The Time Between (8 page)

“What a great spot for watching the stars at night.”

I cupped my hand over my forehead to shade my eyes as I looked up at him. “And at your aunt’s house, too, I would guess.”

He nodded. “I used to have a telescope in my bedroom at their house, but I brought it with me to college. Then things got in the way and I didn’t have time anymore to study the sky. I don’t really remember what happened to it.”

I wanted to be an astronaut.

His words came back to me and I found I couldn’t look at him, afraid that I might see the disappointment in his face, afraid I’d see my own reflection.

A blue heron flew overhead, its wings seeming to mock us humans, with our clumsy feet, who had to rely on planes to make us airborne. I wondered if watching the shorebirds was what had once made a little boy stare up at the sky and dream of reaching the moon.

“Why did you want to come here?” I asked.

His eyes were sharp and clear as he assessed me, and I had the feeling that he’d been waiting for my question. “Aunt Bernadett once brought me here—we snuck out while Aunt Helena was at one of her meetings for the historical preservation society. She brought me here because she wanted me to see the ruins. And because the last time she’d been there, she’d heard something that she’d wanted to share with me.”

He paused. “We were standing right about here when I heard piano music coming from the house that used to stand there.” He indicated the empty space where my family home had been. “It was a cool evening and the windows were open. We stayed here for about an hour, listening to the music and staring up at the sky as the stars appeared one by one. It’s one of the only childhood memories I have where I remember being completely happy.”

My throat felt tight, like I’d swallowed a ball of cotton. “And you wanted to know if it could have been me playing that night.”

His BlackBerry buzzed and he pulled it from his pocket to answer and have a brief conversation before ending the call. Without looking at me, he said, “We’ve got to go. I have an issue at work that can’t wait until Monday.”

He began walking toward the car, his long strides making it hard for me to catch up. “Did you ever come back? Before that time with Harper.”

“A couple of times. It was hard to get away without Aunt Helena noticing. But I never heard the piano again.”

I felt the odd compulsion to apologize to him for not being there to play when he needed to hear me. Instead I reached into my purse and pulled out the car keys. “Would you like to drive?”

He looked almost relieved, and I recalled how his hands had clutched at the armrest on the way over. He took the keys and smiled gratefully. “Thank you.”

He held the passenger door open for me and I slid in. We rode in silence for most of the way home as I tried to remember a night when I’d felt the presence of somebody outside my window, and thought of a little boy staring up at the night sky and dreaming of one day touching the stars.

L
ucy slid her Buick into a spot at the curb on Gibbes Street in front of Finn’s house, then looked at me with raised eyebrows. “You sure you don’t want me to come in with you?”

I rolled my eyes. “Come on, Lucy. Everything about this new position is completely legit—I’ve even met the elderly great-aunt. There’s nothing to worry about.”

She stuck out her chin. “Um-hmm. Well, when he starts asking you to call him by his first name, you just let me know. ’Cause that’s when you
really
need to start worrying.”

I concentrated on gathering my purse from the floor so she couldn’t see my face. “Give me a call if you want me to drive you to work for a change. I’ll have the Volvo for at least the rest of summer—until the nanny gets back.”

Lucy looked with disdain at the white Volvo SUV with the Ashley Hall sticker on the window. She snorted. “I wouldn’t be caught dead in that car. I prefer a vehicle with a lot more personality.”

I leaned into the open door. “It’s got air-conditioning.”

She looked at me without blinking. “I’ll let you know.”

I shut the door and waved as she pulled away. “See you at work tomorrow. If not, you can call the police.”

She was still shaking her head as she drove out of sight, the sound from the broken muffler unfamiliar in this neighborhood.

I stood outside the black painted wrought-iron gate, the scent of something sweet and green heavy in the air. As with most all Charleston homes south of Broad Street, the front and side gardens were filled with flowers, a busy array of colors and scents that always found ways to surprise the senses. They made no sound, yet I’d always thought that if I hadn’t been a musician, I would have been a gardener. But I’d had no desire to be either for a very long time.

I pushed open the gate and stood on the brick-paved walk that led up to the raised house, a split staircase rising to the main entrance on the first floor. I had never been interested in studying or knowing much about architecture, but from staring up at the house from the walk, I could tell it was very big and very old. It faced the street, and although it didn’t have a piazza, there was a small half-circle porch at the front door held up by two columns. The door was painted black, with a leaded glass transom over it, and a brass carriage light hung by a chain from the ceiling.

The house was painted yellow, the inside ceiling of the porch painted haint blue, just like Dah Georgie’s house. But that’s where the resemblance ended. This house was pristine, perfect from the fresh paint to the orderly flowers lined up in the garden like marching soldiers in their bright finery. It was a beautiful house, but it didn’t feel like a home. I couldn’t imagine large numbers of family members gathered for Sunday dinners any more than I could see Finn sitting with his daughter on the empty joggling board set up in the side garden.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I reached up and pushed the doorbell, then waited. And waited. I looked at my watch, making sure I had the right time. Finn had asked me to meet him at his house at five thirty. He would have driven me himself, but he’d been called away from the office. I’d been glad to meet him here, not wanting to have to explain to my coworkers why I was driving home with Mr. Beaufain.

