“Not too bad,” I say, just as Clara reports cheerfully: Hot as blazes!
Miss Bertram smiles. “Cook’s just made up a fresh pitcher of iced lemonade. And you”—she bends down to Evelyn, who hides behind my skirt, clutching one hand, and this time her smile is genuine—“you must be Miss Evelyn. My, aren’t you just the picture of your daddy.”
Evelyn’s nose slides against the side of my leg, and I look down to see that she’s actually peering out from her sanctuary. Meeting the friendly inquiry of Miss Bertram’s face.
“What a big girl you are,” Miss Bertram says. “You must be six years old!”
Evelyn giggles.
“Seven?”
Another giggle.
“Eight? You can’t be eight. No, ma’am. You’re not big enough for eight.”
“Two!”
“Two? Two years old?”
“She’ll be three in December,” I say, stroking Evelyn’s hair. “She’s tall for her age.”
Miss Bertram straightens and winks at me. “She gets that from her mama, I think.”
“Rather,” Clara says. “We’re a funny threesome, aren’t we? Samuel is enormous, and I’m tiny, and Simon was just in between. I don’t think he was quite six feet, was he?”
“Just six feet, I think. An inch or two taller than me.”
“Was he as tall as that? I suppose I always think of him next to Samuel. I say, though, this is grand. How on earth did Simon fix it up so well? I understand it was practically in ruins.”
Miss Bertram’s smile disappears. “Not quite ruins. We did the best we could.”
“Have you been here so long?”
“All my life, Miss Fitzwilliam.”
I intercept Clara’s arm before she can ask any more questions. “Let’s go inside, shall we? I could do with a glass of lemonade.”
The house was designed for the Florida climate, all deep porches and shuttered windows and high ceilings and a vast column of a staircase wending upward in the center, and Clara exclaims at the coolness inside. I think it has something to do with the furnishings, too—what there are of them, anyway—spare and sparse, light in color and texture, creating a dreamlike atmosphere. There are hardly any doors. Miss Bertram leads us from room to room, separated by a minimum of walls, and I remark on the paucity of furniture and decoration.
“Mr. Fitzwilliam wanted it that way,” says Miss Bertram. “He thought you should be the one to decorate the house, once it was finished.”
“Isn’t it finished already?” Clara asks, depositing me on a lonely sofa. She wanders to a tall French window and fingers the diaphanous drapery.
“Not quite. The library annex was just begun when—”
“When he died.”
Miss Bertram stares at the back of Clara’s head. “Yes.”
Clara turns and lifts one of her delicate eyebrows. “You must have been awfully upset when you heard the news.”
“Of course. We have endured a lot of trouble together, Mr. Fitzwilliam and I.”
“Fixing up this old ruin.”
“Yes. And turning the plantation back into a working farm, Miss Fitzwilliam. That was a whole lot of work, believe me. We were just coaxing those poor old trees back to life, you know, and now this.”
The sofa is plain and white and comfortable. I sink against the cushions and watch Evelyn as she scampers from window to window. “What a terrible inconvenience.”
Miss Bertram folds her hands behind her back. Her face, turned toward mine, is really quite lovely. I know she must be thirty-five or forty—about the same age as Clara, in fact—but she hasn’t got a single line. Just that patient expression in her eyes, which are not brown but a kind of opaque, unexpected gray. She says softly, “I’d hate to see all our hard work go to nothing.”
“Mrs. Fitzwilliam could sell the place, of course,” Clara says briskly.
“That’s true. It’s my property, isn’t it? Some rich bootlegger, maybe, with money to burn.”
Miss Bertram stiffens. “Sell! Sell Maitland?”
“Why not?”
“Why, because the family’s owned it for generations!”
“Not my family,” I say. “My husband’s family.”
“Aren’t they the same thing, Mrs. Fitzwilliam? You married Mr. Fitzwilliam, I believe. You took his name. Bore him a beautiful child. He left this place to you, ma’am, not to anybody else. He trusted you to carry on for him.”
“Then he ought to have considered my wishes, instead of his own.”
Clara smiles at Miss Bertram. “She’s had an accident, you know. As I said over the telephone. She’s here to convalesce.”
Miss Bertram accepts Clara’s smile with a faint, sage curve of her own, and for a moment the two women seem locked in a kind of ethereal communication, back and forth between their stiff mouths and their bright eyes, and I’m struck by how pale Clara looks, when only a day or two ago I was admiring the apricot glow of her suntan. I glance down at my bare arms, and then back to Clara’s cheeks, and then Miss Bertram’s warm brown skin.
At last, Miss Bertram tilts back to me, and her expression grows kind. A pair of tiny lines pops out from the outer corner of each eye. “I understand. You’ll want to rest now, won’t you, Mrs. Fitzwilliam? I’ve had the beds upstairs all aired and changed, but I’m sure Mr. Fitzwilliam would have wanted you to take his bedroom. The master’s bedroom. I remember how he chose everything the way he thought you’d like it.”
I’ve never believed in ghosts. For one thing, if spirits could return to visit those left behind on earth, wouldn’t my mother have returned to me by now? I certainly would, if some terrible sickness or accident parted me from Evelyn. I would shatter Valhalla itself to reach my daughter, if I had departed from her too early. If I had left her alone, without my protection. If I had some warning to communicate to her.
But my mother, in death, never gave me the slightest hint that her spirit lived on beside me, or protected me from the man who had murdered her, so as time went on I gave up any hope—or dread—of supernatural beings. I came to understand that we living people exist alone in this physical realm, and the departed spirits belong solely to the eternal one.
This I firmly believe, and yet, as I stand in the center of the master’s bedroom at Maitland, while Evelyn tugs and tugs on the tall French door to the balcony, I can’t shake the uncanny sensation that someone stands by my side, watching her with me. I think I can feel the shimmer of warmth, just to my right, prickling the hairs of my arm. For an instant I don’t dare to turn my head, because I’m afraid of what I’ll see. A pair of spots appears, floating in the air before Evelyn’s head, and I realize I have forgotten to breathe. The room sways. Something brushes my arm.
“Virginia? My goodness!”
“Clara.”
“Are you quite all right? You’re all gray!”
“Just a little dizzy.”