Amber House (3 page)

And that’s when Sammy jumped down from his chair and took Rose by the hand. “It was so good, Rose.”

“What, honey?”

“It was so good Gramma had you as a friend. Thank you.”

As I stood there and wondered what had possessed Sammy to say such a thing, I could almost
see
the anger leak out of Rose. She gave Sammy an awkward little pat on the head and said, “Your gramma was a good friend to me too, child.”

I noticed Jackson watching it play out with a little smile on his face.

Abruptly, Rose looked up at my mother. “I’ll stop back by in the morning, make this child some breakfast. Ida always said you weren’t much for cooking. Then we’ll see what kind of help you need.”

My mother considered being offended, but thought better of it. “Thanks,” she said. “I understand we have a gardening service come by once a week, but can Jackson continue with the outside work he was doing for my mother?”

Rose shrugged. “Up to him.”

Jackson nodded. “Be happy to, Mrs. Parsons. Saving for school. Thanks.”

“No. Thank
you
,” Mom said. “And thank you, Rose, for all the work you did for the reception. You really exceeded my expectations in every regard. The food was wonderful, and the house, the flowers, everything looked perfect.” She held out a check she’d had in her pocket. “This will reimburse you for the money
you spent on the groceries. Plus a little extra for all your time and effort.”

Rose went back to being angry and wouldn’t take the check. “You just rewrite that for the cost of the food, and I’ll get it from you tomorrow. I didn’t do this for pay. None of those folks stepped a foot in this house for the last twenty-five years, but I knew Ida would want a proper send-off, all the same. And she’d want Amber House looking her best.”

Then she went out. And Jackson shut the door behind them.

The four of us sat down to a cold supper of leftovers around the kitchen table. Sammy was all upbeat and animated, and only I knew why — he was completely into being part of our conspiracy.

Before he left, my father made another pitch to Mom. “I wish you’d stay with me. You could have the second bedroom. There’s a fold-out couch in the living room, the kids could sleep there —”

“Thanks, Tom, but I need to be close by, to get everything sorted out and disposed of. The hotel will be fine.”

“Well, maybe the kids would like to spend the night. I’ve been out here eight months already, and they haven’t once come to visit. I could show them the hospital, bring them back tomorrow evening.”

“That’s impossible. What would Sarah do all day with Sammy? Besides, I’m going to need her help. I want to get out of here and back home again as quickly as we can.”

My father’s face got tight. “Have it your way, Anne,” he said. He took his jacket off the hook by the door. “You always do.” He kissed Sammy on the head and stiffly patted my shoulder. I would have felt sorry for him, except I knew it was mostly his own fault. From a couple phone calls I’d “overheard,” he’d gotten
a little too close to Sammy’s overly friendly pediatrician back in Seattle. So when he got the job offer he’d been hoping for from Johns Hopkins here in Maryland, my mother decided to let him make the move alone. She kept saying they were just separated, but I’d also overheard her talking to a lawyer. I’d thought about warning Dad, but I hadn’t. Yet.

He left, and then it was just the three of us.

“Okay, guys,” Mom said, “let’s get these last dishes done.”

Sammy cleared the table, humming his usual six notes, while I scraped, soaped, rinsed, and loaded things into the dish drainer. My grandmother had evidently had a limited appreciation for the modern conveniences. Massive refrigerator. No dishwasher.

Mom was searching through the cabinets.

“Thank God,” she said, locating a stash of medical supplies in a narrow cupboard that contained mostly liquor. She pulled out a little bottle of aspirin. Then she gathered up her purse, her coat, Sammy’s coat, a makeup case, the pills, and her keys. “Let’s get out of here.”

I gave Sammy a look, lifting my eyebrows deliberately. He gave me the smallest frown and shake of the head, disapproving of my lack of subtlety. I coughed to cover the laugh rising in my throat.

Without turning or even looking at Mom, Sammy whispered, “Nope.” My brother. The
master
of subtlety.

“What?” Mom said, absolutely clueless about what was coming.

“Nope,” he said, a little louder. “Nope, nope, nope, nope,
nope
!” Each time, he amped the volume, till the last one was practically rattling the windows. Then he just started to wail, wordlessly and as loud as he could.

“What is this?” my mother shouted, somewhat desperately. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t think he wants to go,” I yelled back. Sammy continued at roughly the intensity of an ambulance siren.

Mom tried getting tough with us. “I need you two to get in that car right this instant!”

Sammy got tough back. He started to rap his knuckles against his skull and spin in circles, still screaming, with tears streaming down his cheeks. Mom stood there, speechless, hysteria bubbling behind her eyes. I held my hands out to show how helpless I was.

“Jesus, I can’t take this today. I really can’t. Stop it. Stop it!” She groaned. “All right!” I had expected more of a fight, but she
was
visibly exhausted. “We’ll stay,” she shouted.

Sammy shut off the noise like a hose, working down to a thin stream and then a couple of drips of sound. He took a deep breath and let out a long, shuddering sigh.

Freaking brilliant. I wished I could applaud.

My mother was in the cabinets again. This time she came out with a bottle of vodka and poured herself an inch over ice. I almost felt sorry for her. She’d spent all day in a place she clearly hated, being gracious to people she didn’t like. And she
had
just lost her mother. Maybe it hurt and I just couldn’t tell.

“Where are we going to sleep?” she snapped.

“Don’t you worry about us,” I said soothingly. “I’ll get Sammy settled.”

