Farthest House (33 page)

Footsteps sounded on the stairs, and Willow’s eyes widened. “It’s Tory. What do I say? Why did Mémé deceive her and make her think Farthest House was hers?”

The footsteps had yet to land on the foyer floor, but Clay lowered his voice to a whisper. “She’ll be glad the place isn’t going to Greenburr. They’d tear down walls and put walls up and turn it into city offices or a medical clinic.”

Willow wasn’t convinced. “It’s still a dirty trick…she trusted…I know how it feels to be double-crossed. Though nothing has to change, it might not seem like her home, anymore.”

Tory stood in the doorway, “Whose home?”

Willow swallowed, trying to hold the letter so still Tory wouldn’t notice it. At her side, Clay said nothing, and she appreciated his silence, his waiting for her to call the first play. But Tory had heard the doorbell, she certainly heard part of their conversation, and there wasn’t time to come up with a plan for breaking the news gently. Honesty seemed not just the best way out, but the only way out. She handed up the letter, and Tory reached for it.

39

Willow started awake, her eyes wide in the darkness, her heart thundering in her chest. Another nightmare, this time that Prairie screamed for help, and though Willow searched frantically and the crying was so near, she couldn’t find her.

The screams came again, and the thumping in Willow’s chest that for half a second had slowed, kicked back up. Not just a dream, Prairie needed her. She threw back the covers and sat up, her feet hitting the rug and slamming a wave of dizziness into her head. Prairie cried out again, and the sound sent Willow running, the rug beneath her feet rolling on waves. Prairie wasn’t just whimpering from bad dreams of her own, but shrieking. Something was terribly wrong.

In the hall, long and dark and empty of support, Willow nearly lost her balance but caught herself, both arms swinging into the air. She slowed. She’d be no good if she fell and broke a hip or sprained an ankle. At Prairie’s door, she smelled the vomit. Only that, she told herself, Prairie was sick. While Willow could identify with how bad puking felt—the pitching stomach, the loss of control as the stomach convulsed, the headache, and Prairie probably had a nose full of bitter, stinging bile—still these things passed. Mary wasn’t in the room hovering over the crib, and Derrick wasn’t standing crib-side, reaching in to snatch the baby away.

Finding the light switch would have taken only a second, but Willow hurried to the crib using moonlight. “Mommy’s here, it’s okay.” Prairie sat with vomit on the legs of her pajamas and on the sheet between her legs, but she’d not rolled in it, didn’t have the rank stuff in her hair, wouldn’t need a full bath, which Willow felt too shaky to attempt. “It’s okay, sweetie.” She shushed and soothed and cradled the child, grabbing a fresh pair of pajamas and heading for the bathroom.

Even washed up and in clean clothes, Prairie continued to whimper. She rested her head on Willow’s shoulder, her tiny thumb in her mouth, as Willow walked the floor, rocking and waltzing a few feet down the hall and then back, never getting too close to Tory’s door for fear of waking her. She did wonder that Tory wasn’t already up. Who could have slept through the screaming, or if awakened refused to come to the child’s aid?

Maybe, she wasn’t being fair. Tory was in her sixties, and she did have the farthest back bedroom. She also kept the door tightly closed, even locked, and then there was her sleeping potion—a tall tumbler of sherry. Possibly too, Prairie hadn’t cried as long or as hard as Willow feared.
Wishful thinking.

She moved back into Prairie’s room, still kissing and cradling and eyeing the rocker. Changing the crib sheet would require more energy than she had, and she didn’t want Prairie in the crib anyway. God forbid the baby would need help again, and this time, Willow wouldn’t wake. The safe thing was for them to sleep together, but not yet. Prairie still needed soothing, and if she was going to be sick again, there was no sense in soiling another bed.

Before Willow could drop into the rocker, moonlight beckoned out Prairie’s window. She swayed up to the glass. A pale hue frosted the yard, not golden or white, but more suffused, as if low light bled through a sheet of blue tissue paper. Jonah’s white cabin, so serene looking, contrasted with what she knew to be the somber, secretive interior. The magnolias and river birch were night-still, even the weeping willow looked like a fountain of inky frozen water. The roses, scores of dark and clumped bushes, each with unmoving fists of charcoal shadow, took a backseat to the moonflowers on the far left of her view. They climbed up tall trellises, each flower the size of a tea cup, a delicate and thin bone china cup bobbing like a beacon to night moths.

