Meg remembered the gay floral print on the walls of the mistress's bedroom in the dollhouse. She smiled and said, "Yes, ma'am, I do."
Mrs. Camplin cocked her head and looked at Meg curiously. "Now whom did you just remind me of?" she wondered aloud, intrigued.
Suddenly self-conscious, Meg made matters worse by nervously fiddling with one of her teardrop earrings. "I look like just about everyone, I've been told," she said, flushing.
"Perhaps," agreed Mrs. Camplin. She stood up, clearly still trying to make the connection, and signaled an end to the interview, "Now: what about the photos?"
Meg explained that she'd be shooting the shade garden today, but that it was too sunny for close-ups of some of the lilies and paler flowers. Those, she'd like to come back and do on an overcast or even a foggy day. Mrs. Camplin agreed, and they strolled back to the house, taking in the sights and scents around them.
"I'm so glad I found this place," confessed Dorothea Camplin contentedly when they reached the house. "I can't imagine living anywhere else in Maine."
Meg seized the opening and said something that she realized too late was truly stupid. She said, "So in a way the Great Fire was a blessing?"
Dorothea Camplin stopped where she was, pushed her bifocals back up her nose, and stared at Meg. "What a perverse way of looking at it! The fire was a great tragedy," she said in a scolding tone. "We lost a member of our staff in that fire. I suppose that this is what happens after time," she said, viciously yanking out a nervy clump of Queen Anne's lace. "Young people become desensitized to the tragedies of the last generation."
"I didn't mean it the way it came out," Meg said quickly. "I only meant to suggest that, well ... you did end up with the house of your dreams," she said lamely.
Mrs. Camplin shook her head mournfully. "But at a price, young lady ... at a price."
Chapter 19
Uncle Billy, who was the mover and the shaker in the Atwells clan, decided that Meg needed moving and Allie needed shaking. He'd heard rumors about what he called Allie's little "tiff" with Tom, and he'd got blow-by-blow accounts from Comfort of the latest setbacks at the Inn Between. He decided to kill two birds with one stone by inviting both Tom and an interested collector of dolls' houses — a Mr. Peterson — to the Inn Between for Chicken Pie Night.
Meg was outraged.
"That pushy old bastard!" she said to her sister. "He's too damn tight to give us a hand — not that I'd want him to; we can pay our own way — and yet he's too damn meddling to just let us be. He drives me crazy. I don't know why Dad puts up with his butting in all the time."
Allie laid out the eighth, ninth, and tenth plates on the supper table and said, "That isn't why you're mad, Meg. You're mad because Uncle Billy is playing matchmaker between Tom and me," she said with supreme, unintended irony. "But I don't care, and you shouldn't, either."
"And I don't understand why Tom is coming." How dare he, after all that had happened?
"Don't blame Tom," Allie said in a weary voice. "I suppose he was just trying to help, passing on Mr. Peterson's name to Uncle Billy."
"Which is another thing. Why pass it on to Uncle Billy? Why not directly to me?" Meg slammed down a knife and then a fork beside each plate. She knew the answer to that question, of course, but it felt good to complain.
Allie avoided looking at her sister as she said, "Maybe Tom knew how reluctant you'd be to sell the dollhouse."
"Not true!" Meg cried. "I'm not reluctant. I'm just not ready." It was pointless to try to explain to Allie about the continued presence Meg still felt in and around the dollhouse. Allie had never felt it, and though at first she'd humored Meg, now she was too caught up in her own pain to care one way or the other.
Meg glanced across the table at her sister. Allie seemed to physically droop, like a daisy without water. Granted, they were in the grip of yet another heat wave; but that wasn't it. It broke Meg's heart to see her like this. Somehow she hoped that Allie would be too proud to grieve.
"Allie ... honey ... you don't have to stick around for supper."
"Where would I go?" Allie asked, sighing. "Besides, it's Chicken Pie Night."
"Big deal; every Wednesday is Chicken Pie Night," Meg said, just itching to rail at something. "That's the whole problem around here! Everything's predictable. Everything's a habit. No one has any — I don't know — gumption. No one has any plain old get-up-and-go. You're right, Allie. We're all just rotting in place here, like the rafters of the Inn Between."
