The Brontë Plot (25 page)

“You owe me an explanation. After all our time together, you owe me something.”

“That was weeks ago, James. You had plenty of time to ask
and when I tried to talk to you, you wouldn't listen. Twice you wouldn't listen.” Lucy stilled, trying to read his face. “Why now? And a phone call is much cheaper.”

“Some things are better done face-to-face, Lucy, and you never tried. You stood there and flat out told me you'd forged those inscriptions and who knows what else and you never came to see me. You never came to explain. And you tried only once, on the phone.”

“I tried that night and you walked out on me. And what was wrong with trying again on the phone?”

“I deserved more. We deserved more. And of course I walked out. What'd you expect me to do? You just stood there.”

“That's not how it went down, but have it your way.” Lucy marched away.

“This isn't my way!” James yelled. He didn't sound angry. He sounded like a boy, a young boy, denied something promised, something he'd desperately wanted.

Lucy dropped her hands. “What do you want from me?”

“I want us to be what we were. I want to go back. I want to look at you and see . . .” His hands dropped. “I loved you . . . And that was hard . . .”

“What was hard? Me?” Lucy watched him and it dawned, slowly. “Telling them. Telling your dad and your grandmother. For you, that was hardest.”

“It's more than that. It's all so messed up.” James continued in a soft exhale, “I want to not be such a fool.”

She stepped toward him, just out of reach. “You aren't that.”

“Sure feels like it.”

“Come on.” Lucy tilted her head down the path and started
walking. James walked beside her and for a few minutes neither spoke. The brown grasses were beginning to turn green and lengthen—some already long enough to bend in the breeze. The landscape was scrubby and stark with only a few trees breaking the sterility. Even secrets couldn't hide here.

Lucy started softly. “Do you know how to boil a frog?” At James's blank expression, she continued. “I've never tried it, but I gather you start with cool water and slowly raise the temperature. The frog never jumps out. Forging inscriptions started that way. It made a good story and the client liked it. Yes, it also added value and Sid liked that. He didn't know what I'd done, but was pleased with the sales. So the temperature kept rising. I didn't pause to notice and that's the problem.”

Lucy quirked a smile. It wasn't returned so she faced ahead, kept walking, and continued.

“To be honest, it probably didn't even start then. It felt like forging my mom's name as a kid so she wouldn't get angry at a bad grade, or making up a good story to cover for a friend in high school, or writing friends' literature papers in college 'cause I knew the novels best. Didn't you ever do that stuff?” She peeked at James. He didn't pull his eyes from the path.

She continued, “You probably didn't, but none of that ever felt wrong. It was what you did for a friend and those things made people happy or helped keep them from pain . . . And the books sold well and I . . . I enjoyed the stories. In many ways, I felt that same sense of excitement that I did with my dad when he'd weave stories for me. I loved imagining who might have owned the books and who they'd passed them on to. It's not an excuse, but it's the start of an explanation.”

“What's the rest?” James peered at her. “Of the explanation.”

“A warped worldview?” Lucy threw it out and checked to see how James received it. He clenched his jaw as if her reply was an evasion and it bothered him.

“I've thought a lot about that in the past couple days. A person's worldview. Helen took me to Westminster Abbey and we found a plaque for her favorite writer, or one of them, and there's this quote wrapped around his name. Here, I took a picture . . .”

Lucy stopped and pulled out her phone. “It said, ‘I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else.' It struck me because we all see the world through a lens, a unique lens. For C. S. Lewis, it was Christianity. You have yours; I have mine. They're different, and for you to understand me at all, you first have to accept that.”

“You can't have a lens that makes what you did right.”

“I'm not saying that.” Lucy closed her eyes and willed her face not to blaze the color of her hair. “Are you going to listen? 'Cause if not, I'd prefer to walk by myself.”

“Go on.”

