Miles

by Melissa R. L. Simonin

  I gave Miles a puzzled look. He seemed like he wanted to say something, but didn’t, and I couldn’t interpret his look. I didn’t spend the last hundred and forty or so years living with him, like Trixie.

  “I wouldn’t say that…” Polly’s voice drifted off as she looked around the room. She picked up an old-fashioned brush from the vanity, and turned it in her hand absentmindedly. Several moments later, she set aside the brush, and turned around.

  “I wouldn’t say that, dear. Very little in this house has not been here for a hundred years or more. My son and grandson made some changes, but for the most part it has stayed the same, just rearranged a bit, to suit the occupants. After all, when you have furniture like this…” Polly ran her hand across the mahogany footboard of the bed. “Why replace it with something else. They just don’t make things like they used to.”

  “I totally agree with you, Polly,” I said.

  She sat at the vanity, and looked around again.

  “So many memories,” she sighed. A slight cloud crossed her face, then it was gone. “You know this wasn’t only my and my husband’s room. This is the master bedroom. Of course you might very well look around and wonder what sets it apart, all of the rooms are spectacular. But this... this, for some reason, is the master bedroom, and this is where the heads of the house slept.”

  Polly paused in thought for a moment.

  “You know dear, the Miles Bannerman whose name you are working to clear… this was his parents’ room, as well.”

  Miles gave me a ‘there, THAT’S what I was trying to say’ look.

  Polly suddenly narrowed her eyes, and looked at me piercingly.

  “Did I hear you speaking to someone, as I was walking down the hall, dear?”

  “Uh... I sometimes talk to myself when I’m thinking… maybe I was doing that?”

  Polly considered the possibility.

  She appeared to accept the explanation, and rose from the chair. As I walked with her back to the front of the house, she stopped to remove something from one of the tapestries lining the hall. She held it up and looked at it.

  “Curious… very curious,” she said under her breath, as she dropped it and continued walking.

  I looked back to see what it was. Several strands of Trixie’s hair, of course.

  Polly moved on to a completely different subject, which was fine by me.

  “We used to have wonderful parties here, Anika dear,” she said, as we passed through a large ballroom. “The women wore such beautiful gowns. And the food! And the orchestra, and the dancing…”

  Polly had a faraway look in her eyes.

  I looked around, imagining. The wooden dance floor filled with dancers, the orchestra in the corner, the chandeliers lit, family and friends enjoying food and good fellowship. For just a moment, I thought I saw a glimpse of the past, and the whirl of ball gowns.

  I walked Polly out, then returned to the bedroom as Miles finished searching the cedar chest.

  “Good job, Trixie,” I gave her head a good rub. “If you hadn’t warned us, Polly might have thought I was crazy, talking to myself like that.”

  Miles laughed, then became serious.

  “I don’t think we’ll find anything here,” he said, looking around the room. “It doesn’t appear to hold any of my parents’ belongings. Too much time has passed.”

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t look like anyone ever got rid of anything,” I said. “Your parents’ things were moved, but they’re surely here. We’ll search until we find what we’re looking for.”

  “Sounds good,” Miles said. He moved to look out the window. “The rain has stopped, and the workmen have gone for the day. How about we take a break, and play ball with the dogs for a while?”

  “Yes, let’s do that,” I said. My back was tired of searching trunks and cedar chests.

  The garden was breathtakingly beautiful after the rain. The colors were more vivid than they were at any other time, and the raindrops hung from the rose petals like diamonds. The stone walls of the castle were damp with rain, and reflected glittering shades of pink and purple that weren’t visible when dry. A rainbow spanned the sky above the castle. It was a fairy tale world. I wouldn’t be surprised if a unicorn stepped out of the forest. But then look who I was with! Why should anything surprise me, ever again.

  The dogs had a blast chasing after the balls we threw. I couldn’t help imagining how strange it would look to anyone passing by, balls rising in the air by themselves, and sailing across the garden! As out of the way as the castle was, no one would just wander by, though. Well, except me!

