The House on Honeysuckle Lane (6 page)

Andie was right—Ian Hayes was a good man. On paper he was a real catch, partner in a successful architecture firm, in excellent health, an active contributor to the maintenance of the local homeless shelter, and unencumbered by bitter former wives or unhappy grasping children. But he was not the right man for Emma.

In the end the relationship had proved too much work, and for what? A degree of comfort? A companion with whom she could attend dinner parties and go on summer vacations? No, there had to be more to a relationship than convenience. There had to be love, plain and simple. The kind of love that made a man follow a woman off a bus; the kind of love that made that woman happily agree to marry him only months later.

With a sigh, Emma turned off the light and lay down once again. And this time, she quickly entered sleep.

C
HAPTER
8

A
ndie couldn't sleep. She had repeated a prayer that most often helped her mind settle into a state of receptivity. She had dipped into one of the several books she carried with her whenever she traveled. A few of the titles explored Buddhist practice and others focused on the spiritual teachings of Rumi, the thirteenth-century Sufi mystic, poet, and prophet.

But it was all no good. She shifted on the leather couch and sighed. She couldn't get the memories of Daniel's behavior out of her mind. Was it always going to be this way, her brother, as had her parents, not understanding—refusing to understand?—the choices she had made for her life? The Buddha had said: “Your work is to discover your work, and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.” That's exactly what Andie had done.

Well, Andie thought, if Daniel was determined to be aggressive with her this holiday, there was nothing she could do about it. In a few weeks she would be home in Woodville Junction, a little haven ten miles from the closest large town, ensconced in her three-room apartment in a residential building on property communally owned by Andie and her fellow spiritual explorers. While the ten or twelve people living there at any given time spent much of the day in each other's company, there was also ample provision for privacy and for essential prayer and meditation. The arrangement in upstate New York—so far from Oliver's Well—suited Andie perfectly.

“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment
.
” No matter how wise, Andie thought, the Buddha's teachings were never easy to put into practice. She reached behind her and pulled the cord on the table lamp. If she was going to be awake, she might as well have light as her companion. She blinked at the sudden illumination and then found herself looking directly at her father's armchair, over the back of which was draped a gorgeous tweed throw her parents had bought on their trip to Ireland one summer. Cliff and Caro had often traveled alone together. In fact, only once had the Reynoldses gone abroad as a family, and that was to Italy when Andie was sixteen, Emma fourteen, and Daniel twelve. Andie remembered it as a magical two weeks, replete with new sights and sounds, new tastes and smells. It was a trip that had first opened her eyes to the possibilities of travel, a trip that had allowed her to catch a glimpse of a future that might truly suit her. But only a glimpse. At that tender age Andie hadn't been equipped to envision much else besides what her mother had already decided for her older daughter's future—marriage and children, membership in a respectable women's club, and if she were tenacious, the presidency of the PTA.

Andie's eyes shifted to a photograph of her father in a highly polished silver frame.
Danny must be in this house every week to keep everything so shipshape and sparkling
, she thought
.
In the photo Cliff looked downright robust, a broad smile on his face, his thick dark hair waving back off his forehead, his fists on his hips. Nothing in the image betrayed the fact that Cliff Reynolds had a congenital heart condition that would eventually take his life. The Reynolds children had known about their father's heart condition from an early age, but for them it was just a fact, like their father's brown eyes or the round-faced watch he always wore. The knowledge carried no threat to their safety as a family, and that was because Cliff had never let the heart defect get in the way of a zest for life. If Daniel wanted a “horseyback ride” around the living room, he got one. If Andie wanted a tent pitched in the backyard for a sleepover with her friends, the tent was pitched. If Emma wanted to show her father a new move she had learned in dance class, Cliff Reynolds was always a willing partner, even if he just stood there as a support when his middle child got up on her toes and attempted a pirouette.

