The Children(26)
She picked up a deck of thick-cut cards whose backs were painted the soft electric colors of an Easter basket. She saw one card’s black-and-white front—a woman kneeling, flesh white and bare, her long hair wrapped around the fist of the clothed man standing beside her—before Llewellyn turned them face down.
“Old men and their games,” he muttered.
You’re a dirty old man, Edith repeated in Guinevere’s head. She coughed to expel the memory.
“Here.” Dad tucked the cards back into the drawer as he spoke. “We’ll take a photo of the funny dominoes.”
They laid out a quick faux game—nobody had half an idea how to play—and Ennis and Guinevere sat on either side of it. The camera went click-whirr, and their expedition was nearly done.
Llewellyn went one way, the kids another. They found another hidden drawer, this one containing a set of six jewel-colored glasses and an unlabeled bottle, half full. Not amazing enough. Then Guinevere saw the flash of some shining thing peeking from beneath a bed’s plain coverlet. She and Ennis peeled it back, revealing a quilt—tapestry?—that looked so like an illustration they had to run their hands over the weave to believe it was stitching.
It showed a woman with long hair made of silver thread, sitting in front of a hearth in which a fire burned. Behind and above her were four stitched windows. Each looked out onto a different view: snowflakes, a cirrus swirl of orange and red leaves, a tree covered in pink blossoms, and that same tree, heavy with tiny blush-colored fruit. This time Guinevere was sure they were peaches. The siblings grinned at each other across the bed and ran to get their father.
They found him inside the room with the rhyme over the door. He was facing the left-hand wall, camera loose in his hand. Something in his posture silenced them, when they’d been about to call.
His tawny hair was dishwater in the dim, the line of his back taut as a cat’s. There was nothing in front of him. No decoration or furniture.
The children watched as he raised the camera to his eye. Click-whirr.
He turned, and for a moment didn’t seem to see them. Then he breathed in sharply and smiled, sticking the photo he’d taken into the kangaroo pocket of his sweatshirt.
“Four is enough,” he said. “Let’s go amaze that mother of yours.”
* * *
Edith stuck a finger in her book long enough to be amazed. The children invented games with the picture dominoes. Llewellyn drank whiskey and didn’t say much, occasionally rising to pace window to window.
By nightfall the wind had quieted. The snow came down in clean white lines like movie snow, beautiful at last. The orchard was a Christmas village of heaped boughs and glistening shadows, inviting entrances between every pair of trees. A hot chocolate mood descended. Llewellyn made it while Edith put a record on. And as soon as she could get away with it, Guinevere sprinted back to the third floor.
The lights in the hall were finicky, flickering in time with the secret song the house was always singing. You could only hear it up here. Creaks and ticks and a nearly musical humming, there if you listened. She could almost discern a melody.
Guinevere counted the windows in the long, warm room: seven. Lined up like living paintings, swirling with snow. Claustrophobia pressed in and she ignored it, moving to stand where her father had stood. She scanned the empty wall, every line and knot studied and dismissed. She ran a hand over the chamois-soft wood. Not thinking too hard, she made a fist.
Knock, knock.
The hair on her arms prickled and rose. The space behind her navel tightened like a zip tie. Nothing else happened. Just her body lighting up for no reason.
“Well?”
Guinevere turned. Ennis was behind her, here to do exactly what she was doing. She shook her head.
“Nothing.”
* * *
Guinevere was lying in the great room’s window seat, between glass and drawn curtain, when she heard her father say, “I think you should keep it.”
She’d been struggling through the first pages of The Ordinary Princess. While she could make out the bead of each word, she couldn’t properly string them. She clicked off her penlight and peeked through the gap in the curtains.
Her father stood across from Ennis, holding out the Polaroid camera. His voice was carefully careless. “You’ve got a good eye. I should know, I used to be a painter. Have I told you that?”
Of course he had. Many times.
“I didn’t go to London to act. I went there to paint. Talked my way into a job doing sets, which of course was how I . . . well.” He looked down at the camera. “It’s yours if you want it.”
Take it, Ennis, she thought. What’s the point in being so mad?
He did. One shoulder hitching like he couldn’t care less. “Okay,” he mumbled, turning the thing in his hands. “Thanks.”
She leaned back with a sigh. Then sat up again, putting a palm to the window. The snow had stopped.
Fifteen
Five days until Mother
Regina’s call came through seconds after Guin walked out the doors of the Hoxton. It was so neatly timed she turned a paranoid circle on the pavement in case the publicist was on the street somewhere, watching. She declined the call and sent a text.
Interview went smoothly. Hit your talking points, all good.