Amber House: Neverwas (10 page)

I stopped and opened the one on my left. Amber was waiting for me
inside. It was a library with no ceiling, built around a single tall tree that
had one withered side, blasted by a long-ago catastrophe.

28 O

She held out her hand, and I took the thing she gave me — a gilded
walnut. I hated to break such a pretty thing, but some things must be
broken. I set it on the floor and stepped on it, and it cracked in two.

Curled inside was a scrap of paper.

There were words written on it, but I could not read them. I had to
concentrate. I had to make them swim into focus. And then they said to me:
Seek the point where past and future meet.

CH A P T ER FOU R

K

At seven the next morning, before dawn, my mother stuck her

head through my door to wake me. “Get up and get a move on,

sweetie.” She pushed the door open a little farther, letting in

more of the hall light. I pulled my pillow over my head. “Come

on. Look alive. Church, and then we’ve got a ton of work to do

before our solstice party tomorrow. We got such a late start

dressing the house this year. You have to help.”

I unburied my face, rubbing my eyes with my knuckles. And

stopped to stare, amazed, at what she was wearing. She stood

there with her hand on the door, lit from the hall light behind

her, looking absolutely poised in a severe, sleek black wool suit,

its skirt tailored Astorian-style above the knee, a cream silk

blouse showing in the V of the collar. “
Where
’d you find that suit?” I said.

“It was packed,” my mother said, a little confused, tugging

down the hem of the jacket. “With all my other clothes. You’re

not going to go back to sleep now, are you? Close your eyes —

I’m turning on the light.” She flipped the switch.

I went temporarily blind as my eyes adjusted to the sud-

den bloom of light. Then I saw that Mom had on her usual pale

pink, square-cut, conservative suit. Not a stunning black one.

Transformed in an eyeblink. Like in a movie, where the guy in

charge of making sure everything stays the same from one

moment to the next made a major error. Or maybe like my brain

got carried away with wishful thinking. I rubbed my eyes again.

Wow. Creepy.
“I’m — never mind,” I said. “Trick of the light.”

30 O

“Get a move on,” she said again. And turned to go.

“Um. Mom?” I dropped my feet over the side of the bed

so their weight would pull me vertical. “Have you ever had a

black suit?”

“Black?” She wrinkled her perfect nose a little. “So grim. I

like happier colors. Besides, I don’t look good in black.”

I didn’t know if I agreed.

Twenty minutes later, I was almost ready to go except for the

jewelry I wanted to wear. Instead of the necklace I was looking

for, I found a scrawl on a piece of the stationery I’d left out on the lamp table. I guessed I must have made it during the night, while

I was half asleep. The words were nearly illegible, but I puzzled

out what they were supposed to say.

“Seek the point where past and future meet.”

I stared at the little piece of paper in my hands, reading and

rereading the words.
Where past and future meet? Some kind of exis-tential advice about living in the moment?

Impulsively, I tore the phrase out of the full sheet of paper it

was written on, and then reduced it to a slip the size of a Chinese

fortune. I opened the dollhouse and set the words inside its tiny

library. I could not say why I felt they belonged there.

“Sarah?” My mom called up the stairs. “We’re all waiting on

you, honey.”

“Coming,” I yelled, spotting and grabbing the missing neck-

lace and my wool coat. I clomped down the stairs, shoving my

arms into the sleeves. Four faces were looking up at me: Dad,

Mom, Maggie, and Sam. Sam was tugging unhappily at his col-

lar, trying to loosen the grip of his striped tie. He hated anything tight around his neck.

My mother picked a hair off my collar. “What are you wearing

on your head?”

I pulled a lace doily thingy out of my pocket. It looked a little

wrinkled, but it would have to do. Mom and Maggie both looked

o31

neat and polished in their complementary suits, with pillbox

hats pinned just so. But I hated hats as much as Sammy hated ties.

Mostly, I hated how the church required only
female
heads to be covered during Mass. The little circle of lace was as far as I was

willing to go.

N

We drove into Annapolis. The Hathaways had saved a spot for

my family, which was fortunate, since I’d made us all a little late

and St. Mary’s was crowded this last Sunday of Advent. We hur-

ried up the aisle to the front pew Senator Hathaway had chosen.

As we slid into our seats, I caught some resentful looks from

folks forced by the overcrowding to stand along the sides of the

church.
Sorry
, I thought,
nothing I can do.
Mrs. Hathaway —

Claire — motioned silently for me to sit beside Richard. She

was all long, blond elegance, wearing a suit very like the one I

had imagined on my mother, sleek and sophisticated in a very

unconservative way. She evidently didn’t think she looked too

grim in black. And neither did I.

Richard seemed genuinely happy to see me. He leaned over

and whispered in my ear, “I like your doily, Parsons.” I rewarded

him with a dirty look; he grinned.

I found it somewhat disturbing to be squeezed in next to him.

I noticed too much when he brushed up against me — a kind of

pins and needles feeling. This was Mass, for God’s sake. I pulled

myself into the slimmest person I could manage and then worked

hard at not thinking about Richard at all.

I’d always loved the Annapolis church where my grandmother

and grandfather had been married. It was a place in which every-

thing was designed to draw the eyes up. The altarpiece with its

five lacy gold spires; the soaring pointed arches endlessly repeated; and at the top, above all, a starry ceiling suggesting the vault of

32 O

heaven. I was contemplating that vault, imagining the scaffolding

they’d put up to get it painted, when Richard leaned for another

amused whisper: “You’re making Father Flaherty mad.”

I snapped to and focused in as Father Flaherty worked his way

toward the conclusion of his homily: “. . . teaches us that Advent

is a season of new beginnings, a time of hope and promise.

