The Mulberry Tree

But after only four steps, she figured her guardian angels and her fairy godmother were all on holiday. She was standing in a small, windowless, airless, lightless room that was covered on all four sides with very cheap and very ugly brown paneling, made out of material that wasn’t wood, wasn’t plastic, wasn’t anything at all. Cut into the wall in front of her was a narrow doorway that led into a large room covered with more of the dark, scarred, and dented paneling. There wasn’t a window to the outside in the room, but there were five doorways leading out of it.

Cautiously, she opened one door and saw a long, narrow room, again covered in dark paneling. There was an aluminum-framed window high up on one wall, but little light came through it. She went back into the big room, then stepped over the cords of the men’s vacuum cleaners, whose roar was deafening, to open another door. It was another bedroom, again with windows that were too high for her to see out of.

The third door led into a bathroom that had been done in pink tile with ugly little flowers on it. In fact, every surface in the room had a pattern on it: the ceiling had great swirls of fake plaster; the walls had flowered foil wallpaper above the flowered tiles, and the floor had more tiles that had been—what? she thought. Bred to look like leather? They must have grown for, surely, no one had actually designed the things.

When Bailey closed the door behind her, she looked to see if there was a lock on it. She didn’t want anyone else on earth to see inside that bathroom. A weaker heart than hers might not live through it.

The fifth door out of the big room led into a small, narrow kitchen. There was a little window over the sink, but it wasn’t enough to alleviate the darkness that filled the room. The kitchen cabinets were old, cheap, dirty, and falling off the walls.

“I can’t do anything about them,” said a man from behind her. He was from the cleaning service, and he was nodding toward the kitchen cabinets. “I can try to clean them, but I ain’t no carpenter.”

“Do what you can,” Bailey said, then walked toward the door at the end of the galley-shaped kitchen. When she opened the door, she gasped, for it was the only room she’d seen that was what she’d imagined a farmhouse to be. At the end was a tall window with old-fashioned wooden panes in it, and below it was a stone sink set into a thick wooden slab, the top scarred from use. Beneath the top were heavy turned legs, and stored below were stone jugs and pottery crocks, the kind that were used to make pickles and sauerkraut. Both sides of the room were lined with shelves that had been painted white.

The shelves were filled with dirty, cobweb-encrusted kitchen equipment. There were old canning jars and big enamel kettles, funnels and racks to hold dripping cheesecloth bags. There were several tongs and stacks of yellowed tea towels that had nests of spiders on them. But what made Bailey’s heart nearly skip a beat was a battered old metal box, “Recipes” printed on it.

“You want me to throw all this stuff out?” the man asked, again coming up behind her. “This is the only room with things in it. The rest of the place is empty. We could take all this trash to the dump for you.”

“No!” Bailey said, then calmed herself. “No, just leave it. Clean in here, but don’t throw out anything. I want to keep everything, every jar, every lid—” She reached up to touch the bail of an old Ball jar. They didn’t make jars like this one anymore. “Everything,” she said, looking at the man. “Clean it, but leave it all here.” Then, on impulse, she grabbed the metal recipe box.

“Aye, aye, captain,” he said, smiling, then smiled more as Bailey squeezed past him in the narrow space.

Outside the kitchen was a closet that held an old avocado-green washer and dryer, then a door to the outside. She opened the door cautiously, fully expecting it to fall on her head. When it creaked, she released the knob, covered her head, and waited. But the door held on its hinges, and she looked outside. The yard behind the house now held what looked like a colony of men, muscular-looking women, and machines. A huge green tractorlike machine with a man sitting inside a glassed-in room was cutting down the vegetation from the house to—well, she thought, to wherever the property led. Hadn’t she read on the deed that it was ten acres? A workman was removing dead branches from an old apple tree, and she could see another one high up in an ancient maple tree, wide leather belts between his legs, as he cut out dead wood from its upper branches.

