I swerved, nearly hitting a yellow-coated policeman who loomed out of the rain to wave me past a downed tree, and put CJ Brennan firmly out of my mind to concentrate on driving. The world had been utterly transformed from the autumnal idyll I’d passed through this morning. The streets were deserted except for policemen and emergency workers. Wind and rain had stripped the leaves from the trees, splattering the ground with a slick red mat that proved as slippery as ice. Turning onto River Road I skidded and almost plummeted into the Saw Kill, which had risen above its banks and was lapping at the road like a hungry animal. My heart pounding, I wrenched the car back onto the road and drove blindly. The gate to Riven House suddenly lurched out of the murk like a black-toothed mouth and I fishtailed the car through them, narrowly missing the high, spiked gate.
In the future, Bayard Montague had written, the estate will be gated off to avoid any further misfortunes.
As if the villagers were clumsy children who had to be kept from the risky grown-up world of their betters. When really what the Montagues had done was draw back into their world of wealth and privilege, barricading themselves behind their high gate and solid brick walls. No wonder the townies told stories about them.
I could glimpse the house now, standing on the hill like a child playing king of the mountain. Without the sun, the windows looked like cataract-covered eyes. Even the cries of a dying baby could not penetrate those thick walls, which in the rain looked as though they had been soaked in blood. How could they go on standing after what they’d seen—
A sharp crack cleaved through the thunderous rain. The world shook. I was staring into a frozen lake splintered into a spiderweb, my ragged breath steaming the air, my hands still clutching on to the steering wheel as though it were a life preserver and I was about to be sucked under.
A gust of rain-soaked air slapped against my face and I realized what had happened. A bough had split, landed across the hood of the Subaru, and crashed through the windshield. One long branch pointed a bony finger just inches from my face. Another few inches closer and I would have been skewered. Instead I was stranded in the rutted drive in a wrecked car that was taking on water.
I undid my seat belt with numb fingers, wrenched open the door, and stepped out into ankle-deep water. The icy water woke me up—and frightened me. I was in the low part of the drive, not far from where the Saw Kill flowed into the river. I could hear the rush of the water above the sound of the rain. The cottage was still a good half mile down the road. Was Jess there? I could picture him at his desk, writing obliviously while the creek rose and lapped over the doorstep. Monty wouldn’t think to come help him, Dale was probably too stoned, and Sunny was away.
I fished my cell phone out of my bag, still strapped across my chest, and hit the first number on speed dial—Jess’s cell—but it went instantly to voice mail. Of course he turned it off when he was writing and we hadn’t bothered to get a landline. Again I pictured him at his desk, tapping away at his laptop, hair standing on end, while water lapped at his ankles.
Or maybe he’d gone up to the house.
I tried Monty’s cell but it too went straight to voice mail. Fucking writers. Not that I was one to talk. I had sat in the library while the worst storm of the season—of the century for all I knew—roared into town. I looked back up the hill toward Riven House. A moment ago the house had looked like a forbidding fortress but now it looked like a safe haven on high ground above the floodwaters—
I looked toward the pond. The Saw Kill had been rushing into it all day, gathering up against the ancient stone weir that regulated the flow of the stream past the cottage. Where the pond should be was a lake, swollen as a blister, ready to burst. And when it did, all that water would rush downstream over the cottage. Our cottage. I had to make sure Jess got out of there.
Getting around the downed tree wasn’t easy, though. It blocked not only the road but a good ten feet on either side. On one side the Saw Kill rushed past, too deep and treacherous to go near, and on the other a steep embankment that the rain had turned into a mudslide. I had to climb over the tree itself, through a thicket of prickly pine branches, dense with needles, dried sap, and birds’ nests. By the time I emerged on the other side I was scratched and bleeding, the salt of my tears stinging the scratches on my face. I was picturing Jess looking up from his desk and noticing the water. He’d try to save his books and notebooks and the boxes of files he hadn’t unpacked yet that contained drafts of his first novel, the copyedit, and galley—what we called “dead matter” in the trade. Jess had hung on to all of it and he wouldn’t leave it. I pictured him trying to stack the file boxes up high, the boxes spilling, the papers falling like dead leaves to be washed away in the floodwater while Jess was caught up in the rushing water, swept away with all the dead matter, drowned in his own words.
