“Actually, no,” Mrs. Cliffton says. “Sterling’s still a good drive from here, but this is our nearest station.” She glances up at the darkening sky. “We’ll want to try to beat the rain.” Will takes our bags from the porter, and Mrs. Cliffton leads us to a Ford station wagon with wood paneling so smooth it looks glazed.
Miles nudges me. “Just so you know,” he whispers, “your ear is showing.”
My hand flies to the tip of my right ear, but it is still hidden under the carefully arranged layers of my hair. Miles’s face breaks into a grin wide enough to reveal the small space between his two front teeth.
“The finishing word just became insufferable,” I hiss. I ignore his wiggling eyebrows and climb into the car.
Mrs. Cliffton opens the driver’s door and takes her place behind the steering wheel. She starts the engine and pulls out onto the road, hunched forward, her gloved fingers wrapped around the wheel. She doesn’t make much conversation, and when the car heaves and jerks, the corners of her mouth tighten. It takes her a moment to find the windshield wipers once the raindrops begin to splatter like paint against the window glass.
“Thank you for bearing with me,” Mrs. Cliffton says, her foot easing and catching on the clutch. “We recently lost our driver. I suppose we’re all doing our best to adapt.” She colors, as if she realizes how this must sound to us. I nod rather than answer. “We are all so hopeful that the war will be over quickly,” she adds.
This is just temporary, my father’s voice echoes in my head.
My mother’s ring hangs weighted around my neck.
The Clifftons’ car sends up thick plumes of dust behind us on the road, and we don’t pass any other drivers or dwellings for miles. “We’re largely farm country,” Mrs. Cliffton explains.
“What does Dr. Cliffton do?” I ask politely.
My question provokes the slightest moment of hesitation. “He’s a scientist,” Mrs. Cliffton says. “He had polio as a child, so he isn’t much use for farming or fighting.” She glances at William. “Now he . . . looks for ways to improve our quality of life. Look ahead, dears—?here is Sterling.”
I peer out the window as we come into town. The main street is lined with American flags. There are a handful of stores, all crowned with tan awnings. Letters are painted across the glass windows of a tiny diner.
“That’s Fitz’s,” Will says, nodding toward the rust-red bricks of a general store. We pass a bank, a hardware store, a milliner, a bakery, an empty Texaco station, all drab and gray through the rain. It looks like any other sleepy farm town, but this is the one where my mother grew up. Maybe something of her is still here for me to find, like sunlight catching a handprint on glass.
“Home’s just a bit farther,” Mrs. Cliffton says, humming, and turns onto a smaller road. Houses and farms are scattered along it like jacks between fields and a thick patch of forest. The sky is wide and laden with heavy clouds. Mrs. Cliffton turns off the road, and Will jumps out to open a large cast-iron gate. When he returns, the rain has speckled his white shirt with gray. Then the car climbs the curving drive, and the Clifftons’ house comes into view.
The house falls somewhere between the cramped and cozy nooks of the Tilt and the sprawling mansions my father once took us to see on the cliffs of Rhode Island. Lights blaze from a first-floor window through the shimmer of rain. Four chimneys rise from a slate roof, and rooms spread from the central house in two glass-covered wings. The red bricks glow as if they would be warm to the touch. I suddenly notice a faint stain blotting the hem of my dress and move my hand to cover it.
“I’m sorry, we seem to have forgotten the umbrellas,” Mrs. Cliffton says, pulling around the circled drive to the front of the house. “We’ll have to make a run for it. The three of you go on in, and I’ll be right behind you.”
Will opens the door to a crack of thunder, and even though Miles and I sprint up the stone steps behind him, the rain soaks my dress until it clings to me. The careful wave Cass set in my hair this morning is now slicked to the side of my cheek.
Will pulls open the heavy front door to a bright yellow foyer, and I hurry inside. The rainwater runs down my legs into a puddle on the checkered marble floor. A chandelier hangs two stories above our heads, twinkling like the sun.
“Wow,” Miles says, gaping at the raised ceiling, his boots squeaking against the polished floor. At least the rain has masked the stain on my hem.
Raindrops bead on Will’s forehead and drip down his lashes. He reaches a hand to brush them away. “I’ll get us some towels,” he says, and by the time he returns with them, Mrs. Cliffton is coming in through the front door. She starts when she sees us still standing there and heavily sets down our luggage.
I look again at the water that has pooled at my feet, and I narrow my eyes.
The wind has taken on a shrieking tone. The rain continues to beat against the windows. Yet Mrs. Cliffton and our leather suitcases are perfectly dry.
We towel off and meet the Clifftons’ only remaining staff: a live-in cook and housekeeper named Genevieve. She is tall and rail thin and has hair the color of smoke. The tea she offers us is scentless but strong. It feels like embers going down my throat, heating me from the inside as we follow Mrs. Cliffton on a tour of the house. I try not to compare it to the Tilt, but I can’t help noticing that the door handles are made of curved brass rather than our rounded glass knobs. There’s no beautiful grandfather clock that clicks and bongs throughout the night, no collection of frog knickknacks with little pieces of paper wedged beneath them so they don’t slide down the slope of the shelves. Instead there are decorative books and patterned curtains and tiny painted porcelain boxes that sit in perfectly level display cases. The hallways bear paintings of vases and bowls spilling over with fruit rather than Father’s nautical maps and sketched prints of archipelagos. At least he’ll get to see more of the ocean while he’s away, I think. Some of the furniture looks as though it’s never even been used. But Mrs. Cliffton is enthusiastic when we round a corner and she points out a wooden chair.
“Will built this for me when he was thirteen,” she says proudly.
“It’s really more functional than beautiful,” Will says.
“I adore it,” Mrs. Cliffton says.
“You’re my mother,” Will says, smiling at me with a hint of embarrassment and running his hands along the scruffy hair at the back of his neck. He trails behind as we tour the sunroom and formal dining room and Dr. Cliffton’s library, where books cover the walls, their spines as ordered as piano keys. I’m examining an old Victrola and a tidy line of wooden canes when Miles reaches out to twirl the large midnight orb of a celestial globe. I grab his wrist. He still has peanut butter smudged on his hand.
I shoot him a look before turning to Mrs. Cliffton. “Your home is lovely,” I say.