Ballet Shoes and Engine Grease (10 page)

His eyes strayed to Bobby.
Stepbrother.
For a moment, the idea of a kid
brother flared like a bright spark against the loneliness of an
only child. Nick hesitated. Then he clung to the anger. Anger of
not being invited to the wedding—although of course, out of loyalty
to his mother, he would never have gone. The anger of being cast
aside.

O
n this day, the most important day of his young racing
career, perhaps the most important day of his life, when he had
taken part in time trials and won a place on a sponsored team, his
father had simply forgotten him.

“
You promised.” His voice had broken early,
three years ago, and it allowed him to speak with a low, masculine
growl. “You said you’d be there.” For a moment, the child in him
rose to the forefront. “I needed you to be there,” he said, his
eyes dangerously moist.

“
I know,” his father replied. “But Bobby
needed me more.”

Bobby needed me
more
. Nick raised his
gaze to the little boy. Behind the toddler, in the distance, a pair
of swans soared up from the narrow lake that bordered the gardens.
Every summer, the swans came to nest on the tiny island. Marilyn
and Elvis, Nick had named them.

He
studied the landscape, took in every tree and flower and
clump of earth. The world that used to be his. A gust of spring
breeze stirred his hair. The black curls, far too long, another
token of his teenage rebellion, tumbled into his eyes, obscuring
his vision. He flicked the strands aside and focused on Bobby
plodding his way up the lawn. The boy stumbled, crashed on his butt
to the ground, let out a frightened squeal.

H
is father hurried off toward the child. “Are you all right,
Bobby?”

It hit him
then. Unreasonable, knifing hurt. Dark and light.
He was all that was ugly in the world, a moody teenager. Bobby was
fair and golden, as angelic in temperament as in looks. He would
never measure up against something so young and sweet and shining.
His father would never love him again, not the way he had loved him
up to now—as the only child, the son and heir.

He’d been replaced.
Cast aside. Already forgotten.

Forgotten
, on this most important day of his
life.

“
I hate you,” he burst out. “I hate
you.”

Without waiting for a reply, Nick
spun around. His heavy boots
crunched on the gravel drive as he set off at a headlong dash
toward the main road. He didn’t try to hitch a ride. He simply
stepped out onto the road and stood in the middle of it, arms
raised high, tears running down his face. The first car to arrive,
a tan and cream station wagon, screeched to a halt with the smell
of burning rubber.

The driver, a
brawny man in his forties, with a crew cut that
hinted at a military background, stuck his head out through the
open window. “What the hell…?”

“
I’m sorry.” Nick fought the pressure of
sobs in his throat. “My parents have just divorced. I need to get
to New York, to my mother. My father has brought his new family
into the house. I can’t stay. I came to visit him, but I can’t
stay. I need to get to Manhattan, but the car that brought me has
already left. Will you take me to the train station?”

The driver
eyed him up and down, concern and suspicion
chasing each other across his blunt features. “I’ll take you,” he
said finally. “On the condition that as soon as you get home,
you’ll call your father and let him know that you’re
safe.”

When Nick nodded, the stranger
jerked his thumb toward the
back seat. Nick got in, making a space for himself next to a
cardboard box full of metal parts that exuded the odor of diesel
oil. Spares for a boat engine, the man told him.

To this day, Nick
remembered his name. Mike Booth. He was
headed out to JFK, where he was picking up his wife who’d been
visiting relatives in Florida. From the airport, Nick took the bus
to Manhattan. Since that day, he’d never been back to Longwood
Hall, had never spoken to his father. He’d telephoned, as he had
promised Mike Booth, but he had left a message with Soames, the
butler.

“
Are you all right?” Crimson asked in the
seat beside him.

“
Huh?” With a start, Nick jerked his
attention back to the present.

“
Watch out!” she cried when he veered
toward the edge of the road.

“
Sorry.” He brought the Panther under
control. “I was miles away.”

“
Are you all right?” she said once more.
“You’ve gone pale.”

“
Must be something I ate,” he replied in a
dry tone that declared the topic out of bounds. In silence, he
parked the car at the bottom of the wide stone steps. Memories.
Memories. They bombarded him as they climbed up to the terrace.
Beside him, Crimson was talking, the words gushing out of her in a
nervous torrent. It occurred to Nick that she was making a
deliberate attempt to use her voice to anchor him to the reality of
the present.

“
We have four staff,” she was saying.
“Soames, the butler, and Hannah, the cook. Two maids, Judy and
Martha. The maids do the cleaning and laundry. When your father
died, we thought Soames might want to retire, but he stayed on. I
never realized how much work there is in taking care of a house
like this. Soames pays the bills and deals with the tradesmen. The
gardening company comes once a week, on Tuesdays...”

Nick listened absently, his mind
fighting
to push the
past back into its place. They entered the vast hall, their
footsteps clattering on the marble floor. On the left, a curving
staircase soared up to the galleried landing. Vanilla air
freshener. The scent had been his father’s favorite.

Nick inhaled, deep and slow.
He’d read somewhere that out of
all senses, smell had the greatest ability to trigger memories.
True or false, images were bombarding him now. A shiver ran over
him. All those years, full of hate and bitterness, and all the time
Longwood Hall had been there, with so little changed.

“
Co-ee
.” He heard the coy sound, looked around for the
source. At the back of the huge reception hall, a sturdy figure in
purple jeans and a fluttering floral top emerged through an open
doorway. Esmeralda Mills. She hurried over and tilted her face in a
way that made him understand she expected him to kiss her cheek.
“Welcome,” she said. “
Mi casa is su casa
. My house is your house. Or is it you who should
be saying that to me?”

