Keys to the Castle

by Donna Ball

  She lifted an eyebrow, hesitating a moment before setting aside her empty glass and accepting the full one he offered. “It’s a mango martini,” she said.

  “Sounds dreadful.”

  “It is.”

  He laughed. “Then you shall simply stand here and hold it and pretend to enjoy the hospitality and inventiveness of our hosts, eh bien?”

  “You’re French,” she observed, placing the accent.

  “I used to be,” he admitted. “I’ve lived in North America now for so many years that I have to practice my accent for ten minutes in the morning before I can go about in public.”

  That made her laugh a little, and the small lines at the corners of his eyes deepened a little as he observed, gently, “There, now. That’s so much better. You have the saddest smile I’ve ever seen.”

  And before she could even react to that, he thrust out his hand and announced, “I am Daniel Orsay. I am a poet, and currently the darling of the avant-garde literary set, or so I’ve been told. Please don’t apologize that you’ve never heard of me. I’m a very bad poet.”

  She accepted his hand, and he held her fingers, in the way of Europeans, as she tilted her head at him in skeptical amusement. “But charming.”

  “Which is precisely how one gets invited to parties such as this without being either rich or famous.”

  He held her hand a little too long, which threatened to make her flustered. She withdrew her fingers and dropped her eyes, taking a sip of the too-sweet martini. “I’m Sara,” she said, looking up at him again. “Sara Graves. And I’m not rich or famous either, I’m afraid.”

  “Impossible.” He seemed to use French pronunciation solely to amuse her, his accent exaggerated. “Do you think we might have stumbled into the wrong party by mistake? Surely, it is so!” Then, smoothly lapsing back into easy cocktail chatter, “What do you do, Sara?”

  “I sell things.” The stupid martini was giving her a headache, possibly because she was sipping it too fast again.

  “What kinds of things?”

  “Things that people don’t need and don’t want.”

  “You must be very good, then.”

  Her lips tightened in acknowledgment. “I am.”

  “But not very happy, I think.”

  She was annoyed, and wanted to argue, but she didn’t know what to say. So she took another gulp of her drink and drew a breath to take her leave but he forestalled her in the very instant she was about to speak. Head inclined toward her curiously, eyes filled with that deep and genuine interest, he inquired, “Where is it that you sell these unwanted things to people who don’t need them?”

  “Chicago,” she told him, finishing off her drink. “I work for Martin and Indlebright Marketing in Chicago.” She flipped a business card from her tiny vintage evening purse and gave it to him. “Call us sometime. We’ll make people believe you’re a good poet.”

  “Chicago?” He seemed genuinely surprised. “How can you be happy there? You have the sea in your eyes.”

  That took her aback, but she recovered quickly, plastering another determinedly distant smile on her face. “It was nice to meet you, Daniel. Good luck with your poetry.”

  He fingered her business card thoughtfully as she turned to move through the crowd. “Good-bye, Sara Graves of the sad smile and the sea-watching eyes,” he said softly. “I will call you.”

  But it wasn’t that casual promise, which she did not expect to be kept, that caused Daniel Orsay, poet, to linger in her memory long after she left the party, after she left Manhattan, after she returned to Chicago and tried, with grim determination, to step back into the routine. It was that he knew. Even before she did, he knew that the life she had always believed she was meant for was over. And by the time he tried to call her, it was too late.

  Behind her, Sara heard the sliding glass door open, and close. She was surprised, because she knew Dixie was upstairs, wrestling the boys into the tub. And then she heard the click of a lighter, and smelled the first whiff of tobacco on the chill night air. Dixie liked to pretend she didn’t know Jeff came outside to sneak a smoke after dinner every night. Jeff liked to pretend he kept a secret. And Sara just kept quiet.

  She was in the lawn chair on the patio, bundled up in gloves, a wool scarf, and a stadium blanket, watching the wind toss the stars around overhead. The sound of the surf was like a distant sigh, in and out, in and out. And, from inside the house, there were muffled giggles, Dixie’s stern mother-voice, and a television somewhere in the background. Jeff stood silently in the shadows cast by the kitchen light on the patio, and smoked.

