House of Secrets Read online

  Ryder had his mother’s eyes, which were a soft blue or what my girlfriends called “dream eyes.” His smile always started with those eyes and then rippled out over his high cheekbones and his nose with its high, prominent bridge, down to his firm, straight, “kissable” lips. He had a slightly cleft chin and was self-conscious about it, probably more so when he entered his teenage years. Nervously, he would put his right forefinger over it whenever he was in deep thought. No one else but me seemed to notice that. His mother had also had that cleft chin. I could see it in the beautiful headshots of her in frames on Dr. Davenport’s office walls the few times I had been in there. But her cleft was even slighter than his.

  Once, years later, when I was more comfortable talking to him, I put my finger on his cleft chin and told him what I had noticed him doing. He shrugged and revealed he had studied up on it.

  “In Persian literature, you know, the chin dimple is considered a facet of beauty.” He leaned toward me and, in a whisper that titillated me as much as a kiss might, added, “It’s a well into which the poor lover has fallen and become trapped.”

  I was self-conscious about the way I blushed, so I snapped back at him with, “Yes, but yours isn’t deep enough to trap a fly.”

  Ryder could be arrogant sometimes and too full of himself. He was honest enough to admit that to me and tell me, “You’re the only one who reminds me I put my pants on one leg at a time.”

  I wasn’t sure I was happy about that. It wasn’t how I wanted him to think of me. It sounded too much like being a good friend, even a sister, and I was dreaming of more. But those feelings were yet to come. They were still embryonic, inside an egg far from being hatched. And boy, were those thoughts forbidden in the world of Wyndemere House. Nothing could damage the Davenport image of being special.

  Inside its walls, we were truly a world unto ourselves. Sometimes I believed the Davenports thought their personal history was as important as the country’s, especially as it involved Dr. Davenport’s father and mother. Awards, plaques given to them from high government officials, huge portraits of ancestors who looked like noblemen or princesses, even queens and kings, hung over fireplaces and in the entryway. When I was five my mother told me most posh families felt that way about themselves. “The blue bloods,” she said, “think they were chosen to have special privileges.”

  “Why do you call them blue bloods?” I asked. I had seen Ryder cut himself and knew his blood was as red as mine.

  “Aristocrats in the Middle Ages thought their blood was blue, and the term stuck,” she said.

  “This isn’t the Middle Ages,” I said. Even back then, at the age of eight, I didn’t want to criticize Ryder and Sam, and I especially didn’t want to think badly of Dr. Davenport.

  My mother shrugged. “You could never convince Simon and Elizabeth Davenport of that.”

  I really didn’t know Dr. Davenport’s parents. His mother gave birth to him when she was nearly forty and his father was fifty. By the time my mother came to work for Dr. Davenport and his first wife, Samantha, his father was seventy-eight and a severe diabetic. There was a full-time nurse caring for him back then. According to my mother, Dr. Davenport’s mother was one of those women determined to defeat age.

  “She practically put her plastic surgeon’s children through college singlehandedly and would spend hours in the morning working on her makeup before she would leave the house, usually to meet women overly made up like herself for lunch at some expensive restaurant. Her skin had been pulled and stretched so much it was practically transparent. You could see the veins in her face, which were always blue, convincing her she was truly a blue blood.”

  Mrs. Marlene told me Elizabeth Davenport interviewed undertakers to find one who would be skilled enough to make her look alive in her casket. She said, “The woman actually went to funerals if there was an open casket to inspect the work they had done. I wanted to tell her what my grandmother had told me: Never resist growing old. Many are denied that privilege.”

  These little stories about Dr. Davenport’s parents trickled down to me as I grew older. I knew they had slept in separate bedrooms almost the day after returning from their honeymoon. I was told that they always dressed formally for dinner, something Dr. Davenport still did, and they were always wealthy. Simon Davenport had assumed control of his father’s export-import business and had doubled its value. He had wanted Dr. Davenport to assume it, too, but Harrison Davenport was a brilliant student determined to become a cardiac surgeon. In the end, the business was sold, for what my mother called “an outlandish amount of money, enough to choke a horse.”

