Compulsion (2 page)

“My mother died last week,” Barrie said, testing the sound of those words too.

“I’m sorry.” The driver’s eyes met hers in the rearview mirror.

Barrie nodded and looked away. The cab pulled up to the house and rolled to a stop behind an ancient Mercedes with a live albino peacock perched on the hood like some bizarre kind of ornament. The bird shrieked, flew down, and landed beside a woman seated on the steps. Purse clutched on her knees in a white-knuckle grip, the woman stared at Barrie.

This had to be Lula’s sister. Lula’s
twin
. The woman resembled Barrie enough to make that clear. Unlike Barrie’s mother, though, she had no burn scars to hide behind a wig and veil. She wasn’t stooped in pain. She was pretty. Beautiful, almost.

Was this what Lula would have looked like if fate had been kinder all those years ago? Barrie studied her aunt’s full cheeks, her neat triangular chin, the liquid play of emotions across her face. Slowly, she climbed out of the cab.

“Aunt Pru?” Barrie asked.

The woman struggled to her feet, scrubbing at eyes as gray as Barrie’s, as pale as Lula’s. She smoothed back her blond curls, and with her gaze locked on Barrie, she took a shaky step. That was as far as she got, as if she didn’t have the strength to descend the remaining stairs.

“Barrie?” she asked. “Is that you?”

Barrie ran a few steps, then stopped. A handshake seemed too formal, but she had never hugged anyone except for Mark, and a hug felt awkward when she and her aunt had never met. She clasped her hands behind her and licked her lips. “I kept trying to call you, but no one answered.”

“I was on my way to get you.” Her aunt’s words trickled out like they weren’t in a hurry, a syllable at a time. “I—I was going to the airport. I just sat down a moment to catch my breath. . . .”

Barrie glanced at her watch. “It’s four fifteen—”

“Four fifteen?” Pru checked her own watch. “Oh, goodness. It is.” She sank back down on the step, wrapping her arms around herself as though she felt cold despite the afternoon heat. “You must have thought I’d abandoned you—”

“No. It was fine,” Barrie cut in before her aunt could burst into tears.

Of course it wasn’t fine. The problem wasn’t only that Pru hadn’t come for her. Something about her aunt, and the whole situation, was off. Pru’s clothes seemed more like what a teenage girl might have worn years ago, instead of a woman of thirty-six. The sundress was ironed stiff, as if Pru had taken trouble with it, but the pattern was so faded, Barrie couldn’t tell if the fruit on it had begun as apples or apricots. And Pru’s scuffed, old-fashioned Mary Janes would have made Mark groan. Overall the look was more can’t-afford-anything-new than vintage chic.

In that, Barrie’s aunt matched the house. A shutter hung drunkenly on a nearby window like it was going to crash down at any moment. Paint peeled from one of the tall columns, and mortar had crumbled from between the bricks.

Unlike the manicured gardens around it, the house looked neglected, as if no one cared enough to maintain it. The opposite of Lula’s obsession to have every room and knickknack perfect.

The driver handed Barrie the charge slip to sign. “You sure you’re goin’ to be all right here, child?” He nodded his chin in her aunt’s direction and added softly, “I can still take you back. No trouble.”

Barrie shook her head. Now that she was here, she couldn’t
leave. Her aunt was undeniably strange, but Pru’s features added up to familiarity, to family. And the house, while run-down, was magnificent. It was
Watson’s
Landing. Lula’s history. Barrie’s own history.

“I’m going to be fine here,” she said, as if determination could make that true.

Inside, Watson’s Landing reminded Barrie of an aging beauty, all sagging skin over lovely bones. Even the smell was ancient. The air stank of jasmine, decay, and dust. And the furniture, like the outside of the house, was an eerie echo of Lula’s mansion in San Francisco.

Pru carried one of Barrie’s heavy suitcases up the mahogany staircase with surprising ease, as if her wiry arms were stronger than they looked. Barrie trailed her aunt more slowly, dragging the other suitcase one step at a time. She tried not to be alarmed that Pru’s breath still came in shuddering little gulps, or that Pru had yet to explain why she had sat outside for hours and forgotten to pick Barrie up.

