The Night Strangers Part 6

They were driving home from dance cla.s.s Sat.u.r.day morning, and it was starting to snow, great white flecks that hit the winds.h.i.+eld and instantly were transformed into droplets of water. It wasn't quite noon, and Emily was a little relieved to be talking about something other than that d.a.m.ned cigarette lighter. Counting greenhouses? The number in Bethel was odd, there was no doubt about it, but hearing the girls bicker as they counted them felt like a return to normalcy after yesterday afternoon's and last night's conversations about the lighter and what, as a family, they should do about it. The conversations had seemed endless. She and Chip had both had to speak to Mrs. Collier on the telephone, and then the two of them alone had debated what to do. She had come home from work early, and they had talked to Garnet soon after she got off the school bus. Then they had spoken with Garnet and Hallie together. Both girls had always been so well behaved that she and Chip really didn't have a lot of history with discipline: Even when the girls had been toddlers, neither she nor Chip had sent either child to the "time-out chair"-one of the ladder-back chairs that was actually a part of their regular dining room furniture-more than two or three times. Good Lord, Garnet had been more likely to send herself to the time-out chair, which she had done at least twice when Emily was alone with the girls while Chip was flying. It was as if Garnet had somehow deduced that her mother was not merely outnumbered, she was outmatched by three-year-old twins and had reached the breaking point: She needed one of the girls to sit still for a few minutes while she tried to straighten up the board books and stuffed animals and baby dolls (and baby doll clothing) that coated the floor of the house like fallen leaves in October, or make a dent in the shaky skysc.r.a.per of disgusting dishes that rose high from the kitchen sink. In the end, Emily and Chip had chosen not to discipline Garnet for hiding her discovery of the lighter from them-and from Hallie-and then for bringing it with her to school: Between the plane crash and being uprooted and brought to New Hamps.h.i.+re, it was a wonder that there hadn't been far more and far worse instances of acting out. She wished that Garnet had evidenced more contrition, but clearly her daughter accepted that she had made a mistake. And even the girl's schoolteacher seemed to believe that the boy who had drawn the picture of the plane was just asking for some sort of off-the-grid reaction.

"And the greenhouses are all in Bethel. Not in Littleton or Franconia," Hallie was saying. "You see one almost the second you get off the highway."

"And then another and another," Garnet added.

"Well, winters are long here," Emily said, speaking as much to try to make sense of it to herself as to try to explain it to her daughters. "And that means the growing seasons are short. You want to start plants as early as you can in a greenhouse and then give them as long a growing season as possible."

"But why just here?" Garnet asked her.

This was a perfectly reasonable question, and she wished she had a good answer. She recalled that woman from the diner, Becky Davis, and how Becky had referred to the local women as the herbalists-as if they were a cult. Emily presumed that each of those women had a greenhouse. And that group, apparently, included Anise and Reseda and Ginger Jackson and John Hardin's wife, Clary, since she knew that all four of them owned greenhouses. And that also meant, perhaps, that even Tansy Dunmore at some point had been one of them-whoever they were-because she and Chip now owned a house with a greenhouse.

Of course, as loopy as all those women might be about vegetables and herbs, Becky herself hadn't seemed a paragon of stability that afternoon in the diner.

"Well," Emily said, trying to focus on Garnet's question, "it could be as simple as the fact that someone around here builds greenhouses. You know, maybe someone in the community owns a company that makes them. That's all. Or it could be a ... a club."

"Even Mrs. Collier owns one," Hallie added, referring to the girls' schoolteacher. Emily felt Hallie tapping the back of her seat with her foot absentmindedly. It drove her a little crazy some days, but now she was taking comfort in the idea that her daughter had kicked off her snow boots when she climbed into the car and so at least she wasn't leaving brown marks from road sand and mud on the tan leather. "What did she tell you about hers?" she asked. In her mind she had already added another person-another woman-to the group. She wasn't sure how she felt about the idea that the girls' teacher was one of the women (and the club really did seem to include only women). "Anything special?"

"No. She just said she might take us there later this spring to show Garnet and me some of her special plants."

"You mean the whole cla.s.s?"

"No, not the whole cla.s.s," Hallie answered. "I think she just meant Garnet and me."

