The Splendour Falls (10 page)

‘You're such a jerk,' I said, and for the first time, I didn't even half mean it.

‘I won't apologize for finking on you about drinking the night of the wedding. But I am sorry it got you exiled to Alabama. Though who knows, maybe you're meant to be there.'

I sat up, dislodging Gigi, who slid into my lap with a disgruntled sound. ‘What do you mean by that?'

There was a pause long enough for a shrug. ‘I don't know. Sometimes things work out. Maybe looking into your dad's past will help you discover something about yourself. I mean, you can't lie around and sulk about your leg for ever.'

‘Screw you, John.'

‘Sorry, Sylvie. Can't – they frown on that kind of thing between stepsiblings.'

He managed to surprise a laugh out of me. Gigi barked in alarm; she probably didn't even know what that sound was.

There was an echo from the other side of the house. At least, that was what I thought it was at first. An animal sounding off in reply. But then it rose in pitch, like the moaning of the wind. It lasted long enough for me to realize it was coming from the woods, then it faded as quickly as it began.

‘That's weird.'

‘What?' asked John, reasonably curious.

The noise came again, for all the world like someone crying – a mournful warble, too soft and weak to identify more than that.

‘Sylvie?'

‘Nothing.' I lightened my tone, shook off the strangeness. I'd had enough of that today, and here, at least, was something I could reasonably dismiss. ‘An animal in the woods. I'm not kidding when I say it's a freaking wilderness out here.'

Gigi had climbed off my lap and her nose pointed in the direction of the sound, ready for action with her ears pricked, her fluff aquiver. This was why she had to stay leashed until we knew our way around. Long-haired Chihuahuas have no notion they are bitesized.

‘I'd better go, John. Gigi is way too interested in whatever made that noise. And I guess it's possible someone might be missing me.'

‘OK. I'm at the condo for a few more days until I head back to school for the miniterm. Call if you need anything.'

‘Sure thing.' I said it carelessly, signing off, and hoped I sounded convincing.

After hanging up, I sat for a moment longer, listening, mirroring the dog in intensity. I did hear a voice, but it was calling my name in a perfunctory and nonchilling tone.

‘Sylvie!' Paula's yell carried from the house. ‘Sylvie Davis! Do not tell me you went and fell in the river on your very first night here!'

At least my cousin seemed to have a flair for the dramatic, something I could appreciate. I climbed to my feet, slightly better for my stretch but still slow and sore. ‘Coming!'

Dusting off the seat of my jeans, I glanced towards the house, and glimpsed a shadow moving across one of the upstairs windows.

I stilled, waiting for some other sign. The idea that someone had been watching disquieted me more than was quite rational. Would anyone have been able to hear me? And what did it matter, except that it was definitely a private, personal conversation. Was I being paranoid?

Well, at least that would be a new symptom.

It could have been someone walking down a hall, not standing at the window at all. Rhys, maybe. Or his father, whom I had yet to meet. Maybe even Shawn – the TTC seemed to have the run of the place. Weird that my mind only supplied male possibilities. Maybe my subconscious had picked up more than my conscious brain had.

When I didn't see anything else, I figured I'd better heed Paula's summons before she came after me. Instead of returning to the house through the hedged
garden, I looped around the terraced lawn at the back of the house, where Paula had turned on the floodlights. She waited on a set of stone steps that faced the river, leading from the back yard to the lawn I'd just left.

‘Where did you wander off to?' She stood impatiently, fists on her hips. If I were going to portray her onstage, this would be the posture I would use. ‘And what's this about you going off in a huff ?'

‘I needed to walk the dog.' Gigi danced at the end of her leash, trying to charm Paula. But it seemed she'd finally met someone impervious to her fluffy charisma.

‘About the dog,' said Paula, which did not sound promising. ‘There is a spot for her crate on the back porch. She can stay there.'

I narrowed my eyes, not liking where this was headed. ‘You mean when she's not with me, right?'

‘No, I mean overnight.'

‘All night?' My voice rose in incredulous anger. ‘What about coyotes and things?'

I had put up with a lot that day. Sent off in a cab by my mother, hours on a plane, then the soccer mom wagon. My fragile psyche messed up by a strange place and strange people, and finding out about my dad's secret past as a reluctant son of the South. Separating me from my dog was really too much.

‘It's screened in,' said Paula, in an implacable tone. ‘Almost like another room.'

‘But it's not another room. It's a
porch.
And Gigi has never slept outside in her life. She always sleeps with me.'

‘Well, this isn't your New York apartment, and here in the South we treat dogs like dogs, and not like baby dolls.' She dropped her hands, and the discussion, with finality. ‘Come and see the place before you pitch a fit. And then you can have some of Clara's cobbler. That's why I came to get you in the first place. We have got to put some meat on your skinny bones.'

I clenched my teeth and didn't point out that dessert wouldn't put meat on my bones so much as fat on my butt. When she turned towards the house, I scooped Gigi up and sulked after her. Paula hadn't said it aloud, but her implication was that Gigi and I were both spoiled. Which might be true, because I was already planning how to get around her on this.

I needed to pick my battles and stay on her good side, even if that meant setting Gigi's stuff up on the porch and eating Clara's fattening cobbler. Afterwards … Well, I was still planning that.

Because Gigi was
not
sleeping by herself outside. As the conversation with John had brought home, she was the only creature in the world who would really care if something happened to me, even if it was only because I was the bringer of kibble.

Even if I had wanted to sleep without Gigi, I wouldn't have been able to. The night was too quiet. Awfully, horribly silent. No traffic, no horns, no sirens. All I could hear was the creak of the house and the thump of my own heartbeat as I lay in bed and
waited impatiently until I could sneak downstairs and get my dog.