  Simon Davenport died before I was born, and Elizabeth had a stroke and lived in her room with around-the-clock care until I was six. I saw only glimpses of her when I was still permitted to go upstairs to either Ryder’s or Sam’s room when my mother cared for them. My memory of her was of a tiny woman practically swallowed up in a bed with huge pillows and a headboard with embossed angels. I thought they were there to carry her to heaven, but when I told my mother that, she shook her head and said, “Too heavy a load.”

  Too heavy a load? She looked like she was put together with chicken feathers.

  I never realized she had died until weeks later. To me, the house wasn’t any quieter or darker, and I saw no one, not even Dr. Davenport, crying. Later, my mother told me she and Mrs. Marlene had gone to the funeral.

  “Did she look alive?” I asked.

  She smiled. “I thought she was going to sit up and complain about the uncomfortable coffin halfway through the service.”

  I knew my mother was just being funny, but for a long time afterward, I had dreams about this wisp of a woman with her styled and lacquered rust-brown dyed hair wandering through Wyndemere House at night looking for some jewelry she was always accusing maids of stealing. When I told my mother about my dreams and visions, she did not laugh.

  “Most ghosts,” she said, “are visible only to children. But you have nothing to be afraid of, Fern. Elizabeth Davenport thought children were a nuisance and wished people were born grown-up. I don’t think she was much of a mother for Dr. Davenport. From the way he talks sometimes, it was like she had completely forgotten she had given birth. Maybe she didn’t,” she added in an almost inaudible mumble.

  There was another dark secret, I thought. It was no use to keep asking about it, either. My mother refused to follow and encourage gossip about the Davenports, especially when other members of the staff asked her questions.

  “Never you mind,” she’d tell them. “Manage yourself. You’ve got enough there to occupy your mind for a lifetime.”

  Even as they grew older, neither Ryder nor Sam seemed to care all that much about their grandparents and their family history. Sometimes, I thought because of my mother, I knew more than they did about their grandparents. Because I had so little when it came to family, I enjoyed the fact that they didn’t talk about their own very much. Their world, like mine, was quite enough, even though we practically lived on separate planets. With Bea Davenport’s heavy unwritten but clearly stated rules governing my behavior, it really was like visiting another house whenever I did cross over, either to help my mother with her chores or during a rare time when she and I were invited to participate in something. It was why I wasn’t very helpful when the girls in my class asked me questions about Wyndemere.

  “I really don’t live there,” I said. “I live in the afterthought, a part of the building created when the original owners realized they needed a place for their live-in help. Two maids slept where I sleep, and another maid and the cook back then slept where my mother sleeps.”

  It didn’t sound good and certainly not like anything any of my friends would envy, but I saw no reason to lie about it. Someday I’d be leaving Wyndemere, and so would my mother. We’d be more like normal people then, I thought, although deep in my heart, I had a fear. I feared my mother would fade and die if she ever left Wyndemere.

  I had no idea why. />
  It was another secret and one maybe not too far from the secret that squirmed restlessly just beyond my reach but was growing closer and closer with every passing year, and this year seemed to be going faster than the previous. Maybe that was because I was doing more with my friends. One thing I was going to do that I had never done was attend the prom. It would be my first formal date.

  At Hillsborough, the senior class ran the school prom. Others attended, of course. Ryder was a senior this year and president of his class. Although he was always popular and invited to many parties and had many friends, he hadn’t dated one girl as steadily as he did this year, Alison Reuben.

  Alison Reuben was definitely the prettiest girl in Ryder’s class. She had light strawberry-blond hair that floated around her cameo face dominated by her kelly-green eyes, and there was no other girl with fuller, more perfect lips. The patches of freckles at the crests of her cheeks and the richness of her complexion made any makeup extraneous. She didn’t even have to put on lipstick, because her lips were so bright, a sort of reddish orange. I wanted so much to hate her, because she was one of those girls who knew they were beautiful and let everyone else know it, too.

