Glass (2 page)

He glanced left to where she stood.

“My apologies for my grandmother’s poor mood.
Had I known what she was thinking …”

He glanced back at the pre-
prepared room. “Didn’t you?”

She gave only the slightest breath.
“No. I’d hoped she’d conduct her business and let you go home. I knew nothing about her plans until you were most likely on your way here. I do my best with her, but …” Her words fell away.

“Forget it,” he said. “I should have expected it.”

Should have known something was up, but kicking himself was profitless.

S
he didn’t respond, so he turned. “Tell me, what do I do with my time?” The remaining hours of the day stretched out before him endless. “You said you like solitude, but I’m not used to it.” No, he was used to the crowd in the shop, a multitude of hands to help with the process, seeing friends in the evenings, dinners and dates. This place was … empty.

Which begged a question.
“How many people live here? You, your grandmother, the boatman …”

“Osiris,” she said. “He’s been here since Grandmother was a girl.”

“Who else?”

“
Mimi. You met her; she answered the door. And one other, Yolanda, that’s Osiris wife. She’s the cook.”

“Five of you then all cooped up in this … this … house. My cell doesn’t work, so I take it there’s no internet.”

“No.”

He sighed.
“Television?”

“There is one, but … effectively, no.”

Of course not. “You do have a phone?” he asked. The old woman had called him on one.

Cerise
didn’t respond, and he exhaled loudly. “The dark ages.”

If she heard him, she didn’t say so nor did her cool demeanor change. “We’ll do our best to keep you entertained,” she said. “You’re welcome to anything in the library. You’ll find it at the bottom of the stairs to the right.”

He vaguely remembered seeing bookshelves on the way up, leather chairs, and a desk.

“You’re welcome to go outdoors,” she said.  “T
hough …” They both raised their gaze to the window. The rain was falling in earnest now.

“Yeah, I get it,” he replied.
He was stuck.

“
You can also explore at will. But I have to ask you to avoid the left wing. Grandmother values her privacy.”

He nodded. “What of
the rest?”

Her brow wrinkled.

“There is a third floor. Isn’t there?” he asked.

She waffled, the first sign of any hesitation on her part.
“If you wish to risk it, but the third floor is empty. No one’s been up there in a decade.”

He started.
No one? Was this house so large they didn’t need an entire floor for ten years? Or was there another reason?

“My room is down the hall, second on the left.
If you need anything, either ring the bell …” She indicated a small brass bell on the bedside table. “Or come find me. Lunch will be served at noon.”

Spent, he
bobbed his head. Her footsteps moved into the distance and the door clicked shut. He flinched at the finality of it. Wandering across the room, he stood before the window watching rain dribble down the glass. One rivulet met another and another forming a stream at the bottom.

He pressed a
finger to the pane, his own reflection staring back at him. Sandy blond hair, a hint of a goatee, and two crystal blue eyes. His father’s face, his mother had told him that many times. Yet he’d never seen a picture. Those she’d had, she’d disposed of long ago. He’d grown up wondering about Levi Garner. Yet life comes full circle, and here was a place he’d been, people who’d known him, one glimpse of the man who’d given him life.

Andre turned and as he did, a knock came at the door. “Come in,” he called. He expected th
e girl, Cerise, to have returned. Perhaps she’d forgotten something, an instruction. Instead a dark-skinned woman entered, her ankle-length black gown sweeping the wooden floorboards.
Must be Yolanda.

“
Mistah Garner,” the woman said. “Miss Delacroix asked me to bring you these.” She opened her palm.

He strolled across the room and lifted the offered
stack of photographs.

“She says you can keep them.”

He nodded, and she left. Finding a seat in an armchair, he crossed his ankle over his knee, and flipped through the stack. A fist pummeled him in the gut. The circle that was life tightened, and for a moment, his vision blurred. He blinked back the haze and raised an image closer.

There, staring up at him was the same face he’d seen in the glass only minutes ago.
That of his father.

CHAPTER 2

Cerise collapsed in a chair, a tiny flowered throw pillow forming itself to the small of her back. She reclined her head on the seat back, the winged arms providing shelter for her face, and her breath at last splintered. Hands shaking, she gave into the fevered rush racing through her limbs. Her heart skipped, stealing what little breath she had left.

He was
fabulous. Not a more handsome man existed on this planet. Not one more pleasant to the eye.
The eyes.
His eyes were mesmerizing, eyes you looked into for minutes at a time. No, not looked. That was too tame. Dived, you dived in headlong never to surface.

She pulled her head up.

He was also angry, and that was as much her fault as her grandmother’s. She should have guessed what was afoot. He was right, her grandmother had planned this. She’d brought him here for the glass, yes, but she’d also brought him here for something else. However, what that was stayed sealed inside the old woman’s head.

