Or maybe it was something more sinister. Something inside that room, taking hold of him. Compelling him to clean the mess it had left behind.
Dressed in a comfy sweater and jeans, Tess padded down to the kitchen, lit a fire, and brewed a pot of coffee. She sat at the table with a steaming cup and watched the sun rise over the lake. It was just as spectacular as the sunsets in Wharton, but she couldn’t say she had seen it rise very often over the years.
When she heard her parents scuffing about upstairs, she started prepping breakfast. She knew her dad always loved pancakes, but not the traditional fluffy kind. He loved thin pancakes that were more akin to French crepes. She mixed up the simple batter for those—one cup flour, two eggs, one and a half cups milk, a pinch of salt, and a quarter cup of sugar—and let it set. She used that same batter to make oven pancakes in muffin tins—another good breakfast option for her guests, she thought. She hunted for some breakfast sausage in the freezer and put it in a pan to steam, then whisked some eggs.
They were coming down the back stairs as she was frying the first of the pancakes.
“What is all this?” Indigo said, a broad smile on his face.
“I thought you could use a nice hot breakfast after the day you had yesterday,” Tess said.
“Honey, you didn’t have to do this . . . but I’ll take it!” Jill said as she poured cups of coffee for Indigo and herself.
Tess put a platter piled high with pancakes, eggs, and sausage on the table, and they all dug in. As they were chattering away, Tess was biding her time. She hated to break this happy mood, but if she was going to get any more answers out of her father, it was now or never.
“I know you don’t believe any of this, but I’ve been having a problem in this house with, well I know it’s going to sound silly to you, but—a haunting,” she began.
“Oh, honey, not this again,” Indigo said.
“No, Dad. You have to hear me out. I’m not going to be able to open this place until we get it resolved. That’s what everyone was doing here last night.”
“Ghost hunting?” Jill asked, an amused look on her face. She and Indigo shared a grin.
“You wouldn’t laugh if you had been here,” Tess said, as she eyed the door. Jane and Wyatt were standing outside of it. “I knew I wouldn’t get very far with this without proof, so I called some people over to show you.”
Tess ushered them in, “good mornings” were said all around, cups of coffee poured, and Jane slid her laptop out of its case and opened it.
And so, in the bright light of day, as the sun streamed into the kitchen at La Belle Vie, they watched the video of what had happened in the studio the night before.
Tess’s parents were stunned into open-mouthed silence.
“There has to be some kind of reasonable explanation . . .” Jill said.
But Indigo was shaking his head.
“That song,” he said, his eyes darting back and forth, as if he were searching his memory. “Grey used to sing it all the time. To Daisy.”
A shiver shot through Tess, and she and Wyatt exchanged a glance. But Jane just gave a knowing smile.
“That does not surprise me,” she said. “You may know I’m a little . . . sensitive. A feeling overtook me last night that I couldn’t shake. I’ve been turning it over in my mind. And I’m pretty sure that whatever happened in the studio all of those years ago happened between Grey and Daisy.”
She turned to Indigo. “Can you tell us everything you remember from that time? It would be a great help.”
Indigo raised his coffee cup to his lips and eyed his wife over the rim. She nodded. “It’s time, Indy.”
Time? So, they did know something they weren’t sharing.
Tess’s father took a deep breath and then began to speak.
“Somewhere, buried down deep, I had the idea that it would turn out this way. That’s why I didn’t stop you from opening up the studio. I had the feeling the truth might be lurking in there, dormant, silent after year upon year.”
He took a sip of his coffee, pausing for effect.
“During the summer of my junior year of college, I had an internship at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. I knew I couldn’t be a great artist like my father, but I loved it all the same, and I thought learning the business of art, how to run a museum and a collection, would let me be part of his world in a way that he needed. I was right about that, by the way. In any case, one afternoon, the director of the museum came and found me to tell me I had a phone call.