The first days of December had brought a fine coating of snow to Asheboro this year, and now, two weeks before Christmas, it had started up again, the wind casting a fleet of big, fluffy flakes all over the silent grounds of the Barton estate. I stood on the back stoop of the mansion and watched, absentmindedly rubbing my chilly hands together. Josh was making his way across the broad lawn as I looked on; he wore a blue down jacket and carried in front of him the last bushel basket of chestnuts gathered from the tree behind the carriage house. We had stored them in a spare room for the past month, away from the prying eyes of squirrels and other visitors, and this was their big day.
It was late afternoon, with the light over the hillside beginning to fade, the hills beyond the house turning a soft and shadowy blue. Inside, Bethany’s teenage niece, Rekia, along with her baby sister, Eve—who had just started walking—sat near the kitchen fire as Morgan stoked it, setting the scene for an epic round of chestnut roasting. Bethany had asked her sister’s permission to bring the kids over to the mansion one day, and they had never wanted to leave. The place must’ve seemed like a castle to them. For the past six weeks, Rekia had joined in with Lisbeth’s son and daughter, a few other local kids, and two grad students in agricultural studies to gather the chestnuts falling from the tree in the autumn months, all of them wearing thick leather gloves to shield their soft fingers from the burs. I’d checked in with Ryan to make sure this didn’t somehow constitute child labor, and he said we were all clear as long as we kept the kids supplied with juice boxes, called it a learning experience, and didn’t sell anything to anyone. It was sort of a practice run for children’s programming at the Barton house; we could think about summer camps and school tours later, but I wanted to get a taste of what it could be like having groups of kids there, showing them around the place, studying the tasks and customs of another time. And it had worked marvelously. All the kids loved being outdoors as the seasons changed, the thick heat in the after-school hours when they visited giving way to soft breezes, and then infusions of colder air. When the day’s gathering was done, they all ran wild circles over the Barton lawns, inventing new games every day.
The grad students had even taught me a few things. They suggested that the relative remoteness of Henry Barton’s lone chestnut, its distance from town and from other stands of trees, might have been what saved it from the fungal blight that had taken out most members of its species in the past century. There were perhaps some benefits, they opined, to being reclusive.
To my left, on another patch of lawn, the hardy members of the Asheboro Gardening Society had set up two folding tables and were putting the finishing touches on a dozen wreaths to decorate the outside of the mansion, swirls of holly animating wire frames that had been bare just hours ago, their red berries standing bright against the backdrop of white lawn.
Josh reached the stoop and gave me a peck on the cheek as he went past, hoisting the heavy basket up against his chest as he passed through the door to the kitchen, to the delighted squeals of the girls inside. Morgan had consulted the town gardeners, the grad students, and even a few food historians to get just the right technique for roasting the chestnuts, which none of us had ever tasted before.
Meanwhile, a small army of decorators was roaming the upper floors of the mansion, steaming any imperfections out of the old fabrics (and a few modern replacements where necessary), then ferociously dehumidifying the rooms to ensure against mold. The place wasn’t quite ready for the public, but it was looking good—good enough, the board had decided, to woo some potential donors, who were expected to arrive within the hour for a wine-and-chestnut reception, a lecture on Henry Barton’s life and work from the eminent industrial historian Joshua Wainwright, and a tour of the rooms that were presentable enough to show them, with commentary from Morgan as the renovation lead. Little sharp pings of pain in my fingertips told me that I’d been standing outside long enough, and I turned and joined the crowd in the kitchen.
As Josh set to scoring the shiny shells of the chestnuts with a small knife, explaining to the girls that these small fruits had once been a staple food to many poor farmers in this part of the country, I locked eyes with Morgan, who rose from his station and followed me down the house’s main hall into the library at the front of the house. We stopped and looked silently out the large windows for any approaching cars; the other board members were on their way, to schmooze with our would-be donors and observe the roasting experiment. So far, no one. The room, in its shell of Victorian lime plaster, held a deep silence. Henry Barton’s books had been replaced where they belonged on the shelf. The furniture, all recently cleaned of its decades of dust, shone as it must have in Henry’s day. Morgan turned to me, and I saw that he had brought along two tiny flutes of sparkling wine from the kitchen. He handed one to me.
“Don’t worry,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “It’s just fizzy apple juice. I didn’t want to break open the real stuff until the crowd got here.”
“How considerate of you, Mr. Wheeler. Although I think the board bought enough champagne to satisfy the whole town if they showed up. I guess it’ll keep for the next event, right?”
“I suppose it will, Miz Kate.” He stopped speaking, the both of us regarding the heavy drapes, their deep red velvet swags absorbing some of the chill seeping through the old warped glass windows. Peals of children’s laughter from the kitchen broke the silence every few seconds. “You know,” Morgan said, after a long contemplation, “I like what you’ve done with the place.” He reached out and clinked my glass with his.
“I rather like what you’ve done with it too, Morgan. I think Henry would be proud of you. And Florence too.”
“Why, thanks.” We stood silently, drinking our bubbly juice as the scent of the first roasting chestnuts drifted toward us down the long hall.