Amber House: Neverwas (32 page)

“I woke up someone else,” I said. “I woke up — Deirdre

Foster.”

I understood it now. “Mad” Deirdre Foster had been Thaddeus

Dobson’s daughter. She’d married the sea captain Joseph Foster

and had two children, twins, Sarah-Louise and Matthew.

According to family lore, when her little boy died, she’d slept

and dreamed, semi-comatose for more than a year, first locked

away in the third floor garret, and then, near the end, in that

room adorned only with a painting and a crucifix. Her dreaming

self must have found Maggie and Sam, and believed they were

Sarah-Louise and Matthew, and in the world of dreams, had

been able to convince them to believe it too. Until I woke them

out of the mirror world, and woke Deirdre too, and sent her

back to the land of the living.

To change history.

Deirdre had lived long enough ago to cause all the changes

that I’d seen. Waking Deirdre could have done it. Still . . .

“How could saving one crazy woman have changed
everything
?”

“I don’t know,” Jackson said. “I can’t imagine. But we’re going

to have to figure it out.”

I stood, ready to move on. The attic had returned to silence,

a mere repository of the flotsam of the past, softened, at rest,

beneath its blanket of dust. It had lost that feeling of threat it had always held for me.

I led the way out. Jackson closed the door behind us. At the

bend of the stair, I saw a man descending before me — a black

man in simple cotton clothes. He was carrying Deirdre limp in

his arms.

o201

When I reached the landing, I spotted Captain Foster and

Nanga waiting by the door to Deirdre’s room. He said to Nanga

as Deirdre was carried inside, “She has a fever. Fix it.”

Nanga hurried off, and a very pretty blond girl stepped out of

the doorway to the Captain’s suite.

“Why not let her die, Papa?” she asked. “I don’t know why

you’ve kept her around this long.”

The Captain stood looking in at the woman on the bed. His

jaw was knotted. “She is my son’s mother, Camilla.”

The girl lifted one eyebrow. “Your son is dead. He doesn’t

need her anymore.”

The Captain turned and regarded her. “You look like your

mother, but she never would have made such a suggestion.” The

girl shrugged. “A practical answer, then. If she dies, none of

this” — he gestured generally, to the house — “will come to

me. The house passes, has always passed, to the eldest daughter,

if there is one.”

“To Sarah, then,” the girl said. “As good as to you. She is easily

dispensed with.”

“No,” the Captain said, emphatic. “Understand that if Sarah-

Louise . . . does not
survive
,” he spoke the word delicately, “there is a female second cousin who inherits. I would still not take the

house. And I must keep the house.”

“Sarah!” My mother’s voice. The vision dissolved. Mom had

climbed the stairs to find me. “Why are Maggie and Sam doing

the work I gave to you?” She noticed, then, Jackson still stand-

ing on the steps to the third floor. “And — what is Jackson

doing here?”

I looked at her blankly for a moment. “He came to help move

the boxes Maggie and I filled, Mom. I’m putting the stuff

upstairs.” She did not look appeased. “And Maggie and Sam vol-

unteered to help,” I added, “so I thought it would be okay.”

“I’m sure Rose needs Jackson’s help more than you do,” she

202 O

said. “And next time I check on the work, I want to find you

there. Working.”

“Your mom’s right,” Jackson said, slipping past her down the

stairs. “I really should go check on Gran. See you, Sare.”

I was frantic. I didn’t want him to go. “Um. Thanks for the

help. See you
soon
,” I added, hoping he’d take the hint. But he didn’t look back.

My mother could have that effect on people.

N

I found Maggie and Sammy in front of a tall pewter cupboard —

Maggie busy with actual packing, Sam with finding things he’d

never seen before.

“Look at
this
, Sarah. A mechanical clown who eats pennies!”

“I told your mom to leave you be,” Maggie said, “but she never

did listen to me. Little sister and all.”

“It’s all right. Maybe I needed a break.”

