Amber House (2 page)

“They say insanity runs in this family — did you see the little boy?”

I spun around at that, my hands reflexively shaping fists, but before I could open my mouth, my father put his arm over my shoulders and faced me back the other direction. “Stop eavesdropping.” He leaned in to whisper to me. “Sometimes you hear things you don’t want to hear.”

I glanced back and had the satisfaction of seeing red stain the woman’s cheeks as she watched me being pulled away. Dad gave me a tiny, tired smile and squeezed my shoulders before letting me go.

I turned my attention to the faces in the portraits of my ancestors. Mom didn’t know I knew, but I’d overheard her talking on the phone, making plans to dispose of my grandmother’s things through the best auction house on the East Coast. She seemed like she was in a hurry to get rid of it all and be done with Amber House. Not that I cared. Why someone would want a portrait of some long-dead stranger was beyond me.

But these faces were family.
Maybe
, I thought,
I ought to take a look.

The newest portrait was of Gramma. I recognized her straightaway. A lovely young blonde, about twenty. It looked like she was hanging in someone else’s spot, because there was a slightly larger rectangle of lighter-colored wallpaper all around the painting. I wondered who had been booted to cheaper real estate.

The oldest portraits were a time-darkened pair over the front table in the entry — a pretty good-looking man and woman, if you could get past the primitive paint job. He had dark hair and dark eyes, with an interesting scar running along his cheekbone. She was auburn haired, with a widow’s peak, and eyes that seemed too big for her face. Hanging beside them, another black-draped frame, like the one on the stairs. I realized there had been a draped frame in the nautical room too. I lifted the corner of the cloth. It turned out to be a mirror. Someone must have covered all the mirrors.

“Sam?”

That voice belonged to my mom, remembering all of a sudden that she
was
a mom, and was therefore supposed to keep track of her child. If she spotted me, she’d ask me to do the track keeping. And I’d already done enough of that for the moment.

I dodged into the gallery behind the stairs. To my left was a long hall leading to closed, tall double doors. To my right, a second hall that took a bend out of sight. But instead of following my impulse to explore, I pushed through a swinging door just behind, to my left. The kitchen.

Where Mrs. Valois and her grandson turned to stare at me.

I couldn’t think why I had come in here. I made my mouth work. “Oh,” I said, backing out. “Sorry.”

“Did you need —” Mrs. Valois started, but her grandson interrupted her.

“Would you like to sit down, Sarah?”

I stopped, startled and bemused by the invitation — in part because his voice sounded more combative than inviting. Had I done something to offend this guy? Was he trying to scare me off?

That last notion decided me. I walked to the table, pulled out a chair, and sat. I looked him in the eye and said, “You know my name?”

He held my gaze, unflinching. “Your grandmother used to talk about you.”

Gramma talked about me? When we hadn’t met a half-dozen times my whole life?
I shook my head a little. “That’s kinda hard to believe. She hardly knew me.”

And instantly regretted it. I mean, what was I doing? Calling him a liar?

It didn’t seem to faze him. He said, coolly, “Would you like something to drink?”

Mrs. Valois shot him a look, as if to ask why he was prolonging this uncomfortable conversation, but turned to me. “Can I get you a soda?”

He corrected her. “I bet Sarah would like one of those cherry Cokes from the stash at the back of the fridge.” Then he smiled, just at the corners, and his eyebrows lifted. As if he was proving a point. As if he was daring me to contradict him.

And okay, so how
did
he know that? Had Gramma mentioned that too? How would she have known?

“Yeah,” I agreed reluctantly. “A cherry Coke would be great.”

Mrs. Valois went to the huge refrigerator — the only modern thing, it seemed, in the entire house. As she rummaged through its contents, I sized up this boy in front of me.

He was about my age, I guessed. This close, I could see he was scarred — it looked like he had been badly burned when he was younger. At his left shirt cuff, and up above his collar, a shiny white web of lines and patches spread across the dark brown of his skin. The scars ran up his neck and over his chin to just under his cheekbone. High cheekbones. Slightly almond-shaped green eyes. Looking into mine, watching me. I forced my attention to his hands — large and square, with long fingers. I’d always thought you could tell a lot about a person by his hands. Maybe because I admired my father’s: a surgeon’s hands, full of skill and intelligence. This boy’s hands were like my father’s.

