We had finished clearing the dishes and the party was starting to break up when the front door opened. Later I would remember that it seemed as though everyone stopped mid-motion, frozen, like in a kid’s game of statue, to stare at the tall, handsome man who walked in. He took off a brightly colored cap with earflaps and two long strings and shook the hat and himself, shedding the snow that had settled on his clothing, seemingly oblivious that a dozen people were watching him. When he finally looked up from under a mop of dark brown hair, his eyes locked on mine and his smile was dazzling.
“Will, you’re here.” Vivienne’s face lit up with such joy and love that I felt a tiny tug of envy. “Come, darling, I want you to meet everyone.”
She ran across the room and grabbed her husband’s hand. He smiled and let her lead him over to our group, looking like an indulgent parent who has come to fetch a child at school.
“This is my husband, Will Baron,” she said with shy pride as she quickly rattled off everyone’s names to him.
Quinn shook Will’s hand and said, “I think I’ve seen you in Middleburg once or twice. Do you work around here?”
“Will’s studying for the bar exam,” Vivienne said before he could answer. “He graduated from UVA law school in December. He’s going to be a brilliant lawyer with heaps of offers once he passes. We moved to Leesburg because of my job at the Tribune.”
Will Baron flashed that heart-stopping smile at us again and said, “My one-woman cheering squad. Vivienne gets a bit carried away sometimes.”
“I do not. Someday you’ll be arguing cases before the Supreme Court. Wait and see.”
He tugged her braid, and Vivienne grinned. “In the meantime,” he said to Quinn, “I’m a lowly delivery guy when I’m not hitting the books. A long way from the Supreme Court. We still have to pay bills.”
“He just got hired at the Goose Creek Inn,” Vivienne said. “He’s not just a lowly delivery guy.”
“Right, I’m a lowly part-time bartender, too.” He smiled at me. “I understand your cousin owns that place?”
“Dominique,” I said. “That’s right.”
“We could always use help around here if you’re interested,” Quinn said. “We’re bottling wine on Thursday. You’d be quite an asset, since there’s heavy lifting involved. We’d feed you and give you a few bottles to take home.”
“I’d like to help with that,” Vivienne said. “What do you think, Will?”
“Unfortunately, I’m not free Thursday, but I’ll send my second,” he said to Quinn, putting an arm around his wife and pulling her close. “If that’s okay.”
Quinn nodded. “Sure, we can use Vivienne, too. She can check labels, make sure the bottles are filled properly, that sort of thing. We start at nine.”
“Can you drive me?” Vivienne asked, looking up at Will. “Thursday’s one of my days off this week. And I almost forgot. Saturday night they’re having a charity fund-raiser here, a dinner dance. I said I’d work then, too. I know it’s Valentine’s Day, but I thought we could do it together. It’s for a good cause, for Veronica House, the homeless shelter in Leesburg.”
Will gave her a look, as though she had broken some private marital rule, and her cheeks turned pink.
“I’ll drop you here Thursday morning,” he said in an even voice. “And maybe we can talk about Saturday night another time, okay, sweetie?” He paused. “It is Valentine’s Day, after all.”
“Sorry. I should have talked to you first,” she said, her face now scarlet with embarrassment. To Frankie and me, she said, “Can I let you know about the party when I see you on Thursday?”
“Of course you can,” I said, and Frankie nodded.
After they were gone, I walked Kit to the front door. “What do you make of Vivienne and Will?” I asked.
“She’s gaga over him, that’s for sure. Who wouldn’t be, a hunk like that?” She shrugged. “He may be gorgeous, but she’s the brainy one. I think it took him an extra semester to finish law school, because he flunked two courses; plus, he’s at least ten years older than she is, probably around our age. I hope, for her sake, he passes the bar.” She gave me a hug. “I’d better get going, or my hunk of a husband will send a patrol car looking for me. I guess we’ll be talking tomorrow.”
I nodded. “Thanks,” I said. “I owe you.”
“Don’t you worry,” she said. “I plan to collect. In full.”
