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The corner room faced the east side of the house. Two large windows overlooked an overgrown garden and the mountains in the distance. The bed would go up against the west wall so you could lie in bed and look out at the mountains. At night you’d see the moon rise. The southeast corner of the room opened into an octagonal turret. A desk had been built across three sides of the turret; on the other three sides were built-in bookshelves below the windows. A straight-backed wooden chair with a needlepoint cushion stood facing the desk. I sat down at it. The desk had been fitted out with dozens of tiny drawers and shelves. I opened one of the drawers and found, to my utter delight, a blue robin’s egg.
“I suppose Dahlia LaMotte’s papers were given to the library with her books,” I said, trying another drawer that turned out to be locked.
“Actually, I believe Matilda moved all her aunt’s papers up to the attic.”
“The attic?” I asked.
Dory Browne sighed. “I suppose you’ll want to see that, too.”
Having spent most of my life living in apartments I had very little experience with attics. I was picturing a dusty, cobweb-filled space at the top of a rickety ladder, but the room, which we reached by a narrow flight of stairs, was clean and smelled pleasantly of tea. It smelled of tea because Dahlia LaMotte’s papers had all been stored in tea crates, each one marked with the insignia of the LaMotte Tea Company and the type of tea inside—Darjeeling, Earl Grey, Lapsang souchong, and other exotic varieties.
“They were left over from her father’s warehouses,” Dory told me.
There were twelve of them. I opened one gingerly, half-afraid after my experience in the woods that a mouse would jump out at me, but the only thing that came out of the box was the scent of bergamot. Three notebooks, each one bound in the same marbled paper, lay across the top of the chest. I picked up one and saw there was another identical notebook beneath it. I turned to the first page and found Dahlia LaMotte’s signature and the datesAugust 15, 1901–September 26, 1901in a florid but readable hand. She’d filled up the book quickly.
“Why aren’t these in a library?” I asked, thumbing through a few pages.StartedThe Wild Moontoday, I read on one page;I had the dream again last night, I read on another.
“Dahlia’s will specified that her papers remain in the house.”
“That’s odd.”
Dory sat down on a tea crate—this one labeled Ceylon—and shrugged. “Dahliawasodd. Years of living alone immersed in your own fantasies will do that to a person.”
“Does her will stipulate what use can be made of the papers?” I asked.
“Whoever owns the house, owns the papers. As long as they physically remain in the house you can read them, write about them, copy them, and even publish them—although a half-share of the royalties of any published work must go to the estate, which pays for the upkeep of the house.”
“I’ve never heard of anything so strange,” I said, running my hands across the worn paper binding of one of the notebooks.
Dory smiled a trifle condescendingly. “You’ve led a very unstrange life then,” she said. Then she sighed again. “I don’t suppose you’d be interested in looking at that Craftsman bungalow now?”
I helped Dory close up the house. It was quite a job. The shutters flapped in the wind, rattled their hinges, and slammed shut on our fingertips when we least expected it. The four-over-four, double-sashed windows groaned on their way down like children forced to leave a birthday party before cake was served. While Dory was closing the front door—and telling me that the asking price, which sounded ridiculously low to me, was really too high—she got her thumb stuck in the doorjamb.
“It’s like it doesn’t want us to leave,” I said, looking back at the house from the front lawn. Shuttered, it looked sad and glowering.
“That may well be,” Dory snapped, sucking her thumb, “but we can’t all have everything we want.”
I didn’t ask what she meant by that—or why she was so set onnotmaking this sale. Instead I added up figures as we walked back to the inn. Aside from the small trust fund left by my parents, I had gotten a nice advance forSex Lives. Paul and I had talked about using it to buy a larger apartment if he got a job in New York City, but with the same money I could buy this house and keep my rent-stabilized Inwood apartment for our pied-a-terre. It could be our country house, even if I didn’t get the Fairwick job…
I was so immersed in my thoughts that I didn’t notice until I came up the inn’s steps that Dean Book was waiting for me on the front porch. Diana Hart was there, too, sitting in the wicker glider with her arms crossed over her chest and her lips thin with seeming anger. Had the women been arguing? I wondered. But Elizabeth Book, dressed today in an ivory linen shift with a matching cotton sweater draped over her shoulders, looked radiantly pleased.
“Dr. McFay,” she said, “please come join me. Diana was just going to bring out another pitcher of iced tea.”
Diana glared at the dean but got up obediently.
“I really don’t need…” I began, but Diana had already gone inside, letting the screen door slam behind her. Dory Browne looked after her but stayed on the porch. I sank down into a wicker rocking chair, suddenly tired out by all the drama of the morning. Elizabeth Book didn’t waste any time getting down to business.
“On behalf of the committee, I’d like to offer you the position of assistant professor of English and Folklore,” she said. “Of course, I know you may be considering other offers, so if you’d like time…”
“That won’t be necessary,” I replied, suddenly sure of what I wanted—had—to do. “I’d like the job and…” I glanced across the street. I couldn’t see the house but I could smell it—honeysuckle and salt air as if it stood on a cliff above the sea instead of on a street in a remote mountain town. It was the smell of my dreams. It was the scent that always accompanied my fairytale prince. Not that that was the reason I had to do it.
I turned back to Dory Browne. “I’m going to buy Honeysuckle House.”
