The Book of James (10 page)

said, pointing. She turned and went back into the kitchen.

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77

I remembered this room as the one where she and I had met

the day before. Dylan closed the door behind him.

“I could tell by Cora’s face that she didn’t appreciate your com-

ing here. I’ve only been here a few hours and already there are

strange men coming to the house.” After having said all of that in one breath, I inhaled sharply and sighed.

“I’m not that strange.” He arched one brow. “I got your mes-

sage and I tried to call you back, but it went right to voice mail, and I wanted to make sure you were all right.”

I looked up into his face. “I’m fine.”

“I got some info from my father that might interest you. He

told me this family has never, and I mean never, invited anyone to stay here. Probably not in over a hundred years. Why is she all of a sudden throwing open the doors to you? She has a reason.”

I sat on the hard sofa and began to chew the skin on my thumb.

“Maybe she’s going to put me in a cage and fatten me up for dinner.

Or, I know, maybe she’s going to force me to live in the tower and I’ll have to grow my hair real long. Or . . .”

He half laughed. “Mackenzie, if they cracked the top of your

head open and looked inside, would they find a carnival in there?

Would a Ferris wheel, a couple of clowns come tumbling out?” I

just smiled and shrugged. “I get it. You want me to butt out. Fine. I only live five minutes down the road; you know where to find me.”

He took a card from his wallet and handed it to me. “My office,

home, and cell numbers are on here. Call me if you need me.” Then he reached into his briefcase and pulled out a thick manila envelope. “Estate papers.”

I stood up. “I wil .”

He touched my hand briefly. His skin was warm and slightly

damp from the rain. I wiped the moisture on my pant leg and fol-

lowed him back to the foyer.

When he’d gone, I found Cora at the kitchen sink, her back

to me. “What did that boy want?” Her raspy voice filled the room.

78

ELLEN J. GREEN

She was washing dishes. Steam rose from around her, making

her seem almost ghostlike. An apparition. I swallowed hard. The

water seemed to be boiling in the sink. The table had been com-

pletely cleared. The pot was no longer on the stovetop. The smell of stew came from the garbage can. I’d barely had a bite.

“I didn’t get a chance to finish eating.”

She turned toward me slowly, methodical y. “When you leave

the table, one has to assume you are finished with your meal. Isn’t that the way you were raised? Unless, of course, you excuse yourself properly.”

I backed slowly toward the door. She knew I had hardly eaten,

and yet she’d dumped my dinner in the trash.

“So what did that McBride boy want?” she asked again. She

turned and dropped her hands back into the scalding water.

“He wanted me to know that he had taken care of some busi-

ness for me.”

“Ah, yes. The money.”

“Yes.”

“Not a bad compensation for losing your husband, is it?”

I felt suddenly defensive and a little angry. “Is that what you

think?”

“Do you know why Nick refused that money?” She whirled to

face me, water dripping from her red fingertips onto the tile floor.

I shook my head and shifted my weight to my other leg. My palms

began to sweat. “My son was not a stupid boy. I could have tracked him down if he had taken the money. I could have followed the

paper trail. I would have had something. Electronic transfer of

money. Something.” The words came out sharp and staccato. “I

expected that sooner or later he would tire of living like a pauper and he’d make a move, but he never did.”

This woman was staring at me with tiny, cold eyes, boiling

water dripping from the ends of her red fingertips. I took another step backward.

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“I’m very sorry that he felt he needed to go to those lengths,

Mrs. Whitfield. And the question I keep asking myself is why. Why would he do that?”

She ignored me and spun back to face the sink, dunking her

hands into the water, almost boiling the plates and silver and her hands before placing the dishes in the dishwasher. Her movements

were automatic and precise, and I wasn’t going to interrupt her to ask my question a second time.

“How was it that the door was unlocked? Of all times?” Cora

slammed the pot down on the countertop. “To leave little Miss

Carlisle to wander right in and start poking at the photographs?”

“Calm down, Cora.”

“The last thing I wanted was that girl in my house. But my son

left me no choice. And now this.” The taste of metallic blood ran across her tongue, and she savored it for a moment. She bit the

inside of her cheek again and felt the dark saltiness fill her mouth.

“Virginia. It had to be Virginia.” Harrison was thinking out

loud. “There’s no other explanation. She must have been in the gallery and left the door open.”

Cora sank her hands into the dishwater. The burning dulled all

other sensations, sanded down the thoughts in her head, making

them smoother, less frenzied—and that was a good thing. That was

always a good thing.

“Take care of your sister, do you hear me? Put her in a home or

something if you have to.”

So many times she had found Virginia in one of the rooms or

in the tunnels. She’d be sitting on the sofa in the little living room THE BOOK
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81

or on the guest-room bed, reading. Sometimes babbling about

things that had happened thirty years prior. One day not long ago, they’d found her upstairs in one of the bedrooms. Cora’s mother’s room. Lying on her bed. The bed she’d died in. Ginny’s hair was

longer, then, and frizzled. Cora walked in and thought she was

seeing a ghost. It startled her so much that she almost fell down.

And now Mackenzie had found her way into the gallery

because of Ginny, had seen the pictures. Putting her in the sec-

tion of the house near the tunnels had been a risk. But Cora didn’t think she could bear to have her son’s trollop sleeping in the main house. It was the lesser of evils. And she had assumed the locked door would protect her privacy.

That room was a gallery of her past. It held the laughing eyes of her grandfather, a drunken fool and spendthrift, who had brought

shame down around the Monroe name. The eyes of her father, who

cursed her from those wal s, diminishing her even in his silence.