I waded through the now calf-deep water and driving rain to the cottage. So vivid was my image of its destruction I was surprised to see it still standing. But it wouldn’t be for long. The Saw Kill rushing down the slope from the weir had divided into two streams that swarmed around the cottage and lapped at the front door like an angry bill collector. I waded up the front path and opened the door, letting the tide seep in across the cracked green linoleum and the stained carpet. What did I care if it ruined it all? I just wanted Jess.
But he wasn’t there. Not at his desk—empty of his laptop—or in the bedroom. Nor were the file boxes of notebooks and dead matter. He must have evacuated it all hours ago and gone up to the house to wait for me. The only paper I found was a sticky note stuck to the refrigerator. Clare, went up to the house to wait out the storm.
I could almost hear his voice. I thought you’d go straight there, he’d say. Why would you go to the flooded cottage?
Why indeed? I looked around. What was there to save here? What had it ever been but a temporary way station between our old life and the murky future?
I walked out without shutting the door behind me. Let the waters come. I walked uphill with my head down, watching the water swirl around my feet, but when I got to the top of the hill I looked back down toward the pond. For a moment the rain coalesced into a figure standing above the weir, rain sodden, clothes dark and plastered to her skin. Not from the rain, I thought, but because she drowned. She looked up at me as if to say, If I drowned, why shouldn’t the whole world drown?
At the thought the rock wall of the weir gave way to the force of the water and tumbled into the rushing stream like it was made of toy blocks. The water leaped over the lip of the pond and ran toward the river—and the caretaker’s cottage that lay in its way. The dark figure hovered in the air for a moment and then turned into a black crow that flapped noiselessly toward the tree line.
She was gone.
I turned around—and there she was. Standing on the terrace facing me, a drowned revenant risen out of the floodwaters to wreak her vengeance on the house.
I blinked rainwater out of my eyes and she was gone again. I was staring at my own reflection in the glass library doors. I was the drowned revenant standing outside in the cold, looking in at the warm glowing room beyond—at the two men sitting beside the fire drinking glasses of scotch that looked like liquid firelight in their crystal tumblers. Monty saw me first. He lifted his head and a look of terror washed over his face, draining the warmth of the firelight from his skin. He looked like a ghost himself. That’s what I must have looked like to him. The ghost of Mary Foley come to take her vengeance on the last of the Montagues. I saw his lips part, but instead of a scream he must have said my name. Jess bolted out of his chair, dropping his glass, and lunged for the glass doors. For a moment I had the strangest feeling he was rushing to lock me out, but of course that was nonsense. He flung both doors wide open, with that flair for the dramatic I’d always admired, and grabbed me by the shoulders.
“Clare! My God! We looked all over for you! Where have you been?” He was pulling me into the room as he shouted, not giving me time to answer. Monty,
still looking pale and shaken from his first glimpse of me, was struggling up from his chair, feebly plucking an afghan from the back of it and tottering forward.
I could have killed him, I thought. I might have given him a heart attack appearing like that in the window.
Jess drew me toward the fire and planted me in the chair he’d been sitting in. He tore the afghan out of Monty’s hands so violently that Monty stumbled.
Be careful, I tried to say, but found that my teeth were chattering. Jess wrapped the throw around me and Monty poured a glass of scotch with shaking hands and thrust it at me. My hands were shaking even harder than his, so Jess held the glass to my lips and tipped it down my throat. I spluttered and coughed like a drowning woman spitting seawater.
Or pond water.
