by Wendy Webb
Kate’s footsteps echoed on the hardwood floor as she walked to the wall of windows. “Let’s see, how do these open?” she said, examining the shutters. With great difficulty, she forced open a hook that was holding two shutters together. When she finally threw them open, she gasped at what she saw.
“Simon! Look at this view!” Kate gazed through the (albeit grimy) window onto Wharton’s quaint downtown area and the entire harbor just beyond it. “My God, this is gorgeous.” From this lofty vantage point, Kate could see for miles.
“Old Harry didn’t spare any detail from this house,” Simon said. “Let’s get all of them open so we can see the full effect.”
They opened shutter after shutter, revealing a panoramic sight. They were high on a hill overlooking the bay. From this height, the boats on the lake looked like toys. Although tourist season was winding down, the streets were still filled with people, wandering in and out of the shops. The bright sun glistened on the water.
“This is absolutely stunning,” she whispered.
“Can you imagine the kind of parties they must’ve had up here?” Simon wondered. “This had to be the invitation to get on New Year’s Eve.”
Kate and Simon had no way of knowing that this lavish ballroom had, in fact, rarely been used by Harrison and Celeste in the manner it had been intended. Harrison had envisioned it as the site of lavish parties and balls celebrating all sorts of community and family events; and indeed, the ghosts of more than a few high-society women in taffeta party dresses still twirled and swayed to the tunes of long-dead musicians here. But all that had ended after baby Hadley was born. Celeste’s frail constitution never recovered from her daughter’s birth, and she never again had the energy or the will to plan the society soirees that her husband so loved.
Instead, baby Hadley had used the third floor as an enormous playroom during the winter months. Much later in life, she told her grandchildren stories of riding her bicycle on these floors and playing all sorts of outdoor games here with friends. Many were the chilly days when Harrison would climb the stairs and find a roaring fire in the fireplace and his daughter having a makeshift tea party with invisible friends in the middle of the empty floor. Seeing her mischievous face and bright smile, he never again wished for something as shallow as a society party.
“What are you planning to do with this room?” Kate asked Simon. “The renovation, I mean.”
Simon came alive with this question, as Kate knew he would. He strode into the center of the room, turned around twice, and said, “Imagine this creaky wood floor completely restored to its original glory, gleaming with rich, warm color,” he said. “A fire in the fireplace. A chandelier here, family photos on the walls there. Of course, we’ll have to tear off this shabby wallpaper and find something suitable.”
“Do you plan to hold parties here?” Kate asked.
“Parties, wedding receptions, you name it.” Simon beamed.
“Fabulous,” Kate said. “This is going to be the place to get married in this town. You are going to be busier than you have ever been.”
“About that,” he said, more seriously. “Listen. I had an ulterior motive for bringing you up here. Until now, it’s been just Jonathan and me doing everything, and that’s been fine because we’ve been only moderately busy. But as you said, when this room is renovated, we’re going to have to beat guests off with a stick. We’re really going to need someone to handle the public relations and marketing. You. You’re nicer than we are. People like you better. You’ll be better with the guests.”
“You mean move here? Permanently?”
“Well, yes.”
“I don’t know.” Kate shook her head, not wanting to think about a permanent life change right now.
“Oh, don’t even bother to turn down this offer.” Simon enveloped her in his arms. “You are going to do this. You and I both know it, silly. You’re going to help me run this place and make a fortune doing it. You owe it to Harry and Celeste to keep their house alive. It’s coming to you after I croak anyway, per Grandma’s will—”
“What do you mean, ‘croak’?” Kate looked at him, concerned.
“Oh, stop it,” Simon said. “I’m not dying. Today. I’m just reminding you that this house is staying in our family. And since Jonathan and I have decided not to have any kids, this place is all yours—or your future child’s—when I die or when Jonathan and I get tired of running a business and want to move to Florida to languish on the beach drinking margaritas. So you’ve got a vested interest. And, I hasten to add, if you come to live here you’ll have plenty of free time to work on that novel you’ve been threatening to write for your whole life.”
