I’ve been holding the inventorying of the upstairs rooms at arm’s length as long as I can. The late summer and early fall made prolonged periods in a dusty, musty attic seem very unattractive, more the kind of task one would undertake during the worst of the winter. However, the men are going to need to get up there sooner rather than later, so it’s upstairs I go, brand-new tablet in hand. I’ll record the items, snap a picture of each, and save the whole thing on the device to share electronically with the Homestead Trust, aka Meghan and Carol et al., and Tucker. I don’t think anyone believes that the key to buried treasure is up here, but who knows. Gramma Baxter was a pack rat.
Chairs piled on chests. Bedsteads dismantled and leaning up against walls. A layer of gray dust coats everything, and I wonder if I should wear a mask. Carol said that they, the kids, slept in these rooms, and I imagine that in high summer it was an oven up here. There is no ceiling, no insulation, just rafters and roof boards. There’s a tiny bit of light like a star, and I realize that despite the fairly recent roofing job, there are problems. Indeed, beneath that glint is a crumbling cardboard box that has clearly suffered repeated wettings. Another job to add to Dogtown Construction Company’s ever growing list.
I can’t imagine what it was like back in the day. There is no sign of a fireplace in either of the two upstairs rooms. Whichever people lived in this house after Susannah, they must have bundled together like puppies in their rope beds, the only heat up here body heat. Even today, a fairly mild October Thursday, I wear a fleece vest against the chill in these rooms.
Shadow sits outside the bedroom door, which is a good thing, since he can only be in the way as I start to shift things around. I tally the big things: four beds—one iron, one spool, two very much 1950s-style rock maple. Most of the slats for this collection of beds are missing. In this room, no sign of a rope bed, which would have been interesting. I list the beds with their styles and move the headboards to snap photos of them.
Next, I deal with the sheet-covered pier glass—nice, maybe worth something, except that the silver backing is worn and the mirror barely gives back my image, which I count as a blessing. It has been so long since I’ve had a good look at myself, I’ve been able to convince myself that I look just fine, not in desperate need of highlights, a manicure. A fresh look. I’m still pretty much rocking the jeans-and-T-shirt look of prison life.
The chairs I lift and examine one by one, all very ordinary, all very broken. There’s a rolled-up braided rug similar to the modern one I put downstairs, except that this one’s colors are muted into a uniform color of highway slush, and the threads holding it together are frayed. It uncoils as I lay it out for its picture. Still, I think, it could be professionally restored. Maybe salvageable.
So it goes for a couple of hours, and I’m surprised to find that I’ve gotten through room number one so quickly. I was imagining that this would be a weeks-long effort, and then I worry about what I’ll have to keep me occupied, keep me from thinking about the rest of what’s going on in my life. By which I mean this civil suit. Pete has tried to keep me off the ledge emotionally, with assurances that it won’t go anywhere, but I still fear Cecily Foster’s tentacles.
“It was a horrible accident.” I kept saying those words over and over as the too-young cop pulled out his Breathalyzer device.
“Just puff into this.”
Why did I feel like I was doing something obscene?
It had been Charles who had been drunk, not me.
We were in Connecticut, at the extravagantly tasteful wedding of the daughter of one of Charles’s late father’s business partners, who also happened to be Charles’s godfather. Tatiana Bigelow and Charles had been destined for each other since the cradle. Until I came along, of course. So she’d found herself a consolation prize in the son of a well-placed political family. When his name was spoken, it was with the hushed reverence due a rising star, a future senator or even a president. Plus, they were richer than Croesus.
I was not speaking to Charles and had no intention of going to the wedding. How could I bear the long ride to Litchfield side by side with someone who could prove himself so cruel? His abhorrent act should have been enough to send me out the door of his well-appointed luxury apartment, but I couldn’t think of anywhere to go. I had no friends in the city. Charles kept the credit cards, and I didn’t have enough money in my own checking account to get a hotel room or even a train ticket as far as Providence. I told myself that I was biding my time, that as soon as I heard from Paulie or from my mother, I could bolt. I was willing to suffer the “I told you so” that either or both would pummel me with. I was so broken. Even my angry family would have to see that I couldn’t stay with a man so vile and would take me back. I was willing to take my lumps.
“You will go.” That’s what he said. That’s what his mother said. “You will not embarrass me.” That’s what they both said. I guess it was far better for Charles to show up with me on his arm as his certified fiancée than have Tatiana entertain second thoughts even as she glided down the aisle. Her missed opportunity. No one had ever told me why they broke up, but I bet now I could figure it out. Either she had more backbone than I did or she, too, saw the cruel side of Charles Foster.
