Embers

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  Except one.

  "There's nothing wrong with me, Allie," he said as he filled the glasses. "There's something wrong with us." He took a deep breath, then let it out. Hoo-ee. Give him a patch of seaweed any time. "C'mon, kiddo," he said softly. "Sit down. We've got to talk."

  He left the Cokes and took her by her arm and she let herself be led, stiffly, back to the couch. Suddenly the talk seemed superfluous; clearly she knew what was coming. All he could do now was try to let her down easy. He blushed even to think of himself having to do something like that with someone like her.

  "Allie," he said, taking her hands in his. "You know I'm nuts about you. You're the prettiest woman I guess I've ever met. You've done more for my ego than any woman I know. You're fun ... you're fearless ... you have the energy of an Olympic skater.

  "But ... that's just it. You're too pretty. You're too energetic. You're so far beyond me that I can't — I'll never be able to — keep up, no matter how hard I try."

  Her eyes opened wide. "You're not good enough for me, is that what this is?" she asked in a voice that seesawed between contempt and hope.

  He shrugged. "We want different things. You want to set the world on fire, whereas at this point I'm just hoping the whole place doesn't burn down."

  "'At this point'? You're talking like some old guy in a rest home."

  "Because I am an old guy."

  "Forty is not old."

  "Forty is relative. I'm an old forty, just like you're a young twenty-five."

  "I'm not a child; don't treat me like one. You're just like Meg." She pulled her hands angrily out of his.

  She was right, on both counts. Allie Atwells had just grown up in thirty-five seconds, right before his eyes. Nothing aged a person like rejection. He knew the lesson only too well: He'd been forced to learn it when he was four years old, on the day his mother abandoned him in a Sears Roebuck store on the northwest side.

  "If you take the job in Chicago, Allie, take it because it's the best job you can find. Don't take it because it's a short commute to my office; that'd be the dumbest thing you could do."

  She still didn't seem to — quite — want to accept it. "It's just not there, Allie," he said finally.

  What "it" was, he had no idea. But he had an inkling that he'd found it in Acadia.

  "Thank you," she said evenly, "for being so honest."

  This time she got it. He could see it in her eyes. She'd pulled up the drawbridge, lowered the portcullis, heated the oil, and tossed a few snakes in the moat for good measure. Her invitation, in short, had been withdrawn.

  Somewhere he read that no woman ever hates a man for being in love with her, but many a woman hates a man for being a friend to her. Whoever he was, the guy knew his stuff.

  Allie stood up with a togetherness that reminded him uncannily of Meg, and then she walked over to the sink where the ice-filled glasses of Coke still stood. The ice was hardly melted; all things considered, his brush-off had been ruthlessly efficient.

  She picked up one of the glasses and poured it down the drain. "I won't be needing that anymore," she said calmly, and walked out of his cabin.

  He wondered exactly how she meant that.

  ****

  When Allie arrived, dragging her heavy suitcase behind her, Meg was hunched over in the attic with an ice pick. Lloyd and a roofing contractor were there, too, also with ice picks, looking for rot. Their search was turning out to be a blinding success: the initial estimate for replacing some of the sheathing, a few rafters, and a new roof came to over ten thousand dollars.

  "Ayeh. The day of the patch is over," the contractor was telling Meg. "Y'got three layers a' roofin' in some spots already. Water's working through 'em all, who knows from where. You try and add a fourth, yer only makin' a bad situation worse. You'll get more a' this," he said, plunging the ice pick up to its hilt into a rotted rafter.

  I've died and I've gone to hell, Meg thought.

  She was bent alongside her brother, who was still arguing gamely for patch number four. Sweat was streaming down all of their faces, but only Meg seemed fatally miserable. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that she hadn't slept in twenty-four hours. A series of thunderstorms had rolled through in the night, and the worst of the roof leaks had trickled its way to the fire alarm, setting it off and rousting every one of their guests out of bed. Twice.