Who
did
that?

Well, Lula’s sister apparently.

Maybe Pru was as nuts as Lula.

Barrie was searching for a way to ask her aunt why she hadn’t gone to the airport, when halfway to the narrow landing between the first floor and the second, her suitcase caught. She stumbled and grabbed the banister. The spindles swayed beneath her weight. Planting her feet, she fought for balance.

Excellent. She’d been here five minutes, and she’d nearly killed herself.

“Stop it! That’s enough!” Pru’s face went white, almost blue around her lips, and her eyes were directed toward the ceiling.

Barrie hastened to apologize. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“What?” Pru gave her a startled glance, and color flooded into her cheeks as if she, too, blushed at every little thing. “No, not you, sugar. It’s this hellhole of a house. I can’t keep up with everything that breaks around here.”

The way Pru’s gaze avoided contact suggested she was lying. Or insane. Or possibly both.

Maybe crazy ran in the family, which was par for the course, because Barrie was starting to feel unhinged.

She edged up the stairs to the landing, let her suitcase drop on the scarred floorboards, and opened and closed her hands to get the circulation back. A full-length portrait of a
weather-beaten Watson ancestor hung on the wall in front of her in grim detail. A ship sank in a boiling sea behind him. The frame held an inscription that read:
Thomas Watson, 1692
.

“If that suitcase is too heavy for you, you can leave it there on the landing. I’ll come back down for it—”

Pru’s voice cut off as the doorbell rang. Her hands flew to her cheeks and the tear tracks beneath her reddened eyes. “That’ll be Seven. Oh, Lord! I can’t let him see me like this.”

“Seven?” Barrie asked.

Pru stared down at the front door like she wished it would spontaneously combust. “Beaufort,” she said, and Barrie couldn’t quite tell if it was a name or a curse. “He handled the papers with Lula’s lawyer.”

“Mr. Ferguson?”

“Yes, the one who did the will. He—Seven—said he might come by to introduce you to Eight, but he can’t know I didn’t get you at the airport. He’ll think I’m certifiable. Which is what you must be thinking, finding me on the steps like that. Maybe I
am
losing my mind—”

The bell chimed again, and whatever else Pru had been going to say was swallowed by another wave of tears. She looked so small and trapped that Barrie wanted to run and hold her. Which was strange.

Pru wiped her eyes again and vacillated on the step.
Anyone who saw her would know that she’d been crying. What if the lawyer actually thought Pru
was
crazy? He might try to ship Barrie back to San Francisco. Mark would panic all over again—

“It can be our secret,” Barrie blurted. “No one has to know. You go hide, Aunt Pru, and I’ll get the door and tell them you’re in the shower.”

Pru gave her a grateful nod. “Ask them to come back after dinner. Say I have to finish the baking for the tearoom, but I’ll make a peanut butter whoopie pie cake if they come back later. That always used to work on Seven.”

The bell rang for longer this time, and then chimed at short intervals. Barrie waited until Pru was out of sight before walking down to yank the door open.

The Beauforts loomed on the stoop, their shoulders swallowing all the light. The older man, brown-haired and hard-edged, stood poised to jab the bell as though he were used to mashing the world beneath his thumb and making it obey. His green eyes were narrowed in concern. Or maybe temper.

His smile came slowly, but it transformed him enough to make Barrie slightly less inclined to slam the door. “You must be Pru’s niece.” He held out his hand. “I’m Charles Beaufort—Seven, people call me. And this is Eight, my son.”

“Nice to meet you.” Barrie shook Seven’s hand awkwardly,
and finding another hand thrust out at her, reached for that one too, before she looked up at its owner. Eight grinned down at her, a half-moon flash in his tanned face, electric green eyes blazing as if so much life had been crammed inside him that it was pushing to get out.

Barrie’s brain telegraphed an only slightly milder version of the returning click she had felt when she’d first touched the bricks by the gate. The air felt clearer, lighter, as if a layer of static interference had been peeled away.