Emily wondered what the teacher had meant by special plants. Some people used greenhouses to grow tomatoes or phlox. What were these women using them for? Comfrey and crampbark? Hawthorn? Elder? She knew there were all sorts of people floating around remote corners of New England, some New Agers and some old-timers, who would still put a little comfrey on a cut or a bruise. She recalled a woman from her visits to her grandmother in Meredith, an elderly friend of the family: Before she would join her grandmother and her friend for walks around the lake at twilight, the woman would rub some leaf on her arms and no mosquito would ever come near her. Not a single one. And it smelled heavenly. Like perfume. Emily tried to recall now what it was and couldn't.

She slowed as she took a corner and the road's shoulder all but disappeared, and she noted the way the snow was starting to stick to the pavement. She had hoped it would have stopped for the season by now. But they'd gotten another three inches in the night, and John Hardin and his wife were probably on their fourth or fifth runs of the day at the mountain. Soon, she presumed, the couple would be calling it quits and heading home to prepare for their small dinner party that evening. Behind her, Hallie stopped kicking her seat.

"Maybe we should put some interesting plants in our greenhouse," Emily said to the girls, trying out an idea. Maybe one of the benefits to living here in northern New Hamps.h.i.+re would be the chance for the girls to reconnect with the natural world. She imagined taking them on nature walks and teaching them the names of the wildflowers that grew along the side of the road. Of course, that would mean she would have to learn the names of those wildflowers first.

"No, let's not," Hallie said, mimicking the derisive voices of the teenagers she saw on sitcoms on TV.

"Yeah," Garnet agreed. "We want that to be our playhouse."

"Can't it be both?" Emily asked, though now she was really only teasing them. If they felt that strongly about wanting it to be their private world, she had no objections at all.

"No way," Hallie said. "It's a playhouse-not a greenhouse."

"Okay, then," Emily agreed. "Playhouse: not a greenhouse." She glanced out the window at a handsome white Cape with evergreen shutters. In the backyard she thought she spied a greenhouse.

You could tell your wife about the bone. Bones, actually. When you dug around in the dirt a little more, you found three bullet-size phalanges that you are quite sure came from a human hand. A human finger.

Perhaps you even should tell your wife about the bones. But you don't. You did not tell her yesterday when she came home from work and you will not tell her when she and the girls return from dance cla.s.s this morning. And while you could devise any number of reasonable excuses for withholding the discovery-Emily is a little depressed, Emily already has a basket case of a husband, Emily is questioning her decision to bring the family north to New Hamps.h.i.+re-the main reason is essentially this: You have a macabre fascination with the bones. This house is br.i.m.m.i.n.g with strangeness and purposeful surprises. You want to investigate this on your own. See what it means. Talk to Hewitt Dunmore yourself.

Besides, why scare Emily? She was disturbed enough by the crowbar, the knife, and the ax. Why risk agitating her-and, thus, the girls? Because when Emily is anxious, the girls are anxious. That's just how it is.

And so you wrap the long bone in sheets of newspaper (the Philadelphia Inquirer, the same pages that days ago pillowed the china plates that had come into your life in the weeks and months after your wedding) and place it upright in the very back of your mahogany armoire. It reminds you of the way that crowbar had been leaned up-hidden-in a corner of a closet in another bedroom. You place the pieces of fingers in a Ziploc bag beside it.

You find yourself smiling a little ruefully when you shut the armoire door. Perhaps you are more like Parnell or Tansy or Hewitt Dunmore than you realized. You hide things.

At some point soon, however, perhaps even this afternoon, Emily is going to go downstairs to the bas.e.m.e.nt, and there she will see that you have torn down that door. She will see that the coal has been moved and the door is in ruins. And so you decide you will tell her about that part of your little project. You will tell her when she gets back from the dance studio with your girls. You will say you initiated this small home improvement this morning. Not yesterday. Today. After all, if she thinks you took care of the door yesterday and chose not to tell her until now, she might ask questions. And, before you know it, you might reveal that you have found some bones. Or, worse, that you may have reconnected with a dead girl with a Dora the Explorer backpack.

