Moonlight in the Morning (Edilean 6)

She tried the front door of the big house, and it was unlocked. Tentatively, she stepped inside and found herself in an enormous living area with a fireplace to the left. There was a beautiful arrangement of furniture. The mixture of styles, ranging from wood frame to Edwardian plush, with some art deco thrown in, looked as though all of it had been put together over several generations. The fabrics were in good shape, not really new, but worn enough that they looked lived-in. The big, round-arm sofa lookd orm sofaed inviting.

As an artist, Jecca admired the room. It looked as though everything had been gathered over eighty or so years—or one truly brilliant decorator had created it.

There was a doorway beside the fireplace and she went through it to enter a dining room that had to be thirty feet long. There was a long table at one end, but the room could have held something befitting a banquet hall. “Arthur and all his knights could fit in here,” she said aloud.

To her left she heard a door open and close. She went through the double doorway toward the sound and entered a long, narrow conservatory, with three walls and a ceiling of glass. Shades with thin bamboo sticks sheltered the room from too much sun.

At one end was a cozy circle of chairs, again of different styles and fabrics that had been skillfully chosen to seem mismatched but that were perfectly attuned to one another.

Around the furniture were plants. There was a variety of them, but for the most part, there were hundreds of orchids. They hung from the ceiling in square wooden pots, their white and green roots peeping out, their long, graceful leaves arching, the stalks of exotic, colorful orchids floating above. A bench went around the perimeter of the room, and it was covered with a mixture of potted plants. There were feathery ferns nestled among the exotic flowers.

She’d never seen such a variety of orchids. There were big, wide ones that looked like giant butterflies and ranged in color from brilliant fuchsia to dazzling white. Tiny flowers, some of them speckled, clustered on other stems. She saw big gaudy flowers, the kind matronly women wore on their shoulders in the time of President Eisenhower.

On the floor were huge pots, some of the containers so big they’d need a crane to move them. Spilling out from them, cascading down, were thousands of the beautiful flowers. Under the shelf, in complete shade, were strange-looking blooms that had a sac at the bottom, with petals of deep purple and green.

Jecca did a slow turn to look about the room. “Gorgeous! Truly breathtaking,” she said, as words seemed to fail her.

“I’ll pass on the compliment to Tris.”

Jecca turned to see her friend emerge from the plants and for several moments there was squealing and hugging.

“You look great!”

“So do you!”

“Have you lost weight?”

“I love that color on you!”

They hugged more, truly glad to see each other. They’d met on their first day in college when they’d been assigned as roommates, and they’d never parted. They had shared a dorm room and later an apartment, first with just each other, then Sophie had been added. The three of them had been a great team, each girl with her own love of an area of art, each with her own personality.

Whereas Kim’s only love was jewelry, Jecca just wanted to create. She was the one who used her mother’s old sewing machine to make curtains. And Jecca knew all about the rods needed to hang them. “Courtesy of Layton Hardware” was a frequent saying in their bare-bones apartment. Sophie used to say that if Jecca had her toolboxe t her to she could fix anything.

Now, the two women, hands on shoulders, kept looking at each other. “The whole summer!” Kim said. “I can’t believe it! Did you bring enough paper? Enough paint?”

“I hope so. But if I run out, how far do I have to go to get more?”

Dropping her hands, Kim looked serious. “You have to take a puddle jumper to the big airport where you can get an oxcart, then—”

“Okay, I stand corrected,” Jecca said, laughing. They were nearly the same height, but Jecca’s dark hair was short, while Kim’s auburn was longer. While they were both very pretty young women, their personalities made them look very different. Jecca always looked as though she were about to laugh, while Kim was more serious. Jecca had always attracted men to her, but Kim sometimes seemed to scare them away. If someone had suggested climbing a pole, Jecca would have agreed to give it a try. Kim would have said, “Let me make some calculations to see if I can do it.” Jecca liked adventure; Kim liked to succeed.

“Hungry?” Kim asked.

“Starving.”

“Nothing’s changed.” Kim smiled, still unable to grasp that her friend was really there. She started toward the dining room.

“I hate to leave this room,” Jecca said, looking back at the conservatory and the orchids. “I can’t wait to do some painting in here. I’ve been learning some new techniques of how to put light in my work, and I plan to give it my full attention. Who made this place?”

“Tristan.”

“Oh. Right. The doctor next door.”

They went through the living room, past the staircase, and into a big white kitchen. In the center was a heavy oak table that looked as though it was put there when the house was built. Gleaming white subway tiles covered the walls. The appliances were top of the line—about forty years ago.

“I’m back in time,” Jecca said.

“And aren’t you lucky?”