  In a moment he said, “It’s no trouble, you know. To drive you to the airport.”

  “It’s a lot of trouble,” Sara said, “and I appreciate the offer. But I’d rather have my own car. Thanks.”

  After a moment, he came over to her. He was a big man, a high school football star now twenty pounds overweight thanks to Dixie’s good cooking. He owned his own construction company, which was no small thing on an island whose off-season sustenance depended entirely on construction and development.

  He sat down at one of the little café chairs drawn up at the bistro table near her, dwarfing it with his bulk. The tip of his cigarette glowed orange in the dark, and the fragrance drifted through the night. He said, “You know, it’s been good for Dixie, having you here.”

  Sara tried to smile, even though she knew he couldn’t see it. “You mean it’s been a royal pain in the ass, for both of you.”

  “I mean what I say.” His voice was mild, Southern-accented, quiet. “You’re her sister. She loves you. It’s been good for her, and the kids, too.” And he added unexpectedly, “I’m right fond of you, too, Sara.”

  Sara sat up a little straighter, surprised. She almost didn’t know how to respond. “Thank you, Jeff.”

  “What I’m trying to say is . . .” Again the flare of his cigarette tip, faint blue smoke diffusing in the air around them. “I know it’s got to be hard on you, flying over to France, doing what you’ve got to do . . .” Another brief orange flare in the dark. “And I know you haven’t exactly made up your mind, you know, about what you’re doing next. But if you were figuring on staying here on the island . . . well, it might be good if you felt like you had someplace to come home to.”

  A pause, too long, and Sara could hear her heart beat in the silence. Her eyes, finally adjusted to the dark, could see Jeff ’s silhouette, arms resting on his knees, shoulders hunched, head down and gazing at the tip of his cigarette, a faint ember in a vast bowl of windy shadows and sighing surf.

  “Joe Peterson’s thinking about selling that little yellow house of yours,” Jeff went on, abruptly. “The place you were renting before . . . well, before. I think he’d give you a good price on it, and it wouldn’t take a whole lot to fix it up.”

  “Ah,” Sara said. And that was all she could manage, because that was all the breath she had.

  Sara had moved into the little house with its scrubby yard and faded yellow clapboards less than a month after she’d arrived in Little John. It had brown linoleum floors and a kitchen the size of a linen closet, and it smelled of the sea. Daniel had moved in three months later, and permeated every corner with his presence. They had sat in the porch swing and counted the stars and listened to the surf. They had made love in every room. They sat before the fireplace, wrapped in a single quilt, and whispered their dreams to each other. And then one dark, cold night Daniel was not home when she got in from the bookstore, and he didn’t answer his cell phone, and it started to sleet, and then Stu Richman, the island’s only police officer, stood on her porch with his hat in his hand, dripping a freezing rain, and said, “Sara, I’m so sorry . . .”

  She had not been back in the house since. Dixie had packed up her things. There weren’t many; so much of what she owned was still in storage in Chicago. There had been only two sad little boxes labeled “Daniel.” Daniel had never owned much at all.

  And now Jeff was saying
, “Listen, I’m not saying you should make up your mind now. But it might be something to think about, while you’re over there, you know. And if you want me to, I’ll go in and check it out for you, put together an idea of what it might cost to fix it up nice.”

  She was quiet for a time. “Daniel . . . never had time to tell me much about his childhood, or the place he grew up. All he ever said about his parents’ house in France was that it was old, and falling apart, and had rats the size of house cats.” She almost managed a smile at the memory. “He loved our little yellow house.” She took a breath—a big breath, a deep breath, a breath whose effort hurt—and corrected deliberately, “My house.”

