Amber House (20 page)

Rose was back in the kitchen the next morning, kindly fixing breakfast for Sammy again.

“Morning,” she greeted me. She seemed irritated. Maybe even more than usual.

“Morning, Rose. How was your trip to Alexandria?”

“Fine, thank you. Heard you and Jackson had some excitement while I was gone.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. We won the regatta. It was great. Jackson tell you about it?”

“No. He didn’t breathe a word. But then he might’ve figured I wouldn’t approve.”

I was confused. Why wouldn’t she approve?

“Jackson never said anything to you?” Rose said. “About his problem? ’Cause he probably should have.”

I stared at her steadily, unwilling to ask her “What?” Not certain I wanted to hear the answer.

She sighed. “It’s his business. I don’t like to interfere. But you’ve been spending so much time together, you probably should know: He’s epileptic. Ever since the accident. He has spells where he just blacks out. He has to avoid stressful activities that demand uninterrupted concentration. Lots of things he can’t do, or won’t do.”

Like driving
, I thought to myself.
And sailing. Or so Rose thought, anyway. And maybe that whole thing about going into research instead of becoming a doctor?

Rose went on. “No need to tell him I said anything.”

“Sure, Rose.”

“Just thought you maybe should know.”

Maybe I should. But I wished I didn’t.

After breakfast, I had a limited amount of time left to get ready before Richard skidded up the drive, so I focused on the tasks at hand. First a call to Jackson to tell him about the tunnel thing and set up a time and place to meet that night — at the entrance to the maze. I was disappointed to have to leave a message, but it was the best I could do. I left it short and cryptic, to save some of the pleasure of showing him in person.

Then on to the ever-agonizing problem of what to wear. Richard’s school did the whole uniform thing. With that as a guideline, I tried to find something to wear that was unobjectionable, but, you know, still hot. I paired a white button-up blouse with a pleated plaid miniskirt that was similar to the skirts we wore at my prep school back home — give or take a few inches. Except, I skipped the schoolgirl kneesocks in favor of a pair of caramel-hued riding boots I found on the floor of my mother’s closet.

I hoped I hadn’t gone overboard with the boots. But I saw Richard give me an appreciative once-over when he pulled up, and allowed myself a feeling of satisfaction.

During the drive, he explained to me that Saint Ignatius Academy was something of a big deal as a boarding school; while it was open as a day school to smart local teens whose parents could pay the huge tuition bill, it also housed the children of political leaders, celebrities, and various security-conscious billionaires. He’d had to pull strings to get them to let me on
campus — if anybody asked, I was sitting in on classes because I was interested in attending. With Richard at the wheel, we made it there in less than twenty minutes, turning beneath an enormous stone arch that supported two iron gates. A guard waved Richard in.

The school was stunning — Gothic-style stone buildings smothered in ivy, housing all the modern luxuries and surrounded by groomed lawns running down to the Potomac River. Richard led me along a brick path to the main entrance. “We have to sign you in up front first.”

The blue-haired lady in the main office was polite, if a tad officious. I signed a register and got a pin-on name tag identifying me as a visitor. When she turned the register back and saw my name, she said, “Oh.” Then, “You’re the young lady from Amber House, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” I said, surprised.

“That’s one of the most beautiful homes in Maryland,” she said. “I told Ida once that she should have opened it for tours.”

“You knew my grandmother?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “We were friends, once upon a time, when your mother was a girl. We both rode competitively. Of course, I wasn’t anywhere near as good at it as your gramma.”

I was finding it kind of hard to picture either one of them ever actually getting on a horse. Richard took that moment to grab my arm and tug me toward the door.

“Thank you,” I said over my shoulder, and, “Nice meeting you,” before Richard pulled the door shut.

“You make me late to class with any more of your ten-minute Amber House chats,” he said, “I’m gonna have to dock you points, Parsons.”

“
My
—?” I sputtered. I was speechless. So I punched him in the arm. He pretended to be in pain.

A bell rang overhead. The first-period classes emptied into the halls. I saw puzzled look after puzzled look, eyes falling to my boots and moving up from there.

Richard put his hand at the small of my back and directed me around a turn in the corridor into a classroom. A wall of windows edged in stained glass dropped rainbow-hued light onto the desks and floor. Richard sat down at an empty desk halfway toward the back of the room and patted the one to his left. As I took my seat, three girls sat down in the desks behind us and commenced to whisper.

“Isn’t that —”

“I like her boots.”

“That’s that girl.”

Richard looked at me sideways, giving me a conspicuous smile.

“The one who beat him in the race.”

He turned away, then, but not before I caught the sigh and roll of his eyes. And I was sorry, a little bit, that I’d made things harder for him.

“I bet he let her win.”

“That’s what I heard.”

Huh. Or not.

I didn’t really get much of a chance to listen to the lecture. I was too busy passing notes with Richard. His handwriting was largely illegible, but what I could make out was so wickedly funny, I kept having to choke down my laughter.

The teacher stopped us on the way out the door. I figured we were going to be reamed for being too rowdy.

“You’re Miss Parsons from Amber House, aren’t you?” Mr. Donaldson said.

“Yes.”

“I read your great-grandmother’s book about the house. I am fascinated by its history and the role your family played in the formation of the political face of North America.”

