The House on Honeysuckle Lane (7 page)

C
HAPTER
10

“T
his could take us forever!” Andie waved her copy of Daniel's inventory.

Emma laughed. She held her own copy of their brother's inventory in one hand and a pencil in the other. “We'd better get cracking,” she said. “I'll start at this end of the room, by Dad's writing table. Why don't you start on the bookshelves?”

While her sister began to check the tightly stocked shelves against the inventory Daniel had compiled, Emma began, half-absentmindedly, to check off the vases and candlesticks and small statuettes her brother had so meticulously listed. When she turned her attention to the room's alcove, home to a plaster column on top of which sat a bronze bust of Shakespeare, she smiled. She had always loved this house, with its clean layout, relatively spacious rooms, and its various unique touches not found in the other houses on Honeysuckle Lane—and over the years Emma had been inside most of them. The alcove in the den was one such touch; the archway separating the dining from the living room was another; the bow window in the master bedroom yet another. Whoever had built number 32 had succeeded in balancing function with charm.

Though Emma had never regretted leaving Oliver's Well, she had always missed the house itself and had often thought of how small changes here and there might make it even more pleasant. Of course, she would have to own the house outright to make any changes.

Emma was so forcibly struck by the thought the pencil fell from her hand and onto her father's writing table. Since when had she ever even
vaguely
considered being the sole owner of her parents' house? But it wasn't so outrageous an idea, was it? She was discontent with her life as it was and she no longer had Ian to use as an excuse for not making whatever changes she might want to make. But . . .
No,
she told herself firmly.
It would be a mad, bad idea, living in this house, coming back to Oliver's Well. It would.

“Since when did Danny get to be such a fusspot?” Andie wondered, breaking into Emma's thoughts. “Look, he's catalogued every single book in this room! Even the paperbacks we had as teens. I can't believe Mom held on to them all these years. They're utterly without value.”

“Not even sentimental value?” Emma asked.

“
The Mystery of the Flaming Lake? My Dog Ozzy? The Best Boyfriend, Ever?
Do you remember anything about those books other than the titles?”

Emma laughed. “No. That's probably a good thing. Although a flaming lake sounds pretty interesting.”

Andie pulled a paperback with a particularly lurid cover off the shelf and tossed it onto the couch. “Danny got so worked up this morning about a little bit of spilled yogurt,” she said. “It seems unlike him to be so nit-picky. This whole estate business must really be driving him crazy.”

“And what about the remark about the baseboards in the living room?” Emma asked. “What does he think we're going to do, take Magic Markers to them? Or Windex to the Bullock desk?”
If I did buy this house and move back in,
Emma wondered,
would Danny relinquish his control of it or would he be checking up on me daily to make sure I hadn't accidentally burned it down?

“The family created a bit of a monster in Danny,” Andie said with a sigh.

“A loveable one.”

“Yes,” Andie agreed. “Most times.”

The sisters continued to work in companionable silence for a time, and Emma realized once again how she treasured their relationship. To be with Andie was to be with someone Emma trusted and loved entirely. And it had been that way right from the start. Being only two years apart, they had spent a lot of time together as children, playing with their dolls or kicking around a soccer ball or watching Disney movies, or simply being each other's companion on long summer afternoons when it was too hot to do anything but sit close to the air conditioner, hair held up off their sweaty necks. Those experiences, simple as they were, had created a strong bond between the sisters, a bond that continued still, even though their adult lives had taken them in different directions and they rarely got to spend time face to face.

“I was surprised when Danny suggested we come with him and the kids when they go to cut down a Christmas tree,” Andie said, breaking the silence. “Like we used to do with Dad, he said. I always felt horribly sad at the destruction of a living thing,” she admitted. “Emma? When Danny said we should come along because the kids want us there, did you believe him?”

“Not really,” Emma told her. “I mean, I don't think Sophia and Marco would mind us along, but I think Danny is the one with the sudden need for family outings.”

“You're right,” Andie agreed. “He's nostalgic for our youth. And in some ways our childhood really was idyllic. At least, it seems that way to me now, aside from Mom always telling me to watch my weight. Things only started to go wrong for me when I made the decision to marry Bob. To marry anyone, really. To settle down to a life I wasn't meant to live. But that was no one's fault but my own.”

“You felt under pressure from Mom and Dad,” Emma pointed out. “They could take some of the blame.”

“But why should they?” Andie shrugged. “I own my choices, right or wrong.”

Emma thought about that. She thought about the pressure she had felt to follow in her father's footsteps, even before he'd made her the offer to join him in business, and she realized that she still harbored some residual resentment over her mother's inability to appreciate her decision to make a life elsewhere. It was childish, holding a grudge, blaming her mother for being nothing more or less than who she was. Childish and pointless.