Caro, on the other hand, had often used Cliff's condition to guilt her children into behaving. “Don't fight,” she would say. “You know your father has a weak heart.” Or “Make sure your homework is done before dinner. You don't want to upset your father.” If Cliff was in earshot he would turn to the kids and wink. It was amusing, Andie thought, how her mother used her husband's heart trouble to justify all sorts of things, like trips to London or Japan or Hawaii. “Your father needs a nice long holiday,” she would say, though Andie had never understood how the sheer physical strain of busy airports and long plane rides would be helpful to a man with a weak heart. Still, she smiled at the memory. And then Andie's smile faded when she remembered how her mother had told her that her divorcing Bob would kill her father. “His death will be on your head,” Caro had warned. “If you still want to go ahead with this ridiculous idea, then you'll have to accept the consequences.”

But the divorce had not been a ridiculous idea and it hadn't killed her father, Andie reminded herself. Cliff and Caro had gone on having dinner at the Angry Squire and attending dances at the Lower Waterville Country Club and hosting cocktail parties for the members of the Women's Institute and their husbands. And, of course, traveling.

Andie shifted again on the couch, remembering when she had been alone in the house for weeks at a time when her parents took off for foreign climes, a young and unhappy woman with a small child. Though part of her welcomed the chance to live without what she sometimes thought of as her parents' surveillance, she remembered all too well how the silence of the house would soon begin to prey on her nerves. She liked it when Daniel would come by for a few days between semesters at college. Emma rarely returned to Oliver's Well in those years, busy as she was with getting an education and later, starting her own business in Annapolis. Even Bob, never neglectful of those he loved, had been overworked, trying to grow and improve the plumbing business his father had started, and his visits to Honeysuckle Lane were often short and distracted.

Andie crossed her arms over her chest in a consciously self-protective gesture, as if the depression and anxiety of the past could somehow still hurt her. The nights, she recalled, had been the worst. Alone in the house with Rumi, she would become overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy, certain that she would do something stupid or careless and accidentally put her child in harm's way. She imagined all sorts of disastrous scenarios. She would forget to turn off one of the gas burners and they would suffocate in their beds. She would spill scalding water from the teakettle over her daughter as she sat innocently in her high chair. She would trip while carrying Rumi down the stairs and the child would land on her head, killed instantly. Once or twice, when the panic was riding high, she had asked Bob to stay with her and he had obliged, until he began to date someone who, understandably, didn't want her boyfriend sleeping in the room next to his ex-wife. After that she considered seeing a doctor for an antianxiety prescription, but then felt afraid that she would accidentally overdose, leaving Rumi alone and helpless until someone finally came to find her, cold, dirty, and hungry.

When her parents finally returned from their travels, Andie would greet their arrival with mixed emotion, glad of their company and yet aware of their displeasure. For a few days they would be overly solicitous, as if they felt guilty for having left their troubled daughter and their innocent, helpless granddaughter alone. And then they would resume their usual behavior toward her, pleasant enough but always with an edge of disappointment.

And of course Caro always had something critical to say about how Andie had cared for the house in her absence. Well, Caro had been a perfectionist. Every picture frame in exact alignment, the house vacuumed every other day, sheets and towels neatly folded and stacked in a linen closet that would have made the most exacting housekeeper proud.
Not like me
, Andie thought with a rueful smile for no one. “I don't know where you came from,” Caro would say, shaking her head at her oldest child's messy habits.

Sometimes Andie still asked herself the same question. Where indeed had she come from? From the very beginning she had been a disappointment. Her parents had fully expected their first child to be a boy; he was to be named after Cliff's father, Andrew. But a girl had come along instead, and “Andrew” became “Andrea.”
I've never been what was expected of me,
she thought.
A miniature of my mother, a girl who excelled at the expected
.

Expectation. It could be a terrible thing when the expectations you attempted to fulfill were not of your own choosing. The expected would have been for Andie to give her daughter a more mainstream name. The expected would have been for Andie to stay in Oliver's Well with her husband and child, rather than for her to travel the world on her own. Sometimes, in very dark moments, Andie thought she would gladly give up all that she had achieved if she could turn back the clock and be a “normal” wife and mother. But only in very dark moments.

Andie scooted to a sitting position and reached for one of her books. It was Rumi's
The Spiritual Couplets
, a six-volume mystical poem regarded by some Sufis as the Persian language's Koran. Simply holding the book for a moment could bring Andie comfort. “Life is a beautiful gift from God,” she whispered to the room.

