With one hand on Prue’s shoulder and one hand on mine, Grandmother guided us into the largest room on the first floor: the Louis XIV drawing room. I had no idea who Louis XIV was, but someone seriously needed to have a talk with him about his sick obsession with gold naked-baby-angel statues.
A great-aunt, an interior decorator for Lilly Belle, you know, from Southern Comfort, was explaining why I was supposed to care about the scene of lambs painted on the ceiling when the first tray of food appeared. The waiters glided around the room, their crisp red uniforms blazing against the pool of white.
There’s this feeling you get when you know someone has their eyes on you, like they’re jabbing two needles into the base of your skull. I turned, glancing over my shoulder, only to see my aunt quickly look away, staring into her wineglass. Beside her, my uncle did the same, only he turned toward the portrait of Silence Redding on the wall and acted like he was trying to start a conversation with her.
The creaking of the house’s old bones was drowned out by the high wail of the violinists (second cousins once removed) in the foyer. Each note seemed to slice against my skin. I started to slip out of the room, but there was a sudden, hard poke at my back—hard enough to knock the breath out of me, and back toward my great-aunt. Great-Uncle Phillip. His white fluffy mustache twitched, still wet from his cider. One matching overgrown eyebrow arched up as he jabbed two sharp knuckles toward me again and nodded toward his wife, who was so still so mesmerized by the ceiling she hadn’t noticed my escape.
“—to be a true replica of Versailles, though, Mrs. Redding”—Mrs. Redding is what everyone called Grandmother—“…well, she would have to do what Lilly Belle—you know, from Southern Comfort? She would have to do what Lilly Belle did and install mirrors. Panels of them. I haven’t the slightest idea why she refuses to keep any.”
Well, the reporter from New England Architecture had wondered the same thing. Dad had only shrugged and explained that the house had never had mirrors because of our town’s weird—excuse me, unique, as Grandmother insisted—superstition about ghosts and bad luck. Something like, if you didn’t cover your mirrors when the sun went down, it was inviting a whole host of evil to come in. Believe it or not, plenty of people in Redhood, the old families especially, still covered what few mirrors they had at night.
As I glanced around for an exit strategy, my eyes found the stranger again.
He crept along the back of the room, moving around the busts of dead poets and ancestors and shelves of old books. Whenever the trays of food skirted close enough to him, one bony hand would reach out and snatch a snack off it. Then he’d disappear into the shadows again. Poof.
“Oh, Bertha, I wanted to thank you again for the work you did on our gazebo—” A second cousin caught my great-aunt’s elbow and turned her away from me. I didn’t miss my chance. I ducked my head and all but ran out of the room, dodging furniture, annoyed looks, and serving staff.
Where was Prue? I’d lost track of her when we’d come in, Grandmother pulling her off to the side to brag to her sister about Prue’s latest achievement. Every now and then I’d think I’d see her, only to realize I was seeing Heart2Heart advertisements and framed magazine covers of her.
I got no more than five feet into the hallway when my aunt caught the collar of my blazer and tugged me back into an awkward, rose-perfume-soaked hug. That was a first.
“Now where are your…darling”—her mouth twisted as she choked out the word—“parents off to this time?”
“China,” I said. “They’re setting up the charity’s office there.”
“How positively…charming.”
Don’t sprain your arm reaching for that compliment, I thought.
“Doesn’t it bother you,” Aunt Claudia began, licking her fingers to smooth down the back of my hair, “that they’re spending all of your money on other children?”
“I’m sure there are a hundred dictionaries in this house if you need to look up the word charity,” I muttered, pulling out of her reach. I’d had ten thousand variations of this conversation before. My parents gave most of their money away, which automatically labeled them as deranged to the rest of the family.
“Yes, well, charity is a sickness not easily cured,” came Grandmother’s voice behind me, “but one day your father will see that. Oh—there you are, Prudence. Don’t you look precious.”
I followed her gaze up, to where Prue had appeared at the top of the curved stairway’s second-floor landing. She had changed into a long black velvet dress with a lacy white collar and was totally aware of how stupid she looked. Her face matched the color of her hair.
I tried to get her attention, but Grandmother clutched my arm and all but lifted me onto the first step. “Up you go, Prosperity. I’ve laid out a change of clothes for you too. And do wash your face, please.”
For the first time in almost an hour, I finally squeezed out the words I wanted to say. “Are we going to Main Street together? The parade’s going to start soon.”
“We’re having a family reunion of sorts first,” was her low reply. Her fingernails dug into my sleeve. “This is a very special Founder’s Day. Now, be a good boy and…”
The young new maid, Mellie, appeared at Grandmother’s side, fiddling with the edge of her black uniform.
“What is it?” Grandmother snapped.
“Ma’am, it’s the phone again. Your son says it’s mighty urgent that he speak to one of the children—” The maid cut herself off when she saw me. The shade of white that washed over her face made her look half-dead with terror. Grandmother’s face hardened until she looked like one of the gargoyles on the Cottage’s roof.
“Is that so?” she murmured through a tight-lipped smile. “Kindly inform him that we’re busy, won’t you?”
It wasn’t a request, it was an order. One I was definitely going to ignore.
The two of us took off at the same time. The maid headed back toward the kitchen, but I bolted up the stairs. I’d only have a second, maybe less—
I threw the door to my granddad’s old study open and dove across his enormous dark wood desk for the old phone.
I gulped down a deep breath when I heard, “—sorry, sir, she says they’re busy—”
“Can you at least tell me why they aren’t answering their cell phones?” I had never heard my dad sound that way before. His voice was higher than normal, like he was barely keeping himself from yelling. I leaned back from the edge of the desk, patting around my pockets, only to remember I had left my phone in my schoolbag. There was a shuffling on the other end of the line, like he was about to hang up.
“Dad—Dad?”
“Prosper?”
Mellie blew out a deep, shuddering breath. She knew, I guess, what Grandmother could do to any hope she’d have of working again in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, never mind on planet Earth.
“Mellie, I won’t tell,” I swore. “Just let me talk to him, please.”
The girl’s voice dropped to a low whisper. “But Mrs. Redding…”