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I can’t help but think about the days on the street that were food scarce, when we had very little to share among ourselves. I have to hand it to Derrek. There was never a day that we didn’t havesomethingto eat. But there were plenty of days where it wasn’t nearly enough to ease the cramping hunger in my belly. Not to mention the dark days in foster care when we were literally not fed at all.
Now, I sit at a table with enough to feed all the kids in Derrek’s crew five times over, and the scents that enticed me just a few minutes ago lose their appeal. I force bites of food into my mouth because I took the plate and I don’t want it to go to waste, but I’ve lost my appetite.
This whole place is so much excess. It just doesn’t make sense. A two-hundred room house for one man? This ridiculous amount of food? The guys told me yesterday the population of Smoky Falls is barely over five thousand people. There’s no way a mayor here earns enough to keep up a place like this. He must just be hemorrhaging money to keep the place afloat.
Which leads me to wonder why he does it.
I observe him while I eat, reading over a sheaf of paper in a folder, making notes in the margins as he sips coffee.
“Uncle Dom?” I ask in what I hope is an innocent tone.
He starts, then looks up with a smile. “Yes, Layla?”
“This house, you said it belongs to our family, right? It’s not like a perk of being mayor?”
“Yes, it’s been our family home since 1895, I’m afraid.”
“Where’s the rest of our family?”
His brows furrow. “I’m sorry, I don’t follow.”
“Well, it’s hard to imagine they built this giant house for a family of four. There has to be a reason for so many bedrooms, such a large dining room?”
The housekeepers and kitchen staff glance back and forth at each other but don’t utter a word, choosing instead to become extremely interested in their plates.
“Yes, well…” Uncle Dom clears his throat. “You have to remember that back in that era, people with a lot of wealth built excessively large houses for multiple reasons. They liked to invite guests to stay, for example, often for several months at a time. Our ancestors might invite a party of thirty people to spend the summer here. It was a part of the culture. People didn’t have any of the electronic entertainment we have now, and travel was expensive. So visiting friends was the best way to enjoy society.”
“But how big was our family back then?” I press. “How many people actually lived here when the house was built?”
The butler, whose name I’ve learned is Mr. Carson, clears his throat. “I believe, Sir,” he starts in a low gravelly tone, “That the historical book in the library might answer the young lady’s questions on Harridan House.” He turns to me with a small smile. “The builders kept detailed records, and your great-great-grandfather was somewhat of a historian. He put together a delightful book about their life here at the turn of the twentieth century. I can lay it out for you in the library after breakfast, if you like?”
My heart leaps. “Yes, that would be fantastic. Thank you, Mr. Carson.”
He nods astutely, then returns his somber gaze to the plate before him.
“Excellent,” my uncle says. “Then that should take care of your questions!”
“For now,” I agree, surreptitiously studying the rest of the household staff as I continue eating. Mr. Carson would certainly have known my mother, and perhaps Mrs. Dowling the head housekeeper. The rest of them were too young or hadn’t been here long enough. Thanks to our chat over cocoa yesterday, I know Susan has been here a decade, and the head chef only two years.
From my observations since arriving, Mrs. Dowling is an imposing woman whose sharp eyes seem to be glued to her watch. The younger housekeepers jump when she walks into the room and flurry around, trying to work quickly and efficiently. She’s so precise about how everything is done, I can’t help but assume she’s been doing this job for a very long time.
Mr. Carson often sports a dour expression and doesn’t speak much. However, the hint of a smile when discussing the history book gives me reason to hope he’s not as serious as he seems.
As I finish my plate and push away, I decide to start with him.
I feel guilty walking away and leaving my dishes at the table, but I learned last night that it offends the staff if I try to take them to the kitchen myself. Sure enough, before I’m two steps away, the younger red-headed maid hustles over and picks everything up, bussing it into the kitchen.
I have got to hand it to them. They take great pride in their work.
I wander around the ground floor for a while, poking in the nooks and crannies, becoming even more familiar with the house. One thing that strikes me as odd: there’s not a single photograph. Anywhere. The house is like a museum, for all you can tell that someone lives here.
Of course, there are tons of fancy oil paintings all over the building, in every space. But I have yet to see a regular photo. This thought gets my mind churning, and I decide to go on a hunt through the public areas to see if I can find any paintings that might be my mom. Perhaps I’ve seen some and assumed they were old, but it makes sense that an old money family like this one would have oil portraits done, even in the twentieth century.
I comb through the first floor carefully, but there aren’t that many common spaces with portraits. On the second floor I work through all the rooms Uncle Dom showed me, and I see a few of young women with striking dark hair and green eyes, but none that look remotely modern. Would they paint newer portraits with old-fashioned dresses, or were these just old portraits?
Travelling down the long hallway, I notice an odd pattern: There’s always a portrait of a young lady, followed by three different men, before another lady. The ladies look similar, all pale-skinned with coifs of dark hair and bright green eyes, the knowing smile on their lips eerily similar to the one I see in the mirror.
The men are incredibly diverse, ranging dramatically in hair colors and skin tones. Always three, following a woman who is clearly my ancestor. I count five sets in all as I traverse the hallways. The clothing styles of the women seem to evolve from corsets and bustles to looser garments, with one featuring a woman with short-cropped hair and the distinctive drop-waisted style of the nineteen twenties. The men wear dapper suits with wide lapels, and the next woman’s portrait appears to be set in the fifties. She sits in a stiff-shouldered dress, a belt cinched at her tiny waist with a voluminous skirt that pours over her lap. She styled her dark curls in an elegant bob, and the three men that follow her all wear fashions from the same era.
