The year I was born. No wonder Sunny hadn’t wanted to tell Monty about Amy’s baby.
“I was going to be deported otherwise.”
“You make it sound so businesslike. We were a couple, of course, only I didn’t really believe in marriage back then. We were still hippies! But Sunny had lost her visa . . . Well, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that we’ve come together again now. And that I have a whole family around me.” He raised his champagne glass again. His hand was trembling. Sunny was right. It wasn’t good for him to stand so long. I moved toward him to help him into his chair.
“Yes, here’s to your reunited family,” Jess said, holding up his glass. “It’s not every man who gets a wife and a daughter in the same day.”
Monty’s eyebrows drew together. “Daughter?”
So Sunny hadn’t told him.
“Maybe this isn’t the best time.” I glared at Jess.
“What better time?” Jess asked. “We’ve got champagne, we’re all here. Why, I even have the birth certificate!” He retrieved the folded Xeroxed sheet from his vest pocket and shook it out like a magician turning an ordinary handkerchief into a bouquet of roses. Presto! Clare Jackson becomes Clare Montague! Monty put down his glass and took the sheet of paper, patting his jacket for his reading glasses.
“Maybe you should sit,” I said, putting my hand on Monty’s elbow. Beneath the worn linen of his jacket his arm felt skeletal.
“Yes, Alden, I wanted to tell you about this when you would have a chance to absorb the news—”
“You knew?” The eyes he lifted from the paper were no longer the weak watery eyes of an old man but the piercing ice blue daggers I remembered from class when someone said something foolish. “It says here that Amy Birnbach had a baby and that I was the father.” He shook the paper in Sunny’s face. “Did you know?”
“I . . . I . . .” Sunny stammered. “Amy didn’t want you to know.”
All the color drained from Monty’s face and beads of sweat broke out on his brow. Wasn’t that a sign of a heart attack? Sunny had been right. Learning that he was my father was giving Monty a heart attack. He couldn’t even look at me. All he seemed to care about was that he had been lied to, betrayed by a woman. I felt something squeezing my own heart, as though in sympathy with Monty’s, and cold sweat prickling my skin as if my veins had been suddenly filled with ice water.
“So it’s true?” Monty asked, still looking at Sunny.
“True she had a baby, but I didn’t know if it was yours. It could have been anyone’s.”
Monty turned to me. “And when did you find out about this, Clare?”
“Just yesterday,” Jess answered for me. I couldn’t speak. Jess got up and put his arm around me but I could hardly feel it. I had turned to ice. “She got the birth certificate from St. Anne’s. Sunny asked her to wait until after the parade to tell you. When I saw the champagne I thought she’d told you—that all this was a celebration for Clare.”
Monty looked at the table set with champagne and caviar on toast points and laughed—a harsh bark like something breaking. I felt something wet streak down my face. I looked at Sunny and saw that her face was wet too, but not with tears. Tears wouldn’t have soaked her hair and streaked her face with red. She looked up—we all did—to the ceiling. A long crack branched across the ceiling like an accusing finger pointing at Sunny, rust-colored water dripping from its fingertip.
Not rust. Blood.
Sunny screamed.
“It’s the bath,” I said, meaning to reassure her. “I must have left it on—”
But she was already running from the room, into the rotunda and up the stairs. Monty took a step to follow her but stumbled. He was patting his hand against his chest. “Pills,” he gasped.
Jess understood more quickly than me. He reached inside Monty’s jacket and retrieved a small bottle.
“Stay with him,” I cried and went to follow Sunny. I ran up the marble steps, which felt slippery under my smooth soles, as if they were coated with ice. I must have left the bath on when I rinsed out my nightgown, I thought. That was all it was. The ghosts were gone.
But when I got to the bathroom and saw Sunny’s face I knew they weren’t. She had slid to the floor, her white dress soaked, weeping. I stepped through the red water and looked into the tub. Floating beneath the surface was the body of a little girl, her dress swirling around her—
I blinked and the “body” resolved into a length of cloth eddying in the water.
