“I guess we call her that now, don’t we?”
“Yes, of course, Doris. You should take the day off, too,” I said. “We’re not doing very much. I certainly don’t want an elaborate dinner.”
“Oh, I couldn’t . . .”
“Yes, you can,” I insisted. “With my father and his new wife gone, I’m in charge here,” I added, perhaps too sharply. She winced. “You go enjoy yourself and visit friends, too. In fact, you don’t have to return tonight.”
She looked around as if she were afraid someone else might be listening. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure, Doris. Mrs. Heaven-stone isn’t the only one running things here. Go on,” I said.
She looked at me with surprise, nodded, and left.
“Very, very good,” Cassie whispered. “Maybe there’s some hope for you yet.”
I continued to sit there, nibbling on a roll and butter and sipping some coffee, until the last of the cleanup was done. Our regular grounds workers swarmed in and in no time had the estate looking close to what it had been before the event. Occasionally, someone looked my way, but it was all really organized and self-run. I didn’t have to say a word. Our estate was always well maintained, but it did seem different since Lucille’s arrival. It was as if a U.S. Marine drill sergeant had retrained everyone.
Ethan returned in his suit and tie. I told him Mrs. Dobson was gone for the day and night and I had dismissed Doris.
“Then we have this whole place to ourselves?”
“Exactly,” I said.
He thought a moment and smiled. “Then I will definitely hurry back.”
He kissed me and rushed off. I nearly fell asleep again just listening to the droning of lawn and garden machinery. Doris stopped by to tell me she was leaving. There was a real look of trepidation on her face. It was almost as if she wanted me to put my command in writing so she could prove she hadn’t left without permission. In the short time Lucille had been overseeing the estate, she had given Doris and the other employees the sense that she was ubiquitous—she was everywhere and always watching, even when she was off on a honeymoon.
“Have a good time,” I told her. I started to clear off what was left on the table.
“Do you want me to do that first?”
“No, Doris, I can do this. I’ll be fine. Really. Go on.”
She nodded, smiled, and left.
What I wasn’t anticipating when I entered the house was the complete stillness. I hadn’t heard such silence inside since the days before my mother had died and she, my father, and Cassie were all somewhere else. Strangely, even as a young girl, I had never felt frightened or even alone. Daddy had done such a good job of giving us all the feeling that the house was a living thing and all the relatives captured in portraits and statuary were there in spirit. When I was a very little girl, I would talk to them the way little girls would talk to their dolls. Strangely enough, Cassie, when she caught me doing that, wouldn’t criticize or make fun of me. She’d give me the feeling it was something she had done and might still be doing herself. More than once, she had said, “These icons of our ancestors have more to tell us than most of the so-called living.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant, but it sounded clearly like permission to imagine conversations and even pretend events.
“Great-aunt Eleanor is having a birthday party today,” I’d say to another portrait, and set up a fake cake and candles. If Cassie saw me doing something like that, she’d stop by to give me some real history.
“Great-aunt Eleanor would be one hundred and eighteen,” she’d tell me.
“Too many candles for a cake,” I’d say, and she’d shake her head and walk away.
Right now, I walked the corridor of ancestors, as we called it, the corridor with portraits on both sides, and asked, “What do you all think of the new Mrs. Heaven-stone?”
I didn’t need to hear their voices. I could see the displeasure in their eyes.
Later, I did what Ethan suggested and put on my bathing suit and went out to the pool. I swam a little and then fell asleep for a while on a chaise longue. The sound of a door closing woke me, and because of the film of sleep over my eyes, I gazed through what resembled gauze toward the house to see what looked like my father coming out to walk to the pool. I sat up quickly. Why would Daddy be home? I quickly realize he wasn’t. It was Ethan, but he was wearing one of my father’s dinner jackets with the Heaven-stone emblem embossed on the outside left pocket.
“And how is our precious Miss Heaven-stone?” he asked as he stepped up to the pool.
I stared at him with a half-smile on my face.
“Where did you get that jacket?”
“My closet, where else?” He leaned down to give me a soft, sweet kiss on my lips and smiled. “If we’re to be the master and mistress of Heaven-stone, we should act like it, right?”