* * *
I WOKE UP, AS I always did, a minute before my alarm went off, shut it off, and lay in bed until the quiet explosion of the heating system kicking on at 6:00 A.M. sounded reassuringly from the basement. My feet touched the icy floor before I found my slippers and pulled on my bathrobe. The weather forecast had called for snow all night. I walked over and pushed open the curtains. Fluffy flour-sifter flakes still fell fast and thick on an already-deep carpet of snow. In the fading starlight, the blue-tinged backyard looked like a lunar landscape, amorphous lumps and shapes that were bushes and flower beds buried in snow, their soft contours silver-edged against the cobalt sky.
I dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans and took the back staircase down to the kitchen, avoiding the creaky treads so I wouldn’t wake Hope or Eli. When I opened the door, the kitchen, which always stayed warmer than the rest of the house, still smelled of Persia’s baking—homemade applesauce bread made with apples we had canned last fall from our orchard. I switched on the radio to the all-news station and made a pot of coffee while a male announcer struggled to keep up with the growing list of schools, businesses, and other places that were announcing cancellations or closures.
“If you can hear my voice,” he finally said, sounding weary, “wherever you were planning to go today, you can take my word for it that it’s closed. Everything’s closed.”
Eli showed up just after seven, his hair caveman wild from sleeping on it, and poured himself a cup of coffee. “I guess I won’t be meeting my client at our job site in an hour.” He cut a hefty slab of applesauce bread. “What time is it supposed to stop snowing?”
“Ten or ten-thirty. Which piece are you eating? The big one or the less big one? You might leave something for your daughter and me, you know?”
“There’s plenty left. You two eat like birds.” He went over to the refrigerator and took out the butter. “Persia is one amazing cook.”
I swiped the plate with the larger piece and poked him in the stomach. “You do appear to be enjoying her cooking.”
He quit spreading butter on his bread and gave me a suspicious look. “Hey, is that a dig?”
He sounded aggrieved, but I noticed one hand moved surreptitiously to shield his protruding belly.
I tugged his belt. “I hear you downstairs at night raiding the refrigerator, even if you think you’re being sneaky.”
“Look, just because you can eat your entire body weight every day and not gain an ounce thanks to your hummingbird metabolism or whatever it is, you don’t need to be snarky,” he said. “This is my winter coat, that’s all. I’ll get rid of it in spring. Plus, work is keeping me so busy, I don’t have time to exercise anymore. I would if I could, you know.”
“Then once it stops snowing, we can shovel out together,” I said, “since you’re not meeting your client.”
He gave me a martyred look. “I thought Quinn and Antonio were coming through with the plows.”
“Eventually. They’ve got all of Sycamore Lane and the villa parking lot to do first. We’ll get out faster if we start shoveling ourselves.” I paused. “If I can shovel, you can shovel.”
Even an oblique reference to my disability makes Eli squirm, since it means we are venturing into land mine territory. To this day, neither of us alludes to the rain-wrecked night a car driven by an ex-boyfriend, who was also Eli’s good friend, plowed into the stone wall at the vineyard entrance because we were arguing over whether the rumors he’d slept with Eli’s ex-wife were true.
My brother’s eyes slid away from mine. “Oh, all right. I’ll call Persia and ask if I can take Hope over to her place until we get a path cleared to the house.”
“Thank you.” I walked over to the pantry and opened the door. “Have you seen the flashlight? The one that’s supposed to be here for when we lose power?”
“It’s in my office,” he said. “I took it when I needed it one night. Sorry. I’ll bring it back. Why do you need a flashlight?”
“I want to get something in the basement for Quinn from his mother’s trunk.”
Eli cut another slice of bread, and I glared at him. “It’s just a little piece. There’s plenty left. What’s in Quinn’s mother’s trunk?”
“An old photo album.”
Quinn had asked me to find out if there was anything in the Trib archives about the Ingrasso family’s having adopted a child at approximately the same time Zara had died, and Gino seemed to think Angelica could have left something having to do either with Zara or her baby in the old trunk. Though Quinn was certain all it contained now were keepsakes belonging to him and his mother—except for Angelica’s photo album, which Gino wanted—I still thought I’d check it out.
Besides, ever since I’d seen that photo of Lucky at Mick’s place yesterday, I’d been thinking about Angelica Tomassi. What kind of woman would burn her husband’s late wife’s possessions and forbid any mention of Zara ever again? She must have been jealous as hell. By my calculations, Angelica’s album, which chronicled the early years of the Tomassi Family Vineyard, dated from the same years as the Studebaker album.
