A Stranger in Alcott Manor

by Alyssa Richards

  Layla ran her hand across Peyton’s back as if to comfort, as if she understood.

  “Oh, Peyton, don’t—” Her mother checked to see where Mrs. Miller was behind her. “You and I both know that you don’t have anything to worry about.” Jayne Ella’s tone was low and scolding.

  Peyton had always been the strong one, the smart one, the organized one. She was the one who made good on her college education by leaving town and building a highly paid career. She was the one her mother loved to brag about. That Peyton might have to rely on medication probably didn’t sit well with her.

  Layla pushed a piece of blond hair from her face and leaned toward their mother. “There are very strange things that have happened in this place. I can personally testify to that fact. Peyton, if you don’t want to stay, I strongly urge you to honor that—”

  “Are you feeling alright, dear?” Mrs. Miller asked from across the room.

  Jayne Ella straightened and flashed her PR-perfect smile. “I think she must be having a reaction to some airplane food.”

  “Mmm. I thought it might have been that she was remembering something.” Mrs. Miller smiled at Jayne Ella with an air of satisfaction.

  Jayne Ella helped gather the rest of the pills and return them to the container then walked to where Mrs. Miller stood in the doorway. Her steps were determined and her arms were crossed in front of her.

  Peyton leaned against the table and held her hand to her head. Layla was right, a knot was forming.

  “Why does it strike me that Mrs. Miller has some sort of hold over our mother?” Layla whispered.

  “I noticed the same thing,” Peyton said.

  “Hey.” Layla patted Peyton’s arm twice. “Do not let our mother twist your arm into staying here to do this work if you don’t want to.” Layla raised one eyebrow to emphasize her point.

  Peyton didn’t know what Layla’s experiences in the manor had been, since they hadn’t had much of a chance to talk lately, but she knew something strange had happened because Layla didn’t want to spend any time in the manor.

  Peyton nodded and Layla squeezed her knee gently. “I’ll get you some ice for that bump.”

  “Did you bring the rest of the Alcott family items from the museum?” Jayne Ella said to Mrs. Miller.

  “Yes, everything is here now. Peyton helped me bring the tintypes inside. Those are the last two boxes there on the floor.” Mrs. Miller pointed toward Peyton and shook her head. “It’s strange to see them like this, boxed up and not at my fingertips. I’ve grown so attached to seeing them every day at the museum, they’re like old friends.” Her voice echoed and carried across the nearly empty room.

  “I can imagine.” Jayne Ella rested her hands on her hips. Peyton recognized that move as the You Can Leave Now signal her mother gave when she had no more use for you.

  Mrs. Miller’s lips pressed together. She returned Jayne Ella’s stare and tipped her chin. Apparently she wasn’t leaving.

  Jayne Ella took in Mrs. Miller’s loose-fitting dress and low, fat heels.

  Mrs. Miller let out her cackling laugh. It danced through the vacuous room too loud and too free. “But after taking care of these Alcott possessions for so many years, these tintypes are more mine than yours. Aren’t they?”

  Jayne Ella dropped her hands from her hips. Her sense of control seemed to deflate.

  “Peyton, I have sandwiches and Cokes in the refrigerator. I stocked the kitchen for you when your mother said you were going to help us with our PR. I have plenty of Pringles. I thought you might still like those.” Mrs. Miller’s smile was softer but still without any trace of empathy. “How about some lunch?”

  “I think that’s a good idea. You look pale.” Her mother walked across the room and stood next to her as if she were her ally.

  Peyton nodded. Her vision of her young self in the manor was still too vivid, too prevalent in her mind. She placed her hand against her own forehead, feeling her skin was clammy.

  She watched Mrs. Miller pass the bottom steps of the grand staircase in the distance and anxiety shot through her chest like a spray of fireworks. She ran her hand across her chest which hurt from the adrenaline. Wave after wave, it peaked.

  “Oh, she’s a menace. I don’t know why she doesn’t just hurry up and die,” Jayne Ella said and launched into a tirade on all things Mrs. Miller.

  “Why do you keep her around if she bothers you so much?”

