Better Homes and Hauntings

18 A House Undivided

NINA PLACED A bouquet of lilies and rosemary at the feet of the memorial statue of Catherine Whitney, standing tall, smiling with her hands open and slightly outstretched. A perfect circle of low-slung white begonias surrounded a wide round bed of forget-me-nots. Wide stone benches flanked the little blue flowers. They’d moved the solarium statue of the children outdoors, so that the figure of Catherine seemed to be watching over them as they played.

The artist Deacon had commissioned to carve the stone figure had worked double overtime to finish it. The team gathered around the statue, watching as Deacon and Jake attached a plaque to the base: “In Loving Memory of Catherine Whitney, Cherished Wife of Gerald, Mother of Josephine and Gerald, Jr., Taken from Us Too Soon.”

Nina smiled at Deacon as he pushed up from the ground and slid his arm around her waist. “Having spent some time in Catherine’s head, I’m sure she would have loved this,” she told him.

“Is it strange that we don’t have a statue for Gerald?” Dotty asked.

Jake said, “I think he would be more pleased that Catherine is finally being seen as a loving wife and their marriage is known for the loving union it was.”

They stood staring at the newly installed plaque. All in all, they had managed to escape the confrontation with Rick relatively unscathed. Nina had a mild concussion and a dislocated shoulder. Jake had some considerable burns on his hands from fighting the fire in the servants’ quarters. And while Anthony had insisted he was fine, Cindy had checked his pulse and found that his poor damaged heart was racing. Deacon had demanded that all of them be checked out at a hospital and had pulled several I donated a bunch of money strings to have them assigned to a private suite.

While the staff quarters had suffered considerable damage, the main house remained untouched. The jewelry, save for the wedding set, which had been put aside for Dotty, had been placed in Deacon’s safety-deposit box.

Dotty hung out in the hospital room all day, reading over Catherine’s last diary and getting some insight into the Whitneys’ final days together. For one thing, there was no second lover in the garden on the night of their first disastrous party. Gerald had asked Catherine about her recent distant behavior. She had insisted that they avoid discussing it until after the party. Gerald had told her he didn’t give a damn about the party if it kept them in this state of limbo for one more moment. A frazzled Catherine had snapped at him for his lack of interest, and the screaming match had grown from there. The last diary entry showed a resolute, saddened Catherine, heading into what would be her final confrontation with Jack.

I have to explain to Gerald. I have to make him understand that Jack must be removed from us immediately and forever. There is no escaping Jack in this house. He knows it too well. There are too many nooks and hiding places for him to spy from. I won’t get a moment’s peace. I am going up to the dock, to wait for Gerald and explain. Everything. My part in it. My lies. Everything. I have been a fool. I let myself be fooled, if only for a moment, and let Jack exploit the weaknesses in my character.

I will never again allow my judgment to be clouded. I will do anything to atone. I will make up for my folly. I will prove to my husband that I can be the wife he deserves. I only pray that his love for me has not changed. Wish me luck, diary.

With Deacon hovering over Nina’s hospital bed, worrying himself into a froth over whether she was comfortable, sleepy, itchy, or otherwise, Dotty had looked up from the diary and said, “So . . . I don’t mean to say I told you so.”

Deacon had snorted, fluffing Nina’s pillow as she batted his hands away. “Of course, you do.”

“At least we know for sure,” Dotty had said, squeezing Deacon’s free hand. “We know what happened to her now. We know that we came from a couple who loved each other deeply, that their lives together would have turned out very differently if Jack hadn’t killed Catherine. They would have been a happy old married couple in a photo album. Of course, Gerald’s fortunes might have suffered anyway, and your parents might still have turned out to be tools. But at least we’d have happier ancestors.”

“Is that better?” he’d asked.

“It makes me feel better.”

“And when Dotty finishes her book—which is awesome, by the way; I’ve read the rough draft—people will know who was really responsible for Catherine’s death and why. Is it wrong that I want to have Rick charged with Catherine’s murder, too?” Cindy had asked, pouring Nina a glass of water.

“No, it’s natural to want someone to pay,” Dotty had told her. “And Rick has been charged with a stunning array of felonies. He’ll pay for the trouble he caused Nina, finally, and that restores the whopping karmic imbalance tilting her way.”

“I don’t know,” Nina had hedged. “Part of me feels sorry for him. He wasn’t in control of himself when he tried to physically hurt me.”

Deacon had pushed her hair back from her face. “When you slapped me out of my strangle mood, didn’t you tell me that the choice to resist was what was important?”

“Strangle mood?” Jake had asked. Dotty had shrugged.

“Yes, but we’re going to have a problem if you remember every conversation we have in detail,” Nina had muttered.

“Rick had a choice,” Deacon had said. “Give in to Jack Donovan’s influence or be a decent human being. He gave in.”

Nina had nudged Deacon with her free arm. “You didn’t.”

“I love you too much to strangle you.”

“Aw, that’s so sweet.”

NOW DEACON SLUNG his arm around Dotty’s shoulders as the early-autumn sun beat down on their shoulders. Jake and Nina discussed the new “nonsubtext, non-Greek” statuary they were planning. Cindy was reorganizing Anthony’s borrowed tools, because she couldn’t help herself.