Paula was, no surprise, an early-to-bed, early-torise type. But I wanted to make sure I gave her time to fall into a nice, deep sleep. After I'd settled Gigi in her crate on the porch – which was, as promised, completely screened in, and almost, but not quite, like another room – Paula had given me a rundown of the living arrangements. Her suite – a bedroom and small sitting/office area, converted from the former maids' quarters – was near the kitchen. Clara and her daughter, my nemesis, Addie, lived in an apartment over the garage. According to Paula, one of my great-greats had been very fond of that newfangled invention the automobile, and had the old carriage house rebuilt into a car palace. So ‘garage apartment' was nowhere as shabby as it sounded.

I was upstairs, in a small room in the back corner of the house. It hadn't been refurbished yet, and the wallpaper was a faded yellow with a tiny print of pale pink and green flowers. A woven rug warmed the floor, which was spotlessly clean, but scuffed and in need of a polish.

When I'd come up after settling Gigi, I'd found my suitcase waiting for me. I'd stashed my toiletries and undies in the cabinet that served as a closet, then slid the rest of my stuff, still in the case, under the bed. I guess part of me was prepared if Paula kicked Gigi and me out, or I decided to run away, or I got carted off in a jacket with arms that tied in the back.

The brass bed frame was an antique and the mattress
felt like one. There was a tiny writing desk under the window, and a small upholstered chair and footstool in the corner. As I lay in bed, I caught a faint whiff of lilac, which I assumed came from the soap on the Victorian washstand, which also held a basin and a ewer. Very quaint. And practical, since I could wash my face without going down the hall to the bathroom.

When the alarm on the nightstand said it was midnight in Alabama – one a.m. by my internal clock – I figured I'd given everyone enough time to reach REM sleep. Without turning on the light – I'd been lying in the dark in case Paula poked her nose upstairs to check on me – I rolled out of my Gigi-less bed and headed for the door.

The knob was a brass oval, darkened with age; I grasped it and paused, listening for any sounds outside, my heart beating a fast and guilty tattoo. You would think I was up to something a lot worse than sneaking in my dog. Maybe I was overidentifying with some ancestress who had to creep out from under the strict eye of her nursemaid. I had no trouble casting Paula in
that
role.

I brushed off the thought and turned the knob carefully so it wouldn't squeak. Leaving the door open, I headed to the first-floor landing, where the wood floor gleamed in the light coming through the French doors at the end of the hall.

It had cooled off considerably, and I wished I'd put on my slippers. The chill seemed to travel up through the bones of my feet and ankles and settle in the healed fissures of my leg. By the time I reached the carpet runner covering the stairs, I was shivering in my thin
pajamas.The night air eddied through the open centre of the house, brushing the nape of my neck, where wisps of hair had fallen from my scrunchie-knotted ponytail.

The downstairs foyer wasn't much better. Moonlight spilled through the window over the door, a cold, silver glow. I headed quickly towards the back of the house, to the big kitchen where earlier we'd sat down to Clara's blackberry cobbler.

The air felt warmer here. So did the tile floor, which should have been icy compared with the wood planks elsewhere in the house. Maybe it was because the kitchen was a later addition, something to do with ventilation or more-modern insulation. Back in the day, most of the cooking had been done in an outbuilding, to keep the heat away from the main house. Paula had told me the present kitchen had been expanded early in the last century, so that food prep could be done closer to the family's swank house parties. It all sounded very
Great Gatsby
; apparently Prohibition hadn't been much of an impediment to anyone's partying. Not the Davises', anyway.

The downstairs also featured a formal dining room and a small breakfast nook for future guests of the B&B, but I could tell that the kitchen was the heart of the house, and that was obviously Clara's doing. Earlier that night, when I'd come in from settling Gigi on the porch, she'd pointed me, with a queenly gesture worthy of a despot welcoming me to her domain, towards a big trestle table that occupied the space once used to stage fancy-dress dinners.

‘Have a seat,' she'd said. At least she seemed a
benevolent despot. ‘I know cold pizza is no way to welcome you to Alabama, but I figured you might like to get to know the kids your age.'

Separating me from my dog was no welcome either, but since that wasn't Clara's fault, I didn't unload on her. ‘Where is everyone?' I tried to keep the wari?ness out of my voice, since by ‘everyone' I meant her witch of a daughter. But there was also no trace of Rhys, or Shawn, and I had mixed feelings about that – disappointment, annoyance at myself for being disappointed, relief that I didn't have to deal with the confused dynamic I felt with Mr Enigmatic or the tug of attraction I felt for Sir Teen Town Council.

Clara had her back to me while she fussed at the counter, so if she reacted to anything in my tone, I didn't see it. ‘The gang all had their dessert and went home. You were outside a good while.'

‘My stepbrother called to make sure I'd arrived in one piece.' It made a decent explanation, at least. Changing the subject, I ran a hand over the table, which was dark with age and scarred with use. ‘This would cost a fortune in an antique store.' Amazing how many reruns of
Antiques Roadshow
you could watch when you were stuck in bed for weeks at a time.

‘It's just about the only thing from the original kitchen,' Clara said, setting a china bowl and a spoon in front of me. I'd noticed all the appliances were shiny and new. ‘I told Paula if I was going to take charge of the cooking in this little endeavour, no way was I using a cookstove from my grandmother's day.'

I picked up the spoon. The ice cream on top of the cobbler was already melting into a thick white lake
around the buttery crumble and glistening purple fruit. This was more calories than I normally ate in an entire day.

Across the table, Clara folded her arms, looking dangerous. ‘If you say one word about carbohydrates, Miss Ballerina, I'm going to pinch your head. Now eat.'