The next days were busy and noisy, with the contractors getting everything ready to start working on Monday. And that next week was enough for me to know I would be counting down the days for them to finish their work and be gone. The worst wasn’t the constant noises and loud voices, or the mess they were doing on that side of the garden, or the dust that no closed window seemed able to stop from getting into the Manor whenever even the slightest breeze blew from the guesthouse. The worst of all was that those men considered Mike and me a nuisance, and tried to have their way the moment we looked away.
I’d thought I could take a couple of days to go to Pennhurst. Changing the construction buzz for a night in the woods with Kujo looked like the deal of the century, but by the third day of work, it was already clear I would be stuck in the Manor from Monday to Saturday until they left.
Despite all that, April was sort of a quiet month. I adjusted to the routi
To my surprise, when I dropped by to give Amy back her keys, she asked me if I would have her over for a couple of days.“I’m sick and tired of being at home,” she said.“Sure. If you don’t mind a little racket starting on Monday.”“Oh, right, the guesthouse. I couldn’t care less.”So she packed one of her bags to carry elephants unnoticed and jumped into her red machine. Needless to say she got to the Manor about twenty minutes before me. The pros of having friends with better cars than me: when I got home, the coffee was already made.The Blotters were happy to see her again, and we spent a nice family Sunday all together.I was exhausted after all the driving over the last few days, so I called it a night early. I traded a few texts with Brandon, already in bed, and fell asleep with my phone still in my hands. I missed him badly. Facetime and texts were okay, but it didn’t make u
“How long?” I asked Amy as we walked out of the ER.“Three to four weeks. I gotta check with my physician first thing tomorrow.”She let me help her into the car and buckle her seatbelt.“Shit, Fran! What the fuck’s going on?” she snarled when I got in behind the wheel.“You ask me?” I reversed out of the slot and drove onto the street. “Why did you ask to come to the Manor so out of the blue? We had breakfast together that morning and you said nothing about it.”She shook her head, frowning ahead. “I don’t know. When you came back to say goodbye, I just felt this strong impulse to go with you. I don’t question that kind of feeling when I get them, so I just played along.“Like something inside you knew we would need you here,” I muttered.My phone rang, because the Haunter Supreme didn’t dig waiting. I handed it to Amy, who
I breathed deep, opened the door and stuck my head in to show off my poor French. “Un moment, Cristine, s’il vous plait.”I think that took her by surprise, because she stopped whatever she was doing. We walked in, and my first look was at the laptop, which I had completely forgotten about when Amy had gotten hurt. It was still on the desk, seemingly untouched. I hurried to grab it and take it out of the room, leaving it on the hallway floor by the wall.“Really, Fran?”“Hey, it’s important to me. Okay, where is she?”“Give me your hand.”I didn’t stop to think, I just held the bowl with one hand and stretched out my spare to the side. A firm cold grip wrapped around it and I saw Joseph’s tall silhouette by my side. He pointed at the middle of the room and I let out a muffled interjection: I could see a greyish shape in a disheveled heap, sitting or kneeling by the dis
I was happy to find Lady Audrey up and awake. She was obviously surprised to hear from me again so soon, and she hesitated before giving me authorization to record the call. Brandon moved back to sit at the other end of the couch.“I’m sorry to bother you, but I’d need to ask you if there’s any kind of historic family record at the Foundation, or somewhere else.”“I’m sort of the official family historian.” Of course she would place herself in the center of the action. “What do you need?”“Does the name Cristine Gauthier ring a bell?”“No. Who is she?”“That’s what I need to find out. She lived in Amiens, France, over a hundred years ago, and died there in the Great War. That would put her in the third generation, give or take. Did any Blotter live in France about that time?”“I couldn’t say.” What kind of historian was she
The two Blotters frowned when we approached them, and they looked relieved to hear me ask about maps, instead of insisting about lovechildren and that kind of outlandish subject. Mr. Blotter seemed to assess there was no risk to the family’s honor in that and left Ann Lori to comply with our request.She led us back to the mahogany table, cleared half of it by the effective method of piling up binders at the other end, and opened another big book like the blue one. It contained maps and blueprints of every single property the Blotters had ever owned.They were all bound together, so there was no way to take the Manor’s blueprints out of the book, not even to make a copy of them. So we took several pictures of them for later printing. However, both Brandon and I wanted to take a good look at the originals, so we asked her for a magnifying glass.While she went to get it, he set the camcorder on his tripod across the table, making me place two chairs v
The nice ladies at the Historical Society hesitated when they saw Brandon walk in already filming. Until one of them recognized him. Then it was all smiles and giggles and a rush to help us. Soon we were sitting at a table covered with old maps and government records since the time Hardwick had been first settled by white people.Brandon set his camcorder on a tripod at the other side of the table, almost against the back wall, to keep in frame not only us, but also the loads of documents before us.We’d spent about thirty minutes going through records when one of the old maps caught my attention.“Look,” I said, showing it to Brandon. “See this town, Greenwich? It was flooded when they built the Quabbin.”He leaned in, studying the area I was pointing at with a curious frown. “So? What’s so special about it? Flooded graveyard or something like that?”I rolled my eyes. Of course the West Coast alien d
I didn’t have the heart to watch Brandon make a mess of my bedroom, so I left him take whatever he wanted upstairs and I headed to the library. Joseph was in the study with Isaac and Trisha, while Edward took a break from keeping Cristine at bay. I found him reading online, but he disconnected the tablet right away to talk with me.“What do you think is happening?”I shrugged and explained to him Brandon’s theory, about Cristine’s arrival being related to Ann’s departure.“So she’s part of the family?”“She may be. I think your brother Henry could’ve met her mother while he was serving in Paris. The dates sort of add up.”“You mean she’s my niece?”“I think so. The people at the Foundation deny having correspondence or financial records that would allow us to see if your brother was in contact with Cristine’s mothe
There was only one thing I loved more than falling asleep in Brandon’s arms, and that was waking up in his arms.It was awfully early, judging by the fading blue of the sky out my window, where I could still spot a couple of stars over the woods. Brandon was sound asleep. He had dared to remove one of his arms away from me, but only to hold my hand to his chest like he used to. I was wide awake, and I knew there was no way I could get out of bed without disturbing him. So I tried to go back to sleep. To no avail. I tried to sneak my fingers away from his soft grasp. If I managed to do it, I had a chance. I was about to make it when his hand pressed mine and his lips brushed my forehead.“Morning, kid,” he muttered, eyes still closed.Don’t ask me why, but hearing him call me that in this situation launched my romanticism through the roof. So no getting up yet. I had better things to do first. He didn’t fully wake up, he just let me