Meg gave her sister a sideways look. "Thank God you're not like the rest of us. Thank God you have bigger plans. You can go anywhere in the world. New York, Paris, L.A. ... some day you'll look back on Chicken Pie Night and laugh."
Allie had finished her task and was on her way out of the dining room. At the door she turned, eyes glistening, and said, "All lies; but thanks anyway, Meggie."
Meg wanted to lie more, but the arrival of Uncle Billy ended all that.
"Comfort Atwells!" Meg heard him shout in the kitchen. "Look at you: rosy cheeks and big as a barn door! You look good, de-ah! Motherhood do agree with you."
Comfort giggled and murmured something and Meg heard Uncle Billy say, "Where's your sister-in-law? I hear she's gunnin' for me."
When he came into the dining room, Meg fired both barrels.
"Uncle Billy," she said without preamble, "When I need help finding a buyer for the dollhouse, I suppose I'll ask for it! Until then I wish you wouldn't treat it like a toaster at a two-family yard sale! I don't have time to listen to insulting offers from every flea-market customer passing through town. When it's time — if it's ever time —"
"Whoa, whoa, let up, will you?" he said, ducking to avoid her wrath. "In the first place, I don't know this Peterson jeezer from Adam; it's Tom Wyler who insists he's more'n just a handshaker. Second place: from what I hear, it is time, Meggie," he said seriously. "Time to sell."
He was such a big bear of a man. His voice carried such authority. It was hard for Meg to do what she did just then — to stand up to him and say, "No, Uncle Billy. It's not for sale."
William Atwells didn't take kindly to the word no. Everyone knew that, from his younger brother Everett to the woman in Bangor who'd refused his hand in marriage thirty-one years earlier.
He scowled his trademark scowl. "I don't want to hear none a' that bilge from you, young lady," he said, hitching his pants over his potbelly. "When I kick the bucket, you and the rest will be well provided for. But until then I expect to see this family stand on its own two feet. Now, Tom knows someone who knows someone who put this Peterson fella on to the dollhouse. Okay. So here's the plan: We're gonna stuff this rube with Comfort's chicken pie, and then we're gonna roll him out to the shed and show him the most gorgeous friggin' dollhouse he ever did see. We're gonna make him beg for it. We're gonna make him cry in pain that he don't have it. And we're gonna make him offer cold, hard cash for it. And then — only then — will you decide whether you'll sell or not."
He thumped three times on the dinner table with his middle finger. "Because, little Meggie, in this world everything is for sale. Whether you like it, or whether you don't."
The front doorbell rang and Terry let out a whoop and ran to answer it. As promised, Tom Wyler was delivering Mr. Peterson, ready for stuffing, to their door.
Meg and her uncle Billy, each with his own agenda, rushed to the front door to intercept their guests. Mr. Peterson was small, thin, meek, bespectacled, and didn't look as if he had two nickels to rub together, much less the cost of a dollhouse that was fit for royalty. Meg gave him one glance and turned to Tom, who was wearing a jacket and tie and looked as if he'd rather be standing on a mat of hot coals than on the threshold of the Inn Between.
Obviously he'd been strong-armed by Uncle Billy into coming. All right, then. The best thing was just to smile and be polite and wait for all three men to go away. She could do that.
Introductions were made and pleasantries exchanged. Uncle Billy sized Mr. Pete
rson up and down, then smiled at Meg and whispered in her ear, "Like eatin' pie."
After that he scooped up Mr. Peterson the way a grizzly would a brook trout and hauled him into the family's sitting room, leaving Tom and Meg to follow in their wake.
"I'm sorry about this," Tom murmured. "I didn't expect to be part of the deal. Your uncle insisted."
"I believe I've told you I'm not selling," Meg said, smiling.
Tom shrugged. "Okay. Fine."
Please don't use that tone of fine with me," Meg said, smiling.
"What the hell tone do you expect me to—"
"Or that tone, either," Meg said, smiling.
"Damn! Your uncle's right about you!"
"Thank you. It's nice of you to say so," Meg said — still smiling.
They commandeered seats at opposite ends of the sitting room. Uncle Billy took over as host, pouring drinks, chatting amiably about life in a resort town, asking an occasional question of Mr. Peterson, reeling him in slowly.
