***
“It’s so pretty,” she keeps saying. The rolling hills and stone-wall-lined patchwork fields dredge up a love-hate thing in me. I mean, they’re my home, and they always make me think about my late mother. Her sweet perfume smell. The hugs. Her gentle nature. It all feels homey and cozy for a moment.
But then images I try to forget flash through my mind in nightmarish sequence. Father bullying her into submission. Father’s cutting insults making her face fall into misery. Powerlessness. He didn’t ever hit her. That would have been too base, too obvious. Rather, he used his words, which packed a punch more deadly than a balled fist ever could.
When I was eight, I picked a bedroom as far away from theirs as possible so I wouldn’t have to hear another of his tirades. But then I felt guilty on Mother’s behalf, as well as lonely, and I moved back onto their floor. The arguments would keep me up all night. Father’s booming voice echoed around the wood-paneled rooms until the whole house seemed to hold his poisonous words in the walls.
The taxi driver turns into the village our manor overlooks. Back in the day, my ancestors owned the whole village and employed mostly everyone in it. Now, it’s a thriving little place with kooky coffee shops, a murder-mystery bookstore, and a somewhat dusty and disorganized antiques place that pulls people in from all over the country. The manor’s the saddest part about the town, now. We have five staff, but the place is so huge it’s always covered with a sheen of dust. Cobwebs cluster in its thousand corners. My father had had thirty staff still there, suffering under his reign of tyranny. I let nearly all of them go.
“We’re nearly here.” I give Isabella a smile. She smiles back with a real excitement, and I feel a bit locked out. Looking in on the beauty and grandeur and status with new eyes, she won’t see what I see. “Just turn in there,” I say to the driver.
The enormous entrance gates are open, as they always are, and the driver starts to crunch over the gravel of the long, winding drive. Isabella’s jaw drops, watching the land that stretches out as far as the eye can see. “Is this… all yours?”
“Yeah,” I say, without enthusiasm.
She sits back in her seat, stunned. “Wow. Just wow.”
Then we turn the corner. Her jaw drops again in surprise. People say that as a means of expression, but her jaw literally drops.
I try to look at the mansion through her perspective. A grand old English country house through the eyes of a Seattleite. It is kind of impressive, I guess, in a foreboding, imposing kind of way. Rows upon rows of windows line up in the gray, cut-stone construction. There’s a huge turret on the east wing where Father used to have his second office, the one where he did all his reading. But it wasn’t the library, mind. That’s on the ground floor of the west wing. The gardens out front were perfectly manicured when Father died. They’re straggling a bit now.
“Gray, this is where you grew up?” She can’t believe it.
I shrug. “Yeah.”
“How many rooms are there? How many bedrooms?”
I know because Father used to trot the figures out when we went abroad. The first thing he did in any conversation was to leave rich foreigners in no doubt about how much richer the Fairfaxes were than they. And more titled, obviously. “Forty-three bedrooms. Seventy rooms in total.”
“My god.”
I played alone in most of them as a child. Sometimes with Eddie. Those were the best days. As soon as Father died, I brought in a bunch of my cousins on my mother’s side. They pretty much took over the fourth floor, which is cool with me. Lilly’s gotten friendly with them and stays over sometimes. As long as she comes nowhere near me, I don’t care. I don’t feel a sense of ownership over the place.
Oh, bloody hell. There she is. “For fuck’s sake.” Lilly hurries out of the grand entrance and rushes down the stairway, elation all over her face. She’s in short shorts and a polo neck sweater. Her brown hair’s sculpted into perfect, shiny waves, as always. It takes her hours to do them.
“Who’s that?” Isabella asks.
“That gold-digging bitch.”
“Your ex? Why’s she here?”
“Fuck knows.”
Isabella leans back and watches. “She doesn’t look like a bitch. She looks really nice. Are you sure your side of the story is right?”
“Yes.”
The taxi driver pulls to a halt below the huge main stairway. I pay with a nice tip, telling him I’ll take care of the bags. Before I can get to the trunk, Lilly’s launched herself on me.
“Gray! Gray! Gray! I’ve missed you so much!”
I pry her off. I have to be a little rough. She clings like a leech. “Go make a nuisance of yourself somewhere else, Lillia.”
“Ooh, who’s this?” Lilly marvels as Isabella gets out the car. “Oh, my god, you’re so pretty. I love your hair. I always wanted curls. Mummy told me eating the crusts of my bread would make me get them, but I never did.”
I expect Isabella to be Ice Queen and push her away, but she smiles back a little shyly, like she’s swallowing Lilly’s bullshit. “But your hair’s lovely.”
“Oh, this old thing?” Lilly pulls her hair out and pulls a goofy face. “Wait till I get in the rain. It’s just a frizzy mass of… well, frizz!” Lilly links her arm in Isabella’s and begins to lead her up the steps. “Now, have you ever seen an English country house before? I can give you a tour.”
“I can’t say I have,” Isabella says.
“Lillia,” I say sharply.
She turns with a false innocence in her face. “Yes, Gray, honey?”
“It’s time for you to leave now.”
Her face falls. Whatever. Just one of her manipulation tricks. She can look at me all puppy-eyed. It won’t work for a second.
But Isabella looks at her, concerned. “Gray, it’s not a problem. I’d like a tour, really. I need to stretch my legs after that long drive.”
I want to bark at Lillia. But Isabella’s eyes have something in them I can’t read exactly. Something deep, and maybe a little sad? Whatever it is, I know she genuinely wants Lilly to stay. She isn’t just being polite. “All right. Lilly, you can stay and give Isabella the tour. But after that, you’re out. You understand?”
“You’re so rude, Gray,” she says.
“Do you understand?”
She pouts. “Yes.”
“Good.”
I carry the cases up the stairs after them and wonder if this cold place might be bearable with Isabella’s warmth. Maybe. Just maybe.