Oh, Jane, don’t be silly,” I said to her as I pushed my chair away from the table. “You know as well as I do …” I turned and my gaze fell upon the brick façade of the house.
I was going to say that there was no “Alban curse” despite legends to the contrary that had circulated around my family for generations. But as I looked at the house, the words caught in my throat and hung there.
Finally, I said: “Let’s not dwell on those old legends. They’ll only scare Amity.”
She nodded her head and stood up. “Whatever you say, miss.”
I crossed the patio to the front door and pulled it open, peering into the foyer, seeing the grand staircase, the deep Oriental rugs, the sitting room beyond. It seemed to be a snapshot from my childhood, the same as it always was, as though time had never passed. But when I opened the door farther and walked hesitantly through it, I found that everything wasn’t the same, not really. The familiar rugs were a little more worn in spots, the patterns on the window seat’s pillows badly faded by two decades of sunshine. The cherry-wood paneling on the walls looked dull, like it could use a good polishing, and the curtains in the sitting room hung wearily, as though they had had enough already.
Age had taken root and was weaving its wickedness through the very foundation here, making the house that had once been so solid, so formidable, so much a fortress, seem vulnerable and even a little bit fragile. I shook that thought out of my head and walked farther into my home, dragging my suitcase behind me.
A small wooden desk stood in the corner of the foyer—this was new. I ran my hand along its surface and picked up one of the flyers stacked neatly in the center.
Alban House, built in 1898, is one of this country’s finest examples of turn-of-the-century technology, crafts-manship, and architecture. Built by shipping, mining, and railway magnate John James Alban …
A handout from the university’s tours. I stuffed one into my pocket for Amity. She seemed uninterested in family history now, but she really ought to have known more about where she came from, who her ancestors were and what they did.
Jane followed behind me. “Let Mr. Jameson take your bag up to your room, child,” she said to me, fussing with her apron. “I’ll just call him.”
“No need.” I smiled quickly at her. “I can manage it.” I peered up the steps, wondering whether to make my way through the kitchen to the elevator in the butler’s pantry or just lug the huge bag up the stairs. “I’m going to get settled and then I suppose—I don’t know, Jane. Should I start thinking about the arrangements for the funeral?”
Jane shook her head. “You needn’t worry about forging ahead with any planning right now,” she said, laying a hand on my shoulder. “Your mother wrote up her wishes years ago, even paid for the arrangements in advance, so you wouldn’t have to wonder and fuss when this time came. I’m sure you’ll find it all in her desk.”
I exhaled, relieved, at least, not to be starting at square one. I wouldn’t have known how to begin or whom to call—the minister, the coroner? Funeral director? It seemed inconceivable to me that I was the one who was supposed to handle all these things. When I had left Alban House twenty years earlier, I was only a few years older than my daughter was now. And suddenly I was the head of the family? The one who had to decide on, well, everything? It seemed wrong, somehow. I sighed, not quite sure of what I was supposed to do next.
As if Jane could hear my thoughts, she said: “You go upstairs and unpack. Your room is all made up with fresh linens. I’ll have supper ready at six o’clock.”
“Unpacking and dinner.” I smiled at her. “Sounds like a plan.”
I dragged my suitcase up the stairs to the second floor and set off down the long hallway toward my room. The family’s bedrooms were clustered in the second floor’s east wing in an effort by my parents to make the enormous house seem smaller and more intimate. In generations past, children always slept on the third floor. But when my mother married my father and they moved into Alban House with his aging parents, she made it clear she didn’t like that arrangement. She wanted her family all around her, close. No nannies required.
As I walked down the hallway, I was remembering winter days when the boys and I would run down its length. The image of Jimmy, wearing those ratty old blue sneakers he loved so much, whooshed through me and down the hall, where, at the end of the west wing, we had set up a chalkboard to tally how many times we had made it back and forth. The sensation was so real—I could feel the breeze as he ran past me—that I turned to look down the hallway to see if the chalkboard was there, too, jagged tally marks in white and all. But the image faded as quickly as it came, and I was alone again in the hall.