On Sat.u.r.day afternoon, the sun trying and failing to burn off the high overhead quilt of oyster white cirrus, Reseda misted the hypn.o.bium, epazote, and derangia in her greenhouse. Then she gazed for a long moment at the arnica, appraising the plants. They looked like daisies, but the flowers were an orange just a tad more vibrant than terra-cotta. They smelled slightly like sage. On Monday she would harvest the arnica for a tincture. Most people only used arnica externally as an anti-inflammatory. They rubbed it on sprains and strains. They feared its toxicity when taken internally: A large enough dose was lethal. And while Reseda knew that you could kill a person with arnica, the truth was you could kill a person with plenty of medicines if you overdid it. Hence the word: overdose. She used a thousand times more arnica than the bare trace element you might find in a homemade homeopathic tincture or pill, but not enough, apparently, to ever have killed a person.

She wondered what she would prepare for the Lintons tomorrow night when they came to her house for dinner, and she put down her mister and wandered across the greenhouse to the section with the herbs she used in cooking. She noted how healthy the rosemary looked and inhaled its fragrance. Lamb, she decided that moment. Yes: She would serve lamb.

She recalled the way Captain Linton's mind had roamed among shadows when he dropped by her office, how he seemed to be living now only in gloaming. She understood; she had her own trauma. She had had her own extended moments with the dead. His depression and disorientation were products of the accident, and with a little luck and the right counsel he would recover and resume a safer path. She found it significant that she was most attracted to the stories of the captain and his wife, while Anise and the other women were obsessed only with their girls.

She paused when she felt a p.r.i.c.kling at the outer edge of her aura and stood perfectly still. She hadn't imagined it. Consequently, she stepped over the s.h.i.+n-high stone statue of the amphisbaena, careful not to trip over either of the serpent's heads (in myth, amphisbaena meat was an aphrodisiac; its skin could cure colds), pa.s.sed by her Baphomet, and knelt. She peeled off her gardening gloves and spread wide her fingers, stretching her arms and straightening her spine. She stared up through the gla.s.s at the nimbus of light in the hazy western sky, closed her eyes, and randomly said aloud names of the living as if they were parts of a mantra or prayer. In a moment, whatever-whoever-was trying to cloud her aura was gone.

It was a source of unending interest to her: How could she-given all that she knew and all that she had endured-be so attuned to the thoughts of the living and so mystified by the thoughts of the dead?

They were only on the interstate for two exits on Sat.u.r.day night, but they pa.s.sed a pair of signs warning drivers of moose. One advised urgently, Brake for Moose: It may save your life. The first time Chip had seen that one, the day after they'd moved to Bethel, he'd remarked, "I suppose they're afraid most people will accelerate when they see a moose. Look, honey, there's a moose on the road: Let's speed up and see if we can hit it!" He didn't joke much these days, and so it always comforted Emily when she saw a glimpse of his humor. It was difficult to recall now, but before the accident he had actually been a rather funny man.

The Hardins' house in Littleton was a white Federal that resided with princely elegance in the town's hill section above the main street. The driveway had a circular portico and the front yard a stone fountain, the basin of which, because it was winter, had been removed and placed against the pedestal like a giant mushroom cap so the water pooling inside didn't freeze and crack it. There was another car in the driveway, and Emily suspected by the way the front winds.h.i.+eld had been defrosted that this vehicle was a recent arrival, too, and not one of the Hardins' automobiles.

"There will be other people," she said to neither Chip nor the girls in particular as they stood for a moment in the driveway. She found herself worrying for her husband. Worrying about her husband. It seemed that morning he had taken an ax and destroyed that squat, ugly door in the bas.e.m.e.nt. The exertion had left him exhausted, though Emily was troubled more by the fury he had brought to the task: Why in the world had he used an ax instead of simply removing the carriage bolts from one side and then prying the door open with a crowbar? He had told her there were too many bolts and they were too long: Removing even a third of them would have taken hours. She took him at his word, but she couldn't help but fear it was the fact that there were precisely thirty-nine of them that had prevented him. He had seemed unduly disturbed by the coincidence, the notion that there was one bolt for every fatality-as if each length of metal corresponded exactly with one human soul. One night over dinner he had expressed his wonderment at the connection, and she had smiled and told him this was magical thinking, a symptom of an obsessive-compulsive disorder. He, in turn, had told her that magical thinking was also a symptom of depression and there was something enigmatic in his response: Was he signaling to her that he knew she had demons, too, and to allow him this indulgence? Or was he alerting her to the idea that she was right and he had done a little Web diagnosis on himself and understood that his consideration of the bolts was at once irrational and explicable?