As I stared, his right hand slipped to the cuff of his left sleeve and tugged it lower, over the scars. Mentally, I kicked myself again. I had a real talent for being thoughtless sometimes.

Mrs. Valois came back with the soda. Bottled in glass, no less. The boy took it, loosened the cap, and held it out to me.

“My favorite,” I said, giving him the win. “Thanks.”

“Your grandmother’s favorite too,” he said.

I took a few sips, wondering if a taste for sweet, syrupy soft drinks could be inherited. Nobody was talking. The boy continued to watch me, not rudely, just intently, like he was waiting for a conversation that had paused to begin again.

“I’m sorry,” I offered finally, “I don’t know your name.”

He shook his head the slightest bit, like he couldn’t believe it.
Sorry, but Gramma never talked about
you.

“I’m Jackson,” he said.

“Nice to meet you.” I nodded to include his grandmother. “Both.”

That seemed to startle Mrs. Valois into motion. “Likewise,” she said, “but I got to check on the food, clear away some dishes —”

“Oh,” I said, starting to rise. “I could help you, Mrs. Valois.”

“No, stay, sit,” she said shortly.

Jackson nodded. “Take a break from the old birds out there —”

“Watch who you’re calling old, young man.” She started out the door, but turned back. “And while we’re on the subject, Sarah, just call me Rose. Having someone call me ‘Mrs. Valois’ makes me feel every minute of my years. Anyone over the age of thirty’s just a step from the grave for you kids….” The door swung shut behind her.

It was evidently my turn to talk again. “Why’s your grandmother doing all this work?” I asked. “I thought she was Gramma’s nurse.”

“Nah, not really. Gran’s retired. She worked intensive care up in Baltimore for twenty years. She was just helping Ida out with
the nursing thing. They were best friends most of their lives. She put this wake together out of respect.”

“Oh. Well. Jeez,” I said. “They must have been really good friends — did you see the spread on that dining table?”

He was amused by that. “Gran never does anything halfway. And she likes to cook.”

“I hope there’s some left over. Looked really good. Think I could pack some up to take back to the hotel?”

That startled him. “You aren’t staying?”

“Here?” I said. “No. Not even tonight. Mom hates this place. She’s selling it.”

He looked down to hide it, but I saw shock on his face. And I thought,
Brilliant again, Sarah. Didn’t Mom say they live on the property? She’s probably selling it right out from under them.
What could I say? “I’m sorry.”

He leaned back, his face composed. “I’m just — surprised. A place like this — you don’t expect someone to sell it to strangers.”

I shrugged a little. “I guess.”

His turn to shrug. “Well, too bad you’re not staying. I was hoping you and I —” He broke off, and I waited, wondering how that sentence was supposed to be completed. He looked uncomfortable.

“Hoping,” he said, finally, his voice dropping, so that I had to lean in a little, “we could find the treasure.”

Didn’t see that one coming.

Mrs. Valois —
Rose
— came backing through the swinging door just then, her arms full of dishes. I jumped and whirled around, and my arm knocked into the Coke bottle, pushing it off the table edge. Jackson’s hand caught it in midair, before it spilled more than a drop. My eyes widened. Those were
fast
reflexes.

“Getting crumbs everywhere,” Rose grumbled from across the room. “Gonna have cockroaches living in the sofa.” She
unloaded the dishes into the sink. “None of them loved her. Why don’t they all just go home?”

She pushed back out the swinging door and was gone again.

Jackson put the bottle back on the table, seeming embarrassed, not cocky like you’d expect a boy to be. But I was still focused on what he’d just said.

“Treasure,” I whispered. “You’re kidding, right?”

“What,” he said, “you never heard about the Captain’s lost diamonds? Everybody around here knows about them. I always wanted to search for them.”

“So? Search. What d’you need me for?”

“Are you kidding? It’s your house. I can’t do it without you.”

“Sounds to me like an urban legend. Sounds like it would probably be a pretty big waste of time.”

