Amber House (5 page)

He laughed. “Well, it
is
the family business.” We reached the compass rose landing, and he crossed to poke his head into Sammy’s room. “The famous nautical room. Belonged to the Captain’s son, Matthew. He died young, probably of tuberculosis.”

“How do you know all this?” I said. “It’s my family, and I don’t know any of it.”

“Fiona Warren — your mom’s grandmother — wrote a book about this house. My mother had a copy.”

“And you
read
it?”

He smiled again. “Not the whole thing. But it’s more interesting than you might expect. She pretends to be writing a nonfiction account, but it’s full of details nobody could possibly know. And sometimes she’ll tell the same event twice, but have it turn out two different ways. She was a little crazy. Literally. She spent some time in an asylum.”

“I come from such a colorful gene pool.”

“You and me both.” He headed on for the next door. My door.

“No, wait —”

He already had it open. Pajamas on the floor. Bed unmade. Suitcase open with personal items poking out.
Great.
“This, I’m guessing, is your room?”

“Yeah. Sorry about the mess. I kinda slept late. Didn’t have a chance to, um, clean up yet.”

He grinned. I took a moment to admire that grin. Square with just a little crooked, really wide, all teeth. It tugged his long, straight nose down a tad. No dimples — good. Strong chin — good. Startlingly blue eyes — great. He pushed back a curl that had fallen onto his forehead. Pretty nice-looking head of hair too. I realized I was staring and looked away. “That door,” I said, gesturing, “is the bathroom, but I haven’t opened any of these others.”

“Well, I think these must lead to the Captain’s rooms,” he said.

I followed him into a sitting room, with a bedroom beyond. An oil painting of a ship in a storm hung over a fireplace. The walls were decorated with a collection of guns and swords that must have come from all over the world. He picked up a piece of ivory from a table and held it out to me. It was etched all over with a whaling scene. “This is scrimshaw. Sperm whale tooth
usually carved by sailors. You can’t even buy whale ivory like this anymore; most countries have banned the sale.”

The Captain’s room was littered with the stuff, on every table, the fireplace mantel, the shelves. Coupled with the weapons, all that endangered whale ivory made the room a little grim.

“I don’t think I like this guy much,” I said.

“He was a shipowner who smuggled guns for the Colonials during the Revolution and then got into the slave trade.” He shrugged. “Or so your great-grandmother’s book says.”

Now I
really
wanted out of his room. “Let’s go.”

I left; he followed after. “Wait, we’re missing one.” He opened the door next to the entrance to the Captain’s suite. “This was his wife’s.”

The room was a startling contrast to every other room in Amber House. It contained only a bed, a dresser, and a chest. The walls held a single painting of two handsome children, and a crucifix. “Wow,” I said.

“Kind of a minimalist, wasn’t she,” he said, stepping inside. “Fiona says Deirdre Foster was sickly most of her life. The Captain kept her locked away from her children — thought she was insane.”

“Another lunatic ancestor,” I said from the doorway. “Lucky me.”

He picked something up from the top of the dresser. “Huh. Wonder why this is here,” he said, holding the thing in his hand out to me.

I started inside to take it from him, but stopped like I hit a wall. I had a strong impression of sadness filling that room. The air felt cold.

“Let’s go somewhere else,” I said, shaking my head. He looked quizzical, but came back out.

“Souvenir,” he said. He turned my palm up and dropped the thing into it — a small green stone polished smooth, mottled
with veins of peach and darker green. Odd, I thought, that something coming from that room should feel so warm.

My fingers closed around it. “Thanks.” I tucked it in my pocket.

He pulled the heavy door closed. I saw then that it had an iron keyhole, set in the middle of an ornate scalloped cross pressed into the metal. I touched it, almost hearing the metallic clanks of a key turning. The thought came unbidden to mind:
They locked the madwoman in.

Richard chose that moment to lean in and whisper ominously: “This house is haunted, you know.”

I tried really hard not to flinch. “Haunted?”

“So they say. Maybe it’s Deirdre.”

Standing outside that desolate room, the thought of ghosts made the back of my neck crawl. But I wasn’t going to let Richard see it. I shrugged. “Good,” I said. “A house as old as this — there better be some ghosts.”

He looked at me as if assessing, and a slow smile spread across his face. “Where next?” he asked.

I was done with these depressing rooms. “West wing,” I answered. “I want to show you something.”

“The conservatory?” he guessed.

Is that what it was called? “The conservatory,” I agreed. He started off ahead of me, and I jokingly power walked past him. “Hey,” I said. “Who’s the tour guide here?”

“I thought we established that — I am,” he answered, and I heard him trying to take back the lead.

I walked faster, then started to run. Instantly he was on my heels. I sprinted across the landing, shooting through the arch into the west wing. He reached for my arm; I put on a burst of speed. I wasn’t going to let him catch up with me. I’d break my speed running right into the wall at the end of the hall, even,
the way I used to when I was little. Laughter leaked out of me like air escaping a balloon.

Strong fingers wrapped around my arm just seconds before impact. Richard tugged me back as he slowed sharply. We collided, and I saw he was laughing as hard as I was. “Are you completely out of your mind too?” he asked.

“Not usually,” I said. “But then again, don’t all crazy people think they’re sane?”

“I know I do,” he gasped. We both stood there, breathing hard, laughing with what little air we had. And I still felt the touch of his fingers on my arm like a bracelet of heat.

Get a grip
, I told myself. I yanked the curtains apart and let the sunlight fill the dark hall. “Come on,” I said, opening the French doors.

We walked carefully out onto an iron-grill platform, from which the spiral staircase descended. There were birds out this morning, little bright blotches of color, singing in the branches, darting through the air. We exchanged a smile. I started down the steps, and he followed. At the bottom, I plunged down a path, trying to remember the way to the fountain.

