Amber House (6 page)

“But, heavens, Robert, maybe it’s just impossible. I’ll need a band, a caterer, a florist — Lord, a thousand things.”

“It can be done,” he said with assurance. “I know a young guy who’s opening a restaurant in D.C. No doubt he’s a little overwhelmed, but with this kind of a crowd — if he could park a van with his restaurant’s name near the entrance, he’d probably pay
you
to cater it.”

“If I had a caterer,” my mother breathed, “everything else would be easy.”

Another brilliant smile. “I’ll give him a call. You’ll see. This absolutely can be done.” Confidence radiated off of him like solar heat.
No wonder people voted for him.
He fished out a card with the national seal and wrote on the back. “Here’s my private phone number. Give me a call. Richard and I will get you names and addresses. And I can probably come up with a little more help.”

“Well, I am just so excited,” my mother said. “I haven’t thrown a party like this in — years. Isn’t this exciting, honey?”

“Exciting,” I agreed, trying harder to give my voice a lift. Remembering how much Mom had wanted to leave, and
wondering what
exactly
had made her change her mind. Perhaps the senator?

“I wish you could meet my son before you go, Robert. Sarah, have you seen Sammy?”

No. I hadn’t seen him. I’d spent so much time being fascinated with the whiteness of Richard’s smile, I’d lost all track of Sammy. And worse, now that I thought about it, I couldn’t
sense
him.

Mom saw it in my face. “Find him for me, Sarah.”

“Sure.”
Maybe.
I went into the front hall. I took a few deep breaths, imagining Sammy, his sandy hair, his crazy smile, the twinkle in his eyes.

Nothing. Why couldn’t I feel Sammy?

“Sarah?” Mom called, a little annoyed. “Wasn’t he just outside?”

“Yes,” I said, forcing my feet into motion.

“I’ll meet him another day, Annie,” Robert said. “I have to go. Do you” — he paused delicately — “need some help finding him?”

“No,” Mother said. “Sarah will find him. She always does.”

“That’s fine,” the senator said as I moved out of earshot. “Sorry to dash out like this. Richard has a tournament —”

I cut through the gallery and started running. I didn’t want my mother to see me panicking, but that’s where I was. Full panic mode. Why couldn’t I sense him?

All I could think of was the river at the border of Amber House, running slow and cold and deep. Waiting to pull Sammy down.

I burst out the sunroom’s exterior doors. “Sammy!” Nothing. Calling and listening, I trotted the path that ran below the east wing and wove through the gardens on that end of the house till I reached a hedge wall. I circled back in a wide arc toward the front of the house. “Sammy!” My voice echoed back at me. I was pretty sure they could hear me in the next county over.

The senator’s heavy dark sedan was just disappearing out the front gate when I reached the lawn outside the dining room. “Sammy!”

Nothing. No response.

The tree house
, I thought. I raced past the front door to the oak. But the ladder stopped ten feet short of the ground. No way was he in the tree.

Mom came out the front door. “Sarah, what’s the problem?”

“I don’t know where he is, Mom.”

“You’ll find him. You always find him.”

“You don’t get it. I don’t
know
where he is.”

Maybe my mother could see the panic in my eyes. She turned back inside.

I ran around the conservatory, calling. I knew he wasn’t down the stone steps that led to the river; Richard and I had just come up those. I doubled back through the west gardens and into the fields beyond. I checked the graveyard. I stood at the edge of the bluff, called down toward the river, and listened.

Still no answer. No sounds except birds. I couldn’t even hear the water. The rivers back home always ran noisily over their
rock beds, but the one below passed so slowly, it seemed like it was dragging against the will of gravity. I thought again of Sammy getting pulled into that slow cold current so that I couldn’t feel his heat anymore.

“Sammy!” I screamed. “Answer me, Sam. Stop playing!”

He had to be somewhere else. Just had to be.

I ran on, into the woods on the west side of the property. I heard a rustling, maybe an animal, down the hill and across a little ravine. I squinted through the leaves — and caught a tiny glimpse of white.

“Sammy!” I called. “No more hide-and-seek. You come home now.”

