The Dark House (12 page)

Suddenly, Heather tried to dart past Rollins, but he caught her tiny wrist just as she was turning the corner of the bed.

“Got you!” he shouted cheerfully. It was his father's mock-gruff voice, he realized, from the rare days when they used to roughhouse on the big rug in the living room.

“I was just going to get my teddy!” Heather pleaded, her voice quivering. Tears had formed in her eyes. “Can't I get my teddy?”

“My goodness, of course!” Rollins felt terrible to have riled her, and he tried to be as soothing as he could. “I'm sorry.” He released her wrist and gently stroked her hair. He could feel the heat from her scalp. “Here, I'll get it.” Rollins hurried out to the hall, grabbed the knapsack, and returned to the bedroom. “There you are.” He dropped the knapsack on the bed, and Heather dug the fuzzy, brown teddy bear out
of it and hugged it to her chest. Rollins perched himself on the bed in front of her. “Can I show you something?” Heather didn't sit beside him as he had hoped, but she did lean against the edge of the bed, watching him. “Please?” he asked gently. Heather nodded. She was all eyes now.

He rolled to his left, pushed a hand into his back pocket and drew out his wallet. He flipped it open, dug a finger underneath all the slots that held his credit cards and teased out a small photograph, slightly brown from all its years pressed up against the calfskin of his wallet. As he did so, he could see Heather lean toward him trying to get a peek.

It was a baby picture of a tiny little girl in a white gown. She had wispy hair, a slightly dazed expression, and soft blue eyes. “This is Stephanie,” Rollins said. “It was taken about six months after she was born. It's the only picture I have of her.”

“Who is she?”

“She's my little sister.”

“She's cute.”

Rollins could sense the girl relaxing. “Yes, isn't she? You remind me of her a little.”

“She doesn't look like you.”

“You don't think so?” He held the picture up by his face so she could compare.

Heather wrinkled her nose. “She's a lot younger. Littler, too.”

“This was taken a long time ago. Look how big her pupils are. They were the most beautiful blue.”

Heather took another look.

“They were always looking for me, that's what my mother said. And her hands were so little. I had no idea they'd be so small. They always seemed to be reaching for me.”

There was a shout from the front hall. “Heather? Heather? You up there, darling?”

Rollins turned to Heather. “Your mother's looking for you.”

“I don't care.”

“Oh, but you should.” He stood up. “Take my hand?”

Heather hesitated only for a moment. “Okay.”

Her hand was warm and light. He held on to it, and then picked up her knapsack and led her through the sitting room to his front hall. Tina was just inside Rollins' door. She was wearing a clingy shirt, and she had on makeup this time. “So you
are
here.” Tina flicked her hair off her shoulders, then reached out and swept her daughter up into her arms. “I was looking everywhere for you!”

“I've been playing with mister,” Heather said.

“You were? Well, isn't that nice.” She turned to Rollins. “I didn't mean to be out so long.” She smiled again, demurely. “You must think I'm the worst mother.”

“Not at all,” Rollins reassured her. “I know how things can come up.”

“Mister showed me a picture,” Heather said.

“Of my sister,” Rollins quickly explained.

“Oh?” Tina said, with a look that compelled him to get out the photograph again. He handed it to her reluctantly. Tina studied it a moment. “Cute.”

“I left the door open,” Rollins assured her.

“Oh, listen—” Tina blurted out in a voice that Rollins took to be reassuring.

“I just didn't—”

“You've been real nice,” Tina said, handing back the photograph. “Mrs. D'Alimonte was right about you.” Rollins waited for a moment. He thought something might come—a gesture, an offer. Some overture that would put him in a terrible quandary. But Tina merely thanked him.

“You can borrow my teddy sometime if you want,” Heather added. She held up the well-worn bear and gave it a little shake. “Everybody needs a friend, you know.”

“I'll keep that in mind,” Rollins told her.

Then, with Heather still in her arms, Tina made her way back down the hall to their apartment.