“It’s just my nightgown,” I said, dredging up the wet cloth. “It must have fallen in the tub after I hung it up to dry.”
But at the sight of the dripping cloth Sunny moaned and bolted from the room. I stayed behind only long enough to turn off the taps and throw the wet nightgown over the shower ring . . . and to fish out another piece of cloth from the tub. It was the handkerchief I had found—Minnie’s handkerchief. The red dye spreading in the water was what had turned the bath red. I wrung it out and put it over the bathroom ring too.
Then I turned to follow Sunny. By the time I got downstairs she wasn’t in the rotunda. I went into the library and found Jess sitting beside Monty. He’d wrapped an afghan around him and given him a glass of water. He still looked pale, but some color was returning to his cheeks.
“Did you see where Sunny went?” I asked Jess.
“I think she went out through the boot hall,” he said. “I heard the door slam.”
“I’d better go after her—” But before I could go Monty grabbed my arm, his grip surprisingly strong.
“Leave her,” he rasped. “I want to talk to you.”
I sat on the hassock by his side. “You don’t have to say anything right now, Monty. I didn’t want you to find out this way . . . I know it’s a lot to take in.”
“It’s the best news I could ever get,” he said, squeezing my hand so hard I had to grit my teeth to keep from crying out. “To find out you’re my daughter . . .” His eyes welled up.
“We don’t even know for sure. Amy could have lied—”
“No! I know it’s true. I think I’ve always known . . .” He grimaced and I looked up anxiously at Jess.
“Did you call 911?”
“He didn’t want me to. I called his cardiologist. He’s on his way.”
One of the perks of being a Montague, I found myself thinking before reminding myself that I was a Montague now.
I tried to convince Monty to go down to his apartment and get into bed, but he refused. We stayed by the fire until the doctor came and he had listened to Monty’s heart.
“I think it was just a touch of angina,” he told us. “No sense dragging him out on such a cold night. Keep him warm and comfortable and bring him into my office tomorrow for an EKG.” He gave Monty a sedative and left.
Jess helped Monty down to his apartment while I made some hot tea with plenty of milk and sugar. For shock, Sunny would say.
Staring out the kitchen windows over the north lawn I tried to make out the light of Sunny’s barn through the trees but an icy rain was falling, obscuring the view. The doctor had been right—it was too cold a night to be out. I hoped that Sunny was warm inside her barn, finding solace with her children. In the morning I’d talk to Monty and convince him to forgive her for keeping my birth a secret. Riven House was big enough for both of us.
I ran into Jess in the boot hall. “He’s already asleep,” Jess told me, taking the tray from me. “Besides, I don’t think he’d like you to see the apartment. ‘Clare will be disappointed at what a messy old bachelor I am,’” Jess said, mimicking Monty’s fussy quaver down to a tee. “And it really is like some groovy bachelor digs circa 1978. The most modern piece of equipment is a fax machine. Honestly, who faxes anymore?”
We drank the tea in the library by the dying fire and then went up to bed where we huddled together under the comforters listening to the icy rain lashing against the windows and roof. I fell asleep thinking of roof tiles and furnaces. In my dre
ams I heard a bell ringing but when I went looking for it I found it was the sound of water leaking through the oculus and striking the marble steps. I roamed the house checking for leaks and putting pails under drips. But there was still water everywhere. It was rising from the pond, I realized, so I went down the hill, floating over the ice-rimed lawn on a flying carpet of fog. The water wasn’t rising from the pond, I saw, it was coming from the barn. I could hear someone weeping there, their tears, like Alice’s in Wonderland, flooding the barn and the surrounding woods. I floated over the floodwaters and into the barn where I saw that it was the apple blossom girl puppets who were weeping, crying because their dresses had gotten soaked.
I hung them all up from the rafters so they would dry. I hung them in a circle facing each other so they wouldn’t be alone and then I drifted back up to the house, which was warm and dry and light . . .
I woke up with the sun in my eyes, alone in my bed. I was wearing the batiste nightgown that I’d rinsed out the night before, only it was still damp. No wonder I’d dreamed of floods! I grabbed one of Jess’s flannel shirts to put on as I crossed to the window and looked outside, half expecting to see a wasteland of water where Sunny’s barn stood, but there was only the sun shining on a thin glaze of ice and a figure running up the hill, slipping on the ice . . .
