Embers (4 page)

"I know this house," she said, puzzled. She turned to Orel Tremblay. Her face, usually friendly and confidant, was troubled. "How would I know this house?"

The old man was nodding triumphantly. "Your grandmother!" he cried, pointing a gnarled finger at the lovely house. "That's how you know! She was a sleep-out nursemaid there! This is a replica of the Eagle's Nest — the old Camplin estate house!"

"Ah. That's how I know," Meg said, not really reassured. She had heard the name many times, but she couldn't recall having seen any photos of the place. If they existed. How
did
she know the house?

"Your grandmother took the job in the spring of ‘47. She was merely fillin' in for the children's regular nursemaid, who took a fit to elope with the chauffeur after the boy got fired. Then in October come the fire."

Meg peeked through the casement window of another top-floor room. It was the nursery itself, with two little brass beds and a rocking chair, and impossibly small toys scattered on the floor. A boy doll lay in one bed. A girl doll was sitting on the floor with a set of minuscule play-blocks. A nursemaid doll — her grandmother, presumably — stood looking out the gabled window at some imaginary vista beyond. She was the only doll in a shorter length dress.

"I never knew the job was only a temporary placement," Meg said, filled with a sudden sense of loss. "How sad."

"For God's sake! Didn't your people tell you
nothin'
about her?"

"Yes, of course. I know that my grandmother was very devoted to her two sons," Meg said defensively. "My father still talks about the blueberry tarts she wheedled from the cook at Eagle's Nest for him and his brother — they were just boys when she died in the fire, of course. I guess the cook was from
Paris
and homesick, and my grandmother's Quebec French was very good. She used to listen to his stories."

"Oh, yeah; the cook," the old man said, nodding. "Jean-Louis. Short fat guy with brown beady eyes. Couldn't speak a word of English. Personally I have no use for a man who can't be bothered to learn our mother tongue.

"But that was your grandmother all over," he mused, rubbing the stubble of his beard. "Everyone loved her. She had this glow about her
...
this wonderful warmth
...
you couldn't help but be drawed to her. Everyone was. Everyone —"

His expression suddenly turned dark and angry, surprising Meg once more; he seemed too fragile for such wrenching shifts of mood.

"You have Margaret's smile," he said suddenly, veering away from his anger. "Not
exactly
the same: You're less open. More guarded. Well, that's no surprise," he said with a thin shrug of cynicism. "Times are different."

But Meg
was
surprised, because she truly didn't believe that times were that different — at least, not in
Bar Harbor
. She didn't lock her door and she'd never been robbed and she always felt safe on the town's streets. She knew and liked everyone, and everyone knew and liked her. That was the whole point of living in a small town, even one as visited as
Bar Harbor
. That was why, like her grandmother, she'd never leave
Bar Harbor
.

"Times aren't so very different, Mr. Tremblay," she argued, convinced that her smile was as open and unguarded as her grandmother's.

He gave her a long, searching, and utterly dispirited look. "Maybe not," he said wearily. "Maybe not."

There was a pause, and then he said, "She never did want to be more than my friend."

"My grandmother, you mean," Meg said, shifting gears with him.

Orel Tremblay nodded. "Oh, I'd of stole her away from her old man in a shot, if she'd of let me. Your granddaddy was a drunken lout," he said contemptuously. "He didn't deserve Margaret. But she was just
...
so
...
loyal,
don't you know. To him, and to their two boys. And damn it to hell, it cost her her life. It was criminal."

"What?"

"You heard me."

Meg was well aware that her grandmother had become trapped in Eagle's Nest during the Great Fire and had burned to death. Naturally her family had never dwelled on it, even though the fire itself was a major event in
Bar Harbor
's history.

Meg began edging away from the dollhouse. It seemed no longer charmed but sinister, a painful reminder of a family tragedy. As for her grandfather: yes, it was true; he drank. That was nobody's business, least of all Orel Tremblay's. Suddenly she was sorry she'd come.

"Mister
Tremblay. I don't understand what you're driving at. As far as I know, my grandfather and grandmother were a happily married couple — average happy, anyway. But even if they weren't, I don't see what the point is in your dragging up the fact. They're both dead now. I think the decent thing would be to let them rest in peace."

"Aaagh, you're right," Orel Tremblay said, more annoyed than embarrassed. "Why ever did I bother? Never mind. What's done is done.
Mrs. Billings!"
he shouted, with astonishing vigor.

The nurse came in, and Meg went out. That was the end of her visit with Orel Tremblay, unrequited lover of Margaret Mary Atwells.

****

At the family supper that night, Meg's strange and wildly unsatisfying visit with Orel Tremblay was
the
hot topic. Nothing else could touch it — not young Terry's second black eye of the month; not his mother's honorable mention at the pie bazaar; not even the ten-year-old pickup Meg's older brother Lloyd had just got for a song. Everyone wanted a word-by-word blow, and they did everything but bang on the table with their spoons to get Meg to tell her story.

Meg wasn't inclined to go into detail. For one thing, they had an outsider at the table tonight — Tom Wyler, sitting smack-dab in the middle of the Wednesday chaos they called Chicken Pie Night. She stole glances at him, perfectly aware that he was watching her watch him. He made her uncomfortable, although nobody else in the family seemed to feel funny about having him there. Allie was still enchanted by the man, and their nephew Timmy seemed to be thrilled to know someone so tall and smart with almost the same first name. His twin brother Terry was ignoring Tom Wyler, but that was nothing new; Terry wasn't on speaking terms with anyone except Coughdrop, the family part-Golden Retriever.

