Amber House (29 page)

“What a sweetheart you are!” she exclaimed. I smiled and kept sweeping.

“Well, thanks again,” I said when we were done, and headed for the kitchen, bags in hand.

“See you tomorrow.”

Really?
She was going to do more to me? “Okay. See you tomorrow.”

With the two bags of trash safely disposed of, I had a chance, finally, to satisfy my curiosity. I ducked into a downstairs bathroom and pulled out the note.

I didn’t get it at first. Why had this upset my mom so much? Then I put it together. Mom had told me her dad died when she was twelve. But the card was dated 1982. And she’d been born in ’68.

I looked at the clipping then. It contained a photo of a smiling, pleasant-looking man. I recognized him as the man I had seen in the downstairs hall the night my parents had been arguing. The clipping’s headline read,
CMDR. MARK MCGUINNESS SUCCUMBS TO CANCER
. His date of death: December 21, 1989.

I put the clipping and card back in the envelope and tucked it inside the waistband of my jeans, under my shirt. I thought to myself, as I climbed the stairs to the flowered room, that it wasn’t just the past that Amber House was filled with. It was broken pieces of people’s lives, all still sharp on the edges. And when you brushed up against them, they cut.

I was dancing, dancing with Edward, his hands sliding over the thin silk of my dress. All around us were shadows, but we were in a pool of light. His mouth was at my ear: “Happy birthday, Fee.” And I thought, confused, that it should be Richard holding me, but then I remembered this was Edward. It was my birthday. I had turned twenty-one. All grown up. Mama and Papa couldn’t tell me what to do anymore.

A sharp, repetitive beeping invaded my dream. Groggy and pained, I reached for my alarm and realized slowly that the noise was coming through my half-open window. It was the sound of a truck backing up.

Before I could sort it out, the door was thrown open and Sammy hurled himself on my bed.

“Happy birthday, happy birthday, today you were borned,” he sung cheerily as he danced and bounced, his little feet carefully sidestepping my legs under the covers.

“Oh,
God
, no,” I moaned, my voice hoarse.

“Get up, get up. There’s trucks and flowers and people in orange vests. Come on.” He jumped to the floor and began to tug vigorously on my arm.

“I’m coming, I’m coming.”

He bolted from the room. Sam-my-man. Always bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at the crack of dawn. I hated that about him.

I mulled the possibility of stealing a cup of coffee from my mother as I stumbled down the stairs, and had actually reached the bottom before I realized that the hall was full of men in
reflective vests drinking juice and coffee from a tray on the side table.

“Morning,” one said.

I froze. I was wearing sweatpants, a dirty camp T-shirt, and
no bra
. Without a word, I scurried down the hall to the cover of the kitchen. Which was filled with strangers rifling through the drawers and cupboards.

Giving up on the coffee and toast, I folded my arms across my chest and slipped back up the stairs as inconspicuously as I could. Safe back in my room, I changed into jeans, tank top, and
bra
, and wound my mess of hair into a loose braid. I threw on some eyeliner for good measure. Then I set out to find Sammy.

He was in the front field, sitting on top of a pile of gray wood posts. What was left of the pasture fence, evidently. He pointed to a yellow-orange forklift.

“Look. That truck picks up these pieces.” He jumped down from his perch and proceeded to enact it for me. “The two pokers slide un’erneath and then it lifts all the pieces onto the flat truck, and the flat truck takes it to the barn, and so when the people come they can put their cars someplace.”

“What a lot of work.”

“It was a good old fence,” he said sadly. “It’s broken now.”

“We can fix it,” I reassured him. “What else is there to see around here?”

“This way.” He grabbed my hand, tugging. “Come on.”

“Not so fast, bud,” I said, dragging my feet. “It’s too dang hot for running.” The warm weather my mother had ordered especially for my party had come with a dose of humidity that was making my light clothes stick to my body.

Sam, unrelenting, towed me to the front of the house, where three white vans were parked in the gravel drive. My nose registered the faint but growing aroma of cooking meat.

“All the food’s in those trucks, Sarah,” he said.

“Three of them?”

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s a
lot
of food.”

“Uh-huh. There’s more. Let’s go.” He spun one hundred and eighty degrees and took off toward the rear of the house.

A swarm of laborers were laying the framework for dance floor and stage. More workers were setting up small circular tables, spreading them with dark blue tablecloths that shimmered, cerulean to black, from varying angles. The florist’s people started setting out centerpieces — bright oranges, indigos, magentas, lime greens, tucked into hollowed pumpkin “vases.” Lighting guys were hanging clusters of glazed-glass orbs from the gnarled limbs of the oaks.

Sammy was practically bouncing up and down from all the stimulation. “It’s just so GREAT,” he shouted, shaking his little arms in the air. “What a great party! You have to tell me after, okay?”

“You’re coming, aren’t you?” I said.

“Nope. Mommy told me I have a sitter.”

“What?” I mean, I understood that he was five years old and a little unpredictable. But when was he ever going to get a chance to see another party like this? If he wanted to come —

I crouched down. “Listen to me. You want to come, you can. It’s my party. Do you want to?”