The trellises stood furthermost in the garden, just yards from the beginning of the wood, the trees serving as a windbreak, helping to protect the thin wooden laths from storms. The outermost trees reflected the pale light, the moon glowing off their trunks and leaves. But the path into the acres of oaks, maples, and poplars loomed dark as the opening to a cave.

Just as Willow was turning back for the rocker, a shadow emerged out of the trees and made her jump. “Geez,” she breathed aloud. Who was on the property this time of night and why? Half a second later, she recognized the silhouette. Tall and thin in a long, dark trench coat, with a reaching gait, Tory stepped onto the grass.

Keeping herself back from the window, Willow watched her aunt advance toward the house along the cobblestone walk. When the walkway split, one fork going to the kitchen door and the other to the portico, Tory took the latter. She stepped beneath the roof so that Willow lost sight of her, but moonlight kept the tip of Tory’s shadow in place, a stilled thing. A minute or two more and Tory reappeared, stepping back onto the path to the kitchen door. Willow was ready to run for her bed when a glint caught her eye. She studied what at first looked like a silver straw slowly snaking out across the smooth stones. As it grew, she realized it was water being struck by moonlight and coming from where Tory had stood a moment before.

Sounds of the kitchen door opening and closing made her rush across the hall, whispering in Prairie’s ear as they moved, “Shh, it’s okay.” Standing just inside Mémé’s room, she could hear Tory cross the kitchen floor, and when she felt certain Tory was in the foyer, she eased the door closed and crawled into bed with Prairie.

The sound of footsteps was so slight and careful on the stairs, Willow couldn’t be sure she heard anything. Her mind raced. Maybe, she hadn’t seen liquid on the flagstones. After all, that was the spot where she’d also imagined weeds climbing her legs.

She held Prairie close and stroked her back. Soft footsteps, which strained for quiet, reached the upstairs hallway, and a shadow stopped outside her door. The shadow passed after a bit, but Willow’s heart still banged. Why was she so scared, and why didn’t she simply step into the hall and talk to Tory? Was it because there was only one possible explanation for the water? Tory, classy Tory, had stopped, spread her legs, and peed on the portico floor. Or was it that Tory had been out in the wood by herself at night? Had she gone to meet someone? A coven?

Prairie began to cry again, and then, she gagged.

“Oh, poor baby,” Willow soothed. “I know just how you feel.” Her stomach gripped. She did know exactly how Prairie felt. What was happening?

40

Two nights later, with Clay in a chair to her left, Willow lay in Luessy’s bed watching the evening light shrink and sicken until darkness pushed, bullied, and blackened the turret windows. An hour earlier in Prairie’s room, she stood on aching legs and watched Clay dress Prairie in pajamas and tuck the toddler under her blanket. Clay did the lifting, Willow the kissing and cooing, a strained smile of exhaustion stretching her lips.

Then Clay went to the library for manuscript pages, and while he was a floor below, Willow made her way, losing her robe and crawling into her own bed.

Now, Clay read, his voice clear and enunciating though his words slid in and out of Willow’s attention. A week had passed since receiving the letter, and while the time ought to have given her a new sense of freedom and foundation, she spent the days more bound by illness than at any time over the summer. She was plagued with flash impressions and questions—some of which felt trustworthy—others ludicrous. At least Prairie was fine. All children were sick here and there, and yet, one question would not quit bobbing in and out of Willow’s awareness: Had Prairie eaten something tainted that hadn’t been meant for her? Willow wouldn’t let herself believe it.

Her right hand circled the area of Mother Moses within reach, resting on a walnut-sized hole. “Just this one,” she said. “The rest of the birds and flowers are all intact.” She was certain that just days before there’d been several holes, or had she dreamed breakage and unraveling?

Clay stopped reading. “You all right?” She wasn’t paying attention to his writing, and that seemed fair; he wasn’t either. He knew the two of them needed to talk, but bringing up the subject plaguing him wasn’t going to be easy.

Willow had been staring, and she brought her gaze back from a middle, unseeing distance and turned to face him. “I’m listening.” She wanted the drone of his voice in the room, the background noise that required nothing of her while still promising she wasn’t alone. “Keep reading.”

He nodded at the manuscript. “I feel like I’m sitting on a fence. I’m not sure of my direction.”

“Humpty-Dumpty died that way.” His expression changed to quizzical, and she went on. “You know, sitting on a fence or wall.”

“You’re funny,” he said. He scooted his chair forward until his knees touched the side of her bed. He leaned in, “We need to talk.”

