The Fate of Mercy Alban (3 page)

As I climbed the patio steps, I could almost see my mother standing there, her arms open wide. Jane ran right through the very spot, dissipating the image into wispy shards that fluttered away on the wind. “Oh, my girl,” Jane whispered into my hair as she threw her arms around me and hugged me tight. “Finally back where you belong.”

I relaxed into her embrace and felt the stress of the past few days begin to melt away. I put my head onto her shoulder and wanted nothing more than to stay there for a good long while—safe and comforted by the woman who had always handled everything for my family for as long as I could remember.

“And Amity, dear,” Jane said, cupping a hand to my daughter’s cheek. “Haven’t you grown since the last time you were here! You’re taller than your mother already. What grade will you be starting in the fall? Eleventh, is it?”

Amity smiled at this. “That’s right. I’ll be a junior. Nice to see you, too, Jane.” She gave me a sideways glance. “Should I take this stuff up to my room?”

I nodded, knowing my daughter wanted nothing more than to escape adult company, flop onto her bed, and start texting her friends. “Sure, honey. Go and get settled. I need to talk to Jane. Then I’ll be up and we’ll see about dinner.”

Amity lugged her suitcase across the patio, pulled open one of the massive wooden front doors, and disappeared inside.

“It meant the world to your mother that you sent the girl here every summer, once she was old enough,” Jane said to me, fishing a balled-up tissue out of her sleeve and dabbing her eyes with it. “Mrs. Alban doted on Amity, so she did.”

I cleared the sadness and shame from my throat. “Now I wish I had come with her. I wish …”

“I know, child. I know.”

Jane hooked her arm into mine and I let her lead me to the patio table. The sight of it, after all these years, gave me a pang of melancholy that reverberated through my whole body. The huge wooden table, with seating for fourteen, had always reminded me of something out of an ancient Celtic legend. My great-grandfather had imported it, and much of the materials used to build the house, from Ireland when he broke ground on this place in the late 1800s—at least that was how the story went.

We used to have meals on the patio during the warm summer months and even into the fall, Mother, Daddy, Jake, Jimmy, and me, along with whatever friends were circulating in our orbit at the time.

I thought of those days, and there it was again—the twins’ laughter, low, musical, infectious. I wished it would engulf me and carry me along whatever river their giggling was floating on, back to another time in this same place, back to evenings when my family debated our way through mealtimes, talking about art and politics and literature and even celebrity scandals of the moment; carrying me back further still to the days when our mother would wrestle with the cook for the kitchen so she could bake for us herself, greeting us with love and good humor and a plate of warm chocolate chip cookies as we came through the door after a long day of school; and back further to lazy summer afternoons when my brothers and I would lie on the lakeshore counting the sailboats as they passed.

And now they were all gone. Only I remained.

Jane’s voice dissolved these memories. “I thought you might like a bite of something after your journey,” she said, patting my hand. I saw she had set one end of the table with a bottle of wine, a basket of bread, some sliced cheeses.

I couldn’t remember the last meal I had eaten. Lunch yesterday? Or was it dinner the night before? Time was a blur ever since I got Jane’s call. I pulled out one of the heavy wrought-iron chairs and sank into it with a sigh. “This is just what I needed. Thank you.”

She hovered beside me, waiting. “Please, Jane, join me,” I said, gesturing to the chair next to mine. Even after more than fifty years of running this house, she still stood on ceremony.

I poured some wine for us both and took a big bite of the crusty bread and cheese, Gouda with caraway, which she knew was my favorite. With all she had been through in the past few days, Jane still took the time to attend to the little things to make me feel welcome.

She peered into her wineglass, a bit scandalized. She smiled, and I saw a devilish glint in her eye. “I suppose I could have a wee nip.”

Dear Jane. I had missed her gentle, good humor, the brogue making music of her words. I smiled at her for a moment but could feel my smile fade as quickly as it came. I had been dreading this conversation, yet I knew now was the time. I took a deep breath, let it out in a long sigh, and said: “You said on the phone you didn’t want to tell me the whole story until we could sit face-to-face. So here we are. What exactly happened, Jane?”

Jane shook her head. “I still don’t rightly know.”

I waited as Jane smoothed the apron in her lap. Finally, she began. “Your mother had her breakfast on the second-floor patio, right outside her bedroom, as usual. I told her that journalist called again, the man interested in writing the book about Alban House, and—”

I held up a hand to stop her story and squinted at her. “Wait a minute. What book?”

She sighed. “They’re always poking around here, the writers, especially after Mrs. Alban opened the house up to tours. They’re wanting to know about
that night
. Some want to know about the supposed Alban
curse
.” She spat out this last word as though it was tart on her tongue.

I rolled my eyes. “Not that again. You know, Jane, people die in other families and nobody thinks it’s a curse. Why can’t they just leave it alone? She told him to shove off, right?”

“Not this time.” Jane lowered her voice, narrowed her eyes, and looked back and forth, as though checking to make sure no one was listening. “She asked me to tell him to come that afternoon. She was going to talk to him.”

I nearly choked on the sip of wine I had just taken. “You’re kidding me.”

“No. She said she thought it was time. It was then she went out. Walked out the back door, waved good-bye, and that was the last time I saw her.” Jane’s gaze dropped to her lap, where she clutched a tissue. “Alive,” she added.

I reached over and took her hands, dry and red from years of working in the kitchen. “I can’t imagine how hard it must’ve been for you.”

“Aye,” Jane sniffed. As she dabbed at her eyes, I could see the years had settled into their corners, creating deep grooves where her faint laugh lines had been the last time I had seen her.