“Before the wine-tasting session last night, Frankie showed me a photo album that Mick Dunne loaned you from Prohibition days, when the Studebakers held some bacchanalian orgies,” Eli said.
A sharp little zing went down my spine, as I thought of Lucky at one of those parties. Orgy conjured up images of debauched revelry and raunchy, voyeuristic drunken acts that no one admitted to later—if they remembered them at all.
“They weren’t orgies,” I said with some heat. “What makes you say that?”
“What makes you say they weren’t?” he said, giving me a surprised look. “I remember Granny Montgomery talking about parties that went on for days, where all the guests got drunk as skunks and had sex in the upstairs bedrooms with everyone except the person they came with. She used to say that Satan himself partied there.”
“Granny Montgomery was a teetotaler,” I said. “She used to go to the picnics on the old temperance grounds with her mother, so she grew up believing that demon alcohol sent you straight down the road to hell.”
“And now her relatives own a vineyard. Go figure.” He licked butter off his thumb. “So what’s in Quinn’s photo album?”
“I have no idea. I just thought I’d get it for him.”
Eli gave me the look. “Man, you never could lie, Luce. You’ve got something up your sleeve.”
* * *
WHEN HAMISH MONTGOMERY BUILT Highland House in 1787, the kitchen had occupied the entire stone- and earth-walled basement, as was the custom in those days. Later, in the mid-1800s, another Montgomery added two symmetrical wings to the boxy Federal-style house: a first-floor kitchen on one end and a light-filled conservatory on the other. We called the conservatory “the sunroom,” and it was where the grand piano now sat.
The original basement kitchen had been left intact except for shoring up the earthen walls with more fieldstone quarried from our land. No twentieth-century conversions to a subterranean kids’ playroom with cast-off furniture, beanbag chairs, and a Ping-Pong table for us. The blackened stone hearth, which still smelled faintly of the greasy smoke of long-ago cooking, took up an entire wall, and the whole place was dark, cobwebby, and as wildly atmospheric as a dungeon. The biggest change had been the addition of built-in shelving and storage for Leland’s now much-depleted wine cellar.
Quinn’s mother’s trunk sat near the bottom of the old wooden staircase, in the spot where the deliverymen had deposited it after I bribed them with an exorbitant tip. Like the attic, the basement was lit by bare bulbs that gave off a watery light, but I had left the door open at the top of the stairs so that a wedge of brighter light illuminated the trunk. Unfortunately, when I knelt in front of it to unlock the padlock, I blocked most of the shaft of light and everything was in shadow again.
It was a grand old steamer trunk, dull black metal with a high dome top and scuffed wooden slats joined together by tarnished brass clasps. All in all, it was in surprisingly good condition except for the leather handles, which had long since become so stiff and brittle, I was afraid they’d break if I tugged on them. I laid my hands on the lid, as though the dust and sunlight and sounds of long-ago rail stations and harbors and grand hotels would seep through my fingers and transport me to a time when the voyage itself had been a sublime luxury and passage on the Queen Mary or the Orient Express had been the dream trip of a lifetime.
The brass key stuck, so I had to fiddle before it would turn in the lock. I lifted the lid and sneezed as dust motes floated in the air. Pasted to the domed lid was a hand-colored lithograph of a ravishing long-necked Gibson girl, her luxurious dark hair piled on her head, her gaze serene and confident as she looked over her shoulder with a teasing air of mystery. The rest of the trunk’s contents were deeply in shadow. If I wanted to see what was inside, I needed either to get the flashlight Eli had pinched or to move the trunk so it would be better situated in light from upstairs. I knelt and gave it a good shove, since I didn’t want to use the fragile handles, and heard a scraping sound, probably one of the brass clasps catching on the uneven floor. Too late I also heard the dry crack of wood snapping. I closed my eyes and heard myself telling Quinn, “I’m so sorry, but honestly, it was an accident,” and imagining the look on his face.
The sound had come from underneath the trunk. I checked the wooden slats for cracks and tipped the trunk on its edge, running my fingers along the bottom, but nothing felt damaged. The noise must have come from inside, though I couldn’t figure out how or what.
