Blackthorn Winter (3 page)

"Your sitting room," Liza announced proudly, as if she herself were responsible for its charm. "Now through this door is the kitchen and eating area. And there's the bath, converted from what used to be the larder, I think. No shower, I'm sorry to say! I know Americans like their long showers. Half of the villagers still use woodstoves to heat their homes, but Quent has recently had central heating installed in here, plus a brand-new water heater. So there should be plenty of hot water..."

Well, I was relieved to hear
that,
because the only thing I hadn't liked at Grandad's was how there was never enough hot water for a really good bath. And right now the thought of a good long soak in a really hot bath was just what I wanted. But Liza's next words made me sigh.

"I bet you can get two full tubs a day. I'd make the kiddies share, Hedda, that's what I'd do, and save the other for yourself! You can keep warm and snug with the woodstove, too—and look here, outside the back door there's a pile of wood already stacked and ready. Now, bedrooms are upstairs—four little ones. They're practically cupboards, but at least you'll each get your own."

"This is just wonderful," said Mom, wandering into the kitchen. She turned back to beam at Liza. "And
you
are wonderful for finding the cottage for us, Liza. I can't thank you enough. It has everything we need."

"It doesn't have a computer, does it?" I asked Liza. I hadn't seen one yet, but maybe upstairs...

"No—" She sounded surprised. "I would have thought you'd bring your own."

"I would have thought that, too," I said, giving Mom what she and Dad called my "dagger" look. "But Mom said we didn't need one here."

"I just wanted to keep everything simple," Mom said. "My old laptop was on its last legs, so I didn't bother to bring it. Anyway, I want the kids to make friends here—not just e-mail their friends back in California all the time or play computer games. We'll get a new setup eventually. But I don't see the rush."

"No fair," complained Edmund, the computer game addict.

This was a sore subject with me. It was bad enough to take us away from Dad, but that we couldn't e-mail him and would have to rely on phone calls and old-fashioned letters seemed unfair—not to mention ridiculously dark age. It felt like Mom was deliberately cutting us off from Dad. She insisted that wasn't the case at all, but she was the one who kept throwing around phrases like "need to find myself again" and "must immerse myself in the artistic community," both of which made me want to puke. Plus, I loved instant-messaging my friends Jazzy and Rosy, and of course Tim every day. Without e-mail, I would be totally out of the loop.

"Well, I know Quent's got several computers, Juliana," Liza told me cheerfully, as if she could read my mind. She pronounced my name JuliAWna. "I imagine he'll let you e-mail your chums whenever the need arises."

"Thanks, Liza," said Mom, giving me a
look.
"Now, what about the upstairs?"

"I get first pick of bedrooms!" Ivy yelled, heading for the narrow flight of stairs.

"No fair!" Edmund dashed up right behind her. I lugged my suitcase up after him, thinking morosely that I would
not
share bathwater with the Goops. Not unless I got to go in first.

At the top of the steps I stopped and rested. I was standing in a small hallway with two bedrooms on either side and another room at the end. "Hey, Jule, come check this out!" Edmund's voice called to me from the room at the end of the hallway. I left my suitcase and joined him and Ivy inside a sunroom full of windows. Stacked along the wall by the door were the large boxes I remembered seeing last in our own living room at home; they were Mom's canvases and paints that she'd sent on ahead. Mr. Carrington must have put them up here. And that meant this would be Mom's studio. I crossed the room and peered out the windows onto the side lawn where, in the fading light, I could see the bulk of the Old Mill House. On a sunny day the light in this sunroom would be gorgeous, I'd bet, because even on this gray afternoon, the room felt airy and
ready.
Ready for
Art
to happen. Art with a capital
A.

With a sinking heart, I knew Mom would love this space, and would think it was much nicer than the studio she had at home over the garage. This was probably the perfect place for her to
find
herself again—not that I'd ever noticed we'd
lost
her in the first place.

"I call this room," said Ivy.

"No way, I saw it first!" shouted Edmund.

"Listen, you Goops," I said sternly. "Mom's boxes are
already in here, so get over it. This place is already reserved. It's claimed. It's NFG—Not For Goops."

