that direction, nothing moved. “Come here, Rocky. I have cookies for you. Who’s a good boy? Who wants a treat? Come on, Rocky!”

  Minutes dragged, time crawling like one of the slugs I crushed underfoot as I forced my way deeper into the wild, but at last I heard Matt shout in triumph.

  “I have him!”

  I leaned against the vine-ribboned trunk of an ancient oak for a minute, the sweet weakness of relief leaving me lightheaded and faintly nauseous, before heading back the way I’d come. When I emerged into the light, the others were waiting. Matt held Rocky in his arms while both girls fussed over him.

  “I think this little guy has had enough adventure for one day,” Matt said when I reached them. “He seems fine, but we should probably go inside.”

  “I’ve certainly had enough excitement,” I agreed.

  “I know I shouldn’t have let go of him.” Hailey blinked away a tear. “But I didn’t expect him to pull so hard. I wonder what he was chasing.”

  Had Rocky been chasing something? Certainly, that made the most sense. But with the fur along his spine raised and his stubby tail flat to his rear, he’d appeared to be running for his life.

  Chapter 6

  The afternoon passed in a blur of video games, puzzles, and an illicit game of gin rummy played for pennies. Matt was a good companion and a far better match for Hailey’s skills than either Liza or I were. I would be sorry when it came time for him to leave.

  Hailey monopolized dinner with a dramatic recounting of Rocky’s escape and the ensuing search. Jenn tutted and shook her head, practically shaking her finger at her brother when the tale wound down.

  “Who knows what manner of parasite that dog could pick up running loose in the woods? Did you check him for ticks when he came in?”

  “He’s on a monthly preventative, Jenn. But I suppose I could check Hailey…” Matt grabbed his niece and knuckled her head while she shrieked in protest. Even Jennifer cracked a smile.

  “So I take it you didn’t see much of the property, then,” Prescott said. “It’s hardly at its best just now, but even so I am sure you’ll find it appealing.”

  I thought about the dilapidated pool house and what a harsh reminder it must be for him. With his r
esources, I might have sold the place off and moved out of the area altogether. But maybe he felt Liza needed the connection. My original imaginings of English country estates had long disappeared, but surely there was more to the land than that decaying structure and the grim little cemetery.

  “I’ll go out again tomorrow. I saw a mailbox at the bottom of the drive when I arrived and I have to write to my family. If I walk down there and stick them in, will the postman pick them up?”

  “He will. It’s about a half a mile down to the end of the private road, though.”

  “That’s fine. I like to walk.”

  “She did see the graveyard,” Hailey put in.

  Prescott choked out a laugh. “That place. Your uncle was terrified of it at your age, you know.”

  “Hey! No ruining my tough guy image!”

  Jennifer shook her head. “You were all impossible.” She rested a fine-boned hand on her brother’s larger one and leaned around him to speak to her daughter.

  “They’d take sleeping bags out there in the summer and spend the night. The next day, Danny and Thane would come back all shaky and frightened and refuse to tell me what happened. When I would finally pry the stories out of Matthew, they gave me nightmares.”

  “None of it was real,” Prescott broken in when Jennifer took a breath. “Danny and I would make scary noises and toss pebbles and stuff. We even rigged sheets and ropes and twigs in the trees. One of us would grab Matt and run away while the other would take it all down, then pretend to have been scared off, too. It didn’t occur to us that Matt would tell Jenn and she’d tell her parents. We got in more trouble for that than for anything else we ever did. I couldn’t sit down for a week.”

  “Only fair,” Matt said.

  “So it was all fake?” Hailey wrinkled her nose. “You never saw anything?”

  “Of course they didn’t,” Jennifer scoffed. “There’s nothing to see. Just some moldy old graves.”

  “We should get sleeping bags and stay out there! Wouldn’t that be cool, Liza?”