Kate smiled, knowing he was right. It did sound like a wonderful opportunity and exactly the change she needed. She just didn’t want to commit to anything concrete, not yet. In Kate’s mind, her life was still in a state of flux. Before she could commit to the next phase, she needed to resolve the current one. That meant divorce papers, selling her house, and a whole host of other unattractive activities. Not to mention that she couldn’t fully concentrate on anything until this otherworldly mystery was solved.
“Okay, I’ll do it,” Kate said, surprising herself.
“What! What do you mean you’ll do it? As easy as that? I thought I’d have to torture a yes out of you.” Simon laughed.
“I’ll do it, but I don’t want to talk or think about it right now,” Kate said. “I have a lot of other things to take care of in my life. Let me do those first, before we talk more about this.”
“What things?” Simon wondered. “I suppose you want to permanently jettison that idiot, Kevin.”
When Kate didn’t respond immediately, Simon said, “Sorry, sweetie. I didn’t mean to be so harsh.”
“Oh, you’re not being harsh.” Kate sighed. “It’s funny, Simon, but when we were talking about Kevin before, it felt like our marriage was a lifetime ago. I’m so consumed with this mystery—this woman—that I’m just not even thinking about this whole Kevin thing. Isn’t that odd?”
“It isn’t odd, not really,” Simon said, wrapping his arms around her and hugging her close. “You’re using this mystery to push away the harsh realities of your life. It’s a coping mechanism.”
This stopped Kate short. “Am I really doing that, do you think?” Kate asked.
“Oh, definitely,” Simon said. “But, listen. Who cares? Focus on something other than your marriage-in-shambles! That’s a good thing. Get through these days in any way you can. It’s better than wallowing in self-pity and despair, which, by the way, I would be doing in your shoes. I love a good wallow.”
Kate thought about this. “Do you think I’m just pushing my feelings away? Should I be feeling more? I mean, am I going to have a hard fall after all of this denial?”
“You’re not denying anything.” Simon looked her square in the eyes. “You’re not thinking that maybe you were mistaken about the affair, right?”
“Right,” Kate said. “I know what I saw.”
“And you’re not thinking of sweeping it under the rug? Marriages do survive affairs.”
“Not a chance. My trust in him is completely eroded. There’s nothing left.”
“Okay, then,” Simon said. “You’re just fine. Don’t obsess about him or your marriage. Use this mystery—and this house for that matter—as a wonderful diversion. Think about Kevin when you’re ready to think about Kevin. Until then, let’s have fun with this.” He opened his arms wide, gesturing toward the dusty trunks.
Kate smiled at her cousin but said nothing, tears welling up in her eyes.
“I can’t fathom why Kevin would cheat on someone as wonderful as you,” Simon went on. “But I can certainly fathom why you should kick his ass out of your life. When you’re ready to do that, divorce his ass, sell your house in town, and make a new life here; just know that all of this is waiting for you. And if you decide that you don’t want to do what I’ve proposed, that instead you want to go back
to Kevin and work through this to save your marriage—well, honey, I’ll be standing right behind you then, too. Bring him here and we’ll all toast your reunion. And I promise not to put any arsenic in his glass.”
“This is such a soft place for me to fall,” Kate said, the tears stinging her eyes. “Do you know how wonderful you are?”
“Of course I do,” Simon laughed. “I’ve been singing my own praises for years.”
He enveloped her in a hug again, the two of them standing together like that for a long while. “Now, are you ready to get to work?” he asked.
Kate shook the tears from her eyes and pointed to the two doors near the fireplace. “Where do those doors lead?”
“Oh, that’s the best yet.” Simon started toward one of the doors. “You know the turrets on either side of the house?”
“These doors lead to the turrets?”
“Winding staircases and the whole nine yards.” Simon opened the door closest to him. “Have a look. This is really something special.”
