How the other half lives indeed.
At the front of the house, I park, get out of the car, and hop up three steps to a massive set of double doors placed in the dead center of the mansion. Before I can even knock, the doors fly open, revealing a woman standing just inside. Her sudden presence startles me. Or maybe it’s simply her monochrome appearance that’s startling. White hair that brushes her shoulders. Black dress fitted tightly around a svelte frame. Lace collar that resembles the doilies my grandmother used to crochet. Pale skin. Blue eyes. Lipstick a bold cherry red. It’s all so dramatic and severe that I can’t quite pinpoint the woman’s age. If I had to guess, I’d say seventy-five, knowing I could be off by at least ten years in either direction.
A pair of cat’s-eye glasses hangs from a chain around the woman’s neck. She brings them to her eyes and peers at me for a breath of a second—an instant appraisal.
“Miss McDeere,” she finally says. “Welcome.”
“Thank you,” I say, even though there’s literally nothing welcoming about the woman’s tone. It’s clear she’s the same person I talked to over the intercom. The disinterested voice is unmistakable.
“I’m Mrs. Baker, the housekeeper.” The woman pauses to take in what I’m wearing, seemingly finding my coat lacking. It’s blue wool and pilled in too many places to count. I’ve had it for so long I can’t remember when or where I bought it. Or maybe Mrs. Baker’s apparent distaste is reserved for what’s under the coat. White blouse. Gray skirt. Black flats last worn at my mother’s funeral. If so, I can’t help it. These are the nicest clothes I own.
After a moment of clear hesitation, Mrs. Baker adds, “Do come in.”
I hesitate as well, hovering just outside. It’s the doorway that gives me pause. Almost as wide as it is tall and surrounded by more of that ubiquitous marble detailing, it sort of resembles an open mouth. Looking at it reminds me of something Carter said.
This place can bite.
I suddenly long for home. A complete surprise, considering how that house hasn’t felt like home since my mother died. But it had once been a happy place, full of equally happy memories. Snowy Christmases and birthday cakes and my mother in her silly floral apron making French toast on Sunday mornings. Does Hope’s End have any happy memories? Or did they all vanish that one horrible night? Is sorrow the only thing that remains?
“Coming, dear?” Mrs. Baker says after an impatient clearing of her throat.
Part of me doesn’t want to. The entire place—its size, its ostentatiousness, and especially its reputation—makes me want to turn around and head right back home.
But then I think about my father, my bedroom, the dregs of cash in my savings account. None of that will change if I don’t do something about it. If I leave—which I desperately want to do—I’ll be stuck in the same limbo I’ve inhabited for the past six months. But working here, even for just a few weeks, could change everything.
With that in mind, I take a deep breath, pass through the door, and allow Hope’s End to swallow me whole.
FOUR
The inside of Hope’s End is nicer than the outside, but only slightly. Just beyond the door is a grand foyer with marble tile, velvet drapes at the windows, and tapestries on the walls. The furnishings range from potted palms to fancy wooden chairs with dusty cushions under brocade pillows. Overhead, an oil-painted sky full of puffy-pink clouds adorns the arched ceiling. It all looks simultaneously fancy and shabby and stopped in time. Like the lobby of a four-star hotel that had been suddenly abandoned decades ago.
To the left, a long hallway runs past tall windows and a single open doorway, on its way to a set of wide double doors that are currently closed. It then takes a sharp right, disappearing around a corner. On the right is another hallway, offering a straight shot to a sun-drenched room.
My attention, though, is mostly focused on what’s in front of me. A red-carpeted staircase directly across from the front door that rises a dozen steps before splitting in two like a pair of wings. Each symmetrical half then curves upward to the second floor. A stained-glass window looms over the center landing, through which slant streaks of sunlight in rainbowed hues that color the carpet.
“The Grand Stairs,” Mrs. Baker says. “Built with the house in 1913. Very little about the place has changed since then. Mr. Hope made sure to choose a design that was timeless.”
She keeps moving, her heels clicking like a metronome on the marble tile. I trail after her, tripped up slightly by the floor. It’s uneven in spots, swelling and ebbing like the ocean outside.
“You can collect your belongings later,” Mrs. Baker says. “I thought it would be nice to chat in the sunroom first. It’s a cheerful little room.”
I’ll believe it when I see it. So far, nothing about Hope’s End suggests cheerfulness, even the few pretty bits. Gloom and doom seem to have taken up residence in the corners, gathered there like cobwebs. There’s also a chill to the air—a salt-tinged, intangible something that makes me shiver.
I know it’s just my imagination. Three people died here. Horrifically, if legend is to be believed. Knowledge like that can mess with your brain.
As if to illustrate that point, we pass a framed oil painting that depicts a teenage girl in a pink satin gown.
“Miss Hope,” Mrs. Baker says, not bothering to glance at the portrait as she trots by. “Commissioned by her father to mark her birthday.”
Unlike Mrs. Baker, I’m stopped cold by the portrait. In it, Lenora is seated on a white divan, with pink-striped wallpaper behind her and, just over her shoulder, a sliver of mirror in a gilt frame. Lenora leans somewhat awkwardly against the armrest of the divan. Her hands rest on her lap, fingers intertwined, suggesting a tension the painter tried hard to disguise with a too-casual pose.
Her pale skin and delicate features make me think of a flower just before it blooms. Young Lenora had a pert nose, ripe lips, and green eyes almost as bright as the stained glass over the Grand Stairs. She stares directly at the painter, a spark of mischief in her gaze, almost as if she knows what people will be saying about her decades in the future.
Mrs. Baker, five paces ahead of me, turns to give me an impatient look. “The sunroom is this way, Miss McDeere.”
I move on, although not before taking one last look at Lenora’s portrait. Three others, identical in shape and size, hang in a row next to it, all hidden behind black silk crepe. Rather than draped over the paintings, the fabric is stretched taut and held in place by nails driven directly into the frames. All that effort, though, doesn’t entirely hide the portraits. I can faintly see them behind the sheer crepe, hazy and featureless. Like ghosts.
Winston, Evangeline, and Virginia Hope.
And Lenora’s the only one still on display because she’s the only one left.
I catch up to Mrs. Baker, following her quickly down the rest of the hall, passing rooms with their doors firmly shut, suggesting places that are forbidden. At each one, I feel another brief chill. Drafts, I tell myself. Happens all the time in big, old mansions like this.
The sunroom is at least brighter than the rest of the house, if not exactly cheerful. The furniture is the same kind of musty antiques spotted elsewhere around Hope’s End. So much velvet and embroidery and tassels. A grand piano anchors the far end of the room, its lid lowered and shut tighter than a casket.
The room’s stuffiness is leavened by the rows of floor-to-ceiling windows along two walls. One row of windows faces the lawn, through which I can see Carter in the distance, back to raking leaves. The other set of windows looks out onto an empty terrace. A short marble railing, not even waist high, runs the length of the terrace. I can’t see anything past the railing because there’s literally nothing else to see. Just an endless expanse of cerulean sky that makes it seem like the mansion is literally floating in midair.
Mrs. Baker grants me a few more seconds of gawking before gesturing to a red velvet love seat. “Please, sit.”
I lower myself onto the edge of the love seat, as if I’m afraid of breaking it. Which I am. Everything at Hope’s End seems so old and so expensive that I assume nothing here can be replaced. Mrs. Baker shows no such hesitation as she drops onto the love seat across from me. The motion produces a small plume of dust that rises from the fabric in a miniature mushroom cloud.