“There’s a lot of chatter in here, and it doesn’t sound like schoolwork.”
The three of us looked toward the door, where Grandmother stood.
“Then you must not have been listening real hard,” Alex told her. “We were just talking about the famous Greek writer, Homer.”
“I believe that, and you’ll tell me another one,” Grandmother replied.
“I heard someone mention Shakespeare,” he added.
“Save your lines for your girlfriends, Alex.”
To my amazement, she was smiling.
He grinned at her. “My father said to tell you he’s still hoping you’ll change your mind and let him interview you for his Eastern Shore history.”
“Your father will be hoping till Doomsday, at which point no one will be interested.”
Alex laughed. “He wants one of the professors in his department to have a look at the old mill.”
“I don’t know why your father persists in thinking of me as anything but a grouchy old woman, who means no when she says no.”
“It’s the newspapers,” Alex replied. “You’re the only person in town who reads as many newspapers and magazines as he does. No matter what I tell him about you, he’s convinced you’re not all bad.”
Grandmother clucked.
She liked this teasing, I realized. In some ways she was like me, always ready with a comeback, enjoying the give and take. Except she didn’t enjoy it with me.
“It’s time to get to work,” she said, her voice turning prim, like a girl who’d decided her flirting had gone on too long. “I want to hear lessons,” she said as she exited the room.
Matt tossed several notebooks on his desk.
“Golden retrievers are terrific dogs,” I remarked, looking again at the picture in my hands. “How long did you have him?”
“Two years.”
“What happened?”
“When we moved out, my mother said I had to get rid of him.”
First his parents separated, then his mother got rid of his dog? “That’s terrible! Homer was yours.”
“It was no big deal,” he replied, shrugging it off.
“Faker,” I said softly.
I saw a flicker of emotion in his eyes, then he reached for the picture. “We should put this back.” He set it gently on the shelf.
“Well, thanks for the use of your computer.”
“Sure.” His voice was quieter than usual.
“Hope I’ll see you around, Megan,” Alex said.
“Yeah, me, too,” I replied, pretty certain I wouldn’t, not if he hung out with Matt.
“When do you turn on the heat?” I asked, soaking my hands in the hot dishwater, wishing the rest of me felt as warm. I had taken a walk before dinner and come back chilled. The cold fried chicken and potato salad hadn’t warmed me up any.
“November,” Matt answered, “if we’re lucky. It’s a big house to heat and Grandmother watches her money.”
I didn’t complain further, not wanting to seem like a wimp from the sunny Southwest. But having left behind ninety-degree days, I was freezing when the temperature plummeted to the low fifties. The dampness here added a raw edge that went right through my bones.
Drying my hands, I went upstairs to put on a heavy sweater, then joined Grandmother in the library for an evening of reading the newspaper. A few minutes later, Matt came in carrying several logs.
“What are you doing?” Grandmother asked him.
“Building a fire.”
She studied him for a moment, then looked at me with my turtleneck yanked up to my ears and my sweater sleeves down to my knuckles. “How thoughtful.”
The sarcasm in her voice made me reluctant to thank Matt in front of her. Besides, Grandmother was wearing a thick sweater, too; maybe he was doing this for her.
Matt built the fire, arranging the logs and stacking the kindling in a quiet, methodical way. He had rolled up his sleeves so I could see the muscles in his forearms. His hands were large, with the wide palms and long, strong fingers of an athlete. I wondered what it would be like to hold hands with him, then quickly squelched that thought.
He struck a match. As soon as it was dropped on the crumpled newspaper, I was down on the floor, close to the hearth. He dropped in another match. A piece of newspaper flared up, then collapsed quickly into ash. Small sticks caught and made crackling noises. Big sticks burned and the outside of a heavy log began to char.
Matt turned to me. “If you keep sighing like that, you’re going to blow out the fire.”
I covered my mouth with my hand. A smile touched the corners of his lips.
“I love fires,” I said.
“No kidding.” Maybe it was the hissing log that made his words seem softer.
I suddenly became aware of Grandmother observing us with a sour look on her face. I sat back quickly and spread the newspaper on the bricks in front of me, then lay on my stomach and began to read. The golden light flickered over the paper. I could feel its warmth on my face.
Matt found the sports page and lay on his stomach about a foot away from me. I didn’t look back at Grandmother, figuring we would have heard if she had any objections to our reading on the floor. I was more relaxed than I’d been since leaving home. Soon the print in front of me got blurry and my head felt too heavy to hold up.
I don’t know how long I slept, probably just a few minutes. The sound of a shifting log awakened me. When I opened my eyes I saw that Matt had stopped reading. His face was turned toward me, his eyes, like dark embers, watching me.
Look away, I thought. Turn away now before it’s too late.
But I couldn’t. Gazing back into his eyes, I felt something stir inside me, some feeling so deep, so secret, my own heart couldn’t whisper the words to me.
Grandmother coughed and Matt and I glanced aside at the same time. I sat up and moved over two feet, so I could sit with my back against a chair. Matt poked at the fire.
That’s when I noticed it, above Matt’s shoulder, on a shelf to the left of the mantel.