“Look, Andie.” Emma pointed to an old-fashioned black metal alarm clock on one of the bookshelves, where it was being used as a prop for a few copies of
National Geographic
. “This was Grandma Reynolds's clock. It's not exactly valuable. In fact, I'm kind of surprised Mom allowed it to be kept around.”

“Only because Dad wanted it to be,” Andie reminded her. “She'd never deprive Dad of something he really wanted, like his mother's old wind-up alarm clock.”

Emma laughed. “Do you remember the awful din this thing made? Really, your eardrum could burst if you were in ten feet of it when it went off.”

“I think it can safely go in the trash.” Andie raised an eyebrow. “After we ask Danny's permission.”

“I doubt he has any memory of Grandpa Andrew or Grandma Alice at all. They died when he was just one. He can't have much of an attachment to what little they left behind.”

“Maybe not,” Andie agreed. “Still, let's play it safe and check with him before we start loading up the trash bags.”

Emma nodded. And she thought of how their Carlyle grandparents had died when Andie was seven, she herself five, and Daniel just three. Daniel had only met William and Martha two or three times and probably had little if any recollection of them, either. “After all the grandparents were gone,” she said to her sister, “it really was just the five of us, wasn't it? We were a fairly insular family.”

“And now it's just the three. Well, we should include Anna Maria and the three cousins. The next generation. The Reynolds family's future.”

“Yes. Oh, look! Remember this?” Emma reached onto another shelf and picked up a small brass elephant from a group of small sculptures in the shapes of animals. “Mom and Dad got this in a flea market in Paris, wasn't it?”

“Yes, I think so.” Andie laughed. “Remember how Danny used to mispronounce elephant? ‘Ephelant' he used to say.”

“That was pretty adorable, actually,” Emma said, returning the elephant to the company of his friends.

“You know, I always wished I could go with Mom and Dad on their adventures,” Andie said suddenly. “Even when I was very young I knew I wanted to be somewhere
else
. Though it took me long enough to act on that desire.”

Emma smiled. “There were obstacles in your way. Like those parental expectations.”

“What about you?” Andie asked. “Did you want to jet off with Mom and Dad?”

“No,” Emma said. “Not really. But at the same time I felt kind of abandoned when they left. And I absolutely hated having a nanny here with us when Mom and Dad were gone. I felt angry all the time, like what right did this stranger have to tell me what to eat and when to go to bed. They were all nice, I suppose. Still, I couldn't wait for Mom and Dad to come home.”
Mostly Dad,
she thought.
It was always Dad for me when I was young.

“Danny didn't like when Mom and Dad went away, either,” Andie said. “I remember one time when he cried for three hours straight. He was little, of course. In fact, it might have been the first time Mom and Dad took a really long trip. I guess the poor kid thought they were never coming back. I remember I felt so bad that I couldn't comfort him. I tried, but nothing seemed to work.”

“You didn't mind the nannies, did you?” Emma asked.

“No,” Andie said. “I didn't. I did what they told me to do, but I never made any sort of personal connection with them. They didn't even register enough for me to dislike them. I suppose that's odd.”

“I think it sounds smart,” Emma said. “It was an effective way of coping with a stranger in the house who suddenly had the authority to send you to bed without your supper if you acted up. I wish I had been able to detach like you did, instead of feeling so grumpy about it.”

Andie smiled. “You felt what you felt. You were only a child.”

“So were you,” Emma pointed out. “But you were already on the right path, weren't you?”

Andie shrugged and pulled another paperback from the bookshelves. “
The Count of Monte Crisco: A Chrissy Clarke Culinary Mystery
,” she read aloud with a laugh. “Now, who do you think was reading this?”

C
HAPTER
11

“H
i, Jack,” Daniel called, though with his window up there was no way Jack Wiseman, driving past going the other way, could hear him. Still, Jack would have seen his wave, as Daniel had seen Jack's tip of his ubiquitous Greek fisherman's cap. It was one of the things Daniel loved about life in Oliver's Well, the strong sense of community.

Daniel was driving back to his home on Little Rock Lane from a private cooking lesson for a young woman recently out of college and sick of eating takeout for dinner. “I can't even make pasta properly,” she had moaned. “It always comes out in a lump! My mother tried to teach me the basics, but I never paid attention. Help!” The woman was the daughter of a frequent client, and a good one at that, so Daniel had put on his apron and gone to the woman's rescue.

It wasn't something he did often, give private lessons on the basics of cooking and baking, and he didn't advertise such services, but on occasion someone like this young woman approached him, desperate for knowledge. They were prepared to pay well, and without exception these private students were eager and attentive learners. With a business to grow and two children to raise and someday send to college, Daniel wasn't picky about how he earned his money. Besides, he'd discovered that he enjoyed the teaching experience. It was less physically taxing than catering parties for fifty or more people, and the look of pride on a student's face when he or she managed the first medium boiled egg or apple pie or classic white sauce was ample payment of another kind.

