Embers (20 page)

The hissing of the coffeemaker, like an audience unimpressed, brought her to a full stop.
"
So,
"
she said once more, tacking violently off in the other direction.
"
Read any good books lately?
"

From the cosmic to the cliché in one fell swoop.
Naturally,
she told herself,
he will assume I
'
m insane.

"
Cream? Sugar?
"
she asked, limping at last to a halt.

That broke the spell; Wyler blinked and tried to sort out the threads of her tangled ramble.
"
I
'
m halfway through a pretty good biography of JFK,
"
he said carefully, watching her with a sideways look.
"
And, ah, no sugar.
"

"
All rightee,
"
she said, seizing the refrigerator door and throwing it nearly off its hinges. She stared unseeing at the contents inside, aware only that her heart was thumping like a pile driver down at the docks. What
is wrong with me?
she asked herself in amazement.

All she could see was a bottle of ketchup. It seemed odd; there used to be more in there than ketchup. She continued to stare blankly at the shelves until Wyler reached in alongside her for the carton of half-and-half.

"
You
'
re letting all the cold air out,
"
he scolded gently.

He was so close. She
'
d never before noticed the slight bump in the bridge of his nose.
"
This is
Maine
,
"
she said with a shaky laugh.
"
No one worries about cold air escaping. Where would it go?
"

The phone rang. She felt as if some referee had mercifully ended the round between them.
"
Excuse me, I have to get that,
"
she said, sprinting out of the kitchen.

The call was from a picky shopper who wanted a description of every room, right down to the number of windows and the directions they faced. After the telephone tour, it turned out that the price was too high and Meg lost the booking anyway. By the time she got back to the kitchen, Wyler was gone and so was Allie
'
s
"
Allie
"
mug.

Just as well,
Meg decided morosely. One more conversation like that, and he
'
d be spearheading a drive to have her
committed
. What could
'
ve possessed her to open
up about her deepest feelings that way? What did an urbanite like him know about nature, anyway?
Zip
.

She craned her neck toward the stone bench at the far end of the garden and saw a patch of khaki pantleg. So Allie hadn
'
t kicked him out. Of course not. Had Eve kicked out Adam?

None of it mattered, anyway, Meg decided with weary resignation. Wyler was a grownup and so was Allie. The only one who didn
'
t seem to want to admit it was Meg, and even she was being forced to come around.

Meg made her way down a side path through the garden and slipped a key into the bright new padlock strung through the hasp on the shed door, then opened it and let herself in. The late-morning sun slanted through newly scrubbed windows and came to rest like a rainbow on the gabled roofs of the miniature Eagle
'
s Nest. The dollhouse was still there, still real, still hers.

She didn
'
t yet believe it, despite her frequent forays out to the shed to pinch herself. The house was so terribly beautiful at every time of day. As the light changed,
it
changed: its aura was alternately gray and mysterious, or twilit and brooding, or sunny and serene. This morning it looked like the summer house that ordinary kids can only dream about; the kind you biked past quickly before the dogs got wind of you and ran to the property
'
s edge, barking furiously, letting the world know you weren
'
t their people.

She walked around the house with the careful, scrutinizing eye of a fussy socialite, checking the rooms she
'
d already furnished. Yes. Every piece was exactly where it belonged; of that she was certain. She
'
d rolled out the foot-long Oriental rug in the dining room, placed the Chippendale-style table on it, and set the table for twelve, just the way she
'
d seen it in Orel Tremblay
'
s house. She
'
d hung the mauve brocade drapes, set out the silver salvers, used a tweezers to set the candles in the chandelier, all without having to think twice about any of it.

In the library, it was just the same. She knew where the porcelain clock should be on the mantel, and the twin red vases, and the blue-patterned porcelain lamps. She knew that the portrait of the woman went on the right side of the fireplace, the portrait of the man on the left. Knew that the needlework pole screen stood
behind the smaller of the kid-
covered armchairs. Even the books
 
—
maroon and green leather jackets on the upper shelves, tan on the lower
—
even those, she remembered where to place.

The maids
'
rooms had taken her two minutes to arrange. The nursery, not much longer. Unpacking the precious furnishings, each piece a new and precious gift, had gone necessarily slowly. But putting each piece in its proper place, as enjoyable as the task was, had taken no time at all.

And that was what frightened her.

How could she possibly have remembered the house in such detail after only a few quick glances into it at Orel Tremblay
'
s place? Granted, some people had photographic memories and were very visual; but Meg wasn
'
t one of them. Meg remembered flower fragrances and birds
'
songs, not which way a club chair was oriented to a sofa. It wasn
'
t a skill she possessed.

