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“Another woman?”
“His company.”
“And did you like it here? Back then?”
She smiled wistfully. “Very much. We had so many plans, Emelia. Frédéric sent workers and tradesmen from France to help with the restoration work I was overseeing. That’s…”
“What?”
“That’s how I met Jacques. Jac, he was called.” She looked off over my shoulder, remembering. A fond smile played at her lips. “He came with a large crew of men—carpenters, stonemasons, iron workers—but he was different. He was a young apprentice, an artist. On his lunch breaks, he’d draw in a sketchbook underneath the big oak tree outside the kitchen window, and I’d watch him. I couldn’t help it. He was so beautiful and young. Trouble…” She looked back to me. “You have so much of him in you.” Her finger traced my eyebrow and down over the high peak of my cheekbones. “Beautiful,” she whispered.
I didn’t quite understand what she was trying to tell me.
“How long were you two together?”
Whatever soft emotion there was in her gaze shuttered as she pulled her hand away from my face and looked down at her lap. Shame colored her cheeks a bright red.
“Only the summer. A blip, really. But well, my stomach grew round, and Frédéric came to visit. It was the first time we’d seen each other in six months. By then, Jac was already long gone.”
I leaned forward and wrapped my thin arms around her, giving her comfort. Life isn’t so simple; it’s not always black or white, right or wrong, faithful or unfaithful.
The rest she explained quickly, like pulling off a Band-Aid. By this point, Frédéric’s fame assured that the scandal between my mother and Jac would be splashed across every tabloid from Edinburgh to Paris. So instead of proclaiming the truth to the world, he quietly divorced my mother, and to save face, he claimed me on paper, but never in real life. To the world, I’m Frédéric Mercier’s distant daughter from his second marriage, but in reality, I’m the daughter of a young artist. After their divorce, Frédéric left my mother a meager sum and Dunlany. It was a good move on his part. My mother’s love for that old ruin ensured we’d stay away from Paris, away from prying eyes and curious questions.
When it was time for me to go to school, there was no choice. I couldn’t stay at Dunlany. The closest one was an hour away, and it was only a country day school. We settled on a boarding school in York, England, which was only a two-hour train ride away from Edinburgh. I could go home as much as I wanted, she promised me, and I did. Even as a teenager, I eagerly took the train home on the weekends, and my mother would pick me up at the station then we’d drive the thirty minutes to Dunlany. After she grew sick and the treatments made her too weak to drive, I’d take her car and drive myself to and from the station. I’d go to classes all week then hurry back to Dunlany as soon as class ended on Friday. I’d study beside her bed, read my textbooks aloud, tell her I was looking into going to an American university to get a degree in architectural conservation. “Someone has to finish restoring Dunlany, don’t you think?” The place was in a horrible state. After the divorce, my mother no longer had the money to finish the restoration work, so she closed off most of the house, focusing her time and energy on a few select rooms she used daily, neglecting the leaky roof and crumbling walls. Things only got worse when I had to let go of Mr. Parmer, Dunlany’s groundskeeper and general handyman, to be able to afford to keep a nurse on full time for my mother.
I haven’t been back to Dunlany in years, not since I went to pack up the few things I wanted to take with me to Dartmouth. It’s completely shuttered now, boarded up and closed off from the elements as much as possible.
Mr. Parmer goes to check on it every now and then. He writes to me and gives me progress reports, just like the letter he sent a few weeks ago, the one Sonya brought me.
“Dunlany in the summertime is one of my favorite sights. The gardens are growing wild,” he wrote. “Flowers everywhere the eye can see.”
To show me, he included a 4x6 photograph he’d taken of the gardens. In the background, I saw the oak tree where my mother is buried, the same tree where Jac used to sit and draw in his sketch pad.
It’s that photograph that convinced me to apply for a job at Banks and Barclay.
I told my mother I was going to go to school to become a conservationist, to gain the skills to finally repair Dunlany once and for all, and instead, I’ve been wasting my life.
“Ms. Mercier.”
I look up. My interviewer is standing at the threshold of the conference room, waiting for me to join her. She’s a well-dressed woman in her late 30s with a kind smile. She adjusts her glasses as I stand to gather my things. She’s interviewed over a dozen people by now, but she doesn’t seem the least bit impatient with me.
“Sorry to make you wait so long.”
“No.” I shake my head adamantly. “It’s absolutely fine.”
She motions for me to go through the door of the conference room first, and I take a second to admire the space. It’s beautiful, boasting an expansive view of Boston and a large wall of glass facing a hallway on the right.
I step forward to take the seat my interviewer offers me. I sit at the long conference table, catty-corner to where she’s set up at the tail end. The glass wall is behind her.
“I’m Nicole, head of human resources here at Banks and Barclay. You and I have chatted on the phone a few times.”
I smile. “Yes, I remember. It’s good to finally meet you in person.”
She nods and looks down at her notes. Everything is arranged neatly before her, pens and pencils and paper all at 45-degree angles. I’d imagine HR is the perfect field for her.
“As you might realize, this final interview is more of a formality than anything else. I’ll ask you a few questions, fill in any gaps we might have. We’ll go over Banks and Barclay policies, and by the end of the day, I’ll have both your compensation package and contract emailed to you.”
I blink, stunned.
