A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel #1)(5)
My mother is.
Flushing with shame that my first thought was of Auden and not of my mother, I force myself to remember the strange note. The convivificat that she wrote, the convivificat that found its way to me.
This is what she would have seen, I think as we round the corner of the drive. The police knew from interviewing Thornchapel’s caretaker that she’d been here on Halloween morning the year she left us; she’d been seen heading for the maze. The caretaker tried to follow her, found the maze empty, and then decided she must have struck out for one of the public footpaths on the edge of the property, because maze or not, people didn’t just vanish.
Unless of course, she’d taken the hidden steps at the center of the maze and gone to the thorn chapel, but I suspected he didn’t know about those. Or if he did, he considered them too secret even for the police. Even to save a woman’s life.
Not that it mattered either way. The police found no trace of her here at all, not even after they tramped out to the silent ruins of the chapel.
I’m not foolish enough to think I’ll find her here, or that I’ll find her at all . . . except, what if I could? Or at least, what if I could find out why?
My father has always worried over my reckless hopefulness, my stubborn optimism, and he’s gently encouraged me more than once to accept that she’s dead . . . or at the very least, the kind of missing that doesn’t want to be found. And it’s not like I expect to succeed in finding her when so many police officers and the private detectives hired by my father have failed, but turning off the hope simply isn’t possible, even after all these years.
Especially not after the convivificat.
Even if she wasn’t the one to send it, even if someone else found it and then decided to mail it to me—it’s still something. It’s still worth building a little fire of hope under.
Anyway, this isn’t how she would have seen the house on that last day, now that I think of it. She came on Halloween, when the trees would have been burning with autumn and the forest floor would have been carpeted with red and gold and orange. Leaves would have fluttered from the sky like rain, the climbing roses shedding ragged petals like tears.
No, she wouldn’t have seen Thornchapel like I’m seeing it now—bare and barren. She wouldn’t have seen it dead, only dying.
However, the house is actually anything but dead or dying—no matter how gloomy the bare rose canes and surrounding trees make it seem. This becomes very clear to me as we park, and I see several trucks and vans disgorging ladders and lumber and plastic pipes. Men in T-shirts, even in this cold, bustle in and out a side door with the industry of ants building an anthill.
“What a place,” the cab driver says, opening my door before I can open it myself. “You really staying here?”
“For now,” I answer as lightly as possible, secretly wondering what all this messy turmoil is. Auden’s lawyer didn’t mention anything about the house having work done—he only mentioned that I was welcome to live there while I worked for the Guest family. I accepted—it’s unusual, of course, but it will save money, and anyway, Thorncombe didn’t have any places available to rent. And if there had been a part of me that thought of Auden as I agreed, then I refused to admit it to myself at the time.
“Modernizing,” the driver says wisely as we circle back to the trunk to get my bags. “Lots of these old places need it. Ah, it’s warmed up enough to rain now.”
It has, just a few soft spits here and there. I glance back at the trucks, the dumpster at the side of the house with odd bits of wall and plumbing sticking out of it.
The Thornchapel I remember had been modern enough—at least outside of the medieval rooms and the silent Long Gallery. There was running water and electricity, and televisions and an Xbox in Auden’s room, so if there’d been hunter green carpet and floral wallpaper elsewhere, my ten-year-old self hadn’t noticed enough to care.
“I think the owner died,” I say in a tone of conversational speculation . . . though I know for a fact that Auden’s father is dead because the family lawyer told me as much. “It’s his son’s now. Maybe he wants to put his mark on it?”
“Fixing it up to sell, more like.” The trunk slams down and the cab driver rolls both suitcases closer to me. “These places are damned hard to maintain.”
Funny how that’s never occurred to me, that Thornchapel needs maintenance, that it needs roof repairs and masonry replacements and plumbing fixes and window sashes refitted. It’s always seemed like a place apart to me, a place alive, like a temple in a myth or a castle in a fairy tale. It just is, it just exists outside any human intervention, a rambling stone sentinel surrounded by trees at the front and sumptuous gardens at the back. Even now, watching workers carry in supplies and hearing the faint but distinct noises of power tools and hammering, it’s hard to believe this place is just a house and not the gorgeous, ancient gate to a mysterious chapel I only half remember.
I tip the driver extra for helping with my bags—and also for braving the hair-raising country roads—and after a quick cheers, he gives me a creased business card from his coat pocket with the cab company number on it.
“In case this place don’t work for you,” he says, giving me a small smile and then giving the house a doubtful look. Through his eyes, I can see how strange this all is. A chipper American girl about to live in a house that’s not hers for a job she only accepted ten days ago. He can’t know I’ve been dreaming of this place every night since I left, that in my mind this is the place that swallowed my mother whole. He can’t know that I’ve spent almost every day of my life since she left trying to find a way back here.