I took a long swallow of the whisky. It burned through the layer of ice that had settled in my stomach. Jess knelt down in front of me and chafed my hands, and then, slipping my mud-soaked loafers off, my feet. His hair in the firelight was a beautiful russet color.
“The cottage,” I managed to say after another swallow, “it’s flooding.”
“You went there?” Jess asked, looking up from my feet. “I left you a message on your phone telling you not to go there. Your phone’s been off all day!”
He sounded so aggrieved I nearly laughed. See how it feels! I almost said. But he looked so worried I didn’t do either.
“I guess I turned it off in the library,” I said instead. “There was a sign telling me to.”
Now he laughed. “That’s you all over,” he said, hugging me hard against his chest. “Conscientious Clare. Always following the rules.” He pulled back and held me by the shoulders at arm’s length. “I was worried sick about you!”
“We both were,” Monty said. He’d taken his seat and was holding his glass of scotch, hands steady now, color coming back to his face. “The storm hit so unexpectedly. We thought you’d head back hours ago.”
“I was in the archives room looking through old newspapers and yearbooks—there aren’t any windows in there so I didn’t notice the rain. To be honest . . .” I took another sip of scotch. “I don’t know that I’d have noticed if there were. I found out all sorts of things about the apple blossom girl. Her name was Mary Foley. She was actually married to my grandfather! But she never had his children—and oh! She won the locals’ scholarship to Bailey but it went to someone else when she got pregnant.”
“Well, well,” Monty said, grinning wolfishly. “It looks like Clare’s found her subject.”
“Yes,” Jess said, still gripping my shoulders tightly, “that is if she doesn’t die of hypothermia before she gets a chance to write it. You’ve got to get out of these wet clothes.”
“But everything is at the cottage,” I objected. “And the cottage is flooding.” Suddenly I was on the verge of tears at the thought of our little cottage—the only home we had—floating away on the Saw Kill. How could I have been so callous about it before? I’d even left the door open!
“I brought our stuff up earlier,” Jess said. “Monty insisted when he saw how bad the rain was. We’re all set up in a room upstairs. I brought your clothes and some of your things. I couldn’t get everything . . .”
He let go of my shoulders and I threw my arms around his neck. “It’s okay,” I said. “As long as we’re both safe.”
I felt a tremor go through him as if he’d been tensed and only now let go. He really had been afraid for me! I burrowed my face into his neck and felt him shiver.
“I’ve gotten your clothes all wet,” I said, pulling back. “I’ll go change. Maybe you should too.”
“I’m all right,” he said, helping me up to my feet. “I’ll go warm us dinner. There’s that soup you made last night—and some bread. You need something warm inside you.”
I gaped at him, about to joke that I hadn’t realized he knew how to work the stove, but seeing the stricken look on his face thought better of it. I left them in the library and hurried upstairs, only remembering on the top of the rotunda that I didn’t know what room we were staying in.
I turned around to go back down—and saw the wet footprints on the stairs. Just like in Charity Jane’s story about the drowned girl come back to find her baby. They’re your footprints, I told myself, but then why did I still hear the patter of bare feet? The sound seemed to be coming from everywhere, even from above me. I looked up. Water was beading on the murky glass dome, reflecting splattered handprints on the curved walls . . . as if someone was beating at the walls, trying to get in. The patter of wet feet was loudest, though, further along the gallery. I walked toward it, wondering if there was a leak somewhere. Instead I found the half-opened door to the room just before the nursery. The nursemaid’s room, I thought as I pushed open the door. But it was too big to belong to a servant. This must have been Monty’s mother’s room. It was papered in the same apple blossom print as the downstairs parlors and breakfast room—designed by Candace Wheeler, Monty had told us that first day. It was hardly faded at all, probably because the shutters of this room had been closed for many years.
