He smiled. “Don’t you know how anxious a boy can be?”
“If I didn’t, I know now,” I said, closing the door behind me.
He looked from me to the house and then back at me. “Anything wrong?”
“No,” I said, now beginning to feel bad. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound so sharp.”
“No problem. I have Band-Aids in the car,” he joked, and reached for my hand. He stopped us halfway to his car and turned around to look at me. “Something has your blood up, but I have to say, it’s pretty sexy.”
Now I really did feel the blood rush to my face. Kane was the first boy who had ever said I was sexy. “Thanks. I think,” I said, and we continued to his car.
After we got in and he started the engine, he turned to me with that winning soft half smile of his and asked, “Why did you say ‘I think’? Don’t you like being sexy?”
“I’m not sure what it means. Some of the girls are so obvious about it. Boys call them sexy, but I don’t want to be that sort of girl.”
“You’re definitely not.”
“What am I, then?”
“I told you. You’re a surprise. At least, to me.” He started to back out but then put his foot on the brake and turned back to me. “And maybe even to yourself.”
“I heard from some other girls you’ve driven crazy that you like to speak in riddles.”
He laughed and continued backing out, turning, and heading us away. “It’s not a riddle. I’m having trouble explaining it, that’s all. I feel like I’m at the grand opening, the revealing of a new model.”
“Like a car? One of your father’s new-model cars?”
“Use what you know, Mr. Stiegman says in English class.”
“Check my tires,” I quipped.
“I plan to. Later.”
“All right. I’ll bite. Why am I like a grand opening?”
“You’re discovering who you are, and I’m with you at just the right moment,” he said. “Is that okay?”
I was silent. He was right about me. Kane wasn’t simply a good-looking, popular, rich, intelligent, and athletic boy. He was sensitive, too. And that was something I really had not expected. Could you really fall in love with someone when you were this young, and if you did, what would happen? You had so much further to go in your life, so many other people, boys, men you would meet. How was it possible to make any sort of real commitment to someone before you experienced any of that?
I did once read that you should fall in love many times, each time just a little more deeply. It was like drilling a well. Each affair brought you closer to understanding what it was going to be like when you were finally there. Was that all romantic gobbledygook?
As if he could read my thoughts, Kane glanced at me and said, “Relax. Let’s just have a good time and not be so analytical.”
“Said the spider to the fly.”
He laughed hard for a moment and then shook his head when he looked at me again. “Kristin Masterwood, I think I’m going to fall in love with you, and you’re going to break my heart. But I’m going to enjoy every moment,” he added.
His words had the ring of honesty and for the first time, I wondered if I could trust him with what I was reading. My father would be very angry if I did, but something inside me was longing for another pair of eyes, another mind to help me understand and clearly see what really did happen in Foxworth Hall decades ago to four innocent children, two of whom were, like me, just discovering who they really were.
The moment I set eyes again on Kane’s home, this time knowing I was going to go inside, another question about Christopher occurred to me. Was the impression the huge mansion made on him when they had first arrived, even at night and at a back entrance, at least part of the reason he was so trusting and hopeful?
To think that his mother’s family, estranged as they had been, owned something so regal must have given him confidence in his mother’s plans. Just as clothes, cars, and jewels could convince you of someone’s importance, a mansion like Foxworth Hall had to have filled Christopher with a sense of real hope. Those people, his grandparents, could easily save them from disaster. It would be a drop in the bucket to them.
Seeing the Hill house from the road as Dad and I rode past it was one thing, but approaching it through the elaborate cast-iron gates and going up the winding driveway with its perfectly spaced maple trees lining the sides, even now nearly leafless but still impressive, overwhelmed me. It was easy to believe important things happened on this elaborate estate and that the people who owned it could easily change, influence, help, or hurt so many other people.
My eyes went everywhere, like the eyes of someone feasting on a world-famous place like the Taj Mahal in India or Buckingham Palace in London. Beneath the trees that lined the driveway was a bed of multicolored leaves not yet cleared away. Kane told me his mother liked the colors to linger as long as possible. His father wanted “the mess” cleared up, but he always waited for her to give him the word every year. The driveway lights were subtle and low, all solar-powered, which I knew was more expensive and something recently done. At the top, the driveway became circular and had an island of plants, trees, pottery, and stone at the center. And at the center of that was a statue of a lion with water flowing from its mouth.
“Where did you get that fountain?” I couldn’t help asking immediately.
“My mother had it imported from Florence, Italy,” he said.
No less impressive was the front entrance. Thanks to my father, I knew the giant pair of raised panel doors with raised molding on both sides was made of mahogany. There was leaded antique glass in the sidelights and transom. Four pillars on the redbrick front patio gave it the Tara look. Kane drove halfway around the circle and then off to the right to reach the very well-disguised six-car garage, one space reserved for his car. One was for his sister’s car when she was home, and there was one for each of his mother’s two cars and two for his father’s current cars. Kane reminded me that his father had a Bentley dealership, too, and mainly drove the latest model.