  Ryder was blind to any faults in her character, and I was certainly not going to be the one to point any out. Whenever I was near them, she was pleasant enough to me but always acted toward me the way someone much older and more sophisticated would. Although she never came right out and said it, I sensed she saw me as only the little girl whose mother worked for Ryder’s parents.

  So I was very surprised when one night after dinner, when I was doing some homework and lying on my bed in my pajamas, I heard a soft knock on my not-quite-closed door and looked up to see Ryder peering in.

  “Hey,” he said. “Can I talk to you?”

  I slammed my history book closed so fast and hard that I almost caught a finger in it. “Come in,” I said, sitting up. He stepped in. “Close the door.”

  He thought a moment, as if he had to step over hot coals, and then did so.

  “What’s happening?”

  I brought my knees up and embraced my legs. He came closer and, after a slight hesitation, sat on my bed. My pajama top was open more than it should be, but I didn’t rush to button it. I saw how his eyes were drawn to the growing fullness of my breasts.

  “What do you think of Paul Gabriel?” he asked.

  “Paul Gabriel? He’s a senior.”

  “Right.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t think of him at all,” I replied, tucking the sides of my mouth in. That triggered a dimple in my right cheek, the same dimple my mother had. I supposed one of the things that made it easier to ignore wondering who my father might be was the strong resemblance I bore to my mother. We had the same violet eyes and raven hair, with curls that were always a little frizzy and untamed. Our foreheads were a little too wide, but we made up for it with perfect, diminutive features, high cheekbones, and full lips.

  “Yeah, well, he’s noticed you,” Ryder said.

  “Really?” I searched my memory for any snapshot visions of Paul Gabriel. He was tall, over six feet, with an awkward gait. I vaguely knew he was one of the best pitchers on the school’s baseball team, but I couldn’t recall ever speaking to him.

  “He’s a nice enough guy, actually shy.”

  I nodded. “So?”

  “So he came to me to ask if I thought you would go to the prom with him.”

  “Paul Gabriel? I don’t think he’s said two words to me.”

  “I told you he was shy. I think you’d have a good time. I bet not too many girls in your class are being asked,” he added.

  “I don’t know.”

  “If you agree, he’ll drive. He’s got his own car.”

  I started to shake my head.

  “And we’d double-date,” he said. “There’s an after-party at Shane Cisco’s house.”

  “Really? Is Alison all right with that?”

  “She will be. I haven’t told her yet. Paul called me again about it tonight. So what do you say? C’mon. It’ll be fun. Paul’s okay. I wouldn’t set you up with anyone who wasn’t,” he added.

  “I’ll ask my mother,” I said. “But I know I don’t have the right sort of dress.”

  “I’ve got an idea,” he said, leaning forward, his hand on my knee. “I know where my mother’s dresses are stored in the attic. We’ll find one that works, and you can get it fitted. Okay?”

  “I guess,” I said, shocked and delighted at how determined he was to get me to go, determined enough to want me to wear one of his mother’s dresses.

  “Great.” He stood up and started out.

  “Hey,” I called when he opened the door. “You didn’t arrange all this just to get a ride to the prom, did you? Because I know you wouldn’t want Parker driving you like some snobby rich kid, and your father hasn’t bought you your car yet.”

  He smiled. “What a terrible thing to think,” he said, widening his smile, and he left.

  Did I know him, or did I know him? Whatever, what did I care about his reason? We’d be double-dating! It would be my first formal date, too.

  I lay back and looked up at the ceiling.

  It all sounded wonderful, but how was Alison going to react to this? I could count on the fingers of one hand how many conversations she’d had with me so far this year, and those were usually “Oh, hello.” I wasn’t exactly the choice she would make for a girl to share her big night. She had many close friends in her own class.

