Garden of Thorns

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  “Hello, Hilary,” Dolores said. “Wes Bradshaw assures me you’re doing a good job with the paperwork.”

  Hilary replied graciously, “I’m very fortunate to be able to work with such artifacts.”

  “We’re fortunate to have you.” Dolores linked her arm with Vasarian’s and led him away. He shot one last sardonic smile over his shoulder, making a silent comment about Dolores or the artifacts or Hilary herself.

  Hilary sagged against the table, feeling like a private released from general inspection. Dolores. Sharon, Ken, and Travis. Vasarian. They spent a lot of time hanging around either the Lloyd or Osborne—like the lilies of the field, they neither toiled nor spun…. I might have ended up neither toiling nor spinning. Hilary opened her notebook and scrolled through her computer files until she found the description of the reliquary. Purgatory, she typed, and almost added, The condition of skipping your lunch to impress people who have nothing better to do than eat it.

  It was about two o’clock when June called Hilary to the telephone. “Hello?”

  “Hilary, it’s Gary.”

  She’d been prepared for Mark’s soft baritone drawl. Her mind stammered, hardly recognizing her brother’s voice. They were so far apart in age—he was twelve years older—she might as well be an only child. “Rats, you found me,” she said. “And I thought I was safe here.”

  As usual, Gary ignored her joke. Not that she was really joking. “You’ve got to go home, kid. Dad’s had a heart attack.”

  “What?”

  “Mom says he’s sitting up in bed ordering the nurses around, so I think she’s panicked. You know what a ditz she is…. Hang on a minute.” Gary spewed muffled curses—his vocabulary of four-letter words was truly impressive. “Idiot,” he said into the receiver. “I told him to buy that stock before the company declared a dividend.”

  “You’re not in Indianapolis, I take it? Still in New York?”

  “Hell yes, I can’t leave the office, got to keep my finger on the old Wall Street pulse. You’re not doing anything, you go home. Call me when you get there and tell me what the blazes is going on.”

  “Thank you,” Hilary said sweetly. “I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry about a thing.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw the gleam of gold and ivory, the sculpted and painted faces gazing into another dimension. She hadn’t even looked at them today. Not doing anything. Right.

  “Gotta run, kid….” Gary was already shouting at someone else when mercifully the line went dead. Mr. Type A plus, Hilary said to herself. Even Vasarian didn’t buy with such zeal into the sacrament of the bank account. As a child she’d imagined she was really the offspring of poor but honest artists or musicians who’d left her in a basket on a wealthy family’s doorstep. Maturity hadn’t changed her fantasy.

  Wearily she packed the artifacts, put them back in the storeroom, saved her computer files, and trudged upstairs.

  Nathan was sitting at his desk, his chin resting on his fist, his other hand tapping a pencil against a catalogue from the Prado in Madrid. The eraser was leaving smudges on the glossy Velasquez on the cover. Felicia’s pink notepaper was gone, replaced with a printout of Hilary’s own descriptions of the Regensfeld artifacts.

  “Nathan?” Hilary said. “I’m sorry to bother you…”

  With a start he looked up. His face was drawn, as though he’d had liposuction during his lunch hour, and his hazel eyes were flat and colorless. Hurriedly Hilary explained her problem and was rather relieved when he offered no explanation of his.

  He reached for the telephone directory and called the airport, ascertaining that she could get a flight to Chicago at four-thirty. “Can you get a commuter flight on to Indianapolis from there?”

  “Yes. Thanks. I really hate running out on you like this. I’ll work next weekend or something….” Only then did it occur to her that her father might die. What was sobering was how little that prospect meant to her. But it was safer, after all, to pursue a psychic scorched earth policy—destroy your own emotions so no one else can. “I’ll try to be back Friday. My brother didn’t think the situation was very serious.”

  “Take as long as you need.” Nathan forced an encouraging smile onto his face, the effort becoming almost a grimace of pain, and slumped again over his desk before Hilary was out of the room. I don’t have the energy to worry about him, she admonished herself, and ran out of the museum.

