A Sound Among the Trees (6 page)

Hudson stood. “He won’t care.” Her great-grandson tossed the three words over his shoulder.

“Well, I care. You are a gentleman.”

“You said I’m a kid.”

“Who is learning to be a gentleman.”

Hudson shuffled away. Adelaide watched him approach Kirby, watched the vacuum-cleaner boy shrug, stand, and then place the cookbook on his chair. They began to walk toward the open dining room doors. Brette dashed away without a word from the lap on which she was leaning to follow them, leaving Marielle’s mother to look thoughtfully after her.

Carson stood to address the thirty or so people who had remained. “Marielle and I just want to thank you all again for coming today. I’m especially glad Marielle’s family could be here from Arizona and New Mexico and that all of you could meet them. It’s been so wonderful to share this day with you all.”

“You deserve to be happy again, Carson,” Maxine interjected.

Adelaide sighed. Leave it to Maxine to painfully state the obvious at the most unnecessary time.

“Yes, well, uh, thanks again, everyone.” Carson reached for Marielle, putting his arm across her shoulders. “It really means a lot to us that you came.”

Chairs made little scraping sounds on the patio stones as people stood and stretched and began short conversations that would inevitably end with a soon-to-be-spoken good-bye. Except for the Blue-Haired Old Ladies. They signaled the waitstaff to bring them more coffee. Marielle’s mother, Ellen, walked over to Adelaide and sat down in the chair Hudson had occupied.

“Thanks so much for having the reception here, Mrs. McClane,” Ellen said. “It was so lovely. You have such a beautiful home.”

“It was my pleasure. Anything worth celebrating has always been celebrated here in the garden. So, where else could we have it but here?”

Ellen nodded. “Well, it was just wonderful. Carson has told me so much about this house.”

“Has he.” Adelaide didn’t frame it like a question. It wasn’t a question.

“Mmm, yes. He said this house has been in your family since before the Civil War. And survived a horrible battle. That’s amazing to me.”

Adelaide swallowed. “Indeed.”

“Marielle tells me you sew uniforms for Civil War reenactments. That’s a very interesting hobby. How long have you been doing that?”

Adelaide repositioned herself in her chair. “It’s actually more than a hobby. Hobbies tend to cost you money. This actually pays for my brandy and cigars.”

Ellen laughed nervously.

“I am kidding, dear,” Adelaide continued, and the woman visibly relaxed. “I prefer port over brandy—and without the cigar. And never while I am sewing.”

“Well. That’s … that’s fascinating.”

“I use the original patterns, you see, and sew everything but the interior seams by hand. I won’t sell an officer’s decorated greatcoat for less than $350—that’s quite a bit more than most of my competitors. But I don’t care. People buy them. I always have a waiting list. And I’ve been doing it since I retired from teaching. Twenty-five years, if you’re into the math.”

“So interesting.” Ellen seemed genuinely intrigued. “And how did you get involved in reenactments, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Adelaide shrugged. “I don’t mind. My great-grandmother and her mother and grandmother sewed uniforms in the same parlor I sew mine
in. But theirs were real, if you know what I mean. Many women were called upon to sew uniforms in their parlors during the War Between the States. I have picked up where they left off, you might say.”

“Wow.” Ellen breathed in deeply, taking in the sweep of the patio, the lawns, and the west end of the garden at their backs. “There’s just so much history here.” Then she pointed toward the back of the yard. “Carson said those two buildings at the edge of the garden there used to be slaves’ quarters.”

Adelaide followed Ellen’s line of vision to the stone buildings festooned with ivy.

“Yes. Those are the last two. Hudson keeps his rabbit in one of them.”

“And the other one?”