She bit her bottom lip. All week she’d spent more time asleep than awake, rowing through lucid dreams full of bright, colored illustrations. Waking to the dim, sepia-hued world around her was jarring, leaving her mind slippery, untethered to either place. Even now, Clay’s voice wasn’t the only one she heard, and it wasn’t the most insistent. Mother Moses spoke through the cotton string, and stories whispered from the room’s dark and paneled walls. Behind the tiny door she’d opened to the attic staircase, a cane tapped faintly.

She tried to concentrate on Clay and the intense set of his mouth. She not only wanted him to stay, she wanted him in her bed, naked and holding her steady, the long length of him warm against her, his body a ballast against her fears and what the room would tell her.

“You’ll let yourself out?” Tory stood just inside the door, her body in shadow, and her glass of sherry in her hand.

The amount, too much nightcap for one skinny, elderly woman, always surprised Willow. Was part of the liquor saved for the middle of the night, sedating Tory again after her nocturnal stroll?

The blame was mine.
Sip, sip,
I told Tory so many years ago.

“Of course,” Clay said. “Good night.”

Willow waited, and when the sound of her aunt’s door closing traveled back from the end of the hall, she whispered. “When you were reading Mémé’s and the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, did you also read Daphne Du Maurier?”

“Some.”

“
Rebecca
?”

He thought for a moment, “Yeah, I believe I saw the movie, too.”

She rolled her eyes toward the door Tory had just exited.

He was quiet for a moment and then chuckled. “Mrs. Danvers? No. Tory’s a sweetheart.”

“I’m just saying. Sometimes….”

“Did you know,” he said, “that after the Salem witch trials, the town changed its name to Danvers?” He grinned back at her surprise, “I’m just saying.” He motioned around the room. “And is this Manderley?”

“No. This is Farthest House.”

They grew quiet, and Clay cleared his throat. “Something strange happened today.”

“Let me guess, I’m not going to like it.”

“It’s not that big of a deal, maybe not even worth mentioning.”

“Then don’t.”

He stretched, kissed her, and studied the strain in her eyes. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

“Derrick called again. I won’t take his calls. Prairie seemed fine, didn’t she? I told you she was sick?”

He thought about Mary’s “Looky here,” as the camera flashed, but this wasn’t the time to bring it up. Willow was struggling with enough. “Yes, Prairie is fine. How about Tory? How’s she taking the news?”

“I think we’re both still in shock. Some days, she appears happy for me, even sort of celebratory over the news. Other days, she’s withdrawn. I suppose she’s hashing over what her mother did and what she should do now.”

“She’s not thinking of leaving?”

“I don’t think so. I have a story for you. The other night….” she stopped. Was she absolutely positive Tory had peed on the portico floor? It seemed so long ago. “She has to feel betrayed, and I don’t blame her.”

Clay squeezed Willow’s hand. “You could give the house back.”

“What have you been smoking? We did talk about my having a will drawn up. I’m putting her name on it.” She was aware of how slowly she was talking, as if treading through her thoughts. “She thinks Papa, not Mémé, was behind the deception. She can’t think why though, other than maybe Papa was afraid to tell her the truth.”

“That sounds like anger to me.”

“She hopes I don’t blame him.”

“Maybe, your dad did it to protect her, to give her peace of mind for another ten years. What good would it have done to dangle the truth over her head?”

Willow didn’t need to close her eyes to see the raven on the kitchen ceiling, the black and winged stain hovering and descending on Papa. The anger that morning, the day the will was read, turned the kitchen air fetid. Papa wouldn’t have done his sister any big favors, at least not that day.

“Or,” Clay said, “maybe, he thought she wouldn’t keep the place up if she knew the truth. Or she’d move out completely and the place would really fall into ruin. It’s good she’s been here.”

“There’s no such thing as a perfect family, is there?”

“Last I heard, they were still made up of humans.”

She let her free hand creep again, the motion hopefully not enough to catch Clay’s attention. When she found the open place in the crocheting, her palm rested, widening over the broken threads. The center of her hand, the most sensitive part, was circled now by the rough outline of knotted string. She imagined a touch or tug, imagined she could slide down through the hole and away. She knew that sort of travel, mental or psychic. The flying thoughts were anything but new. For days, especially since the letter, she’d felt extra loopy, as though she were already half wings and wind. Right now, she could slip away, so easily.