“Sounds to me like a full ride at Johns Hopkins, if we find them.”

“You going to Hopkins?” I was impressed.

“That’s the plan, yeah. But it costs just a little more than Gran’s got stuffed in her mattress. I say it’s worth a look around.”

I was ready to tell him no — the whole thing was ridiculous. If there was some lost stash of diamonds, why hadn’t my grandmother found it? And if she hadn’t, how would we? When would we even look for it? Where would we look for it?

And yet, it would suck if Mom sold the house and somebody else turned around and stumbled over a chest full of diamonds. And just imagine if the whole thing turned out to be true. Just imagine the look on my mother’s face when I handed her a fistful of diamonds from this place she hated —
A gift from Gramma,
I could say. It might be worth a look around. For a couple days, anyway.

“Maybe,” I said, lifting my shoulders.

He nodded, satisfied, like he’d expected me to say that. And I realized I was getting a little tired of feeling like he knew me a
whole lot better than I knew him. Gramma shouldn’t have talked so much about me.

“All right,” I said abruptly. I stood. “I better get started looking for my brother. A place this big, I might die of old age before I run into him.”

“Hide-and-seek.”

“What?” I frowned a little, startled.

“Hide-and-seek? A children’s game? One little kids play?”

I didn’t like it. It was disturbing. Gramma couldn’t have told him that Sam and I —

But then I felt stupid. It was just an idle comment. He didn’t mean anything by it. He didn’t know about Sammy and me. Not even my mother knew about Sammy and me.

I nodded and left without another word.

It made me uncomfortable, to have a stranger seem to know so much about me. It felt unpleasantly weird. Like my life was just a story for other people to talk about.

But that thing about hide-and-seek — that was just
really
weird. The way he’d said it. Like he knew.

It was probably my only real talent, my ability to find my little brother. I wasn’t beautiful and arty like my mother, or brilliant and driven like my father. As my teachers would be happy to inform anyone who would listen, I was a disorganized procrastinator with an attitude problem and (self-diagnosed) ADHD. But I had a veritable gift for finding Sammy.

I’d discovered it when I was twelve and he was nearly two. He’d just started wandering off on his own. That first time, we were in a department store in downtown Seattle. Mom looked up from the pile of silk scarves she was sorting through to find Sammy’s stroller empty. She blamed me and called for him, checking all the nearby aisles. Then she started to panic. We split up, and a sales clerk summoned security, so a half-dozen middle-aged guys in uniforms were running around in circles with us. Other customers joined in, all of them calling, “Sammy,” and not one of them figuring on how much the kid was enjoying himself.

But I did. I could just imagine it. I stood there, in the middle of the cosmetics department, imagining his chubby face, his wide smile, those little dimples I loved in his knuckles and knees. I could almost feel him, making himself small, giggling silently.
At first I thought I was making it up — an almost imperceptible electric vibration. But I walked toward that feeling, into it. Then it became a simple game of Hotter, Colder, like when your parents hide a present and tell you “You’re getting warmer, warmer.”

I found him tucked on a metal perch in the middle of a circular rack of dresses. He was delighted with himself, yelling, “Peekie, peekie!” Little twit.

My mother had no idea how I’d found him, and I never told her. I knew even then it wasn’t the kind of talent she’d approve of. Mom loathed everything and anything that had to do with what she called “New Agey garbage.” So I didn’t think she’d want to know about my Sammy radar.

But she knew enough to always send me to find him.

“Sarah?” I jumped a little. An old lady sitting on the long sofa in the living room was beckoning to me. “Come here, dear,” she said in this
I’m-really-wealthy
drawl that turned one-syllable words into two. “Sit beside me. You look the picture of Ida when she was your age.”

I sat down next to her, enveloped in her lavender scent, half listening as she chattered on, first about my grandmother as a girl, and then about my “artistic” great-grandmother Fiona, who had thrown wild parties during Prohibition, and liked to dance in the moonlight, and could tell your fortune with a deck of cards. Great-gram had evidently told this woman’s entire future for her when the woman was just eleven years old.