It turned out that Meg was right: Mr. Peterson did not have the necessary nickels. He was in fact an expert on miniatures, commissioned by an investor who'd got it in his head that dollhouses were a hot collectible. Mr. Peterson had taken pains to advise "this particular gentleman" that collectibles ran hot and cold.
"But with real estate depressed, the market stagnant, and interest rates so low, this particular gentleman is hard pressed to turn a profit," Mr. Peterson confessed between nibbles on a Ritz cracker. "He believes that antiques and collectibles may be in the process of bottoming out."
"They're a damn good hedge against inflation," avowed Uncle Billy.
"If we had inflation," responded Mr. Peterson.
"Beats buyin' waterfront on a flood plain," countered Uncle Billy.
"My client lives on high ground," said Mr. Peterson.
And on it went. Mr. Peterson gave as good as he got, to the point that Uncle Billy was becoming a little flustered. He decided, abruptly, to change the subject.
"Say, where's Allie, anyway?" he demanded in a petulant voice. He turned to his guest and gave him a knowing elbow. "My niece is just about the most fetchin' thing in New England. Wait till you see her. Meg? Where is she?"
"Allie will be on display shortly," said Meg, annoyed with her uncle in more ways than she could count.
He gave her an evil look and added, "Whereas her sister, here, is just about the most aggravatin'."
Tom Wyler took the opportunity to mutter, "I'll second that."
Lloyd had arrived through the kitchen, clearly in a good mood. Meg heard Comfort yelp the way wives yelp when liberties are being taken, and heard Lloyd's low laugh of amusement. Still smiling, he strolled right into the middle of an awkward lull that was hanging over the sitting room like a big wet cloud.
"Hey, Uncle Billy, whaddya think?" he asked in his usual Down East greeting.
"I think damn, that's what I think!" Uncle Billy answered, sulking.
Because he didn't say it in his usual hearty way, Lloyd became immediately cautious. He looked to his sister for a clue. Meg gave him a tight-lipped smile. Everett Atwells showed up hard on his son's heels, also in a good mood — his usual mood — and was introduced to Mr. Peterson. Right after that Comfort came in to take away the cracker plate and tell them shyly, "Supper's about ready."
It was obvious that Allie didn't have the heart to make an appearance. With a reproachful look at Tom, Meg said, "My sister won't be joining us after all, Mr. Peterson."
"She's been in a decline," Uncle Billy explained in a grave voice.
"Oh ... I'm so sorry," said Mr. Peterson.
"It's nothing terminal," Meg said icily.
"Her heart's broke," blurted Lloyd.
"Hearts can't break," said Terry caustically.
"Yes they can," said his twin. "That's what happened to Great-Grampa when Great-Gramma burned. Isn't that right, Grampa?"
"Burned?" said Mr. Peterson faintly.
"In the Great Fire," Meg explained. "It's part of the history — the provenance, isn't that what you collectors call it? — of the dollhouse, which is a replica of one of the grand Bar Harbor cottages that burned in 1947. Surely my uncle told you that? Doesn't that add to the value?" she asked in bitterly ironic tones.
"I didn't know someone died. I'm sorry," murmured Mr. Peterson, clearly uncomfortable.
"That doesn't make the dollhouse cursed, though," Timmy said earnestly. "Even though we've had awful things happen to us ever since we got it."
"Not so much awful as unexplainable," his twin brother elaborated. "Like one night everything in the dollhouse got thrown around every which way. As if a poltergeist lived there."
"How did you know that?" Meg said, scandalized.
"I saw you putting everything back," Terry said.
"What were you doing up at that hour?" his grandfather asked.
"Does that add to the value, a curse?" Lloyd wondered.
"Of course it does," said Uncle Billy. "Notoriety has a definite dollar value."
Meg glanced around the sitting room. There was a certain bizarre feel to the conversation that she would've normally shared with Allie. But Allie wasn't there. As for Tom, it was true that he was following the talk with that wry, amused look that set her heart singing, but as far as Meg was concerned, he was the tenth plate at the table. No more, no less.
She looked away from him and began a friendly conversation with her father, who had absolutely no idea what anyone was talking about.