There were no warning footsteps, just the sound of the latch being sprung from the other side of the door, followed by it opening slowly. I looked down and saw a young girl, older than in the photo on Finn’s desk, with white-blond hair cut in a short pixie style and held back with a pale pink fabric headband. Her eyes were large and round and much too big for the tiny face that peered up at me. They were dark gray, like her father’s, and had the same steady intensity as his. But seeing those eyes in a young face was unexpected, like finding a pearl inside an oyster’s shell.

Despite her appearance, I knew Finn’s daughter was about ten, although she could have easily passed for a six-year-old. The skin on her face was so pale it appeared translucent, and her stature small enough that I could probably span her waist with both of my hands. But her smile was broad and welcoming, and the hand she put into mine, though tiny, was warm.

“Eleanor Murray?”

“Yes,” I replied, startled at her firm grasp. She shook my hand, then let it go before pulling the door open farther to allow me inside.

“And you must be Genevieve.” I smiled down at her.

A round-faced woman with bright red hair and freckles came hurrying into the marble-floored foyer, wiping her hands on an apron. “Miss Murray?”

I nodded. “Yes. Mr. Beaufain is expecting me.”

“It’s so good to meet you. I’m Mrs. McKenna, the housekeeper. Mr. Beaufain called to say he’s running a bit late. He said he’d let you go ahead and take the car, but he has the keys in his briefcase. He wanted to know if you could wait.”

I glanced at my watch, realizing I didn’t really have an alternative unless I wanted to call Lucy and make her come back and get me. “Sure, that’s fine. Is there someplace I can wait?”

Before the housekeeper could say anything, Genevieve spoke up. “I can show you my room if you’d like.”

Mrs. McKenna beamed. “That’s an excellent idea. If you don’t mind, Miss Murray?”

Not really knowing what I should say, I shook my head. “Of course not. I’d love to see it.”

Genevieve slid her hand into mine again and tugged me toward the graceful staircase that rose in a spiral to three levels from the foyer. Passing by a large floral centerpiece holding court on a round table in the middle of the marble foyer, I noted the antique furniture and custom draperies as we ascended the stairs, marveling at how perfectly beautiful it all was, how it looked like somebody had re-created it from a painting that showed the way an elegant home should be. But I found myself wanting to push aside the draperies to allow the light to shine into all the corners, to see the father with his collar unbuttoned or the mother reading a magazine in bed. But I neither saw nor felt either one.

When we reached the first-floor landing, Genevieve led me down a long hallway covered with plush carpet toward an open bedroom door, keeping up a constant chatter. “You don’t have to call me Genevieve,” she said solemnly as she faced me on the threshold. “Madame LaFleur—my ballet teacher—calls me Genevieve, but everybody else calls me Gigi. Well, except for Mommy and Daddy.”

“And he calls you Peanut,” I said, smiling at the memory of our conversation in the dark car.

She looked surprised. “He told you? Mommy won’t call me anything but Genevieve because she says nicknames stick to people their whole lives until everybody forgets your real name. I like Gigi better, so it doesn’t matter. But when Mommy’s here, you need to call me Genevieve.”

I nodded. “Of course. And you can call me Eleanor.”

She frowned, her eyes serious. “You don’t look like an Eleanor.”

“And what should an Eleanor look like?”

She shrugged her small shoulders. “I don’t know. Somebody bigger, I think? Maybe with curly hair who knows how to play tennis really well.” She frowned again, thinking. “Somebody who doesn’t dream when they sleep at night.”

Gigi dropped my hand and slid into the room. I wanted to ask her what she’d meant, but I stopped inside the room, my words temporarily deserting me. A large white four-poster canopied bed dominated one corner of the large room. It and the windows and the stuffed armchairs gathered in another cozy reading corner were covered in a whimsical pink lace fabric, yards and yards of it draped over the four posts and over the drapery finials, which were in the shape of ballet slippers. A ceramic chandelier, a replica of a fairy-tale castle, hung suspended by a rope of the same material in the center of the room. A mural covered the wall opposite the bed, what looked like a scene from
The Nutcracker
. On closer inspection, I realized that the little girl at the center of the stage was Gigi.

“I like pink a lot,” she said, not apologetic at all.

I realized that the walls had been painted a soft hue of her favorite color, and even the rug was the palest pink. I turned my back on the little girl, overwhelmed with . . . what? Anger? Jealousy? I couldn’t explain it, other than to admit to myself that this was the room I’d always wanted, the kind of room my own father had promised me I’d one day have once he’d saved enough money to send me to school and had a little extra left over. This was the kind of room a devoted parent created for a beloved daughter. A room that could have been mine if things had been different.