Kate followed Simon through the doorway and up a dusty, winding staircase, which opened up into a round room with windows on all sides. Even through the decades of dust, the view was magnificent.
“They weren’t used as bedrooms in Harry’s day,” Simon said. “Grandma used to play up here when she was little. Do you remember her saying that?”
“I do,” Kate said.
“I’m thinking we’ll make them into luxury suites for people who host events in the ballroom. We’ll have to add bathrooms and other amenities, of course.”
If only Kate and Simon had listened a bit more carefully, they might have heard the cries, or certainly felt the anguish that still lingered here, left by a man nearly a century before. A man whose actions, kept secret all these years, had caused him to take refuge in that room and weep bitter tears of regret and disbelief where no one could hear him. It was the sound a soul made when it was in the very depths of mourning, and it never dissipated, even in death.
But they weren’t listening closely enough to discern it. They were immersed in the present.
“The first step,” Simon was saying as they trotted down the turret stairs to the ballroom, “is going through the trunks to see what’s here, what we can use, and what we should just pack away into the attic.”
“Let’s get started then,” Kate said, pulling a sheet off an old, wooden trunk with a brass clasp. “Is this thing locked?” she wondered aloud, but a bit of fidgeting with the lock answered her question. It popped open with a little effort.
Under a burgundy-colored blanket, Kate saw that the trunk was stuffed full of scrapbooks, newspaper clippings, aging photographs, and memorabilia of a life gone by. She sank down on the floor next to the trunk and peered inside.
“What are we looking for, exactly?” Kate wondered. If all the trunks were this full of items, they’d be there sifting through them for a good, long while.
“I’m thinking about family photos and other memorabilia from Harrison and Celeste’s time,” Simon said. “We’re renovating this house back to its original glory, if you will, so I thought that accenting it with items from that period would give guests a real sense of the past.”
“I see,” Kate said, fingering the items in her trunk. “You want to duplicate the feel of the main floor throughout the house.”
“Exactly,” Simon said. “We’ve got some photos and other things, old books and such, on the second floor, but I want more of them for the guest rooms and to adorn the walls of this ballroom. What I’d really love are photos from galas and balls that Harrison and Celeste hosted here, but I don’t suppose we’ll get that lucky.”
“Who knows?” Kate said. “All we can do is look and see what’s here.”
“I can see right away that this trunk isn’t going to have what we need,” Simon said, gesturing to the trunk in front of him. “Look at this.” He pulled out an old toy, a child’s telephone. “This looks like it was made in the forties. These are probably our dads’ toys. I’ll bet everything in here is from that period.”
“My trunk looks more promising,” Kate said. Simon walked across the room and came to sit on the other side of it. The two sifted through the belongings of their ancestors, taking hold of items with enormous sentimental value to Celeste and Harrison but which meant little to these two cousins today. Among the relics, they found a baby’s baptism gown, a delicate crocheted blanket, a tiny silver cup.
Kate held them up and examined them, murmuring comments like, “Oh, how beautiful,” and “I wonder who wore this?” not knowing that Celeste had carefully laid these items away with a crippling grief and longing in her heart.
“Harrison!” Celeste’s screams had echoed through the enormous, empty house in the middle of a windy autumn night. “She’s not breathing! Clementine is not breathing!”
His wife’s cries awoke the new father, who rushed, horrified, to the side of his first daughter’s crib in the nursery, an alcove just off what was now the master bedroom that Simon and Jonathan had renovated into a spectacular master bath, complete with a steam shower and Jacuzzi tub. It was Simon’s favorite thing, lazing in the scented water, enjoying a glass of wine and a good book. He had no idea that his great-grandmother had begun to lose her sanity in the exact spot where numerous water jets now massaged the kinks in his back. Although he had told Kate that he had never heard messages from the other side, if he had listened keenly enough during any one of his baths, he would have heard the soft weeping of a woman cradling her dead child, her first child. Clementine.
