Whispering Hearts Read online

  Moving like someone sleepwalking, I started to unpack the few things I had brought. The bathroom was impressive, big, with a full-size tub and a separate shower stall, marble walls, and floors that, although they were clean to the point of sterilization, nevertheless looked like they were still made of the original building materials. The brass fixtures resembled antiques, in fact.

  Towels and washcloths, bubble baths and soaps, shampoos, and all sorts of facial creams were neatly organized on the shelves. I had the feeling that everything in this bathroom was a duplicate of what was in Samantha’s. After all, from what she had told me, I understood that the control of this room and everything in it had been given over to her.

  I showered but didn’t wash my hair. Afterward, I sat at the vanity table, wearing the pink silk robe that had been hanging on the bathroom door. I brushed my hair and then looked at the lipsticks. There was a variety of shades of two similar colors, very close to what Samantha had been wearing, which wasn’t that much different from what I usually wore. Thus I understood what she had meant when she said she thought she knew what I would choose. How did she know that?

  I went to the closet. When she had told me some of her things were in it, I anticipated three or four dresses, a few blouses, and a few skirts, but the closet, which was almost as wide as my apartment living room, had racks with clothing from one side to the other. Shelves to the right were loaded with shoes, shoe boots, and additional slippers. If this was what she called some of her things for my temporary use, how much did she possess?

  When I sifted through the garments, I realized one quarter of the rack was devoted to maternity dresses. As soon as I touched the first one, I drew my hand back as if I had grazed a hot stove. My mind had not completely embraced what I was intending to do. This was a splash of reality in my face. I stepped back for a moment to question myself. The answers were the same. Do it, and continue to pursue the life you dreamed you’d have, or stop now, return to New York, and start your journey home. For a moment, despite how large this room was, I felt claustrophobic, trapped, and unable to breathe.

  I took a moment to calm my thumping heart, sat on the bed, and stared at the closet. Instinctively, I knew I had to embrace everything and at least pretend to be excited and grateful. After all, this was a lot of money. I’d have my independence. Gradually, my breathing became normal, and the wave of heat that had rushed over me dissipated. I rose and returned to sift through the clothes.

  I plucked out and held up a navy, yellow, blue, and green floral print that had a low scooped neck. I thought it was beautiful. There was something about it that suggested it wasn’t a dress Samantha had long owned. In fact, when I tried it on, I was surprised that it still had a shop tag attached. The price was over twelve hundred dollars.

  She had definitely said the closet contained her clothes. Why did she buy something for herself and never wear it? Was this a mistake, perhaps? It shouldn’t have been transferred from her closet to mine? I had no doubt that if I pointed it out to her, she would still insist I wear it. I cut off the tag and gazed at myself in the full-length mirror on the closet door. It couldn’t have fit me better if it had been tailored for me, yet I wasn’t pleased as much as a little spooked. Everything was just… a little too perfect.

  I went to the dresser and began looking at what was in the drawers. Everything was my size, including brand-new bras. There wasn’t a variety of sizes, either; everything would fit me. It was so odd. I stood thinking about it all. My gaze went to the clock Mrs. Taylor had bought me on my birthday. Placing it on the night table was one of the first things I had done. It didn’t strike me then, but I was suddenly aware that it matched the blue in this room, just as it had in Julia’s and my bedroom in Guildford. It truly was as if this room and everything in it was put together in anticipation of me, not just anyone.

  Of course, that cannot be, I told myself, and shook my head. It was all coincidence. I had to get hold of myself. I was getting a little too paranoid.

  Wasn’t I?

  For a moment, I had the suspicion that Leo Abbot might have told them about me much earlier than he had claimed. For all I knew, the Davenports could have hired a private detective to follow me, take pictures, and report to them about my behavior. Maybe I even had served him in the Last Diner.

  After I put on the shoes that matched the dress, shoes that also looked unused, I gazed at myself again in the full-length mirror. On second thought, the size coincidences weren’t that astounding. Samantha and I were about the same height and weight. It happens. Stop making a thing of it, I told myself. I broke out of my reverie when I heard someone knocking gently.

  “Yes?” I said.

  I was expecting Samantha, of course, but Dr. Davenport opened the door and stepped in quickly.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt, and I’m certainly not here to rush you,” he said.

  “It’s fine. I’m ready. Thank you.”

  “Yes, I imagine you’re hungry. I know I am.”

  He didn’t close the door behind him completely. He had changed his clothes and wore a light-blue jacket, shirt, and slacks with a dark-blue tie. I had been so nervous in Leo’s apartment when he and I first met that I really hadn’t looked at him. I had a suspicion that he was someone who never totally relaxed in the presence of someone else, especially someone who was yet a stranger, but he looked far less severe right now, his gaze not as stern or as analytical, his lips softer. Yet he didn’t lose what I had recognized in my father early on, a posture reeking of self-confidence.

  “Although I pride myself on being careful and a bit skeptical of first impressions,” he said, “I believe you are very bright and perceptive, especially for someone as young as you are.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I don’t imagine it will take you long to size up this family and navigate the waters of Wyndemere successfully, but I want to be sure you understand how delicate and fragile Samantha really is. She floods anyone, especially someone new, with a plethora of distractions, keeping you from seeing just how vulnerable she really is. I hope your life in New York, as short as it has been, hasn’t made you too cynical or hardened you.”