  Sara leaned forward, and placed her hand lightly on her brother-in-law’s knee. “Thanks for letting me live in your basement, Jeff, and monopolize your wife and steal your kids. Thanks for not saying anything when I didn’t show my face at meals for days at a time and worried Dixie sick.” And even as she spoke she began to understand how hard these past months had been on her family, even though she had never intended to bring them her sadness, and how much they had given her, even though she had never asked them for anything. She understood, and even though she knew she could never repay them, she vowed in that moment she would not steal any more of their happiness.

  She found Jeff’s fingers in the dark and squeezed them briefly. “Thanks,” she said. “Just thanks.”

  He looked uncomfortable. “Listen, Sara, it’s not that you’re not welcome here. You know that. But a person . . . well, a person needs a home. A place of her own.”

  A life of her own, Sara amended silently. She sat back in her chair, and tucked the scarf up around her ears against a gust of salty wind. “What’s Peterson asking for the house? Do you know?”

  “I’ll find out. But whatever it is, you take ten thousand off the top if he doesn’t replace the roof.” He ground the cigarette out under his heel and sat forward with his elbows on his knees, in his element now. “I was thinking you could bump out the back wall, right where that little patio is now, and double the size of the kitchen. Of course you’ll have to redo the plumbing, but you’ll get ten times your money out of it when you go to sell. And as long as you’re in there, you might as well add another bath. If you decide you want to go ahead with this, I could probably get a crew in there before summer . . .”

  Sara smiled and nodded and made appropriate affirmative sounds in the right places, and didn’t hear a word he said. Her thoughts were far away, in a country to which she had never been, with a man she had never known. And a future she couldn’t even imagine.

  TWO

  Ash Lindeman’s flight from Hong Kong arrived in London a little after three a.m., and by the time he reached his flat and collapsed in bed, it was almost dawn. He had gone through the past thirty-two hours of difficult negotiations on fewer than three hours’ sleep and almost nothing at all to eat, living on the exhilaration of risk and success, which was what he loved most about his life. But when it was over, he was exhausted to the bone. And, as often happened on such occasions, he had the dream.

  It was a silly dream, about nothing, really, that he had had since he was a boy. A bright green meadow, and sunlight glinting off a river. In the background, a flapping sound, like wings. Two small boys in blue jackets tossed a red ball, and a little girl in pink ran around them trying to steal it. There was a woman in a big hat, someone he knew, seemed to have known all his life, and he was happy standing beside her. As they stood in the sunshine and watched the children play, a breeze caught the wide brim of her hat like a sail and spun it into the air. They both reached for it and missed, and she started laughing, and so did he, and he always woke then, yearning for that moment, and that place, and understanding, for just the briefest of instants, that he would never be that happy again.

  As an adult Ash had come to realize that the dream was, in fact, a memory, but the devil of it was that he could not place that meadow, that hat, those children with the red ball, anywhere in his past. And that bothered him. Because if he could recall with such perfect clarity that moment of pure, unadulterated happiness—even if he could not recall exactly when or where it had occurred—didn’t it follow that the rest of his life had been, well, virtually downhill from there?

  But the worst thing about having the dream was that, having awakened from it, he found himself for days afterward wishing he could dream more.

  He awoke now with the memory of leaping to catch the hat, a bright white sail against a cobalt sky, and the fast-fading sense of bliss that he ached to hold on to, and could not. He fully expected the day to be nothing but disappointment from there on.

  Moreover, as he showered and shaved and dressed for the day, he was bothered by a discomfiting sense of unpreparedness, as though there was something he was supposed to have done, or remembered, but he couldn’t for the life of him think what it was. He had been out of the country for nine weeks. He hated to begin his first day home this way.

  Jet lag was, in a word, a bitch.

  Nonetheless, he greeted the sloppy gray London day with a pragmatic equanimity and his secretary with his customary élan. “Good morning, gorgeous,” he declared, checking his mobile for e-mail as he strode into the office. “Did you miss me? Lovely to be home, thank you for asking.” He tossed his trench coat, still damp from the London rain, on a chair, deposited his briefcase atop it, tapped out a text message, and sent it. “I e-mailed you the contracts from the plane, did you get them? Excellent. Hard copies are in my briefcase. Work your magic on the computer, won’t you, darling, and fax them out for signature before nine U.S.? Anything urgent overnight?”