Meg looked to her father, Everett Atwells, head of their extended household, for
his
reaction to the newcomer. No problem; to him Tom Wyler was apparently just another mouth to feed. Of her relatives, only her brother Lloyd looked unhappy to have him here. That was probably because Tom Wyler clearly had money and a job, and at the moment Lloyd had neither.

The real test, of course, was Uncle Bill, her father's older brother. Uncle Bill was outspoken, outrageous, and unmanageable. He was a kind of litmus strip for the family. If Uncle Bill liked someone, everyone else was allowed to like him too. If he didn't, he made life such hell for the newcomer that the family, out of pity, usually ended up taking the poor wretch back to where they'd found him.

They had no choice in the matter, because Uncle Bill, not the marrying kind, wasn't the cooking kind, either; he ate with the family as often as he could and
always
on Wednesday, when Comfort served her Chicken Pie with Secret Seasonings.

So it was Bill Atwells's voice, as usual, that elbowed its way through all the rest.

"Are you gonna tell us what happened or not, Meg? In the meantime, pass them pertitters. And I don't mind another dollop of chicken pie while I'm at it, Comfort; it's wicked good tonight. Well, Meg? Don't just sit there poundin' sand. You went to the man's house and the nurse let you in and what?"

Meg cast a wary eye at her irrepressible uncle. She was treading over tricky ground here. Bill Atwells might find it fascinating that someone had had a crush on his mother, but he wouldn't think much of the "drunken-lout" description of his father. And what about Allie? Did Allie really need to be reminded that drinking ran in the family?

Meg tried simple evasion. "We don't want to bore Mr. Wyler with our little small-town dramas, Uncle Bill."

"Don't be silly, Meg. Tom
wants
to hear," Allie said with a confident, beguiling look at her invited guest.

Meg had seen her sister — who could look seductive reciting the alphabet — use that look before. It was very effective, almost a form of hypnosis.

Tom Wyler gave Meg a good-humored smile and said, "I like a good mystery."

"C'mon, tell!" said Timmy.

"What're you afraid of?" asked his twin brother Terry.

"Okay," Meg said with a sigh. "As I said, Mr. Tremblay's not in great shape physically. But he's very sharp mentally. It turns out that he's noticed me around town. In fact he says I look exactly like Grandmother."

"Don't be silly," Everett Atwells said. "You look exactly like you."

"Well, all right; but here's the part he seemed determined for me to know: He was wildly in love with Grandmother."

"That son of a bitch!" Bill Atwells said through a mouthful of chicken pie.

"It never went anywhere, Uncle Bill; you won't have to challenge Mr. Tremblay to a duel," Meg said ironically.

"When was
this?"
Everett
demanded. Plainly it was all news to him.

Meg explained that Orel Tremblay and Margaret Mary Atwells had both worked at the Eagle's Nest at the same time, and that Tremblay, like the rest of the staff, was smitten with her grandmother's great natural warmth.

"Which, by the way, he told me I didn't have," Meg added wryly.

"He said that to you? That he had a thing for Grandmother, and that he thinks you're cold?" Allie was agape with indignation. "What nerve!"

"He didn't exactly say
cold,"
Meg said, coloring. "I think he said I was ‘guarded'."

"Well, that
has
been true since Paul killed himself," said Comfort naïvely. "He knew about Paul?"

"No
...
I don't know. Paul did not kill himself, Comfort. Anyway, cold or hot was not the
point,"
Meg said, exasperated. "Orel Tremblay wanted to show me the dollhouse; it was because of the dollhouse that he summoned me."

She went on to describe in great detail the exquisite miniature of the Eagle's Nest that was hidden away in Orel Tremblay's unassuming home. She avoided dwelling on the obvious — that the dollhouse was a replica of the tomb of Margaret Mary Atwells — and she made no mention at all of Orel Tremblay's scathing opinion of her grandfather.

She limped to the end of her story, which clearly had no conclusion, and waited, knowing that her family would jump all over her to provide one.

Uncle Bill weighed in first. "That's it? He had you over there to look at a dollhouse? What
for?"

"I don't know."

"It must be worth a pile," said Lloyd. "How much, do you think?"

"I don't know."

"How come
he
has the dollhouse?" asked Terry suspiciously.

"I don't know."

"Probably he
stole
it," his twin brother said. "After he fixed it up he kept it for hisself. Brother. What a dumb thing to steal."

"It must be worth a
pile,"
said Lloyd again. "How much did you say it was worth?"

"I don't know."

"This dollhouse — " Meg's father began.

"I never understood what they were doing at the Eagle's Nest in October, anyway," Allie said, interrupting him. "Okay, we know Gordon Camplin was staying on through the hunting season. Fine. But why keep his wife and two children and the whole staff there? Why not send them back to
New York
or
Boston
like everyone else? Did you ask Mr. Tremblay?"

Meg shook her head. "He threw me out."

Her family began hooting her off the stage with cries of "So you don't know
beans!"

Meg wouldn't have cared, except for Tom Wyler. He was sitting there as calm as a clock while her family took turns beating her up. It bothered her that he was neither embarrassed
nor
amused by their antics. She had the sense that he was watching them the way a psychologist might watch a play group through a one-way mirror.

No doubt it was part of his job. She was struck by the way he held himself, so casually alert, so ready to spring. If a fire alarm went off, he'd be the first one into action. But whether it would be to help the women and children, or to step over them on his way out the door — that, she couldn't know.

"Uncle Bill? A piece of my roobub pie?"

Without waiting for an answer, Comfort cut a wedge the size of an Egyptian pyramid, eased it onto a dinner plate, and passed it down the table to her husband's uncle. Comfort began dividing what was left of dessert among the rest of the family, and the talk settled down into pleasing, pie-filled murmurs about everyone else's day.