  We played until time for me and Chip to go home, then said goodbye until tomorrow.

  The scent of the forest after the rain was intoxicating. The air felt so fresh and cool. As we walked home under the towering oaks, rain drops from the afternoon shower filtered through, lightly dotting the path’s cobbled stones.

  We crossed the bridge, marveling in another gorgeous rainbow over the cabin.

  “Hi Mom,” I said, as we walked inside, and I stopped to clean my shoes on the rough mat.

  “Hi honey,” said Mom. “How was your day?”

  “It was good. Polly came by, and was pleased to see what’s been accomplished so far. I really love what I’m doing. I could see doing this sort of thing forever, and not getting tired of it.”

  Of course it wouldn’t be as interesting if I wasn’t searching the castle with Miles, to find evidence. Still, I did enjoy it. Seeing the estate come back to life as rooms were cleaned, repairs made, and the grounds restored... I did enjoy that a lot.

  “Good, I’m glad,” said Mom, as she patted me on the back, on her way to the stove where dinner was cooking. “I knew you had it in you, and that’s wonderful for Polly that she has such a conscientious estate manager.”

  Relieved that Mom wasn’t inquiring further about my friend, I walked into the living room where Doreen lay on the couch. The TV was on, but without sound. She looked barely awake.

  I knelt beside her.

  “How are you doing?” I asked her, gently moving one of her beautiful gold curls away from her equally beautiful blue eyes.

  “Same…” she said lethargically.

  “Need anything?”

  She gave me a weak smile. I saw a little bit of her old self in it.

  “A diagnosis would be nice. Maybe a cure.”

  I gently kissed her forehead.

  “That’s what we’re all praying for… maybe the next doctor will be the one.”

  Doreen nodded, and closed her eyes. I walked softly out of the room.

  Tryon just about ran over me in the hall.

  “Anika!” he shouted, quietly, for Doreen’s sake. “You’re home!”

  “Yes I am, funny boy,” I said, trying to pick him up.

  I grabbed my back and groaned dramatically, making a face.

  “I need—some—ibuprofen—”

  Tryon giggled, and ran back down the hall for his favorite book. I knew what I’d be doing until dinner was ready!

  Chapter 8

  “If I’m back by one o’ clock, will that give you enough time to get to Doreen’s appointment?” I asked Mom, as I put the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher.

  Mom thought for a minute, calculating in her head.

  “Yes, that ought to work.”

  “Okay, great. I’ll be here at one o’ clock then,” I said with a wave, and headed out the door. I whistled for Chip, and he came running.

  The weather looked ominous. I hoped there wouldn’t be another violent storm like the one that led us inside the castle. If there was, I supposed Mom could pick me and Chip up, then drop us and Tryon off at the cabin before heading to the appointment. It wouldn’t be very nice weather for driving to the city, though.

  As Chip and I entered the garden, I saw Nate and his guys hard at work. The grounds were now free of weeds and overgrown plants and vines, and they were preparing the flower beds for the cold-hardy flowers that were so
on to be planted there.

  “Very nice,” I said to Nate, as Chip and I walked by. “I love the progress you’re making. It’s looking great.”

  “Thank you,” Nate said, looking around at the grounds. “It won’t be much longer before the work is done, and we’ll switch to maintenance mode.”

  “Awesome,” I said, as I continued on to the house.

  As I walked up the steps, the Queen of Clean ladies arrived, and I ushered them in. After they were well on their way deep into the west wing, I followed Miles to the east wing.

  “Hi,” I said, when I figured it was safe to talk.

  “Hi back,” he smiled.

  “Today’s my sister’s appointment with the new doctor, so I need to be home by one, so I can babysit my brother,” I said.

  “How’s she doing?” asked Miles.

  “Not better, that’s for sure. After Mom visited the website you recommended, she made an appointment with a doctor on the Lyme literate physician list. That’s who she’s seeing today.”