Jane cleared her throat and went on. “An hour or so passed, and then I started to get worried. The journalist would be on his way, and there was no sign of your mother. That’s when I sent Mr. Jameson and Carter out to look for her.”

“But you found her in the study, right? That’s what the police said.”

She shook her head. “No. That’s what I told the police, and it’s what they in turn told the reporters, but …”

“What, Jane?”

“Your mother disappeared. Vanished. Carter, Mr. Jameson, and his two assistants—those lads he’s got helping in the garden for the summer—they searched the entire grounds. I searched this house. She was nowhere to be found. She was not in the study.”

“But—”

“I know how it sounds. But I’m telling you, child. She was gone. We searched for more than an hour.”

Dread hung in the air, surrounding me. I wanted her to continue, but I couldn’t formulate the words to ask.

“Just when I was about to phone the police, we found her.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Not in the study. In the main garden. She was …” Jane stopped, took a deep breath in, and continued, her next words rushing forth like a waterfall. “She was laid out there, with her hands folded across her chest, on the bench by the fountain. As though she were in repose.”

I snapped my head around and looked toward the front of the house. “But you said they looked for her outside. You can see the fountain from right here. If she—”

“That’s what I’m telling you, girl. They had gone through that garden a thousand times, looking for her. She wasn’t there. And then, suddenly, she was.”

I held Jane’s gaze, shaking my head from side to side. The urge to get up and run away from this whole situation was overwhelming. As if she could see what I was thinking, Jane grabbed my hands and held them, and me, tight.

“I couldn’t have the police finding her like that, now, could I? In the same spot, the very same spot, where they found
him
all those years ago. The newspapers would have had a field day. We didn’t need that; you didn’t need that. So I had Mr. Jameson and Carter carry her into the study. Then we made the call to the police.”

I exhaled, not realizing I had been holding my breath the entire time. “You’re right, Jane. That kind of publicity is the last thing we need right now.”

I poured another glass of wine and gulped it down, thinking it might help quiet the violent shivering that was coursing through my body. It didn’t. I set the glass down on the table so I wouldn’t drop it.

“What are you saying, Jane? Do you think my mother was—” I had trouble formulating the word. “Murdered?”

Jane shook her head. “It doesn’t seem possible. Who would do something like that? And why? Your mother was the salt of the earth.”

I let her remark sink in. She was right; there was nobody who would want to hurt my mother. And yet … “What do the police say?” I asked finally.

“When the medical examiner was here, she said it was likely natural causes. Your mother was in her seventies, she had been ill and had a heart condition. But they’re doing an autopsy so we’ll know for sure.”

I slumped against the back of my chair.

“So the police say it was natural causes. What do you think?”

Jane looked me in the eye. “You don’t want to know what I’m thinking, my girl.”

Oh, Jane, don’t be silly,” I said to her as I pushed my chair away from the table. “You know as well as I do …” I turned and my gaze fell upon the brick façade of the house.

I was going to say that there was no “Alban curse” despite legends to the contrary that had circulated around my family for generations. But as I looked at the house, the words caught in my throat and hung there.

Finally, I said: “Let’s not dwell on those old legends. They’ll only scare Amity.”

She nodded her head and stood up. “Whatever you say, miss.”

I crossed the patio to the front door and pulled it open, peering into the foyer, seeing the grand staircase, the deep Oriental rugs, the sitting room beyond. It seemed to be a snapshot from my childhood, the same as it always was, as though time had never passed. But when I opened the door farther and walked hesitantly through it, I found that everything wasn’t the same, not really. The familiar rugs were a little more worn in spots, the patterns on the window seat’s pillows badly faded by two decades of sunshine. The cherry-wood paneling on the walls looked dull, like it could use a good polishing, and the curtains in the sitting room hung wearily, as though they had had enough already.

Age had taken root and was weaving its wickedness through the very foundation here, making the house that had once been so solid, so formidable, so much a fortress, seem vulnerable and even a little bit fragile. I shook that thought out of my head and walked farther into my home, dragging my suitcase behind me.

A small wooden desk stood in the corner of the foyer—this was new. I ran my hand along its surface and picked up one of the flyers stacked neatly in the center.

A handout from the university’s tours. I stuffed one into my pocket for Amity. She seemed uninterested in family history now, but she really ought to have known more about where she came from, who her ancestors were and what they did.

Jane followed behind me. “Let Mr. Jameson take your bag up to your room, child,” she said to me, fussing with her apron. “I’ll just call him.”

“No need.” I smiled quickly at her. “I can manage it.” I peered up the steps, wondering whether to make my way through the kitchen to the elevator in the butler’s pantry or just lug the huge bag up the stairs. “I’m going to get settled and then I suppose—I don’t know, Jane. Should I start thinking about the arrangements for the funeral?”

Jane shook her head. “You needn’t worry about forging ahead with any planning right now,” she said, laying a hand on my shoulder. “Your mother wrote up her wishes years ago, even paid for the arrangements in advance, so you wouldn’t have to wonder and fuss when this time came. I’m sure you’ll find it all in her desk.”

I exhaled, relieved, at least, not to be starting at square one. I wouldn’t have known how to begin or whom to call—the minister, the coroner? Funeral director? It seemed inconceivable to me that I was the one who was supposed to handle all these things. When I had left Alban House twenty years earlier, I was only a few years older than my daughter was now. And suddenly I was the head of the family? The one who had to decide on, well, everything? It seemed wrong, somehow. I sighed, not quite sure of what I was supposed to do next.