A Darker Shade Read online

  Although Liza’s expression remained utterly flat, a chill shivered through the still playroom air. I wanted to get Jennifer, with her pretty sweater and perfect hair, out of the room, though who I was protecting with that instinct I had no idea.

  “Hailey says you have the girls’ homeschool packet,” I said.

  “Yes, I do.” Jennifer checked her watch. “There are only a couple of hours until dinner, so I can’t go over it with you now. But if you’d like to look it over tonight, we could chat after breakfast.”

  “That sounds fine. Shall I come with you and get it now?”

  “Certainly.” She cast a warning glance at the girls—what kind of trouble did she think they were apt to get in?—then led me out of the room.

  As Mrs. Vogel had mentioned, Jennifer’s room lay at the far end of the corridor. It was even larger than mine, and it had been remodeled to add a private bathroom. A gorgeous, dark vanity that had been transformed into a writing desk stood in the corner, and Jennifer reached into the single drawer and pulled out a hefty folder of papers.

  “Here you go.” She tucked the folders into the shopping bag with the sweater. “You can put that away, too, since your room connects to Liza’s.”

  Right, because all twelve-year-old girls wanted complete strangers going through their things. That would absolutely get me off on the wrong foot. I would keep the sweater in my own room and offer it to Liza later on.

  “I’ll see you for dinner,” said Jennifer. “I don’t know whether Thane told you exactly what’s expected of you or not, but if he didn’t we can hash that out tomorrow, too. I don’t have time right now.”

  I bit back the childish urge to tell Jennifer she was wasn’t my boss, that I’d been hired by Nathaniel Prescott and I’d talk to him until he said otherwise. Antagonizing one of the few people I would be spending the foreseeable future with was a bad idea, however, especially if it turned out that “Thane” did intend for her to be my supervisor. Old Mrs. Sutter, my last charge, had regularly screamed epithets at me that would make a sailor blush, and I’d stuck it out with her until her family moved her into a facility; I could cope with Jennifer Prescott’s haughty dismissiveness.

  When I got back to the playroom, the girls were sitting in front of the television in the corner playing tennis on the PlayStation. In my opinion, actual tennis would be a better use of their time, but the sun was already on the downslope and soon enough it would be time for them to wash up for dinner. A single evening in front of the screen wouldn’t hurt them, but I resolved to encourage as many outdoor activities as we could fit in before the weather turned.

  “Hi, Molly.” Hailey looked away from the screen for a minute. “I’m kicking Liza’s ass. Do you want a turn?”

  Was she allowed to use language like that? It didn’t bother me, but I somehow couldn’t imagine Jennifer Prescott finding it amusing. I’d have to clarify language parameters with both Jennifer and Nathaniel. And the phrasing…surely she hadn’t meant to make it sound as if she were inviting me to take a turn humiliating her cousin.

  “No, thanks. Eye-hand coordination is not my strong suit. I rather think Liza would slay me in any video game.” Not that it seemed to me Liza cared much about her score. But the girl was wrapped so tightly inside herself that I couldn’t make any real judgment.

  “Okay. But I’m going to my room.” Hailey chucked Liza on the shoulder. “See ya.”

  I took the vacated spot on the small couch in front of the television. “Do you want me to play a game with you? It doesn’t have to be tennis. Is there one you like better?”

  She flipped off the television, which I took as a decided no, and picked up a book.

  Over Mrs. Vogel’s excellent beef stroganoff, Jennifer filled in Prescott on her day with Hailey. He listened with half an ear, answering only when he was asked a direct question, his attention fixed on his daughter. For her part, Liza ignored us all, cutting her food into tiny pieces and chewing each bite thoroughly. I did my best to emulate her so as not to gobble down the savory dish, which was so far beyond anything we ate in my house even in the best of times that I feared making an ass of myself in front of the others.

  “Matthew finished his case,” Jennifer said, “so he’ll be coming tomorrow.” She turned to me. “Matthew is my brother. He’s a lawyer. He’s coming to stay for a few days. We’d thought he wouldn’t be here until Thursday, so this is excellent news.”