“Good,” she said. “Good. I think I’m going to sleep in my mother’s room down here. Seemed like it got pretty thoroughly cleaned. Only room in the house with a TV.”

“We’re going upstairs, okay?”

“Fine. Just —” She stopped to consider what she was going to say. “Don’t worry about any — noises — you might hear. Old houses have a lot of creaks and groans, you know?”

“Of course, Mom. We know. Don’t even think about it. We’ll be fine. Can I borrow the laptop?”

“Sure. But there’s no hookup, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

No Internet?
“How am I supposed to talk to Jecie?”

“There’s a phone in the library.”

“Yeah, sure. Never mind.” Mom apparently didn’t get that my friends didn’t chitchat on the phone. I would have texted, but idiot that I was, I’d left my cell charger on my desk at home. “We’ll be in Seattle in a couple days.”

“God, I hope so,” she said.

Sammy came to stand next to me. For the first time, Mom noticed Heavy Bear in his arms. A tiny furrow appeared between her brows. “Sammy, you can’t have that. It’s old and filthy. It will make you sick.” She reached to take it. Sammy dropped open his mouth and started to wail.

“All right!” she said.

He turned it off. His lips curled up the tiniest bit.

I had created a monster.

We went out to the car to get our night bags — the rest of the luggage could wait until morning. Then Mom headed straight for Gramma’s room. “Get to bed,” she called back to us, and disappeared around the corner.

Sammy grinned up at me then. “You’re welcome,” he prompted.

“Yeah, right, thank you,” I agreed. “You did good.” I had to laugh, he was so pleased with himself. “Hey, champ, you got your flashlight in that bag?”

He nodded emphatically.

“You want to do a little more exploring before we hit the hay?”

He nodded emphatically.

We shut off the front hall lights, resolved to do our exploring in the dark. That way, if Mom surfaced as far as the hall, no glow would draw her out to investigate further. Plus, the overhead lighting would take the adventure out of it.

The darkness was intense, warm, velvety. The flashlight’s beam stabbed through it feebly, picking out here a face staring
from a portrait, there a china cat paused in a corner. As we tiptoed into the downstairs west wing, I walked just behind Sam, my hand resting on his back. I could feel his shoulder blades hunched up against the spooks just out of sight, and smiled, because I could feel mine doing the same thing.

The first room on the right side of the hall looked like an office; the one on the left was some kind of comfortable sitting room with a wall of night-blackened windows casting shards of our light back at us. A door to a bathroom on the right, and then a workroom. I saw a sewing machine with a piece of fabric still clamped in its teeth, and wondered what project had died with my grandmother. Across the hall, a wood-paneled room with one of those pool tables that have no pockets. At the hall’s end, a pair of French doors that betrayed nothing of what lay beyond.

We pulled open both doors. And gasped in unison.

Before us spread a moonlit jungle of trees caught beneath a glassed-in metal web two stories high. At our left an iron stair spiraled up into the darkness, and somewhere behind the walls of greenery, a fountain splashed. We wandered stone paths that led between beds of ferns and flowers until we found the shallow pool. Its surface was a black void in the darkness, the flat pads of lilies suspended in it.

Sammy sucked in his breath, startled, then slowly raised his light. A bone white form stood facing us at the opposite end of the pool — a marble statue of a woman in a Grecian dress. We walked closer.

“She looks sad,” Sammy said, staring up at the statue’s downcast eyes. They were stone smooth, carved without irises. She was looking blindly into her outstretched hand, where four small red crystals sat like drops of blood on her palm. I wondered if they were loose or set into the marble. I leaned against a rock in the pool’s wall and reached to touch them.

Behind me, Sammy switched the light off. Struggling to catch my balance, I completely missed the statue in the sudden darkness — couldn’t find her at all. Some little part of me wondered irrationally if she had moved.

“Hey,” I said, turning. “Sammy? Where’d you go?”

“Sarah,” I heard him whisper.

“Sam,” I hissed, tracking the voice. “Come back here.” I followed the sound of his steps right and right again, trailing him down the path, deep in darkness. “Sam?”

“Sarah,” he said again, farther ahead.

“Sam, this is seriously
not
time for hide-and-seek.” I walked faster, then started to trot, pushing through branches that reached invisibly from the dark. Left, right. I could hear him moving ahead of me. “Sam. Stop!”

“Sarah,” he whispered again.

The room felt endless. I couldn’t see the webbed iron walls; there were too many stars. I stopped still to listen, to catch my breath stuck like a knot in my throat. Oddly, I couldn’t hear the fountain. I started backing up, trotting back the way I had come. “Sammy! You’re freaking me ou —”

And I collided with him, appearing from the dark, his light suddenly gleaming.

“Sarah —” he started.

“Don’t
do
that,” I said, taking his hand a little too tightly.

He nodded, but said, “Do what?”

“Don’t run off like that.”

“I won’t, Sarah. I won’t run off.”

The moonlight had dimmed. There were clouds where there had just been stars, and they started to empty. A few tiny splats turned into a million drops hitting the glass roof in a cacophony of sound. I felt chilled.

We crept back into the house and down the hall to the entry and fished our packs out from where we had stowed them under a bench. “No more ’sploring tonight, Sarah?”

“No, Sam. I’m done for now. Time for bed. But let’s be quiet. I think Mom’s still up. I hear the TV.”

“Nope, Sarah. I don’t hear it.”

“Yeah. Just voices. Real low. So keep it down. We don’t want her coming out here.”