And what had he discovered from all that sweat, what had he found on the other side of that barnboard? Nothing. He said there wasn't a single thing behind that creepy door-which, when she was honest with herself, left her a little relieved. If she could find knives and axes hidden beneath heating grates and under the sink, what in the world might Tansy Dunmore have hidden behind the door in the bas.e.m.e.nt? A cannon?

"Will there be other kids?" Garnet was asking. It was spitting snow once again, and the slate path had enough of a dusting that their boots were leaving tracks in the fine white powder. Emily looked up and focused instantly on her daughter when she heard the unease in the child's voice. Garnet could be shy, and other children had not been a part of the plan. Quickly Emily inventoried the rest of the law firm in her mind and tried to catalog the possible children. In the end she couldn't decide and answered that she honestly didn't know, but she expected that the girls would be able to coc.o.o.n upstairs with a movie or two just as John Hardin had promised.

And, it turned out, there were no other children. But there was another couple present whom Clary Hardin, John's wife, thought Emily and Chip would enjoy. When the pair saw the Lintons awkwardly removing their snow boots in the front entryway, they rose from their perch on a sofa with plush pillows and serpentine arms that looked like it belonged in a French villa and went with the Hardins to greet them. They seemed to be roughly the age of their hosts: Emily pegged the couple as somewhere in their late sixties, though both-like John and Clary-seemed almost impeccably well preserved. They introduced themselves as Peyton and Sage Messner.

"And you two, quite obviously, are Hallie and Garnet," said Sage, kneeling down before the twins. It looked like she was drinking Scotch, and the ice cubes tinkled against her gla.s.s as she moved. With her free hand she surprised Garnet by stroking her hair, and Emily hoped that only a mother would sense her child's discomfort with a gesture this intimate from a stranger. "Your hair is every bit as extraordinary and as beautiful as I'd heard," Sage went on.

"I told Sage at bridge club," Clary said quickly.

"And I had told Clary," John added, chuckling. "I told her it was remarkable, a shade of magical t.i.tian that only a practiced Renaissance dye maker could concoct."

"And you knew your share of them, old man," Peyton Messner chided him.

"I am old, but not that old-thank heavens," John corrected him.

Emily handed John her overcoat and glanced quickly at Chip. He was staring at the chandelier that was dangling from the dining room ceiling, and so she glanced at it, too. The bulbs were faces, she realized, though because they were lit one couldn't really study them. But there seemed to be at least three or four different characters, one as sad as the cla.s.sic drama mask signifying tragedy and one as hysterical as the mask denoting comedy. And then there was one that seemed ... terrified. She thought of the Edvard Munch painting of the scream. She guessed there were twenty bulbs, each the white of a cotton ball cloud, and they seemed to exist like flowers at the ends of slender but tangled wrought-iron vines.

"Don't you just love it," Clary said, when she noticed Emily gazing at the chandelier. "John and I found it in a lighting store in Paris. We saw it for sale in a shop window in the Marais and just had to have it."

"It's pretty eccentric," she said.

"I've always found it downright hypnotic," said Peyton, his voice deep and plummy and rather hypnotic itself.

"Where in the world do you get replacement bulbs?" Emily asked.

"I hope we brought a lifetime supply back with us," said John, and he punctuated the sentence with another small laugh. "But I do fear someday we may run out."

"When my father's construction company was building the first greenhouses, he was investigating the best grow lights. I wonder what he would have thought of bulbs like these," Peyton said, pointing at the chandelier ever so slightly with one of his long, elegant fingers.

"Tell me something," Emily asked. "Why are there so many greenhouses in Bethel?"

"Do you girls want some juice-or c.o.c.ktails?" Clary asked the twins, and Emily had the distinct sense that she was consciously avoiding the question by turning her attention-everyone's attention-to Hallie and Garnet. "John makes a mean s.h.i.+rley Temple."

"I make a mean everything," her husband said, raising his eyebrows rakishly.