  “Good, I hope this one figures out what’s going on,” said Miles.

  “Me too,” I said. “It’s a desperate feeling to know something is badly wrong, but the medical community at large won’t believe it, because they can’t figure out what it is.”

  Miles shook his head.

  “It’s faulty logic to say it doesn’t fit what I’m familiar with, therefore it must not exist.”

  Miles stopped and opened the door to yet another storage room.

  “I seriously cannot get over the amount of storage space in your house,” I said, as Miles closed and locked the door behind us.

  “I can’t either. I never went through any of them, before you came along. I had no idea how ridiculous it was.”

  I tackled the contents of yet another wardrobe, and Miles sorted through a trunk.

  “Is that rain?” I asked.

  Miles listened.

  “Sounds like it.”

  “Ug, I hope it doesn’t storm the way it did the first day I came here.”

  “More than likely it won’t. This is probably the last rain we’ll see this year. The next time, it will be snow,” Miles said.

  I found what might have been a diary, it was filled with spidery writing.

  “Can you read this?” I held it out to Miles.

  “Hm. Not without an extreme amount of difficulty,” he said, turning to the inside cover. “Fortunate for both of us, this was written in 1805, so we don’t have to interpret it one painful word at a time.”

  Miles handed the book back to me, and I looked through it just to be sure there wasn’t a note or some other bit of pertinent information inside of it.

  Nope, just a diary I was thankful not to have to try and read.

  “It sure is full of history though,” I said, using my fingers to comb back the hair that wanted very much to shield my left eye.

  “That it is,” said Miles.

  “Imagine what a great museum curator you’d make,” I commented. “You’d know all about everything!”

  Miles laughed.

  “You overestimate me. I was here for a great deal of our country’s history, before this part of the country even became a state. However, we didn’t have the flow of information that’s available now, so there’s a lot I never knew until long after the fact.”

  “Well you are still the smartest guy I know,” I said stubbornly. “Anything you didn’t already know, I know you’d learn it faster than anyone else could.”

  “I may need a few hundred more years of learning, to live up to that opinion of yours,” Miles smiled. “But thank you, for the compliment.”

  We sorted in silence for several minutes, listening to the sound of the rain gently tapping against the window panes. It didn’t sound like anything my umbrella wouldn’t be able to handle.

  “The rain makes me think of another time I intervened for my sister,” Miles said, as he lay aside a bundle of needlework.

  “Really? Another guy?” I asked, wondering if Miles was the only gentleman in the late eighteen-hundreds.

  “No, thank goodness she met and fell in love with a guy who was good enough for her. And that’s saying a lot. He was a minister, actually. Quite poor by Bannerman standards. Cynthia was very happy though, and together they did a lot of good during the time they had on this earth.”

  I finished searching the wardrobe and sat back to listen, as Miles talked.

  “Cynthia dreamed of being married in the garden amongst the roses she loved. It was thick with roses, even then. Preparations were made, and all was in readiness for the wedding she dreamed of. Mother and Father spared no expense of course, as you can imagine. The Bannermans as a whole, had more sons than daughters, and my family was no exception. So when there was a daughter, her wedding was made much of. Cynthia’s wedding was the event of not only the season, or even the year or decade, but if you were to ask any one of the guests who attended, it was the event of the century. Far more importantly, it was significant for my family, as they focused entirely on celebrating a new beginning rather than on remembering previous losses. Family from all over the country traveled to attend, and for a time, the house was full again.”

  “Really?” I said in awe.

  “No,” he smiled. “Of course not, can you imagine? No, but there was enough family to fill half the east wing.”

  “Oh my goodness, you completely had me!” I laughed.

  “Yeah, I could tell by the size of your eyes,” he smiled.

  “Well I didn’t know how that was possible, but you said it, so… still, even filling half a wing of the castle equals a crazy amount of people.”

  “Yes, it does. So the day arrived, and all was in readiness. However, just before noon, the sky filled with clouds.”

