“Dad didn’t tell me about Auntie Sylvia until Sunday,” she said. “I feel so bad. I wish she was still here.”
“So do I,” Ivy agreed.
There was something so poignant about the sight of Gabi’s long, flaxen locks brushing against Ivy’s silver halo of hair as they embraced that Zoey got choked up and she had to look away.
Then Mark came around the corner from the kitchen. “I think it’s time to flip the pancakes,” he announced.
“You’re right!” Ivy let go of Gabi and spun toward the kitchen, instructing over her shoulder, “Show Gabi to her room and then hurry back down. Brunch is almost ready.”
While their aunt disappeared around the corner, Gabi picked up her flute and carry-on bag and Zoey grabbed her other suitcase, since Mark clearly wasn’t going to give them a hand.
“Hi, Mark,” Gabi said as she squeezed by him.
“Hey, kiddo. You’ve gotten tall.” Mark patted her shoulder. Coming from him, that was actually a rather demonstrative gesture, however awkward. “Tall and thin. It obvious you come from the Winslow family line. Not like Doughy, here.”
When Zoey was learning to talk, she couldn’t pronounce her first name, so she called herself ‘Doughy’. Her family thought it was adorable and the nickname stuck for years afterward as a term of endearment. But she knew that’s not how Mark meant it now. He meant it as a crack about her weight. Not that it was any of his business either way, but she wasn’t doughy; she was muscular and athletic, a former soccer player. But ever since they were young, her cousin seemed to relish drawing attention to the fact that she wasn’t as thin as the rest of the women in their extended family.
Zoey ignored the juvenile dig. “Aunt Ivy usually isn’t so active at this time in the morning. You didn’t come here and wake her up to make breakfast for you, did you?”
Mark smirked. “You’re the one who told me she still loves to cook.”
As he ducked into the kitchen, Zoey said to Gabi, “Let’s take the back stairs. Be careful—they’re steep.”
Ivy’s rectangular, Federal-style home was built at the turn of the nineteenth century. Some of its original features included the narrow servants’ staircase in the back of the house, and the wider, split-level “grand staircase” in the front. A kitchen and formal dining room, as well as the “keeping” and “best” rooms, both with fireplaces, made up the lower level; and four bedrooms—also with original fireplaces—were found upstairs. As simple as the floor plan was, the house was spacious and elegant and Zoey hoped her niece would feel comfortable there.
At the top of the stairs, Gabi abruptly stopped. “I’m not going to use Aunt Sylvia’s room, am I?”
Did Scott tell her that Sylvia had died at home in bed? Although unexpected, her passing was peaceful. Even so, Zoey understood why the young girl would have been reluctant to sleep there. “No. You’ll be at the other end of the hall, across from me. You get the room with the fireplace—not that you’ll need to use it.”
“I might. I’m actually kind of chilly.”
“You are? I guess that’s one way you don’t take after your mom. She and I always ran hot. We used to beg our parents to let us sleep up on the widow’s walk because we thought it would be nice and breezy up there. Of course, they never did.”
“Yeah, well I’m from southern California, so this weather is colder than what I’m used to.”
Zoey was surprised she identified herself as being from California. She lived in California, but she wasn’t from there. Not originally, anyway. Even in terms of duration, Gabi had resided on the east coast longer than on the west. Zoey knew it was irrational, but it made her sad to hear her niece say she was from a state that Jessica had never visited. It was almost as if she were distancing herself from the first part of her life. Or from her mom.
I’m hypersensitive because I’m tired, Zoey told herself as she splashed water on her face in the bathroom. I should be glad Gabi sounds so proud she lives in California—it’s a beautiful place and it shows how well she has adjusted to being there.
She went downstairs into the kitchen, where Mark had begun eating. A few minutes later, Gabi came in and when she did, Moby padded over to rub against her legs.
“Aww, hi Moby.” She picked up the portly animal, turning him around and stretching her arms straight out to examine him before cuddling the monster cat to her chest. “You’ve lost weight, you poor thing,” she cooed, pressing her face into his fur.
