Embers (48 page)

This was not an easy question to camouflage.

"I suppose running a grand house the size of Eagle's Nest was like running a small business," Meg ventured. "All those rooms
...
all those servants
...
I can just imagine what the key ring looked like!"

Nothing.

"Or maybe the house was more modern than that. Maybe the doors to the rooms didn't even have any locks?"

"For heaven's sake," Mrs. Camplin remarked, staring. "What an odd question. Of course they had locks. For security as well as privacy. I myself used to keep my favorite jewelry in my bedroom, in a covered jar."

She shook her head, wondering at the memory. "I'd never
think
of doing that nowadays, of course. Not after what happened to a friend of mine in
Newport
. Robbed in her own bedroom, while she slept. Twice. These are terrible times. Terrible. No one is safe anymore."

For one brief moment the strong and capable Mrs. Camplin looked like some fragile old lady at a bus stop, clutching her purse more tightly as a pack of teenagers in running shoes approached. But the moment passed as the wealthy socialite remembered who she was and where she was.

"Anyway," she said in a friendly but puzzled voice, "what does this have to do with my gardens at Tea Kettle?"

Not a heck of a lot.
Meg had to temporize. "Well, one of the questions our readers like to see addressed is which rooms face the garden—kitchen, breakfast room, master bedroom.

I guess I was wondering, not only about Tea Kettle Cottage, but about your previous summer house."

"My bedrooms
always
face the garden; that goes without saying. But at Eagle's Nest the trees overhung the view of the grounds; it was hard to see much. That house was dark; very dark inside," she added, shuddering. "I never cared for it. I prefer a bright, sunny room. Don't you?"

Meg remembered the gay floral print on the walls of the mistress's bedroom in the dollhouse. She smiled and said, "Yes, ma'am, I do."

Mrs. Camplin cocked her head and looked at Meg curiously. "Now whom did you just remind me of?" she wondered aloud, intrigued.

Suddenly self-conscious, Meg made matters worse by nervously fiddling with one of her teardrop earrings. "I look like just about everyone, I've been told," she said, flushing.

"Perhaps," agreed Mrs. Camplin. She stood up, clearly still trying to make the connection, and signaled an end to the interview, "Now: what about the photos?"

Meg explained that she'd be shooting the shade garden today, but that it was too sunny for close-ups of some of the lilies and paler flowers. Those, she'd like to come back and do on an overcast or even a foggy day. Mrs. Camplin agreed, and they strolled back to the house, taking in the sights and scents around them.

"I'm so glad I found this place," confessed Dorothea Camplin contentedly when they reached the house. "I can't imagine living anywhere else in
Maine
."

Meg seized the opening and said something that she realized too late was truly stupid. She said, "So in a way the Great Fire was a blessing?"

Dorothea Camplin stopped where she was, pushed her bifocals back up her nose, and stared at Meg. "What a perverse way of looking at it! The fire was a great tragedy," she said in a scolding tone. "We lost a member of our staff in that fire. I suppose that this is what happens after time," she said, viciously yanking out a nervy clump of Queen Anne's lace. "Young people become desensitized to the tragedies of the last generation."

"I didn't mean it the way it came out," Meg said quickly. "I only meant to suggest that, well
...
you
did
end up with the house of your dreams," she said lamely.

Mrs. Camplin shook her head mournfully. "
But at a price, young lady ..
. at a price."

Uncle Billy, who was the mover and the shaker in the Atwells clan, decided that Meg needed moving and Allie needed shaking. He'd heard rumors about what he called Allie's little "tiff" with Tom, and he'd got blow-by-blow accounts from Comfort of the latest setbacks at the Inn Between. He decided to kill two birds with one stone by inviting both Tom and an interested collector of dolls' houses — a Mr. Peterson —
to  the Inn Between for Chicken Pie Night.

Meg was outraged.

"That
pushy
old bastard!" she said to her sister. "He's too damn tight to give us a hand — not that I'd want him to; we can pay our own way — and yet he's too damn meddling to just let us be. He drives me
crazy
.
I don't know
why
Dad puts up with his butting in all the time."

Allie laid out the eighth, ninth, and tenth plates on the supper table and said, "That isn't why you're mad, Meg. You're mad because Uncle Billy is playing matchmaker between Tom and me," she said with supreme, unintended irony. "But
I
don't care, and you shouldn't, either."

"And I
don't
understand why Tom is coming." How
dare
he, after all that had happened?

"Don't blame Tom," Allie said in a weary voice. "I suppose he was just trying to help, passing on Mr. Peterson's name to Uncle Billy."

"Which is another thing. Why pass it on to Uncle Billy? Why not directly to me?" Meg slammed down a knife and then a fork beside each plate. She knew the answer to
that
question, of course, but it felt good to complain.

Allie avoided looking at her sister as she said, "Maybe Tom knew how reluctant you'd be to sell the dollhouse."

"Not true!" Meg cried. "I'm not reluctant. I'm just not ready." It was pointless to try to explain to Allie about the continued presence Meg still felt in and around the dollhouse. Allie had never felt it, and though at first she'd humored Meg, now she was too caught up in her own pain to care one way or the other.

Meg glanced across the table at her sister. Allie seemed to physically droop, like a daisy without water. Granted, they were in the grip of yet another heat wave; but that wasn't it. It broke Meg's heart to see her like this. Somehow she hoped that Allie would be too proud to grieve.

"Allie
...
honey
...
you don't have to stick around for supper."

"Where would I go?" Allie asked, sighing. "Besides, it's Chicken Pie Night."

