The House on Honeysuckle Lane (29 page)

C
HAPTER
57

“T
he casserole didn't hold up as well as it might have,” Daniel said with a frown. “Did you remember to heat it at three hundred and fifty for twenty minutes?”

“Yes, Danny,” Emma said. “And I thought it was as delicious tonight as it was the other evening.”

Daniel shrugged. “At least there was enough to go around.”

As it had been at the morning's ceremony, only the Reynolds siblings and Anna Maria were gathered. Bob was spending the evening with his brother while Rumi had taken Sophia and Marco to see one of those lavish animated Christmas movies that popped up every year.

Daniel poured himself another glass of wine and went over to the old VCR. “This is labeled First Day of School,” he said, choosing one of the videotapes onto which his parents had long ago had the old family films transferred. “Let's give it a go.”

After inserting the tape into the machine and pressing the play button on the ancient remote, Daniel took a seat in his father's favorite chair.

“This is original,” Anna Maria noted immediately. “Not an old transferred film. Look! It's Daniel! Oh, you were so cute!”

Daniel felt himself blush. “I was pretty adorable, wasn't I?”

There were about four minutes of Daniel, dressed in shorts with a striped T-shirt neatly tucked into the waistband, standing outside the grammar school, waving to the camera with one hand and clutching a small backpack with the other. The rest of the tape, they discovered, was blank.

Emma laughed. “Well, my first day of school doesn't seem to be here, or Andie's. You always were Mom's favorite, Danny.”

Daniel didn't refute his sister's observation; it was, after all, the truth. Instead, he got up and chose another and then another of the videotapes, and for the next forty minutes the past was once again alive before their eyes. And as he watched the birthday parties and Christmases long gone, as he was presented with the faces of those now dead—not only his parents but their parents as well—Daniel felt the small degree of calm and release he had achieved that morning at the memorial ceremony fade away, and in its place came into his heart a sharp pain of loss. Daniel poured himself another glass of wine and drank it greedily.

“It's like after I turned ten I disappeared,” Andie was saying. “Except for that split second of my high school graduation.”

“I remember someone taking video at your wedding, Andie,” Emma told her. “It must be on one of these tapes somewhere.”

“Caro stopped taking pictures of any kind when Cliff died,” Anna Maria put in, “and I suspect nothing has been organized properly since then. After Andie mentioned Caro's wearing a tiara at a costume party, I went looking for a picture to show Sophia, but I couldn't find anything.”

“Look,” Daniel directed loudly. He drained his glass of what little wine was left and raised the volume. “Here's Anna Maria's and my wedding reception. There's Mom dancing with my best man, Sam. She looked absolutely gorgeous.”

“Not as gorgeous as your bride,” Emma pointed out. “That was such a lovely gown, Anna Maria.”

“I was the third person in my family to wear it! The first was my cousin Lisa, and the second was my sister Gabriella.”

“Your first dance as husband and wife. ‘Sea of Love.' ” Andie shook her head. “You know, sometimes I can't even remember what song Bob and I danced to.”

“Don't let Rumi hear that,” Daniel said shortly.

“No,” Andie said. “I won't.”

“Gabriella made such a funny maid of honor toast.” Emma looked over at Daniel. “Do you remember it, Danny?”

But Daniel ignored his sister's question. The video was now showing Andie talking with one of Anna Maria's aunts. As the cameraperson approached, both women smiled and waved.

“What was that you were wearing, anyway?” Daniel asked his sister. “It looks like a silly costume out of a silent film about some ancient desert sheik!”

“Daniel,” Anna Maria said sharply. “It does not. I thought it was lovely, Andie.”

“Thanks. It was a gift from a fellow student in my meditation class at the time,” Andie explained. “She was also studying dressmaking methods from around the world.”

Daniel laughed. “Well, you certainly stood out. But look,” he said, pointing to the TV screen. “How cute is Rumi, dancing with her father. You were just about to leave Oliver's Well for good, right, Andie? And I don't think you saw any of us again for almost two years.” Daniel raised his wineglass to his mouth before realizing it was empty.
And I doubt,
he thought,
she ever thought much about us, either.

Emma laughed. “Ooops,” she said. “Whoever Mom and Dad hired to put these videos together had a continuity problem. Here's your wedding shower, Anna Maria!”

Daniel frowned. A wedding shower that neither Emma nor Andie bothered to attend. Andie had gone off to take a ten-day course in some arcane and useless topic in the wilds of Pennsylvania. And Emma had cancelled at the last minute, claiming a case of the flu.
More like a case of something more interesting on her social calendar,
Daniel thought.
A party for some visiting corporate bigwig or free tickets to an opening night at the ballet.

“You guys really should have been at the shower,” he said, vaguely aware that he was speaking loudly. “It should have been a priority. I know Mom was embarrassed that neither of her daughters was there.”