And yet she knew every location of every item at the Eagle
'
s Nest. It didn
'
t seem possible. She reminded herself that the rooms she
'
d unpacked so far were the rooms that she
'
d stared at the longest; the furnishings that still lay wrapped in boxes were from rooms she
'
d barely seen. The house had eighteen rooms. Today would be a real test of her memory— or of something else, she didn
'
t know what. She resumed her unpacking.

One by one the guest bedrooms filled up, each with its own coordinated color scheme. After that she arranged the sleeping and dressing rooms belonging to the mistress of the dollhouse, done in a classic sunny treatment of green-and-white stripes and rose chintz. They were cheerful rooms, the rooms of a gardener. Meg had no doubt that in the original Eagle
'
s Nest, they looked out on roses and perennials and flowering shrubs.

She opened the next unmarked box and unfolded a bundle of white tissue. Inside was a massive little headboard, elaborately carved from dark teakwood in a serpentine, Oriental design: without question, it was from the master bedroom.

Meg held the headboard in her hand for a long time, paralyzed by a sense of dread that had absolutely nothing to do with any fear of dropping it or breaking it. Her hand began to shake, but still she stood, clutching the headboard, fixed to the spot. She was overcome by an irrational sense of fear and revulsion that left her faint. Her heart was hammering out of control in a wild, uncountable beat. Her chest hurt. She couldn
'
t breathe. Worse, she couldn
'
t get past the fear, couldn
'
t make her feet turn and head for the house.

I
'
m going to die
was her only thought.
Right here. Right now. I
'
m going to die. I can
'
t believe it.

"
Meg!
Here
you are,
"
came her sister
'
s happy voice from outside the shed.

Meg wavered and dropped the headboard after all as Allie rushed through the doorway with a look of radiance on her face.
"
Oh, Meggie,
"
she said, encircling her sister in her arms.
"
Thank you thank you
thank
you,
"
she gushed.

The embrace of her sister was a restorative to Meg. She bent over and picked up the headboard, which wasn
'
t damaged.
"
You
'
re welcome,
"
she said wanly.
"
What did I do?
"

"
Brought Tom to his senses! You were right about him; it turns out that his wife was practically the only woman he
'
d ever known well, and they couldn
'
t communicate at
all.
He thought that when she said no she meant no. It caused endless confusion. Plus he
'
s so standoffish anyway, which of course is his great charm, and
—
Meg! You
'
re white as a sheet,
"
Allie said suddenly.
"
What
'
s wrong?
"

Meg, still a little shaky, shook off her sister
'
s concern.
"
Too much caffeine,
"
she lied, placing the headboard carefully against the wall of what she had no doubt was Gordon Camplin
'
s bedroom.

"
Caffeine, hell,
"
Allie said.
"
What
'
s
wrong
?
"

"
I
...
don
'
t know, Allie. Honest. I
'
m a little lightheaded, that
'
s all. I haven
'
t eaten.
"
She laid one hand casually over her heart
—
it felt okay
—
and took the next parcel out of the box and began gingerly unwrapping it. It was the carved footboard to the bed.

"
Well,
eat
something, then,
"
Allie commanded.
"The doll
house can wait. You
'
re almost done here, anyway, it looks like.
"

Allie took the footboard from Meg and turned it this way and that.
"
Pretty,
"
she said admiringly. She nudged her sister with her shoulder.
"
Doesn
'
t it give you a kick to know that you own this and Gordon Camplin doesn
'
t?
"

Meg laughed weakly.
"
You bet.
"

"
Are you
sure
the dollhouse was Orel Tremblay
'
s to give?
"

"
I told you, Allie: Gordon Camplin
'
s mother gave it to Mr. Tremblay after he saved one of her dogs from the fire. She didn
'
t want to be reminded of Eagle
'
s Nest, anyway. She assumed he
'
d sell it, and that would be that. It was a very generous thing to do, even in
'
47. But it was definitely his, Tremblay
'
s lawyer said. The papers that prove it are part of the probate file.
"

"
Think how galling it would be if Gordon Camplin sent his lawyers after it,
"
Allie said thoughtfully.
"
God. I
'
d
burn
it first! Well, gotta go,
"
she said, falling back on a phrase that Meg had heard often in the last ten years.

She headed out the door, then turned back around.
"
Oh! The most important thing of all,
"
she said.
"
Tom
'
s moving out.
"