Her sincere yet ludicrous remark must have tickled their aunt’s funny bone because for the first time since Sylvia died, Ivy laughed. Which made Zoey laugh, too.
Maybe having Gabi here will be good for all three of us, she dared to hope.
After Mark, Gabi and Zoey had eaten more blueberry buttermilk pancakes than seemed possible—their aunt had made a double batch and insisted they couldn’t let them go to waste—Zoey offered to do the dishes. Gabi went upstairs to sleep. Then, probably because Mark had woken her up so early, Ivy said she needed to lie down again, too.
Which left Mark in the kitchen drinking a third cup of coffee. Zoey figured he was killing time until he went to the golf club again, and as she cleared the table she tried to think of something to say to him. Ever since Mr. Witherell’s remark after the funeral, her cousin had seemed edgier than usual, so she had no intention of bringing that subject up. Nor did she want to quarrel with him again about his opinion that Ivy should move. So, she nonchalantly asked, “When are you going back to Boston?”
Mark immediately sounded defensive. “Why? Are you eager to get rid of me?”
“Just wondering what your schedule is like.” But why are you being so cagey about how long you’re staying on the island? Usually, you can’t wait to leave.
“Well, when I’m done with my coffee, I’m going up to the attic. Ivy said Sylvia stored a couple of containers up there and I want to look through them.”
Zoey was taken aback. Sylvia had diffidently shown her and Jessica the contents of the trunks once or twice when they were girls but Mark had never demonstrated any interest in her keepsakes. Kitsch, he called them. Most of the knickknacks she’d put into storage in the attic weren’t worth more than fifty dollars apiece, but they held a wealth of sentimental value to her. It seemed odd that he’d taken a sudden interest in his grandmother’s favorite doilies, bric-a-brac and the dress she’d worn when she got married.
Or was he hoping to find something else, something more valuable. Like… what? Mark knew that Sylvia had given her wedding ring to his father so he could use it when he proposed to Mark’s mother. After Mark’s mother died, his father sold the ring and used the money to buy a new one for his second wife. Zoey tried to imagine what else Mark may have been looking for, but she drew a complete blank. And it wasn’t as if she could have asked him about it outright; while Mark had no problem drilling others, if someone asked him a question he didn’t want to answer, he accused them of interrogating him.
So she squelched her curiosity, and at the risk of offending him by pointing out what he should have thought of by himself, she asked, “Could you please wait until after Aunt Ivy and Gabi get up from their naps? Otherwise they’ll hear you tromping around overhead and they won’t be able to sleep.”
“I didn’t plan on tromping, but whatever. I’ll come back this afternoon.” Clearly insulted, he left his cup on the table and headed out the door.
Couldn’t he have at least brought this to the sink? Zoey thought as she lifted the cup and wiped the wet ring beneath it. I’m not his personal servant.
As with other things Mark sometimes said or did that irked Zoey, this trivial gesture wasn’t particularly offensive in itself. But it bothered her because it reflected his deep-seated sense of entitlement. Or maybe it reflected what Zoey’s father had referred to as “poor training.” Which was his way of saying that Mark’s parents hadn’t taught him how to be responsible for himself and considerate toward others. And as much as it pained Zoey to admit it, because
she loved her great-aunts dearly, they had spoiled him rotten, too.
While she poured the rest of Mark’s coffee down the drain and washed his cup, Zoey recalled that when her family used to come to Sylvia and Ivy’s house for their annual two-week vacation, Mark was usually already there. His mother had died when he was seven and although his father remarried six months later, neither he nor Mark’s stepmother seemed to know what to do with him when school wasn’t in session. So, they’d ship him off to visit Sylvia and Ivy. In retrospect, Zoey realized it must have been upsetting for the young boy to know his parents essentially didn’t want him around. But at the time, she resented how self-centered and lazy he was.
