Fiona

by Meredith Moore

  “Everything in this master suite is still the way they left it,” Alice says, turning off the vacuum and noticing what I’m looking at. “No one knows what to do with it, and no one wants to bother Charlie about it.”

  This room is a time capsule, then. Preserving all of Lily’s secrets.

  Who was this woman who used to be my mother’s best friend? Who wrote to my mother, probably from this very desk, telling her she would be her confidante? Why did she ask me here after all those years I spent with my resentful aunt? Why did she trust the daughter of a schizophrenic to look after her own child? The questions scream in my head, and soon I find myself staring at the desk drawer underneath all those photographs. What secrets did she hide in there? As soon as Alice goes back into the main room, I hurry around the desk and try to pull the drawer open, but it’s locked.

  I snatch my hand back as if the knob has burned me. What was I thinking? I can’t go snooping around in some dead woman’s personal things just because she used to know my mother. Whatever’s in there is meant for Charlie and Poppy to go through when they feel up to it. Why on earth would I have followed such a strange impulse? What kind of delusion is this?

  I can feel the blood drain from my face. What’s the matter with me?

  I swallow, hard, and shake my head. I straighten my shoulders and take a deep breath. Just forget it. Nothing’s wrong. I walk as steadily as I can back into the main room and, with a quick wave to Alice, make my way to the safety of my own room.

  CHAPTER 8

  Charlie finds me one morning a week later in my usual spot in the library. I’m reading through Poppy’s most recent history test, which she got a C on, so I can go over her missteps with her this evening. It looks like we’ll have to do a refresher course on Mary, Queen of Scots.

  Charlie’s been locked up in his office the past few days, emerging only for breakfast and dinner, and since I don’t want to bother Alice too often, I’ve gotten used to being on my own during the day again. Seeing him here, now, makes me feel as if I’ve been caught doing something wrong. Or maybe that’s just the way he’s looking at me.

  “I thought I’d find you here,” he says. “You know there are other rooms in this house, right?”

  “Yes, but none of them have free books,” I say with a shrug. I’m having trouble meeting his eyes, and I take a deep breath, remembering everything Alice told me. He’s just a player. I know how to deal with players. Even the ones trying to turn a new leaf.

  He leans against the bookshelf next to me, boxing me in. He wears a light blue dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up his forearms. It fits him perfectly.

  “How do you like your new life so far?” he asks.

  “It’s a bit . . . confusing,” I say, surprised at my honesty. Why does he care? Or, rather, why does he feel the need to make pointless conversation? He’s probably just trying to be nice to his sister’s nanny, I remind myself.

  “How so?” he asks, his eyes narrowing in interest.

  I try to formulate a response that won’t make me sound like a complete idiot and finally settle on what Alice said. “This place is like its own little world out here.”

  “It can be a bit isolating,” he agrees.

  “But it seems like Poppy might tolerate me now, which is nice,” I say with a wry smile.

  “And what do you think of me?” he asks, surprising me.

  “I don’t know,” I start, accustomed now to being so caught off guard. Accustomed to the way it makes me much too honest with him. “You’re a bit . . . unknowable.”

  He wrinkles his forehead a little, as if he doesn’t like that I find him unknowable, but he doesn’t comment. “What do you do while Poppy’s in school?” he asks after another suspended moment.

  I look around, as if I’ll find the answer among the shelves. “This,” I answer.

  “You don’t play the piano?” he asks, nodding to it, and I remember how he found me hovering over the keys that first day.

  I shake my head.

  “Why not?”

  As I try to think of a way to explain it, I realize how ridiculous it will sound. “It seems too beautiful for me to play it.”

  “It’s meant to be played.”

  “By someone who knows what they’re doing. Someone like my mom.”

  He frowns. “Come on,” he says.

  “Charlie—” I start to protest, but he takes my hand, and all words float out of my head.

  “I have to hear you play,” he insists, while I try to get my breathing under control. It’s as if his touch sears right to the core of me, making my heart race. “How about this? For every song you play, I’ll tell you a secret.”

