“See, this plaster is firm,” he explained. “It’s almost surely the original, but it was done by master craftsmen. They probably ran those crown moldings by hand. There aren’t even the minimum cracks you’d expect from settlement. When I get under the house I’m going to find these are chain walls that go clear down to the ground, and that the sills that support this house are enormous. They have to be. Everything is level, firm.”
“And I thought it was hopeless when I first saw it.”
“Take this old wallpaper down with your imagination,” he said. “Paint the walls in your mind’s eyes with bright warm colors. See all this woodwork shining white and clean.”
“It’s ours now,” she whispered. “Yours and mine. We’re writing the file from now on.”
“The File on Rowan and Michael,” he said with a faint smile. He paused at the top of the stairs. “Things up here on the second floor are simpler. The ceilings are about a foot lower, and you don’t have the ornate crown moldings. It’s all a smaller scale.”
She laughed and shook her head. “And how high are these smaller rooms, thirteen feet, perhaps?”
They turned and went down the hall to the first bedroom on the very front of the house. Its windows opened both to the front and the side porches. Belle’s prayer book lay on the chest of drawers, with her name engraved in the cover in gold letters. There were photographs in gilt frames behind dim glass hanging on dulled and rusted chains.
“Julien again. Has to be,” said Michael. “And Mary Beth, look, that woman looks like you, Rowan.”
“So they told me,” she said softly.
Belle’s rosary, with her named engraved on the back of the crucifix, lay still on the pillow of the four-poster bed. Dust rose from the feather comforter when Michael touched it. A wreath of roses peered down at him from the satin tester above.
Gloomy it all seemed with its fading flowered paper, and the heavy armoires tilting ever so slightly forward, and the carpet threadbare and the color of dust itself. The branches of the oaks looked like ghosts beyond the pongee curtains. The bathroom was clean and very plain-tile from Stella’s time, Michael figured. A great old tub such as one still finds now and then in old hotels, and a high pedestal lavatory, and stacks of towels, layered with dust, on a wicker stand.
“Oh, but Michael, this is the best room,” Rowan said behind him. “This is the one that opens to the south and the west. Help me with this window.”
They forced the stubborn sash. “It’s like being in a tree house,” she said as she stepped outside on the deep front gallery. She laid her hand on the fluted Corinthian column and looked into the twisted branches of the oaks. “Look, Michael, there are ferns growing in the branches, hundreds of little green ferns. And there, a squirrel. No, there are two of them. We’ve frightened them. This is so strange. It’s like we’re in the woods, and we can jump out there and start climbing. We could just wander heavenward through this tree.”
Michael tested the rafters underneath. “Solid, just like everything else. And the iron lace isn’t rusted, not really. All it needs is paint.” No leaks in the roof above either.
Just waiting, waiting all this time to be restored. He stopped, and slipped off his khaki jacket. The heat was getting to him finally, even here where the river breezes did flood by.
He slung the jacket over his shoulder and held it with one hooked finger.
Rowan stood, with arms folded, leaning on the cast-iron railing. She looked out over the quiet still corner.
He was looking down through the tangle of the little sweet olive trees, at the front gate. He was seeing himself as a boy standing there, just seeing himself so clearly. She clasped his hand suddenly and drew him after her back inside.
“Look, that door connects to the next bedroom. That could be a sitting room, Michael. And both lead on to that side porch.”
He was staring at one of the oval photographs. Stella? Had to be Stella.
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful?” she was saying. “It has to be the sitting room.”
He glanced down again at the white leather cover of the prayer book with the words Belle Mayfair inscribed in gold. Just for a second, he thought, Touch it. And to think, Belle was so sweet, so good.
How could Belle hurt you? You’re in this house and not using the power.
“Michael?”
But he couldn’t do it. If he began, how could he stop? And it would kill him, those electrical shocks passing through him, and the blindness, the inevitable blindness when the images swam around him like murky water, and the cacophony of all the voices. No. You don’t have to. Nobody has told you that you have to.
The thought suddenly that someone might make him do it, might tear off the glove and force his hand on these objects, made him cringe. He felt cowardly. And Rowan was calling him. He looked down at the prayer book as he moved away.
“Michael, this must have been Millie’s room. It has a fireplace, too.” She stood before a high dresser, holding a small monogrammed handkerchief. “These rooms are like shrines,” she said.
Beyond the long window, the bougainvillea grew so thick over the side porch that the lower railings could no longer be seen. This was the porch above Deirdre’s porch. Open, because only that lower part had been screened in.
“Yes, all these rooms have fireplaces,” he said absently, his eyes on the fluorescent purple blossoms of the bougainvillea. “I’m going to have a look at the firebricks in the chimneys. These little shallow grates were never used for wood, they were used for coal.”
Now they housed gas heaters, and he rather liked that, for in all this time, he’d never seen a little gas heater blazing away in the cozy winter dark, with all those tiny blue and gold flames.
Rowan stood at the closet door. “What is that smell, Michael?”
“Lord, Rowan Mayfair, you never smelled camphor in an old closet?”
She laughed softly. “I’ve never even seen an old closet, Michael Curry. I’ve never lived in an old house, nor visited an old hotel. State of the art was my adoptive father’s motto. Rooftop restaurants and brass and glass. You can’t imagine the lengths to which he went to maintain those standards. And Ellie couldn’t stand the sight of anything old or used. Ellie threw out all her clothes after a year’s wear.”
“You must think you slipped off the planet.”
“No, not really. Just slipped into another interpretation,” she said, her voice trailing off. Thoughtfully she touched the old clothes hanging there. All he saw were shadows.
“And to think,” she whispered, “the century is almost over, and she lived all her life right here in this room.” She stepped back. “God, I hate this wallpaper. Look, there’s a leak up there.”
“Nothing major, honey. Just a little leak. There’s bound to be one or more in a house this size. That’s nothing. But I think the plaster’s dead up there.”
“Dead? The plaster is dead?”
“Too old to take a patch. See the way it’s crumbled. So we’ll put in a new ceiling,” he said, shrugging. “Two days work.”
“You’re a genius.”
He laughed and shook his head.
“Look, there’s an old bathroom there,” she said. “Each room has its own bathroom. I’m trying to see everything cleaned and finished … ”
“I see it,” he said. “I see it all with every step I take.”
Carlotta’s room was the last major room at the end of the hallway-a great gloomy cavern it seemed, with its black four-poster bed and its faded taffeta ruffles, and a few dreary slip-covered chairs. A stale smell rose around them. A bookshelf held law texts and reference books. And there, the rosary and the prayer book as if she’d only just laid them down. Her white gloves in a tangle, and a pair of cameo earrings, and a string of jet beads.
“We used to call those Grandma beads,” he said with vague surprise. “I forgot all about those.” He moved to touch them and then drew back his gloved hand as if he’d drawn near to something hot.
“I don’t like it in here, either,” Rowan whispered. She was hugging the backs of her arms again in that chilled, miserable gesture. Scared maybe. “I don’t want to touch what belonged to her,” she said, looking vaguely repelled by the items strewn on the dresser, repelled by the old furniture, beautiful as it was.
“Ryan will take care of it,” she murmured, becoming ever more uneasy. “He said that Gerald Mayfair will come and take away her things. She left her personal things to Gerald’s grandmother.” At last she turned as if
