There was a heavy silence. The air seemed shot through with electricity, even out in the hallway. Fay held her breath.
Ashley, Frances. Kitten. New York: Drake, Richards and Weems, 1976. Print.
Chapter Eleven
I didn’t remember waking.
That is, I didn’t remember waking up in my bed. The first thing I was conscious of was a panoramic view of Ambletern’s lush backyard, covered in mist. An ornate tabby-and-blue-tile fountain that appeared to be dried up was at the center of it. I realized then that I was standing on a balcony that jutted off the sitting-room section of my suite, wrapped in my bedsheet.
I was naked underneath it, which set me on edge. I’d never been a sleepwalker, but there was a first time for everything. I’d had half a Xanax and a couple of drinks on the plane. It was hard to remember. The ferry ride, the horse stampede, the conversation with Koa. It all seemed like a dream. I looked down at the balcony railing. There was a series of letters scratched into it, dirt and grime highlighting them. I started to run my fingers over them, then reconsidered.
Welcome, Cappie, the letters spelled out. Over and over, in a repeating string, all the way down the length of the railing. I felt a draft coming from the open balcony door. A whiff of something deep and smoky, like it came from the forest. I turned. The door was still closed.
I heard a noise and looked out over the yard, to the far edge, near the woods. It was one of the wild horses, the stallion, standing in the curling mist. He was alone, near a clump of pines. Head up, ears pricked forward, he seemed to be looking right at the balcony where I stood.
A faint knock sounded behind me. I hurried back inside the room, rummaged through my suitcase, and threw on a T-shirt and sweats.
“Come in,” I yelled.
Doro stuck her head in the cracked door. “Morning,” she said.
“Hi,” I said. “Come in.”
She was wearing jeans and a stretched-out, faded brown tank with a yellow sports bra underneath. Her hair hung in one white-blonde braid over her shoulder. It was hard to believe a woman her age still had that shade of hair. “Didn’t want you to miss breakfast too,” she said. “Food goes fast around here.”
I pulled at the hem of the T-shirt. “Sorry about that. About last night. I must’ve been more tired than I thought.”
She flicked her wrist, dismissing my words. “Don’t worry about it. Meals aren’t command performances.”
“All right,” I said.
“So—what else? It’s just the four of us left—me, Koa, the housekeeper and cook. The only staff I absolutely needed to keep this place from caving in around me. The only ones I could still afford with no more paying guests.” She sighed. “Everybody’s pretty independent. Koa and Laila and Esther get their work done, but their off-time is theirs, to enjoy however they choose. We’ve got two Jeeps, keys under the seats; feel free to use them.”
“Got it.”
“How do you like the room?”
“Oh”—I looked around and nodded enthusiastically—“it’s great.” I hoped I sounded convincing. Truthfully, the bed had been sinfully soft.
“I’ve got a lot of empty bedrooms, eighteen to be exact, and, if you can believe it, this one’s not even the biggest. Laila and Esther live on the first floor, in a double, and Koa lives in a cabin, near the marsh. I thought you might like this one, though, because it was your mother’s room. The summer she lived here.”
I looked around the room. At the desk. The bookshelves. The mussed bed. A chill fingered up my spine.
“Pretty nice digs for a member of the staff,” I said. Her brows lifted. “I mean, for somebody who vacuumed rooms and changed sheets.”
Doro shook her head. “Frances didn’t work at Ambletern. She was a guest.”
“What?”
“She didn’t . . . ?” Doro looked stricken.
I flashed the smile I used to remind people I was just regular-gal Megan Ashley, that I wasn’t famous, like my mother, and they could talk to me normally. I hoped it worked. Doro had suddenly gotten a nervous look on her face.
“I know this feels strange,” I said quickly, “talking about the past like this, right off the bat. But I don’t have a lot of time to write this book, and I need to get to the heart of things. You can tell me anything about Frances. Or anything else. In fact, I need you to.”
She shut the door quietly. Faced me again. “Frances told you she was a member of the staff?”
“She told everybody that. It’s in all the interviews. She’s always said she worked here that summer—cleaning toilets and stuff—while she was writing the book.”
“I know, I just . . . I thought she would’ve told you the truth.” Doro’s expression softened. “Her parents were looking for a place where she could rest. She’d had a tough year at college. She’d . . .” She faltered again.
I was going to have to push, I saw that now. I had to make Doro feel comfortable confiding in me, and quickly, even though I felt massively uncomfortable.
“Doro,” I said. “What?”
“Gosh. I feel like I’m really talking out of turn here.”
“Doro, please. If I’m going to write a book about my mother, I need to know the truth, no matter how bad it makes her look.”
I would need to know the truth about other things as well—like the Kitty Cultist who’d attacked Doro, and why her father dropped the lawsuit against Frances—but that could wait until I’d established some sort of trust between us. Later.
She inhaled. “The way I understand it, toward the end of the semester at school, your mother got pregnant. From what I was told, the relationship wasn’t . . . well, it had no future, so she terminated the pregnancy.”
“Oh,” I said. “Wow.”
Frances had definitely left that part out, although I couldn’t blame her. It was nobody’s business.
Doro continued. “Her parents were looking for someplace far enough from Macon but close enough to get to her if she needed them. A place with some privacy where she could recuperate psychologically from the whole ordeal. She wasn’t here as an employee. She was hiding.”
I sat on the tufted chaise. I wasn’t here twenty-four hours and already Frances’s story was crumbling. For her fans, she was all supercilious cat smiles, but, in the end, they didn’t know the first thing about her. Nor, apparently, did I.
“Maybe some things you shouldn’t include,” Doro said.
I gave her a wry smile. “You’re protecting her now?”
Doro hesitated. “I know it sounds crazy, but when she was here, she was really great to me. She was the cool college girl and I was eight years old. She played with me in the backyard, at the beach. Took me on long walks all over the island. She used to tell me wonderful stories. I thought she was a movie star, you know, with the red hair and the big sunglasses and the halter tops. I was a lonely little girl, and she was my friend.”
“Some friend.”
She looked down at the floor.