  That, coupled with the sleep-robbing heartbreak she'd felt since Acadia, had left her absolutely punchy. And now this. Ten thousand dollars. Ten! At least! She almost couldn't take it in. She staggered over to the small attic window tucked under the peak and tried to suck in air that hadn't been preheated to a hundred and thirty degrees. That's when she saw her sister, home a day early, dragging her rolling suitcase along the front walk.

  Immediately Meg knew that something was wrong. "I'll see you when you're finished here, Mr. McLarty," she said abruptly, and scrambled down the access ladder. She found Allie in her room.

  "What happened, honey?" she asked, her voice filled with concern. She'd never seen Allie look this way.

  "I got dumped," her sister said without emotion as she swung the suitcase onto her bed.

  "Oh, no," said Meg, misunderstanding her. "Which one? The Hyatt, the Westin? Surely not the Castle Inn!"

  "No, no," Allie said tiredly. "The Castle Inn's a done deal. I'll know about the Westin in a week or two," she said, unfolding a smart two-piece suit in cobalt blue. "And the Hyatt obviously wants someone with more experience. No; I mean, dumped by Tom."

  There are times in every person's life that are considered defining moments. The heart stops. Breathing stops. Time itself stops. And afterward, when the heart begins beating again and the clock begins ticking, the person remembers something trivial — what they were wearing, or listening to on the radio, or eating at the table. For Meg, the moment was distilled into the two baseball caps, obviously intended for the twins, that Allie took out of her suitcase just then: one from the Chicago Cubs, the other from the White Sox.

  Terry will want the Sox cap, flashed through Meg's mind. Because the Cubs are too cute.

  "I went straight to Tom's cabin," Allie explained in a voice that was completely unlike her own. "You remember how I was going to offer myself officially to him, since he didn't seem to be taking the hint? Well," she said, pulling out a satin nightie that Meg had never seen before, "I never got the chance. He beat me to the punch. He said there was nothing there."

  My God. "He didn't."

  "Ah, but he did. It took guts, I'll say that," she said as she scrutinized the nightie, then tossed it in the direction of the hamper. "Not many men would risk making me feel like an idiot. In fact, your lieutenant is the first."

  Her lieutenant? Why hers? What had Tom told her? Obviously, nothing about Meg and him. Meg tried to distract her sister with humor. "Assuming you hadn't already torn off your clothes, I see no reason why you should've felt like an idiot."

  Allie stopped unpacking and gave her sister a look of — Meg didn't know what. Contempt? Was it possibly that?

  "Meg, it's over. Skip the spoonful of sugar; the medicine's gone down." She took out the last of her things, closed the suitcase, and slid it under her bed.

  "But look, everyone's heart gets broken sooner or later, Allie. You've just led a very charmed life, that's all." Meg didn't know how to comfort her. She didn't have the words; the situation was unique.

  "You're right," Allie agreed in a toneless voice. "The first failure's the worst. I'll be much more philosophical about the second one."

  Somehow it didn't seem as if they were talking about love anymore. It frightened Meg. She'd spent the whole night rehearsing a confession of her betrayal to Allie; now, wild horses couldn't drag it out of her. Suddenly the rules had changed. She needed time to think them through.

  "Allie, you have your whole life —"

  "If you don't mind, Meg, I'm tired. Do you need me to do anything? If not, I'd like to go to bed."

  "At seven fifteen?
"

  But Allie was practically weaving as she stood, which conjured up other, more painful moments when she could hardly stand. Was she simply exhausted? Meg tried to get closer to her, to smell her breath. But Allie averted her head, unwilling to accept her sister's embrace, and Meg was forced to smile and say, "Sleep around the clock, then. It'll help; trust me."

  ****

  Over the next week the Inn Between, like an old dowager in poor health, endured several further indignities. The refrigerator suffered a nervous breakdown and had to be replaced. Coughdrop managed to get wrapped up in the extension cord of Comfort's beloved Bunn coffeemaker, pulling it to the floor and smashing it to bits. The new chambermaid got a better offer and quit. A small electrical fire — insignificant, really — caused an impromptu electrical inspection and resulted in a list of violations and a deadline for repairs. And — the worst affront of all — one of the guests sneaked in a sadistic dachshund who chewed a hole in the middle of Meg's favorite hooked rug.