  *

  The afternoon sun sparkled in a clear sky. From Osborne’s hill the city looked like an Easter basket, blue sky, green grass and trees, yellow forsythia, pink redbud, and purple wisteria nestled around chocolate and marzipan buildings. The breeze was warm with the scent of burgeoning green, sharpened by a hint of fertilizer and weed-killer.

  Preston ramrodded the students in the garden trench. “That’s a line of post holes,” he was saying. “See where the soil changes color?”

  In the knee-deep garage trench, Jenny was taking photographs of Mark and a meter stick by a brick right angle, his Garfield T-shirt adding a note of whimsy. “Left two paces,” she directed. “Steady on. I think we’re almost through the burned rubbish and into the foundation.”

  Mark saw Hilary approaching. He put the stick down and leaped from the pit. “What’s the matter?”

  She realized she must be exuding unease as obviously as Nathan had been. Again she explained—Gary, her father, the hospital, how she would come back as soon as possible. Even to herself her voice sounded dull and detached.

  “I’ll drive you to the airport,” Mark offered.

  “No thank you, I’ll drive myself.”

  “Parking is expensive.”

  “So my parents can damn well pay for it.”

  Jenny murmured her sympathies and glided discreetly away. Mark’s perceptive gray gaze, shaded blue by the sunlight, thudded onto his muddy shoes. Hilary bit her lip, wishing she hadn’t been so terse. Surely Mark, at least, knew her well enough not to think she enjoyed being an ice princess.

  “Check the weather if you’re planning to come back tomorrow,” was all he said. “They’re predicting a blue norther.”

  “A what?”

  “A winter storm. High winds, a sudden drop in temperature, and sometimes snow or sleet. You know what we say about Texas weather—if you don’t like it wait fifteen minutes. It’ll change.”

  Mark’s tentative smile drew one from her. She raised her voice to include Jenny. “Nathan’s got the go-ahead on the biography, but he’s decided the Ripper material is politically incorrect, and we’re not to tell the Coburgs about it.”

  “I’m not going to faint in astonishment at that,” Jenny replied.

  Mark offered Hilary a hug. “Are you all right?”

  She leaned against his chest, dirt or no dirt, thinking, Thank God we can still be friends; the little sex demons haven’t spoiled that. And, I don’t want to go back. It’s not home, I want you to be my home…. She said, “It’s not just me. Nathan’s upset about something—Bradshaw, Sharon, I don’t know.”

  “Let them worry about their own problems,” Mark told her. “I’ll miss you, sweetness. Keep on fighting.”

  “Sometime I’d like to stop fighting.” But Mark hadn’t heard her conversation with Vasarian; he didn’t know what she meant. Hilary contented herself with kissing him. Cheers rose from the students in the garden trench despite Preston’s half serious, half joking scowl at them. Jenny offered Hilary a grin and a backhanded British salute. The small red flame of a cardinal landed in a nearby oak, its call echoing Mark’s affectionate pet name for her: “Sweet, sweet, sweet.”

  She walked toward the driveway, her shoulders as bowed as Nathan’s had been, her carapace of composure growing heavier by the moment.

  Chapter Nine

  To the northwest the horizon was an ominous blue-black. The wind drove streamers of cloud across a leaden sky and monochrome landscape. Mark ducked his head against the chill blast and ran from the garage around Osborne’s hulk. The windows were blank ey
es staring out into the prematurely dark evening. All the scene needed was narration by Vincent Price.

  Mark banged at the kitchen door with his foot, since his arms were full. It opened so abruptly, he almost tumbled inside. Jenny peered over her reading glasses at his rosy face and windblown hair and said, “You weren’t having me on, were you? When the weather changes here, it changes good and proper. It’s like the Yorkshire moors out there.”

  Mark handed over his burdens. “Careful, the bottle’s cold and the food’s hot. I didn’t know any Indian places, so I brought Chinese.”

  “Brilliant.” She shoved the paper sacks of food in the oven and inspected the bottle of wine. “Well done—good plonk, nothing too posh.”

  “I was contemplating a package of bologna in my fridge when you called. Thanks for the invitation.” Keep me from brooding over Hilary, Mark added to himself. He tossed his coat onto the chair by the hearth and extended his hands toward the cheerfully popping fire. Graymalkin promptly took up residence on the coat, toasting first one furry flank and then the other. The wind moaned in the chimney, angry at being closed out.