Whether he felt it or was reacting to her reaction, Eight’s slouch and his grin both disappeared. Barrie tried to will herself not to turn the same pink as his rumpled oxford shirt. Her cheeks didn’t listen. She pulled back her hand and tucked it behind her, pasting on what she hoped would pass for an honest smile.

“Aunt Pru’s in the shower,” she said, “and she’s behind getting ready for tomorrow. She asked if you could maybe postpone until after dinner. Sorry. That’s my fault, not hers. We got to talking, and . . .”

Seven’s frown deepened the lines around his eyes. “I was hoping Eight and I could take you both out to eat for your first night here.”

“Pru said she’ll make you a peanut butter cake if you’re willing to come back later,” Barrie said, praying he wouldn’t argue—he seemed the type to argue.

“One of her whoopie pie cakes?” Seven waited a beat before he continued, “Is eight thirty late enough?”

Barrie gave a manic nod and waved good-bye. Then she closed the door and leaned against it until her legs stopped shaking.

“Was he mad?” Pru leaned over the top of the banister. She suddenly looked too familiar: the curve of her shoulders, the angle of her neck. Barrie had seen her mother peer down from the second floor like that a million times at home.

Lula’s twin.

The realization struck Barrie all over again, and she tried to memorize everything about the moment so she could sketch it later. If not for the scars, Lula might have looked like this. Years ago, Barrie’s mother might have bent over the upstairs railing here, the same way Pru was leaning over it now. Lula might have looked down to greet whoever had come through the door to stand in the foyer. Maybe she had smiled and been happy to see—who? A boyfriend? A best friend?

For the hundredth time since the reading of her mother’s will, Barrie wondered why Lula had left. Why had she run away to San Francisco and stayed there even after the fire that had killed her husband? Why had she let everyone on Watson Island believe she had died too, instead of letting them know she was horribly burned and had a newborn baby she couldn’t care for?

The answers had to be here at Watson’s Landing. Barrie could find them if she stayed. And however strange it all seemed, she was going to stay. Mark wanted her to. Pru clearly needed someone. No one in all her life had ever needed Barrie before. Not really. Not enough.

She fought to keep her voice even as she spoke to Pru. “They said they’d be back at eight thirty.”

“They’ll be early. Seven never waits,” Pru said, too bitterly for someone discussing dinner plans.

Barrie climbed to the second floor. The staircase opened onto a gallery with corridors on either end leading into the two wings of the house. Pru carried Barrie’s suitcase toward the one on the right, but a stomach-clenching sense of loss pulled Barrie in the opposite direction. Rubbing her head, she stopped and peered into the gloom of the unlit corridor.

“Are you coming, sugar?” Pru called behind her.

Barrie edged closer to the hallway. “What’s down this way?” she asked.

Her aunt glanced back. “It’s best you stay clear of that whole wing up here. It’s dangerous, and I haven’t gotten around to doing any repairs. Really, there’s not much point, when I’ve got too many rooms to clean as it is.”

Barrie studied Pru’s back as she followed her aunt down a hallway hung with brooding portraits of more Watson ancestors. Pru’s battered Mary Janes moved evenly over the Oriental
runners. Didn’t she feel the awful pull pulsing from the other end of the house? Or the other pings of loss from behind the closed doors they were passing?

It shouldn’t have been possible for anything to be lost at Watson’s Landing. But the crushing pull from the other wing faded the farther Barrie walked, and whatever was lost behind the other doors didn’t hold much significance. By the time her aunt stopped near the end of the hallway, Barrie could almost forget that the finding gift had exerted itself at all.

Pru threw one of the doors open with a flourish. “This has the best view of all the bedrooms, I think. The French doors open onto the balcony. Your mama used to love to sit out there and watch the river.” Fresh tears slipped down her cheeks, and she wiped them away with the back of her hand. “Lord, what a first impression I’m giving you, sugar. I swear, I’m not like this all the time.”

“It’s all right. Lula was your sister,” Barrie said. “I understand.”