Lucy started to walk again. “My dad was a con man, James. You know that. He told lies, stories, and convinced people to sign over stuff or sell him things cheap because they didn't know their true value. Weaving lies was his gift. I always said he left me the books, but what if that's not all he left? Maybe he trained me in ways I'm only now fully understanding.” She laughed, a low, bitter sound. “Those forgeries, those lies, aren't any different from what he did. Not really. Like father like daughter.”

“What are you doing about it? You can't keep deceiving people.” James laid a hand on her arm.

“That's obvious.” Lucy pulled away. “And that's what I'm trying to figure out, but I can't give you the nice neat bow you need.”

“What do you mean?” James stepped back.

“That's why you came, isn't it? That's what was hard. Feeling vulnerable in front of your father and your grandmother. Their expectations. And you had no answer for me, for what I'd done.” Lucy resumed walking.

“You can be so frustrating,” James called after her.

“So can you. But I'm trying to figure this out, James. Do you think I like what I've become? I hurt you. I hurt Helen. And Sid? Do you not think that keeps me awake at night now? None of this is easy, but I've got to sort it out, and dealing with your expectations and your burdens is too much. You walked away from me, James, and we need to keep it that way. Because I can't take on your issues as well as my own.”

She walked back to him. “You've got your own mess. Find out who you are and what you want. Not what they want for you, but what you want, because life is short and, as your grandmother says, regrets are exhausting. And I can tell you, they're also very, very heavy.”

Somewhere in her speech, James's jaw had dropped open. Lucy resisted the temptation to flick it shut with her finger. Instead, she sighed again and continued her walk to the gate. “I'm going to head back to see if Bette wants any more help today. You should come too and wake your grandmother, because even if it's ‘counterproductive,' it's the nice thing to do, James, the relational thing, the kind thing.”

As Lucy stalked up Main Street, she looked back repeatedly. James didn't follow. She found her anger and frustration building with every step, along with a crushing sense of loss that upset her more, until she practically hurtled herself through the front door and ran into Bette.

“What happened to you?”

“Nothing. Why?” Lucy stopped.

A smirk spread across Bette's face. “Go look in the mirror.” She opened the door to the tiny hall restroom tucked under the staircase.

Lucy followed inside, shutting the door before she flipped on the light. Once on, however, she debated flipping it back off. “This can't be . . .” She covered her face in her hands.

When she pulled them down moments later, all she could see was Sid's paint deck, splayed out on his worktable as they'd debated a selection of red and orange tones for Veronica Laughton's home. Lucy reached up and pulled at her hair. Usually so neatly tied back, it curled wildly à la Albert Einstein around her face and the color seemed to have burnished to a striking resemblance to Benjamin Moore's #1309
Moroccan Red
.

Her face was worse, but at least she could see it cooling from a #1307
Geranium
to a #1304
All-a-Blaze.
Lucy glanced down at her sweater and moaned. She hadn't even realized that she'd worn James's favorite, the one he said lit her hair on fire; now it clashed against all the other reds at war. It had morphed to a dull #1322
Ladybug Red
and lit nothing well. “Why? Why can't I just be a lovely #1329
Drop-Dead Gorgeous
?”

There was a soft tap at the door. “Lucy?” Bette called in with a little laugh. “Are you okay in there?”

“I'm humiliated.”

“Open the door.”

Lucy unlocked the door and plopped onto the closed toilet seat. “I imagined it all so differently. I stood out on that moor and I told James everything I'd wanted to say.” She waved her hand. “It didn't come out as I imagined, but it wasn't too bad either. I got to tell some of it . . . And he saw all this.” She dropped her head in her hands. “There's no recovery from this much red.”

Bette started laughing.

“Go ahead. I'd do it, too, if it were you.”

“I'm so sorry. It's not even all the red; you're so dramatic about it. I just meant your hair went a little crazy.”

“Nice try.”

They both heard a noise in the hallway. Bette peeked her head out the bathroom door. “He's standing at the desk. I've got to go.”