Zoey and Jessica’s parents had always expected them to pick up after themselves, as well as participate in chores that benefitted everyone else. But Mark refused to clear the table or take out the trash. He wouldn’t help load beach chairs into the car’s trunk. He never even dashed through the house closing the windows when it rained or took a turn filling the basin everyone used to rinse the sand off their feet before entering the house. What was really maddening to Zoey was that her aunts hadn’t seemed to mind, especially Sylvia.
“It’s not fair,” she’d once complained to her mother as a child. “Can’t you tell him to take out the garbage tonight?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because what Mark does or doesn’t do is between him and his grandmother and great-aunt. And how your cousin behaves shouldn’t have any bearing on how you behave. You should help your aunties because you love and appreciate them and because it’s the responsible thing to do,” her mother had lectured her. “But if you really feel it’s such a hardship to set the table or dry the dishes while we’re here, just let me know and next year we don’t have to come back.”
Zoey smiled, remembering how effectively her mother’s threat had shut down her adolescent grievance. Years later, her mom admitted that Ivy and Sylvia had mollycoddled Mark’s father, too. But by then, Zoey had learned a lot more about Ivy and Sylvia’s history through the stories they’d shared, as well as secrets her mother confided, and she’d come to understand why they may have indulged “the boys.”
So, Zoey’s cousin had grown into a man who still expected his grandmother Sylvia—and more notably, Ivy, since she was the wealthy one—to cater to him. Not just in little ways, like getting up earlier than usual to make him breakfast because he had a craving for buttermilk pancakes. Oh, no. They babied him on a much bigger scale; like buying his first car and then paying for his speeding tickets. Giving him the down payment for a house he moved out of after less than a year. Compensating his attorney the first time he divorced. They even settled his gambling debts—and those were just the things Zoey knew about. It was safe to say there was no financial crisis or legal jam Mark got into that Sylvia and Ivy didn’t get him out of. According to Zoey’s mother, they had done the same kind of things for his father, too.
Although Jessica and Zoey had many private discussions about Mark exploiting their aunts, Zoey had followed her mother’s example and held her tongue about it in front of everyone else. It wasn’t her money or her relationship, so it wasn’t her business. As she matured, she came to the realization that if she had asked them to, her aunts would have helped her just as much as they’d helped Mark. But that was the difference between the two cousins; Zoey never would have expected Ivy or Sylvia to rescue her, especially not from a mess she’d made herself. Like allowing Erik to deplete my life savings, she thought ruefully.
But dwelling on her regret was a poor use of her time. With the funeral behind them, Zoey needed to resume her job search. After putting away the last dish, she decided to follow up on a few leads she’d researched earlier in the month. She tiptoed upstairs to get her laptop, stopping to peek in on Ivy and make sure she was actually napping and not weeping.
Downstairs again, she went into the living room, or the “keeping” room, as it was originally known. When the house was built in the early 1800s, the room was intended to “keep” family members warm. It was right next to the kitchen, where the woodburning stove provided a major source of heat, and contained a fireplace of its own, as well as a small beehive oven for baking bread.
Of course, keeping warm wasn’t a challenge any more; over the years the house had been modernized to include a heating system, as well as electricity and a landline for the only kind of phone Ivy ever used. The servants’ cramped quarters, both upstairs and down, had also been converted into bathrooms with functional plumbing long ago. The kitchen had been remodelled in the late seventies, but otherwise, except for essential updates and the occasional fresh coat of paint, Ivy declined to make many superficial changes to the rest of the house’s interior, including to its original wide-plank floors and simple but elegant molding and chair rails. Nor did she replace her numerous antique tables, chairs, lamps and mirrors because, as she said, they were tangible reminders of her family’s history.
She was especially fond of the “best parlor” or “best room,” which was still solely used for its originally intended purpose of entertaining guests on special occasions. It also housed numerous Winslow family heirlooms in two floor-to-ceiling built-in china cabinets. The best parlor’s décor had virtually remained unchanged, for better and for worse, for at least the past seventy years. Ivy treasured the room so much that not even Moby was allowed to tread across its threshold without explicit permission from her, and most of the time, the door was kept shut.