  The middle-aged Mrs. Harrison—he had never called her anything else—maintained a perfectly sanguine expression as she brushed away the raindrops that had splattered from his coat onto her dove silk jacket. She had two suits, which she wore on alternate days with identical white blouses, dark stockings, and sturdy, block-heeled shoes. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays she wore black. Tuesdays and Thursdays she wore gray. It had been so for the thirty-five years she had worked at Lindeman and Lindeman. And for the twenty years since Ash had inherited her from his father, he had found himself looking forward to Tuesdays, and the gray suit that broke up all the black.

  She crossed the room, hung his coat on the coatrack by the door, and said, “Welcome home, sir. I trust you had a pleasant flight.”

  “Wouldn’t know. Slept like a baby the whole way.” He pocketed his phone and scooped up a collection of envelopes from her desk, sorting through them absently.

  “Which might explain why you’ve failed to realize it’s afternoon, not morning, and already well past nine, U.S. It has been for several hours now.”

  He glanced at his watch, which had faces for seven different time zones. “So it is,” he observed, surprised. “How do you keep up with all of that in your head?”

  Patiently, she retrieved the envelopes from him, and rearranged them into their original stack on her desk. “Perhaps five o’clock U.S. would do as well? I’ve taken the liberty of clearing that with the New York office.”

  He smiled at her. “Of course you have, you precious thing.”

  She did not respond with as much as a flicker of an eye-lash. “On the subject of the U.S., sir, I was asked specifically to remind you that the young lady is flying out for Rondelais today. I believe you wanted to send flowers?”

  He stared at her blankly. “What young lady?” And then, in a sudden flash of chagrined recognition, “Oh bloody hell! Is that today?”

  He knew then what he had forgotten. And it sank in his heart like a stone.

  “Mr. Winkle reminds you that if you wish him to represent your interests in this matter, you should please pop down to the sixth floor and sign the power of attorney before end of business today, or kindly instruct him otherwise of your wishes. Otherwise he will expect you at Rondelais Friday at noon to take care of the matter personally.”

  The frown that had started to gather betw
een Ash’s brows as she began speaking had settled into a scowl by the time she finished. He had been back in the office less than five minutes and his day was, indeed, on a steady downhill slide. “I was supposed to go to the cricket match with the Swiss ambassador Friday. I don’t suppose we could reschedule?”

  “The cricket match, possibly. The appointment at Rondelais, no. After all, it did take almost six months to arrange. Shall I send down to Mr. Winkle’s office for the documents, then?”

  “No.” The word came out a bit too sharply and he modified it with a quick, “What I mean to say is, hold off a bit on that. I’ll let you know.” He thrust his hand through his rain-damp hair in a brief and uncharacteristic gesture of frustration and said, “Damn it all to hell. What a bloody nuisance. The last thing I have time for this week is a trip across the Channel. I haven’t even unpacked my cases from Hong Kong.”

  “Then that should save you some time, sir. And on that subject . . .”

  He turned on her with an uplifted eyebrow. “Mrs. Harrison, has anyone ever told you that you are the master of the elegant segue?”

  She did not blink. “Your mother called to invite you for the weekend. She is having a few people out. Since you do not intend to go to Rondelais, shall I accept?”

  Ash regarded her without expression. “You surely can’t be serious.”

  And she returned, equally sanguine, “She is your mother, sir.”

  “And I adore her. But her house parties are ghastly—not to mention dangerous. She almost sent the prime minister to hospital with food poisoning that time.”

  “A regrettable incident,” agreed Mrs. Harrison.

  “And how she can manage to gather every homely, awkward, tediously unsuitable female in the British Isles all in one place at the same time . . . there must be some sort of directory to which she has exclusive access.”