  “It’s just easier that way.” Her mother looked away.

  When her mother was lying or even thinking about lying, she had a specific tell. She chewed the inside of her cheek, the area just to the left side of her lips. Occasionally she used the knuckle of her index finger and pushed her cheek so her teeth could get a better grip. Around the time of her divorce she chewed a hole in her mouth and Peyton often found her spitting blood into the bathroom sink. The doctor prescribed a medical rinse that cleaned and anesthetized the area. But it also numbed her mouth and caused Jayne Ella to drool slightly.

  “How is that easier?”

  “Because. She’s lost her husband and her daughter and she’s taken care of our ancestors’ belongings for decades. It’s the right thing to do.” Jayne Ella’s knuckle pushed against her cheek twice.

  Peyton thought yet again about chewing a Xanax with her lunch. She looked at her wedding dress draped over the long table. The bottom hem hung out of its plastic cover. She had wanted to shop for her dress in Boston, but Jayne Ella had insisted that they shop together in Charleston. She ended up buying a chic crepe gown with a halter bodice, a high neckline and a t-strap racerback to make it ultra-contemporary. It was the exact opposite from the full-skirted satin dress with the long train she had purchased for her wedding with Beau. Strange how both dresses suited her, and yet there wasn’t one similarity between them.

  For a quick moment she thought about grabbing the dress, leaving the manor and eloping with Ira. He would do it, too. He had already told her that he would marry her wherever and whenever she wanted. “As long as we get to be together for a lifetime,” he said. “The wedding is all yours.”

  Maybe she could design the tours and the publicity plan from Boston. Surely there would be another bride nearby who would kill to have her wedding on a historical oceanfront property. Jayne Ella could have the photographer take pictures of that wedding for the website.

  “Anyway.” Her mother dug through her shoulder bag. “You have to help us.”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  Layla returned with a plastic bag filled halfway with ice cubes. She handed it to Peyton.

  “You have that look on your face that says you’re calculating a way out of the situation.”

  “Don’t push her, Jayne Ella. If she doesn’t want to be here, let her go,” Layla said.

  Peyton put the bag to her head and wondered what her tell was. “I could make some notes while I’m here, then I could send directions from Boston. You and Aunt Laura and Mrs. Miller could set everything up.”

  Her mother scoffed and started pacing. When she moved, the grand staircase reappeared just beyond the door. A chill covered Peyton’s arms, the same chill she’d felt when she had first entered the manor.

  “You’re so secretive,” Jayne Ella whispered. “Secrets are destroyers. I’ve been completely open with you. You need to be more vulnerable, more open with me. What’s the real reason that you don’t want to do this?”

  Peyton studied her mother, watched her lips twist to the side. She imagined Jayne Ella’s canines gnashing against the soft insides of her mouth, blood mixing with her spit. Her mother had a secret, and it was eating her up inside.

  Peyton knew her mother didn’t believe what she was saying. It was just the right thing to say at the moment. Jayne Ella rattled on about how honesty was everything and that’s what relationships required in order to succeed. Then she laughed into how her daughters took for granted the close family they had. They didn’t know what it was like to have a difficult mother. Unlike h
er. She had had a very difficult mother.

  Layla let out one loud, “Ha!”

  Jayne Ella fussed at Layla.

  Peyton questioned whether she agreed with this practiced advice on openness and vulnerability. Sometimes keeping a secret was what kept the relationship together. Not all secrets needed to be shared. That was the advice she had gotten from a relationship book she had read recently: The Clean Slate Theory. Especially if sharing the secret only made you feel better, the need to confess wasn’t always the best reason. So the book said. Peyton was torn on the idea. Half of her landing on one side of the issue, half of her positioned on the other.

  “The manor isn’t an easy place to be,” she said and hoped she had redirected the topic.

  “The manor is all cleaned up and I know you, Peyton. Now, our entire family is depending on you to set this up for us. We’re all gathering around to celebrate your wedding, this is only a few days of work.”

  “I’ve never asked for anything special for my wedding. I just wanted a very small, very casual—”

  “Well, you should have spoken to Ira and his mother about that. They keep adding names to the guest list.”

