Lost Among the Living(29)

I put my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands in a most unladylike manner. “It isn’t just that I don’t want another husband,” I told him. “Any husband. It’s that I truly can’t marry you. The War Office never sent the official notice of his death, and the paperwork is a mess. So under the law I’m not precisely a widow—I’m still his wife. I can’t even get a widow’s pension.”

“That’s beastly,” Martin said softly. “I assume Mother doesn’t know. I’ll be the one to tell her, if you like.”

“She’ll dismiss me if we don’t marry.”

“No, she won’t. Mother has her faults, but she wouldn’t leave a member of the family with no means. Just leave it to me.”

I looked up at him. He spoke with the confidence of an only son who knows his mother will listen to his wishes. “And what will you do about a wife?” I asked.

“I’ll tell her to find me another, of course.”

“That’s madness. Don’t you want to choose your own wife?”

“My wife for how long?” he asked. He gave me a smile. “I’m not quite healthy, and the war nearly did me in. It’s made Mother frantic. If I shuffle off this mortal coil without leaving an heir, all of this will be for nothing.” He gave a grand wave at our surroundings, indicating the house and the woods. “I’ve known my duty since I was a boy—even more so after it became clear that Fran could never marry. Don’t worry about me, Cousin Jo. After the trenches, and then the hospital, it doesn’t seem like such a bad lot.” He pressed his hands to his knees and stood. “Come. I haven’t shown you the house yet.”

He rose from his seat and started slowly off through the trees. When we emerged, I looked at the house, standing tall and silent in the sunlight. There was something sullen about it, as if it kept its secrets on purpose, buried in the tangled brush that surrounded it. As the sunlight winked off the glass of one of the upper windows, I saw a figure looking out at us, but when I looked again, it was gone.

A servant, I thought. One of the maids. That’s all. I forced myself not to hesitate at the front door, not to think of the bloody tracks I’d seen in my dream. I couldn’t start babbling about nightmares, mists, and leaves. Instead, I stared ahead as Martin led me to the staircase.

Upstairs, Martin showed me Dottie’s picture gallery, a massive open space at the east end of the house in which she displayed her paintings. Two workmen were on ladders, rearranging works of art, moving the paintings already on the walls to make room for the new pieces Dottie had just bought. “This room is actually a ballroom,” Martin said, his hushed voice echoing from the walls. “But of course Mother doesn’t use it that way.”

I nodded and followed him. As we crossed the room, I thought footsteps echoed behind us, but it must have been a trick of the acoustics, because when I glanced back, no one was there.

On the same floor, at the other end of the house, were the rooms that included my bedroom. I was the only tenant in this part of the house, he explained, while himself, his parents, and the servants were upstairs. He paused on the stair landing, his hand on the rail, looking up. “Fran’s old room is up there,” he said, his voice quiet. “I suppose no one has emptied it out. I haven’t gone to look. I don’t think—Mother wouldn’t throw away her things.”

I looked at the expression on his face and placed a hand on his wrist. “We don’t have to go up there,” I said softly.

But his usual easygoing humor was draining out of him, leaving his gaze cold and bleak. “It’s a terrible thing to say,” he said, “but it was hard to love Fran. It was hard. You know?”

“I know,” I said, the words pricking my skin like needles as I thought of Mother.

“It was always something.” The words seemed to have come loose in him. “She’d have one of her spells, and the doctors would come. She’d break valuables, shout nonsense at the servants. And sometimes—the screaming.”

I had come home one day, at fifteen, to find that Mother had pulled all of our belongings from the closets and cupboards and piled them in the middle of our tiny flat. She had convinced herself that our landlady watched us somehow, listened to all of our conversations through secret telephone wires she’d laced through the walls, and we needed to move. It had taken days for me to undo the damage and put everything away. I let Martin talk and said nothing.

“She was desperate,” Martin said. “It was part of what made it so hard. Beneath it all, she wanted love so badly. Mother’s, of course, though Father was her favorite. He didn’t speak to her much—Father doesn’t like to deal with difficult things—but Fran would have shined his shoes if he’d let her. As for me, she would throw her arms around my neck, and all I’d be able to think about was that she hadn’t bathed since the last time the nurse had made her do it. Do you know, when I first heard she’d died while I was in the hospital, the second thing I thought was, Thank God it’s over.” He glanced at me. “Not very brotherly, is it?”

I remembered the monument Dottie had bought for her daughter, expensive and overweening. “What was the first thing?” I asked. “The first thing you thought when you heard she was dead?”

He swallowed. “Well, I was very ill, and it was a shock. I’m afraid I wept a little more than is considered manly. But the first thing I thought was, Fran wouldn’t do that. I wonder if someone did her in. I didn’t know the circumstances, you see. I thought maybe one of the village children—they hated her. But she died here, at home, so it wasn’t possible.” He shook his head. “Enough morbid talk. Let me continue the tour.” He moved ahead of me and began to climb the stairs.