I poked my head into the boys’ old room, now used by Amity when she visited, and found my daughter flopped onto her stomach on one of the beds, her iPod so loud that I could hear its tinny music from where I stood at the door. A phone was in her hand and she was texting at rapid speed. I walked over and tapped her foot. She snapped her head around, her eyes wide.
“Don’t sneak up on me like that,” she said, furrowing her eyebrows at me and pulling the earbuds out of her ears. “I didn’t know you were there.”
“You need to turn the music down, honey,” I told her. “Then you’ll hear people. Besides, that’s ruining your ears.”
She shot me a look and went back to her texting. Why did I always do that? I knew better than to think that kind of motherly badgering did any good with my headstrong daughter.
Trying again, I sat down on the bed next to her. “Jane said dinner is at six,” I said, rubbing her back. “Tomorrow’s going to be busy, but we could take a walk along the lakeshore tonight. Or we could go to the malt shop. Or shopping …?”
“Nah,” she said, sitting up and shrugging off my touch.
Defeated, I stood up and began to walk out of the room. “Maybe we’ll watch a movie later?”
“Yeah, maybe,” she said, dissolving back into her texting.
I closed the door behind me. Where was the cheerful little girl who had hung on my every word not so long ago? Who was this sullen, moody changeling?
I shook my head as I made my way down the hall to my old room. Opening the door, I saw that the same white linens were on the bed, the same sheer white curtains framed the windows. The room was largely unchanged from the day I left it.
But a certain strangeness hung in the air here, too, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. And then it hit me. Emptiness. When my mother was here, even after what happened with the boys and my dad, every room in this house felt alive, warm, and loving. Now it was as cold as a tomb.
I unpacked my clothes and stuffed my empty suitcase into the back of the closet, then slid my feet into the decades-old slippers that had stood sentinel, waiting for me all this time.
“Here I am again,” I whispered into the air. The walls seemed to sigh a tired welcome in response.
Back out in the hallway, I padded down to the master suite and stood outside the door. I knew I’d have to go inside—my mother kept all of her important papers in the study just off her bedroom, and I needed to find the instructions for her funeral, at the very least. But I was having trouble summoning up the courage to face the memories I knew were waiting for me there.
As I stood there leaning against the door, I felt a surge of warmth swirling around me, a soft tickling on my skin. A scent wafted through the air—lake water mixed with morning rain and the minty aroma of the type of bath soap we used as kids.
“Jake? Jimmy?” I said aloud, turning around in a circle, almost expecting to see them standing behind me, their quirky, impish grins firmly plastered on their freckled faces. “Are you here?”
I felt it then: Water. Icy cold. As though it was rising, first around my feet, then calves, then thighs—
“Who are you talking to?” Amity’s voice startled me out of whatever was happening.
“Oh, honey.” I scrambled, holding her wide-eyed gaze and trying to think of something plausible to say as she made her way down the hall toward me.
In the end, I admitted: “I guess I was talking to my brothers. I know it’s silly, but being back here, in the house where we all grew up, and now having to go into Grandma’s room …” My eyes began stinging with tears. I tried to brush them away, but Amity grabbed my hand and squeezed it.
“It’s okay, Mom,” she said to me, taking my hand, her face radiating the maturity and serenity of an old soul. “I get that this is really hard for you.”
Teenagers, I thought. Hellions one minute, angels the next.
I wrapped her in my arms and held her tight. “Oh, Amity,” I said into her hair. “I’m the one who should be comforting you. I’m the grown-up here, and you’re grieving for Grandma, too.”
“Nonsense. It couldn’t matter less who comforts whom. What’s important is that we’re standing together as family,” she said in a voice not quite her own … or maybe I thought she said it? Nonsense? Whom? Amity’s teenage vernacular didn’t typically include those words. As I stood there holding my daughter, a chill shot through me. Was it my mother speaking?
I broke our hug and looked her in the face. She smiled, back to the teenage girl that she had been moments before. “I used to like sitting with Grandma in her study,” she said to me, putting her hand on the knob. “There’s nothing so scary in there.”
With that, she pushed open the door.