Emily saw both children looking at her, trying to gauge whether she approved of their having c.o.c.ktails. The word was such a throwback to another era that she wasn't sure either girl even knew what it meant. "Why not have s.h.i.+rley Temples?" she said to them. "You always like them at the airport." Funny, Emily thought now: The girls did like s.h.i.+rley Temples, but she and Chip only thought to order them for the children when they were traveling. She recalled almost at once all of the restaurants and bars and lounges along the concourses at the Philadelphia airport.

"Okay, I'll have one," Hallie agreed.

"And you, Garnet?" asked John.

"Yes, please."

"I have cherries, but the red won't be as magic as your hair," he said to her and then retreated to the kitchen.

"Where would you like the girls to settle in?" Emily asked her hostess.

"Well, wherever they'd like!" said Clary, waving her arm at the living room as if she were a fairy G.o.dmother with a wand. "The couch, the divan, the carpets. Wherever they'd like!"

Emily recalled John's invitation at the office-the way he had stressed that there was a playroom upstairs where the twins could escape the grown-ups. The last thing Hallie and Garnet wanted this evening was to sit like dolls on the divan. And so, even though it was awkward, she said to her hostess, "That's really very sweet of you, but I know the girls are tired. They had dance in the morning and were doing yet more unpacking this afternoon. John said something about a playroom. Would it be okay if they just curled up there and dozed in front of a movie? They brought some of their DVDs."

"Oh, of course. Just let us have them for a few minutes," Clary said, and she smiled at the children. Her eyes hadn't wavered, but in those two short sentences her voice had lost its saccharine lilt and grown demanding. Just let us have them. The words echoed in Emily's head, and they sounded vaguely threatening. This was, she understood, a ridiculous and completely unhealthy overreaction. Still, she wanted her children to have a quiet evening upstairs. It was what she had promised them-and what she had been offered.

Reflexively Emily turned toward Chip for help, because the old Chip would have found a diplomatic way to have the girls excused as soon as John returned with their drinks. But the moment she saw him with that odd new posture of his-his left arm dangling down at his side, his right arm bent across his stomach, and his right hand cradling his left elbow-she knew there would be no cavalry approaching from that direction. He was still gazing at that bizarre chandelier. And so she grinned at her children and did nothing as Sage pressed her palm behind Garnet's back and Clary did the same with Hallie, and the two older women guided the girls into the living room. Emily followed them, feeling a little obsequious and a little put upon. For a second she was afraid she was going to have to escort Chip into the room, but abruptly he pulled himself together and followed her.

"No one asked you two what you would like!" Peyton said to her. "That's John for you-always the grandfather. Oblivious to adults when there are children present whom he can spoil. Would either of you like some wine? I brought a couple of very nice Malbecs from Sonoma."

"That would be lovely, thank you," she murmured.

"Chip?"

He waved his hand as if brus.h.i.+ng a fly from his face. "Oh, that's fine."

Peyton nodded approvingly, clearly pleased to have a task, and went to the kitchen, where John was concocting the s.h.i.+rley Temples.

"Now," Clary was saying, sitting both Hallie and Garnet down on a round velvet pouf the color of a raspberry in August. "Tell me how you're enjoying New Hamps.h.i.+re." She and Sage sat on the floor before the children, as if the girls were storytellers or-and when the word came to Emily, she thought it, too, was an unhealthy connection-royalty. Clary was sitting with her legs straight before her while Sage had curled hers underneath her. Emily was impressed with the woman's elasticity. She contemplated recommending to her daughters that they offer their hostess and her friend the pouf, but there were plenty of other places where these ladies could sit. They had chosen to sit on the floor before her daughters.

Hallie and Garnet glanced briefly at each other, deciding who should answer, and then Hallie rocked forward a bit and replied simply, "I like the greenhouse."

"Me, too," said Garnet.

"I am not at all surprised," Sage said.

"Why?" Emily asked. She realized the moment the word had escaped her lips that it sounded like she was cross-examining the woman. But Sage didn't seem to be disturbed by the tone.

"What's not to love in a greenhouse?" she answered. "Think of the beauty and the magic inside and the fact the world is always new in a greenhouse. It can always be spring. You can have flowers every day."

Emily noticed Hallie looking at her and nodding. She was reminding her of their conversation in the car ride home from dance that morning: Bethel had more greenhouses than the neighboring communities.

