Amber House (9 page)

I looked back into the attic’s depths. “If she wasn’t talking to me, then who was she talking to? Who was behind the door?”

“I don’t know.”

I stood up shakily, Jackson helping.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I echoed.

He found my flashlight, still glowing, and handed it to me. “It went out,” I told him, plaintively, like a little child.

“No,” he said, “it probably was just dark in the vision. You were in the past, in the darkness of the past. The light never actually went out.”

She was trapped in the dark
, I thought. I remembered, then, when Sammy’s flashlight turned off in the conservatory our first night here.
Had I slipped into an echo without even knowing? How had I gotten out again?

“Can you make it down the stairs?” he asked. I nodded.

He tucked my box under one arm and turned out the light. I followed him closely to the landing on the second floor. He gestured with the box. “Where do you want this?”

I went into my room and turned on the small bedside light. I pointed to the bed. “Can you shove it under there?”

It disappeared behind the bed ruffle. He headed out, but turned back at the door. He started to speak, stopped, then started again. “If you tell your mother about this, she’ll leave. You’ll never come back.”

“Maybe I want to go.”

“Maybe you don’t,” he said. His eyes were pleading. And I thought,
How can the diamonds be so important to him?

“I don’t know,” I repeated.

“Please do one thing for me,” he said, “before you decide.”

“What?”

“Talk to Nanga. Go back to her cabin, if you can, and talk to her. Please.” He turned and left.

If I can?
I thought, as his footsteps faded away.

I noticed, then, the TV set murmuring downstairs. I hoped Mom hadn’t heard us stumbling around. Maybe she’d drifted off with the set on.

I brushed my teeth and got into bed. Thinking about nothing. Remembering Deirdre’s words. “Don’t sleep,” she’d said. I wished not to. I lay there, silent and frozen, listening to the voices rising in the dark.

“Sarah.”

I woke out of the fragments of a dream I wished I could have back. I tried to nudge together the pieces — a woman’s smiling face, a sense of peace, of coming home — but they were spreading like smoke.

The moonlight filtering through the lace curtains at the window cast strange patterns on my bed. It felt like I had only just closed my eyes, but the clock on the table showed that several hours had passed.

The air in my room felt cold.

“Sarah?”

I knew the voice. It was Sammy. He was in my room. But though I told myself I was crazy, I was afraid to answer him.

“Sarah?” the voice came again, flat and unnatural. “Where’s my box?”

I snaked out one arm to the lamp beside the bed.
How do I turn it on?
I thought a little frantically. My fingers found the knob. I twisted. Light bloomed.

Sammy was standing there. His eyes were open. But he wasn’t awake. Walking in his sleep. He’d done it before, lots of times, ever since he was about three. “Sam?” I said, and got out of bed.

“Where’s my box, Sarah?”

I took his arm. He let me lead him without any resistance, placidly, easily. In the old days, Dad had taken care of this part. Now I guess it was my job. I guided him to his bed, sat him down, and lifted his legs onto the mattress. I pressed his shoulders down until his head fell against the pillow.

“Where’s my box?”

“Shh, shh,” I said, pulling the covers over him, tucking them up under his chin. “We’ll find it in the morning, bud. Go back to sleep.”

His eyes closed. His sweet lips fell open. He snored lightly. I surrendered to an irresistible impulse to kiss his forehead.

I went back to bed.

When I opened my eyes the next morning, I gingerly and reluctantly began to examine the freakish thing that had happened to me the night before. What had it been? A hallucination? A ghost? Thinking back on it, it didn’t really seem like she’d been talking to me. It was more like a piece of film being shown over again. Déjà vu two hundred years later. Life on endless replay.

I wondered if she could feel it happening.

When I sat up, my skull began to throb in time with my heartbeat. I touched my forehead carefully and found a lump the size of half an egg. Brilliant. What was I going to tell my mother? Especially with that fun-filled day of Baltimore errands ahead of us. Not to mention the thrill of meeting all my dad’s coworkers. What was I going to tell any of them?

I found a bottle of foundation and dabbed that on, gently, then combed some hair down and across my forehead. I checked the effect in the mirror.

Yeah, I looked horrible.

I was eating a bowl of cereal in the kitchen when Mom came in. “Sarah, I’m expecting you to ride herd on Sa —”

She interrupted herself, disbelief in her eyes. “Oh my
God
, what the
hell
did you do to your face?”