  And then I wondered, what would it be like going to the prom with a boy I hadn’t even spoken that much to all year? And anyway, could I give Paul Gabriel the attention my date should have if I was with Ryder? Every time he kissed Alison, I would imagine he was kissing me.

  Could I hide that from Paul Gabriel? What if he realized it and blurted out something like “Hey, she’s jealous”?

  Alison might tell him to take care of his own business, meaning me. What would I do then? I had yet to kiss a boy the way I dreamed of kissing Ryder. And the prom . . . what if it led to something further? Would my resistance fit Alison’s view of me perfectly?

  She’s just a little girl. Why did Ryder arrange this?

  I might spoil their night with my innocence.

  My worries fit. After all, this was virgin me afraid of justifying the dirty thoughts boys whispered behind my back because I was a mistake.

  Was I a mistake?

  And was it true that girls who were mistakes had a tendency to be more promiscuous after all? I was always worried about my sexual thoughts and the fantasies I couldn’t seem to stop lately.

  What did this really mean?

  Maybe I didn’t have long to find out.

  And maybe that frightened me more than anything.

  2

  PAUL GABRIEL WASN’T just physically awkward, walking as if one of his legs was shorter than the other; he was socially awkward as well. Shy wasn’t the right word for it. Ryder had searched for a euphemism for crude, unsophisticated, and as far from romantic and graceful as the planet Mars was from Earth. I knew shy boys who had a sweetness about them. Shy fit them as well as a perfectly sized shoe. They were cute. Paul wasn’t ugly, but he certainly wasn’t cute. I couldn’t imagine that Ryder was that close to him, either, or at least any closer than he was with other boys in the senior class. Truthfully, I hadn’t seen them together that much.

  Ryder was correct in saying that few, if any, other girls from my class would be asked to the prom, but what he didn’t understand was that I would go not just to be one who was invited but because I would be with him and Alison. I was confident that Paul Gabriel took it the way he thought any girl might, that I was excited enough to go on a date with him because he was one of the school’s sports heroes.

  The following day, Ryder invited me to sit with him and Alison in the cafeteria. I was surprised. Ryder and Alison were always surrounded by friends who were either seniors or juniors. A seat at their table was cherished as if i
t was a seat with royalty. This particular day, no one was walking toward a table with them. I saw Ryder nudge Alison when I entered the cafeteria. My eyes always went to Ryder when I was in the same room with him in school, whether that was the gym, the auditorium, or the cafeteria. She rolled her eyes.

  I was keenly aware of how much closer his relationship with Alison had become, practically counting how many times he pressed his shoulder against hers or snuck in a peck on her cheek like someone stealing a grape off a vine. I realized their affection for each other was maturing into love. They were behaving more and more as if there was no one else in the room. I think there were times when my eyes were soaked in jealous tears that I couldn’t stop. I was watching a star grow dimmer and dimmer in the night sky, a star certainly out of my reach.

  Maybe my jealousy colored how I viewed Alison. Did she sense that, and was that why she deliberately treated me as if I was still in grade school? I never wanted to dislike someone Ryder liked. I was terrified of his being disappointed in me if I even hinted at something unpleasant about her.

  Instead, if anything, I tried to emulate Alison, even to walk like she walked or keep that Madonna smile on my face, too. I was hoping that someday Ryder would say, “You’re just like Alison.” He would give me a longer second look and maybe think, I have someone very precious right under my eyes.

  Timidly, I approached them. Now that they were drawing me into their circle, even if only for a short time, the possibility that Alison would take one good look at my face and know how jealous I was worried me. She wouldn’t want anything to do with me then. No girl would want someone too close who was competing with her for her boyfriend’s attention.

  “Hey,” Ryder said. “Grab your lunch and join us.”

  “Really?”

  “No. Pretend,” he said. He smiled. “Of course. C’mon. Just join us, Fern.”

  I watched him discourage other boys from sitting at their table. Whatever he had said to them didn’t upset them. Naturally, I rushed to get my food and nearly tripped carrying my tray over to their table.