  “No, I don’t think so, but I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing in today’s world.”

  I knew where he was going, but I waited to hear him say it.

  “Some cynicism is necessary for survival, of course. But to our issue… having a child, children, is very important to us, even though Samantha is apparently tossing overboard what most would agree is the essence of motherhood, carrying and giving birth to one’s own child. Dr. Bliskin will tell you that for most women, being pregnant is, at one stage or another, a time when they feel most fulfilled, healthy. Indeed, it seems almost antithetical to a woman’s essence to reject natural motherhood.”

  “I’ve heard that, yes.”

  It bothered me, too, I thought, but seventy-five thousand dollars…

  “From what Leo tells me, you come from quite a traditional family structure. I doubt you’ve ever come into contact with this sort of thing.”

  “In vitro?”

  “That, and a woman like Samantha,” he added, to be sure his point was clear.

  “I come from a male-dominated family,” I said. “My father oversaw all my social contacts. I can’t imagine that you’d appreciate how important my independence is to me now, but please be assured, I am capable of making my own decisions.”

  “Yes, I believe you are. Leo warned me that you could be very determined.”

  “In that way, I am my father’s daughter,” I said.

  He finally released one of his precious smiles, precious because when he smiled, his demeanor changed instantly. The warmth that rushed in enhanced his good looks. He was like a man who, for the moment at least, had stepped out of the portrait painted of him.

  “However, there’s a bit of a reversal here when it comes to what we call a traditional family. You’ll find the older generation in this house is
female-dominated. My father would never admit it.”

  “Yes, I met your mother for only a moment or two, but long enough to get an initial impression.”

  “She won’t be any problem for you. As they say, more often than not, her bark is worse than her bite. She tends to ignore what she doesn’t approve of rather than truly face it down. But I’m here to talk about Samantha. I know you’re still deciding about this. What I want to be sure about is that whatever your final decision, you do not make her feel any less of a woman. I have no doubt that she will love our child more than her own life once he or she is delivered into her arms.”

  He paused, expecting me to say something either to reinforce that or to challenge it, but I was silent. I could almost feel his eyes searching my face for a clue, but I really wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I didn’t know her well enough yet to voice any opinion about that. My hesitation stiffened him a bit.

  “It’s, as you British say, ‘early days,’ but any derogatory statements or comments of disapproval, criticism, and disparagement of her for wanting to do this will be, could be, devastating for her. If you’re already carrying and such a thing happens, I might be forced to house you somewhere else until you’ve completed your obligation,” he concluded, his voice tempered but clearly thick with threat.

  “I understand,” I said. “I wouldn’t take on something I thought was wrong. Being critical of Samantha for wanting to do this would be the same as criticizing myself.”

  His eyes brightened. I wasn’t saying it simply to please him. I really believed that much.

  “I was hoping to hear something like that. Well, then, let’s begin your Wyndemere education by us all having something to eat in the dining room. I don’t think you’ve met Mrs. Marlene yet, right?”

  “No.”

  “She, our estate manager George Stark, my father’s private nurse, and Parker are my most trusted help. There are a variety of maids coming and going, going mainly because of something my mother sees them do or not do that upsets her, like forgetting to dust one of the grandfather clocks,” he added with a smirk. I couldn’t help but wonder how he really did feel about his mother.

  The door opened farther, and Samantha looked in at us.

  “Oh. Have you come to fetch her, Harrison? That’s so sweet. When he’s a mind to, Harrison can be a wonderful host, even for his mother’s guests,” she said, and Dr. Davenport laughed.

  Then he did something that really surprised me. He held out his arms.

  “Can I escort the two most beautiful women to ever grace the halls of Wyndemere to dinner?”

  Samantha took his arm quickly and then looked at me. “That dress looks better on you than it did on me. Doesn’t it, Harrison?”

  I hesitated to question whether she had ever worn it besides trying it on to buy. Could she have and not noticed the tag?

  “Better? It looks very nice,” he said, carefully negotiating a diplomatic reply. If he knew she hadn’t worn it, he was keeping that to himself.

  He continued to hold up his arm for me to take.

  I did, and the three of us walked down the long, wide corridor toward the stairway. However, before we reached it, Mrs. Cohen came hurrying toward us from the opposite direction. Dr. Davenport stopped.

  “He’s had a cardiac event,” she said as she drew closer.

  Dr. Davenport took his arms away from ours quickly. “You two go down, Samantha. I’ll come as soon as I can.”

  Samantha took my hand. “Don’t be frightened,” she said.

  Coming from the young woman who was supposed to be quite a bit more delicate than I was, her words of comfort during what was obviously a family crisis nearly brought a smile to my face.

  We started down the stairs. I looked back.

  “He’s had a number of those episodes lately. Harrison wanted him taken to the cardiac ICU, but his mother insisted his father could have just as good care here. She hates going to the hospital and vows she will die in her own bed, so her husband should, too. There are all sorts of medical equipment and things in his room, and there’s a specialty nurse around the clock. Someone comes in later to relieve Mrs. Cohen.”