“Find anything?”

“Yes. Someone else was there in the attic with you and

Sammy.”

“Mama,” said Sam, making the clown toss another penny in

its mouth. I realized he’d said that before. It occurred to me I

ought to listen more closely to the things Sam said.

“It was Deirdre Foster. She lives in the seventeen hundreds.” I

noticed after I said it that I used the present tense.

“You saved her too?” Maggie said. “You’re so kind, Sarah.”

I pinked up. “Kind, maybe, but it was a stupid move. I changed

the past
way
back. God only knows how many things that made

different.”

“The house knows too. It will show you. Be patient.”

I smiled at that. “I’m still waiting, Maggie. Still giving it time.”

o203

N

Because I’d made up that story about Jackson helping me take

the boxes to the third floor, I couldn’t ask for more help get-

ting the job done. I ended up having to carry them all up myself.

Five trips.

On the last climb, I stopped on the second landing, to rest the

box on a sideboard and ease my exhausted arms. Space shifted

and I saw the little black-haired girl who had been Deirdre

Dobson standing by the windows that looked toward the river.

A young black woman limped up behind her. Portions of her

face were swollen as if from blows, and she looked like a scare-

crow, loose skin over bones. She was the woman I had seen in a

dream, lying half-dead on a dock in Annapolis. I She’d recovered

enough for me to recognized her — she was Nanga.

“I wish they would not do it,” Deirdre said, looking at some-

thing happening below.

“What do they do?” Nanga said, not yet fluent in English.

“Papa is burying the little house. It makes me sad. The

first grandmother and grandfather built it. It is called Heart

House.”

The vision dissolved in my excitement. I
remembered
. A secret tunnel. A buried house. Maggie was right. One piece at a time,

it was all being shown to me. Everything I needed. I just had to

be patient.

I carried the box as far as the first turn in the upper stairs,

then ran to my room to get my coat. I snuck into the kitchen to

get a screwdriver from a bottom drawer. I needed to make it

outside before my mother could happen upon me and stop me.

Right, skip, right
, I recited, racing through the turns of the maze. Remembering —
remembering
— having done it before.

Done it for this same purpose. To find the secret passage.

204 O

The center of the maze held a little octagonal gazebo shaped

of wrought iron, guarded by ancient wisteria vines that dripped

purple blossoms in the spring. My destination.

I turned the last corner —

Jackson was there, of course. Waiting for me. Because he

could see the future like I could see the past.

CH A P T ER TW E N T Y-TWO

K

He was holding a crowbar, a flashlight, and a broom. I looked at

the puny screwdriver in my hand and laughed at myself. He had

always known what I wanted, what I needed, before I did.

“They’re here, aren’t they?” he said, gesturing to the gazebo.

“The tiles you want to pry up.”

“Yes,” I said. “We have to hunt for some odd-looking grout.”

He spotted the loose tiles quickly and levered up the marble

squares, making sure not to crack or chip them. I watched him

work, noticing his efficiency, the lack of wasted movement, the

care.
How long has he been like that?
I wondered. So long I could not remember him any other way.

With the tiles removed, the trapdoor was revealed. Jackson

looked at me with wonder and excitement in his eyes — unlike

me, he could not remember having found this door once before.

He planted himself firmly, grabbed the ring handle, and

pulled. The last time, in that other time, I remember he had

oiled the hinges. This time he was fighting both rust and ice.

He groaned between clenched teeth with the effort of it. But he

pulled until it gave, until the hinges squealed surrender. The

door creaked open for the first time in a century. Again.

He stabbed a flashlight beam into the darkness. I saw him

twice over — once in the winter afternoon, and once sur-

rounded by autumn night. He descended the stairs, my double

vision continuing. He asked for the broom, again, and kindly

swept the stairs for spiders. When I climbed down after, he said,

206 O

“Just keep an eye on your footing, because the rock’s a little

uneven.”