  “What?”

  Jayne Ella waved Peyton off. “What’s most important, what we really need, is our Fixer.”

  Peyton wished she had never told her mother about the nickname she had earned at the office. She also wished she had never bragged about her unique talent for taking corporations with image problems and repositioning them in the public eye for a fresh start. A new slogan, a goodwill campaign, a flurry of public relations efforts and she could erase a company’s poor image from the public’s memory. Her mother wasn’t wrong, this was exactly what Alcott Manor needed.

  She rubbed her arms to warm the cold fear that dripped through her insides. “Well, the truth is that I’m having a hard time being here. And I know we don’t agree on this, but I do have this very realistic memory that I was here, alone, when I was young. It’s coming back to me in bits and pieces, and honestly, it’s terrifying. Maybe it would be best if you hired someone else to do this.”

  “We’ve been over this. You’re remembering some sort of dream you had. I would never have allowed you to be here alone when you were younger. No good mother would do that. Obviously. Good Lord, Peyton. Let it go. And you have to do this because we don’t have enough funds left to hire someone else. How long have you been taking those?” Jayne Ella pointed to the prescription bottle.

  “I said I could help you remotely. Just as soon as we get back from our honeymoon.” She shoved the bottle into the side pocket of her purse and decided to take one as soon as Jayne Ella was out of sight. It hadn’t been a dream.

  “Don’t be selfish.” Her mother stepped in front of her.

  “I’m selfish?” She was suddenly overwhelmed with an extraordinary need to get back to Boston, to her work and to her life that waited to reward her. “That’s rich.”

  She tried to walk around her mother but Jayne Ella stepped to the side and blocked her again.

  Layla took one step back.

  “I get it, Peyton. You finally have everything—a wonderful man, the prestige of a great career, money. I really do get it. But what about family? We were there for you before you had any of those other things,” her mother said.

  “That’s hardly it, Jayne Ella. I was just open with you about what was bothering me, then you discounted me. You make a better case for secrets than you do for vulnerability.”

  Her mother waved her off again. She pulled a letter from her purse and handed it to her. “We just got this today.”

  Peyton unfolded the paper, with the letterhead of First Bank of Charleston. Her eyes dropped to the signature and she recognized the name immediately: Austin Spencer. Beau’s father.

  “How did Beau’s dad become affiliated with First Bank of Charleston? I didn’t realize that had happened.”

  “Read on,” her mother said. She popped a piece of cinnamon gum in her mouth.

  The letter detailed how River City Bank had merged with First Bank of Charleston. They had chosen to keep the First Bank of Charleston name. Austin Spencer, former President of River City Bank, was now the President of the newly formed conglomerate. As a result of the merger, they were evaluating the bank’s loans and assets, among them, the loan for Alcott Manor.

  “They’ve asked for a face-to-face meeting in order to re-evaluate the family’s ability to pay back the loan. They say they want to better understand the Alcott Manor business model.

  “So, essentially you have to show Mr. Spencer how the manor is making money, otherwise he calls the loan.”

  “Essentially, yes,” Jayne Ella said.

  “But this is really about Beau,” Peyton said.

  Her mother sighed and shrugged. “It could be.” Her lips pulled to the side. Her teeth were working on the inside of her cheek.

  “Of course, he still blames you for Beau’s disappearing.”

  Peyton squeezed her eyes shut, tried to quiet the fury. But images of her and Beau on Austin’s boat passed through her mind. She opened her eyes again, scanned the walls. It must be the manor, as Mrs. Miller suggested. Being here somehow resurrected old memories and feelings she had long relegated to a corner of her heart.

  She’d never been able to stop the memories entirely, the good times she and Beau had shared. She had tried. When they refused to be forgotten, she made room for them. But now too many of them competed for her attention. Like the trip she and Beau had taken to San Francisco where he bought her a beautiful rose quartz bracelet. Her fingertips traced her wrist, she could still feel the coolness of the stones from when he slipped them on. She inhaled, thinking she caught a whiff of the sandalwood and lemon verbena from his cologne. She shared her life with a ghost.

