by Wendy Webb
Cassandra, Henry, and Richard were all nodding, exchanging knowing glances. They were seeing the outline of something begin to fill in, just like I was.
“So, you all are beginning to understand that we’re here together at Miss Penny’s bidding,” I said. “She gathered us here, personally. But we don’t know why. That’s what I hoped we could brainstorm about together.”
Henry rubbed his chin. “You said it was my story that got you thinking. Why?”
“You’ve got a prior connection to Cliffside,” I said, first looking at him and then around the room. “I thought—maybe we all do, too. I was here twenty years ago, as was Richard. Brynn’s grandmother was here as a patient. Cassandra and Diana, that leaves the two of you. Do you have prior connections to this place?”
Diana shook her head. “As I said this morning, I’m the odd girl out,” she said. “As far as I know, I don’t have any connections to Cliffside.”
Cassandra was sipping on her drink. “As for me, I thought you knew,” she said, slowly. “My grandfather was a patient when it was a sanatorium. He had TB. It’s funny—it’s like I can feel his presence here, even though I never knew him.”
“But he survived?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “He was the last patient to die at Cliffside.”
CHAPTER 24
Harriet had come in at some point in the discussion to let us know it was time for dinner. Her scowl had also let me know she was none too happy with the line of conversation, but that didn’t matter to me, not really. I felt like we were on to something, and I wanted to continue with it.
“Okay,” I said, after we had all settled in at the dining room table and Harriet and the girls had brought in the big bowls of stir fry and chicken fried rice, “so, it’s true, then. We all”—I shot a look to Diana—“well, most of us have a prior connection to Cliffside. So what?”
“What do you mean, so what?” Brynn sniffed.
I let out a sigh. “It’s a question to get people thinking, Brynn,” I said. “So, what? What does it matter that we all have a connection and we’re all here together now?”
Everyone was looking at each other across the table, puzzled.
“Maybe she only accepted people with prior connections to Cliffside,” Richard offered. “I mean, not just us, but everyone.”
I shook my head. “That’s not right,” I said. “I’ve been reading the application letters of the entire next year’s worth of fellows.”
“And none . . . ?” he ventured.
I shook my head. “None that I could see, not yet, anyway. And Diana can’t put her finger on a prior connection, either.”
I looked around the table. People were turning their attentions to their dinners, trying not to meet my gaze. They were losing steam for this idea, I could see that. Mysteries had been my life, but not everyone was as intrigued as I was. I caught Diana’s eye, and she shrugged. She felt it, too. I decided to let the subject drop, for now. It was pointless to keep pushing. Maybe I was the only one really invested in finding the answers.
“I’m just asking you all to let me know if anything comes to mind,” I said, finally. And the conversation turned to other things—progress on people’s work, the house and the grounds, items in the news.
After everyone finished eating, they all went their separate ways. I stayed at the table for a while, letting ideas and possibilities drift through my mind. But my thoughts were like so many phantoms, ethereal and wispy, without any real substance.
Richard poked his head around the archway. “I’m going out for a walk,” he said. “It’s a beautiful evening. Care to join me?”
Given what had begun to happen between us earlier, I knew I shouldn’t accept. I had already decided to be every inch the proper director of Cliffside. Miss Penny didn’t go off walking in the twilight with male fellows, I told myself. But despite all of that, I pushed my chair back from the table and smiled at him.
“I’d love to,” I said. Caution, meet wind.
He was right—it was a beautiful night. It was after eight o’clock, but there was still plenty of light in the sky. A slight breeze whispered around us, carrying the scent of lilac on the wind, reminding me of other times, my childhood, and, it seemed as I walked with Richard Banks, something earlier than that.
I steered us toward the path down to the water, thinking the shoreline at dusk might be safer than one of the trails through the woods. Animals crept out of their lairs at night, stealing through the forest, doing whatever it was they did when the light of day wasn’t shining on them. I had no wish to encounter a bear or worse. So we scrambled down the path on the cliff until we reached the bottom.
The shoreline stretched for miles in front of us, and we strolled lazily along the water’s edge as the lake gently caressed the sand and the rocks, polished by years of such activity. It was a hypnotic, soothing sound, and I could feel my breathing begin to keep time with it. That’s just what it seemed like, this great lake’s respiration, its breathing soft and steady, as though it, too, were winding down after a long day.
Richard had a camera slung over his shoulder, and as we walked, he began snapping photos. We didn’t say much at first. I was content to listen to the lake’s breath and watch him capture the beauty of the landscape around us.
“I think we’re going to get quite a lovely sunset,” he said, finally.
“You’ve seen sunsets all over the world,” I said. “How do you think this one will compare?”
He smiled at me. “Oh, I think it will stack up against the best of them.”
We walked a bit farther, when something struck me. “Your application, what I have of it, says you retired,” I began. “But you’re a little young to retire, aren’t you? Either that or you’re extremely well preserved.”
“I prefer to think I’m both of those, thank you,” he said, grinning. “But you’re right. I’m not exactly retirement age.”