“I just want to see you blow out all those candles.”

“‘All those candles’?” I stood up and put my hands on my hips, doing indignation. “You yanking my chain? I’m not
that
old.”

He laughed, threw his arms about my waist, and hugged hard. “You’re still good.”

“Well, okay, then. I guess you’re in for the cake and candles.”

“All
riiight
,” he said, jumping a little and pumping his fist in the air.

We went back inside to see if we could find a place that was out of the way. We were being overly optimistic.

In the west wing, workers were moving an enormous amount of furniture. Using some of the comfortable chairs and tables from the sunroom and billiards room, they were refurnishing the north side of the wing — office, bath, and studio — to turn it into a dressing room and lounge for Ataxia.

More workers were setting up a casino in the two rooms on the river side of the wing. The pool table had been transformed into a craps table. It was flanked by a roulette wheel. The sunroom’s remaining furnishings had been pushed to the walls to make room for blackjack, poker, and baccarat stations. One wall held a row of slot machines. My party was doing double-duty as a fundraiser for cancer research — the theory being, I guessed, that if you gathered that many rich people in one place, you should soak them for
some
cash in the name of a worthy cause.

They were setting up a bar in the library, in addition to the one on the back patio. The dining room was prepped for the food that would be spread out just before the guests arrived, with a dozen extra-long tables for food outside. Mom thought a buffet would make the guests move around more — mingle, explore the house, drop money in the casino — so she’d opted not to have a sit-down dinner.

On that thought, my stomach growled.

“Me too, Sarah. My tummy is hungry too.”

There was nothing for it but to brave the kitchen again. I ducked in, wove my way through the moving workers, and
snagged the paper plate Rose had left me the night before. Then Sammy and I retreated to the nautical room to eat potato salad and coleslaw with our fingers. Sammy thought it was great.

“Where’s your bear, Sam?” I said, noticing its absence.

He shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.

“Mom’s not gonna like it much if you lost him. He’s a pretty valuable old bear.”

He concentrated on the potato salad in his fingers. “No one took him?” he said.

“No, bud, nobody took him.”

He shrugged again.

We were in my room reading a story from Sam’s book of fairy tales when Dad poked his head through the door. “Hiding out?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” I said.

“Can I join you?”

“Sure, Daddy,” Sammy said graciously. “Sit next to Sarah so you can see the pictures. Do you want Sarah to start over?”

“No, thank you, Sam,” Dad said, as he sat down next to me obediently. “I think I know how this one began.”

We sat there, we three, cozy and calm. We finished the first tale and were heading toward the exciting conclusion of another until Mom interrupted. She stood in the door, looking around her old room like it was a habitat at the zoo and an animal might be lurking. She focused on me. “Sarah, you need to go down to my room for hair and makeup.”

All business. No sign of the upset she’d experienced the night before. She’d just discovered her mother had lied to her about her father’s death and prevented her from ever seeing him again, and she was still operating full steam, looking not only cool and
collected, but annoyingly beautiful. Her hair was swept up into a polished French twist. Her long, slim neck was beautifully exposed, an elegant setting for the emerald necklace she’d be wearing later. Her perfect face was even more perfect. Clearly she’d already had her turn in hair-and-makeup. “Hurry up,” she said, a little exasperated.

“So soon?” I said.

“It’s nearly two, honey. It’s not a ten-minute job.”

Right. Making me presentable was going to require hours of intensive labor.

“Sam wants to watch me blow out the candles, Mom,” I said, as I stood.

“That’s really not going to be poss —”

I started to sit again. She said hastily, “We’ll work it out, okay?”

It was mean of me, I know, but I was kind of enjoying my newfound power. What did they call it? Passive resistance? “You finish the story with Dad, okay, Sam? I’ll see you later.”

“Will Jackson be there, Sarah? I haven’t seen Jackson for
days
.”

I cringed a little, hearing Jackson’s name, thinking of his possible presence at the party. Since Rose had said she wasn’t coming, I’d assumed Jackson wasn’t either, but I guessed he could walk on over if he wanted to. I was hoping he wouldn’t want to. “I don’t know, bud. I don’t think so. We’ll see.”

“I’ll find him and tell him to come, okay?”

“Don’t,” I said a little sharply. Dad gave me a funny look. “Sorry, Sam. But — Jackson already knows all about the party. He’ll come if he wants. So you don’t have to tell him. All right?”

I hoped that would stop him. I didn’t want him pulling any of his special persuasion tricks on Jackson, who seemed to have a soft spot for the little guy. And who might get the wrong idea and think I had sent Sam on this mission of arm-twisting.

When I reached the door to Gramma’s room, I saw four women sprawled in various poses of boredom, while one very handsome man of about thirty-five paced in the middle of the room. “Where is she? Does she have any
idea
how long this is going to —”

Angelique caught his attention and redirected it to me. He turned and smiled, teeth gleaming with an unnatural whiteness. “Ah, here’s our little princess,” he said. “Are you ready for your makeover, sweetheart?”