 

It was drizzling when Rollins set out to meet his mother an hour later. The traffic hadn't subsided, so he decided to walk to Richardson Brothers, which was across from the Johnson building, maybe ten minutes away. He felt anxious as he hurried along under his black umbrella, and he glanced about him periodically, but saw no sign of any pursuers. Halfway along, too late to do anything about it, he realized he was doing something quite unwise. The Richardson Brothers offices were practically the family vault, after all; the Brothers had held various family trusts for generations. The money itself was rarely seen of course, but it had certainly had its effects, funding that big house in Brookline, a country house in Vermont, the private schools, the European ski trips that Rollins never much enjoyed. If he was indeed being followed, it hardly seemed prudent to draw attention to the family's pile.

Richardson Brothers was located in one of the grand granite office buildings that fronted onto the small European-style park, heavy on marigolds, the blossoms clotted in the rain, in Post Office Square. He'd come here a few times before, the first being the most memorable. It had been shortly after his twenty-first birthday, and he had been summoned from Williams by a Mr. Grove for what he described as “an important conversation.” When Rollins arrived in jacket and tie, Mr. Grove explained about his trust fund. Rollins had some trouble grasping the concept of a big bundle of money—it was $573,000 then—that had come, virtually gift-wrapped, down to him through the ages to do with
entirely as he pleased
, so Mr. Grove actually took him into a back room, through a thick steel door and into a vault to examine the stock certificates themselves. “Nothing quite like touching it,” the older man had said with a laugh. The certificates had proved to be unusually large, ornate documents printed on the same paper as cash money, but adorned with the names of prominent American corporations like IBM, Ford, and General Electric. “I own all this?” Rollins had asked, flipping through all the paper as one might an encyclopedia. Mr. Grove merely nodded, a beguiling half-smile on his face. Since then, Rollins had often sensed that the money gave him a secret allure, an importance that went beyond anything that he actually did, which was another reason he thought it best to keep quiet about it. Still,
Rollins himself had gazed with fascination on his quarterly statements, watching the sums grow steadily, year by year, as if charged with a powerful vitality all of their own.

With one last look behind him, Rollins pushed through the revolving door to find a uniformed security guard behind the marble reception desk in the high-ceilinged front hall. Rollins explained who he was.

“Oh, yes,” the guard replied. “You're expected upstairs.”

The guard had Rollins sign in, then led him around to the elevators. The guard had to turn a key to activate one that would take him up to the seventeenth floor.

The elevator opened directly into the Richardson Brothers' quarters, where a grandfather clock faced him, along with an oil painting of a clipper ship. He turned left toward a window that gave a partial view of the Atlantic—foggy and gray this morning—between the other high-rises that had sprung up along the waterfront. Unlike Johnson, which was so bright it sometimes made him squint, the Richardson offices were dimly and soothingly lit. With their dark wood paneling, leather furniture, and plentiful antiques, the offices reminded him of the Somerset Club, where his father sometimes took him for lunch after the divorce.

The door to the reception area was open, and Rollins made his way across the thick carpet silently. That was habitual with him, especially around his family. He'd always recognized the benefits of silence as he crept about the house, the little things you could learn. Now, he spotted his mother sharing a leather couch with Mr. Grove underneath a portrait of the founding Richardsons, with their grim visages and bright watch fobs. If Rollins hadn't known better, he might have taken his mother and Mr. Grove for lovers, they sat together with such familiarity. Mr. Grove, a well-dressed, ruddy-cheeked gent who must be in his early sixties now, had been out to the house many times when Rollins was a child, often bearing a heavy leather bag filled with important-looking documents to sign. Now, he had something of a feminine aspect as he gazed over at Rollins' mother, who, in her businesslike blue skirt suit, seemed somewhat bemused by all the fawning attention.
Her hair was up in a tight bun, a new style for her, and it was grayer than before, and her face seemed somewhat drawn, but there was still the same glint in her eyes.

It was Mr. Grove who noticed Rollins first, and he caused Jane Rollins to turn. “Oh, there you are!” she declared, rearing back a little before she recovered herself. “What a pleasant surprise.” She checked her watch. “So prompt.”

Mr. Grove, seemingly oblivious to any hint of familial strife, immediately stood up and extended a hand. “Good to see you again, my boy.” His voice was soft and welcoming, like well-worn upholstery.

“Buy and hold,” Mrs. Rollins told her son. “That's the key. I learned that from my father, just as he did from his.” She turned to Mr. Grove with a slight twinkle in her eye: “Wouldn't you say that our conversation this morning underscores the soundness of that principle?”

