Reassured by that, I found a new spot for the fan beside the window, where its plug could share the power bar with my computer.
For the rest of the day, while I filled out the budget forms, dealt with my emails, and drafted a loan request letter to send to the other museums that held the few items we knew had once been in the Wilde House, my room remained obediently quiet. Nothing moved, apart from me, except the oscillating fan that sent its rhythmically repeating flow of cooling air across my desk and had a low-key whirring hum that muted the sounds of the workmen outside. So when my cell phone rang, the noise was jarring.
It was Lara.
? ? ?
“The Sisters of Liberty? That sounds fun.” Gianni Bonetti, the son of our neighbour, leaned back in his chair with a grin. He’d brought us meatballs and had stayed to help us eat them, and the three of us were sitting on the front porch of my brother’s house now in the sultry warmth of this late summer evening, while the colours of the sunset sky were softly overtaken by the deeper shades of blue. I’d once thought his mother was matchmaking, sending him over here, but I was starting to think it was Gianni’s decision to play the delivery boy.
Twenty-two years old, he had a true Long Island accent—or, as he’d pronounce it, “LawnGUYland”—that turned all the rs at the ends of his words into ahs and lengthened his vowels so “whatever” came out “whatevah” and “coffee” was “cawfee,” which I found adorable.
He also had a ladykiller smile and eyes for Rachel.
When she turned her gaze on him, he asked her, “What? I’m being serious. We used to cater their meetings before they moved out to the Privateer Club. They’re a fun group of ladies.”
“Ladies? Really?” Rachel challenged his word choice. “That’s so patronizing.”
He lifted his eyebrows. “I’ve heard you say ‘lady.’?”
“I say it ironically.”
“Women, then.” He shrugged it off and raised his arms to link his hands behind his head, a move that showed off his physique to good advantage.
I liked Gianni. He was a good-looking guy and he knew it, but underneath the cockiness he had a thoughtful nature and was smarter than he seemed.
He said, “I used to like to work their meetings. They had good presenters, really interesting. Once this lady—woman—came and talked about geology and how that ridge there, all of that was made back in the ice age, when the glaciers pushed the rocks down here and left them. That was fascinating. And another time, Sam Abrams—you know Sam, who’s working up at your museum? Well, he talked about the architecture of the houses people lived in here during the Revolution. That was really cool.”
I thought of Sam telling me this morning that if I spoke at a Sisters of Liberty meeting they’d make me feel welcome. I hadn’t known he was speaking from personal experience.
Settling back in the chair I had chosen, the old wicker rocking chair angled to face the road, I set it idly in motion.
My apartment in Albany hadn’t had a balcony, let alone a porch, and I’d forgotten just how much I liked to sit like this, half sheltered by the railing and the roof but with the whole outdoors before me in a panoramic view. The cooler air of evening felt revitalizing after my long day of working in the heat, and the summer sounds of insects singing in the reeds that edged the water of the bay behind the house rose on the breeze like music.
The sun had fully dropped from sight now. All along the ridge of darkened land that Gianni had just pointed out—the glacial moraine that formed the hills that gave this section of Long Island so much character—small lights had started twinkling on, like stars in the descending night. They were the lights of all the houses tucked amid the trees and winding roads that edged Millbank, some as old, or very nearly, as the Wilde House.
Watching those lights, I remarked, “I guess Sam’s done work on a lot of old houses.”
“Well, sure,” Gianni said. “He was doing some work up at Bridlemere while they were meeting there, so that was cool, too, to see how he used antique tools. I mean, it isn’t from the Revolution, but that house is old, you know?”
Tracing a finger through the condensation on the glass of iced tea I was holding, I cleared my throat and clarified, “The Sisters of Liberty used to have meetings at Bridlemere?”
“Oh, yeah. For years. They just moved to the Privateer Club this past spring.” His shrug was pragmatic. “I think Mr. Kiersted made them an offer they couldn’t refuse.”
That didn’t surprise me. For all he followed Sharon’s lead on our board of trustees, Harvey seemed to like to throw his weight around in town. “Does the Kiersted Group own the Privateer Club, too?”
“Nah, but one of Mr. Kiersted’s friends does. Owns the whole marina. So I’m sure Mr. Kiersted gets something for bringing him business.”
Rachel thought that was unethical, and said so.
Gianni shrugged again. “You can’t stop people doing what they do, you know? Some guys will always find a way to put an extra dollar in their pocket.” But he did add, “It’s a shame, though. I used to like working those meetings. Veronica did all the food. It was great. You won’t get food like that at the Privateer Club.”
Veronica, the daughter of the owner of the deli Gianni worked at, handled the catering side of their business. She was also the significant other of our museum treasurer, Tracy, and at my very first board meeting there’d been a tray of incredible canapes sent by Veronica, who had been testing new recipes for some upcoming event. Having tasted her cooking, I knew Gianni was right—any other chef probably wouldn’t be able to match that.
But still, I felt relieved the meeting wouldn’t be at Bridlemere. If I had to face my grandmother, at least it would be easier for this first meeting to take place on neutral ground. Besides, if it had been at her estate, there would have been no guarantee she’d even let me through the gates.
Gianni, though, had been through those gates. That made me curious. I asked him, “What is it like inside?”
“The Privateer Club?”
“No, Bridlemere.”
“Big. Really fancy, old-fashioned, and big.” Gianni lounged farther back in his chair and propped his feet carefully on the smooth top of the porch railing. My brother had “fixed” the porch railing when they’d first moved in, and you had to know just how to lean against it or else it tilted and wobbled, but Gianni appeared to have mastered the trick of it. “Too big for me,” he said. “I’d rather have a house like the ones Sam talked about—you know, square house, square rooms, all the space you need and none you don’t. I’d like to build a house like that, someday.”
Rachel pointed out that, in a place like this, he wouldn’t need to go to the trouble of building one. “There are lots of old houses in Millbank. You could just buy one and fix it up.”
“Nah, I could never buy an old house. Might come with mice. Or a ghost. Hey,” he said to me, “have you run into the soldier yet, up at the Wilde House?”
I answered a little too firmly. “No.”
Rachel frowned. “What soldier?”
Gianni jumped in with the story and I let him tell it. He told the same version, or nearly the same, as Frank’s—Lydia Wilde and the captured French officer falling in love, making plans to run off with each other, and being caught out by her big brother Joseph, who, seeing the light of their lantern pass by, had come out and confronted them there on the path, and had shot the French officer. But the way Gianni had learned the tale, Lydia Wilde hadn’t died of a broken heart. She’d drowned herself in the cove. “She just followed him. Followed the light of her dead soldier’s lantern, and he led her down to the water, and she walked right in.”
One of the lights on the darkening ridge had begun to move—probably a motorcycle coming down one of the streets, but even so it made me feel uneasy and I looked away. I noticed Gianni, in his version of the story, hadn’t given Lydia a name. She’d just been “Captain Wilde’s sister.” So I said, “Her name was Lydia.”