“That's all in the past,” Anna Maria said quickly, smiling at Andie and Emma and putting the video on hold. “Though you guys did miss some awesome food. My uncle Dominic is famous in my family for his
cassata
cake. We usually only have it at Easter, but as it's my favorite and it was a special occasion . . .”

“Here,” Daniel said, picking up and passing an open album to his sisters. “Look at these.” The photos pasted to the pages showed Cliff and Caro dressed to the nines, clearly heading out for a formal event. “Doesn't Mom look elegant?”

“Who took these?” Andie asked, looking up at Daniel. “I must have left Oliver's Well by the time these photos were taken.”

“I don't remember ever seeing them,” Emma said. “I must already have been living in Annapolis.”

“Joe Herbert took the pictures,” Daniel told them. “There was a business awards dinner that night, something to do with a society of accountants. Joe had also been invited and he'd offered to drive Mom and Dad. When he got to the house, Dad asked him to take the photos.”

“You know, I've never regretted my decision to leave Oliver's Well all those years ago, but seeing these photos, well . . .” Emma shook her head.

“Well what?” Daniel asked.

Emma shrugged. “I don't know. I guess I would have liked to be with Mom and Dad that night. Maybe if they had told me about the dinner I could have come back for it.”

“Assuming you were able to wrangle an invitation,” Daniel pointed out. “You weren't part of their crowd. There might not have been a place for you at their table.”

Emma frowned. “Thanks for pointing that out, Danny.”

Well,
Daniel thought,
all I said was the truth.
“I'll be right back,” he told the others, heading for the kitchen to retrieve another bottle of wine. It was the third they had opened that evening. Usually he didn't drink much at all, but it had been an emotional day, and tonight, what with the revival of his feelings of loss, he felt the need for something to help him relax and . . . And there was something else he needed help with, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what it was.

“Danny,” Emma said when he returned to the living room. “Look at what I just found sticking out from behind this picture.” Emma held up a piece of slightly yellowed paper.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It's a love note from Dad to Mom. It was written before they were married. Listen.”

“ ‘My beloved Caroline,' ” Emma read. “ ‘I'm counting the days—no, the minutes—until we are joined forever as husband and wife. You've already made me the happiest man alive. I can't imagine what additional happiness there is to come, and yet, I look forward to it with all my heart. Your Cliff.' ”

“That's lovely,” Anna Maria said. “Isn't it, Daniel?”

Daniel didn't respond. He felt . . . Well, he realized, he didn't know exactly how he felt or why. A little bit angry suddenly, but with whom? Sad. Proud. And something else . . . Emma passed the note to Andie, who then passed it to Anna Maria.

“Mom and Dad knew what love and commitment meant,” he said finally, and firmly. “They knew what was important. They knew the meaning of family.”

Anna Maria passed the note back to Andie, who handed it once again to Emma. “We know that, Danny,” Emma said quietly. “You don't need to remind us.”

Daniel put his hand out. “I want to keep that note.” His sister handed the paper to him without a word. “I'll keep it safe.” To himself he added,
I'm the only one who can keep it all safe.

C
HAPTER
58

A
ndie watched her brother carefully fold his father's love note to his bride to be and place it in his wallet. Something was wrong with Daniel this evening. For the first time in her life she felt vaguely frightened of her brother. For one, he was drinking way too much and way too quickly. But she felt helpless to do or to say anything.
I'll only make things worse
, she thought.
Again
.

“What's in here?” Emma said, opening an album with blue leather covers. “Pictures of Rumi,” she said. Andie looked down at the photos on the open pages. “Rumi's ninth birthday party,” Emma read. “That's Mom's writing, isn't it?”

Andie nodded. Slowly Emma turned the pages of the album, and together the sisters watched Rumi's childhood unfold. Rumi in Halloween costumes; Andie recognized her daughter's witch costume but not the big green frog. Rumi in a bathing suit on Virginia Beach. That was the time Bob and his parents had taken her there for vacation, Andie remembered. And then there were the many photos of Rumi with her grandmother. Rumi seated on Caro's lap. Rumi holding Caro's hand. Rumi and Caro with their arms linked.

Of course Rumi is still mourning the loss of her grandmother,
Andie thought.
Of course she doesn't like me very much.

“This is a cute picture,” Emma said, pointing at the left-hand page. Rumi looked to be about ten or eleven; she was sitting cross-legged around a campfire with several other girls. Each of the girls was smiling and holding a stick on which a marshmallow had been speared for toasting. Suddenly, Andie became aware of Daniel looming over her.

“It's really too bad you weren't here that summer she went to Girl Scout day camp,” he said. “She had so much fun learning how to cook over an open fire and how to tie knots. The girls even went canoeing. But you know all that, Andie, don't you?” Daniel laughed. “Then again, maybe you don't.”