And then she smiled, remembering the text that Bob—her anchor—had sent her earlier that evening.
Happy yr here
, it said.
Hugs, B
.
Texting might be inadequate for what Andie thought of as true communication, but there was no denying it was quick and efficient.
Happy yr here, 2
,
she had replied.
Kisses, A.

Andie returned the book to the little table by the couch, turned off the light, and snuggled down under the old but immaculately clean blanket she had found in the linen closet that afternoon. Gratefully she welcomed the gift of sleep as it approached.

C
HAPTER
9

A
t nine
A.M
. sharp, Daniel pulled into the drive in front of the house on Honeysuckle Lane. He got out of his car—a Honda CRV that doubled as his work vehicle—and jogged up the steps to the front door. He didn't bother to knock or to ring the bell. Why should he when he had a key and was the caretaker of the house? He was the one who had had the boiler repaired that February, the one who knew where all the cleaning supplies lived. He was the one who religiously and ever so carefully polished his mother's most prized possession, a desk of pollard oak designed and crafted by the famous British Regency cabinetmaker George Bullock.

Daniel opened the door, went inside, and closed the door behind him.

“Who's there?” Emma emerged from the direction of the kitchen, a dish towel in hand. “Oh, Danny, it's you. Why didn't you knock? I know there's not a lot of crime in Oliver's Well, but you startled me.”

“But I have a key,” he said. And then he added, “I'm used to coming and going as I please. Sorry if I frightened you.”

Emma shrugged. “No big deal. Come on in. We're in the kitchen.”

Daniel followed his sister. “Still eating breakfast?” he said, noting the slice of half-eaten toast at Emma's place, a bowl of yogurt and fruit in front of Andie, the half-empty press pot of coffee in the center of the table.

“We both slept late,” Emma said. “Bad night for me, at least.”

Andie was on her phone and taking notes in a small spiral notebook in front of her.

“Someone from her publisher,” Emma explained, nodding toward her sister.

“I suppose you've checked into your office already?” Daniel asked Emma.

“Of course. I might be having trouble waking up, but I can't let my clients down.”

Andie ended her call then and greeted her brother. “Good morning, Danny. You're out and about early.”

“What's early about nine
A.M.
? Bad night for you, too?” he asked.

“Dreams. Exhausting dreams,” Andie said. And then she yawned widely and reached for the coffeepot. “Being a lucid dreamer is not all it's cracked up to be.”

Emma nodded toward the brown leather satchel slung across Daniel's chest. “Business?”

“Yes,” he said. “Family business.” Daniel took a seat across from his sisters and opened the satchel. “Here,” he said, handing a stack of brochures to Emma. “These are from the top local real estate agents. Will you meet with each of them as soon as possible and decide on one who can best handle the sale of the house? I'm assuming we want to sell, right?”

Emma nodded.

“I think it's probably for the best if we sell as soon as we can,” Andie said. “It's sort of awful to know the house is just sitting empty, when a family might be very happy living here. There was good energy here. There can be again.”

A blob of yogurt fell from her spoon onto the table. Daniel reached for a napkin and wiped it up. “Good or bad energy, let's try to keep the place intact,” he said, trying to keep a note of annoyance from his voice. “If we're going to auction off the furniture it's got to be in good condition. I've been keeping everything in pristine shape and I don't want it getting ruined now.”

“Sorry, Danny,” Andie said.

“Speaking of all you've been doing around here,” Emma said, “Andie and I would like to give you some money to repay what you've obviously put out stocking the kitchen for our stay. Would—”

“No.” Daniel knew that his tone had been harsh, but he hadn't been able to help it. “I'm not taking money from my sisters,” he went on. “I don't need it.” Daniel cleared his throat and removed a sheaf of papers from the satchel. He handed one set to each of his sisters. “I've made an inventory of the contents of the house. I need you both to go through it carefully and note anything I might have missed.”

Emma flipped through her set of stapled pages. “This must have taken you ages,” she said. “It looks very thorough.”