I smiled, even though it gave me a feeling like pain. “You said

that to me the last time. Word for word.”

“Did I?” he asked, startled.

“It was a ploy. You didn’t want me to look up and see the

crickets.”

He smiled and nodded. “Smart guy.”

The buried house was waiting for us, just as before. The

house, I remembered, that my many-times-great-grandfather

Liam O’Malley had built for his bride, Sorcha: “Everything my

heart has ever wanted,” she had told him. When Jackson found

the oil lantern with his flashlight’s beam, I told him it would

light.

Both Maggie and Nyangu had promised me that Amber House

would show me what I needed to know. “Like calls to like,”

Nanga had said once, in the time before. “Need pulls an answer.”

So why was the house showing me this other Jackson, so like to

mine that his words and thoughts were identical? That other

Sarah . . . She was like me, but not me. Some things about her

were a little bit better — some things, maybe, a little bit worse.

But Jackson was Jackson.

“See anything?” he asked as he set the lit lantern on the table.

“Besides one long ‘Heart House Discovery’ rerun?” I shook

my head. “Not yet.”

The stone cottage, like Jackson, was the same as before: from

Liam’s massive brick fireplace to the rotted rope-strung bed in

the corner, to the built-in cupboards and bricked-in windows.

The cottage’s single adjoining room was also just as I remem-

bered it. A ruined child’s bed, a trunk, a crude rocking horse.

I remembered something else, and stepped to the farther wall. I

found and pushed a lever in the center. A hidden door swung

open, and I felt a coil of darkness unspool from above.

o207

“Shall we go up?” Jackson said, shining a light in at the web-

draped stairs. His voice was eager. “We could use the broom to

clear the webs.”

I shook my head. “It only goes to the kitchen, and it’s probably

blocked.” I rubbed my hand. “Besides, it’s full of spiders.”

We went back to the main room. He dusted a chair with his

coat sleeve and offered it to me. I sat, and sudden sunlight

streamed into Heart House once more.

A girl walked through the door — young Deirdre. “Look

what I found, Nanga. Papa’s purse.” I saw then the black woman

sitting at the same table as I. I thought again how beautiful she

was. Fierce and intelligent, and broken with sorrow. “Look at

what he keeps in it,” Deirdre continued. “His lucky coin.”

She held it up in the sunshine falling through the door. The

two-headed coin gleamed as if it had fire inside it. Something

tight passed over Deirdre’s face. She said, “I want it.”

Like a striking snake, Nyangu’s hand flashed out and slapped the

coin from Deirdre’s grasp. It fell onto the packed-dirt floor,

the aged face of grief looking up. Nyangu bent her head and said

in a low voice, “Miss Dee-da-rah must not touch this thing.”

For a moment, the little girl looked angry enough to strike

her — it was an ugly thing. Then her anger broke, and she

stepped closer. “Why, Nanga? Why mustn’t I touch it?”

“Miss knows things can hold . . .” She stopped, unable to find

the word.

“Memories,” Deirdre said. “Memories of the people who

touched them.”

“Yes. Memories.” Nyangu peered into the little girl’s face.

“Some things . . . this thing. It holds worse.”

A shudder loosened me from the vision. I looked up and saw

Jackson watching me, a question in his eyes. “I saw the Janus

coin,” I said.

He nodded.

208 O

N

We went back out the way we had come. Jackson closed the

trapdoor and set the four harlequin tiles back in place. I was

doubtful anyone would come here in the dead of winter and find

our discovery, but thought perhaps he had a need to seal the past

away again. I understood it. Like closing a coffin.

We ducked back inside the conservatory and found Sammy

waiting for us. “Mommy sent me to find you, Sarah. To tell you

‘time for dinner.’ ”

“Does she know I slipped off?”

He shook his head. “Maggie said you were carrying up more

boxes.”

I knew he was unhappy because of the lie. I lifted his chin.

“She was trying to help, bud. Because what Jackson and I are