On the subject of teaching,
Daniel thought as he came up on the high school he and his sisters had attended. He remembered his high school years as if they had only just taken place. On the very first day of his freshman year, Emma, a junior, had declared that she would look out for him. She briefed him on what teachers gave less homework than others and what food to avoid in the cafeteria and what other kids to stay away from because they were bad news. And she had gone about it all discreetly, so Daniel hadn't felt he was being coddled in public. No teenaged boy wanted his big sister hovering over him, threatening his burgeoning masculinity and very fragile male ego.

Those four years had been happy ones overall. He had done well in his classes, played a fairly important role on the junior and then varsity soccer team, and kissed his first girlfriend by the time he was a sophomore. That she dumped him a month later hardly mattered because two weeks after that another girl caught his eye. Thinking back on his mildly lothario days, Daniel felt a surge of paternal protectiveness. There was no way he was going to let his daughter date until she was at least sixteen. And as for Marco, well, he was going to get a very stern lecture about responsibility and respect for women the moment he hit puberty.

Daniel's attention was briefly caught by what he thought was Emma's car just turning into the parking lot of the one Chinese restaurant in town. But another glance told him that the car was an older model Lexus, not Emma's.
Good,
he thought.
That means she's likely at the house, getting down to business.
Daniel still couldn't shake his irritation, the feeling that his sisters were simply going through the motions, not really
caring
the way he did about the family's belongings, the Audubon prints their father had treasured, the Bullock desk that had been in the Carlyle family for almost two hundred years. Those things were important; in fact, they were more than just
things
. They had meaning. They deserved respect, and only partly because they had been respected by Cliff and Caro. They were . . . they were visible manifestations of continuity.

An ambulance from Oliver's Well Emergency Corp was coming up behind him, sirens screaming, lights flashing, and Daniel quickly pulled the car to the side of the road. At least they had been spared that at the end, he thought, easing back into traffic, the mad dash to the hospital. Caro had died at home, peacefully, in the surroundings she loved, unlike her husband, who had passed away in the ER. Caro had been with her husband at the end; Daniel had been there, too. When the attending doctor pronounced Cliff dead, Caro had asked Daniel to give her a moment alone with her husband. And when a few minutes later his mother had come out of the cubicle where his father was already growing cold, Daniel had seen a profound change. He had known right then and there that Caro Reynolds would not be long for this world.

Daniel's lips tightened. He would never forget the final days of his mother's life. Anna Maria had been a blessing, supportive, kind, willing to do some of the less pleasant work of caring for a dying person when the wonderfully competent private nurse they had hired for Caro took her breaks.

“Do not go gentle into that good night. / Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” There had been no rage in his mother's final moments, no protest against the imminent arrival of death. The nurse had left the room to give Daniel and his mother privacy, allowing them to be alone together when Caro breathed her last. She was still beautiful at the end, still the elegant woman Daniel had always loved and even at times had adored.

The nurse, as if sensing her patient's passing, had come back into the room immediately. “I'll close her eyes,” she had said softly, but Daniel had refused. “I'd like to do it,” he told her, and he had, gently and finally. He remembered thinking,
I'll never see those eyes again. My mother will never look at me again, with all the love she had for me.
It was only then that he had broken down in a wave of hot tears.

Daniel felt his hands tighten on the wheel. He wondered if an adult could be considered an orphan. That's how he felt, orphaned and unmoored now that the anchors of the family, Cliff and Caro, were gone.

His children missed their grandparents, too. Cliff and Caro had been a fixture in their lives since the day they were born. Never a week went by without Sophia and Marco spending an afternoon at the house on Honeysuckle Lane; never a week went by without Grandma and Grandpa having dinner at their son's home. That is until illness and death had gotten in the way.

Not surprisingly, at least to Daniel, Rumi was the grandchild most affected by her grandmother's death; Caro had in some ways been a second mother to her, both before and after Andie's escape from Oliver's Well. If Rumi was a bit spoiled by the attention she got from family members seeking to make up for Andie's absence, well, that was understandable. Daniel had come to feel very protective about his niece. In some way he regarded Rumi as his own child.

Daniel turned onto Little Rock Lane and a moment later pulled into the driveway of his home, noting that Anna Maria's car wasn't there. He looked at his watch. Of course, he thought. She would be taking the kids to pageant practice. He got out of his car and realized he was looking forward to a good cup of espresso before dinner that night with his family. Sometimes, he thought, inserting his key into the lock of the front door, it was the little pleasures that helped soothe the deepest pain.