“Oh?” I said. I had no idea what he was talking about.

“Richard tells us you might end up enrolling at Saint Ignatius. We look forward to having you as a student.”

I thanked him as Richard tugged my arm again to pull me out the door.

“God, has
everybody
heard of Amber House?” I asked.

“Don’t you know it’s a big deal in Maryland? It’s the reason everyone’s coming to your party.”

“I thought it was because of Ataxia.”

“Yeah, well, that helps.”

After history came lunch. A little early for me. I wasn’t hungry just yet. Which was a good thing because, as the students mass-migrated in what I assumed was the direction of the dining hall, Richard grabbed my hand and tugged me into an empty stairwell. Was he going to try to kiss me again, I wondered hopefully.

“Sarah!”

Kathryn lunged down from the bend in the stairs above us. She wrapped her arms around me and gave me a big hug, all flowery perfume. “I didn’t get a chance to congratulate you on the race the other day!”

“Where’s Chad?” Richard asked, brushing past that subject.

“Meeting us there.”

We slipped along a gap between the side of the building and the privet hedge in front of it, then dashed down some steps to a lower walkway, cutting across a lawn through some more bushes. By this time I was guessing some rule breaking was in the immediate plans. We got to the side entrance of a large building with a vaulted roof, where Kathryn knocked on the
door. It was promptly opened by Chad, who smiled at me and nodded. “Nice win, Parsons.”

“Thanks.”

The gust of air blowing out through the cracked door smelled distinctly of chlorine; we had arrived at Ignatius’s indoor Olympic-sized pool. The others dumped packs at the foot of one of the bleachers and sat down on the cushiony flooring — nothing so mundane as concrete around this swimming pool.

Chad had a sack with lunch essentials: sodas and candy bars. After a few minutes’ worth of conversation about people I didn’t know doing things I hadn’t been around to see, he started stripping off his clothes. With each item of clothing removed, I scooched a few inches backward, until I was up against the tiled wall. None of them seemed to notice.

Chad stopped undressing when he got down to his boxers. He took a running jump and cannonballed into the pool. Kathryn — now in nothing but a matching bra and panty set — followed. Richard strolled over to the deep end and executed a perfect, streamlined dive.

Richard and Chad mostly horsed around in the deep water, but Kathryn parked herself nearby and talked up to me. After a while, she realized this was inefficient. She emerged and sprawled out on the rubberized flooring like a swimsuit model.

“I noticed at the party that you don’t drink,” she said. “And you don’t do semi-skinny-dipping. What
do
you do?”

“Not much, I guess.”

She snorted. “Except make an ass out of Richard in front of all his friends. I wish I could sail. I’d have done that a long time ago.” She propped herself up on one arm and smoothed her wet hair back with her free hand. “I like your boots.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s for the best,” she went on. “He was getting
so
cocky. It was about time someone took him down a peg.”

“Oh, well —”

“I mean, except for the fact that it was kind of like the
Swallow
’s last race. So that sucks.”

“What do you mean?”

She lowered her voice. “His dad said he was going to sell it.”

“Sell the boat?”

“I bet he won’t, though,” Kathryn said. “That would be way harsh.”

“Why would he do that?”

“He won’t,” she said definitively. “But Richard was freaked, of course. I need a towel,” she announced. She got up, and snatched her clothes from their place on the floor. “Come on.”

I followed her into the locker rooms, to what I assumed was her locker, since she knew the combination. She pulled out a large fluffy towel and buffed herself dry. Which led me to wonder why she hadn’t just gotten her suit to swim in, instead of the polka-dotted bra and panties.

“I can’t wait for your party. It’s all my mom’s been talking about. I’ve never been to a haunted house before. Have you seen any ghosts?”

I puzzled over how to respond to that. I settled on, “Not yet.”

“You should try some, like, voodoo or something. I’ve got a Ouija board. I could come over sometime and we could hold a séance.”

A séance at Amber House. It was bad enough knowing as much as I did about my ancestors; I was absolutely certain I didn’t want them talking to me. “Sounds awesome,” I said.

“I know!” She’d ruffled through the contents of the locker and found a hairbrush. She slipped a hair tie from around her wrist and proceeded to braid her hair. “My mom was telling me about your great-grandmother. She said she was absolutely wild. Like, had twenty lovers and boozed it up all the time and did magic. Probably sacrificed chickens —”

“Sounds like your mom knows more about it than I do,” I said. “Almost everyone does. The other day, Richard was quoting from this book about the house that his mom gave him before she died.”

“What?” She tilted her head to one side, in just the same way as she’d done at the pool party. Her compulsory expression of confusion.

“My great-grandmother — the crazy one, actually — wrote a book —”

“No. You said ‘before she died’? Where’d you get that idea?” She was giving me this funny look. Like I was stupid or something. “Claire Hathaway isn’t dead. She left. Like, four years ago.
Everybody
knows that.”

“Left?”
Why would he lie about that?

“Yes. And it was a big deal for Richard, ’cause she was the one with the money. I mean, Richard’s dad got the house, but Claire had piles and piles of money.”

I must have looked shocked, because Kathryn put her hand to her mouth and kind of giggled. No wonder his father was thinking of selling the
Swallow
. No wonder he was so hot after my mom. If she sold Amber House, she’d have piles and piles of money too.