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“Oh, you didn’t need to do that.” She’s no longer looking at me, and it wouldn’t matter if I told her that this report is simply going to be passed on to my dad’s press secretary, Belinda, and by the time she’s done with it, it will only amount to a bullet point on a fact sheet.
Caroline grazes about the room while we wait, casually dragging her fingertips along tabletops and trinkets, as if drawing attention to the opulence of this space. She doesn’t really own any of this. She doesn’t even rent it. The Welles home is under her custodianship as long as her husband serves as headmaster. And yes, the Powells have a good amount of wealth on their own, but the legacy of Welles is only something they are borrowing.
“You know, it’s so strange to have a room this full of books and absolutely no time to read them,” she says, stopping on a copy ofJane Eyre. She flips through the crisp pages, the spine crackling as if the book is being opened for the first time ever.
“That’s one of my favorites,” I say. She shuts the cover and glances up at me.
“Hmmm? Oh, yes. Glorious story.”She’s never read it.
She pauses at the ladder for a moment, tilting her head as she looks at it quizzically. It’s exactly where Cameron left it after taking it for a ride the night he helped me escape this place without Caroline calling in a surgical team and an ambulance.
“Hmmm,” she says, dragging it back to the place where Cameron found it. The wheels creak along the way.
“It’s a beautiful piano,” I say, wanting to fill the dead air.
Caroline’s smile spreads and she moves toward shining black lacquer, the glow of the canned lights twenty feet above us shining in the reflection of the waxed lid.
“Do you play?” she asks.
I shake my head with a light laugh.
“My family is not musically inclined. We can’t even play the kazoo,” I say. She doesn’t laugh along with me. Instead, her brow grows heavy and draws in with pity, as if she feels bad that I missed out on being able to have recitals.
“I played for years. I even had a concert once with the symphony at the old Orpheum Theater.” She takes a seat on the bench and runs her fingers along the lid covering the keys.
“Do you . . . still play?” I won’t be shocked if she grows animated and forces me to endure an hour-long performance with the way this interaction is going. Thankfully, though, she only laments the days when she did.
“No, again . . . who has the time. And my hands aren’t what they used to be. Arthritis is a cruel woman,” she says with a short-lived smirk.
“Why does arthritis have to be a woman?”
“Oh!” She cuts off my question immediately, rising from the bench and moving toward the grand bookcase again. Her hand zeroes in on the copy ofGulliver’s Travels, and I hold in my amusement that she’s discovering all of the things Cameron probably messed up in this room. I wonder if he didn’t push the spine in perfectly.
“Now, this book. Oh, Brooklyn. I adore this book. So does my husband,” she says, pulling it out the same way she did withJane Eyre. Unlike that book, though, she’s careful with the pages, which are obviously well-worn.
“You know, it’s so funny . . . when my grandson was younger and lived with us for a summer, we forced him to read this book. Oh, how he hated it. I would make him sit right there on the floor while I watched, quizzing him a few pages at a time to make sure he was really reading because if I didn’t he would pretend.”
My lips part, and I keep my mouth from hanging open in an obvious way.
Her head swivels and her gaze zooms to me.
“You know what he said about it?” she asks.
“He thought it was boring . . .” The words slip from my mouth as if a ghost said them.
Her forehead dents.
“Huh. Actually yes. That’s exactly what he said.” She snaps the book shut. “Hehatedthis book. And I know he read it because we discussed it at length after every chapter.”
It can’t be. Yet it positively is.
“Did he take piano lessons? Your grandson?” I fish because I need more to solidify my near-certain suspicion.
“When we had him at the house, yes. He took to it quickly too, but you know boys.” She slidesGulliver’s Travelsback into its spot. “He didn’t want to practice or show up for lessons. He would fake these stomach aches. He was always more interested in climbing trees than learning the arts.”
Climbing.
“Ah, Ashley. Thank you!” Caroline abandons the source of her memories, and I’m left puzzling over these stories I am fairly sure she is not supposed to share. She meets her assistant in the center of the room and passes the leather binder along to me.
