Yes, yes, I will call you along the way and will call you when I get to Mom’s house. I’ll miss you, Linda. Two months is a long time,” Amy said wistfully.
Linda threw her arm over her boss’s shoulder. “I think you’re going to be too busy to miss this place. Go on now before we both start blubbering.”
Amy picked up Cornelia’s carrying case and threw it over her shoulder. The briefcase weighed a ton and she probably wouldn’t even open it once she got to Virginia. Her mother always said she overcompensated for everything. Her mother also said she was anal retentive, was an overachiever and needed to think inside the box instead of outside. So much for her loving mother.
Amy settled Cornelia on the passenger seat before she unzipped the carryall. Cornelia poked her head up just long enough to see her surroundings before she curled up to sleep. Amy slipped a disc into the player and settled down to make the trip to Fairfax, Virginia.
Four hours later with four stops along the way, Amy pulled into her mother’s driveway on Little Pumpkin Lane. She leaned back and closed her eyes for a moment. She was home. The house where she’d grown up. A house of secrets. The house where she’d been lonely, sad, angry. So many memories.
Now why had she expected her mother to be standing in the doorway waiting to greet her? Because that’s what mothers usually did when an offspring returned home for a visit. A stupid expectation, Amy decided as she climbed out of the car. She left Cornelia in the car while she unloaded her bags and the boxes of things she’d brought with her. Four trips later, Amy carried Cornelia into the house and settled her and her litter box in the laundry room. She called her mother’s name, knowing there would be no answer. Her mother was a busy lady who did good deeds twenty-four/seven. All she did was sleep at the house. It was like that while she was growing up, too. Tillie Baran for the most part had always been an absentee mother with various housekeepers picking up her slack. When the housekeepers went home, her father took over, making sure she ate a good dinner, brushed her teeth, helped her with her homework and tucked her into bed at night. For some reason, though, she’d never felt cheated.
All of that changed when her father died of a heart attack in the lobby of the Pentagon on the day after she graduated from college. If her mother had grieved, she hadn’t seen it. Armed with her substantial inheritance, Amy had relocated to Philadelphia where she worked for a PR firm to get her feet wet before she opened her own small agency.
She called home once a week, usually early Sunday morning, to carry on an inane conversation with her mother that never lasted more than five minutes. She returned home for Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas—just day trips, because her mother was too busy to visit. For the past two years, though, she hadn’t returned home at all. Her mother didn’t seem to notice. No matter what, though, Amy kept up with her early Sunday morning phone calls because she wanted to be a good daughter.
And now here she was. Home to do her mother’s bidding. For the first time in her entire life her mother had asked for her help. She couldn’t help but wonder if there was an ulterior motive to this particular command performance.
Amy carried her bags, one at a time, to her old bedroom on the second floor. It all looked the same, neat as always, unlived in, smelling like lemon furniture polish. A cold, unfeeling house. Her mother’s fault? Her father’s?
Amy hated the house. She thought about her cozy five room townhouse, chockful of doodads, knick-knacks and tons of green plants that she watered faithfully. In the winter she used her fireplace every single evening, not caring if the soot scattered from time to time or if the house smelled like woodsmoke. She had bright-colored, comfortable furniture and she didn’t mind if Cornelia slept on the couch or not. Her garage was full of junk and she loved every square inch of it. There simply was no comparison between her mother’s house and her own. None at all.
Amy stopped in the hallway and opened the door to her father’s old room. It still smelled like him after all these years. How she’d loved her father. She looked around. It was stark, nothing out of place. A man’s room with rustic earthy colors. She opened the closet the way she always did when she returned home. All her father’s suits hung neatly on the double racks, exactly two inches apart. His shoes were still lined up against the wall. This was a room that didn’t include her mother. Amy had always wondered why. She backed out of the room, closing the door behind her.
She had no interest in checking her mother’s room. Instead, she opened the door to her room. A bed, a dresser, a bookshelf and two night tables on each side of the twin bed. The drapes were the same; so was the bedspread. She hated the patchwork design.
Long ago she’d taken everything from this room, even the things she no longer wanted. There was nothing here that said Amy Margaret Baran ever resided in this room. It was a guest room, nothing more. Well, she didn’t do guest rooms. In a fit of something she couldn’t explain, Amy carried her bags back down the hall and opened the door to her father’s room a second time. She would sleep here for the next two months. The bed was king-size, and there was a deep reading chair and a grand bathroom, complete with a Jacuzzi.
As Amy unpacked her bags she wondered if her father’s spirit would visit her. She didn’t know if she believed in such things or not but she had an open mind. If it happened, it happened. If not, her life would go on.
She set her laptop on her father’s desk, her clothes hanging next to her father’s. The picture of her and her father on her sixteenth birthday—taken by the housekeeper whose name she couldn’t remember—went on the night table next to the house phone. She looked around as she tried to decide what she should do next. She walked over to the entertainment center that took up a whole wall. Underneath was a minifridge. She opened it to see beer and Coca-Colas. She wondered when the drinks had been added. She popped a Coke and looked for the expiration date. Whoever the housekeeper was, she was up-to-date.
Amy settled herself in the lounge chair and sipped her drink. All she had to do now was wait for her mother.
Cornelia leaped into her lap and started to purr. Amy stroked her, crooning words a mother would croon to a small child. Eventually her eyes closed and she slept, her sleep invaded by a familiar dream.
…She knew it was late because her room was totally dark and only thin slivers of moonlight showed between the slats of the blinds. She had to go to the bathroom but knew she wouldn’t get up and go out to the hall because she could hear the angry voices. She scrunched herself into a tight ball with her hands over her ears but she could still hear the voices….
Chapter Three
Exhausted from his long trip, Cyrus antsy to get out and run, Gus pulled up to the entrance of Moss Farms and looked at the dilapidated sign swinging on one hinge from the carved post. A lump rose in his throat. A few nails, new hinges, some paint, and it would be good as new. The lump stayed in his throat as he put his Porsche Cayenne into gear and drove through the opening.
Gus ascended a steep hill lined with ancient fragrant evergreens, their massive trunks covered in dark green moss. His mother always said it was so fitting because their name was Moss.
At the top of the hill, Gus shifted into park and got out of the car to look down at the valley full of every kind of evergreen imaginable. He saw the Douglas firs; the blue spruce field; and to the left of that, the long-needle Scotch pine. He shaded his eyes from the sun to better see the fields of balsam fir, Fraser firs, and Norway Spruce. To the left as far as the eye could see were the fields of white pines and the white firs. The Austrian pines looked glorious, and the three fields of Virginia pines seemed to go on to infinity. Thousands and thousands of trees. The lump was still in his throat when he tried to whistle for Cyrus, who came on the run.
Gus