A pale sound like laughter. The rustling in the bushes started moving up the far hillside away from me, fast.

“Sammy! Stop!” I started running again, down across the hill. The little creep was running too. I could just catch flashes of white as he whipped through the brush. “Stop, Sam!”

I leapt over the creek bed at the bottom, and began running uphill. Hard work. I couldn’t believe the speed that little monster was making. My legs were burning; my lungs were burning. “Sammy!”

The slope started leveling off. There was a thinning in the trees ahead, a concentration of sunlight. If Sammy knew what was good for him, he’d be sitting in that clearing when I got there.

I grabbed the stitch forming in my side and pushed on through the bushes into the open. I stopped short in front of a large, square log cabin. Smoke curled from the stone chimney despite the day’s warmth. The rocking chair on the front porch was occupied by an old woman in a dark, shapeless dress. She looked at me with interest.

“Sorry,” I gasped around breaths, “to intrude.”

“Oh,” she said, smiling, seeming oddly surprised I had chosen
to speak to her. “I should’ve said hello straight off. It’s good to see you, Sarah.”

She knew my name. I figured she must be Rose’s mother. She looked old enough. “I’m after my brother. See him?”

“You know me, child?” she asked, leaning forward.

“No. Sorry. No one mentioned you.”

She nodded. “Guess Providence figured it was time we met.” She leaned back. “Sammy ain’t out here.”

“Just saw him. Running through the woods. Came right past here. You must’ve seen him.”

“Sammy ain’t out here,” she repeated firmly. “He’s on his way home.”

“How d’you know?” I asked, a little frustrated. “Who ran past?”

She smiled. “You can believe what I’m telling you, girl. Sammy’s just fine. Go on home.” I noticed she had the tiniest trace of something foreign in her southern accent.

“Um, okay. Thanks.”

“But you come back and see me soon,” she directed. “I got some things you need to hear. And you and I could help each other.”

Right
, I thought. “Okay,” I lied and started backing away. Then I turned and ran.

“Come see old Nanga,” she called after me. “Come on back again.”

When I stumbled up the last rise to the house, I spotted Sammy coming out of the trees closer to the river. He was carrying Heavy Bear, walking hand in hand with Jackson. And wearing a green shirt. Not white.

“Where’d you find him?” I asked when I caught up.

“He was down by the river near our house.”

“You live on the river?” Rose and Jackson didn’t live with the old woman?

“Yes. He said he was playing hide-and-seek with his friend.”

The kid in the white shirt. “Does some other kid live around here?”

“Not that I know of, but someone might’ve moved in. Always building along the river.”

“I was hiding real good, Sarah,” Sammy said, “and Jackson just finded me and said, ‘Time to go home, Samwise.’ He’s a good looker too.”

“Thank you,” I said to Jackson.

“No problem,” he said, shrugging. “Glad to help.”

Mom came out then. “Sammy,” she cried, a mixture of anger and relief. I could sympathize with that. Sam hesitated a second, then tucked Heavy Bear under his arm and ran up to the steps where Mom waited. She caught him up and hugged him.

“So,” I said, turning back to Jackson, “seems like we’re gonna stay another week or two. Think that’s enough time to find the diamonds?”

The truth was, I wasn’t really sold on the idea of some hoard of diamonds lost on Gramma’s property for more than two hundred years. But after Richard’s tour, I had a newfound interest in my family’s history. I wanted a chance to poke into all the corners and cupboards of this place, and see what was there before it was gone.
Without
calling my mother’s attention to the fact, because I had a feeling she wouldn’t like it much.

Which meant I had to do it mostly at night. And for that, I wanted Jackson’s help. I freely admitted to myself that I was too much of a chicken to wander through more of Amber House in the dark without someone over the age of five to keep me company. If Jackson wanted to search for the diamonds, then I was willing to go with him for that company. And if we stumbled across the treasure in the process, so much the better.

He was looking hopeful. It made me smile. “Maybe,” he said. “When do we start?”

I shrugged. “Tonight if you want. If you can stay up. It’s three hours earlier here — I can’t sleep. Want to meet me in the kitchen around eleven thirty? Everyone else will be in bed.”