  “A secret?” I repeat clumsily. He’s still holding my hand.

  “One secret for one song. Then maybe I won’t seem so unknowable.”

  He pulls me down from the windowsill and lets go of my hand, placing his own on the small of my back to propel me forward. I want to lean into it, turn and slide my arms around his neck, pull him into me, caress his lips with mine.

  The impulse shocks me, and I nearly stumble. Of course. Of course I’m attracted to the exact wrong person.

  I can’t help it. He makes me feel calm, quiets that doubting voice in my head. I feel settled, present in my own skin around him. He makes me feel unsettled, too, but in a good way.

  I have to stop this, I think as he guides me toward the piano. These feelings will compromise my new life here if I let them go any further.

  It’s just a stupid crush, I tell myself. It will pass.

  He stands behind me as I arrange myself on the piano bench. Gingerly, I place my fingers on the keys, wondering why the hell I thought I could do this. How am I supposed to play with him standing there, watching me? I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and before I can stop myself, the song begins. The notes of the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata creep from the keys, filling the room with the language of longing and regret. A slow, quiet ache. It was the first song I ever heard my mother play, on that beautiful piano in Mrs. Alvarez’s bungalow. That moment, that song and the emotion she put into it, changed my view of her forever. I understood, even then at such a young age, that her life held secrets I would never know. That, before she was my mother, she had known a whole world of passion and heartache.

  It’s only when the sound of the final note fades that I remember that Charlie is standing behind me. That I have opened up this most secret part of me to his judgment. The realization makes me release a stuttered gasp.

  He says nothing, and I summon the courage to turn and look at him. In his bright green eyes, I can see the same loss, the same desperation that always fills me when I hear this song.

  I stand, stepping around the piano bench so that there’s nothing between us.

  “You should play,” he says finally. “Every day. This piano needs you.” He breaks his gaze from mine, and I cross my arms over my chest.

  “I was at the pub that day because I’m a coward,” he says, and it takes me a moment to realize that he’s telling me a secret, as promised. “I was supposed to catch the train to Glasgow a few hours earlier, but I couldn’t.”

  “You were late?” I ask.

  “No,” he says. “I stood on the platform and watched it leave without me. I just—I couldn’t leave home just yet. I didn’t feel ready to face the world. So I ducked into the pub and caught the next train.” He finally looks at me. “I must sound ridiculous.”

  “No,” I say. “I can see how it would be hard to face all that responsibility after everything that happened.”

  “I hated leaving Poppy, too, even if she doesn’t believe it. I still don’t know if I made the right choice.”

  “You’re here now.”

  He rubs a hand across his forehead. “I don’t know if that makes it any better,” he says. “And now that the
board approves of me, I’ll be going to Glasgow every few weeks. The paper’s not doing very well—hasn’t been for ages. I’ve got ideas on how to fix it, but that takes money we don’t have, and the board’s nervous. So I have to keep abandoning her.”

  “She’ll understand,” I say, though neither of us knows if that’s true.

  A knock from the open doorway startles us both, and we snap our heads to look. It’s Mabel, clearing her throat, her eyes sharp as she examines both of us. “Someone at the door for you, Master Charlie,” she says.

  He glances at me only once before following her out into the hallway, and I collapse back onto the piano bench.

  How could I have opened myself up to him like that? I’ve never played in front of anyone but my mother before. Even at school in Mulespur (which had the funds for a band only thanks to the football boosters, who couldn’t bear the idea of their precious varsity players going out on the field without musical accompaniment), the music teacher let me play the piano after-hours, after everyone had gone home, so that I wouldn’t have an audience.

  But I can’t help but admit that the brief moment when Charlie opened up to me made playing in front of him worth it. A secret for a song. I’ve never made such a thrilling deal.