  That Austin blamed her for Beau’s leaving was absurd. Her suspicion was that Austin had lost his temper with his son and took things too far. He had to be the one who—

  “I need you, Peyton.”

  “What?”

  Her mother grabbed her by the shoulders and looked her in the eyes. “I need you to show him that we’ve got the tours organized, that we have cash coming in and we can afford to make the loan payments. We need the income, otherwise we’ll lose the manor, and all of the property. We have to make this work!”

  It was the first time she had looked at her mother since she arrived, really studied her. Her crows’ feet were more pronounced and the skin at the front of her neck had slackened—small signs that she was losing her race with time. Her passion for saving Alcott Manor had bled into her every expression. Her intensity reminded Peyton that her mother was capable of handling a difficult conversation when she wanted to. When they’d waited for over an hour for Beau at the church, all Peyton could do was stare to the window, her knuckles white from gripping the straight back of the chair. Jayne Ella was the one who had pried her hands from the polished wood and said, “He’s not coming. You have to move on.”

  With such an ability to be forthright, Peyton didn’t know why her mother insisted on lying and keeping secrets.

  Her mother’s tone was reaching a fever pitch and she had developed a wild look in her eye. It wasn’t just that Jayne Ella wanted to save the manor, she needed it. For herself. This was going to be her new role in life. Her second wind, maybe. Her second chance.

  “I think Peyton might be remembering something from when she was a little girl,” Mrs. Miller announced from the back of the room. She put a plate with two sandwiches and Pringles chips and a bottle of Coke on a side table.

  Anxiety gripped Peyton’s chest. She crossed the room and took a bite of the ham and cheese sandwich so she wouldn’t have to talk.

  When she looked up, she realized all eyes in the room had fixed on her.

  Jayne Ella sidled up to her. “Why would you have brought that up with Mrs. Miller?” Jayne Ella frowned at her daughter as if she were afflicted.

  Peyton exhaled hard and glared at her mother. “I
didn’t. She was in the room when something came back to me and I guess she assumed. It’s not like I started a conversation about it or anything. What does it matter anyway? She’s heard me mention this before.”

  Mrs. Miller squinted when she stared at Peyton. “I maintain what I’ve always told you—that if you were really here, that memory will come pouring back one day. The manor will insist. Maybe when you least expect it. Maybe it’s coming back now.”

  “There’s nothing for her to remember,” Jayne Ella snapped. “She was never alone in the manor as a child.”

  Mrs. Miller smiled, like she toyed with Jayne Ella. “Maybe her memories are just a bit jumbled. Do you remember what you were wearing?”

  “No, she doesn’t,” Jayne Ella said sternly.

  “A white dress,” Peyton said. A flash of the room that night came back. Panic hit her deep and hard, like she’d been punched in the gut.

  “If it happens in the manor, it’s never forgotten.” Mrs. Miller’s gaze traveled along the walls as if someone else were listening to their conversation. “The manor captures everything. Almost like it’s on film. Right, Jayne Ella?”

  Peyton’s mother fixed her stare on the glass ceiling, her mouth twisted and her jaw working.

  “Or maybe seeing Beau again triggered something for her. One of those flyers was pasted to the front pillar when we arrived. It’s old home day for Peyton.”

  When Jayne Ella finally looked at Mrs. Miller again she lowered her voice. “We don’t bring that up.”

  An argument ensued and their voices took on a hollow sound, as if Peyton were sinking underwater. Images shifted in the back of Peyton’s mind like the colors of a distant kaleidoscope, taking shape but not in a way that made sense. Someone cried. A man yelled. Panic crept through her like a thief, stealing what little bit of peace she had left.

  Mrs. Miller locked into a stare with Jayne Ella, who, after a few moments, looked away. Her mother’s face flushed.

  Mrs. Miller put her skeletal hand on Peyton’s shoulder. “Why don’t you try on a few of these dresses, let me take some pictures with one of the old Alcott family cameras?” Mrs. Miller pointed to the rows of mannequins.