Nick touched his lips to her layer of
makeup
and inhaled
enough perfume to wipe out the scent of vanilla. “Where’s my
mother?” he asked as he straightened.

“
Myrtie went back into the
city.”

Myrtie?
His yes bugged. As far as he knew, no one
had ever had the audacity to call his mother with a nickname of any
sort. He couldn’t help feeling that he had entered some kind of a
strange world, a bit like Alice through the looking
glass.

Esmeralda
waved her arms, sending floral silk fluttering.
“Hannah has made
beef burginy
.
Soames says it’s your favorite. The poor man’s been having kittens,
waiting for you to arrive after Crimson rang up to say you’ll be
staying with us so you can help her in the office.”

“
Thanks for taking me in.” Nick said. “Did
Crimson mention that you’re welcome to use my condo any time you
want to spend a few days in New York?”

“
Maybe later.” Esmeralda squirmed,
appearing to almost shrink. “I’m not really all that keen on the
city,” she muttered. “I like things to be…familiar and cozy. But if
Myrtie offers to show me around, I’ll go.” She brightened up. One
floral sleeve rose to point toward the door that led to the
library. “There he is now, Soames, the poor darling.”

Nick turned to see a
shadow separate from the woodwork.
Seventeen years fell away. Soames was small and dapper, like that
English king, Edward something, who abdicated to marry Wallis
Simpson. He had the same sandy coloring, too, and bland, regular
features. Like any skilled butler, Soames had an impeccable sense
of timing. When to fade and when to make himself visible, just as
he was doing now.

“
Master Nicholas,” he said in his crisp
British accent and gave a small bow. “It’s a pleasure to have you
here.” His mouth tightened imperceptibly, in what could have been a
sign of sorrow, or the faintest of smiles. “From now on, I shall
call you Mr. Constantine, now that your father is no longer with
us.”

Nick managed a nod and a rough sound that
caught in his throat. Inexplicably, the thought foremost in his
mind
at this moment was
that he didn’t know Soames’s first name. He doubted if anyone in
the household did.

“
It’s good to see you, Soames,” he
said.

“
I’m very sorry about your father,
Sir.”

Dear Lord
, this was getting crazier and crazier. Nick felt
the urge to collapse on the floor and howl at the moon, although of
course the moon had a few more hours yet to rise. It made no sense.
No sense at all. Soames, who had been a steady fixture in Stephan
Constantine’s life right up until his death, was offering his
condolences to a man who’d last seen the deceased seventeen years
ago.

It got too much. Too much. Too strange.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Nick said to no one in particular. “I’m not
really hungry. Could you just get me settled and send some coffee
and sandwiches up to the room?”

“
Of course.” Soames stepped forward,
unflappable as always. “We’ve put you in the Green Room. Your
mother stayed there during her visit earlier this week. The maids
have aired everything. Later, perhaps, you might like to move into
the main bedroom suite. I’d be glad to help you decide what to do
with your father’s personal belongings.”

Nick shot a quick glance at
Esmeralda
Mills.
“Haven’t you…?”

She shoo
k her head, peroxide curls bouncing. “I’ve touched
nothing,” she informed him with a surprising vehemence. “The lawyer
went through the desk in the study to check for any important
papers. Everything else has been waiting for you.”

As Nick followed Soames up the stairs, he
listened to the heavy
tread of his tired footsteps. They sounded like his
heartbeat, slow and sluggish. A dark, choking wave of emotion
rolled over him. It dawned on him that for years he’d dreamed of
his moment.

D
reamed of returning home, the prodigal son.

We’ve missed you, Master Nicholas.

Everything has been waiting for
you.

His hand
tightened over the balustrade. There was one
difference.

In his dream
s, his father had been alive, welcoming
him.

****

The Green Room was named
after the green and pink floral
curtains and bedspread. Although they looked the same as in his
childhood, Nick knew they must have been replaced at some point
over the years. The walls were neutral, off-white, like in most of
the house. On the floor, a Turkish rug in muted shades of green
broke the expanse of the cream carpet.

As
Nick sat down to work at the small circular table by the
window that overlooked the sloping lawns and the lake, he wondered
if the two swans lazily floating in the water were still Marilyn
and Elvis. Probably not. He had no idea how long swans might
live.

Half an hour la
ter, Soames appeared bearing a silver tray. On it
stood a plate of sandwiches, a brushed steel thermos, an empty
coffee cup, and a balloon glass filled with amber liquid. “I took
the liberty of offering you of cognac,” the butler said as he
expertly lowered his burden on the table, after Nick had first
cleared his laptop out of the way.

“
Thank you.” Nick picked up the crystal
glass and swirled the contents, inhaling the rich aroma of
expensive brandy. “Excellent idea.”

Soames retreated to the door. “Is there
anything else, Sir?”

Nick hesitated.
“My father…did he suffer?”

Silence. Then, in a soft voice,
“The morphine
helped.”

It took
Nick a moment before he could speak. “I
see.”

“
And, if I may say so, Sir, Mrs. Mills was
a great comfort to Mr. Constantine in the last few
months.”

“
Why does she call herself Mrs. Mills?”
Nick asked.

“
Mrs. Mills felt it was better not to
create a third Mrs. Constantine, out of respect for the first Mrs.
Constantine, and the late Mrs. Constantine. In addition, she wished
to keep the same name as her daughter.”

“
I see.” Nick studied the amber liquid,
sloshing it inside the glass. He was starting to suspect that
unexpected sensitivity hid beneath the gaudy clothing and the
coarse manner of his father’s third wife. Curious all of a sudden,
he wanted find out more about her, but he knew that professional
discretion would prevent the butler from revealing further
details.