It was Noelle, yelling something as she ran.
I pulled on jeans and a sweater and ran down the stairs. I heard a door open and voices out on the lawn—Jess and Noelle and Monty. I caught up with them halfway down the hill, Monty leaning heavily on Jess’s arm and slipping on the ice. The sensation of sliding down the hill was like it was in my dream, only when we got to the barn there was no flood, only puppets hanging in a circle, their painted faces all pointed toward a puppet hanging in the center. A horrible puppet with a bloated lopsided head and a blue face. Only it wasn’t a puppet. It was Sunny.
Chapter Twenty
We waited outside the barn for the police to come. I would have liked to take Monty back to the house, but he insisted on standing outside in the cold and damp in his bedroom slippers and dressing gown. It was a silk burgundy robe with gold braid piping and a crest over the chest pocket with his monogram. There were tears along the shoulder seams and the cuffs were unraveling. Dark stains spread across the chest and hem. With his white hair standing up all over his head he looked like Ebenezer Scrooge visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past. Or like a ghost himself. The cheerful man who’d ridden in the parade float yesterday was gone.
We waited in silence, the only sound the foghorns of passing ships on the river, until the Concord Police patrol car pulled up. Then, as if the sight of Dunstan Corbett getting out of the cruiser had woken him, Monty grasped my hand and whispered hoarsely, “Let me do the talking.”
As if there were some question of what had happened and Monty didn’t trust Jess or me with the story. I could see why he might not want Jess, who was already bristling at the sight of Dunstan, to take the lead, but what was he afraid of me saying?
Monty straightened up and pulled the lapels of his robe together as if it were a suit jacket and not a shabby dressing gown. “Thank you for coming so quickly, Officer,” he said, reaching out his hand to shake Dunstan’s.
Dunstan hesitated, his eyes cutting toward me. I could read his thoughts clearly. Monty was acting as if he were the lord of the manor welcoming the local constable to a charity picnic. The old Dunstan would have said something cutting, but he grasped Monty’s hand in his and replied, “We always respond quickly to a suspicious death. Is the body in here? Are you sure she’s dead?”
“I’m afraid so,” Monty said, blocking the entrance to the barn. “And I’m afraid there’s no suspicion about it. Poor Sunny. If I’d known she meant to do herself harm I would have insisted she stay at the house last night after dinner.”
“Is that the last time you saw her?” Dunstan put his hands on his hips, his eyes glued to the barn door. He didn’t like being kept from the body, but he also wasn’t about to push a frail old man out of the way.
“Yes. We had a celebration for her success at the parade. Did you see the parade, Officer?”
“Yes, I did. Everyone seemed to love it. Was Miss Gruenwald unhappy about anything to do with it—or about anything else last night? Anything that might have led her to take her own life?”
“Ah,” Monty sighed. “That’s the thing. She was ecstatic over her success—flying high!”
“Then why—” Dunstan began, his jaw clenching with frustration.
“You see,” Monty said, laying his hand on Dunstan’s shoulder, “what nonartists don’t understand is that sometimes success can be as emotionally difficult as failure. It raises one’s expectations, lifts one up into the clouds. The drop can be . . .” Monty’s voice trembled as he looked toward the barn. “. . . precipitous.”
I saw Dunstan’s face harden just as it had when I told him he didn’t understand what the big deal was about Monty’s class because he wasn’t a writer.
“I suppose I’ll just have to do my best evaluating the situation as a nonartist.” As Dunstan moved toward the barn, Monty stepped backward, tottering dangerously. I grabbed his arm to steady him.
“You don’t have to go back in there,” I said. Another police car had arrived, followed by a white van, which I supposed would take Sunny away after the police had examined the barn. “Why don’t we go up to the house and wait,” I suggested. But Monty shook his head and, leaning heavily on my arm, steered us through the barn door.