And there she was, the statue guarding the pool. The lily blossoms open, huge and creamy. Foot-long orange-speckled fish swimming in their shade.

“Sarah?” Richard called.

“Over here,” I said in a musical tone that embarrassed me.

He came through an arch of vegetation, admiration in his eyes. “Look at that,” he said.

“I know. Pretty amazing, huh?”

“It should be a painting.” He framed out a rectangle with his fingers. “
Girl by Fountain
.”

The guy was flattering me. And I blushed. I was such a loser.

“Who built this?” I said, covering my embarrassment. “Fiona?”

“Fiona’s parents, actually. Around the turn of the last century.” He pointed at the statue. “Fiona asked for her specifically. Persephone. Demeter’s daughter, stolen by Death to dwell in the Underworld.”

And the red stones on her hand, I realized, were the pomegranate seeds that had doomed her. I saw in the daylight that the water trickling into the pool came from the statue’s blind eyes, running down to fall from the tips of her lower hand, the hem of her marble gown. It was kind of awful. “She was also called Nestis,” I remembered. “‘Moistening mortal springs with tears.’”

“Yeah, she looks like quite a weeper,” he observed with amusement. “How’d you know that?”

“My classics teacher had a poster on the wall.”

“Can I show you something else pretty amazing?”

“Sure.” I nodded.

“How do we get outside?”

I led him back into the west wing, down through the hall and sunroom, and out another set of French doors onto the flagstone patio. The air felt cool and clean after the trapped humidity of the conservatory. I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply.

“Sarah? You still with me?”

I opened my eyes, squinting a little in the bright light. Richard was eyeing me, a quizzical smile on his face. He gestured toward the steps with his left hand, pressed the small of my back with his right. “Race you.”

Then he started double-timing it down the steps, laughing back at me. I took off after him. The flagstone steps wound down the hillside between rock retaining walls, with ferns, flowers, and vines trailing over their tops. They ended on a stone landing that opened onto —

— a dock. On the river. With a beautiful golden-orange sailboat moored there.

“Jeez,” I said, in disbelief. “Is this — is this my gramma’s?”

“I think she’s yours now. She’s called the
Liquid Amber
.”

I stooped to look at her name. “The
Liquid Amber IV
.” The woodwork on her was nothing short of amazing, but she had none of the shiny gadgets I was used to seeing. “She looks pretty old.”

He nodded. “Everything at Amber House is, isn’t it? I think your great-grandparents used to sail her, so that makes her at least a hundred.”

“And she still floats?”

“Floats pretty fast, from what I’ve heard. Do you sail?”

“Are you kidding? I’m from Seattle. We live on the water.”

“Bonus points, Parsons.”

Points?
I thought.
Is he keeping score?

“We should go sailing,” he said.

“I don’t know if this boat’s ready to take out —”

“I was inviting you to sail with
me
, on my boat. Dad and I live a half mile downriver.”

“Oh.” Was this guy asking me on a date? “Sure. I love sailing.”

“Day after tomorrow, then?”

I wished I had my phone with me, so I could snap a picture of him to show Jecie. She’d never believe me without the photographic evidence. I nodded as coolly as I could manage. “I think I can squeeze you in.”

“Great,” he said easily, as if he made plans like this every day of the week. Which he probably did. “I’ll pick you up here at ten thirty and we’ll sail down toward the bay. Assuming you can wake up that early?”

I grinned. “It’ll be tough, but I’ll make the effort.” He grinned back. “Don’t you have school?”

“Careful scheduling. Only four days a week.”

“Lucky.”

“You know it,” he said, still smiling widely. “We should get back.”

“Oh. Right. Sure.”

“After you,” he said, gesturing toward the steps.

Nope. Nuh-uh. He wasn’t watching my rear end climb four flights of stairs — even though I had a pretty decent rear end. “You first,” I said.

Mom and the senator were sitting in the living room drinking coffee when we got back. Looking pretty cozy, I thought with disapproval.

“Dad, Sarah and I are going out on the water on Friday. You don’t have plans for the
Swallow
, do you?”

“Not a one.” The senator flashed the smile they probably put on all his campaign posters. “You should try to introduce Sarah to some of the other kids around here.”

“Sure,” Richard said.

“Oh,” my mother exclaimed, struck by some thought. “I just had this
brilliant
idea. Sarah is turning sixteen in ten days. I know this is short notice, but wouldn’t it be fantastic if we could get all our old friends together, Robert? Have a huge party? Richard could get the young people to come.”

A party?
I repeated in my head.
My birthday here? Whatever happened to leaving as quickly as possible?

“I’m not doing anything next weekend,” the senator said with enthusiasm. “We could pull it together, right, Richard?”

“If you have food, my friends will come,” Richard said with that easy smile.

“We could do a masquerade,” my mother improvised. “It’s almost Halloween.” She turned to me. “I felt kind of bad you weren’t going to have a sixteenth party, honey, like I did and Gramma did and, well, all the girls of Amber House. Now you can.”

All the girls of Amber House?
Suddenly my mother was a traditionalist? I must have been lost in shock too long, because she prodded me again. “Is this brilliant or what, Sarah?”

They were all waiting for me to respond. I honestly didn’t know what to say. If we had been in Seattle right now, I would have been hoping to see a movie with Jecie to celebrate my sixteenth. If I was really lucky, I’d get a used car for my gift. All of a sudden, I’m supposed to have a huge expensive costume party with dozens of strangers? Yet I couldn’t bring myself to embarrass my mother in front of her friend, the good senator. My voice squeaked out a little queerly. “Brilliant, Mom.”

The tiniest frown creased my mother’s brow.

“It
is
brilliant, Annie,” the senator confirmed.
Annie?
Did anyone
ever
call my mother Annie?