“Tripped over my suitcase in the dark and fell into the bedpost,” I offered, wondering if it would float.

She sighed and shook her head. “See, Sarah? There’s a reason why civilized people try to keep their rooms neat.”

Terrific. With that explanation, I got to be a klutz
and
a slob. I’d have to think of something better to tell the rest of the world.

Sam came in then, and his eyes widened a little when he saw me, but he didn’t say a word. He just stopped in front of me and reached up to put his two little hands on my cheeks. He pulled my face toward him, then he planted the softest, gentlest kiss on my lump. “Owie, Sarah.”

Who wouldn’t love a kid like that?

Mom saw Sammy had Heavy Bear in tow and was going to say something about it, but I shook my head no. My newfound authority. She pursed her lips a little, but decided to let Sam and me have our way. “Just get in the car,” she said.

I was stuck with shotgun, since Sam had to sit in the back, but I turned toward the window and visibly spaced out. I didn’t want to make small talk with Mom — I wanted to think. I knew if I was going to say something about what I’d seen, I should do it now, before Mom started spending money on my birthday bash. But I also knew if I said anything, I would never set foot in Amber House again. And I wasn’t sure I wanted that. I wasn’t sure at all.

This thing that I could do in Amber House was — unbelievable. Maybe a little scary. But Jackson said they couldn’t hurt me; they were only echoes. And they were
my
echoes — people who had contributed bits and pieces to the puzzle of me. I had to admit — I was interested. We’d be gone in two weeks anyway.

Maybe I would stay and see what happened.

We reached Baltimore in less than an hour. Mom navigated the streets with all the confidence of a former resident. She had gone to school here — the all-girls College of Notre Dame. She’d met Dad at a mixer, a dance to which the young and
eligible from other nearby schools were invited. Dad was from Connecticut, going to school at Johns Hopkins; he came to the mixer with a cousin who was a midshipman in the Naval Academy at Annapolis. The rest, as they say, was history.

I had assumed we’d be heading straight to the hospital, but Mom had other entertaining destinations in mind. Our first stop was McCauley’s, “the oldest stationers in Baltimore,” Mom told us. The place was dark and full of every imaginable paper product. We went to a counter in the rear of the store where an old guy looked up from his work.

My mother’s face split into a beaming smile. “Mr. Perkins. You’re still here.” I was always amazed how musical her voice became when she was being charming.

“Is that Miss — McGuinness?”

“Oh, my Lord. You got it! What a memory you have.”

“A man doesn’t forget a beautiful girl like you.”

“At my age, that kind of flattery keeps one going.” She touched the back of his hand. She was
flirting
with the old guy. Ugh.

“What is it we can help you with today?”

“Well, I’m hoping you
can
help, because I’m nearly frantic,” my mother began. She poured out her story for him: how we were called away suddenly from Seattle by her mother’s death, how she had given up the idea of giving me a proper coming-out party, but now “Senator Hathaway” had promised to help her throw one here, which was “an incredible piece of luck,” but it was all very “rush, rush,” next weekend, could he possibly do anything?

“Hmmm,” Mr. Perkins said speculatively. “What exactly are we talking about?”

“A card, heavy stock, with R.S.V.P. enclosure. It would be
per
fect if it could be midnight blue with gold script. Embossed. Say, two hundred fifty?”

Two hundred fifty?
I repeated in my head.

“You have the text?”

Mom offered him a page from the leather notebook in her hand.

“Very nice,” he commented. He pursed his lips and mulled it over. My mother waited breathlessly. “Okay,” he said. “For you and the senator.”

“Oh, good heavens, thank you! What’s your soonest?”

Mr. Perkins made a call to the warehouse. “We have the stock you need — darkest indigo. With a little shifting around, I could have them for you this evening.” He shrugged apologetically with his face. “For a significant premium.”

“Of course,” my mother gushed. “You’re a miracle worker, Mr. Perkins.”

Mom clenched her fist in a little victory gesture as we walked out, but I felt sick. That number just kept ping-ponging around in my head. Two hundred and fifty invited guests to Miss Sarah Parsons’s sweet sixteenth. What in God’s name had she gotten me involved in?