Zoey preferred the living room anyway, where she could settle into an antique mahogany lady’s writing desk in front of one of the windows facing the harbor. She opened her laptop to type an email inquiry, but the room was so warm and her stomach was so full of pancakes that she lowered the lid again. Crossing her arms, she rested them on her laptop and put her head down. Just for a minute…
Zoey woke to the muffled pitter-patter of Moby slinking across the floor behind her. But when she turned, she discovered it was her niece who had entered the room. The teenager yawned and gracefully folded her legs behind the coffee table as she took a seat on the sofa. Getting up to join her there, Zoey resisted the urge to tell her again how much she looked like Jessica.
“Did you have a good rest?”
“Yeah. Except when I woke up I couldn’t figure out where I was.” Gabi pushed her bangs out of her eyes and pointed to the dome-shaped, brick opening in the wall to the right of the Rumford-style fireplace. “I used to be scared to walk past the beehive oven. I thought bees really lived in there.”
Zoey chuckled, happy that her niece was starting to remember more about being here.
“Hey.” Mark had come in without her hearing him. He plunked himself into an armchair across from them, causing the antimacassar to slide off the back of the headrest. “What were you two laughing about?”
When Zoey told him, Mark said to Gabi, “That’s not so silly—Zoey used to be afraid of the dentil molding.”
Zoey had forgotten all about that and she was surprised her cousin remembered. “I wasn’t afraid of it. I was disgusted by it.”
“What’s dentil molding?” Gabi asked.
“It’s the kind of wood trim in the best parlor.” Zoey gestured to the edge of the ceiling opposite them. “But it’s not as plain as this crown molding is. Dentil molding was considered very ornate and at the time, it was expensive. So the original homeowner could only afford to put it in one room, the best one.”
“It’s really called dental molding?” Gabi clarified. “Dental, like dentist?”
“Sort of. It has the same root word as dental, dens. But it’s spelled d-e-n-t-i-l. It was named that because it’s composed of little blocks that look like teeth.”
Mark hooted. “Except Zoey thought they actually were teeth.”
“I wonder who gave me that idea?” Zoey tried to glare accusingly at him but she couldn’t keep a straight face.
“One day Zoey overheard Ivy say that a section of the denti
l molding in the best room was rotting out and it was going to have to be replaced,” Mark explained. “Ivy was really upset because it had been there almost since the sea captain, Captain Chadwell, first built the house.”
Zoey cut in. “He was actually a whaling captain. But we weren’t supposed to make that distinction, for obvious reasons, even though back in those days whaling was a highly regarded occupation. Anyway, I didn’t know what dentil molding was but I couldn’t ask my parents because they would have figured out I’d been eavesdropping.”
“So she asked me instead—”
“Big mistake.” Zoey shook her head, but she was enjoying this.
“I came up with a story about how Captain Chadwell was out at sea for so long, he got scurvy and all of his teeth fell out. Which was tragic, because the one thing his wife had always loved…”
Because Mark was laughing too hard to continue, Zoey picked up where he left off. “The one thing the captain’s wife always loved best about him was his pearly white smile. So when his teeth fell out, instead of tossing them overboard, he put them in a leather pouch and brought them home to give to her. At first, she was heartbroken but then she realized if she put the teeth on display she could be reminded of her husband’s smile even when he was at sea “right hunting,” meaning hunting right whales. Her china cabinet was already full of other valuables, so she secured his teeth to the molding instead.” By this point, Zoey was clutching her sides and she could hardly get the words out. “Mark told me that’s why Aunt Ivy referred to it as dentil molding. So, you can understand why I was so grossed out by it.”
Gabi wrinkled her nose. “Eww! That’s a terrible story.”
“What are you talking about? It was romantic,” Mark exclaimed with mock indignation.
Aunt Ivy's Cottage: A totally gripping and emotional page turner Page 4
