After Reverend Parker had gone home, I sat in the parlor until the fire settled into embers and then I retreated to the master suite, where I found Amity already asleep on the daybed in my mother’s study. I locked the door behind me and stole over to her bed, tucking the covers up around her neck and giving her a soft kiss on the cheek. She’d be perfectly safe here with me, intruder in the house or not.
I felt my way behind the tapestry and checked the hidden door—locked tight. A quick look in the closets turned up nobody lurking. I peered out the window and saw two uniformed officers sitting on folding chairs near the side door, a small flame burning in a fire ring between them. I hoped they weren’t too terribly cold out there as I slipped into my mother’s bed and pulled the quilts around me.
Jane had lit a fire in the fireplace and, as I burrowed under the covers, I watched it burn in the darkness, its flames casting wild shadows that looked like trees with gnarled and leafless limbs, witches reaching out from behind them toward me. That image sounds rather macabre but it felt just the opposite—I was content and comforted there among my mother’s mountain of pillows and down quilts, listening to the crackling fire and watching the shadow play on the walls.
Several days passed with the police turning up nothing in the way of an intruder—perhaps Jane was right and it was my imagination working overtime—and finally Friday arrived. I awoke to rain on the day of my mother’s funeral. Not a delicate, whisper of a rain like I had been used to in Washington but a good, old-fashioned Minnesota downpour with electricity crackling through the sky. As Amity and I walked hand in hand down the main staircase, a booming clap of thunder shook the house so hard that the stained-glass window quaked and rattled its displeasure.
I had been moving through a dense fog for most of the morning, relying on my familiar routine—showering, drying my hair, applying makeup, pulling my dress over my head—to guide me. I smiled at Amity, who was looking so grown-up in her black skirt and blouse. I squeezed her hand, trying to put on a strong façade for her. But the truth was, I was splintering inside.
My mind drifted back to the day of my brothers’ funeral, when my mom and I walked down these stairs hand in hand, just as I was now doing with my own daughter. Mom had turned to me as we stood on the second-floor landing, her face a mask of grief and pain, and managed a smile. “We’ll get through this together,” she said, her voice wavering. She was always a tower of strength, even on what was undoubtedly one of the worst days of her life. I hoped I could be half as strong for Amity.
Jane stood at the front door, her mouth in a tight line, her eyes reddened. I could feel the tension radiating from her. I wanted to run to her and throw my arms around her, tell her how much she had meant to my mother over the years, how completely my family had relied on her, and how grateful my mother had been for her steadfast presence in this house. But I knew that if I said anything of the kind, her false display of strength would crumble to the ground right along with mine.
So instead, I was all business: “You’ll be one of the first ones out after the service, and you’ll be back here before anyone else to supervise the catering, right?”
“That’s right, miss.” She nodded tightly, her gaze fixed on the wall behind me. “Mr. Jameson and I will sit in the back and slip out during the last hymn. The car’s waiting for you now.”
“Okay, then,” I said, putting my arm around Amity’s shoulders and trying to smile at her. “It’s time to go.”
Jane had arranged for Carter to bring the car around to the front of the house to take Amity and me to the funeral—she wouldn’t hear of riding with us herself, stickler for protocol that she was—and although the church wasn’t more than a mile away, my stomach tightened as I saw the thundering downpour outside. I wondered if old Carter could keep the car on the road.
Jane opened the door onto the patio, where Mr. Jameson stood in the deluge holding an enormous black umbrella. He ushered Amity and me down to the waiting silver-and-black Bentley, the same car, I thought with a pang in the pit of my stomach, that had brought David Coleville to this house all those years ago. He opened the back door for us and we slid in.
“Miss Grace.” Carter smiled at me from the driver’s seat, the years evident on his impossibly kind face. He looked the picture of a driver—black suit, white shirt, black tie and hat. I had never seen him wear anything else. “So good to have you back at Alban House.”
I smiled back at him and nodded, holding his gaze for a moment before my eyes began stinging. Amity handed me a tissue and I held it to my face, trying to hold back the flood of grief.
He cleared his throat and pulled away, and I watched as the rain distorted Jane, her husband, and the house behind them into an Impressionist painting.
Just a turn here and a turn there down the road and we would soon arrive. But we were crawling at a snail’s pace as the rain beat down onto the windshield and the wipers flew back and forth in a frantic attempt to clear the way.
