Seeders: A Novel (6 page)

A second trail cut across their path and they stopped.

“We keep straight, take the one in the middle,” she said.

“Where do the other two lead?” the lawyer asked as they continued walking.

Isabelle recalled that the path to the left was mostly thick woods and difficult to navigate, but the path going right had a lot of steep rocks to climb and a small pond as well.

“My mother called it Ice Pond because it was too cold to swim, and we skated there every winter.”

“There must be lots of places for a child to explore.”

“Not really. It took some imagination to have any fun by myself.” She glanced around at Sean, who was busy examining something on the ground. “George must have been lonely.”

Bonacelli nodded. “For a while he took in students. Poor kids from farms or working the boatyards, strays backpacking through Nova Scotia. He gave them work and a place to live. Some were grateful but most took advantage of his kindness. He finally gave up on civilization.”

They walked in silence, until he said, “Do you want to know what happened?”

She knew he was referring to George’s death and stopped abruptly. “Yes. I do.”

He paused beside her. “Your father jumped off the cliffs at High Peak.”

For a moment, she didn’t say anything. Then she nodded and continued their walk. “Were drugs involved?”

He shrugged. “I’m afraid the body was too decomposed. It was caught among the rocks and in rough water for days until we found him.”

She fell silent again.

“Your father was tormented. Some people are just made that way through no fault of their own. He was a good man, Isabelle.”

“Please don’t make excuses.” She glanced around the woods where George had spent half his life and wondered what kind of demons could have tormented him into such a tragic ending. She stared at the trees, silent witnesses, and whispered, “Perhaps he should have left the heads hanging.”

CHAPTER 5

THE TRAIL ENDED
, and the woods opened to a vast clearing of unbroken sky. In the distance, the house stood under yellow sunlight, surrounded by tall fields of ryegrass that blew like waves in the wind.

Right away, Sean ran up the path. Isabelle didn’t try to stop him.

From where she stood, the house was lovely. It was a grand two-story farmhouse, made of rustic fieldstone and white clapboard, with pillars and porches, a lot of glass doors and windows, all under a blue slate roof. There was a path of gravel that stretched toward the house, intersecting at the halfway point with another trail, a sweeping uphill climb to the cliffs at High Peak.

Isabelle wasn’t going to think about the cliffs. She stared at the house and felt a flicker of joy that eased the painful news of her father. It was an extremely personal moment coming back to her childhood home and she resisted the urge to run up the path, straining to slow her pace. Bonacelli could sense her eagerness and told her it would be fine if she walked ahead. She did, and was soon well past him.

As she got closer, the house wasn’t quite what she remembered. It was large by anyone’s standards, but Isabelle had thought of her home as a castle. There were significant signs of decay—missing tiles, collapsing roof, splintered window frames, crumbling chimneys—but none of that mattered. It felt good to be home.

Luke and Monica were on the fieldstone patio, squatting by a pit of ash the size of a child’s swimming pool, poking a heap of charred remains with a stick. Isabelle called out to Luke, but he didn’t notice, or at least didn’t respond.

The front of the house had tall, floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on the fields of rye and the distant woods beyond. There were three sets of glass doors with entrances to the laboratory, kitchen, and library, and in between were small rock gardens where her mother had grown wildflowers and strawberries. Nothing remained but some twisted stems that lay brown and withered in the dirt, but there were a few blossoming weeds, tiny buds of white and yellow.

Isabelle slid open the door to the library and a musty odor struck her senses. She stepped into the dimly lit room. It was enormous with a twenty-foot ceiling, the walls covered in dark cherrywood. In the shadows of the sitting area were overstuffed sofas and chairs upholstered in a worn floral print of burgundy and olive.

She pushed open the drapes, letting in sunlight and illuminating years of dust that swirled and hovered over the furniture. Memories flooded back, yet at the same time the house was a stranger. She didn’t remember the dreary bleakness of the place. The Persian rugs were thick with grime and the furniture smelled moldy from salt and dampness. She recalled her father, always practical, had suggested white wicker but her mother insisted on comfort and luxury.