  “I wasn’t keen on spending the evening alone, to tell you the truth,” said Jenny. “I saw too many horror films as a child, I suppose—the ones that start on a dark and stormy night.”

  “You’re welcome at my place, you know.”

  “Thank you. But since I’m earning my bed by playing security guard, I feel I ought to stay here as much as possible. Half a minute while I finish these.” Jenny settled her glasses on her nose and considered one of the printouts stacked on the table. “Mind you, that’s a sizable structure for a carriage house-cum-garage, quite complex.”

  “Supposedly Arthur liked to tinker with his cars and had a workshop in there.”

  Jenny shrugged. “I’ll ask Lucia tomorrow night. And Nathan, too—he was turning over the study both Wednesday and Thursday afternoons—collected almost everything of value.”

  “The garage burned down the night Felicia died,” Mark said. “Maybe a coincidence, maybe not, if anyone could ever figure out why she was murdered. Fifteen years ago yesterday.” He glanced at the door leading into the rest of the house. The dark rooms beyond seemed like massive boulders teetering atop a precipice, threatening to roll down and crush the unwary. So much for his smug assumptions the day he’d first stepped inside; the place had been teasing him.

  Jenny took off her glasses, folded them into their case, and rubbed her eyes. “The door is closed and locked tonight, I assure you. If Miss Cat wants to go mousing, she can go on her own.”

  “Any cat worth its catnip knows how to walk through walls,” said Mark.

  “Or find a secret passage. There’s a loose board behind the old stove. Opens into a cupboard in the butler’s pantry. Clever boots, our Graymalkin,”

  Graymalkin looked up from her nest on the coat. The angle of her ears reminded Mark of a samurai helmet.

  With a sigh Jenny folded the papers and stacked them with a couple of photos next to the computer. She rotated her head and shoulders and rubbed the back of her neck. “I’m whipped.”

  “You should let me do some of that,” he chided.

  “You shall, don’t worry. But for now you can open the wine.”

  Mark pulled out his knife and unfolded the corkscrew. When Jenny had called an hour ago, her voice had been brittle. Now she laid out plates and silverware with her usual poised efficiency…. No, her movements were a bit jerky, like a marionette manipulated by an inexperienced puppeteer. The strain of dealing with the Coburgs and the Coburgs’ haunted house would tire anyone, he supposed.

  One of the photos on the table was of Arthur looking proudly at Dolores and Dolores looking proudly at a miniature Kenneth and Sharon. In the other, a younger Arthur and a tiny, blond woman with a remarkably penetrating gaze stood beside several rosebushes. Felicia, Mark realized. He wrenched the cork from the bottle. “A wild night like this should keep Kenneth out of your hair.”

  “I can’t barricade the house, can I? He’s lord of the manor.”

  “Which wouldn’t be so bad if he didn’t expect seigneurial privileges?”

  Jenny held out her wineglass and said acidly, “Right.”

  The delectable odors of ginger and peanut oil, plum sauce and peppers beckoned. Mark and Jenny opened the cartons of food and squabbled amiably over who got how much of what. After several moments of peaceful munching, Jenny asked, “Have you heard from Hilary?”

  “She called last night saying she’d try to be in tomorrow for Lucia’s dinner party, and would I let Nathan know she’d be back to work on Monday. Her father had a mild heart attack, but he’ll be all right.”

  “Hilary didn’t seem terribly upset.”

  Mark glanced up. Jenny was wrestling with a noodle; she had merely commented, not criticized. “Hilary says she used to think she was an alien adopted by a family of humans, until she decided they’re the aliens and she’s the human. They’re not a particularly close family.” There was more to it than that, but he didn’t need to broadcast the gory details.

  “I don’t think any of us feel really connected to our relatives,” Jenny said. “We end up paying their debts, that’s all. Pass the mustard.”

  Mark offered her both the mustard and a curious look. “I thought you were close to your mother—the cats and the history and everything.”

  “Oh yes, I was close to my mum. There were only the two of us. I never knew my father. I’m a bastard, you see. Fortunately bastardy isn’t the albatross it used to be.”