They grumbled, but I ignored them and they stampeded out of the room. I wandered around the sunroom, enjoying the sudden quiet. The room was furnished with a simple wooden table, two easels, a cupboard to store supplies, and a deep, comfortable-looking armchair of worn leather. Along the window ledges were interesting pieces of the sort of things Mom always called "found art." She had collections at home of things from nature that might inspire a painting. These things weren't hers, though. I wondered if our new landlord had set them out to inspire his new tenant. There was a large conch shell. Pinecones in several sizes. A heavy, softball-sized beach rock, with thick white veins branching through it like a spider's web. A bouquet of feathers, large and small, held in a vase made from a gourd.

A large square basket held several smaller boxes. I reached in and opened them one by one: Collections of dried pods and flowers, tied with twine. Red autumn leaves that had been pressed flat. Tiny seashells.

The last box was a small one, the sort that might hold jewelry. I opened it eagerly and lifted off the square of cotton. Sure enough—a necklace. I dangled it from my finger. Curious—and enchanting. Immediately I wanted one like it. Silvery blue embroidery floss had been threaded through delicate, white pressed blossoms and tiny silver beads. A polished pink quartz stone, nearly as round and smooth as a marble, hung from it.

"Where did you find
that
?" asked a sharp voice at my side, and I looked up with a start to find Liza Pethering standing next to me. I had been so engrossed by the flowery thing, I hadn't heard her come upstairs.

"Here in this little box—at the bottom of this basket," I explained. "Isn't it beautiful?"

"It is positively
glorious.
" Liza Pethering's voice was uncharacteristically soft. She reached for it. "I'm just surprised to see it—after all this time. It was Nora's good luck talisman. My friend Nora, who died. She used to make necklaces for her special friends. It wasn't her art, of course—that was painting. But she made jewelry when she felt like it, when she found a special good luck charm. No two were alike."

At the thought of a good luck necklace I felt my stomach clench—much in the unfathomable way it always had at the sight of a stretch of sandy beach or the sounds of waves lapping the shore. "I think it's pretty," I said after a moment's hesitation. "I'd love to have one like it."

"No two were alike," repeated Liza, rubbing her finger meditatively over the quartz. "She made one for me, too—just before I opened my gallery. With a lovely dangling seedpod to rub for luck. She wore hers and rubbed the quartz just before any big event, and I always wear mine and rub the seedpod. And I always will!" She held the necklace to her own throat, then gently laid it back in the box. "Only death would keep us from wearing our lucky charms!"

I laughed a little at this.

"No, really, it's too bad Nora wasn't wearing her talisman the night of the accident—or she might still be with us. Odd, really—that she
wasn't
wearing it..." Liza broke off and stared out the window in silence for a moment. I wanted to ask what accident and who this friend was, when Liza turned back to me with her loud, trilling laugh. "What I came up to tell you is that your mum is making a pot of tea downstairs. She says to choose your bedrooms quickly and come down and have some."

"Okay, thanks," I said, rubbing my finger over the smooth pink quartz before carefully fitting the lid back onto the little box. I stowed the box back into the big square basket. "I'll do that." I wasn't really a tea drinker, but maybe it would help settle my stomach—or at least help ward off jet lag with a jolt of caffeine. Yet after Liza left the sunroom, I still stood there, looking around.

There was a peaceful feel to the place. All too well, I could imagine Mom sitting at an easel, or sitting in the armchair, to sketch a new idea.

I left the sunroom to go in search of my bedroom. I found a small corner bedroom only about as big as my bathroom at home in California, but clean and pleasant, with sponged yellow walls, floorboards painted light blue. There was a narrow bed along the far wall, with a huge, puffy white quilt (a
duvet,
Mom called such things) folded on top of it. A low white bookshelf stood at the foot of the bed, waiting to be filled. A small dresser was tucked into an alcove. Since I
had
to be in England, this room would suit me just fine.