Sean was sitting on the parquet floor at the foot of a bookcase that covered an entire wall. He was surrounded by piles of old clothbound books pulled from the shelves, some of George’s favorite authors: Hemingway, Shakespeare, and Dickens. He’d loved poetry and there were collections by Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath, and beatnik poets who were part of the British revival in the sixties: Roy Fisher and Allen Ginsberg.

Isabelle sat down beside Sean and rested her chin on his shoulder. She wrapped her arms around him and angled her head to read the title of the book in his hands,
Captain Courageous.
“Oh, that’s a good one.”

He curled up his legs and rested against Isabelle’s chest like a baby, never taking his eyes off the page. His hand reached back and stroked her cheek. It was how they spent many evenings after the accident when there were so many sleepless nights. She kissed the top of his shaggy hair and made a mental note to give him a trim as soon as they got home.

Isabelle knew the books would occupy Sean for hours, so she got back on her feet and continued the house tour, moving under the ornately sculpted archway into the great hall near the bottom of a curved staircase. Upstairs were six bedrooms that would have to be explored later. For now, she carried on with the inspection of the ground floor, peeking behind doors. A laundry and maids’ quarters were both empty except for piles of rubbish on the floor. A storage room was stacked high with old furniture, books, and cardboard boxes covered in thick dust. She warily opened the door to her beloved music room, where her father had played his cello and her mother accompanied him on piano, with young Isabelle doing her best to keep up on a small violin. The piano was gone and the empty cello case lay open and grieving. There was nothing else in the room but a broken music stand.

It was clear from inspection: The house had not been cared for. Everything was coated in water stains and mildew. There were cracks in all the walls and peeling paint on the ceilings. It would take weeks to clean and months to restore, a project she decided would not be attempted on this trip.

At last Isabelle found herself in front of her father’s laboratory. To Isabelle, this room
was
George. She took a deep breath, pushed open the doors, and the collapse of her initial excitement was complete. Gone was the sparkling white, high-tech room she remembered. The walls of the lab were sloppily painted in mustard yellow and the counters were bare of any scientific equipment. The metal cabinets were rusted and dull, and an old-fashioned sink hung lopsided and dripping. Pots of wilted plants were stuffed in boxes that filled the room with a warm, fetid smell.

Beside the back door, an old terrarium contained dirt, but nothing more. Isabelle squinted, imagining a little girl with a thin ponytail peering into the tank, cradling a tiny box with one hand and scooping away dirt with the other, burying her beloved toad behind a Venus flytrap. “It’s also a cemetery,” she said, and a slender man in a white jacket stepped behind her, placing a hand gently on her shoulder. His soothing voice whispered in her ear, “I think that’s lovely. Every terrarium ought to have a graveyard. Are you sure you’d rather not feed him to your carnivorous friend in there?” The girl replied, “Oh no, he needs a proper burial.”

Isabelle blinked away the memory and found herself standing once again in the bleak laboratory. The voice of her father sounded all too real, and at the same time completely wrong. There was something dreadfully wrong about the whole place, something unsettling about the house and the entire island. Growing up it had seemed crisp and clean, flourishing with life, excitement, and adventure. Now there was an eerie gloominess everywhere, an almost malignant force.

“This is much better than we found it.”

Isabelle startled as Bonacelli eased up behind her.

“I paid a service to clean up the mess. Not the best job, but you should have seen it before.”

“I can imagine.” She gazed over the rest of the room and her eyes fell on an empty gun rack on the wall. “What happened to the rifle?”

“It’s in the hall closet. I put it there myself. Of course you’ll want to keep it away from the children and out of Coast Guard view as well. Firearms are illegal if you don’t have a license.”

She didn’t remember her father ever touching that gun.

“We should get started,” he said, and led her toward the study. Halfway down the hall was the sound of an unfamiliar voice.

“Is there someone else here?” Isabelle asked.

“I’m sorry, I should have told you. Your father named two others in his will.”