  And, of course, the roof still leaked. There was only one cure for the Inn Between: money. We need more of it. And yet Meg couldn't sell the dollhouse; she couldn't. A deathbed promise and a spiritual connection that Meg still didn't understand made that impossible.

  But they needed more money. The refrain pounded like a dull headache through Meg's consciousness day after day, mishap after mishap. Money, money, money ....

  If she could've shared her troubles with Allie, she might've been able to appreciate the darkly funny side of them. But Allie was unapproachable. It wasn't that she was angry or pouting or obviously in pain. In fact, she was more courteous than usual, and less complaining, as she went about her chores. But she never laughed, she never yelled, and she never, ever cried. Meg was sure; she listened at the door.

  "Whatsa matter with Anty Allie?" Terry had asked. "She's like a zombie."

  "A nice one, though," Timmy had added, yanking on the bill of his new Cubs cap.

  And in the meantime, no Tom. He was as good as his word. Meg knew he would be — and was — leaving Meg, and now Allie, alone. Meg was having her first taste of what life without him would be like: dry and bitter. As for Allie, it was hard to say.

  ****

  Dorothea Camplin's "camp," as the summer visitors liked to call their seasonal retreats, was smaller than her ex-husband's house but easily as big as the Inn Between. It had a quainter name than most — Tea Kettle Cottage — and was situated on a large parcel of land outside of town with no view of the sea. Mrs. Camplin, it turned out, did not care for the sea.

  The stout, elderly woman put it more precisely than that. "It's not the sea I object to; it's the salt that's in it. Salt spray wreaks havoc with my perennials. One should be able to grow something besides thrift and milkweed if one chooses. And of course one wants roses. After the Great Fire I came back to Bar Harbor, and this is what I found. I've spent my summers here quite happily since. The house is small, but not the parcel."

  Meg was busy scribbling every word on a steno pad, doing her best to look like a feature writer. She was dressed to please in a cabbage-rose print and a straw hat rimmed in pink ribbon. For whatever reason, at the last minute she threw on the teardrop earrings as well.

  "This is absolutely wonderful," she said with genuine pleasure as she glanced around between jottings.

  The gardens were rambling, secret, and charmingly spectacular. No one would have guessed it from the road. Each garden "room," as they said in the trade, was more exquisite than the last, from the all-white garden near the towering chestnut trees, to the carefree border of mixed-color perennials, to the island of larkspur, Madonna lilies, and Canterbury bells. There were fountains — one of bronze, one of marble — strategically located, and birdbaths high and low, and feeders where the sunflower seeds could drop discreetly without making a mess. There was a delightful spontaneity about all of it that Meg knew could only come from a completely controlling hand.

  Almost in answer to Meg's thoughts, Mrs. Camplin said, "I pride myself on doing all but the very heaviest digging myself. That border over there? I double-dug every cubic inch of it last summer. Manuel — my Cuban gardener, who's been with me for thirty years and is as decrepit as I am — tells me I'm going to give him a heart attack one of these days, just from worrying," she said, chuckling.

  "Incidentally," she added, "I'm one of the few who employs a gardener full-time; estate gardeners are truly a dying breed. I took Manuel on when I acquired my own house in Palm Beach. Between the two places there's more than enough work. The fact is, gardening can be a full-time hobby ... it becomes an obsession for so many of us. I suppose it's a personality thing."

  Meg scribbled away, nodding furiously. "You have to have many skills, patience among them," she agreed. "You have to have foresight ... and a love of beauty ... a fine sense of color and balance —"

  "And grim determination, of course," said Mrs. Camplin, laughing. "Don't forget to write that down."

  Meg agreed completely. "Gardening isn't for the fainthearted," she said, thinking of how easily Allie became bored with weeding.

  "How well you know, dear. You have your own garden, then?"

  "It's nothing at all, compared to this," Meg said at once, dismissing the question. She had no desire to have this portly, amiable woman show up at her door for a tour and discover who, exactly, Meg Hazard really was: Margaret Mary Atwells Hazard, local rumormonger. Not yet, anyway.

