The slanting moonlight glanced off Matthew’s features, silvering his hair and adding lines and shadows to his face. For a moment—just one moment—I imagined him an old man, and me an old woman, holding hands on a late summer evening and remembering when our children slept safely inside and love filled every corner of our lives.
“I know it can’t stay this way,” I said, thinking back over the events of the past summer. “We can’t stay in the garden forever.”
“No. And the only true fence against the world and all its dangers is a thorough knowledge of it,” Matthew said as we rocked in silence, together.
38
One Hundred
20 AUGUST
Marcus drove through the center of Hadley, along the village green that preserved the town’s colonial layout. Stately houses with carved doorways clustered around the leafy space with an attitude of determined persistence.
He swung the car onto a road that led west. Marcus slowed slightly as they passed a graveyard, then pulled up in front of a small, wooden house. It was far more modest than those in the center of town, with no extensions or additions to alter the original footprint: two rooms downstairs and two rooms upstairs arranged around a central chimney made of brick. The house’s fa?ade sparkled with casement windows on the ground and first floor, and Phoebe adjusted her glasses to lessen their glare. There was a single stone step leading up to the door. Outside, a small garden in the front was filled with sunflowers that stood out against the white painted clapboards like polka dots. Like the house, the white picket fence had been freshly painted, and the wood was in surprisingly good condition. An old-fashioned, sprawling rosebush filled the space under the windows on one side of the door, and a tall shrub with dark green, heart-shaped leaves was on the other. Fields surrounded the house in every direction, and two ramshackle barns added a romantic note.
“It’s beautiful.” Phoebe turned to Marcus. “Is it how you remember?”
“The fence wasn’t that sturdy when we lived here, that’s for sure.” Marcus put the car in park and turned off the ignition. He looked uncertain and vulnerable. “Matthew’s been busy.”
Phoebe reached over and took her mate’s hand.
“Do you want to get out?” Phoebe asked quietly. “If not, we can always keep driving, and stay somewhere else.”
It wouldn’t be surprising if Marcus wanted to wait a bit longer. Returning to the home of his childhood was a major step.
“It’s time.” Marcus opened his door and came around to open hers. Phoebe fished around in her purse and found her mobile. She took a picture of the house and sent it to Diana, as she had promised.
Phoebe held tight to Marcus’s hand as they walked through the garden gate. Marcus closed it securely behind them. Phoebe frowned.
“Habit,” Marcus explained with a smile. “To keep the Kelloggs’ hog out of Ma’s garden.”
Phoebe caught him in her arms when he returned. She kissed him. They stood, arms locked around each other, noses touching. Marcus took a deep breath.
“Show me our house,” Phoebe said, kissing him again.
Marcus led her down the short, gravel path to the stone threshold. It was rough-hewn and uneven, a massive piece of rock that was weatherworn and had a dip in the center from the tread of hundreds of feet. The door had a split in the top panel, and its dark red paint was peeling. Phoebe scratched at it, and the paint underneath was the same color, as was the paint beneath that.
“It’s as though time stood still, and everything is just as I left it,” Marcus commented. “Except the lock, of course. Mr. Security strikes again.”
When they turned the modern brass key in the substantial mechanism and pushed the door open, the air that met them smelled old and stale. There was a touch of damp, too, and a slight scent of mold.
Phoebe searched for a light switch. To her surprise, she couldn’t find one.
“I don’t think there’s any electric,” Marcus said. “Matthew refused to wire Pickering Place until about twenty years ago.”
Phoebe’s eyes adjusted to the dim light coming through the ancient casement windows. Slowly, the house’s interior came into focus.
There was dust everywhere—on the wide pine floorboards, on the chamfered summer beam that spanned the width of the house, on the shallow sills that held the diamond panes on the casement windows, on the round newel post that punctuated the end of the banister.
“Christ.” Marcus sounded shaky. “I half expect my mother came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, to see if I was hungry.”