“Oh, definitely,” Mr. Grove said obligingly. “I'm always glad to hear from you, and very glad you came in.” He rubbed his hands together as if trying to warm them. “Now, are you sure I can't call you a cab or something?”

“I have a car waiting, and I've got my son here to help me along.”

For the first time, Rollins noticed that a wooden cane leaned up against the couch beside his mother. As she grasped it in her right hand, Mr. Grove alertly stepped toward her to help her to her feet.

“Why, thank you, Nick,” his mother said. She turned to her son. “I've been having a little trouble with my hip lately. But nothing to worry about. This damn rain doesn't help though.”

Mr. Grove saw them out to the hallway. When the elevator arrived, he shook hands with them once more, helped his client into the elevator, and pressed the button for the mezzanine floor for them before stepping back out. He was smiling at them as the doors closed and the elevator descended.

 

Rollins' mother raised her cane just outside the front door, and a black Lincoln Town Car came around from its spot in front of a fire hydrant across the way. As Jane Rollins led the way toward it, Rollins did his best to shelter his mother with his umbrella. Once they'd reached the
car, he glanced about, checking for onlookers. And again, he saw none.

“You coming?” his mother asked from inside the car.

“Of course.” Rollins went around to the far side and climbed in.

“I thought the Harvard Club would be good,” Mrs. Rollins said.

Rollins said fine, but he had the feeling that he often had with his mother: that her plans were settled and irrevocable regardless of his own wishes.

She looked at Rollins out of the corner of her eye. Her head had dipped with age, as had her eyelids, and, up close, they gave her appearance an unsettling reptilian aspect that was not fully countered by the gold pins in her hair and her faded lipstick. “I have to watch them in there. Oh, they're so very genteel. You saw our dear Mr. Grove. Such a kind man. But he'd ruin us in a second with some ghastly municipal bonds if I gave him half a chance or, God love us all, Internet stocks. No, I have to come show my face every few months, just to keep them in line.”

They were passing the back of the templelike Boston City Hall, across from the bustling tourist trap, Faneuil Hall. “You live over that way, don't you?” she asked, tapping on the glass in the direction of the North End. “You'll have to invite me to see your apartment one of these years. After a while, a mother gets curious, you know.”

“It's kind of small. I'm not sure you'd like it.”

“I love small things.”

“Not to live in.”

“Well, perhaps not.”

His mother returned to the view, and started reminiscing about Government Center's previous incarnation as Scollay Square, with its burlesque shows and prostitutes. Actually, she used the word “whores,” much to Rollins' surprise. No doubt, she'd learned about such things from his father, who was always more attuned to what really went on in the world.

It wasn't until they were in the small dining room at the Harvard Club (a massive edifice built, Rollins always thought, far more to a towering New York scale than to a cozy Boston one) that Rollins dared to enter potentially dangerous conversational territory. His mother had
pulled out a snapshot that Richard had sent her of his children, and Rollins had said, he thought, all the right things, especially about Natalie, whom he genuinely did like. The photo reminded him of Neely's picture from the
Globe
's files and, despite his apprehensions, he decided to mention it. “I ran across a photograph of cousin Cornelia the other day.”

His mother had been babbling on quite cheerfully about Richard's kids, but now a marked coolness came into her voice. “Oh?” His mother had never warmed to her niece, for reasons Rollins could never quite piece out. In attitude and temperament, they'd seemed perfectly suited. Like his mother, Neely had been very athletic and had gone on to captain the varsity lacrosse team at Smith. She'd always encouraged the children to play whiffle ball or croquet on the lawn in the two summers she stayed with them while her parents traveled abroad. She was a big sister to Rollins and his younger brother those summers, a bright bundle of good cheer. It went so well that Neely returned for a full year the following summer, even though her own parents stayed home. She was eighteen by then, and she'd finished boarding school, but her parents had decided she wasn't ready for college. Rollins' mother declared that she needed official duties, so she served as an au pair—baby-sitting mostly, but running the occasional errand as well—while she took art classes in town. His father was more enthusiastic about Neely than his mother was. Father could sometimes be roused to join in the merry lawn games that Neely organized, but Mother never could.