As we inched along, I thought about how I’d always loved this tree-lined street. Maples and elms arched over the roadway on either side as though they were trying to grasp one another’s hands. It made for a beautiful scene in the fall when their leaves were ablaze, but on this day, with their branches shaking violently in the wind and lightning crackling through the dark sky, it seemed sinister and foreboding, as though we were creeping through a haunted wood.
We were nearly at the church. I turned to smooth a stray curl off Amity’s forehead when I felt the car jerk to a stop, my head hitting the back of my seat with a thud. Carter gasped aloud and I looked out the front window to see a woman standing in the roadway. She was wearing a long black dress and a black hat with an extremely wide brim, and was holding a large black umbrella. Obviously, she was there to attend the funeral. She had been looking down at the car, but then she raised her head and stared right in at us, and a slow smile crept across her face.
“Oh my God,” Amity gasped, her mouth in a grimace. This woman was made up like something out of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Heavy black eyeliner and mascara, bright red lips with the lipstick applied rather … haphazardly. A wrinkled, ghostly white face with violent streaks of blush on her cheeks. She was elderly, but I couldn’t quite tell whether she was my mother’s age or much older.
I was about to ask Carter to offer her a ride to the door—peculiar though she was, it was raining heavily—but before I could get the words out he veered around her and sped the rest of the way so aggressively that I thought he might hit the building’s stone foundation. He jerked to a stop and hurried out of the car, unfurling an umbrella as he did so.
Opening the back door, he leaned in to us and said: “Ladies?” He was smiling but his eyes had a hint of fear behind them, and I noticed beads of perspiration on his brow.
I looked out the rear window at the woman, who had been joined under her umbrella by a young man, who was leading her away. I turned back to Carter. “Is everything okay?”
“Fine, miss. Fine.”
Reverend Parker stood to welcome us at the church door. In the midst of that storm, he seemed to me to be an oasis of serenity, smiling that warm smile, his blue eyes shining. Upon seeing him, all the tension I had felt during the morning pooled onto the ground in front of me and I stepped over it, just like one of so many puddles.
He held out his hands and I slid mine into his.
“I’m going to get you through this day, Grace,” he said. “I’ll be right here, next to you, with the widest shoulder you’ve ever seen. You are not doing this alone. I’m asking you to do me the favor of leaning on me.”
I managed a smile.
We had timed our arrival so that most of the people coming to the funeral would have been seated before us. Avoiding the throng, that was the goal. I saw that the parking lot was full and cars were snaking out onto the side streets. Fleets of official-looking limos lined one side of the lot—the vehicles of the governor, senators, and various congressmen. Satellite-laden vans from the three local news stations stood just past the limos. Adele Alban’s funeral would be the lead story on tonight’s news. I had asked reporters to stay away from the reception following the service—I had no wish for my grief to be on display—but there wasn’t anything preventing them from filming here in the parking lot. It was a public place, after all. Cameramen and dark-suited reporters with microphones had jumped from the vans as we arrived, but I knew the rain would hamper their ability to get a clear shot. Good, I thought. Still, they called out to me.
“Grace! What’s it like to be home after all this time?”
“Any comment about your mother, Miss Alban?”
“Amity! Over here!”
I ignored them and turned to the minister. “Is everyone in place?” I asked.
“They are,” he said, scowling across the lot at the newscasters. “The beginning hymns have started, so you’re right on time. When you’re ready, the three of us will walk up the aisle together. You’ll take your seats in the front pew, I’ll go up to the pulpit, and we’ll get this started. Then, after the service is over, I’ll lead you back down the aisle. Your driver will be waiting right here to take you back to the house so you don’t get caught in a line of well-wishers.”
“Got it,” I said.
“Grace! What’s it like—”
We stepped inside, leaving the reporters and their questions behind. As we stood in the vestibule, I pushed that same stray curl from Amity’s forehead, my palm lingering on her cheek. I saw that the church was packed, every seat filled, with even more people spilling out into the side aisles and standing in the back.
“Are you ready, honey?” I asked my daughter. She looked into my eyes and nodded. I put my arm around her shoulders and we followed Reverend Parker up the center aisle as every head turned to see the last two surviving Albans.