  “Mmmph,” said Mark around a spicy mouthful of chicken and peppers, and managed to swallow. “I’m sorry. Or should I be sympathetic?”

  “Damned if I know. You had two parents, you tell me.”

  “I don’t know, either. My parents kept saying they were staying together for my sake, even though they hated each other. They should’ve divorced a lot sooner—they ended up hating me, I think, because they were trapped. Hard to believe they were ever in love, but here I am.”

  Graymalkin nestled further into Mark’s coat, making sure it was thoroughly fuzzed. Feline nirvana, Mark thought. Human beings required a little more comfort than a coat and a fire. Although the fire was undoubtedly pleasant, and the food and the wine muttered sweet nothings to his senses. The wail of the wind and the creak of the old house were atmospheric touches making the kitchen all the more cozy. A shame Hilary wasn’t here. But then, Jenny was here—it was her place—and sometimes three could be a crowd.

  “I decided early on I would never have children,” Jenny said. “I even had a tubal ligation, just to make sure. Children should have parents who want them.” She swirled the wine in her glass as though the red liquid was her own bloodline.

  “I had a daughter,” Mark said, and stopped dead. But Hilary’s eyes weren’t the only ones that inspired confidences—Jenny’s dark, even gaze asked nothing and judged nothing. “I was seventeen, desperate for comfort, searching for it the way too many kids do. In the most ludicrous moment of my life, I traded my virginity for Karen’s and got her pregnant all at once.”

  Jenny winced.

  “There we were, seniors in high school, married. It was fun at first—we worked our way through three different sex manuals before she got too big and uncomfortable. Then the baby came. Karen had a terrible time. It seemed like days she lay there sweating and screaming and cussing me out. It was all my fault—she didn’t want to be married, she didn’t want the baby. Dammit, she climbed into the back seat of that car just as fast as I did.”

  “You stayed with her,” said Jenny. “That’s more than most men would have done.”

  Mark shook his head. “I never even got to hold Chelsea, she was hooked up to so many machines. She lived three days. I remember looking out the hospital window the night she died. It was the Fourth of July—you know, Independence Day—and the horizon was lit by fireworks. Like in a movie, when the couple makes love and they cut to bombs bursting in air. But they never
show how badly the sparks burn and how you spend the rest of your life tasting ashes. I’ll always wonder if we’d wanted Chelsea, would she have lived?” He drank. But no amount of alcohol would ever answer that question. He’d tried. “Karen and I realized overactive libidos were all we had in common. Divorced at eighteen—I’m not proud of that. I’m not proud of any of it.”

  Jenny stacked the empty food containers. “Now that you’ve learned how to handle fireworks, you won’t get burned again.”

  Mark didn’t reply. He remembered Hilary writhing in his arms, and his gut cramped.

  Graymalkin looked up, ears perked, as if she heard something. Jenny rose and with a sharp gesture poked at the fire. Sparks flared and died. She leaned against the mantelpiece, her back turned to Mark’s uncomfortable seated huddle. “And Hilary. What about her? Do you love her?”

  “I would if she’d let me.”

  “You’re not sleeping with her?”

  “No.” His voice squeezed a Niagara Falls of emotion through a pinhole.

  In a younger woman, Jenny’s response to his strained inflection would’ve been a giggle. As it was, her laugh was filled with rue. “Her choice, not yours, I take it. Don’t tell me why, that’s not my affair.”

  “Celibacy isn’t my style. Neither is masochism. But I guess they’re my choice, since I care for her.” Mark topped off his wine, got up from the table, and tilted the last drops from the bottle into Jenny’s glass. She had offered him no sympathy. He didn’t want sympathy, not over Karen and Chelsea, certainly not over Hilary, when Hilary herself shied away from sympathy. He wasn’t sure what he wanted. The faint odor of smoke in the room came from the fireplace and not his own scorched nerves.

  Graymalkin leaped down from the chair, stretched, padded toward the connecting door, and proceeded to sharpen her claws on it. Jenny watched her intently, unblinking. Mark was beginning to realize how guarded Jenny’s eyes usually were, their rich dark depths covered like a well. Not that they were open now, by any means, but she was sending up a bucketful or two of candor.