Chapter 3 Chapter 3The entrance hall was designed to impress. The floor was a buttery cream-colored marble and the walls were paneled in dark wood. I’m not a lumberjack, so I had no idea what kind of wood it was, but it looked expensive and it had been carved into elaborate scrolls and designs. A huge staircase dominated the room. It looked like it had been stolen from the movie set for Gone with the Wind or Titanic. At the bottom of the stairs, at either side of the railings, were two carved women holding aloft what I think were supposed to be the lamps of knowledge. The house smelled like lemon furniture polish and old books. All that was missing was an English butler named Jeeves to take my coat and bag. Impressive, but no one was going to call this place cozy.
I dragged my duffel up the main staircase. I really hoped Dick didn’t think part of our “one big, happy family” plan included me cleaning this place. The main banister had been polished, but I could see some cobwebs near the ceiling. Dusting would be a full-time job in this place.
I dropped my bag at the top of the stairs and started peeking in the various rooms, looking for one I could tolerate. The bedrooms on the second floor were decorated in a style I would call uptight fussy meets grandma’s house. The curtains had giant flouncy ruffles. Each of the beds came with a herd of small pillows in flowered fabrics. They looked hard and uncomfortable. A lot of the furniture seemed to be perched on tiny fragile wooden legs designed to break. A few of the rooms had wallpaper that could be used as a torture device. I was fairly certain constant exposure to those patterns could lead to blindness or insanity.
As soon as I opened the next door, I knew I’d found Nathaniel’s room. The lack of floral wallpaper was a giveaway, along with a giant bag of sports gear that was spilling out onto the floor. Instead of shutting the door, I took a few steps inside after shooting a look over my shoulder to make sure he wasn’t coming up the stairs. He wasn’t a slob, other than the duffel bag on the floor. There weren’t piles of laundry in the corners. Unlike Anita’s brother’s room, which always smelled like old socks, his smelled a bit like campfire smoke mixed with vanilla. There were no posters of bands or half-naked women draped over cars on his walls, instead he had a bunch of framed black-and-white photographs. I wandered around the room touching the odd thing here and there. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for—maybe something that would help me understand him. I ran my fingers over the stacks of things on his desk: a pile of loose change, a pen with a chewed cap, his music player, a stack of books for school.
There was a small frame on top of his dresser. I picked it up. A woman stood on the beach looking at the camera, shielding her eyes from the sun with one hand. Her other arm was draped around a little girl. There was an elaborate sandcastle in front of them, the sides decorated with shells and rocks. It had to be a photo of his mom and sister. It struck me that when this picture was taken, they had no idea they were going to die. I put the frame down. I didn’t want to see their smiling faces. They probably thought their biggest problem was that the tide would come in and destroy the castle they spent hours making. I heard a noise in the hall and my heart sped up. I could only imagine what Nathaniel would say if he found me in his room. I backed out quickly and shut the door.
There was another room stuffed with antiques, and the next had to be the master bedroom. The room was large, but all the dark colors and heavy fabrics made the room feel claustrophobic to me. Above the dresser was a giant painting of a woman I was pretty sure was Dick’s mom. The idea that he wanted a life-size portrait of his mom in his room was creepy. The windows were covered in thick red velvet draperies, and in the center of the room was a giant four-poster bed. The idea of my mom and Dick rolling around on that football-field-size mattress while his mom watched made my stomach clench. The idea of Dick in general made me nauseated.
I stood back out in the hallway. I was out of bedrooms. I wondered if it would be rude to ask Dick if he was open to some major remodeling. I’m not a giant pink cabbage-rose-bedroom kind of person. I was trying to picture Dick’s face if I used pushpins on his walls to hang up my poster of Klimt’s painting The Kiss. Then I noticed the door. It was covered in the same paneling as the wall, and the handle was a small brass knob designed to blend in to the wood detailing. I must have walked right past it. I’d barely touched the handle when the door clicked open to reveal a narrow staircase leading up. I was surprised. From the outside, it hadn’t looked like the house had a third floor.
At the top of the stairs there were two more doors. I opened one and found the attic. It ran the length of the wing. The ceiling was sloped, giving the room the appearance of a huge wooden tent. The room was dusty, with piles of old leather trunks that looked like they were last used in the 1800s when the Wickham family moved in. I wandered in farther. I pulled a sheet off one of the giant lumps to expose a rack of dresses. They were ball gowns. My hands ran down the sides of an emerald-green silk dress. The bodice was covered in blue, green, and gray beads. There was a handwritten dry cleaning tag on the hanger. Elizabeth Wickham. That was Dick’s mom. Apparently, she didn’t just keep her house like a royal estate, she liked to dress as if she were a queen too. The dress was stunning in a cool vintage over-the-top way, but since I was hardly ever (as in never) invited to royal balls, I hadn’t a clue where I would wear it. Across the aisle I spotted a row of boxes marked TOYS. A lonely stuffed zebra sat on top of one box. One of his eyes was gone, and someone had sewn a black button on in its place.
