“Good old Maryann Interiors.” It was something Dad had called her. It was the name of her company, but it was also her when she was being . . . like this.
Blythe waved a hand to the house. “Just throw some fabric over it.” Mom’s catchphrase. Stained duvet? Throw fabric! Cracked window? Fabric drape. Boxes for bedside tables? Guess what will fix that!
“Too bad fabric can’t cover holes in the floor,” I said.
“And she’s going to have to be Maryann Interiors and Exteriors if she wants to make something of this place.” Blythe tapped the crumbling brick walkway with one foot. I gave her a rueful smile.
We hauled our bags and ourselves to the wrought iron gate. It fought opening, but we yanked, flecks of rust coming off on our palms. It gave. Balancing our bags, we gingerly made our way across a dead, gopher-holed lawn.
Blythe stumbled, and I caught her arm, then kept her upright until we were back on brick. She shot the crispy yellow grass a dirty look from the walkway. “She didn’t warn us about the holes in the lawn.”
I managed a laugh. “When you’re going through hell . . .”
“Keep going,” she finished.
It was a Winston Churchill quote. But really, it was a Dad quote. He’d had a lot of them, but I was afraid this one would stick with me. We’d been standing in his hospital room, my mom pacing after the doctors had told us that Dad’s infection wasn’t responding to antibiotics. As always, he’d tried to lighten the mood. His eyes had been closed as he’d spoken, his voice low and hoarse. “But Churchill was a notorious drunk,” he’d added. “So who knows if he even said it. History is a game of telephone.” I tried to think of something that would lighten the mood in this moment, like my dad had in that moment. But I had nothing.
I let go of Blythe and made my way up the warped steps to the buckling porch. I pulled out the completely normal key and unlocked the door. As I pushed it open, a long-drawn-out creak emanated from the house. It was like a horror film parody. I lifted a brow to Blythe and in a whispery voice said: “After you.”
Blythe shoved her way in, batting dust motes away. “How is this an ‘unbelievable decorating opportunity’?”
“The key word is unbelievable.” But I couldn’t fault my mom for trying to look on the bright side. Our lives were pretty dim at the moment.
“How many people do you think died here?” Blythe whispered, mimicking my horror film voice. “Don’t go low. One of the ghosts will know for sure.”
“Stop it,” I said, and stepped inside behind her. The foyer paint was peeling in long strips, as if the walls were shedding skin. A chandelier tilted precariously over an antique entry table, the mahogany coated with a thick layer of dust. Everything was covered with dust. If there was ever a house in need of Maryann Interiors, this was it. As I squinted into the gloom, a corner of gold fleur-de-lis wallpaper caught the sun and glinted. Gold wallpaper. Classy. This place might have been beautiful. Once.
Blythe scanned the high ceilings and smirked at the admittedly suspicious-looking water stains, edged in a coppery red, like dried blood. “My money’s on ten. With at least one window-sash beheading.”
“Just don’t tell me there’s a poltergeist,” I said.
My sister held her hands up to test the air, as if taking a psychic reading. She nodded. “Two, actually.” She left me standing beneath the skull-crushing chandelier.
I followed her into what could only be called a parlor lined with thick moth-bitten velvet drapes. In the hall I passed, I spied a built-in wooden telephone booth, a tiny private room with a glass door and its own light. An old-fashioned rotary telephone hung on the wall. I tried to pull the door open, but it was stuck. Blythe was ahead of me, so I left it and followed her to the dining room. A door to the side said butler’s pantry, but the handle was locked or stuck, too. Beyond was a barren conservatory, the decorative tile gray and yellow in the afternoon light.
I blinked, thinking of my dad’s office, with its Lucite desk and Eames chairs. “This doesn’t seem like Dad at all. He loved modern. Modern everything.”
Blythe popped back around the corner. “I doubt he was planning to keep it this way.”
My mood lifted when we found a completely renovated kitchen. A new kitchen island looked recently cleaned, as if . . . well, as if someone lived here. I guess they did. We did, kind of. Still. I couldn’t imagine my dad’s coffee cup on this new kitchen island. Or his gardening gloves on that antique entry table. My dad smelled like Old Spice and manila folders. This place smelled like mold.
Outside, the moving truck blared, backing up toward the house to make way for the Momobile.
“Do we dare go upstairs?” Blythe asked me.
“It’s that or sleep in the car.”
Mom had told us what to expect: it would be livable. Now, as we walked through the second floor, I saw what she meant. We walked past four musty bedrooms full of broken furniture before we got to the end of the hall, and our room. I felt queasy as I pushed the door open, but it was the only room that didn’t look like it needed to be ripped to the studs and renovated. The windows were thrown open; clean air wafted in. Our Jenny Lind beds were already set up, and a new chaise in pink velvet was waiting beneath the bank of back windows. There was a view of a dry terraced backyard leading up to the only living thing I’d seen so far. A willow tree.
“How did someone manage to put a regular room into the middle of a decaying mansion?” I leaned out the open window. The air smelled like rose water with an undertone of low-VOC paint.
“Mom must have redecorated. It is her job.” Blythe removed her laptop before she dropped her bag to the ground.
“In a week? From home?”
Blythe looked at me. “Maybe it was . . . that guy. From the hospital.”
I was about to speak his name when my mom walked in, leading with jazz hands.
“You love the chaise, don’t you? It’s custom. You have no idea what it cost to have it done so fast.” I raised an eyebrow. She raised hers back, ruffled the velvet, and smoothed it down.
“We had to move because of money,” I said, “but you got a custom chaise?”
“I wanted something special for you.” She smiled.
I petted it, too. I couldn’t help myself. So far, ruffled-velvet feel was the best part of my day.
“Besides,” Mom said, “we moved because of taxes. That’s different from money.”
Blythe snorted from the corner, where her desk was almost set up, her screens already glowing. “Wi-Fi code?” Blythe asked, pulling out her phone.
“Oh. I don’t know. For particulars you’ll have to check with . . .” My mom flipped a hand. As if he’d been waiting for us all along, Charlie walked in. I looked between them. His smile was a sliver of ice down my back.