Inside the trunk, a shallow tray covered in faded pink-and-white floral paper held a yellowed christening gown and a delicate crocheted baby’s blanket. I lifted out the tray and set it on the floor next to me. What lay underneath had clearly been tossed around during the move from California to Virginia, the jumbled-up memorabilia of Quinn’s life and his mother’s—report cards tied together with twine; Quinn’s high school diploma in a severe black frame; an elaborate hand-embroidered linen tablecloth with matching napkins; a silver-framed photo of Quinn when he graduated from high school, mortarboard askew and looking as uncomfortable as hell; and another photo of a beautiful raven-haired girl holding a chubby-cheeked baby—obviously Quinn and his mother. It was the first time I’d seen a picture of her, and I felt a quick pang of guilt to have stumbled on it this way, rather than having him choose to show it to me.
Angelica’s photo album lay at the bottom. It looked almost exactly like the tooled leather album Mick Dunne had loaned me, except this one was blood-colored, the deep red of a good Chianti, with the gilt initials A and G—the latter for Gianluca, not J for Johnny—intertwined around a regal-looking T.
I put the album with the other items and sat back on my haunches, staring at the bottom of the empty trunk. Nothing appeared damaged there, either. I reached inside and began feeling along the seam between the sides and the bottom. At one of the corners, something gave way under my fingers, as though it were spring-loaded.
Now that I looked closer, the bottom of the trunk—also covered in that busy floral-print paper—was not a seamless piece as I had thought. The section I’d pushed on, roughly nine by nine, had popped up and I could easily slide it to one side. What it revealed was a long, narrow compartment in the false bottom.
I reached in and touched something dry and dusty that felt like a packet of letters that had been tied together. They snagged on something as I started to pull them out at the same moment Hope’s sweet chirpy voice came from upstairs, calling Eli and me.
If I had known the child was awake and had come downstairs from her bedroom, I would never have left the basement door open. Eli and I had put reinforcing the steep, rickety stairs—old wooden boards and a flimsy railing with no balusters, a sheer drop to the floor if you lost your footing—on the list of things around the house that needed fixing, but it hadn’t been an urgent project.
“Hope?” I tried to keep the anxiety from creeping into my voice so I wouldn’t scare her. “Where’s Daddy?”
“Aunt Wucie? Where are you?”
“Hopie, don’t come near the basement door, okay, sweetie? Stay right where you are. I’m coming upstairs, so wait there for me. Promise?”
She appeared in the doorway, backlit by the hall light, sweet as a sugarplum in a fuzzy pink bathrobe, Sleeping Beauty pajamas, and bunny rabbit slippers.
I pushed the letters back into the compartment and slid the lid back into place. It clicked shut as smoothly and seamlessly as a Chinese puzzle box. If you didn’t know it was there, you’d think it was merely a seam in the floral paper.
“Aunt Wuuucie, where are you?” Hope’s high-pitched voice was now a plaintive wail.
I looked upstairs at my niece, who had started to reach for the railing and was swaying slightly. My heart caught in my throat.
“I’m right here, angel. I’m coming. You just stay put, okay? Don’t touch the railing. Do you hear me?” My voice was sharp with fear, and she dropped her hand, stepping back from the edge of the stairs. “That’s better. Stay right there, okay? Did you have breakfast yet?”
“Daddy gave me Pop-Tarts,” she said in a singsong voice.
“Did he really?” Probably because he’d polished off the applesauce bread.
I picked up the photo album and got up. As soon as I took care of Hope, I’d come back and retrieve those letters and anything else that was in that compartment.
“Yup.” Hope nodded her head so hard that her dark curls shook. “Strawberry. With frosting.”
I reached the top of the stairs and knelt down, pulling her close and kissing the top of her head. “Let’s get you dressed, pumpkin.”
She touched the photo album with a plump finger. “What’s that?”
“A picture book,” I said. “I got it for Quinn. We’ll look at it later, okay?”
I set it on the demilune table in the foyer and climbed the sweeping spiral staircase with her to the second floor.
The photo album was Angelica’s. That I knew from Quinn.
And so were the buried secrets in the hidden compartment of her trunk.