Adelaide was about to speak when an oozy realization crept over her. Marielle’s mother surely knew the other one had been Sara’s art studio. Ellen had been at its steps with the children for the better part of the reception. She had no doubt looked in the windows and asked the children about it. She’d surely seen the pitched tabletops where Sara experimented with paint, fabric, clay, and metal. Had seen the remnants of Sara’s unconventional creativity. Artist friends had long ago taken away the usable elements Sara had left behind, like leftover tubes of paint and fabric. What remained was what Sara had barely started, a few haphazard, gestational pieces whose imagined final appearance no one could guess. They still sat in the studio, covered in dust, visible from the windows.

“Sara had a studio in the other.” Adelaide turned to face Ellen.

Marielle’s mother murmured a “hmm” that dissipated into the afternoon air.

“No one is using it at the moment,” Adelaide continued.

“Right.” But Ellen’s eyes were on the studio, as if its door were wide open, declaring its current usefulness. Or perhaps its shrinelike aura. Adelaide recognized the look of a mother whose concern for her child gnawed at her.

“You needn’t worry about the studio, Ellen,” Adelaide said. “Most of Sara’s things have been cleared away. What’s left is rather unremarkable. Things she had barely begun to work on.”

Ellen slowly turned away from the old buildings at the edge of the garden, her face pained. “I’m sorry, Mrs. McClane. I didn’t mean to bring up anything painful. Has … has this been a hard day for you?”

The woman’s question surprised Adelaide a little. Of all the people who might’ve asked how she was feeling about the day, Marielle’s mother was the last person she had expected would ask. She barely knew the woman. Adelaide thought of the moments in the parlor, much earlier that day, before the vacuum boy had intruded on her privacy and the lingering memories of her granddaughter.

“A little,” Adelaide replied. “I raised Sara, you know. She lived here. Her children began their lives here. Yes, today’s been a little difficult.”

“And Carson? Do you think it’s been a hard day for him? Maybe just a little?”

Carson stood several yards away, his hand on the small of Marielle’s back, talking to the man who had twice been his best man. “I don’t know,” Adelaide said. “But I would imagine he would not be the gentle soul that he is if it didn’t still hurt just a little.” She brought her gaze back to the woman who sat next to her.

Ellen smiled, the kind of slow, measured grin that an honest answer evokes. “I suppose you have a point.” She turned her head to look at Marielle and Carson, who were now walking with a few guests to the garden gate. “I worry that they took this all a little too fast,” she continued, almost as if to no one.

“Maybe they did,” Adelaide replied, and Ellen swiveled her head back to look at her.

“You think maybe they should’ve known each other a little longer, don’t you?” Ellen’s quiet voice was laced with subtle urgency and sad camaraderie. She seemed to think she had an ally in Adelaide.

Adelaide patted the woman’s hand and then withdrew her arm. “It doesn’t really matter what you and I think. It’s done. They are married. And if there’s one thing I have learned in almost ninety years on this planet, it’s that you cannot undo the past by wishing it undone.”

late afternoon breeze sent a pair of crumpled mauve napkins dodging about the caterers’ feet as they pushed their black rolling totes across the patio stones. Marielle watched the last evidences of her wedding celebration disappear from the garden—in the form of the waitstaff dressed in bridal white, whose hushed service had sent the guests away content. They closed the gate behind them, waving to her as they left. The guests and string quartet were gone as well, and the garden was noiseless now except for a choir of songbirds in the birches and the sound of a neighbor’s lawn mower.

Marielle’s parents and brother and his family were touring the national cemetery and Marye’s Heights with Carson before the sun went down. She had been to the sites with Brette and Hudson on her first visit to Fredericksburg, and since the children had not wanted to go again, Marielle opted to stay at Holly Oak with them. Adelaide had gone up to her bedroom to rest, and the silence that now enveloped her was welcoming.

She turned away from the gate and the empty patio. Sunlight through the trees freckled the stones with a messy ballet of light, and the leaves responded to the breeze with an obedient rustle; applauding the day, perhaps.

It had been a good day for the most part. Meeting friends and family who had known Sara, loved Sara, hadn’t been as awkward as she had imagined. Everyone seemed to genuinely accept her, some nearly congratulating
her for steering Carson out of his pitiable aloneness. The smiles had been kind and sincere. But there had been scattered sideways glances she was most likely not meant to see, accompanied by a cocked head or pressed lip or crinkled forehead.