  “I’d better re-stock the bourbon.” Prescott raised an eyebrow at Jennifer. I couldn’t tell whether he was serious, but she laughed.

  “Don’t be silly. Matthew doesn’t drink that much. And if he did, he’s perfectly capable of providing for himself. He’ll only be here a week.”

  “A week?” I considered the house’s layout. “I thought the third floor was closed off?”

  “It’s not actually shut off, but we don’t use it. He won’t stay in the main house. There’s a very spacious apartment over the garage. You can see it from the kitchen or from Thane’s room.”

  I remembered Mrs. Vogel driving the Range Rover around the back of the house. So there was a garage. A substantial one, if it had a big apartment above it.

  As Mrs. Vogel cleared the plates, Prescott turned his attention to me. “And you, Miss Allworth? Is everything at Rook’s Rest to your liking?”

  All eyes, including Liza’s, swung toward me and I repressed a shudder. So much for avoiding scrutiny.

  “Her name is Molly,” said Hailey.

  Prescott’s lips twitched in a half-smile. “So it is.”

  “It’s very nice here,” I said, “though I haven’t had much chance to explore. I’m hoping Liza and Hailey will show me the grounds while the weather’s still nice enough.”

  “Of course they will.” Jennifer touched her daughter’s hand. “Won’t you, girls?”

  “Yes, mom. We’ll show you all the good stuff, Molly.”

  “Tomorrow I’d like to take Liza—and Hailey if she wants to come—into Portland. Is there a car I can use?”

  Prescott’s dark eyes narrowed. “Why would you want to do that?”

  “Is it a problem? I told Liza she could help me pick out cookbooks since she’s going to have to eat whatever I make.”

  His jaw went slack for a second, but he recovered quickly. “I’ll take you.”

  Considering that the trip was meant to help me get close to Liza, having her father along would be less than ideal. But I could not contradict him in front of the girls.

  “That sounds fine. Perhaps after lunch?”

  He nodded.

  “Also, if you have time tonight, I’d like a word.” I held my breath, hoping Jennifer would let it pass. She didn’t.

  “I told you. I’ll go over everything with you in the morning.”

  “And I appreciate that. I do. But Mr. Prescott is my employer.”

  “His name is Thane.” Hailey scrunched up her face, clearly put out that neither her uncle nor I were observing the rules she had for us.

  “You’re absolutely right,” I said. “But he’s not my uncle, so I have to be a bit more formal.”

  “No.” Prescott winked at Hailey before turning back to me. “I don’t want to undermine your authority with the girls, Miss Allworth—Molly—but there’s no need for formality. Thane will do nicely.”

  My cheeks heated and I was glad of the dim light. “Thank you.”

  Mrs. Vogel served fresh fruit and chocolate chip cookies for dessert. This, at least, Liza dug into with enthusiasm.

  After dinner, I helped tidy away the dishes, but Mrs. Vogel turned down my offer to wash them.

  “I’m staying late tonight because it’s your first night. Normally, Henry and I leave between five and six. There will be plenty of time for you to learn the cleaning later.”

  I almost laughed aloud at the idea of learning to clean. When Mama first got sick, while I still had to finish school, I’d cleaned houses for Aunt Nadya. Even then, no one had had to teach me. No, I’d told Liz
a the truth when I said I’d been cleaning houses my entire life. Once, when I was about her age and I’d complained about having to make my bed every morning when I was just going to crawl back into it at night, Mama had explained the world to me.

  “Only the rich can afford to be slobs,” she’d said. “If you’re rich, other people pick up after you. And if they don’t, if you don’t have someone like Nadya to make your bed and empty your wastebaskets, then you’re eccentric. When you’re poor, no one calls you eccentric. They call you lazy, filthy, and they look at you out of the corners of their eyes as if you might be stealing from them or giving their children diseases.”