I crossed to the window and leaned into the deep windowsill. The stone walls of this little cottage were nearly two feet thick. I unlatched the casement window and pushed it open. Cold air gusted inside. The March afternoon had darkened further, and the chill rain had started to fall again. I heard Ivy and Edmund chattering out in the hall. I heard Mom and Liza downstairs, laughing in the kitchen. I thought I could even smell the tea they were brewing, pungent and spicy. Or was that the salt wind from the sea? And then—there!—that other smell again.

Wake up, oh, please, please—wake up!

Again, the frightened child's voice in my head. And a sense of danger—close by. What was going on? I stood staring out the window, trying to capture whatever it was that seemed just beyond my understanding; it was like straining to see around corners, or through a dark, smoky glass.

Was there danger—here and now?

Or only the memory of danger?

You see, there was something weird about me, something that set me apart from other people. Everybody in my family was
normal
—even, yes, even the obnoxious Goops—and I wasn't. My friends at school were all
normal
—even the amazing, fabulous Tim Raglan, who was a mathematical genius and won all the competitions at state level ... and Jazzy and Rosy, my two best friends, who were part of a set of triplets and the most popular girls in school. I was the only different one, the only
not
normal person I knew. But I kept quiet about it.

It was a memory problem. A major one. And though it did make me feel weird—set apart from other people—it had never included hearing voices or smelling smells. So what was happening here? Was it part of my general odd-girl-out brand of weirdness, or was it something to do with this place? Were all the people living in this village smelling things and hearing voices and not telling? Was the voice in my head some ghost of a long-ago child who had once lived in this cottage? Was this demon possession? Or was it just weird little old me, cracking up completely?

Give me a break,
I thought angrily, and it felt way better to be angry than scared.
No more weirdness!
I didn't need any more oddball stuff in my life. My memory problem was bad enough. No one knew how much it bothered me. It wasn't something I could talk about, not to friends, not to family. Even my parents didn't really know how much it bugged me.

The rumble of a deep voice down in the sitting room made my musings vanish. For one thrilling moment I thought it was Dad down there, somehow transported to England. Then I heard the peal of Mom's laughter, and knew it couldn't be Dad. Mom never laughed anymore when Dad was around. I closed my bedroom windows and started unpacking my suitcase into the small dresser, throwing the clothes into the drawers
hard.

Then Edmund and Ivy were at my door. "Hear that downstairs?" Edmund hissed. "It's the new landlord, the famous sculptor."

"With his son," Ivy whispered, wiggling her eyebrows at me. Then the two of them stifled their giggles and snapped their fingers under my nose. "Bet he's cuuuuute!"

"Hey hey hey!" my very annoying little brother tried to chortle suggestively. Not that he knew what he was suggesting.

"Out of my way, Goops." I pushed past them.

Mom was at the foot of the stairs, talking to a tall, dark-haired man. She smiled at me. "Come down and meet our new landlord, Juliana. Mr. Carrington, this is my eldest, Juliana."

Our new landlord's hand enveloped mine. He was a large man with a shock of dark, unruly hair and a booming laugh, and I was surprised, because somehow I'd pictured the famous sculptor as an old, stooped, white-haired guy. "Juliana," he said warmly, pronouncing it the way Liza
had—
JuliAWna.
"Lovely to meet you, young lady. And please, both of you, call me Quent. It's going to be very nice having you here. Don't you think so, Dunk-o?"

I looked around for the son who had such an unfortunate name, and there, coming out of the kitchen with Liza behind him, was the red-haired boy I'd seen racing by in the sports car!

"Hullo," he said, ducking his head rather than shaking hands. He was tall and lanky—gangly, my dad would have said—but I liked gangly. And I liked his red hair. He looked about my age—fifteen—or maybe a little older. He didn't look much like his dad. Must have gotten the red hair from his mom. Or maybe he was adopted. Some of the best people are.

"Hi," I said brightly, thinking that maybe Edmund was right with his hey hey heys.

He gave me a shy smile, then shuffled across the room and started looking at the books in the shelves. Okay ... so the Dunk-o was not a great conversationalist, obviously, as well as the possessor of a totally crazy name. "So Liza's shown you all around, has she? And everything is to your satisfaction?" Mr. Carrington—Quent—was asking Mom.

"I haven't been upstairs yet," Mom said. "But it already feels like home."