Leave it to Phillip to find the best and the most, she thought as she closed the door on the noise outside, then went back to the men, noise, and machines in the big, central room. When she opened the last door out of the big room, she saw that it led into a little hallway with several doors leading off it. Before her was a staircase, and she could see light streaming down toward her. To her right she found a large bedroom with a bathroom off it. There was a separate shower, plus a tub, and there was even a walk-in closet. The bedroom had a little step-out on one wall and more of the tall wooden windows, such as she’d seen in the room off the kitchen. It was obviously the master bedroom and where Bailey would be sleeping.

Although the proportions of the room and the windows were beautiful, unfortunately, all the walls were covered in the awful dark

paneling, and the tile and fixtures in the bathroom were too ugly for her to comprehend. There was a dark brown bathtub, a white toilet, and two sinks that were the color of dried blood.

With a shudder, she turned away and went back into the hall, where she found two more rooms and a third bathroom. There were also a number of closets.

Without exception, all the rooms were paneled in the dark fake wood, and the bathrooms seemed to be a study in how many patterns could be put into one room. The third bathroom had been tiled in a green faux marble; another type of faux marble had been put on the countertop, and yet another one was on the floor. There was wallpaper above the tile, a pea-green foil version of marble.

“I’m going to be sick,” Bailey said as she closed the door behind her.

She took a deep breath as she looked up the stairs. More bedrooms? she wondered. So far, she’d counted five of them. Had the previous owner had many children? Or if this place had been where Jimmie grew up, knowing him, maybe they’d had a lot of guests.

Slowly, testing each step to make sure it was safe, she went upstairs to the attic. As soon as she entered it, she smiled. Sure, there were two holes the size of her fist in the roof, and someone had placed buckets under them to catch the rain, but under the dirt, Bailey could see that the room was lovely—at least, one side of it was. The steep pitch of the roof cut into the room on two sides, but on the side where the stairs were, a row of windows had been set into the roof, and they let in sunlight. They were high windows, but not too high for her to see out. Setting down the recipe box, she turned the rusty crank to open one, and fresh air rushed into the room. Without the dirty glass blocking it, more sunlight came inside. Turning back, she looked around the big, open room.

In the middle was a waist-high railing, looking as though it had once been a divider in the room. Someone had sawed an opening in the center and removed a piece of the railing; she saw it leaning against the far wall.

The walls of the half of the room at the head of the stairs had been plastered and painted white, but the other half was paneled in the same dark brown used downstairs.

“Yet another bedroom?” she said aloud, looking at the big, empty room. She started to step through the opening in the railing, but drew back and looked down at the floor. For some reason, she didn’t trust that floor. The half behind her had wide, thick-looking planks for flooring, but on the other side sheets of plywood were nailed down. It looked safe, but something made her not want to walk on it.

Bailey didn’t have a chance to figure out if the floor was safe or not; suddenly, someone blew a truck horn in three short blasts, and she knew she was being summoned. “Six weeks ago it was, ‘May I get you anything, Mrs. Manville,’ and now it’s a truck horn,” she muttered as she grabbed the recipe box off the floor and ran down the stairs. “I should be glad it’s not, ‘Sooey, sooey,’ ” she said out loud as she leaped over three heavy-duty electrical cords, an electrician’s toolbox, and a telephone man, who was on his stomach, looking into an outlet. As she ran out the front door, she told the man from Viking Cleaners not to let anyone go into the attic, as she thought it was dangerous.

Two women were standing in front of one of the trucks. They were both about five foot three, both in their early thirties, both pretty but not overly so. Physically, they were so much alike that she was sure they were sisters, but they were dressed very differently. One woman had dark hair and wore a cotton shirt, jeans, and sneakers. The other was blonde—artificially so—and wore a knit suit, hose, pumps with heels, and enough gold bracelets that Bailey wondered how she could lift her arms.

“Hello,” Bailey said, walking toward them and extending her hand in welcome. “I’m Bailey James.” She was pleased with herself for saying the name without faltering.

“I’m Janice Nesbitt,” said the woman in the suit as she shook Bailey’s hand.

“Ah, yes, from the Chamber of Commerce,” Bailey said as she turned to the other woman.

“Yes,” Janice said, obviously pleased that Bailey had seen and remembered her brochure. “It’s a shame that no one else has come in person to welcome you,” she said loudly.

“Just the two of you.” Bailey smiled at the second woman.