  A night off dishes was a treat, and I left Mrs. Vogel with my thanks and joined the family in the living room. Heavy, overstuffed furniture cluttered the space, but in one corner cushions had been piled on the floor next to a painted chest. Hailey opened the chest and both girls peered inside, shuffling through the contents.

  “We always play a board game after we eat,” Jennifer explained. “It’s been a bit more challenging with Liza, but family time is the most important thing.”

  I had the absurd urge to laugh. It had never occurred to me that people needed to schedule time with their loved ones. But I supposed it only became an issue when your whole family didn’t share a single bathroom.

  “Why don’t you get the girls started while Miss Allworth and I have our discussion,” Nathaniel suggested

  Jennifer’s smile stiffened into a rictus. Did Prescott realize he’d just undercut her assertion by placing our conversation above the game? But she hesitated only a moment before nodding and removing herself to join the girls.

  Chapter 3

  I followed Prescott across the atrium, his hard soles clicking a rapid tattoo on the parquet floor. He’d set up his office in what must originally have been the ballroom. Two large oriental rugs divided the enormous room into separate spaces. One part had been organized into a seating area with a large leather sofa and a pair of armchairs set around a coffee table. The other half of the room, farther back from the door, had been modernized into a working space. In the dim light I could make out the shape of a heavy desk, steel file drawers, a drafting table, and some ergonomic chairs.

  Prescott was a boat builder. I knew that from the packet I’d read on the train. He’d run his business out of both Boston and Portland before his wife’s death, but had shifted the whole thing up to Maine when he decided Liza needed to be there.

  “Well, Molly.” He gestured to the sofa. “Shall we sit?”

  I chose one of the big chairs while he took his place catty-corner to me on the couch and flicked on a floor lamp between us.

  “It’s your show,” he said.

  I took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “I read the paperwork you sent. It was very bare bones. I’m going to assume, given your history, that you didn’t trust that I would stick around, so didn’t want to go into too much detail.”

  For the first time, I saw a hint of actual amusement slide across his face.

  “You’re very direct.”

  “I don’t believe in wasting time. Your daughter needs help.” I squelched down the internal voice calling phony, phony, phony. You can’t help a girl like that, you’re not qualified. “If you expect me to help her, you have to be candid with me about precisely what I’m facing.”

  All amusement vanished from his features. “What are you accusing me of hiding?”

  Step carefully. Vanity has no place in service. “In the packet you sent, it said that your wife died.”

  His jaw was so tense the words had a hard time escaping. “She did.”

  “Let me tell you something that’s not in my employment file, Mr. Prescott.” Despite his earlier remark to appease his niece, he didn’t correct the formal address when we were alone. “My father died when I was eight.”

  Even after all these years, the story was hard to tell. It had been a Saturday morning when they’d found him. Bright and bitterly cold. My mother had made us cinnamon raisin French toast for breakfast, a rare treat, and the whole house smelled sweet and spicy. The police had come to the door as she was bundling Ali into snow pants to take us to the zoo. I pushed away the emotions and stiffened my spine. Keep it professional.

  “My sister wasn’t even a year old. We were living in Queens and my dad was driving a taxi on the night shift. He was killed one night when someone decided that a cab driver made an easy target.”

  “I’m sorry.” The light cast a golden glow across the bottom of his face, but his eyes were dark, shadowed mysteries. He probably wondered why the hired help was bothering him with her history.

  “I’m not telling you to get your pity.” This was the important part, and I found myself leaning toward him, as if simple proximity could force him to understand. “Sudden death is very different for a child than one she has time to plan for. My mother was diagnosed with inoperable cancer when I was in my senior year of college. My sister was fifteen. We had three months with Mama. Three months to say goodbye, to let her tell us all the things she needed to say. It wasn’t enough. No amount of time is ever enough. But it was a completely different experience than what we had with Dad.

  “Right now, the single biggest turning point in your daughter’s life is her mother’s death. Not just the fact of it, but because you changed your whole way of life afterwards. I need to know all I can about that if I’m to help her at all.”