“Sure. I’ll be there.”

“By the way,” I said, “who’s the old woman in the cabin back there?”

An unreadable play of emotions showed in Jackson’s eyes. He said carefully, “The old woman?”

“Nanga. She told me to go home, that Sammy was found. Did you call her or something?”

“Not me.”

I gave a small laugh, a little confused again. “Well, I hope I wasn’t trespassing or anything.”

“What did she say?”

“She told me to come back and talk to her.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really. I think she wanted some help with something.”

“Sarah, I —” He looked like he had something else to say.

“What?”

He shook his head, changing his mind, and started back the way he had come. He said out loud, without turning his head, “Not many people get to talk to Nanga. If you can, you should.”

Okay
, I thought.
Whatever.

When I got inside, I was surprised to find Rose hustling Sammy off to a bath — I guessed it was the nurse in her taking charge. He was going meekly. Not his usual behavior. He seemed to like Rose, and she seemed to like him.

She saw me come in. “You need to wash up too, young lady,” she directed in a no-nonsense, do-what-the-doctor-orders voice. “Those woods are full of poison ivy and poison sumac, and I bet you don’t know what either one looks like. Use plenty of soap to cut the oil. And check yourself for ticks all over. Ticks like hidden places.”

Nothing like a nice walk in the woods
, I thought, but I was due for a soak anyway.

First I raided Gramma’s vanity for some bath salts, a robe, and a couple of heavy towels. Then I headed up to the west wing, second floor, far away from everyone else, to see if I could find a spot for a long, hot, first-class bath.

An arch just beyond the stairs led to the hall I’d sprinted down the day before. Six doors opened off of it, three on each side.

Three rooms in, I found what I was looking for: a bathroom, tiled in delicate shades of pink across the floor and up the walls, with an enormous claw-footed bathtub beneath a stained-glass window.

Perfect.

I spread one towel over the floor and looped the second over an amusing sculpted hand fixed to the wall beside the tub. I plugged the drain, dumped in half a bottle of foaming bath salts, and made the bath water as close to boiling as I could stand. Once in the tub, I stretched out my legs, leaning back against the sloped end with a sigh as the heat turned my muscles to butter. I scrubbed with plenty of soap “to cut the oil.” Then I slipped down under the surface. Rising bubbles emitted glooping pops; the groans of the plumbing turned into whale calls. Up for a breath of air, then back down into the depths. I could hear my mother talking far away, the sound carried through the pipes. I could hear my brother humming in his high, sweet voice.

The sound got louder, then louder still.

Is he in the bathroom?
I wondered, outraged.
He’s in the bathroom!

I surfaced in a rush of water. “Sammy, what
the heck
do you think you’re —”

No one was there.

The humming seemed to echo in the hollow space of the tiled room. Sam was close. And my bath had grown cold. I wrapped myself up and poked my head out into the hall. “Sam?”

Shivering into my terry-cloth robe and leaving a trail of damp footprints on the carpet, I followed after those six piping notes. And ended up outside a closed bedroom door.

The humming stopped. My heart was thudding. I made myself open the door to Deirdre Foster’s bedroom.

“Sam, you in there?”

The room was dark. Empty. The mirror on the far wall reflected my silhouette back at me. With someone right behind.

I whirled, my heart in my throat.

Sammy stood looking up at me, his blond head still wet from his bath, cocked to one side in confusion. “Did you call me, Sarah?”

“Yes,” I said, and shivered.

“It’s cold here, Sarah,” Sammy said. “Let’s go to another place.”

He took my hand and led me to my room.

Dad showed up while I was braiding my damp hair. Mom didn’t seem pleased to see him.

“Look, since you couldn’t let the kids come visit me today, I thought I’d visit them. I want to spend time with them before you fly back across the continent.” He held out a large brown bag oozing tasty odors. “I brought Chinese,” he said temptingly. “If you want me to go —”

“No, of course not,” she said. “Stay.”

She was something less than gracious. I wondered what had happened to the effervescent woman from this afternoon.