I wanted to know why he had given up his career of traveling to exotic locales, camera in hand, but I didn’t ask the follow-up question. What some people called curious, others called nosy. I waited for him to continue, if he so chose.
“I got tired of the constant travel,” he said, shrugging. “It’s a young man’s game, that. Hopping from continent to continent.”
“Oh, the tedium of it all,” I teased him.
He smiled. “Don’t misunderstand, I’m grateful for everything I’ve been able to do,” he said. “I’ve seen, with my own eyes, up close and personal, what most people only see in pictures.”
“In your pictures.”
“Well, yes,” he said. “But, speaking of tedium. People think it’s exciting, photographing animals in the wild, and it is. But glamorous it is not. Those dramatic shots don’t just happen in an instant. Sometimes it takes hours or even days. So, there’s a lot of waiting and watching through the lens. And crouching. And hiding.”
“And bugs.”
“Ach, yes, the bugs,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “And weather extremes. I’d be on the African plains stalking elephants one week and in the Arctic following a polar bear family the next.”
“From a safe distance, I assume.”
He smiled. “Sometimes not so safe. I took my share of chances.”
“Is that why you stopped? The danger?”
“An angry mother bear had something to do with it, yes.” He raised his eyebrows. “Like I said, it’s a young man’s game. When I got out of hospital—”
I broke in. “Hospital?”
“Indeed,” he said, lifting his shirt to show me a long scar across his abdomen. “She got me. I started thinking maybe it was time for a change.”
“That’s when you opened your gallery?”
“I did,” he said. “In Saint Ives. I started yearning for a quieter sort of life, one without all of that travel and danger. It was as though I was settling down. The only problem was, I didn’t have anyone to settle down with.”
And there it was a
gain, the electricity charging the air. It was shimmering around us, as though the very molecules in the air were vibrating and humming. An image floated through my mind and filled up my vision—I could see us lying there together, in the sand, faces close, his hand stroking my cheek. But it wasn’t this beach, it was someplace else, a different shoreline, a different time. I could smell the salt air and taste it on my tongue.
“And, what about you, Norrie Harper?” he said, his voice breaking my vision. “You’re living here at Cliffside on your own. But is there anyone in your life I should be concerned about?”
Our eyes locked in the same mesmerizing gaze we had begun in the drawing room hours before, a gaze that seemed to reach deeply into my past, as though there were nothing about me this man couldn’t see. “Why would you be concerned?” I managed to say.
“Because,” he said, his voice almost a whisper. Before I knew it, he pulled me close, wrapping his arms around my waist, our faces nearly touching. “Because I’ve wanted to do this since the moment I laid eyes on you.” And he kissed me then, the tenderest, gentlest kiss I’ve ever felt. My legs were shaking as I put my arms around his neck and drew him closer, wanting him closer still, until reason got the better of me. I pulled away and cleared my throat.
“Why, Mr. Banks, I do believe you’re making a pass at me,” I said, my voice wavering as I tried to lighten the mood.
“You picked up on that?” he said with a grin.
He turned the camera on me, then, and began snapping. I laughed and put out a hand toward the lens. “I must look a fright.”
“Not a bit,” he said. “You look lovely.” He kept snapping frames as my face heated up.
“Come on, then,” he said, still pointing the camera at me, “give me your best fashion model pout. This is for the cover of Vogue.”
I struck a pose and smiled at him. He snapped a few more frames, but then he gasped and lowered the camera, looking just over my shoulder.
“That bad?” I winced.
“No,” he said, quickly. “Not at all. It was just . . .” He was still staring behind me, his mouth open. I turned to look, but there was nothing but sand and rocks and water.
“Richard, what is it?”
He shook his head. “Damned if I know,” he said. “I could’ve sworn someone was standing behind you just now. I thought I saw it through the lens. But . . .”
A shiver ran through me.
“Through the looking glass,” I said, raising my eyebrows. “It’s our world, but not quite.”
His scowl, directed toward whatever it was he thought he saw, told me this wasn’t a joke to him. He let his camera dangle from its strap around his shoulder and put a hand on my back. “Come on,” he said. “I think it’s time we get back.”
I looked up to the west and saw a dark, gray bank of clouds had moved in—I had been so entranced with our conversation, and that kiss, I hadn’t noticed the weather building.
“Good idea,” I said, pointing up at the cloud and thinking of Nate and how we had been caught out in a storm. “It looks like a storm is coming.”
He squinted at the sky. “That kicked up quickly, didn’t it?”
“It happens like that here,” I said. “Before you know it, the weather will change. It’s one reason why boating on Lake Superior is so dangerous. You never know when the wind will change and bad weather will roll in.”
We walked together back the way we had come, a bit faster now, his hand on my back all the while. I made no move away from him. It felt good and right to have him steering and protecting me.
Night was falling when we reached the path that snaked its way up the cliff.
A loud rumble of thunder rolled as a huge bolt of lightning lit up the sky and drops of rain began to fall.
“I think Mother Nature has something against us today.” He smiled. We scrambled up the path, but not fast enough. The sky opened up and it began to pour, soaking us to the skin as we hurried across the lawn toward the house. Just then, a pang of guilt zipped through me. I had done the same thing with Nate not so long ago.