  “Oh no!” I said, imagining Cynthia’s disappointment, and his whole family’s, really. And after they chose to focus on celebrating instead of grieving, too! It just seemed so unfair! “Well… it helps to have an extra ballroom when your humongous family shows up for a wedding, and it gets rained out.”

  There was laughter in his eyes, but he held in the rest.

  “This is a somewhat serious story, and here you are trying to make me laugh…”

  I laughed, then pretended to zip my lips. He smiled, and continued.

  “It seemed inevitable that rain would force the wedding inside. It came closer and closer, and at last it reached the grounds. But then it stopped.”

  “It stopped raining? Oops, sorry, faulty zipper,” I said, zipping my lips again. Miles smiled and shook his head, then kept going with his story.

  “No, it didn’t stop raining. But the rain stopped. It stopped right at the edge of the grounds, and then went all the way around. While outside of the Bannerman estate, right up to the encircling trees, the rain came down… from one side of the estate grounds to the other, there was none.”

  “You did that?” I was awestruck.

  “Yes. It required a great deal of concentration, but yes. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for my sister, although there were so many things I couldn’t do, after I returned like this.

  “When I was alive, she once told me the reason she talked to me so much is because it was easy. I never looked disinterested or found amusement in the serious things she had to say. I understood her even when others didn’t, and I always gave good advice.”

  Miles paused, lost in memories.

  Outside, the rain fell softly against the window panes, and the grandfather clock in the hall announced the half hour.

  I watched him silently. His eyes were sad, and my own eyes now stung with suppressed tears.

  “There was so much I couldn’t do anymore. See her grow up, for one thing… when I returned like this, she wasn’t the little girl I last saw when I hurried after Delevan that day. She was four years older, and so grown up. She was still my little sister, though. She still needed someone to understand her, to care what she had to say and take her seriously, and
give her advice. She didn’t always have that, and I couldn’t fill that gap for her, no matter how badly I wanted to. I could talk to her, and I did, but she couldn’t hear me, and so she couldn’t respond. I loved my little sister, and it grieved me that I couldn’t be the big brother I used to be. I was so glad, and relieved, when she married Matthew. He loved her unconditionally, and gave her the listening ear and understanding she needed. He gave her advice too at times, which sometimes she appreciated, and other times not so much.” Miles smiled softly, remembering. “In spite of all that I couldn’t do, throughout her life I watched out for her and was there for her in every way that I could be. Giving her the wedding she wanted and seeing her so happy, and seeing Mother, Father, and James enjoying family without a shadow of grief in their eyes… controlling the rain tested the limits of my abilities, but giving that to them… I felt truly happy.”

  “Okay, you are just going to make me cry,” I said very honestly, tears pooling in my eyes. “That is so sweet, but so incredibly sad at the same time. The thought of you being so totally alone, while the family you loved continued their lives right beside you… and the way you watched out for your sister all her life… You have got to be the nicest guy that ever lived, and it’s just wrong what happened to you. You’ve just succeeded in breaking my heart. That’s movie material, you’d win an Oscar, and every girl in the country would be completely in love with you.”

  Miles laughed. He thought I was joking.

  “You laugh, but I’m serious,” I said, trying unsuccessfully to hold back a few sobs as I wiped away the tears that insisted on spilling onto my cheeks.

  “I didn’t mean to make you cry,” Miles said in dismay. “I had no idea—you were laughing just a second ago! What happened? I can’t believe I made you cry!”

  I couldn’t help laughing, he was so disturbed by the effect his incredibly emotional story had on me. I wiped the remaining tears off my face with my sleeve.

  “Well then, Miles Bannerman, I’d say in spite of being very smart about a lot of things, even after all these years, you don’t know very much about women!”

  Miles laughed too, then.

  “Considering how I thought you’d say something like ‘wow Miles, that’s so cool how you used your superpowers to save your sister’s wedding!’ and instead you burst into tears, I don’t think there’s any hope I ever will!”