*   *   *

Isabelle stopped at the open doorway. Both guests were having tea in the study: an elderly woman rummaging through a desk and an extremely tall, middle-aged man standing by the fireplace. She recognized Jules Beecher right away and was overwhelmed by the sight of him.

His long arm stretched across the mantel as he leaned down, stoking the flames with an iron poker. Jet-black hair fell slightly over his face and the firelight flickered across a handsome profile. Jules turned to Isabelle as if he sensed her coming through the door, and they stared at one another, surprised and breathless.

Bonacelli introduced Isabelle as George’s daughter. “This is Professor Jules Beecher, whom you already know, and Miss Ginny Shufflebottom, a friend of your father’s from England.”

Ginny offered a reluctant smile and went back to ransacking the desk.

Jules opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out. He hastily turned back to the fire, tapping the log with the poker, sending sparks up the flue.

“Have some tea and a bite to eat,” Bonacelli suggested to Isabelle. “We’ll start as soon as I get my papers in order.”

She walked to a silver tray and poured a steaming cup of tea. There were so many memories of her father in the study; a giant globe he used to teach her geography, a calabash pipe that had belonged to his father, a ladybug paperweight that Isabelle made from a rock when she was five. There was a framed map of Sparrow Island on the wall, which her father had sketched. He was a good artist and the drawing was the first time she’d seen the island in its entirety. It was the first time she realized her world was very small.

Isabelle looked across the room at Jules, a man who’d spent two years on the island with her family. She had been merely a child and he’d been twenty-two, but she thought he was brilliant and handsome, and she’d had a heart-wrenching crush on him at the time. Standing by the fire, he looked as though he hadn’t changed much. Still tall and attractive in an ill-fitting dark suit, although now he was much broader in stature and seemed more solemn than she remembered. A little gray at the temples. Isabelle couldn’t help feeling a twinge of attraction.

The elderly woman slammed a drawer, giving Isabelle a start. A friend of her father’s whom she’d met only once, Ginny looked to be in her late sixties, but quite fit and feisty. She was a diminutive woman with a pasty complexion, but her blue eyes sparkled and her even features implied that she was once quite pretty.

Her frilly lavender dress seemed more suitable for a party.

Isabelle watched Ginny approach Bonacelli as he opened his briefcase on the desk. She whispered something in his ear with a girlish expression and thrust her lip in a pout. The lawyer shook his head and walked to a cabinet, returning with a bottle of whiskey and discreetly pouring a shot in her teacup. She swayed into him, spilling a drop.

Isabelle put a hand to her mouth and smiled.

Luke and Monica came into the study and went straight for the fruit cake as Ginny watched with a scornful eye, gaping at Monica, who was dressed in the usual skimpy leather and black makeup.

It seemed as though the elderly woman was about to reproach the girl but instead she teetered toward Isabelle, scrutinizing her from head to toe. “My dear Isabelle, didn’t you turn out to be a pretty little thing? You look nothing like your mother.”

Isabelle swallowed hard. “It’s nice to see you again.”

“I’m surprised you even remember me, although I
have
aged quite well, don’t you think?” She didn’t wait for an answer but raised a gesturing hand. “Is that your son and … daughter?”

“That’s my son, Luke. Monica is just a friend.”

“Well. How lucky for your gene pool.”

Isabelle took a moment to respond. “I didn’t realize you and my father were close.”

“
Close?
Why, we were lovers for thirteen years. George should have told you. Heavens, I hope there won’t be any feuding over the will. You should know George wanted to marry me.”

Isabelle wished she had the courage to walk away.

Then Ginny looked terribly sad and pulled a tissue from the sleeve of her dress, dabbing her dry eyes. “You probably don’t know this, but I gave that man everything I had. I financed his work and paid to keep this entire island running.” The expression of sorrow turned into an angry grin. “Bloody fool, I was. Now I’m practically destitute and my only hope is to recoup my losses from this estate.”

“It was nice of you to be there for him.”

“Well, his entire family left him. What else could I do?”

Isabelle watched Ginny teeter off, baffled by how George could have loved such a woman. Then she remembered her own mother, a far cry from courteous.

“Don’t mind her,” a voice spoke from behind.