Andie put her copy on the table. “Most of this is just stuff, Danny. I really don't care what happens to the bric-a-brac. You and Emma can decide what to do with it.”

Daniel felt his frustration mounting. “We
all
have to make the decisions about the contents of the house,” he said firmly. “What to sell, what to keep, how to sell. It's what Mom wanted. Anna Maria can help you if you really feel overwhelmed. But remember, she's already stretched pretty thin.”

“Don't worry, Danny,” Emma said. “Andie and I will handle this on our own. Do you want some coffee?”

“No,” Daniel said. “Thanks. Oh, Emma. I talked to Joe Herbert this morning. He suggested I might want to reconsider the way Anna Maria and I have been putting away in the kids' college savings plan. He said because college is still some time away, we might want to be a bit less conservative than we've been.”

“I think Joe's probably right,” Emma said. “But as I don't have access to your accounts, I can't be certain. If you'd like me to take a look at anything, I'd be happy to, though I totally trust Joe. He hasn't steered us wrong yet.”

“Dad would be glad to see you taking an interest,” Daniel said.

“Why wouldn't I be?” Emma asked, shaking her head. “Sophia and Marco are my family.”

Daniel turned to Andie. “Well, we all know that Dad intended Emma to be his successor, but our Emma had other ideas. She wasn't interested in inheriting the family business.”

“What made you bring that up?' Emma asked. “It's ancient history and hardly news.”

Daniel shrugged. “No reason. Oh, and you should know that Mary Bernadette Fitzgibbon has been pestering me about our giving the Oliver's Well Historical Association the George Bullock desk. She reminded me the other day—as if I could forget—that in 1805 the British government ordered a suite of furniture from George Bullock for Emperor Napoleon when he was exiled on Saint Helena.” Daniel laughed. “Anyway, I wouldn't put it past her to approach either one of you if she runs into you around town.”

“Is she still chairperson?” Emma asked. “The estimable Mrs. Fitzgibbon.”

“No, she retired from that position about six months ago,” Daniel said. “Leonard De Witt took over. But she still plays a vital if unofficial role. Mary Bernadette Fitzgibbon
is
the OWHA.”

“Mom cherished that desk, didn't she?” Andie commented. “Passed down through the generations of her family like it was.”

“Maybe we should find out its financial worth,” Emma suggested. “If it's valuable, and I'd guess it is, we could sell it and split the proceeds. I'd be happy to give my share to Sophia and Marco,” she added. “Something else to stash away toward college.”

“Why not just let the OWHA have the desk?” Andie asked. “That way everyone can enjoy it, not just a single owner. It's a very beautiful piece.”

Daniel shook his head. “But it doesn't belong to everyone. It belongs to us, the Reynoldses via the Carlyles. By the way, Rumi agrees with me one hundred percent. She absolutely doesn't want the desk to leave the family. It's what Mom wanted.”

Andie smiled. “Do you remember the time when you were about five or six, Danny, and Mom caught you using crayons at the desk?”

Daniel frowned. “I had a coloring book. The desk wasn't at risk.”

“That's not what Mom thought.”

“She wouldn't even let Dad use the desk,” Emma added. “I'm surprised she didn't keep it tucked away somewhere under lock and key instead of in the living room where it was vulnerable.”

“She liked to see it every day,” Daniel said.

Andie nodded. “And she wanted other people to see it, too. It always elicited comment.”

“She was proud of it,” Daniel said firmly, “and rightly so.”

“Okay, so the desk stays here, at least for now.” Emma poured more coffee into her cup; Daniel hoped that she knew how to properly clean the filter in a press pot. If it wasn't properly cleaned the resulting coffee could be negatively affected.

“I've got to go,” he said, rising from the table. At the door to the kitchen he turned. “One more thing. I just had the baseboards in the living room painted, so try not to damage them. And don't dust Mom's desk. I use a special-formula polish.” Daniel loved his sisters, but he wasn't entirely sure they fully realized the preciousness of this house and all that it contained. In fact, he was pretty certain they didn't understand the half of it.

“Okay, Danny,” Emma said. Andie just nodded.