She hadn’t
known anything was amiss until dawn, and they’d argued over it. She’d insisted it was wrong to deceive him, and her grandmother had acted like the aristocrat she was.
He’ll be fine. This is no big deal.
As always, her grandmother had won.

The single photograph held between
Cerise’s fingers slipped from place, and she looked down at it. Two young men about her age wrapped muscled arms around each other’s necks. Her father and his best friend, Levi, come for yet another weekend.

Be
fore. Before the bad things happened.

A voice shook her from her thoughts
. “Cerise?”

H
er hands trembled yet again. It was him, Andre Garner. She’d known who he was the minute he’d turned around in the parlor. There was no mistaking the image. He was as striking as his father was in the photographs, more so because he was living and breathing. It had been all she could do to retain her bearing and not fold.

“Cerise?” he called again.

She inhaled and cracked the door. The brilliant blue of his eyes flooded in, and a tremor sent her hand clutching the wall. “Yes, Mr. Garner?”

“The photos.”
He waved them before her. “I have questions.”

She nodded and reverse
d, throwing the door wider. “Please have a seat.”

There was only one seat in the room, a roo
m decidedly feminine. Pink walls speckled with tiny magenta flowers papered the space. Airy white draperies tied back with a twisted yellow cord spread the little available light. Then there was the bed, a fantastic creation of ruffles and lace all but defying description.

He looked out of place inside
the space and conscious of it. Nonetheless, he sat, the photographs balanced in his lap.

“Ask what you wish,” she said.

He selected one and held it up. “This one. Where was it taken?”

She stared at the image.
His father, bare-chested, perched on the edge of the water.

“By the pool.
Would you like to go there?”

“
There’s a pool?”

She smiled. “Yes, downstairs. Grandmother insists on keeping it filled and cleaned.”

He returned to his feet. “I’d like to see it.”

She motioned him out the door and into the hall. However, instead of heading toward the front stairs, she turned her footsteps
in the opposite direction. It was a five minute hike to the back stairwell. Hidden from view, the narrow, steep risers descended into a nook in the wall.

“Please,” she said.
“You first.”

Again, he made no effort to argue, but entered the space, the aged wood cr
eaking beneath his feet. He inhaled sharply at the bottom, and she knew why.

“It’s … magnificent,” he said.

Indeed it was. An open space with the pool stretching from wall to wall and a series of dressing rooms lining the corridor. Potted ferns growing in wicker stands sat at each corner, and overhead, wrapped around the space was a fantastic stained glass mural.

“
Dutch, isn’t it?” he asked. “Achterberg.”

“You have a good eye.”

But then his eye for glass was what her grandmother had brought him here for.

“How much did it cost?” He wandered around the shallow end of the pool and stood beneath the windows, his head thrown back.

“Too much, according to grandmother, but my grandfather insisted.”

“And it’
s stood all this time?” he asked. “Not been broken or cracked?”

“Once
.” She moved to his side. “Grandfather brought in the original artist to repair it.”

Tha
t boggled the mind, even to her. That had also been before her day, sometime in the fifties.

He dropped his gaze and
turned slowly, ending his scrutiny with a crooked smile aimed at her face. The steady heartbeat she’d tried to regain pranced again in her chest.

“You’d like to swim?” she asked.

One eyebrow shot up. “In this weather?”

“Why not?
There’s no weather in here. Plus, the water’s warm. There’s swim trunks in any of the dressing rooms.”

He knelt and traile
d one hand in the sparkling liquid. “Heated?” He glanced up at her. “How?”

“We are self-sufficient here, Mr. Garner. My grandmother might insist on keeping everything as it once was, but she’s also willing to embrace modern convenience.” She pointed a finger upward. “Solar panels on the roof store energy in a small building out back. We have whatever electricity we need no matter the situation.”

“But surely, the pool wasn’t heated originally.”

She shook her head. “No, it wasn’t. That was my father’s doing. But as I’ve said, you’re welcome to take a swim.”

“What about you?” he asked.

Blood pulsing in her ears, she took in his question, briefly shaken. “What about me?”

He stood to his feet and narrowed the space between them. “You.” He raised his fingers and brushed the tips down her cheek. “Do you ever let your hair down, Cerise? Or are you a fixture like this house?”

He returned his hand to his side, but the spark of his touch tingled on her skin.

“Swimming is good exercise.”

The quirk of his smile increased. “Always so practiced,” he said. “Every answer laid out for you, as if you picked it from a list
. No hint of emotion. No feeling.” He crossed his arms. “I’ll make you a deal.”

She waited, butterflies flitting in her gut.

“I’ll swim if you will.”

The butterflies erupted into flight, and her mouth dry, she attempted to swallow.

“Besides, you promised me entertainment.”

She found her voice, albeit thin. “I hardly think that’s proper. Is it?”

“Proper?” He waved his hands wide. “This is a state-of-the-art society. Everything man wants, man can have. There are no rules to break because they can all be bent at will. Like glass when heated. You shape it this way or that to your pleasing.”