Anna Maria cleared her throat. “Daniel. Don't you think—”

But Daniel cut off his wife in midsentence. “I'm sure Bob sent you photos, but there's nothing like being there to watch your child experience the world for the first time. It's all so fleeting. It's a crime to miss it.”

“Yes, Danny,” Emma said, her voice tight. “That's enough of that.”

For a moment no one spoke. Andie stared down at the picture of Rumi seated at the campfire. She thought that now the image would be forever burned on her brain. And suddenly she felt so very tired of feeling guilty and hurt, tired of being battered around by her brother's switching from critical mode to loving sibling and back again. She felt . . . she felt wounded. She felt as if she were bleeding out. If someone asked what her motives were for speaking then, she would honestly have to say sheer exhaustion.

“You're right, Danny,” she said, and she could hear the note of defeat in her voice. “You're right about all of it. And you might as well know it from me, before the news gets around town. I spoke to Mary Bernadette Fitzgibbon the other day and promised her the George Bullock desk for the OWHA.”

Andie braced herself against the storm she knew was about to strike. Her brother stepped back from the couch. Andie looked up at him and saw the look of horror on his face.

“But we'd decided what to do with the desk!” he cried. “We'd decided
not
to sell it and
not
to give it away! How could you have done something so . . . something so stupid!”

“Daniel,” Anna Maria said loudly. “Please.”

“There's an easy solution to this, Danny,” Emma said quickly but calmly. “If Andie didn't sign anything promising the desk to OWHA we can simply not deliver it. We can tell Mary Bernadette that we've changed our minds.”

“I didn't sign anything,” Andie assured her family. “It was a verbal agreement. I know a verbal agreement has value but . . .”

Emma took her hand. “Don't worry, Andie. I'll stop by the Wilson House tomorrow and take care of it.”

Daniel, it seemed, was not to be appeased. “I want to know why you ignored the family's decision,” he demanded, his face growing red. “I want to know what in God's name made you so carelessly give away our mother's most cherished possession!”

Andie said nothing.

“It's all right, Andie,” Anna Maria said. Andie saw with sorrow that her sister-in-law looked as if she had aged ten years in the past few minutes. “No real harm was done. Daniel—”

But once again he cut off whatever it was his wife was about to say. “If anyone has the right to go against Mom's wishes, which all three of us agreed on—how to dispose of the important items—then it's me.” He jabbed his chest with his forefinger. “I'm the one who's been doing all the hard work since Dad died!”

“Oh, Danny, not again,” Andie murmured.

“You're not in the least bit sorry for what you did, are you?” Daniel demanded.

Andie took a deep breath. “I
am
sorry. It was wrong of me. I was upset. I wasn't thinking clearly. That's not an excuse, just the truth.”

Daniel waved his hand in a gesture of disbelief.

Anna Maria got up from her chair and sat on Andie's left. Andie felt grateful for her show of support; still, she felt guilty that she was the one responsible for this terrible scene.

“You've never cared about the family,” Daniel went on, pacing in front of the couch. Behind him on the television screen was the stilled image of Anna Maria and Caro at the wedding shower Andie had not attended.

“That's not true,” Andie answered quietly, trying to ignore the taunting image.

“Yes, it is. At the ceremony this morning you couldn't even find something original to say about our parents. No, you had to quote that stupid dead poet again!”

“I thought the words were lovely,” Emma said firmly, “and entirely appropriate. And my words weren't original, either. Be fair, Danny.”

Daniel shot her a frown and turned back to Andie. “And the way you just gave away Mom's desk—our very
heritage—
as if it means nothing!”

Andie folded her hands tightly in her lap and said as calmly as she could, “You're obsessed with things, Danny. You're held prisoner by the material. The concern you show for the most minute and inconsequential contents of this house, envelopes stuffed with out of date coupons, soup spoons and fish forks, that ridiculous desk. Danny, let it go. It's making you so unhappy.”

“Things have meaning,” Daniel argued. “They hold our memories.”

Andie sighed. “Things are nothing, Danny. The memories are inside you.”

Anna Maria stood abruptly. “This—this conversation,” she said, her voice trembling, “is leading nowhere. I suggest we call it a night and—”

“Mind your own business, Anna Maria,” Emma cut in. “This is between siblings. And Andie is right. Danny's behavior is troubling. I for one am tired of it.”

Andie was shocked. She had never heard her sister use such a tone or such words to their sister-in-law, to anyone. She tried to catch Emma's eye, but Emma wouldn't look up from her lap.

There was a moment of heavy silence. Andie half expected Daniel to defend his wife against Emma's harsh words, but he didn't. Instead, he turned and stalked off toward the kitchen. “I need another drink,” he said, letting the kitchen door slam behind him. And instead of going after her husband, Anna Maria quietly returned to her chair.