Farthest House (28 page)

34

Three rows of bookshelves flanked each side of Luessy’s library. Moving down the aisle with Willow, I spied books I had read, colored spines, snatches of titles, many in French, ideas picked up and put down. Worlds. They had an equally spellbinding effect on Willow. She not only longed to read each one, for her the worlds of reading and painting were as connected as the two sides of the brain, thick with ropy links and nerve fibers firing impulses. She loved line, color, shading, and negative space. And she loved words.

When she thought of summer’s passing, April and May already gone while she tossed in bed with headaches or leaned over the toilet heaving, it depressed her. But she was up now and having a much better day, even managing to shower and come downstairs. Still in her bathrobe, she’d stopped to rest a moment in the wide arboreal foyer, and the door to the library had caught her up and pulled her in.

She walked slowly with no more desire than to be in the space, another space, where Mémé found inspiration. Two mahogany arm chairs in antique leather still flanked a small reading table in front of a wall of French windows. The windows framed a view of the garden where Jonah worked at one of his endless tasks, and the willow tree Papa used as inspiration for her name sat stately and much larger than she remembered. At the front of the library was the desk where Mémé’s will was read so many years before. Willow felt she’d never understand what happened that morning: Papa so angry and stunned by the raven. Mémé’s death, though he grieved her, hadn’t done that. Something else crippled him that winter morning.

The Luessy Starmore Mysteries occupied a prominent place in the first bookcase, middle shelf, and eye level. Like the rest of the library, everything looked in its proper place but spiritless with Mémé and Papa gone.

Willow moved around the desk, sank into the chair, and her hands fanned out over the broad and polished desktop. Mémé had touched and palmed the wood all through her adult life, and Willow felt starved for connection.

I felt a deep ache, too. As Willow’s illness drug on, I was losing hope. My worst fears were unfolding.

“Why am I so sick?” she asked of the space. On good days, she managed a few minutes outside, sitting on the portico with Prairie, until a bee, sometimes two or three, came circling. At other times, she found the strength to duck through the low door in the wall of Mémé’s bedroom and climb the narrow and crooked attic steps. There she sat and stared at her paintings. Kahlo, she knew, found ways to paint while in pain, the bright primary colors full of blood and heartache, but how?

On her worst days, Willow lay in Mémé’s old bed, drifting in and out of fitful sleep, the wall paneling, windows, and the door to the attic winging around her, and the lines of day and night bleeding together or entirely erased.

“Mom read in here every day,” Tory said from just outside the door, her voice reaching like one of her long fingers into the library. “But when it came to her writing, she preferred the attic, believing all the books were a distraction.”

As Tory appeared, Prairie on one gaunt hip, and behind her Clay Hartford, Willow drew in a quick and frustrated breath. She ran her hands through her damp hair and clutched closed the deep vee of her robe. “Hello,” and then, “I’m here. So sorry, Tory, nowhere to hide.”

At the sound of her mother’s voice, Prairie leaned forward, trying to squirm out of Tory’s grasp, her small arms stretching for Willow.

“There’s my baby girl,” Willow said. She stood too fast, a swoosh of dizziness slamming her head. She dropped back down.

The hems of Tory’s black, wide-legged pants fluttered around her thin ankles, and she brought Prairie forward. “I haven’t seen anyone sitting behind that desk since Mom died. How strange to see you there. You remember Professor Hartford?”

He reached his hand across the desk. “It’s good to see you again. And please, it’s just Clay.”

His coat was off, and he carried it swung over his shoulder on the hook of a finger. He’d also loosened his tie and rolled his shirtsleeves back from his wrists.
Tall,
Willow thought.
Taller than me, and kill-me-now handsome.
She reached for his hand, trying to keep Prairie balanced on her lap and her robe closed. “I bet I wouldn’t find Clay in the
Catholic Book of Saint’s Names.”

“I wouldn’t know,” he looked amused. “Is that important?” Then after a pause, “Tory tells me you’ve been sick. I hope this means you’re recovering.”

Tory stood closer to him than Willow thought necessary. “Dr. Mahoney has left instructions: Willow is to get plenty of bed rest, but she’s also to get up and get busy.”

The comment made Willow cringe, and she hoped her face wasn’t coloring. She disliked the town’s old physician and his condescending recommendations. Only for Prairie, who needed a healthy mother, had she allowed him to examine her not once, but twice. Both times he repeated the same diagnosis: “Probably a virus.” The second time though, his voice held a thinner, slightly tighter note: “I suspect you’ve let yourself get depressed. Just the sort of thing viruses like. You need to get over that, now.”

She’d stared at him.
Get over Papa’s death? Get over caring that Mary murdered him and is still free? Get over worrying about Prairie’s safety?

Still, Dr. Mahoney had drawn blood on her second visit, and when the tests came back, his white brows tangled over his dark eyes, and he scolded: “There’s nothing medically wrong with you. When a woman spends her time in bed like you’re doing, I tell her she needs to find something useful to occupy her mind.”

In the library, Clay stepped back from the desk and to the long line of Luessy’s mysteries. “Do the two of you have a favorite?”