Harrison had burst into the room to find a horrific scene. Celeste realized her beloved infant was dead—surely, she must’ve realized it—but Harrison could not convince her to let go of the tiny body. She sat in the nursery’s rocking chair, singing and cooing to the dead child in her arms. “Why won’t she go to sleep? Why won’t she stop crying?”
Harrison ran to Cook’s room and rapped at the door until she answered, disheveled in her nightclothes.
“Mrs. Connor is unwell,” he whispered to her. “Run and get the doctor, will you?”
Cook bundled up against the cold and ran down the hill into town, knocking for what seemed like an eternity on the doctor’s back door. When he finally answered, the two of them sped off for the house and climbed the stairs to the master bedroom to find an ashen-faced Harrison staring out of the window. His wife, rocking a dead baby in her arms, was singing a lullaby.
“This child simply will not sleep if she’s not in my arms,” Celeste said as she smiled at the doctor. “Every time I attempt to put her into her crib, she cries so terribly! Hush now, baby, don’t you cry . . .”
Harrison looked at the doctor imploringly.
“Let me take her to the hospital, Mrs. Connor,” the doctor suggested, holding out his hands. “We can care for her there. We can determine why she is crying so.”
Celeste could see the wisdom of this; the child was obviously ill. She handed the tiny, stiffening body over to the doctor, who in return handed her the hot drink laced with something to help her sleep that Cook had brought up from the kitchen.
“You have been through quite an ordeal, Mrs. Connor,” he said. “Get some sleep now while I tend to your daughter. I will take care of things from here.”
Harrison mouthed a heartfelt “Thank you” to the doctor as he gently led Celeste back to their bed. When she awoke the next morning, she did not ask about the baby. She would not speak to Harrison, nor to anyone, about what had occurred the night before. She simply packed away all the baby’s things, the gown that would’ve been used for her baptism, the blanket her grandmother had crocheted, the silver cup. All those precious memories, packed forever into a trunk, out of sight, out of mind.
To the world, Celeste was dealing with the loss beautifully and pragmatically, like any sensible woman of the day. Infant death was not a rarity at that time and place—it seemed every family had seen this type of tragedy. But Celeste never recovered from the loss. A
second daughter, Hadley; a loving husband; and more money than she would need in five lifetimes did nothing to ease her sadness. It ate away at her body. When she died, she was looking expectantly toward heaven, wondering if Clementine would finally be able to sleep now that her mother could, at long last, hold her in her arms.
But Simon and Kate knew nothing of this as they held up those tiny relics of their great-grandmother’s undoing. They didn’t know about Clementine. Things such as an infant’s death weren’t talked about in Celeste and Harrison’s day. The parents were expected to carry on with a brave face, no matter the extent of their grief. So, their great-grandchildren unknowingly sifted through Clementine’s belongings, among others’, looking for books and photographs to display.
A few hours and several trunks later, they had finally accumulated many such items. Simon had migrated across the room to another trunk, where he found several photographs of the family that he intended to frame and hang in the guest rooms.
“Look at this one,” he said to Kate. “This must be Harrison and Celeste when they were first married.”
She walked over to his side of the room and regarded the photo.
“They were so good looking, weren’t they?” She smiled. “How dashing he was!”
“Those are the genes that brought you all of your glory,” Simon said, holding up a stack of photographs. “Here’s a bunch more. Help me look through the rest of these and then we’ll call it a day.”
Kate sat down next to Simon and took a pile of photos. He was right, Kate thought, these shots must’ve been taken early on in their marriage. The couple looked so young and so happy. Dusk was starting to fall beyond the room, but still the pair kept sifting through photos, both mesmerized by the dalliance into their collective past.
Simon held one of the images in his hands, squinting to see it in the fading light. “You’ve got to see this one,” he murmured to Kate. “It looks like Harry and Celeste with another young couple on a picnic. What a fun shot. We’ve got to frame this one.”