“Tragic war injury?” I asked, picking him up. I expected the zebra to smell musty, but he smelled clean and almost minty, like toothpaste, maybe. I touched his button eye. “Don’t you worry about it,” I told him. “Real women dig men with scars. Gives them character.” I tucked the floppy zebra under my arm and went back into the hall.
As soon as I opened the only other door, I knew I had found my bedroom. It was larger than the other bedrooms downstairs, but much of the space was lost, due to the ceilings that sloped down to the floor like a Parisian garret. Two big windows opened to the back of the house, each with a deep inset window seat. I kneeled in the first and peered out. The view was amazing. You could see the stone patio I had noticed from the ferry, and beyond that, the cliff edge jutting out, and then the ocean. The waves marched along in perfect formation, and I could hear the sound of them breaking against the rocks, even through the thick glass.
The floor was wide-planked hardwood that had been stained so dark it looked nearly black. The walls were a soft gray instead of the insipid pinks of downstairs. There wasn’t a single inch of ugly wallpaper or giant floral fabric anywhere. There was another door, which led to a small bathroom. My own bathroom! I gave the zebra a hug in glee. The bed wasn’t made up, but a soft white blanket had been pulled over the mattress. The only other furniture in the room was a desk tucked into one of the corners and a low bookshelf that was completely empty.
I put my duffel bag down and looked around the room. It was perfect.
“What the hell are you doing?”
I jumped when I heard the voice. Nathaniel was standing in the doorway looking at me, his eyes the same cold gray color as the ocean outside.
“Your dad told me to pick out a bedroom.” I hated how my voice sounded so defensive.
“Well, you can’t have this one.”
“Look, if you wanted it, you should have called dibs before now. I saw yours downstairs.”
“You went through my room?” He yanked up his sleeves as if he was getting ready to start a fistfight with me.
My face flushed red-hot. “I didn’t ‘go through’ your room. I opened the door and figured it was yours since it was one of the few places that wasn’t pink,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t call me on my lie.
“You’re a girl. You’re supposed to like pink.”
“Tell me you did not just say that.”
“What? Pink doesn’t go with your goth image?”
“My image isn’t goth,” I said through clenched teeth.
“What is it then?”
“Nothing. I’m capable of coming up with my own look instead of dressing like a clone.”
“Dressing all in black is being a rebel clone. Low rent.”
“Fuck you.”
“Isobel!” My mom and Dick appeared in the doorway. My mom’s face was flushed. I had the sense she wasn’t impressed with my language choice.
“Did you hear what he said to me?” I asked her.
“No, and we don’t want to know.” Dick crossed his arms and gave both Nathaniel and me a stern look. “We’re not going to get in the middle of you two. Do you think we can’t see what you’re doing? We’re a family now. You can’t ask your mom to take your side any more than Nathaniel can expect me to take his. The two of you are going to have to work things out on your own, and I would hope that you could learn to do it without resorting to foul language.”
“But she—” Nathaniel started to say.
“Nathaniel, remember your breeding,” Dick barked. Nathaniel swallowed whatever he was about to say and stood up straight as if he were in a military prep school. “Honestly, you two are acting like children.”
“She wants this as her bedroom,” Nathaniel said, biting off each word. “I was trying to explain to her that wasn’t possible.”
I wasn’t backing down. “You said I could pick out whatever bedroom I wanted. No one is using this room, so what’s the big deal?” This was the room I wanted. Not only was it the only room I could possibly imagine myself living in for the next year, it was also separate from the rest of the house. I needed some distance if I was going to survive.
“How did you even get up here?” Nathaniel asked. “The door to this floor is kept locked.”
“It wasn’t locked,” I said.
“It’s always locked.”
“Okay, you busted me. I jimmied the lock, just a little trick I learned on the wrong side of the tracks with my low-rent buddies.”
“Isobel, honestly. What has gotten into you?” My mom shook her head as if she didn’t know me.
“The door wasn’t locked,” I repeated.
“This was my sister’s room,” Nathaniel said.
The air was suddenly sucked out of the space. My mom looked at me as if she blamed me for bringing up this awkward issue. How was I supposed to know this was Evelyn’s room? It wasn’t as if there was a nameplate on the door, and there wasn’t a thing left on the walls or shelf that would indicate it belonged to anyone. Besides, why would her bedroom have been so far away from the others? I suddenly remembered the stuffed zebra. Shit. I bet that belonged to Evelyn too. The zebra was propped up next to the duffel bag at my feet. It didn’t look like anyone had seen him yet. With a silent apology, I nudged him under the bed with my foot so he was out of sight. I didn’t need to be accused of poaching the dead girl’s toys in addition to her room.
“If Isobel wants this room, it should be hers,” Dick said. I couldn’t tell who was most surprised by his announcement.
“Dad!” Nathaniel looked shocked. I could tell he had expected his dad to back him up on this one.
“She can pick something else,” my mom rushed in to say. “She doesn’t need to be a bother.”
“We can’t keep this room a shrine to the past.” Dick gave a weak smile. “I should have realized a girl would want her own bathroom and some space to herself. You go ahead and move your things up here.”