  Mrs. Camplin motioned Meg to sit next to her on an old bench that once had graced a churchyard in Wales. From the bench they had a fine view of the house, a rambling, gabled two-story structure with an attached greenhouse that dated to the 1900's, as well as the herb and cutting gardens behind it.

  "I'm so inspired," Meg said, sighing. "I want to go back and level my house and turn all the land into a garden."

  "And where do you live, dear?" asked Mrs. Camplin.

  Mistake. "Oh ... in town," Meg said vaguely.

  Mrs. Camplin looked at her curiously but didn't press. Meg said pleasantly, "I wanted to ask you about your previous summer place. Eagle's Nest could not have had such cozy gardens, could it? The site wasn't at all the same."

  "Oh, dear me, no. Eagle's Nest was on high ground, wide open to the north. The winters took their toll. It was so discouraging to come back each summer and see how much I'd lost. Not that there was much to lose. Mr. Camplin had little use for a flower garden. Too frivolous," his ex-wife said dryly. "His tastes were more basic than that."

  Meg thought she heard acrimony, even after all these years of being divorced — a hopeful sign. She said, "Mr. Camplin seems to know what he likes. His new place — well, hardly new, anymore — is still imposing, still on high ground ... and, I assume, still without a flower garden?"

  "I wouldn't know," Mrs. Camplin said shortly. "I've never been there."

  Good. "It must have been a grand old place — Eagle's Nest, I mean," said Meg, inching sideways toward her goal.

  "I've read where some of the bigger cottages that burned down had thirty rooms. Eagle's Nest had, I believe —?"

  "Only eighteen, including the maids' rooms."

  So the dollhouse was an accurate replica. "Ah. Only eighteen. So it didn't have all the bells and whistles — secret corridors for the servants to come and go, a grand ballroom, that sort of thing?"

  "Not at all. One wing had guest accommodations, and the other had our bedrooms and dressing rooms. The living quarters were on the first floor, the nursery and servants' quarters on the third. It was all very straightforward."

  Yeah. For a small castle.

  Meg knew from the dollhouse that the master bedroom, bound on one side by its own dressing room, led directly into a sitting room for the mistress of the house, which in turn led to her own bedroom. Meg's theory was that after Gordon Camplin raped her grandmother, he locked her in the master bedroom and left her there to die in the fire that was already nibbling at the edges of the estate. Why else would Meg have pounded on empty air and screame
d "Open it!" so hysterically during her little séance in the shed? What Meg needed to know now was whether every door into or out of the master's bedroom — there were three — could be locked.

  This was not an easy question to camouflage.

  "I suppose running a grand house the size of Eagle's Nest was like running a small business," Meg ventured. "All those rooms ... all those servants ... I can just imagine what the key ring looked like!"

  Nothing.

  "Or maybe the house was more modern than that. Maybe the doors to the rooms didn't even have any locks?"

  "For heaven's sake," Mrs. Camplin remarked, staring. "What an odd question. Of course they had locks. For security as well as privacy. I myself used to keep my favorite jewelry in my bedroom, in a covered jar."

  She shook her head, wondering at the memory. "I'd never think of doing that nowadays, of course. Not after what happened to a friend of mine in Newport. Robbed in her own bedroom, while she slept. Twice. These are terrible times. Terrible. No one is safe anymore."

  For one brief moment the strong and capable Mrs. Camplin looked like some fragile old lady at a bus stop, clutching her purse more tightly as a pack of teenagers in running shoes approached. But the moment passed as the wealthy socialite remembered who she was and where she was.

  "Anyway," she said in a friendly but puzzled voice, "what does this have to do with my gardens at Tea Kettle?"

  Not a heck of a lot. Meg had to temporize. "Well, one of the questions our readers like to see addressed is which rooms face the garden—kitchen, breakfast room, master bedroom.

  I guess I was wondering, not only about Tea Kettle Cottage, but about your previous summer house."

  "My bedrooms always face the garden; that goes without saying. But at Eagle's Nest the trees overhung the view of the grounds; it was hard to see much. That house was dark; very dark inside," she added, shuddering. "I never cared for it. I prefer a bright, sunny room. Don't you?"