“Absolutely on the money too,” she said. “Bad marriage, two daughters, typin’ and typin’ in a yellow house.” She laughed and clapped her hands together like a child. “And I became a writah, you see? Fiona was absolutely psychic.”

Sounded absolutely psychotic to me.

“You heard any stories about this house?” I asked, fishing. Okay, so I was a little interested in the lost diamonds. Maybe they were bogus, maybe they weren’t, but how cool would it be to
find them? Besides, I was a Tolkien fan — who wouldn’t want to go looking for lost treasure?

“Stories,” she said. “Oh, heavens, yes, child. It’s been standin’ here more than three centuries, after all.”

“Like — what kind of stories?”

“Oh, you know. Murdahs. Ghosts. Secret passages. Suicides. Illegitimate children. The usual things.”

“Any” — my voice dropped — “treasure?”

She laughed at me. “What? Amber House isn’t treasure enough for you? Look around, child. The things just in these front rooms have got to be worth more than a million dollars. Not that your mother would dream of sellin’ any of it, I’m
sure
. It’s all pieces of your history.”

“Yes,” I agreed politely, thinking this nice old lady would likely have a stroke when she heard that was exactly what my mother had planned. “So … no hidden treasure?”

“
Hidden
treasure. Ah. You must mean the Captain’s lost diamonds.” She smiled wickedly and leaned in, as if to share some bit of juicy gossip. “Your great-great-however-many-great-granddaddy, Captain Foster, was a smugglah during the Revolution, and they say maybe dabbled in some piracy on the side. The story goes that the Captain liked to trade in his illicit wealth for diamonds. Harder to trace. Easier to carry. Unfortunately, diamonds have a way of disappearin’. They say he went mad looking for them. Who knows? Amber House holds its share of secrets. But those are in the past, aren’t they, and the past doesn’t give up its secrets easily.”

“Sarah?”

My mother had wandered into earshot. I didn’t have to be psychic to know that she was less than thrilled to catch me talking family history with the neighbors. Or to guess what her next words were going to be.

“Find Sammy, will you? Honey. Please.”

I thought, as I forced myself into motion, both the
honey
and the
please
were nice touches. Added for the benefit of the guests.

I found Sammy back upstairs in the nautical room, talking to the bear.

He was sitting cross-legged on the bed, which was made like a ship’s berth, all framed in wood to be its own little room, with drawers underneath and two porthole windows to the outside. Above it, a carved eagle stared from a ten-foot-wide board. A wooden mermaid leaned from a corner.

“I wonder whose room this was,” I said.

“It’s mine now.”

“Sam,” I said, shaking my head, “you know Mom doesn’t want to stay here. She’s booked us into a hotel.”

“Nope,” he insisted, “I wanna stay.” He got a crafty look on his face. “Commere, Sarah.”

He was up and running again, ducking past me, out the door, and down the hall. The whole
find-Sammy-and-bring-him-back
routine had been a lot easier before he’d gotten so fast.

I went into the hall. Sam was standing before another door. “Listen up, bud,” I said, trying to sound stern. “We need to get back downstairs.”

“Come here,”
he insisted.

“Fine.” I took a few reluctant steps toward him. “What?”

“Look,” he said, pushing open the door, holding his hands wide like a showman. “This is
your
room. I
choosed
it for you.” He came and took my hand, and tugged me faster toward the door. “Look, Sarah. See?” He sounded so eager to please. “I
gived
it to you.”

I looked inside.

It was a room of flowers. Not in a tacky way, like you’d see in some outdated decorating magazine. It was like the dwarfs’ room in “Snow White,” the way the Grimm brothers imagined it. The walls were hand painted with hollyhocks, irises, roses, lilies, and still more, maybe imaginary, blossoms in the deep, burnt shades of twilight. A canopy bed, draped in ribbon-trimmed linen, wore a quilt that was a mosaic of the same dusky colors, stitched into the image of a fruit-bearing tree. Two shelves of leather-bound books framed a dollhouse with gables and balconies and green-shuttered windows.

I realized, as I took it all in, that this room had once been my mother’s. I knew it even as I doubted how my mother ever could have slept or played here, or lived here.