“Seriously?” I asked.
“This was Evie’s room,” Nathaniel said again. His jaw was tight and it looked to me like his eyes were starting to tear up.
“The house is centuries old. If we saved rooms for all the people who were gone, we would have run out of rooms by now. We’d be forced to sleep in the garage.” Dick chuckled, but I could tell Nathaniel didn’t find the situation even remotely funny. I couldn’t really blame him. His mom and sister hadn’t even been gone a year and Dick was acting like it was no big deal. “Nathaniel can show you where the linens are kept, Isobel, so you can make up your bed. Now, you get settled, and your mom and I will rustle up some sandwiches for dinner. It’s been a long day. Later we can play a round of Scrabble together.” Dick clapped his hands like he was a kindergarten teacher and it was activity time. My mom was giving him a tearful smile like she couldn’t believe how brave and caring he was being by letting me have the bedroom.
Nathaniel and I stared at each other. I wasn’t sure where things had gotten so off track between us. Actually, we’d never really been on track. When I met him, I thought he looked rich, like when he was a baby his diapers had been cashmere. He came across as the kind of person who would never hang out with someone like me, and so far, that had proven to be the case.
“Look,” I began, but before I could say another word, Nathaniel turned around and left, slamming the door behind him.
“I’ll talk to him.” Dick followed him out, treating the door more gently.
Now that we were alone, my mom shot me a look.
“I didn’t do anything. Dick told me to pick out a bedroom.”
“Would you please call him Richard?” My mom paced the room and then stopped to gaze out the window. “I know you’re not happy, but is it asking too much that you try to make this work?”
“Mom, this is my senior year—” I began.
“This is the beginning of the rest of my life,” she cut in. “Do you know how many things I put on hold for you? How much I sacrificed over the years? Now I have a chance to start over. We have a chance to start over. Having Richard as a stepfather is going to open doors for you, too. Can’t you give me one year of your life when I’ve given you seventeen?”
I loved how she had this way of making my entire existence a burden to her when I hadn’t asked to be born in the first place. “You don’t believe me, but I’m doing the best I can. I’m here. I’m trying, but it’s hard. I don’t know anyone.”
“You know Nathaniel.”
“Nathaniel hates me,” I pointed out.
“He doesn’t hate you. He’s just having a hard time with all of this.”
“Welcome to the party.”
“Nathaniel is sensitive because of what happened to his mom and sister.”
“What did happen? Was it a car accident?” My mom had always been vague about how Dick’s first wife and Evelyn had died. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing I could ask a lot of questions about without coming across like an insensitive jerk. For some reason, with all the wedding planning there had never been a good time to bring up the dead first wife.
“No, it was a boating accident.”
My knowledge of sailboats and yachts was pretty sketchy. All I could picture was some kind of Titanic-type incident, but there weren’t even any icebergs out here. What else could happen to a boat? Did it run into another boat? Isn’t the ocean big enough that they shouldn’t run into anything else?
“Wow.” I was at a loss for anything else to say. How did Nathaniel stand this house, with the sound of the ocean in the background like a constant reminder? No wonder the guy was edgy.
“Richard says Nathaniel hasn’t been the same since the accident. He withdrew from his friends, quit the soccer team, and won’t talk about it with Richard no matter how hard he tries. He won’t even step foot on the boat.”
“Dick kept the boat?” My voice came out a little screechy, and my mom raised an eyebrow. “I mean, Richard still has the boat? Isn’t that weird?” By weird I meant disturbing as hell, and morbid, but I was trying to be more balanced in my communication style.
“If it were just any boat, that would be one thing, but it’s a handmade wooden sailboat from the 1950s. It’s been in his family a long time. Richard’s dad was the one who restored it.”
“Huh.” Maybe Dick’s dad had restored it, but his wife and daughter had died on it. I’m all for family memories, but this felt wrong on so many levels.
“It was an accident, after all. It wasn’t like it was the boat’s fault.” Mom’s face flushed, which told me that she thought it was creepy too, but she wasn’t going to admit it. “He understands how upsetting it is, especially for Nathaniel, so he keeps it locked in the boathouse for now.”
My mom started picking at her thumbnail the way she always does when she’s stressed. During most of my childhood, she had raw, bloody cuticles from where she would tear the skin off. She’d stopped in the past few months. For the wedding, she’d even gotten a manicure. “I’ll try harder,” I said, giving in.
My mom gave me a huge smile. I could see her take a deep breath. She crossed the room with a quick stride and hugged me.
“That’s all I can ask, just give it a try. Richard likes you. He’s trying really hard to make you feel at home here.”
I didn’t bother telling her that the harder Dick tried, the more it made me want to run away. My mom brushed the hair out of my eyes and slipped out of the room. I could hear the waves outside. I sat down on the bed and pulled the zebra out from underneath.
“Looks like it’s just you and me, buddy.”
When you’re seventeen and the only friend you have in town is a stuffed animal that doesn’t even belong to you, I think it’s safe to say your life is officially in the shitter.