  I bury my head in my hands. I like him. I can’t believe I didn’t realize it before. But then again, I’d never experienced anything like that violent shiver I felt when he placed his hand on the small of my back. Everything with Charlie feels so . . . new. I don’t know how I could have let this happen.

  I push myself back up, determined to make it to my room before I start hyperventilating over my stupidity.

  But when I hear raised voices as soon as I step out into the hall, I can’t help but follow them to the front door.

  Charlie stands with his back to me, facing a girl I can barely see behind his frame. But I hear her voice, loud and shrill in the empty space of the foyer. “. . . didn’t mean for it to happen, but it did. And we need to deal with it.”

  “Deal with it how?” Charlie says, his voice low and strained. I press myself against the hallway wall, officially eavesdropping now. I try to feel guilty about that, but my curiosity is overpowering. Who could make Charlie this upset?

  “I want to keep it, Charles,” the girl answers, her voice softer, throatier now. Charles? Who would call him Charles? “I want us to keep it.”

  There’s no question now about her meaning, whoever she is. She’s pregnant, and Charlie is about to become a father.

  I retreat as quietly as I can, tiptoeing back down the hall. I reach the servants’ staircase and sprint all the way up, flinging myself into my room.

  Who is she? Could that be Blair, the ex-girlfriend, or just some random local girl he slept with once and forgot about? What will he do? I barely know him, but somehow I think that, no matter who she is, he’ll step up to his responsibility and be a father to their kid, the way he’s stepped up to his responsibilities with Poppy. He just doesn’t seem like the deadbeat-dad type, whatever his reputation.

  But I don’t know that for sure. I don’t know him. And he’s my boss, I remind myself for the millionth time. I can’t be sad, because I haven’t lost him. Because he was never mine to begin with. He’s going to be a father, and he’ll probably marry that girl, and I’ll just remain the governess up in the attic who watches it all happen from the periphery. And then, at some point, I’ll go back to my old life, and this flashing wound will be nothing but an amusing memory.

  I hope.

  CHAPTER 9

  I manage to avoid the girl, whoever she is, for the entire morning. But when I go out to Albert’s car to pick up Poppy from school in the afternoon, I nearly run right over her.

  She’s lying on her back in the stone courtyard in front of the castle, like a cat basking in the sun, her eyes closed, one hand resting on her flat stomach. She wears black skinny jeans and a loose light gray T-shirt, her dark hair spread out against the gray stones beneath her.

  I must have stopped too short and noisily, because she moves her hand to shield her eyes from the sun and looks over at me. “Who are you?” she says, her voice disinterested despite the bluntness of her question. She’s beautiful, in a feline sort of way. Her eyes—slate blue, a color I’ve never seen before—are narrow, almond-shaped, and the line of her nose is long and straight. Her brown hair is so dark it’s almost black, and it shines in long, loose waves. I’m suddenly very conscious of the ever-present frizz in my red curls.

  “I’m Fee,” I say, my throat dry. I clear it. “I’m the au pair.”

  She props herself up a bit more, her eyes narrowing. “I’ve met the au pair. She’s a sixty-year-old obese woman with pockmarks.” The clipped, aristocratic tones of her accent nearly match Charlie’s, but hers sounds more labored. Maybe I’m just imagining it. Or maybe it seems that way because talking to me is nothing more than a chore for her.

  “I’m new,” I answer, trying to match her bored tone but managing only to make my voice a bit breathier. There’s something about the way she’s looking at me, examining me, that makes me nervous. I resist the urge to fidget, to shift my weight from one foot to the other.

  “Hmm,” she says. “I’m Blair.”

  “Oh, of course,” I say for lack of anything better. My suspicion has been confirmed. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “You’ve heard about me?” There’s something lurking in her tone that makes me think very carefully about how I’m going to answer that question.

  I decide on a simple “Yes.”

  She straightens her arm, lying back down and closing her eyes once more against the sun. “Nice to meet you, Dee,” she says, deliberately misremembering my name, I’m almost positive.