CHAPTER 25
“This is the second time in one day that we’ve been drenched while fully dressed,” Richard said as we opened the veranda doors and made our way into the house. “That’s got to be some kind of—”
His words trailed off when we both realized the lights were out in the house. Some, albeit murky, light from the windows was illuminating the area just inside the veranda doors, but beyond that, it was inky blackness. I wasn’t sure if I could find my way to the stairs without tripping over something.
“Oh, great,” I said, trying to adjust my eyes to the darkness. “There must be a power outage.”
“Do you know where the fuse box is?” Richard asked. “I could probably muddle my way through throwing the proper switches.”
I groaned. “I really have no idea,” I said. “I’m still getting used to this place. But I’m sure—”
I cut off my own thought when I heard footsteps scurrying across the marble floors. Harriet emerged from the darkness carrying two flashlights.
“I thought you two could use these on your way upstairs,” she said, flipping each one on in turn and illuminating herself with an eerie glow. “You’re going to catch your death if you don’t get out of those wet things.”
All at once I felt like a kid skipping school caught by the headmistress.
I handed a flashlight to Richard and took one myself. “Thank you, Harriet,” I said, trying to sound as dignified as possible. “Can I assume Mr. Baines is handling the fuse box?”
She shook her head. “We haven’t blown a fuse,” she said. “It’s an electrical outage. Mr. Baines heard from a friend in town—a transformer was hit by lightning a short while ago, and half the county is dark.”
That was probably the huge bolt of lightning we had seen.
“Ah,” I said. “So the lights just recently went out, then?”
“Yes, ma’am,” she said. “Within the last few minutes.”
Only then did I think about the fellows. It was my job to see to their needs, and when the place had been plunged into darkness, I was nowhere to be found. For the second time in one day I was chagrined at myself. Some director I was turning out to be.
“Have you checked on any of the fellows?” I asked her.
“No, Miss Harper,” she said, giving me a stern look. “That will be up to you.”
Zing. Why did I always feel like I was a schoolgirl and Harriet was grading my performance?
She reached into her apron and pulled out a plastic bag containing several boxes of wooden matches. “All of the fellows have flashlights in their desk drawers, candles in their rooms, and fireplaces, of course. There are extra candles in the linen closet on the second floor, across from the director’s study. And here are some extra matches”—she held the bag out to me—“just to make sure they have what they need. There’s no telling how long the power will be out, and there’s no use wasting flashlight batteries if they don’t need to.”
I took the bag from her. “Right,” I said. “I’ll go upstairs now and check on everyone.”
Richard took me by the arm and directed his flashlight ahead of us. “We’ll go together,” he said to me and then turned to Harriet. “Thank you, Mrs. Baines,” he said, flashing her a smile. “I’ll make sure Miss Harper gets upstairs safely.”
And we walked off into the darkness as Harriet muttered something under her breath.
Upstairs, we found everyone out of their rooms, clustered together in the hallway. Henry and Cassandra had found their flashlights and were illuminating the dark, casting monstrous shadows that seemed to dance and sway on the walls.
“Swimming, at this hour?” Henry asked, grinning at us.
“It’s getting to be a habit,” Richard said, patting him on the arm as they shared a laugh.
“I see you found your flashlights,” I said to Henry and Cassandra. “For you others, they’re in the top drawer of you
r desks.”
“How long is the power going to be out?” Brynn asked, shivering. “I was planning to work tonight, and I only have a few hours of battery life left on my laptop.”
“According to the all-knowing, all-seeing Harriet, a transformer in town was hit by lightning,” I said. “Half the county is dark, she told me. So it might be awhile.”
Groans all around.
“Listen, everyone,” Richard said. “I’m going to get out of these sodden clothes, but then I’ll come to each of your rooms and light a fire in your fireplaces.”
“Good idea,” I said, smiling at him. “And you’ve all got candles in your rooms and here”—I reached into the plastic bag and began handing out the boxes of matches—“in case you’re running low. We have extra candles, too, so if you need some, just let me know.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Cassandra said. “I’ve got a fire and some candles already lit, so I’m good to go.” She broke into a conspiratorial smile. “And I took the cognac from the sideboard when I went upstairs after dinner,” she admitted. “Who wants a brandy by candlelight?”
The other fellows gave me questioning looks. Was this allowed? I was sure Miss Penny wouldn’t have approved. But, I reminded myself, I was the director of Cliffside now.
I grinned. “Sounds good to me,” I said, shivering a bit in my wet clothes. “Give me a few minutes to change, and I’ll join you. Anybody else?”
“Delightful!” Henry said.
“I’m in, too,” Diana chimed in.
Richard caught my eye and winked. “What better thing to do on a stormy night than to chat with fellow artists around a roaring fire,” he said. “It’s almost like you planned this, Miss Harper.”
“We do what we can.” I grinned at him. And then I turned to Brynn. “How about you? I know you said you wanted to get some work done, but won’t you join us for a bit?”