But I saw the way she’d propped up little things — photos, seashells — against the books on the shelves. How she’d draped a blanket over the back of a chair. These were traces of my mother that still could be found back home in Seattle, among the steel and glass and bleached wood. I stared a moment, my mouth open, wondering how she had ever gotten from here to there.

And, okay. Maybe there was treasure in the house, maybe there wasn’t. But one thing was absolutely certain. There was no way I was going to turn down the chance to sleep in a room like this. At least for the few days Mom was planning on staying in Maryland.

“You got me, Sammy. This is my room.”

“You’re welcome,” he said proudly.

“Yeah, thanks,” I responded, as always, belatedly. “But listen to me. Mom’s not going to let us stay here without a fight. You know that, right?”

“Right.”

“So, here’s the plan, Sam-my-man.”

And we worked it out. People who didn’t know Sammy probably would have thought I was asking too much of him. They
always assumed Sammy didn’t understand very well, because he was different from other kids. When he was four, they’d put a name on it — autism. Like it was a disease. But it didn’t seem to me that what was different about Sam was something “wrong” that needed to be fixed.

It seemed like he had a gift for making connections in his head, and he made more of them faster than most people. Even when he was little, he had this sly sense of humor where his mind would slip sideways and he’d do something surprising and funny. And Sam was so sweet, so
not
mean. Not like other people. Not like normal people.

I thought he was the strangest, most wonderful friend I had. And I knew he was twice as smart as I was. So I could count on him to play his part. When I explained my plan to him, he smiled in appreciation. He totally got it. He was on board.

The last of the guests left about an hour after Sammy and I had finished plotting. They dribbled to the door and clutched my mother’s hand, giving her a final helping of sympathy. She wasn’t having any of it. She had remained cool and aloof all day. Which wasn’t going to help her reputation in the neighborhood, but I guessed she didn’t care very much.

Mom, Dad, Rose, Jackson, and I spent an hour clearing away, washing, sweeping, and finding room in that enormous fridge for all the leftovers until Mom finally had enough. “Let’s leave the rest of this for — Rose, what is the name of the cleaning help Mother had?”

“Kate,” Rose said, looking slightly offended on behalf of the forgotten woman. “Her name is Kate. She’s a real nice lady.”

“She’s been coming twice a week?” Mom asked.

“Wednesdays and Saturdays.”

“That’ll work for now, I guess.”

That’s when my mother cleared her throat. I cringed. As charming as my mother could be, when I heard that little
ahem
, I knew Mom’s capacity for tact was about to fail her once again.

“Rose, I’m sure it’s no surprise to you that I intend to sell Amber House.”

Rose folded her arms in disapproval. My father looked grim.

Mom swallowed and continued. “I wanted to tell you right away, to give you and your grandson adequate time to relocate —”

“No need,” Rose said.

“What?” My mother’s head jerked back a little in surprise.

“Jackson and I aren’t moving anyplace. That cottage and land’s ours.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Fiona gave that land to Jackson’s great-grandfather back in the twenties. We own that piece on the western line, from Nanga’s cabin to the river. I got the deed.”

“Oh,” Mom said, a little faintly. “I never knew. Well. That’s good,” she added unconvincingly.

“Yes,” Rose agreed. She handed a basket packed with some of the leftovers to her grandson and pushed him toward the door. “You let us know if there is anything we can do for y’all.” Her short tone of voice completely undercut the genuineness of the offer, but my mother apparently didn’t pay attention to that.

“I would love to have some help, Rose, going through Mother’s papers and things, since you know this place better than anyone.”

I don’t know how my mother had the courage to utter that sentence. It was pretty easy to tell Rose didn’t like her much. I guess, as Gramma’s best friend, Rose might have been a little angry about the distance my mother had always kept from her. Not that I blamed Mom, necessarily. Even as a kid I could feel the presence of some old hurt or battle that stood between them
like a third person, and I had never liked the sort of sweetly sarcastic way Gramma talked to my mom.

But right then I wished my mother had had the good sense to let Rose escape out the side door. An unpleasant silence welled up as Rose considered her response. I could see it just behind her lips, ready to emerge.