  I hurry to the car, feeling like I’m escaping the clutches of a tiger, and by the time I slide into the backseat, I’m shaking. How has she provoked such a response in me? Is it just because she was Charlie’s girlfriend—scratch that, his pregnant girlfriend? Or was it the look in her eyes, sharp and stormy as they pierced through me?

  Albert takes one look at me in the rearview mirror then turns to face me, his eyes crinkled in concern. “What’s happened to you?”

  I try to clear my expression with a light smile. “Nothing. I just nearly ran over Blair is all.”

  “She doing that lying-in-the-sun thing again?” he asks, starting the car and looking out his side mirror to see her, still there behind us. “Last time she came here was Christmas, bloody freezing, but she still spent half her time in the courtyard.”

  I nod. “She’s not really what I expected.” I press my lips closed, annoyed at myself. There I go again.

  Albert just laughs. “She’s a nice lass, kind to everyone,” he says, pausing a moment before continuing. “We all like her.”

  I keep my lips pressed together, refusing to let any of my many questions spill out. Albert is too perceptive for me to let my guard down. He’d know in an instant that my interest in Blair implies an interest in Charlie, and I don’t really want to know what he would think—or do—about that.

  We arrive at Bardwill to see a short woman in a stiff skirt suit waiting out front. It’s not until we get closer that I see that it’s Mabel, out of her traditional uniform and white lace cap. Albert pulls up in front of her, and she opens the passenger door.

  “Mabel, I . . . what are you doing here?” I ask as politely as possible despite my surprise.

  She glances at me once before settling into her seat. “I’ve just come from a meeting with Poppy’s headmistress. She wanted to speak to her caretaker about her performance in school.”

  Right. I’d been meaning to set up that meeting. I’m certainly glad not to have to talk to that woman again, but I never expected Mabel to be the one to talk to her.

  “Oh? And how did it go?” I ask coolly.

  “I told her we care very much for Poppy,”
Mabel says, with a stiff neck and no eye contact, “and that we are doing everything we can to help her through this hard time.”

  I nod and keep quiet, but I’m still confused and a bit hurt. Mabel didn’t even tell me about the appointment, let alone ask me to go in with her; she just assumed the responsibility for herself. I keep underestimating how close she is to Poppy.

  Poppy doesn’t seem at all surprised to see Mabel, in any case. As she skips over to the car with a group of girls, I see that she’s getting closer to her friends again, opening herself back up. On the way home I learn that apparently Natalie has a mad crush on a boy named Logan from the boys’ school, and Poppy finds it the most fascinating news ever. I let her prattle on with a smile on my face, though I’m still distracted by this new perspective I have on Mabel and her position in Poppy’s life.

  Back at the castle, I expect to run into Blair again after we wave goodbye to Albert and head back across the courtyard, but she’s moved from her spot, and I don’t see any trace of her inside.

  When Poppy and I are set up in her study, going over a math problem, I ask her, as casually as possible, “What do you think of Blair?”

  Poppy looks up from her workbook. “I don’t really know her. I’ve only met her a couple of times. Charlie was never that big on bringing her home to meet Mum and Dad. She seemed really nice, though.”

  She must have been in a bad mood when I met her, then, because Albert had said the same thing. Maybe she really is nice. Maybe the pregnancy has her really stressed out. Or maybe I’m just being paranoid.

  “How did she and Charlie meet?” I ask, trying my best to sound perfectly pleasant and merely curious.

  Poppy shrugs. “University, I guess. They both went to St. Andrews.” She pauses, then continues, her voice lower, “Mum asked Charlie about her once, a few months ago. She wanted to know why he hardly ever brought her home, you know? So she was asking all these things, like how they met, what she wanted to do after college, if she was from a good family. Charlie went mental, said why did it matter what kind of family she came from? Mum kept asking, like why was he so defensive? And then he said something about her dad, like he was a bad guy or something. And that Blair didn’t talk to her family anymore, but that didn’t make her a bad person. He said that he was her family now, and then just stormed off.”