The Knight (Endgame #2)(16)
We reach my driveway, the limo rocking over the old cobblestone. I stare out the window at the unkempt bushes, the forlorn birdbath. Everything in disrepair. “Would you say he’s a good man?”
“No, miss.”
“Why not?”
“Because he wouldn’t like me saying so. He wants everyone to think he’s dangerous and cruel. Sometimes he is. But only when he needs to be.” He pulls the limo to a slow halt in the circular drive. His eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror. “I’d call him a fair man. You take care of him, he’ll take care of you.”
Chapter Eleven
I grew up in this house, stealing warm cookies from the baking sheet when Rosita made them, finding every nook and cranny to hide my dolls. And after my mother died, the house became my conduit to her. A temple with which both my father and I worshipped her memory.
Anticipation speeds my heartbeat as I cross the front walk.
The engraving on the front door looks foreign after only a few weeks away. I examine it with the kind of detachment I might use in an art gallery. Beautiful architectural detail. Nothing more.
It doesn’t feel like home.
That will change once I’ve won the auction. It has to.
Inside the air feels different. More dusty. More dry. The rooms are mostly bare from when I sold the furniture to estate dealers and antique stores, desperate for money. Not enough. Never enough until I auctioned the most valuable piece left—myself.
Upstairs I find my bedroom the way I left it, a plain mattress on the floor. Some old posters on the wall—overly colorful kittens and the grinning face of a male pop star. The room of a teenager, never updated when I moved to college and definitely not when I came back.
It’s a little like looking at a museum. A sepia photograph.
History, not the present.
That will change once I have the house back, once I can take down the posters and buy back antique furniture for the rooms. A small voice whispers, what if it doesn’t? Except if I’m not fighting for my mother’s house, I don’t know what to fight for. This is all I have left.
A shiver runs through me, as if the house is haunted.
I leave the room and wander the empty hallways, aimless and melancholy. And it strikes me suddenly that I might be the specter haunting the house. My sudden laugh cuts off abruptly, strange in the hollow space.
At the end of the hall a small door leads to old metal stairs. I spent some time in the dusty attic when my father got sick, sifting through stacks of antique headboards and trunks of old dresses. Some of it was sold along with the furniture in the house. Whatever’s left was too broken or too personal to be of any value.
The lights don’t work up here, the wiring too old and faulty. Instead I pulled down boards from the stained glass window so I could see. As soon as I open the low door, blue and yellow light floats down from the top. The smell of old paper and cedar draws me up the stairs. Stained boxes hold the only things with any meaning left in the house.
I kneel beside one and find Christmas decorations, an angel’s wings chewed through by some long-dead rodent. Another box has pictures, and I smile at the sight of my father. Tears prick my eyes. I visited him in the hospital two days ago, after his heart attack. He was barely conscious, still recovering and heavily medicated, which was almost a relief.
When he wakes up, he’ll have questions. I’m not sure how to tell him that I lost the house, that I auctioned my virginity to get it back.
Not sure how to tell him that it was all for nothing.
If I win the auction today, I won’t have to tell him anything. He’ll be able to return home, to live out his final days in the only place that reminds him of my mother.
Dust-coated brocade drapes pile on top of a box in the corner. I shove them aside, sneezing at the cloud that rises. The window shines a purple hue on stacks of yellowed paper. Invitations to coming-out balls and engagement parties. Correspondence with my father’s friends from his alma mater.
From a sheath of newspaper clippings, a book slips out. A thud on the floor resounds in the musty air. I pick up the book made of old leather, soft to the touch, wrapped with a long strip of the same material. There’s nothing marking the cover. I open it, revealing thin pages hand stitched. The first page has only one thing scrawled in perfect, looping penmanship: Helen Avery Lancaster. My mother’s maiden name.
My knees weaken, and I sink onto the nearest closed trunk.
A turn of the page reveals more of her handwriting in straight lines across.
Since my debut is in one week, it seems fitting to begin a new journal. This is my new life as an adult, eligible to be married—and to hear Mother tell it, as quickly as possible. I understand what’s at stake. Although Mother refuses to speak about such uncouth matters as money, Father isn’t nearly so circumspect.
Still, I won’t say yes to the first boy who offers for me.
No matter how rich he is.
A diary, from before my mother married my father. Maybe even before she met him. My heart expands, filling my chest and pressing against my ribs. I’ve seen a hundred pictures, spoken to her husband, her friends, but I’ve never heard her words. Never imagined I would get to see through her eyes.
“I thought I’d find you here.”
I whirl to face Gabriel Miller, my heart beating too fast from my discovery. He’s wearing an overcoat still dappled with rain, hair dampened, eyes glinting gold. I’m breathless and a little bit wary. Somehow the diary ends up tucked behind me, hiding it before I’ve fully decided to.