The Book of James (13 page)

reserved, but my stomach was calling me. I ate everything while

Dylan watched and sipped tea.

“I knew Ginny Cooper growing up. Did I tell you that?” he

said.I looked up. “Ginny? What made you think of that?” I asked.

“You said you were in her house this morning. It reminded

me of when I was a kid. Wipe your hair.” He handed me a napkin.

I looked down. A large blob of mustard was stuck in a curl. I

took the napkin and cleaned myself.

“My hair catches everything. Sometimes I use it to dust,” I said.

He laughed. “She was nice. We used to love her on Halloween.

She did her house all up and gave kids those big candy bars.” He

was silent for a second. “We used to dare each other to climb the fence and go to the Monroe Estate.”

“What Monroe Estate?” I was confused.

“The house you’re staying in. That’s what it’s called: the Monroe Estate. It’s marked out front on the fence.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I did see that.”

“When we first moved here, my mother volunteered for the

historical society. I remember seeing pictures of it in their albums THE BOOK
of
JAMES

103

when I was a kid. It’s one of the last mansions that’s still owned by the family that built it.”

“When
did
you move here?” I’d assumed he’d been born and raised in Chestnut Hil .

“I guess I was about seven. We used to live in West Mount

Airy, not too far away. But I was telling you about Halloween. It was always dark and spooky. This one kid, Davey, he was brave

one year and climbed the fence that borders the Cooper property.

He was supposed to run through the woods and circle the house

and then come back.” He stopped. “Are you ready to go?” he asked.

I nodded and stood up. “And what happened?”

“Davey ran into the woods and a little while later he came

out with Miss Cooper. Wel , Miss Cooper came out dragging him

behind her by the seat of his pants. I don’t know how she got over there. She dragged him back to the fence line.” He stopped talking as the waiter approached. He gave him the money for the check. I

reached for my purse, but Dylan waved me off. “I got it.”

“Go on, so what happened?” I asked as we continued out onto

the street.

“She yelled at all of us. Screamed at us, saying, ‘Don’t you ever come on this property again. Do you understand? Do you?’ Every

time she said ‘Do you?’ she shook him a little harder. Davey was

so upset he wet his pants. We made fun of him for years after that.”

We stood at an intersection. Dylan looked at his watch. “I have to go home and change. Do you want me to walk you back?”

I shook my head. “No, thanks. You go ahead. I have some

things I want to do.”

He darted across the intersection and was gone. I spent the

leisurely walk back plotting my next move. The house was the key

to it al .
Go to the house. Stay there.
Nick’s words. If I was going to stay there, I needed to get the lay of the land.

It took several minutes for my eyes to adjust to the dimness. The small pen flashlight I’d purchased at the hardware store in town

gave out a narrow stream of light. Even this pinpoint beam in the tunnels would be enough to draw Cora’s attention. I’d waited until dark, thinking Cora would have retired upstairs, but waiting for

her to leave the house altogether was out of the question. Dylan

said she was a recluse. I saw her more like one of the fat pil ars in the entryway. Solid, unyielding. And always there.

The rough stone wal s of the tunnel rubbed against my arms,

making me curse under my breath. I reached the first-floor land-

ing and waited, listening for the slightest sound. Silence.

Nothing about the house was familiar yet, but I knew I was

looking for a stairway to the second story. The main stairway, in the foyer near the front door, was way too open and conspicuous.

At one time, servants had had living quarters, and it stood to reason that they were near the kitchen. There had to be a second set of stairs somewhere in that vicinity.

I shined my light upward. The ceiling was high and rounded.

Marble cornices braced the wal s every twenty feet or so. Marble.

THE BOOK
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105

Stone. Ornate, heavy wood doors. This wasn’t a house; it was a

castle.

I twisted each doorknob as I went along. All were locked. Cora

lived here alone; bizarre that she chose to keep everything secured.

I was surprised when I felt one knob turn with my hand. I stepped inside a formal dining room. A dark wood table the size of my

bedroom in Portland sat in the middle under an elaborate chan-

delier. French doors ran across one entire wal . They were covered in heavy olive-green drapery. I shoved the thick velvet aside and peered onto a terrace.

In days gone by they must have opened these doors, set the

terrace with tables, and had large outdoor parties. I closed my eyes and was taken back to the nineteenth century. I could see the people milling about, eating, drinking, socializing, spilling over onto the terrace and the yard beyond. The cream of Philadelphia society had visited this room. Now it sat empty. What remained were the

furniture and the musty smell of a time gone by. I switched off my penlight so as not to draw attention to myself, pushed the swinging door at the end of the room, and entered the kitchen.

The room was dark and silent. Stars were visible through the

windows set high in the wal . I stood for a moment, listening to my breath, trying to get my bearings. There were four exits from the kitchen. One was the dining-room door I had just come through;

another was not a door at all but an archway that led out into the hall near the entrance of the house. The third door was directly

across the kitchen. It was opened enough that I could see it was a pantry. The glint of moonlight reflected off a stainless-steel appli-ance. There was only one other exit. A tal , narrow door near the windows. This had to be the servants’ route to the upstairs quarters.

My hand ran across the granite countertop on my way. The

hardness of the counter ended, and my fingers landed in soft ash. I stopped. Where the counter should have continued, a barbecue pit

sat surrounded by brick. I hadn’t noticed it when I was in here the 106

ELLEN J. GREEN

night before. It was a nice feature. It had probably been a fireplace at one time and been used to keep the kitchen warm.

I was about to walk on when I saw something white among

the embers. I picked it up and squinted at it in the gloom. It looked like the corner of a photograph. I switched on my penlight, il uminating all that remained—white edging and a little of the gray

background.
Pictures, pictures everywhere
. . . I stuffed the remnant in my pocket and went to explore the upstairs.