I sat in the backseat of the car, Charles’s favorite indulgence, his 1968 Chevy Camaro. Cecily was up front with Charles. I said not a word. They chatted about “dear people” they would soon see. It mystified me, how Charles went on as if he hadn’t done the thing he had, as if he had no moral compass. I realized then that he really didn’t have one; that his interaction with my own family proved that he had nothing more than ice water in those patrician veins. All the way to Connecticut my mind replayed what had happened to Tilley.
“Where’s Tilley?” Charles said nothing. A knock on our door. A flicker of reaction from him. Doris from next door: “I’m so sorry; I think that your dog fell from your balcony. You’d better come.” Silence. A knowing silence. The crushed body of my little dog. What did you do?
Charles remained silent, sitting in the damaged club chair, stroking the ruined leather as if it were a living thing. “What did you do?” The answer, a bald-faced lie: “I didn’t touch her. She must have squeezed through the rails.” Except that I had stretched wire cloth across the rails to prevent just such an accident. If he had just pretended to be shocked and sad, I might have bought his innocence.
Ice water might have filled his veins, but molten lava was building in mine.
I sat in my seat at the wedding reception and drank one glass of champagne. Every other glass of wine poured for me over the several courses of dinner I slid over to Charles. I stubbornly refused to dance with him, not caring what the others at our table thought. Cecily happily took my place. She was one of those middle-aged women who keep themselves in such good shape that they don’t look ridiculous on the dance floor, and Cecily had moves like a much younger version of herself. Every now and then she’d throw a glance my way, a self-satisfied look on her face. I think she saw the end of my relationship with Charles, and that suited her just fine.
It was, of course, a perfect midsummer evening, and the wedding reception took place under a grand marquee on the sweeping lawn of the massive faux Newport manse that was the Bigelow family home in Connecticut. By the time the wedding party had performed all the obligatory elements—the toasts, the first dance, yada, yada—I was bored and so weary with the anguish of what had happened, not just Tilley’s brutal end but all of it, my father’s prolonged dying, the alienation from my family, which seemed permanent. I was enveloped in a miasma of grief and with it came this curious inertia. I knew that I had to get out. I just didn’t know how. Somewhere along the line, I’d become emotionally disabled.
I left our table and skirted around the dance floor until I was out on the lawn and heading toward the house. I wanted a private place to make yet another call for help. I had left so many messages on Paulie’s phone, I was pretty sure I’d broken it. And then I had a flash: There were other people besides family I could call. I thumbed my contacts until I found my old friend Brenda Brathwaite. Okay, maybe it had been a year or more since I’d done more than hit “Like” on one of her Facebook posts, but a friend was a friend, right?
When she answered on the first ring, I burst into tears.
“Rosie? What happened? What’s wrong?”
At the sound of her voice, I melted into a warm puddle. I don’t actually recall my words; I only have the impression that I was blathering, incomprehensible, and it took her a few tries before I settled down enough to ask her to come get me.
“Where are you?”
“Litchfield, at a wedding.”
“It’s after nine now. Are you at a hotel?”
The devil is in the details, they say, and the fact was that this wedding would be long over by the time Brenda could drive all the way from Boston, and there was no place I could wait for her. I didn’t imagine that these perfect strangers were going to let me sit on their steps deep into the night. “No. We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
“Okay.” The good news was that Brenda was clearheaded and not suffering the surfeit of emotion that was clouding my brain. “Can you go home with him? Get back to the city? Then get out, go to a hotel?”
“I don’t have any money.” How mortifying it was to say that.
“Go to the train station. I’ll buy you a ticket and you can pick it up.”
“Okay.”
“Be smart, Rosie. Don’t let him know what you’re going to do.” The implication was that my grand boyfriend, for whom I had sacrificed my family, was dangerous.
After calling Brenda, I spent a few minutes in the powder room, freshening up. I had to repair the smudged mascara and hope that the redness of my eyes wouldn’t be obvious in the soft lantern light of the marquee. I ran a brush through my hair. As I walked out of the small room, there was Cecily Foster. It looked a bit like she’d been waiting for me.
“Rose, Charles is looking for you. Where have you been?”
The flip answer would, of course, have been “The bathroom, obviously.” Instead, I kept my mouth shut and waved her toward the open door of the powder room. Instead of going into the little half bath, she grasped my upper arm in a clench. “Charles hasn’t appreciated your behavior today. You would have been wiser to behave like a loving girlfriend instead of a child in a snit. What do you suppose the Bigelows are thinking? What is wrong with you?”