  “So he’s very, very sick,” I said. Fatally ill was what I really meant.

  “Oh, I think so. I really don’t know any details aside from his being diagnosed as a severe diabetic. Harrison is like a police detective,” she said when we reached the bottom of the stairway and paused, now both of us looking back up.

  “A police detective?”

  “You know. Someone who doesn’t want to bring the ugliness of his work home to his family.”

  But this is your family, I thought.

  “I don’t hear about a patient of his dying until weeks afterward or when I read it in the newspaper, if I do. I don’t like reading the obituary section, do you?”

  “Come to think of it, I don’t recall ever reading it, even in England.”

  “See? We think alike,” she said, smiling. “Let’s see what light dinner Mrs. Marlene has made for us.”

  She led us down the hallway to the dining room. It was grand, with its high ceilings and large chandelier centered over the long, elegant dark maple-wood table with its floral-patterned cushioned chairs. It did indeed seat twenty. The wall to the left was almost all windows that provided a view of the lake below the grounds as they sloped toward it. The lights of some homes surrounding the lake twinkled like falling stars. Now the water itself was a dark silver splashed like an immense tablespoon of tungsten on this picture-postcard view of the valley and the mountains.

  On the opposite dining-room wall hung a large oil painting of what was obviously Wyndemere. It was done in a romantic style, with the background dark, the night sky light, and the figures of a man and a woman in a horse-drawn carriage being brought to the front. The contrast and texture in the painting highlighted them. The picture was quite big, leaving barely a foot or so on each side of the wall.

  “That’s very beautiful in an almost mysterious sort of way,” I said.

  “Supposedly, the people in the carriage are ancestors of the original family. The artist wasn’t someone important. The story is he was the son of the Jamesons’ best friends, a man who died before he was twenty-five. He had tuberculosis and lived in the attic of his family home. Most of the scenes he painted were born in his imagination. He could see like a psychic. Supposedly, he lived here while he did that painting. There are so many stories and legends about this house and the people and things in it that if you listened to them all, your head would spin.”

  “Legends and fables are my favorite stories, especially about mysterious things.”

  “Really? I don’t read as much as I should. Perhaps you’ll suggest some. Wait until I show you the library. My mother-in-law brags that there are over three thousand volumes, not that she reads anything but the social column. We’ll have nothing but time on our hands soon enough. I’m not a big television person, are you?”

  “Not since I’ve been here. Had no time for it.”

  “Oh, how dreadful. Everyone should have some time to relax.”

  I looked at the table. The platters of salad, shrimp, and what was surely pieces of lobster were set before three prepared seating places, all facing the windows. There was bread, at least three different kinds, butter pats, and goblets of water. On a table this large, with two chairs at the ends with arms and a bit taller than the others, the food, although plentiful, looked diminished.

  “I hope you love shrimp and lobster.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Although my father usually frowned on the expense.”

  “Is your mother a good cook?”

  “Not a gourmet cook,” I said.

  “Mrs. Marlene is. She doesn’t live in the house. She’s been with us only a year, but she is as dedicated to my husband as anyone can be. He did something that saved her husband’s life, although he’s been put on disability or something, which is why she has to work. She’s like you, only she’s Irish,”
she said.

  I had to laugh. “She’s like me? Don’t tell the Irish that.”

  “Don’t tell the Irish what, now?” we heard, as Mrs. Marlene, a tall, attractive woman with reddish-brown hair and true kelly-green eyes, came in from the adjoining kitchen. She carried a platter of fresh fruit.

  Instead of answering, Samantha laughed and nodded at me. “This is Emma Corey from England.”

  “Oh, you’re from England. No one told me so,” she said, standing back after she put the platter on the table. “How long have you been here?”

  “Not even a year,” Samantha answered for me.

  “Is that so, now?” She smiled and looked at Samantha. “If you study on it, Mrs. Davenport, you’ll find the English have been here quite a while. Where is your hometown?”

  “Guildford.”

  “Yes, I know it. I have a nephew who attended the University of Surrey. He teaches dramatic arts in Cork now.”

  “Emma is a singer,” Samantha said, and then looked at me. “Did you attend that university?”

  “No,” I said, smiling. Didn’t she realize how old I was? “I came to America right after secondary school.”

  “What school is that?”

  “What you call high school here.”

  “Well, you’ll have a lot to discover between you,” Mrs. Marlene said. “Is there anything else you might want?”

  “We don’t, do we, Emma?”

  “No, this is wonderful.”

  “My husband is looking after his father. There was some sort of cardiac thing, so we’ll start,” Samantha said, indicating we should sit. “Thank you for doing this after working what I’m sure were two tours of the kitchen for my mother-in-law’s guests.”

  Mrs. Marlene nodded but didn’t smile. She gave me a long, hard look and then left.

  “She likes you,” Samantha said immediately.

  “Really? How can you tell that so quickly?”

  “I can,” she said. “Let’s eat, and then, if Harrison says it’s all right, I’ll show you his office and, of course, the library and the rest of the house. Go on, take what you want.”