“Don't you dare.”

“Lucy, I'm going to the desk. Lock the door behind me until your face turns all creamy pale again.”

“My face is creamy pale?”

Bette rolled her eyes and slipped out of the bathroom. Lucy twisted the lock behind her.

Chapter 23

L
ucy didn't see James again. She and Dillon spent the afternoon with Bette, moving more furniture, and he spent the time with Helen, had even eaten dinner at her bedside. And when Lucy went up to grab a sweater and her tablet after dinner, she heard them laughing behind the closed door. She paused to listen and had to admit that, despite being angry with him, she was glad he had come. Helen needed him and was probably shocking and delighting him in equal measure with all the stories of her youthful exploits and saddening him with what lay before her, before their entire family.

As Lucy entered the Great Room to read by the fire, she found Dillon had already stolen her favorite chair. She slipped off her loafers and tucked into a corner of the love seat across from him.

“Bette told me to wait here,” he said.

“Do you want me to go? I don't want to interrupt something.”

“You're not interrupting anything. This is for the three of
us,” Bette called as she entered from the dining room. She carried a silver tray with a wine bottle and three glasses.

“One of Dad's best.” She poured out the wine. “In honor of his two favorite guests and my heroes.”

Bette noted the guest reading in the corner then sat next to Lucy on the love seat and lifted her glass. “Cheers,” she whispered.

“I can't move my glass,” Dillon moaned.

Lucy reached across the table. “If it's too tough, pour it in mine.”

Dillon drew back. “Forget it. I earned this. Cheers.”

They raised their wineglasses in unison and flopped into the cushions.

Bette lifted her glass once more. “Thank you both so much. I can't tell you what today meant. I took my mom up again while you were out to dinner to show her the two new rooms and she cried.”

“That bad?” Lucy quipped.

Bette swatted her arm. “That good. She loved it. And tonight I'll upload the pictures we took onto the website. It's a whole new look.”

“Let's name them too,” Lucy added.

Bette took another sip and considered Lucy's suggestion. “We've never done that. Dad thought it was tacky to play into all that.”

“I think it'd be fun. I get what he's saying but I also see that every sign out there works. They create links to our favorite stories and people come here to be a part of that. You don't come here to see a moor. You come here to see Cathy's moor and get
a glimpse of gothic love at its finest and ponder the incongruence of three lonely girls writing some of the most provocative literature of their age.” Lucy felt herself getting swept up in her sales pitch.

“Tell us how you really feel?” Dillon sent her a cheeky smile.

“I'm serious and I think naming a room, like the one at the top of the landing, ‘Earnshaw Suite' would be fun and not cheesy at all. Maybe ‘Varens' for that pink room we overhauled this afternoon or ‘Millcote' for the one with that huge apothecary cabinet. That's the village where Rochester went to buy all those gifts for Jane and all those drawers kinda reminded me of that. Like they'd be full of little treasures for purchase.”

Lucy put her fingers together like she was pulling out little drawers. Dillon laughed at her and she shot an “Enough from you” at him before she turned back to Bette.

“The names can be less obvious than you might find at other inns and it'll give you a chance to tell a good story about the town or the room when you check people in.”

“Creating emotional attachment,” Bette whispered.

“Exactly. It's all about emotional attachment.” Lucy tapped Bette's leg. “Decorating 101.”

“Psychology B-Levels.” Bette reached over and clinked her glass against Lucy's. “I think you're right. You were right about everything else today. The rooms look great. You have a real gift.”

“Thank you. I've always thought of myself as the nuts and bolts at work: procurement, billing, scheduling, and stuff. But
today felt really good.” She sipped her wine and watched the fire dance. “More than good.”

“Not me.” Dillon reached his right arm far over his left shoulder and pulled at his back. “This really hurts.”

Lucy opened her mouth to tease him, but stopped as Bette jumped up and nestled on the edge of his armchair.

“Turn,” she gently ordered him.