Cecily had imbibed enough that her reserve was slipping; she fairly hissed, and clearly didn’t realize exactly how loud that hiss was. I was embarrassed for her, and furious. “Did Charles happen to mention why I might be angry with him?”
“Something about your dog, your foolish insistence on getting a destructive dog. Those chairs are family heirlooms.”
“Did he tell you that he threw her off the balcony?” I wasn’t even trying to keep my voice down. “That he killed her?”
Cecily blinked. Her mouth went hard. “I doubt that very much.” Ice water in the veins indeed. She looked at me with utter contempt.
At that moment, a cluster of bridesmaids appeared, heading for the powder room. There we stood, Cecily Foster and Charles Foster’s fiancée. I’m sure we looked like we were about to spit in each other’s faces. If there was one thing I’d heard over and over all the way from the city to the Litchfield Hills, it was how wonderful Tatiana Bigelow was, how beautiful, charming, and, oh, gosh, suitable. The gaggle of pink-flounced bridesmaids would surely communicate to the lucky bride that her ex’s fiancée was an out-of-control head case.
My heart was beating so hard, as if I’d been running a marathon. I jerked my arm out of Cecily’s grasp.
I had the last lick. As I passed the cluster of women, I rolled my eyes, suggesting that Mrs. Foster was the one not quite in control.
The reception had wound down to just a few stragglers when Charles came up behind my chair and put his hands on my shoulders. “Time to go. Where’s Mother?”
I shrugged. I wasn’t going to break my silence. I watched as he went off in search of Cecily, and noted that he was swaying, a gentle side-to-side movement that suggested he was pretty drunk. Charles wasn’t a man to overindulge, but this wedding—that of his could-have-been wife—coupled with my sliding my wine to him throughout the evening, had broken through his reserve. I saw him slap an old classmate on the back, and literally guffaw in the man’s face. Oh, yes, Charles was in no condition to drive the two-plus hours home. But I needed to get back to the city. My salvation was waiting at Penn Station in the form of a prepaid ticket.
Charles had his mother by the arm and the two of them were making their way slowly toward the circular driveway of the house. I’d spoken to the valet, and the car was sitting there, idling in neutral. I decided that it would be best if I drove us home. Charles never let me drive if he was in the car, but I was certain that this time he’d see the wisdom of my being the designated driver. I slid into the driver’s seat, began adjusting the rearview mirror, the seat, the seat back. Charles handed his mother into the backseat, an awkward maneuver in the low-slung two-door muscle car. I waited for him to get into the front passenger seat, but instead, Charles’s face appeared at the driver’s window, startling me. He rapped on it. “Get out.”
I rolled down the window.“No. You’ve had too much to drink and I’m the DD.”
“You can’t drive a stick.” He was derisive, but it didn’t deter me.
“I certainly can.” Not entirely true, but not untrue, either. My father had taught me years ago on his old Bronco.
I just needed a minute or two to get used to the car. I knew I’d probably strip the gears and that would set Charles off, but it was better than his driving us off the road. But this was a vintage Camaro with a heavy-duty clutch and a hair-trigger transmission. Not my father’s Bronco.
Charles leaned his hands on the roof of the low car and leaned closer to me. I could smell the whiskey he’d had as a nightcap with that fraternity brother. He swayed a little.
The valet came over. “Sir, let her drive. You don’t want to wreck this car.”
Charles shot him a look. “Fine.”
The valets were lining up cars in that circular drive and there was now an Escalade ahead of me. It was clear that the driver wanted to get going, and I needed to back up to let him out. I put the clutch in, feeling that tension of the heavy-duty mechanism fight against my left foot in its five-inch heel. I ground the stick shift into reverse. I knew that I would stall if I didn’t get the gas-to-clutch ratio right, so I hit the gas at the same time I let go of the clutch and the car flew backward. I heard the thud, felt the Camaro roll over something. Then my world closed down around me.
It was a terrible accident. But Cecily Foster had powerful friends. And she believed that I had motive to want to kill her beloved son.
For some reason, I am sitting on the floor of the landing between the two upstairs rooms in the Homestead with a large gray dog on my lap. Shadow literally holds me between his paws and rests his big head on my shoulder as I am overwhelmed by memories. I served my time for a sin I didn’t mean to commit, and now Cecily Foster is going to rake me over the coals again, punish me further. What will become of Shadow if I get carted off to prison again?