“I am not made of glass, Mr. Garner.”

“Andre,” he corrected. “Call me by my first name, as I have used yours.”

She nodded sharp.
“Very well.”

“But back to my question,” he stated.

“About rules?” She turned away from him, resting her gaze on the water. “There is something to be said for the old-fashioned, I think. For not treating rules as if they were pliable, but instead firm lines made to hold us back.”

“Not hold us back,” he said. He’d stepped closer, and his breath puffed warm on her neck. “Guide us. Teach us right from wrong. But never prevent us from living. You are not
living
here in this place, and I don’t believe a girl as lovely as you is meant to be left on a shelf.”

“You flatter me toward your own end,” she said.

He laughed, the sound echoing across the room. “I’ve simply asked you to come for a swim. Me and you, a man and a woman, enjoying each other’s company in a perfectly allowable atmosphere.”

“You enjoy my company?” The question slipped out unheeded. She would call it back, but it was too late. Wh
y did it matter what he enjoyed? He was here for a day at most, then the weather would clear and he’d return to wherever he’d come from. She’d be left here, as always, a watchdog for her grandmother’s moods.

“A swim,” he said.
“And a story.”

She turned o
n her heel. Their faces were only inches apart. “A story?”

“
Mmm. Tell me about my father, and I’ll tell you about yours.”

She returned his gaze. “What do you know of my father?”

He reached into his pocket and took out the photographs. Selecting one, he turned it around. “This picture. I know where it was taken and why. I’m thinking you don’t.”

She plucked it from his hand and taking a step back, turned it toward the light. He was right. She had no idea, nor had she noticed her father was in the picture. But there he was, he and Levi and another boy, unnamed.

“If I make this deal, then what?”

He placed his knuckles on her cheek and drew them downward. “Then you take your hair down, and let me see you for the glorious creature you really are.”

***

He’d pressed her on purpose to see if she cracked, and she hadn’
t, not really. He wasn’t too surprised by that. What he was surprised by was his own desire to see her in the pool, to see her smile or laugh or act even the tiniest bit human. At least, that was the motive he told himself.

Her pulsed
raced, based on the throb at the base of her throat; she was nervous. However, she hid it very well. She also, avoided his question. Maybe he was crossing the line. Probably he was. It wouldn’t be good for him to seduce the old woman’s granddaughter. On the other hand, nothing in this house was as it seemed. He hadn’t expected to come here and learn about his dad and had the distinct impression that was part of his reason for coming, though no one had said so.

“So how about it?” he asked. He left his hand on her cheek, more because of its effect on her than anything else. “I promise to behave myself.”

“Do you?” she asked. “You ask me to swim, to ‘let my hair down’ as it were, with the condition you only want to admire me?”

“You are worth admiration.”

She smiled then. “You are smooth with your words, Andre.”

He dropped his hand to his side. “Do I get that from my father?”

She blinked at last, the tiniest flick of her eyelids. Why now? Why after all the other things he’d said did the mention of his father make her uncomfortable?

“I didn’t know your father,” she said.

Of course not. But she obviously had knowledge of him. She’d given him the photographs. He raised the photo he’d held before her earlier. “This one was taken at the annual regatta.”

A sign of good faith.
He’d share what he knew first.

“I recognize the setting because I’ve attended it in recent years. This is my father, obviously, and from the photo you had earlier, this would be yours.” He tapped the golden-haired youth in the center. “This young person is none other than Marvin Fitzgibbons.”

She made a short gasp. “
The
Marvin Fitzgibbons?”

He grinned and nodded.
“The very same. What were your father and mine doing with such a
wild
youth?”

She hesitated to speak. “They were young. Maybe this was before.”

He shook his head. “No. From what I’ve heard, he started his wildness in college, the same college our fathers attended.”

“So they met there.” She stated it rather than asked.

“Yes. I know only a couple stories about my dad, and this is one of them. How your father fits into it was not an issue until now. My uncle, the only person in my family willing to talk about my father, once told me they’d went on a weekend to Atlantic City – my dad, Marvin, and a couple friends. They took their tuition money, thinking they’d double it, and instead blew it all gambling. Poker, I believe. Broke afterward, they had to figure out how to buy enough gas to get home. But then someone approached them, looking for people to sail in the regatta.”

“Sail?
How would anyone know they could even sail? That’s a learned skill.”

“True. But didn’t your father know how?”

She gave a soft laugh. “Yes. But this man couldn’t have known that.”

“Oh, sure, he did. He’d have recognized him from newspapers, magazines, society pages. The
Delacroixs were all over the rags then.”

“So a complete stranger recognizes them and asks them to sail?”

He raised and lowered his shoulders. “Why not? My uncle said they accepted. I simply never knew your father was involved, but it makes sense now. Here’s your proof.” He waved the photo again. “Look at their shirts.”