"Well, I'm not sure that's why the girls love the greenhouse. We've discussed what we will and won't do with the building, and Hallie and Garnet are pretty clear about this: It will be their playhouse, not my greenhouse," Emily said. "Besides, I think this village must have enough greenhouses already devoted to tomatoes and phlox and whatever."

"Tomatoes and phlox," Sage said slowly, pondering Emily's response. She didn't seem especially happy. "We do grow both. At least some of us. But we also grow a fair amount of ... whatever."

"Really, why are there so many greenhouses in Bethel?" Emily asked. "There must be a reason."

"There might be more than in some towns, but there's no mystery to it," Clary answered, jumping in. "There used to be a very active garden club in the village-women from Bethel won embarra.s.sing numbers of blue ribbons at the county fairs for flowers and herbs and vegetables-and Sage's father-in-law happened to own a construction company that specialized in them."

"In greenhouses."

"And solariums. And sunrooms. And he gave us all the 'friends and family discount.' "

"But whatever it is that we grow," Sage added, still smarting from Emily's offhand dismissal of what they cultivated in their greenhouses, "more times than not it tends to be more interesting than mere tomatoes and phlox. Some of us bring in cuttings and seedlings from all over the world. I have all sorts of things thriving in my greenhouse right now that most Americans have never even heard of-would never even have dreamed of! And Anise? Her work is even more extraordinary. Anise is brilliant: You simply can't imagine. The things either of us could tell you about the power of herbs and tinctures and blood and-"

"Yes, Sage," Clary said, squeezing her arm and cutting her off. "We all know that you grow some remarkable things. But we don't want to bore the girls!"

"What do you mean by blood?" Emily asked. "I presume you don't put blood in tinctures or potions."

"Oh," Sage said, her voice more measured than a moment ago but still edgy, "I only meant the effect a natural remedy can have on the blood-on a person's health."

"Herbs and tinctures and blood," Chip said, and because he had barely spoken since they arrived, everyone turned to him expectantly. Even the girls. He sat down in an easy chair upholstered with images of honeysuckle vines. "Sometimes I think I could use a good herbalist these days."

Emily could tell there was a subterranean layer of sarcasm in his remark, but only because they had known each other so long. She was confident that only she had even an inkling that he might be mocking the need for an herbalist. Moreover, she also believed that it wasn't precisely that he lacked faith in herbal medicine; rather, it was that he had problems of his own that in his opinion far transcended the powers of cohosh and ginseng.

"Tell us, Hallie: What specifically do you like about the greenhouse?" Clary asked, not exactly ignoring Chip but not responding to his remark, either.

"Well, it's, like, Garnet's and my own special place," the girl answered.

"It is your own special place, isn't it? Places have auras, and I am so glad you appreciate the aura of that greenhouse."

"We haven't spent a lot of time there yet," Garnet added. "It's kind of cold right now."

"Of course it is. But Sage and Anise and I will be happy to help you decide what to grow there. We can bring by seedlings and starters and roots. We can-"

"I was serious," Emily said, careful to smile as she interrupted Clary. "I think the girls want it to be a playhouse. Dolls and games and secrets-that sort of thing."

Sage stared at her, the woman's eyes narrowing just the tiniest bit. "You know that Peyton's father built that greenhouse. You know it was on land that was carefully dowsed."

"I didn't know that. But, still, it seems to be metal framing and big pieces of gla.s.s with a good southern exposure. It's beautifully built, and your father-in-law's company did very good work: I don't know much about greenhouses, but I can tell that for sure. You can be very proud. But, well, it's a greenhouse-not a nuclear power plant."

"No, it's certainly not. But tell me, Emily: Could you design a greenhouse?"

"No, but I could call a company that makes them and order one."

"There was more to it than that," Sage told her, her tongue clicking hard on the last word, and Emily was just about to say she agreed, she understood, she was just being glib. It wasn't that she actually believed she had said something that might merit an apology; rather, she simply wanted to deescalate the conversation. But before she had opened her mouth, John and Peyton returned with the girls' s.h.i.+rley Temples and her and Chip's gla.s.ses of red wine.

"You're going to like this, Chip," Peyton told her husband.

"And you girls are going to love these," said John, leaning over and handing each of the twins a wide tumbler blus.h.i.+ng with grenadine syrup. "It's my secret ingredient."

"And that is?" asked Chip.