“Grandmother, look. Your Bible.”
She glanced at me, then her head jerked in the direction that I pointed. Her mouth opened with surprise. She sat still in her chair as if she couldn’t believe she was seeing it. I scrambled to my feet, retrieved the Bible, and carried it over to her. When she didn’t take it from my hands, I laid it in her lap.
“Which of you wicked children put it there?” she demanded.
Matt and I looked at each other. “Neither,” I said after a moment.
“Liar!”
I stepped back. Matt got a guarded look on his face.
Grandmother started paging through the heavy book, then looked up at the gap on the shelf where the Bible had been. The pale blue of her eyes thinned inside a ring of white. “Put something there, Matt. Now!” she cried. “Put it there!”
Matt picked up several magazines and stuffed them in the space. “Are you all right?”
Her hands were shaking badly. “I’m looking for Corinthians,” she said.
“Can I help?” I asked.
“You stay away.”
I retreated to a chair.
“I have it,” she said, and began to read Paul’s famous passage about charity-what love is and isn’t. Her voice quivered when she read how all things but love would pass away. Matt stood close to her, his face lined with concern. Despite what he had said before, he must have been worried about her state of mind. It was her intensity, the anger and suspicion with which she spoke, more than what she said, that was frightening.
She looked up suddenly. “Finish it, Matt. Verses eleven and twelve.”
“Why don’t we finish it later?” he suggested quietly.
“I want to hear it now.”
“You know I don’t like to read aloud.”
“Read it!” She shoved the book in his hands.
He hesitated, then took a deep breath and carried the Bible to her desk. Sitting down in front of the
book, he focused on the page for a few moments, marking the place with his finger.
“When I was a . . . a child/’ he began, “I... played-”
“Spake!” she corrected him.
“I spake as a ch-child, 1... understand-”
“Understood”
“I understood as a child.” His face was tense with concentration. “I tough as-”
“Thought!”
“I thought as . . . a child.”
I listened with disbelief. Matt could barely read.
“But where I because a name-”
“But when I became a man,” Grandmother said in a low, ugly voice.
He nodded and swallowed. “I . . . put . . . away childish thoughts.”
“Things. Give it to me, Matt.”
“You wanted me to read,” he said, his jaw clenched. “I’m going to finish it.”
I closed my eyes, wishing I weren’t there.
“For no, we see . . . uh-”
“Through a glass darkly,” I said softly.
“For now we see through a glass darkly; but the-but then . . . fa-face to face; No I now-” He shook his head and started again. “-Now I know in part; but there-then shall I now-know-ever as also I am known.”
The passage was finally over. Matt looked grim and humiliated; I knew anything I said would only make it worse for him.
Anger simmered inside me. I didn’t know what made Grandmother act the way she did. It was as if certain things could turn on a switch in her and make her cold and mean. What dark, distorted glass did she look through when she got this way?
I couldn’t begin to guess. Only one thing was clear to me: Matt was dyslexic and Grandmother was trying desperately to shame him in front of me.
eight
I awoke Monday morning just as the sky was getting bright. I knew I was at Grandmother’s house, but something was different about the pale gray light. It reflected off a ceiling that was too close. My eyes traveled down to the walls. Faded roses, huge as headlights, surrounded me. I wasn’t in my room. I sat up quickly and realized the surface beneath me was hard. I’d been sleeping on the floor of a small room that was wallpapered in roses.
I scrambled to my feet and went to a window. Below me was the herb garden and the long tin roof that covered the kitchen porch. I was in the back wing, in the room next to the one with the dormer windows where I had found the dollhouse. The closed door to my right must have led to that room. Opposite from it was an open door that revealed five steps, which rose to the second floor hall of the main house.
I walked slowly around the empty room, trying to remember how I had gotten here. I couldn’t recall waking up and moving. Was I sleepwalking? I had done it once or twice as a kid. I struggled to remember last night’s dreams, hoping for some clue as to why I had left my room. All I could remember was something round, a circle with bumps or marks on its circumference.
I wondered who had used this room and for what. Perhaps it was a housekeeper’s or maid’s room. Then I recalled what Alice, the customer at Yesterdaze, had said. “I’ve seen the ghost. In the rear wing, in the room above the kitchen.”
The skin at the back of my neck prickled. Avril? I mouthed her name, afraid to say it aloud, as if I had the power to summon her. Had she been here last night? Had I followed her here?
“Get a grip, Megan,” I muttered.
Wrapping my arms tightly around myself, I tiptoed back to my room. I didn’t know what unnerved me more: the possibility that Avril was real, or the fact that I could do something and have absolutely no memory of it.
The second time I awoke it was after eight o’clock, and Matt had already left for school. In the bright light the objects in my room-my hairbrush, the romantic paperback, the sweatshirt I’d left draped over a chair—seemed startlingly normal. I got up and began to brush my hair, standing in a swatch of sunlight, hoping it would melt away my uncertainty and fear. Everyone has nightmares, I told myself. As for the change in rooms, I had been sleepwalking.