Our next stop also wasn’t the hospital. We drove to the pricey commercial district below Mt. Vernon Square, where Mom pulled up to the valet parking for a narrow brick building that turned out to be a woman’s boutique. Sammy started humming.

“Mom,” I said, “I don’t think Sam can take another errand. Can’t you just drop us at the hospital?”

She swung her long legs out of the driver’s seat, handed her keys to the valet, and came around to Sammy’s door. She crouched down in front of him. “Last stop, honey, and then we’ll go get you a malted at this fabulous deli I know. Can you hang in there?”

He stopped humming. “Can Heavy Bear have one too?”

I could see her start to say no. I could see that she
wanted
to say no, but she sucked it up. “Sure, honey, he can have one too, but you have to promise me that you and Heavy Bear won’t misbehave in this nice store. Can you promise?”

“Uh-huh,” he said.

Good luck with that
, I thought.

Inside the store, we headed for a room set off by a short flight of stairs and two huge stone urns filled with expensive flowers. The dress centered in the view was a bridal gown.

This wasn’t looking good.

An attractive woman, impeccably dressed, came up to us at once. “My name is Marie,” she murmured to my mother. “May I help, madame?”

“I need two gowns, full length, one for each of us. Something a little conservative for me, I think, but not too conservative. And something really extravagant for my daughter. It’s her sixteenth birthday party.”

“Of course, madame.” She guided us to some leather-covered couches, flanked by glass tables bearing tall vases of lilies. “May I get you something? Champagne? Hot cocoa for the young man?”

“Champagne sounds wonderful. Sam? Hot cocoa?”

He nodded. “Two. One for Heavy Bear.”

Mom shared an exasperated smile with Marie, then bent down to speak seriously to Sam. “Sweetie, I think you and Heavy Bear can share a cocoa —”

“TWO!” he shouted.

My mother flushed, but Marie interjected smoothly, “Of course we will get Heavy Bear his own cocoa.”

Marie’s assistant hurried off to fetch the refreshments, while Marie started filling a rolling rack with dresses. I watched them with mounting anxiety, cringing at the idea of trying on all these gowns. But the rack disappeared into a back room, and, moments later, the first dress came back out snugly fitted on one of the salesgirls, who apparently were hired as much for their modeling skills as for their abilities with a cash register. Valued customers were not to be put to the trouble of actually trying on dresses. Particularly when said dresses showed so much better on the models.

So I sat there, sharing Heavy Bear’s cocoa, watching Sam crayon in blank spaces in a coloring book that Marie’s assistant had magically produced for him, while my mother quietly shook her head at gown after gown after gown. About eight dresses in, I showed some fleeting interest in a sleek black number, at which my mother merely frowned. Marie seemed to realize then that my input wasn’t particularly needed or wanted and directed all her attentions toward Mom.

About fifteen dresses in, a rose-pink thing with a lace bodice got my mother’s “maybe.”
For her
, I thought, scowling,
I hope.
Otherwise, the dresses swam by in an uninterrupted stream, the same two models alternating in an endless variety of colors and styles. Marie was looking more than a little frustrated when a dark green dress appeared, a classical Grecian cut worked in a silk organdy that both clung and billowed softly with every step the model took. My mother’s face lit up.

Marie leapt on that as her cue: “I thought this would be very becoming on
you
, madame, with your figure.”

Evidently Mom thought so too. One down. But the rack was emptied and there was nothing for me.
Yet
, I thought grimly.

“I am sorry we were not able to find something for the young lady,” Marie apologized.

“I’m just stuck on the idea of putting her in autumn gold,” my mother said. “It would set off her skin, make her shine. But I really liked that cream gown with the embroidered tiers. Did you like that one? Honey?”

Oh. Speaking to me. Someone wanted my input now? Um. Did I
remember
that one? “Yes, absolutely. It was great,” I lied. If we weren’t doing something like that black sheath I’d liked, I just didn’t care.

“When is the dress needed?” Marie asked, reinvigorated by the prospect of another commission. “If madame would like, I could check with the designer. Perhaps she could render it for you in gold.”

“That would be perfect.”

Marie made the call. They took my measurements. The dress would be ready a week from Friday in Arlington. It was up to my mother to arrange for delivery.

I had no idea how much money my mother had just spent, but it had to have been a lot to put such a big smile on Marie’s face.