"Big deal;
every
Wednesday is Chicken Pie Night," Meg said, just itching to rail at something. "That's the whole problem around here!
Everything's
predictable.
Everything's a
habit. No one has any — I don't
know — gumption
.
No one has any plain old get-up-and-go. You're right, Allie. We're all just rotting in place here, like the rafters of the Inn Between."

Meg gave her sister a sideways look. "Thank God
you're
not like the rest of us. Thank God
you
have bigger plans. You can go anywhere in the world.
New York
,
Paris
,
L.A.
  ... some day you'll look back on Chicken Pie Night and laugh."

Allie had finished her task and was on her way out of the dining room. At the door she turned, eyes glistening, and said, "All lies; but thanks anyway, Meggie."

Meg wanted to lie more, but the arrival of Uncle Billy ended all that.

"Comfort Atwells!" Meg heard him shout in the kitchen. "Look at you: rosy cheeks and big as a barn door! You look
good,
de-ah! Motherhood do agree with you."

Comfort giggled and murmured something and Meg heard Uncle Billy say, "Where's your sister-in-law? I hear she's gunnin' for me."

When he came into the dining room, Meg fired both barrels.

"Uncle
Billy," she said without preamble, "When I need help finding a buyer for the dollhouse, I suppose I'll ask for it! Until then I wish you wouldn't treat it like a toaster at a two-family yard sale! I don't have time to listen to insulting offers from every flea-market customer passing through town. When it's time — if it's ever time —"

"Whoa, whoa, let up, will you?" he said, ducking to avoid her wrath. "In the first place, I don't know this Peterson jeezer from Adam; it's Tom Wyler who insists he's more'n just a handshaker. Second place: from what I hear, it
is
time, Meggie," he said seriously. "Time to sell."

He was such a big bear of a man. His voice carried such authority. It was hard for Meg to do what she did just then — to stand up to him and say, "No, Uncle Billy. It's not for sale."

William Atwells didn't take kindly to the word
no.
Everyone knew that, from his younger brother Everett to the woman in
Bangor
who'd refused his hand in marriage thirty-one years earlier.

He scowled his trademark scowl. "I don't want to hear none a' that bilge from you, young lady," he said, hitching his pants over his potbelly. "When I kick the bucket, you and the rest will be well provided for. But until then I expect to see this family stand on its own two feet. Now, Tom knows someone who knows someone who put this Peterson fella on to the dollhouse. Okay. So here's the plan: We're gonna stuff this rube with Comfort's chicken pie, and then we're gonna roll him out to the shed and show him the most gorgeous friggin' dollhouse he ever did see. We're gonna make him beg for it. We're gonna make him cry in pain that he don't have it. And we're gonna make him offer cold, hard cash for it. And then —
only
then — will you decide whether you'll sell or not."

He thumped three times on the dinner table with his middle finger. "Because, little Meggie,
in this world
everything
is for sale. Whether you like it, or whether you don't."

The front doorbell rang and Terry let out a whoop and ran to answer it. As promised, Tom Wyler was delivering Mr. Peterson, ready for stuffing, to their door.

Meg and her uncle Billy, each with his own agenda, rushed to the front door to intercept their guests. Mr. Peterson was small, thin, meek, bespectacled, and didn't look as if he had two nickels to rub together, much less the cost of a dollhouse that was fit for royalty. Meg gave him one glance and turned to Tom, who was wearing a jacket and tie and looked as if he'd rather be standing on a mat of hot coals than on the threshold of the Inn Between.

Obviously he'd been strong-armed by Uncle Billy into coming. All right, then. The best thing was just to smile and be polite and wait for all three men to go away. She could do that.

Introductions were made and pleasantries exchanged. Uncle Billy sized Mr. Peterson up and down, then smiled at Meg and whispered in her ear, "Like eatin' pie."

After that he scooped up Mr. Peterson the way a grizzly would a brook trout and hauled him into the family's sitting room, leaving Tom and Meg to follow in their wake.

"I'm sorry about this," Tom murmured. "I didn't expect to be part of the deal. Your uncle insisted."

"I believe I've told you I'm not selling," Meg said, smiling.

Tom shrugged. "Okay. Fine."

Please don't use that tone of fine with me," Meg said, smiling.

"What the hell tone do you
expect
me to—"

"Or that tone, either," Meg said, smiling.

"Damn! Your uncle's right about you!"

"Thank you. It's nice of you to say so," Meg said — still smiling.

They commandeered seats at opposite ends of the sitting room. Uncle Billy took over as host, pouring drinks, chatting amiably about life in a resort town, asking an occasional question of Mr. Peterson, reeling him in slowly.

It turned out that Meg was right: Mr. Peterson did
not
have the necessary nickels. He was in fact an expert on miniatures, commissioned by an investor who'd got it in his head that dollhouses were a hot collectible. Mr. Peterson had taken pains to advise "this particular gentleman" that collectibles ran hot and cold.

"But with real estate depressed, the market stagnant, and interest rates so low, this particular gentleman is hard pressed to turn a profit," Mr. Peterson confessed between nibbles on a Ritz cracker. "He believes that antiques and collectibles may be in the process of bottoming out."

"They're a damn good hedge against inflation," avowed Uncle Billy.

"If we had inflation," responded Mr. Peterson.

"Beats buyin' waterfront on a flood plain," countered Uncle Billy.

"My client lives on high ground," said Mr. Peterson.

And on it went. Mr. Peterson gave as good as he got, to the point that Uncle Billy was becoming a little flustered. He decided, abruptly, to change the subject.

"Say, where's Allie, anyway?" he demanded in a petulant voice. He turned to his guest and gave him a knowing elbow. "My niece is just about the most fetchin' thing in
New England
. Wait till you see her. Meg? Where is she?"