The fear of going, even for a moment, made her shiver despite the summer heat and her blankets. She would not risk leaving Prairie. Not all journeys had roads leading back.

She closed her eyes, pushing her hand off the entrance but leaving her fingers on the cusp, trembling. She whispered Luessy’s words, “I’m up here. Out here.”

“No, Willow, you’re not,” Clay said. He let go of her hand and cupped her face, forcing her to look at him. “You’re right here. You’re with me.”

She wished again that he’d crawl into the bed beside her, stay the night, and keep her from being alone. She wished it for Prairie too, someone who’d wake at the first sound of crying and know where they were and what should be done. She didn’t trust herself, or Tory, who walked out of the house at night and prowled under the moon and peed on the flagstones. Who stood in shadow or created shadow.

The darkness beyond the turret’s windows had turned to crepe. “I need everything on paper. A will, ASAP.”

“Everyone needs a will, but ‘ASAP’?”

She didn’t miss his frustration, or blame him, but he needed to understand. “I want Prairie to have this house, eventually, and should something happen to me, Tory is the logical person to keep it until Prairie is grown. Strange as Tory is, she opened her door to us. Without a will,” her fingers opened, reached for the broken threads, “there might be a way, as Prairie’s father, for Derrick to put Tory out. Even sell Farthest House. Just as bad, suppose he and Mary ended up living here. I’d return from the dead!”

“This is crazy.”

“Houses do burn down, Clay. People do die.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to you.”

“There are no bogeymen, right? No lawyers for hire who’d kick Tory out? And where would Jonah go, to some state-run dump for old folks?”

“Does this mean you’re agreeing it’s time to see another doctor?”

“I thought you believed Dr. Mahoney.”

With a soft plop, the pages in his lap landed on the floor. Whole paragraphs of the manuscript were scratched through, and marginalia crawled up the sides. “I do believe him. The point is, you don’t. He says the migraines are from stress and are as likely to quit as quickly as they started. Losing your dad, and the horrible way you did, it’s no wonder. When I lost Robbie,” he took a breath and exhaled, “I came completely unglued.” He ran his fingers back through his hair. “Remembering what I went through, the drinking binges, I’m lucky to be here.” He leaned forward again and put a hand on her forehead. “I do believe Dr. Mahoney. Think about it, serious illnesses get chronically worse. They don’t come and go like what you’re experiencing. Right now, you’re tired, but you’re feeling pretty good, aren’t you?”

“What is it then?”

“If not migraines,” he shrugged, “appendix? Measles?”

“Measles?”

“I don’t know,” he laughed. “I do literature. Another doctor agreeing with Dr. Mahoney though might help you relax. Which might help you break through this wall and get better.”

She considered his comment. “Have you’ve been talking to Dr. Mahoney?”

“Willow, I love you, and this week has been a bad stretch for you. I needed assurances.” She didn’t answer, and he tried again. “Your depression is bulldozing you, but I get that. Just give yourself more time. This is where Dr. Mahoney is wrong; it’s only been a couple of months. The mind doesn’t heal as fast as the body.”

She longed for a cave of her own where she could go and hide until she figured everything out and gained some peace. Even Jesus needed forty days to get his head together.

“What are you most afraid of?” Clay asked.

“That Mary won’t ever go to jail for murdering Papa, and that she’ll hurt you or Prairie.”

Looky here,
Mary had said. He looked to the papers on the floor, began picking them up, worked at straightening the edges.

“All these years,” Willow said, “I’ve blamed Jeannie for dying and leaving me. Now, being sick, I think maybe I was wrong. That’s hard for me to admit.”

“No one
decides
to leave a newborn. Why would admitting that be hard for you?”

“If I can’t blame her, I’m left with only myself to blame. Have I spent my life
choosing
to be a victim? Don’t answer that,” she smiled. “In fact, I don’t want to talk about any of this.” He did make her happy, even when she feared happiness was risky and a precursor to loss. “You talk to me, great keeper of secrets.” And then, daring herself, “In this bed.”

He rounded the footboard and dropped down beside her on the mattress before she scarcely heard her own words. Before she could turn to face him, he held her, her back pulled into his chest. She stiffened, but he pulled her closer, his longer body spooning hers, his arms snug beneath her breasts.

“That didn’t take much coaxing,” she said.

“You might have changed your mind.” He kissed her cheek, her ear, her neck, and then grew quiet for a moment. “You might not have had your mother, but you had your father, and having even one moderately-functioning parent is a blessing. You’re right up there with the luckiest.”