The stairway from the kitchen to the second floor was very

narrow and steep. It had no handrail or banister, no carpeting or runners. A very slippery slope. One misstep could mean a nasty

fall to the bottom. I reached the top by holding on to the wal .

I was in a maids’ suite. Four or five small bedrooms sat off a

main gathering area. My heart was dancing under my ribs, and I

stopped to calm myself.

Cora had to be up here somewhere. I could feel it. Her very

presence sent off vibrations strong enough to chase away small

rodents. I swore under my breath. I could have been at home right at that moment, in Maine, with nothing more to think about than

how to invest fifteen million so I didn’t have to pay taxes on it. I could spend endless hours lounging in my living room, drinking

coffee, perseverating about how I could have been married to this man and not known, not even had an inkling, that he was a fraud.

But how
could
I have known? Yeah, when I thought about the few formal dinners we’d had together, he did seem to know which fork

to use. Was that enough? Should I have stood up and thrown my

napkin in his face and demanded the truth?

I shook myself back to reality. I was standing in this sitting

room with a penlight stuck between my teeth, my heart jumping to

and fro, trying to dodge a mother-in-law who had been so horrible that my husband would rather eat cold beans from a tin can for

three days running than pick up the phone and call her.

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107

I found a door that opened into the main hal way. The wal s

were full of more art; the hardwood floor was covered by a thin

Oriental rug that ran the length of it. I stood and counted the

doorways. There were seven closed doors and an air of silence.

I tested the knobs as I walked along. Some were locked; a few

were open. Most were guest rooms. Well-furnished, overstated

guest rooms. One was an office. A huge desk and a filing cabinet

filled one corner. I made a mental note of the location, should I decide to come back, and moved on to the next set of doors across the hal . I had just cracked one door when I was able to see enough to know I had found what I was looking for.

Nick’s room. My body tingled. It looked as it must have the

day he left this house. It was a large room with a queen-sized four-poster bed. I walked over and shined my light on it. The covers

were scrunched up, as if someone had recently been sleeping in it.

I ran my fingers over the blanket. Dust covered everything.

The wal s were bare. No posters of rock groups, or half-dressed

women, or even sports teams filled any of the pale-blue space. In a house full of art, not even one print, painting, or picture of any kind decorated these wal s. A large mahogany dresser and armoire

were pushed together in the corner. The wood was warped, and

the drawer resisted when I pulled at it. It gave way with a loud

scraping sound. Clothes were folded inside.

I took out a shirt and held it up. A boy’s shirt. In the corner by the dresser lay a pair of gray socks. Clumps of dust clung to them.

I shook them several times and watched the dust float to the floor.

They had been white at one time. The last pair of socks Nick wore before he ran away. A hamper held dirty clothes heaped in the bottom. Untouched for over a decade. The smell was enough to make

me drop the lid.

A wooden rocker sat next to the hamper. I shined my light

on the figures carved into the wood. When I ran my finger over

108

ELLEN J. GREEN

them, it came up clean. This chair was the only item in the room

not covered in dust.

My imagination began to take my mind in all sorts of crazy

directions at once.

I shuddered and backed away, tossing the socks back in the

corner where they’d been. It was then that I noticed a stream of

light visible underneath a door on the far side of the room.

I held my breath, listening for sounds from the other side of

the wal . Nothing. But I knew it was Cora’s room. It made sense. A room next to Nick’s with an adjoining door so she could smother

him with her presence even as he slept.

I tiptoed to the closet and opened the door. Cobwebs brushed

across my face. I kept trying to wipe the threads from my skin, but they clung to me. I could feel them in my mouth, and I wanted to

spit but held it in.

The clothes in the closet hung in a row, nothing out of place.

Several small cardboard boxes were stacked on the floor. I lifted a flap and shined my light inside. They contained various notes and school papers. I tried to sort through them, but with every slight or imagined sound, my heart skipped two beats. This wasn’t going to

work with Cora so close. I heaved one box under my arm and tip-

toed to the hal way. The wooden floors were old and creaked with

each footstep, so I slipped off my shoes and put them in the box, shuffling along the rest of the way the best I could in my stocking feet. I only remembered how steep and slippery those steps from

the maids’ quarters were when I lost my footing and fel .

The air brushed her face as she tromped along the edge of the

woods. Things were getting keyed up inside of her, she could feel it, like she was a windup doll and someone was turning the key. If she listened, she could hear the sounds of the gears turning inside her.

She stopped short. The path to the cemetery was near, and she

didn’t want to see it. She’d made sure to avoid that part of the property since the day they’d carted her father’s rotting carcass through the woods in a pine box.

The morning he’d died had started the same as any other. Nick,

nearly five and about to start school that fal , had bounded down the stairs still in his pajamas. Cora led him to the kitchen to find him breakfast.

“Go see if Grandfather is home. If he wants to eat this morn-

ing.” She hadn’t heard the sounds of his car engine, but it wasn’t unusual for him to head to town on foot. It was clear when she

watched him now that age was taking a tol . He was stiff when he

moved. He hadn’t been eating much lately. Twice she’d caught him

napping in the afternoon—something he never would have done

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ELLEN J. GREEN

in the past. And he’d become a particular kind of nasty he had

never been before. Angry at his own failings.

Nick returned to the kitchen wide eyed. “Grandfather is in the

study. His eyes are open, but he’s not answering me or moving.”

A mix of fear and elation washed over her. She dropped the

dishtowel onto the counter and ran to the study. There he was. In the chair. She saw the side of his face. He looked like he might