She wondered if Mackenzie had seen it too. Cora had watched

her careful y, but she couldn’t be sure. She swallowed hard. She

should have gotten rid of those pictures, all of them, burned them when she’d had the chance. So many times she’d wanted to. She’d

reached for them, but the eyes stopped her cold in her tracks. They were telling her to leave the pictures where they were, and she had no choice but to obey. She took a deep breath.

Cora slammed a dish against the sink as hard as she could; it

didn’t break. Hatred welled up into her throat. The kind of hatred she had tried so hard for years to smother deep down inside her.

This girl had married her son, taken his money, come to her house, flaunting information long forgotten—but worst of al , she’d had

the audacity to draw another man here. A double insult. And the

girl had pretended not to know. She’d just stood there blithely,

staring with wide brown eyes, the stupid expression of a cow plastered across her round, freckled face.

82

ELLEN J. GREEN

Cora whirled around to say something to Harrison, but

he wasn’t there. Instead it was Nick who was standing near the

counter, wearing a black suit, white shirt, and red striped tie. The same as he’d worn the last time she’d seen him. Cora blinked and

tried to touch him, knowing he wasn’t real.

“Just let me go, Mother. I want to be alone.” It had been the day of Bradford’s funeral. Nick had been quiet the morning of the service, sitting in the corner of the parlor, head down. He didn’t eat or drink. Cora had watched him, saw his lips moving, as if there were two people inside him having a conversation. Later, when he’d

sneaked into the kitchen, she’d followed, determined to confront

him, make him say something. Now here he was again. Maybe she

could make it right this time.

She took a step toward him. “Nick, please . . . please . . . I . . .”

“I killed him,” he said. The same words he’d said that morning,

standing in this very same spot.

“What?” she whispered back. “Don’t talk . . .”

He walked toward her; his expression was tight and angry. “I

killed Dad. I told him everything. The day he died. And do you

know what he did? Do you know?”

Cora was silent. Watching. She knew every word of this con-

versation. The last one she would ever have with her son.

“He said he loved me and that everything was going to be

okay. He told me he was going to make it okay. But he didn’t get

the chance. He said he had to lie down, that he needed to think,

that he didn’t feel good. And he never got up, Mother. I found him there. His skin was gray. Dead. Because of me.”

“You can’t talk to people. You know that.” Cora had been

angry. How could he have been so stupid? “
No one
is like us. Don’t let anyone tell you that they are, or that you can trust them. No one. Do you hear me?” Lord knows what would have happened if

Bradford hadn’t died. “Tell me that you understand.”

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“He was my father!” Nick jabbed at his chest. Cora had watched

her son turn and look out the window. Just then, William McBride

had passed by with one of Bradford’s cousins. “I have to talk to

him,” Nick said. He started for the door.

“No, no. Nick, please don’t leave me. Don’t leave me. We can

stay right here, in this kitchen, and talk. Please don’t go.” Those years ago she’d grabbed him and pulled him to her, but he’d shaken free. “Get off me, Mother. Just get off.” And he’d looked at her with an expression she’d never forget. Intense love or hate, she couldn’t be sure. There was a connection between them, an indescribable

connection. He was born from her womb but had never left it. “I

have to go.” He leaned forward and kissed her. A quick kiss. Half on her mouth and half on the skin above her lip.

Cora felt that kiss now, like it was happening all over again. No matter how fervently she wanted to grab him and pull him back,

keep him from going, it was too late. He’d left years ago. This was just an imprint of a memory. He’d walked out onto the terrace that day and spoken to William. The two stood together for a long time.

Whatever passed between them was somber and intense. Then

Nick disappeared from view around the side of the house. Forever.

“Cora, are you all right?” Harrison was standing by her side.

“I’ve been talking to you and you’ve just been staring at that sink.”

He slid his hand into the pocket of her dress and slipped some-

thing in there.

“What? What is it?” She was confused, touched her pocket.

“Where did you get—how did you know?”

His voice was soft. “You’re usual y more careful.”

“I know, I know. I’m sorry. I’ll take care of it.” Harry nodded at her but said nothing. “I want my son back here. Dead or alive, he’s mine. I want him back.”

“I have to go. I’ll take care of Virginia,” he said.

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ELLEN J. GREEN

She nodded. Harrison turned and left the kitchen the way he’d

come in. Quietly, almost without a sound.

She went to the old fireplace that had been modified when she

had the renovations done. It had been built up so the opening was waist high and was used only to barbecue or rotisserie a chicken.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d cooked anything like

that. She took the matches from the mantel. Better late than never.

She lit the corner of the photo and watched it crumble to ashes.

I thought the layout of the house was beginning to imprint itself in my mind and that I could predict the twists and turns of the

hal way, but the house was so big it was easy to get disoriented.

When I came to the end of the hal way where I expected the stair-

way up to the guest rooms to sit, I found, instead, a large oak door.

The handle refused to move when I touched it. Confused, I turned

and headed in the opposite direction. So many locked doors only

meant secrets to me.

When I was a child, our house was always open, welcoming.

Except . . . a strange feeling came over me when I remembered how my parents would go up to their room together and lock the door

behind them at the end of every week. My brother and I wanted to

go too, but they always told us we weren’t allowed. I would stare at that big door, feeling left out, abandoned. It was the only time that I felt unloved, and it was perplexing to me. My parents included

me in everything else. I wondered what they could be doing that

was so secretive they couldn’t let me in. It wasn’t until several years later that I ful y understood the implications of their private time together.

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ELLEN J. GREEN

Cora’s reaction upstairs had piqued my curiosity. She was furi-

ous that I had dared to violate the sanctity of her gallery. I hesitated only a moment when I reached the heavy metal door, my hand on

the knob. I glanced behind me, feeling a chill race against my neck.