The second police officer was taking pictures of Sunny from every angle. Dunstan stood just below Sunny, hands on hips, staring up at her. I looked away from Sunny’s horribly bloated face, but looking at the puppets was not much better. Nor was Dunstan’s face when my gaze caught his.
“Were the puppets like this when Miss Gruenwald left the barn yesterday afternoon?”
I shook my head. “You’d have to ask Noelle or one of the other volunteers. I wasn’t here.”
Dunstan narrowed his eyes at me. I can always tell when you’re lying, he’d said. I wasn’t lying about not being down here yesterday, but I was remembering the dream of floating down to the barn, hanging up the puppets to keep them out of the water . . . my ears ringing as if I were the one under water . . .
“Officer Ryan, talk to the volunteers who worked here yesterday while I take Ms. Martin’s statement.” Then Dunstan had his hand on my arm and was piloting me out of the barn toward his squad car, saying something about his notepad being in the car. I looked back and saw Jess stepping forward to say something and Monty holding him back, a worried expression on his face. What was he afraid I would say? That Sunny had killed herself because they fought . . . ? Then I knew what it was. Dunstan had called Sunny Miss Gruenwald. He didn’t know that she and Monty were married. Didn’t they always say that the husband is the first suspect in a wife’s murder? Was Monty afraid that he would be accused of killing Sunny? Perhaps to avoid Sunny demanding her share of his estate? Of course that was absurd. Monty was too old and frail to have strung Sunny up on those rafters—
Unless he had help.
And who would help him but his caretaker—Jess.
But what possible motive would Jess have to help Monty kill Sunny—unless it was because his wife had just found out that she was Monty’s daughter and would inherit Riven House after Monty’s death—unless Monty had a wife who would inherit instead.
I broke out in an icy sweat and would have stumbled if Dunstan hadn’t been holding my arm. I shook the thought away. I was letting my imagination run away with me—letting it use me. Dunstan didn’t know that Sunny and Monty were married or that I was Monty’s daughter.
At least not yet.
He opened the passenger door for me, pushed me inside, and closed the door. While he walked around to the driver’s side I took a deep breath and rubbed my hands on my jeans to dry them off. I had to think. Should I tell Dunstan that Sunny was Monty’s wife and that I was his daughte
r? Dunstan would find out sooner or later. Sunny and Monty’s marriage would show up in her records. That woman who showed me my adoption records at St. Anne’s might tell someone. As Dunstan had said, Concord was a small town. If he found out from someone else and knew I had deliberately withheld the information from him he would be suspicious.
“At least you didn’t throw me in the back with handcuffs,” I said when Dunstan got in the car. “So I suppose you’re not arresting me.”
“Not yet,” he said without smiling. He turned and fixed me with those blue Corbett eyes. “But that can change real quick, Clary. I can tell you’re not telling the truth about something. And I know that Montague, with his whole lord-of-the-manor act, is leaving something out.”
“He is, but only because he’s embarrassed. You see, it turns out Monty and Sunny are married—did you know that?—and they’d just gotten back together after Dale’s accident . . .” I told the whole story. Dunstan only broke his silence when I got to the part about finding Monty’s name on my birth certificate.
“That bastard! Getting his student pregnant—”
“That’s why he left it out,” I said quickly. “He’s embarrassed—as he should be.”
By the end I’d told everything but the part about the overflowing tub and Sunny screaming at the sight of my nightgown. I’d told him about Anya, though, and how I thought the apple blossom dolls were a kind of tribute to her and that me turning out to be Amy Birnbach’s daughter had brought it all back for her.
“I feel like it’s all my fault,” I said toward the end. “Sunny thought she was getting a second chance with Monty, but when Monty found out she’d kept my birth from him he was angry. I’m sure he would have gotten over it, but she must have thought he didn’t need her since he’d found me. I’m afraid she was jealous of me—”
Dunstan’s harsh laugh stopped me. “She wouldn’t be the first.”
“What do you mean?”
He snorted. “Come on, Clary. For a smart girl you can be awfully dumb sometimes. Half the girls in high school were jealous of you—for your looks, your brains, your . . .”