The shutters and windows were open now to air out the room. That was why I’d heard the pattering. Jess had spread his sleeping bag over the (no-doubt) musty bedding. A duffel bag with my clothes was on top of the sleeping bag. I stripped off my sodden clothes and dumped them into the big claw-foot tub in the adjoining bathroom and filled the tub to soak the mud out of them. I toweled off and pulled on dry jeans and a loose oxford cloth button-down shirt that had once belonged to Jess but which I’d co-opted when he renounced his preppy phase.
I stood at the window, rolling up the French cuffs, looking out over the deluged landscape. The rain looked like it was finally letting up. Across the river a sliver of sun appeared, wedged between ink blue clouds and indigo mountains. It burned fiercely for a moment, blazing a path across the river and over the flooded lawns, and the swollen pond, turning the wreckage into something beautiful.
“That’s what art does,” Monty had told us once in class. “It turns the catastrophes of our lives into something glorious.”
I looked for the dark figure standing on the weir, but she wasn’t there—or anywhere outside. She was back where she came from, inside my head where I intended to keep her. As Monty had said, I’d found my subject.
Chapter Ten
The caretaker’s cottage was completely destroyed. Jess and I went down the morning after the storm to see what could be salvaged and found a pile of broken wood sticking out of the swamp where our home had been. It looked like a beaver lodge that had been ravaged by a bear. Wading through the debris, we found artifacts—wads of paper clinging to branches, broken bits of white china like seashells littering a beach after a monsoon, bloated books floating on the surface like dead fish.
“It’s a good thing most of our stuff was in storage,” Jess said, poking a swollen copy of The Paris Review with a sharp stick. “I only had time to save our laptops and a few boxes of papers.” He looked at me guiltily. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save the china.”
“I always thought that plain white china was kind of . . . unimaginative.”
Jess grinned, delighted, as I knew he would be, to hear that I’d never really liked his editor’s housewarming gift. Standing knee deep in water surrounded by the wreckage of our home, he looked like Huck Finn ready to ride his raft down the Mississippi. “Yeah, like a pattern would’ve cluttered up the narrative flow.”
Jess went back to happily poking at the wreckage. Truthfully, I had liked the china, but I didn’t care that it was gone. Each object I unearthed—the broken glass carafe of the Braun, plastic bottles of the Kiehl’s shaving cream Jess used, reusable shopping bags from Trader Joe’s—seemed like a relic of a lost civilization. When I’d woken this morning in Riven House, a fresh breeze rustling yellowed lace curtains, I’d felt like I was finally in the right place. I had Jess and I had a story to tell. Mary Foley’s story.
The sound of a woman cryi
ng reproached my good humor. It was coming through the trees, from the direction of Sunny’s barn. I waded through the muck toward the sound and came out by the old barn, which stood square and solid in the middle of a lake. Of course, I thought, the Montagues built their barns to last, not like their caretaker’s cottages. But as I rounded the barn and looked through the wide double doors I saw that the contents of the barn had not weathered the storm so well. Bundles of tangled limbs and hair swayed from the rafters like gallows’ corpses. Sunny was standing in the middle of the barn, her long madras skirt trailing in standing water, holding one of the broken figures to her breast and wailing.
“Oh, Sunny!” I said as I approached her. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t think . . . I knew you were safe in Beacon . . .” When I laid my hand on her shoulder she flinched and raised her tearstained, ravaged face to me. Her eyes were rimmed with mascara and purple eye shadow, her silver hair as wild as a fright wig. She looked like a vengeful Japanese ghost out of one of Yuriko’s stories. Her eyes glittered with such malice that I thought she was going to lash out at me and blame me for the destruction of her children. I should have done something, I rebuked myself, only the damage must have happened when I was in the library before I even knew about the storm.
“It’s not your fault,” she said, wiping at her eyes and leaving a purple streak across her cheek. “You had your own house to worry about. I saw what the storm did to it . . . I’m sorry . . .” Her voice warbled, making me feel guilty that I didn’t care more about the ruined cottage.
“We didn’t have anything of value there,” I told her. “Not like your puppets. Will you be able to fix them in time for the Halloween parade?”