Arriving downstairs, I found Grandmother pacing. When I greeted her in the hall, she jumped.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
“My clock is missing.”
“Which clock, Grandmother?”
She looked at me as if I should know. “The antique that sat on my desk in the library.”
“You mean the little gold one, the one with a picture painted on its face?”
“Where did you put it?” she demanded as if I’d just admitted guilt.
Indignation flared up in me. But I had moved myself without realizing it; how could I be sure I hadn’t moved a clock? And the fragment of my dream, a circle with marks on it-wasn’t that like the face of a clock?
“I don’t remember putting it anywhere,” I told her honestly. “Have you asked Matt?”
“No, of course not. I can’t trust him anymore.”
“Why not?” I asked, walking over to the library door, scanning the shelves and tabletops.
“He has other loyalties now.” She said the words slowly, as if they held great meaning.
I moved across the hall to the dining room, my eyes sweeping that room-side tables, windowsills, mantel-any ledge that could support a small clock.
“Grandmother, it’s obvious that he loves you and wants to help you however he can. Though I don’t know why, when you’re so mean to him.”
I walked down the hall and looked in the front parlor. “You were awful last night,” I went on. “Matt has a learning disability. It has nothing to do with intelligence, but it makes school hard. You had no right to embarrass him the way you did.”
Grandmother raised her head, like a cat picking up a new scent. “Well, now, instead of going after Matt with that smart little mouth of yours, you’re defending him.”
“I can do both.”
“Have you become friends? I believe you have,” she said before I could answer. “You’re working together, aren’t you? He’s siding with you now.”
I shook my head in amazement and passed her in the hall, crossing over to the music room.
“You two are playing tricks on me!”
“No, Grandmother, we are not.”
“Where is the clock?” she asked.
My eyes surveyed the room one more time. “1 have no idea.”
Fortunately, I had agreed to work for Ginny from ten to three that day and could get away from the house for a while. I didn’t mention to her the strange things that had been happening, afraid that she might call my mother or insist I stay with her. I was spooked, but determined to figure out what was going on, which meant I had to stay at the house.
Before I knew it, it was three-fifteen and Ginny was shooing me out the door of Yesterdaze. I walked up High Street and had just passed Tea Leaves, when I heard a girl’s voice calling to me.
“Megan. Hey, Megan. Up here!” From a second-story window in the next building, Sophie’s ponytail dangled like a fiery flag. “I want to ask you something. Can you come up?”
“Sure,” I replied. “Is this where you live?”
Sophie laughed and I stepped back to look at the brick building. It was long, with a porch roof running from end to end, extending over the sidewalk. Next to the front door was a brass lantern and sign: The Mallard Tavern, 1733.
“It’s a B and B, bed and breakfast,” Sophie explained. “Mom cleans it and I help out after school. Door’s open.”
I entered the front hall and climbed the carpeted steps, following the sound of a vacuum cleaner. When I arrived on the second floor, the machine shut off and Sophie stuck her head out a door. “The weekenders are gone,” she said. “Mom’s down washing sheets and towels. Come on in.”
The room she was cleaning was homey, with red and white wallpaper, a canopy bed, and chairs pulled close to a small fireplace.
“I looked for you at the dance Saturday night,” Sophie said.
I figured she had invited me up to ask about my cousin. “I’d like to have gone, but Matt do
esn’t want me hanging around his friends. Like I said before, there’s really not much I can tell you about him.”
“Her,” Sophie corrected me.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s a her I want to ask about.” She shook out a clean bottom sheet. “Avril Scarborough. Do you know her?” She watched my face and waited for my response.
“You mean the ghost?”
“Have you seen her?” she asked.
I walked to the other side of the double bed, caught the edge of the sheet, and slipped it over two corners of the mattress. “Have you?”
“I asked you first,” she said, then laughed. “Once I did.”
“When? Where?”
“Back in sixth grade,” she replied, tugging down her corners and smoothing the sheet. “1 was still hanging out with Kristy then and she had a sleepover. We paid her older sister to drive us to Scarborough House at four in the morning. Avril usually shows up just before dawn in the back wing.”
My breath caught. Then I reminded myself that people would expect to see a ghost in an abandoned part of a house, and people saw what they expected. I had seen what I expected after hearing Alice’s story.
“It was a bust,” Sophie continued. “Everybody got tired and whiney. Kristy’s sister got mad, piled us back in the car, and headed toward town again.”
“So when did you see her?”
“That same night, when we were crossing the bridge over Wist Creek.”
Sophie shook out a top sheet. We worked together to slip it under the lower end of the mattress and pull it up evenly.
“How do you know what you saw?” I asked. “How do you know it was Avril, or even a she?”
Sophie tossed me a pillow, then thought for a moment. “I guess there was something about the shape. It was thin and moved in a graceful kind of way. She seemed more like a girl than a woman.”
“Did anybody else see her that night?”
“Nobody. I got teased a lot,” Sophie added, then shrugged. “I’ve always seen things other people don’t, now I just don’t tell anyone.” We pulled the spread up over the pillows. “I guess you know how that is.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re psychic, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Me? No!”