We — all of us — have an opportunity now to embrace change,

and to help a new president bring about a vital new beginning for

our nation and for our continent.” The priest then nodded mean-

ingfully toward Senator Hathaway, seated a few places down

from me. As all eyes turned toward our pew, I was glad —
very

glad — I was no longer staring at the ceiling.

After Mass, most of the congregation headed over to the

Carvel Hall hotel for brunch. Richard fell into place beside me

on the way to the doors. “Want to walk?”

“With you?” I said stupidly.

He chuckled and nodded. “Yeah. With me.” He was giving me

one of his patented smiles. He bent his head down, as if he were

a little uncertain, then lifted his eyes, locking them with mine

through a heavy fringe of gold lashes. I wondered if he had any

idea how irresistible he looked.
Yeah, probably.

“Sure,” I said. I was wearing heels and too-bare legs, so it

would be a cold, uncomfortable walk. But for that smile, I was

prepared to be stoic.

Most days, I loved walking through town. The Confederation

was home to many beautifully preserved cities full of gracious

homes and marble-faced public buildings. But Annapolis was

its own kind of gem. It wore a mix of northern and southern

influences — lots of the straight-laced lines of the Puritan North, with some of the soft colors and curlicued details of the decadent

South. The oldest houses were built in the mid-1600s, and most

of the government buildings dated to the colonial era. Not like

in Astoria, where an 1860s house was considered ancient.

o33

We walked up Main Street, window-shopping. An aproned

man leaning against the doorway of the tobacco shop —

smoking, of course — nodded to Richard. “When’s your father

announcing?”

Richard smiled. “As soon as he tells me, I’ll be sure to let

you know.”

“I bet Jimmy Nealy a bottle of the good stuff that he’d do it at

the exhibit opening.” He grinned. “Nice piece of politicking,

that is. ‘Amber House: The Women and Minorities of the

South’ . . . Pull in the liberal votes. Soften up the allies. It’s

genius.”

Richard frowned slightly. “This is Sarah Parsons,” he said,

gesturing toward me. “The daughter of the owners of Amber

House.”

The man gave me an embarrassed look, I guessed for his hav-

ing implied my parents’ exhibit was just so much political

calculation. “I meant to say,” he said, “how — smart the whole

idea is, putting Senator Hathaway into the international spotlight

that way. We’re all so grateful to your folks.”

I gave him a small, brittle smile. “I’ll tell them.”

He pretended he didn’t notice the brittleness. Beaming, he

said, “Can I borrow this guy for just a minute?” Without waiting

for an answer, he beckoned for Richard to follow him inside. “I

have something for your dad — new Cubans. Will you take

them for me?”

Richard politely looked to me for permission; I nodded I

would wait. Because of course a sixteen-year-old young lady was

not exactly welcome in the tobacco shop. Some places were still

considered male territory.

“Be right back,” he promised, and mouthed at me silently,

Sorry
.

So I stood there, in the cold, stamping my feet a little to force

warm blood into them. A lot of holiday shoppers were on the

34 O

street, all the way down to the harbor’s choppy gray waters.

Boats of all types and sizes bobbed there. But my eyes fixed on

the plain blue building sitting on the water’s edge that served

as the local yacht club.

A wave of déjà vu smacked me so hard I was dizzy with it. My

vision actually rippled.

I
knew
what the club looked like inside — blue carpeted with golden wood accents. I could see in my mind a beautiful two-masted ketch framed in its lobby’s sheet glass window. Could

hear myself chatting with an old man in a captain’s hat who

signed me up for a race that began and ended at the club’s

docks — a race that I won. But I’d never been inside that build-

ing. Never. It was like having a memory of something I knew I’d

never done.

I stopped, bent over; the heels of my hands pressed against

my eyes.

“Are you all right?” Richard said beside me.

“Yeah,” I said, straightening up. “You ever been in there?” I

pointed at the club.

“Sure,” he said.

“What color is the carpeting?”

“No carpeting. Wood floors with area rugs. Nautical themes.”

Huh.

“You sure you’re all right?”

“Just — need to eat, I think. Let’s get to Carvel before all the

hash browns are gone.”

He grinned. “A girl with an appetite. Points, Parsons.”

Points?
I thought. He was keeping score?

“I shouldn’t have left you waiting. I’m really sorry. Took lon-

ger than I thought. And I’ve never liked that guy — he’s the kind

who thinks everybody’s as crooked as he is. It’s part of my job

description, though — running errands for Dad.”

o35

“It’s fine,” I said. “Is your father actually going to announce at

the exhibit?”

“Hey,” he said, “don’t ask me — just the errand boy. Nobody

tells me nothing.”

I shot him a mock-exasperated look. “Come on, Hathaway.

You left me standing in the cold. Cut me in.”

“All right, all right,” he said. “But you have to keep this quiet.

Dad has been working for years on building relationships with

political heavyweights from all over the Americas, and a lot of

them are going to be at the opening gala. So yeah” — he leaned

in to whisper — “he’s probably going to announce then. The

exhibit’s the perfect occasion, very pro-women and pro-minori-

ties. It’ll help cement my father’s image of someone willing to

push the Confederation into the twenty-first century.”

Wow
, I thought.
He’s announcing at my parents’ exhibit.
That was — kind of impressive.

No hash browns, as it turned out. When Richard and I walked

into the banquet room, my mother intercepted me. “What took

you so long? I was worried.” She handed me a doggy bag. “I

ordered some eggs to go for you, hon,” she said. “We have to get

a move on.” Which apparently was the operative phrase for the day.

When we got home, Jackson was in the main hall, helping

another man brace a towering fir in the U formed by the stairs.

The grandfather clock, a table, and a couple of wing-back chairs

had been removed to make room.

As soon as my mom hit the threshold, she flipped into party

dictator mode. With her arm linked in mine, tugging me to