Some were wondering.

Marielle could read, even peripherally, their unspoken concern. Was she really content with living in the same house where the first wife had lived? with the first wife’s grandmother? Those few perplexed glances hadn’t truly surprised her. Her parents—and Chad—had practically the same looks on their faces when she told them where she and Carson would be living after they married.

She’d returned from the East Coast with Carson’s engagement ring on her finger, and her parents had hastily arranged a dinner party to celebrate. Chad, a regional sales director, had used some frequent flyer miles and flown in from Santa Fe. When the guests left, and as her parents, Chad, and she finished up the last of the coffee and dessert, her father asked if she and Carson would be moving closer to DC after the wedding.

“That’s quite a commute he’s got,” her father had said.

Marielle had set her coffee cup down carefully and answered no, they would not. They would live at Holly Oak.

No one had to ask what Holly Oak was. She had shown them the pictures of the mansion, both inside and out. Her parents and brother knew it was on the National Register. That it survived the shelling of downtown Fredericksburg during the Civil War. They knew how impressive it was. And who had lived there.

“At Holly Oak,” her father had echoed. And as Marielle looked up from her coffee cup, she saw the surprised look people have when they ask a question they think they already know the answer to. They all wore that look. The three of them had assumed she and Carson would make their home somewhere other than Holly Oak. It wasn’t even Carson’s house, after all. It belonged to his dead first wife’s grandmother. And she still lived in it.

“It’s a beautiful house,” Marielle had said. “A beautiful,
big
house that has everything. You guys can stop worrying. I’m okay with this. I’m not afraid to live there.”

For a long moment no one said anything. Then Chad spoke into the strained seconds of silence. “So what are you going to do with all the toasters and Crock-Pots you’re going to get?”

Gentle laughter filled the room.

“I’m keeping the ones I like best, of course. And using them.”

“But Carson has such a long drive,” her mother said, her brows furrowed with unease that seemed meant for a different concern altogether.

“Everyone who works in DC has a long commute, Mom. It’s not a place to live; it’s a place to work. Everyone in Carson’s department lives outside the Beltway. Most of them live in Virginia, actually.”

“He must be on the road for more than an hour each way,” her father said.

Marielle shrugged. “That’s the East Coast, Dad.”

Again, there was silence.

“It’s a beautiful house,” Marielle said again. “Just wait till you see it.”

“Looking forward to it.” Her father’s tone suggested he knew it was not his place to decide where his married daughter should live. Her mother smiled, stood to clear away the dessert plates, and asked Marielle which department store she’d like to register with …

At her far right, the door to the dining room now swung open and Brette popped her head out.

“Marielle, Hudson won’t let me play the Wii. It’s my turn. And he won’t let me.”

An empty space where the rented tables had been placed stretched between her and Brette. Marielle wasn’t quite ready to go in. She wasn’t ready to step out of her wedding dress or referee her first squabble between her stepchildren.

“I’ll be there in a little bit, Brette.”

The girl frowned.

Marielle turned toward the edge of the garden and the long sloping lawn. “I promise. I won’t be long.”

Brette mumbled, “Okay,” and the french door closed.

Marielle walked to the edge of the patio stones, slipped off her shoes, and set them by steps that led to the garden’s stretch of grass and trees in the ample backyard. The cool flagstones massaged her bare feet as she walked down the steps onto the sloping lawn. The back of her dress trailed on the tops of the blades of grass, and she liked the way it looked and felt. Behind her, Holly Oak was bathed in an amber glow of sunlight as the sun hovered low on the western horizon. Ahead of her were the old slaves’ quarters and Sara’s studio, their entrances shadowed now since the sun had fallen behind them. She stepped to the edge of the quarters and winced as the grass gave way to dirt and little stones. Marielle put out a hand on a stone wall to steady herself and flick a pebble from between her toes when a voice startled her.