Tory’s shoulders lifted. “I’ve never read them. Oh, I’ve thumbed through some of them, but it wasn’t much fun having a mother preoccupied with her work.”

Willow swallowed, forcing herself to stay quiet. Mémé always gave her plenty of attention, and Papa never complained about neglect. The criticism seemed as unfair as it was surprising. Even if Tory believed she’d been neglected, she needed to be careful what she said in front of Mémé’s biographer.

“I’m interested in her writing habits,” Clay said.

“Completely compulsive,” Tory said. “The writing always came first.”

Clay acknowledged her comment and nodded toward Mémé’s titles. “One is missing.”

Gazing around, indicating the whole of the library, Tory smiled. “It must be misfiled. You’re welcome to try and find it.” She turned back to Willow, “Mable is fixing tea, and we’re taking it outside. Do you feel up to joining us?”

The bees!
How many times had she been stung? The furry little monsters in her face seemed like extensions of Jonah, telling her over and over that she wasn’t wanted. “I don’t think so, and I’m not dressed. You two go on ahead. Prairie and I will stay inside.”

“I wish you would,” Clay said. He looked solid and comfortable as he took the few steps back to the desk, light from the nearest window layering a thin sheen over his jaw. “It’s a beautiful afternoon, and I’d like to hear your stories of your grandmother.”

Was she staring at him?

He looked down at Prairie. “You want your mom to come outside?”

Prairie nodded up and down.

Smart,
Willow thought,
use the kid.
Spending more time with him though and being outside with Mémé’s roses and Prairie did sound wonderful. She was starved for company other than that of the two sixty-something women who prattled on about the weather or gossiped ceaselessly about folks she didn’t know or served up churchy platitudes about how she’d certainly feel better soon. But did she have the strength to climb back up the stairs, get dressed, and make the trek outside? Only to face the bees?

“Having you join us
would
be a treat,” Tory said.

They waited for an answer, but Willow continued to hesitate. “I wish the porch were screened in.”

“Nonsense,” Tory said. “We’re going first to see the attic. Dress and join us outside.”

They turned to leave, and Prairie squealed and squirmed in Willow’s lap. Clay stopped. “You want to come with us?”

He dropped his jacket onto the desk and lifted his palms in invitation. She leaned for him.

The three left the library, and Willow marveled at how Prairie went so easily to Clay, and how Clay hadn’t considered himself too busy or too important to reach out and take her. Considering how Prairie had only women in her life now, Clay’s kindness was appreciated. The flip-side though made Willow’s throat tighten. Prairie was likely to reach for any stranger who smiled at her.

Dressed and feeling gratitude just for having found the strength to do so, Willow stepped onto the covered portico and stopped, breathing in deeply. The air smelled of fading peonies, and new roses. The sky was a clear, liquid blue, maybe cerulean, cobalt light, and titanium. Across the lawn, Jonah worked with pruning shears. Behind him, farther still, stood his hives.

She hadn’t spoken to him since their first conversation, and knowing he didn’t want her, or Prairie, around still hurt. There had to be some misunderstanding. She’d get well, start helping out in the garden, doing the heaviest jobs, and they’d get things straightened out. He’d come to love Prairie.

She noticed Clay then, sitting alone at the patio table and looking out in the direction of the graves. He’d rolled his blue shirtsleeves up to his elbows, and for a moment, her eyes rested on his bare forearms. She wondered if he remembered he left his coat on the library desk. Hopefully not. If he left the prize behind, she’d wrap herself up and—Reason thumped her on the head.
You’re losing it. Might as well bare your breast to an asp as trust a male again.

He turned, smiled, pushed his chair back and started for her. “I’m glad you decided to join us.”

She didn’t have a vocabulary for describing scents, not like she had for the nuances of color, and she wondered about his faint suggestion of spice. Not cologne, something warmer and more masculine. How did you describe attar of man? “I’m glad, too.”

“The graves over there,” he nodded in the direction of the rocks, “they’re the aunt and uncle who raised Luessy?”

As much as she enjoyed his standing beside her, she still felt somewhat lighted-headed and moved on to the patio table and a chair. “Did Tory tell you about the graves? Mémé’s will says they’re to remain undisturbed for a hundred years.”

She’d dressed first in a long-sleeved cotton blouse over her cut-offs, a top with no cling over her shoulder, but she thought of how much spring weather she’d already missed lying in bed, and how quickly Prairie was growing and Jonah, Mable and Tory were aging. She wouldn’t waste one more afternoon wishing she were prettier and trying to hide herself. She tossed the blouse across the rose chair and reached for a cooler white T-shirt.

Now, Clay stood behind her doing the whole gentlemanly thing, pushing in her chair like he didn’t already have carte blanche to the library. How could he not be looking at her shoulder? He hadn’t missed her legs. Crossing the portico, she noticed his gaze going down, and up. For years she’d hated them,
gangly and too long,
and now here was a leg-man. Not that it mattered. He was not a potential partner. Tory was right, seven or eight years
was
too much of an age difference, and he had a PhD, and taught at the University. She was barely twenty, already a divorced, single mother who lived off the generosity of an aunt, and according to Dr. Mahoney, a victim of mindless depression.