When the door went up, I realized the six-car garage was probably wider from one side to the other than our entire house. We got out, and Kane opened the door to a small entryway and a hallway.
“The kitchen’s on the left,” he said. “This hallway leads to the downstairs hall and my father’s home office, our dining room, living room, larger den, where we’ll have our party, and smaller den. Off to the right is where Lourdes Rosario lives. She’s been with us since I was two, I think. As I said, she’s off tonight and tomorrow and visiting her cousin in Richmond.”
“One woman cleans this whole house?” I asked, impressed with the crown moldings on the hallway walls and the care taken with the round corners, which were part of the finishing when it was constructed. Probably no other girl would be, but I was, after all, my father’s daughter. The floors were a beige Spanish tile. Along the way were niches for art, small statues, and figurines that I recognized to be expensive Lladro and Herend porcelain.
“No, she brings in her three nieces twice a week,” Kane said. “Dad has a groundskeeper who has a small crew. They’re here five days a week, but everyone’s off this weekend. I made sure we had plenty of paper plates and cups and plastic spoons, forks, and knives. There’ll be little to clean up afterward.”
“You hope,” I said.
He led me into the kitchen.
“I don’t remember anyone talking about you ever having a party here.”
“I had a few small things but nothing like this,” he said. “When I was little, they had birthday parties here, for my sister and me. Mostly relatives. We’ve got a lot of relatives,” he added. “As Dad became more and more successful, more came out of the woodwork, as he says. How about you?”
“Just an uncle and an aunt. My uncle’s coming to visit us on Monday. He’s my father’s younger brother.”
“No leftover Foxworths?” he asked. He turned when I didn’t respond. “I
mean, none of them ever tried to contact your family?”
“No.”
He shrugged. “Probably a good thing,” he said. “If you consider the crazy story about the kids up in the attic coming out distorted or something.”
The words were on the tip of my tongue. I wanted to say that whatever the children eventually did in that attic and afterward wasn’t solely their fault. I had the urge to defend them and tell him that I wouldn’t mind them contacting me, but I kept silent. He’d surely want to know why I had that opinion, and it might lead me accidentally to mentioning the diary.
We began to take out the plates, cups, napkins, and plastic dinnerware to set up the counters where everyone would go to get food and drink later.
“How many have you invited?” I asked.
“About thirty, I think.”
“You think?”
“I don’t remember. We’ll find out when the party starts.”
When we were finished, he led me down the hallway to what he had called the larger den. It was more like a grand ballroom in an upscale hotel. He said his parents used it for their parties, some of which were fund-raisers for political candidates.
“Thirty people will get lost in here,” I said. “Are those tables and chairs around the room always here?”
“No. Before he and his crew left for the day, I had Curtis put them out the way he does for parties. Curtis is the house manager and grounds manager. We’ll get it all put away again before my parents return.”
“There’s a house manager?”
He just smiled.
“So from what you’re saying, your parents really don’t know about the party?”
“Oh, they know. It’s their way of testing me, I’m sure,” he said.
“Why did you decide to have the party? It can’t be only because you’re alone in this . . . palace,” I said.
“Why, to impress you. Why else?” he said, smiling.
I looked at him skeptically, but he didn’t break his smile. “You didn’t need to throw a party to impress me, Kane.”
“I know, but I like to hedge my bets,” he joked, or maybe didn’t. “Let me show you a little more of the house.”
He took my hand and led me through the hallway to look at the formal living room, the dining room, and a smaller den with a pool table and walls lined with shelves and shelves of books.
“It rivals the school library,” I said.
“Believe it or not, my father can tell when one is missing. Many of these books are first editions. My mother is into art; Dad is into antiques. There’s too much to show you in one day, and besides, I don’t want to share your attention with too much more. C’mon. We still have a good hour before our guests arrive.”
“Our guests?”
“They’re your guests now, too,” he insisted.
He led me to the winding stairway, with its polished mahogany balustrade and dark brown carpeted steps. All the bedrooms were upstairs. His was off to the right, and his sister’s was just down from his.
“This is embarrassing,” he said the moment we stepped into his bedroom. “My mother designed it for a prince.”
“No kidding,” I said. “Though a prince might not have as nice a bedroom.”
If I were to measure it against anything we had, I’d say his bedroom was as large as our living room and dining room combined. On the left was an entirely separate area for his computer desk, shelves, and some electronics, including speakers for his own music. The floors were done in a dark blue tile with area rugs. All of the lights were recessed. On the right was the doorway to his en suite bathroom. Through the open door, I could see a shower probably three times the size of mine with multiple shower heads. I imagined that the door down from the bathroom doorway was his closet.
His king-size dark maple bed had a headboard embossed with trees and birds, some in flight, some settled on branches.
“Quite a headboard.”
“My mother had that custom-made. It’s an illustration from a children’s book I loved when I was about four. She said I always told her I wanted to sleep in the forest depicted in the book. Now I do. Over the top, wouldn’t you say?”
“Everything about this house is over the top, Kane, but your father worked for it. I’m sure he’s proud of what he’s accomplished.”
“You have a lot of compassion in you, Kristin, even for the rich.”