  He leaned back against the shiny, slightly cracked leather of the couch, his jaw working. Had none of the others asked for this information? Or had all of them, wearing him out with telling the same story over and over to people who never stuck around?

  At last he took a deep breath and forcibly relaxed his shoulders. “Marianne was never the strongest woman. She’d give you the shirt off her back, would do absolutely anything for absolutely anyone, but she suffered from depression and would sometimes lock herself into her room for days at a time. After Liza was born, she seemed to get better. As if Liza gave her a focus. I wasn’t a great father. I spent a lot of time at work. We were living in Boston, and using this as a summer home, the same way my parents did with me and Danny. In fact, the playroom was built for me and Danny. So every summer, we’d come up here, Liza, Marianne, and I. That was the time I really got to know my daughter. Danny and Jenn would come up, too, with Hailey.

  “Then two years ago, twenty-six months, to be exact, right after we moved back down to Boston for the school year, I got a call from Liza’s school saying Marianne hadn’t picked up Liza. It wasn’t the first time. Marianne was an artist—you’ll see her work around the house; she said this place inspired her—and sometimes she’d get caught up in a painting and forget the world. I went by the school and got Liza and brought her home, got her settled in the kitchen with her homework and went to the studio to see what was keeping Marianne.”

  The stark lines of his face hollowed even further. I knew what was coming, but I was powerless to open my mouth and tell him he didn’t need to continue.

  “She’d taken a bottle of pills and washed them down with a bottle of bourbon. I don’t know where she got the drugs and she didn’t even like bourbon. She always said it smelled like turpentine when I drank it.”

  “What did you tell Liza?”

  “What was I supposed to say? I told her mommy had a heart attack. She wasn’t old enough to hear the truth.”

  But she knew it. I felt absolutely certain, though I could not put my finger on why.

  “Why did you move here? Your business was in Boston. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to stay there?” Rather than here, surrounded by her dead mother’s work, where spirits hung in dark corners and a lonely little girl would have no opportunity to make new friends.

  “Do you think I didn’t try? The true circumstances of my wife’s death were in the papers. People talked. Eventually, Liza’s classmates found out. They were… less than kind. So I withdrew her from school and tried to homeschool her in Boston. But she k
ept asking to spend time in her mother’s studio. She called it ‘spending time with mommy.’ I indulged her at first, but she became more and more insistent, more and more reclusive. When she locked herself in there and I had to break the door down, I realized we needed to make a radical change.”

  “Is that when she started talking about ghosts?”

  He nodded.

  “So you brought her up here.”

  “Yes. The Boston au pair backed out once she saw the living conditions. She was a city girl. But even so, this seemed the right place for Liza. Here, she had only happy memories of her mother and me. I always took time in the summer to spend with them when we were at the house. She was speaking less and less, but she seemed happier away from the memories of her mom’s death. And then my brother died, and Jenn and Hailey needed a place, so they came up here, too. I thought the company would be good for Liza.”

  Two lonely, mourning children instead of one. It made a certain kind of sense, though it wasn’t the direction I would have chosen.

  “You don’t agree.”

  “It’s not that.” At least, that wasn’t all. “Do Jennifer and Hailey know about the ghosts?”

  “I had to tell Jenn. I wasn’t sure she’d want Hailey exposed to Liza’s ideas, but she said she didn’t mind. In the long run, I don’t know that either Jenn or Liza said a word about spirits to Hailey. It wasn’t long after they arrived that Liza quit talking altogether.”

  I filed that away for later. Had Liza been retreating more every day, or did she suddenly cut herself off because of the new arrivals?

  “Did you tell Liza that the ghosts weren’t real?”

  “Of course!” He glared. “For Christ’s sake. You don’t think we should play along with her little fantasy?”

  Never criticize the choices your employers make. This time, the voice in my head was Sandy’s. I had never realized how much alike she and my Aunt Nadya were in their worldview. They won’t thank you for it.