"We're selling, then?" Everett Atwells said in a whisper to his daughter. "I thought we weren't."
Meg whispered back, "We're not selling, Dad. This is just to humor Uncle Billy."
Just her luck that all the other conversations tailed off at the same time, leaving her remark hanging in midair like a pair of ratty underpants alone on a clothesline. Embarrassed, Meg fell back into hostile silence.
The hell with it, she decided. I've had it up to here with them. She let her glance drift around the room, from Uncle Billy's red suspenders to Mr. Peterson's wing-tip shoes to the cross-stitch sampler — Allie's one and only attempt at needlework — that Meg had got tired of waiting for and had hung on the wall unfinished: HOME SWEET HO, it read.
Only once did she risk glancing at Tom. He had taken the overstuffed chair that was tucked in a corner of the sitting room — the gunfighter's chair, her father liked to call it — and was watching Meg with an intensity that seemed to set her on fire. This was nothing like the bland, disinterested detective's look he reserved for group occasions. This was personal. This was white-hot. He was as focused as a laser beam, and he was focused on her. She looked away, in danger of a meltdown.
And so they sat, Meg and all the men in her life, while she waited for Comfort to call people in to eat so that supper could finally be over with and all the men in her life would go away. But it was Allie who showed up first.
"Allie! How's your headache?" Meg said, covering for what she assumed would be her sister's glum mood.
Allie laughed gaily and said, "You know I never get headaches. Uncle Billy! Comment ça va?" she asked in her most cosmopolitan tone. "And this must be Mr. Peterson. It's an honor to meet you, sir," she said, taking his hand. "I understand you're an expert in your field. You won't be disappointed with the dollhouse, I promise you. It's a treasure."
She turned to Tom with a smile of radiant confidence. "Tom! You were able to come after all! It's good to see you looking so well. Don't let me forget: I still have three novels of yours. Well, everyone? Shall we go in?"
She slipped her arm through Tom's, surprising everyone, especially Tom, and led the company into the dining room. Meg went in behind Terry, who pinched his twin brother's arm and whispered, "I told you hearts can't break."
But Meg could see into her sister's heart, and it was breaking. The more Allie laughed and joked and entertained them all, the more Meg was convinced of it. Allie was behaving exactly as Meg had wished: too proud to grieve. But once or twice in t
he course of dinner, Meg caught Allie stealing a glance at Tom. That was when her mask slipped, and Meg could see the pain.
But Meg was the only one who could see it. Allie was a perfect actress and a perfect hostess, an unbeatable combination for hiding her feelings. She had a funny story to tell for every job she'd ever held—from saddling a llama in a children's petting zoo to hypnotizing lobsters before she turned them into seafood salad at a dockside snack bar. Everyone laughed, including Meg, including Tom; Mr. Peterson was in stitches. Uncle Billy looked over at Meg every once in a while as if to say, "See? If you wanted to be useful, this is what you'd be like."
But Allie was too funny. Her laugh was too gay. Her dress, for that matter, was too red. Everything about her was right at the edge, maybe a little over the edge, and it frightened Meg.
Eventually Comfort said, as she always did on Wednesday, "More chicken pie, Uncle Billy?"
That was when something in Allie snapped. In a perfect imitation of her uncle, Allie boomed out, "Just a whiska, maybe," at the same time that he did, much to his chagrin. Then she jumped up and said shrilly to Meg, "You're right, Meggie. It's all so predictable!" And she rushed out of the room.
That pretty much put a damper on the supper. There was dessert, of course — peach pie and ice cream — but Tom begged off and Mr. Peterson mumbled something about an early flight. Uncle Billy, jumping in to save the sale, said, "I'll drive Tom home. Mr. Peterson, you stay and take all the time you need to look over the dollhouse. No hurry now. Meg, take him out to the shed. You got plenty a' light there? Comfort, you just wrap my pie to go. Give me Tom's piece, too, since he don't want it. I'll bring the car round front."
Tom said good-night to the rest of the family. Then, while Mr. Peterson freshened up, he corralled Meg in the hall.
He leaned one arm into the wall, blocking her from slipping past him. "Is this it?" he asked in a voice wound tight from the effort to sound casual. "Good-bye?"
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