“Why do the rich need our compassion?”
“I remember what you said when we were at the Foxworth lake.”
“What did I say?”
“You asked if I thought money made people happy when I said they should have been happy there because of how much they had.”
“That was different. They didn’t use their wealth to help each other.”
He cocked his head to one side and looked at me, half joking, half serious. “Why do I get the feeling you know a lot more about them then you let on?”
I didn’t answer.
“I want to show you something,” he said, and led me deeper into his room. There were two large windows, one on each side of his bed. He took me to the right window and opened the curtain wider. “We’re looking west,” he said.
I gazed at the acres of trees, spotted here and there with homes and a highway that snaked along and disappeared over a small rise. It had grown much darker, so windows were lit in the homes and car headlights looked like the eyes of robotic creatures slithering through the darkness. “So? What am I looking at?”
“I don’t remember it, of course, but we could see Foxworth Hall from here before the last fire. The trees weren’t as grown up. There were many fewer houses between it and here, and the mansion loomed above everything. I was just five and a half when the place burned down, so I don’t have any memory of the fire, but my sister does. She told me she came into my room back then to watch it all from this window.”
“Darlena would have been about eleven.”
“I know. I understand it was practically an inferno. They thought that the woods might catch fire back then and maybe even spread over so many acres that it would threaten other homes. She said the sky was lit up so brightly the stars disappeared.”
“That would be impressive,” I said.
“Probably as impressive as the first fire, maybe more because of the added trees and stuff.”
I knew it was a strange feeling to have, but suddenly, Kane was more important to me because of what he was saying, what his sister remembered, and what could once be seen from his bedroom window.
“Next time she’s home, I’ll ask her to tell you what she remembers,” he said. “She’s got one of those photographic memories. She can recall the details of every doll she ever had and especially movie scenes, even the ones she saw at an early age. She’s already been accepted into the NYU graduate school film-study program, you know.”
“Oh. How exciting. I would enjoy talking to her, I’m sure.”
“Didn’t your father ever tell you about the last fire?”
“Not really. He just says it was big. Of course, we don’t have this view.”
“Right.”
“However, I know that for our community, Foxworth Hall’s second demise, with all its mystique, was something historic. It was like having witnessed a famous earthquake or a volcano erupt again, I guess.”
“Exactly.”
“What were you told about the first fire?” I asked him. “I mean, it must have come up from time to time. I’m sure your father knows a lot about it.”
“Nothing firsthand. That was more than forty years ago. He talks more about the second fire. He said it seemed to burn forever. My mother said it was like the burning of Atlanta in Gone with the Wind. She’s prone to exaggeration, but the fire department could do little to save it, just like the first time. No one died in that fire because the house had been abandoned, and as you know, the bank got stuck with the property. Once in a while, I look out here and try to imagine what the fires were like. I do remember overheari
ng my parents and some friends talking about the first fire one night and someone saying, ‘Imagine if it had happened years before, when those poor children were locked in that attic.’ It gave me nightmares when I was younger.”
“It seems it gave lots of people nightmares and still does, even after all these years,” I muttered.
“Right. But I used to worry about being up here. I couldn’t exactly just jump out this window. Kinda high up. My father assured me we had the most sophisticated fire protection and warnings any home could have. You know . . .”
“Sprinkler system and smoke detectors,” I said. I looked up at his ceiling and pointed to two nozzles.
“Exactly.”
“How come you didn’t mention all this when we went up to the Foxworth property, especially what it was like seeing the mansion burn a second time?”
“I didn’t want you to think I had a weird interest in it like so many in this town do. I wasn’t sure how you felt about it. I know you’re sensitive about being asked questions and talking about being related, even though you’re a distant relative.”
“A very distant relative,” I said.
“Are you upset about me telling you all this?”
“No,” I said. “Actually, I appreciate it.”
“Good. I didn’t want to do anything to spoil the evening, but . . .”
“You didn’t. Stop worrying about it.”
He nodded and then widened his eyes. “Oh heck, I forgot to keep the gate open. We’ll have them buzzing us like crazy.”
He went to his phone and punched in a code. “Now we can relax,” he said. “Come on. Let’s organize the music for the night. We have a full media room that coordinates what is heard and seen throughout the house. The house has internal video security.”
We started out. I paused in the doorway and looked back at the window from which his sister had witnessed the second fire at Foxworth. He paused, too. “How old is this place?” I asked.
“It wasn’t here when the children were supposedly up there, if that’s what you want to know,” he replied. “If you believe the stories, they were there about 1957, ’58. That’s more than fifty years ago. That’s probably why so much of it is confusing and distorted. Anyone around who was our age then is in his or her seventies now. Anyway, this house is only twenty years old, and it’s been remodeled, expanded in some way, almost every year after it was first built. My father built it. There was no other house on the property. No one lived here and witnessed the first fire from here, so there was no other property owner who told my father firsthand stuff. He and my mother know only the junk everyone else seems to know. And neither of them thinks about you inheriting Foxworth madness just because your mother was a distant cousin or something. Our children won’t be weird,” he added.