I pretended to stare at the mural, keeping my back to Gigi while I tried to check my emotions, tried not to miss my father so much that being in this room felt like a blade sliding across my skin.

“Do you like it?”

I managed to nod. “Yes. I like pink, too,” I stammered. My gaze drifted to a bulletin board hanging on the wall adjacent to the mural. There were several photos of a tutu-wearing Gigi with her father and a single picture of her with a beautiful slender woman with dark hair who I assumed was her mother. I realized then that this was the first time I’d seen anything personal in the house. From what I could tell from my brief glance from the foyer, the downstairs was immaculate: no discarded shoes or backpacks or books splayed open as if the reader had just left. It was as if the heart of the house had been confined to this one room.

Tacked along the edges of the bulletin board were neatly folded paisley scarves in every color—although there were several in varying shades of pink.

“That’s my collection,” she said at my elbow, startling me. I hadn’t heard her approach. “I don’t wear them anymore, but they’re pretty so I keep them.”

I looked down at her, feeling I was missing something. “They are very pretty. Which is your favorite?”

A small finger with chipped pale pink polish pointed at a fuchsia scarf. “That one,” she said matter-of-factly as she unpinned it from the board and then handed it to me to examine more closely. “Mommy said I should venture out into different colors, but I keep coming back to pink. I do try, though. Last week I wore green tights with a pink leotard. Mommy said that didn’t count because the tights had pink polka dots on them. I think that the way we dress is as much a part of expressing ourselves as when we dance.”

I found myself smiling down at her. There was something eminently likable about her. Although she was a child, she had a depth to her, a gravity to her movements and expressions that made me think she could have been years older.

Facing her, I said, “And did you figure that out all by yourself?”

An impish grin lit her face. “No. Madame LaFleur said it first. But I’m pretty sure I thought it even before she said it out loud.”

Despite myself, I laughed. “I somehow don’t doubt it, Gigi.”

“It’s time for your vitamins, Gigi. Mrs. McKenna’s waiting for you in the kitchen.”

Finn looked like a shadow in his dark suit as he stood still against the doorframe, and I had no idea how long he’d been there.

“Daddy!” Gigi ran to her father with outstretched arms, and he scooped her up. After kissing her on the forehead, he set her down.

“I’m glad to see you two have met. Now, say good-bye to Eleanor and run on downstairs. You’ll see her again on Saturday when we go to Edisto.”

Almost sedately, she walked back toward me and extended her hand. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Miss Eleanor, and I look forward to seeing you on Saturday.”

Her eyes sparkled, belying her formality, as if to tell me she was performing for her father.

I took her proffered hand and smiled back. “It was a pleasure meeting you, too, Genevieve, and I look forward to spending more time with you this weekend.”

She grinned up at me, but instead of turning back to her father, she paused, a questioning look on her face. “Can I call you Ellie? You look much more like an Ellie than an Eleanor, don’t you think, Daddy?”

I wondered if he could hear my quick intake of breath.

“I think you may be right, Peanut.” His eyes, a calm and cool dark gray, stared back at me over his daughter’s head. “But it’s up to Eleanor to decide what she wants you to call her.”

Ellie.
Nobody had called me that since my father had said good-bye to me the morning he disappeared into the sea. And until this moment, I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it.

I smiled. “I like Ellie. If you’d like to call me that, it’s okay with me.”

Her own grin widened. “Great! See you Saturday!” She skipped out of the room and, with a final wave, disappeared down the hallway.

I found myself looking awkwardly down at the fuchsia scarf in my hand, the skin at the base of my skull beginning to prickle. “Why does Gigi have so many scarves?”

“She was diagnosed with leukemia when she was five years old. She’s in remission now—almost four years. We’ve got another year to go before we’ll start breathing again.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know. . . .” I remembered how I’d felt when I first saw her bedroom, my misplaced anger at a little girl.
She had leukemia.

I turned abruptly back toward the bulletin board, blindly looking for the thumbtack that had held the scarf in place, afraid that if he saw my eyes he would know.

“It’s not something I like to talk about. I was gone from work a lot when she was first diagnosed, but that was before you came to work there, so you wouldn’t have known.” He stopped. “Those were very dark days.”

I found the tack and replaced the scarf before facing him again. “I understand. It’s just . . . I’m glad I know now. She’s a great kid.”

He smiled his warm smile, the rare smile that made the sides of his eyes crinkle. “I think so, too.” He tilted his head toward the hallway. “Let’s go downstairs. All this pink makes me a little dizzy.”

I nodded, relieved to leave the little girl’s bedroom behind me. I waited in the foyer while he collected his briefcase and set it on top of the hall table. After pulling out the Volvo’s keys, he handed them to me.

“I had the people at Volvo give it a little tune-up and make sure everything was in working order, so it’s good to go. I’m sorry things took a little longer than I’d anticipated.”