“I’m going to miss you, you know,” Deacon whispered into Dotty’s hair. “I’ve gotten used to seeing you every day. I know I give you a hard time sometimes, but, Dotty, I want you to know you can come here anytime you want. I promise. You’ll always have a place here . . . on the weekends . . . when I’m out of town . . . or maybe out of the hemisphere.”

Dotty dug her knuckles into Deacon’s side, making him yelp.

“OK, OK, I give,” he said. “But since we’re talking about spending time here together, what would you think of us unveiling the house on Labor Day? I’d thought about inviting my competitors and the old Newport families for a big open house as sort of a neener-neener. But maybe we should invite my employees and their families instead. We can have one of those old-fashioned lawn parties Catherine had envisioned—plenty of good food, games for the children, and no one being murdered on the roof.”

“That sounds great. I’ll help plan.”

When Deacon snorted, Nina elbowed him in the gut. “What he means to say is, ‘Thank you, Dotty, that would be nice.’ ”

“And we’ll finally be able to tell people the truth about Catherine and Gerald, in the book we have planned, which should go a long way to settling the spirits and clearing up the curse,” Dotty said.

“If the curse ever really existed,” Cindy teased.

“Skeptical Cindy is skeptical.” Dotty sighed, rolling her eyes.

“And I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Jake said, pulling Cindy into his lap and kissing her neck.

“Is there a chair shortage?” Deacon asked dryly as he took a seat beside Nina and threaded his fingers through hers.

“Yes, it’s tragic, really, that a billionaire wouldn’t anticipate this sort of seating crisis,” Jake said.

“Hey!” Dotty exclaimed. “We’ve talked about that. No PDA. It’s like watching someone make out with your sister.”

“You’re going to have to live with it,” Cindy said. “Because it will be a regular occurrence at family gatherings, holidays, and birthdays.”

“Family gatherings?” Deacon said, his voice cracking with discomfort.

“Sure, you think the five of us will be able to spend Thanksgiving with anyone else?” Dotty said. “Who else will want to sit around and talk about that time Jake almost climbed into bed with a waterlogged ghost?”

“I knew I shouldn’t have told you about that. That has to be the memory we all relive over turkey and stuffing?” Jake asked.

“Yes,” the group chorused.

Nina knew this wasn’t a pie-crust promise, made in the moment by friends bonded by an extreme experience. They would be close for the rest of their lives. There would be holidays and parties, weddings and children, all together, all looking out for one another. Because who else would understand them?

“Well, since we’re talking about scheduling future events.” Deacon cleared his throat and knelt in front of her with an elegant silver box. Nina eyed the box—which was too large to hold jewelry—with suspicion. Deacon popped it open to reveal what appeared to be the latest-model cell phone, encrusted in tiny peridots, her birthstone.

Deacon held the phone aloft, ignoring Cindy’s hushed “What the hell?”

“I have programmed all of your contacts,” he said. “The phone is virtually indestructible, but if you ever break it, I will be the one to take it to the store to get it replaced.” Nina lifted an eyebrow. “Of course, I would send Vi out to do it, but you wouldn’t have to deal with it. You will never have to do your own tech support. I will take out the garbage, fix broken appliances, go to the post office; basically, any errand you don’t want to do, I will do. Or I will pay someone I trust to do it for you.”

“Really?”

“I can’t bring you flowers,” he said, gesturing to the garden. “You seem to be afraid of expensive jewelry. So making your life a little easier is going to be how I show you I love you, all day, every day, for the rest of our lives.”

“You’re proposing to me with a cell phone?” she said, her eyebrows raised.

“If you think about it, they’re both long-term contracts.”

“Well, how could a girl resist an offer like that?” she asked, taking the phone out of the box. She turned it on and sighed. “You put a Master Gardener app on here.”

“The ‘all day, every day’ speech didn’t get her, but a gardening app did?” Jake whispered as Nina threw her arms around Deacon’s neck and kissed him, whispering “Yes, yes” against his lips.

“Everybody has their thing,” Cindy told him.

Deacon turned to them. “If the phone thing didn’t work, I had a mint-condition Qui-Gon Jinn action figure in my office.”

Nina gasped. “You got me a tiny posable Liam Neeson? You really do love me.”

Cindy shook her head, glancing at Dotty. “Sweetie, I never thought I’d say this, but out of everybody here, you may be the normal one.”

Jake cleared his throat. “With all this talk of long-term commitments, do you think you might want to . . . get a phone contract together . . . someday . . . eventually?”

“Only if you plan on calling me long-distance. If and when you propose, there had better be roses and a string quartet and a clever hiding place for the very tasteful yet expensive ring. And doves.”

“Doves?”

“I don’t particularly like them, but I want them. So when I say yes, they can be released in a crescendo of romantic fluttering.”

Jake’s lips twitched at her assurance that she would say yes, but he tamped down his smile quickly. “Seems like an awful lot of trouble for a simple question.”

“Well, you did forget that you dated me. A little extra trouble doesn’t seem so unreasonable.”

Jake slid his hand over his face. “Never going to live that down, am I?”

Cindy shook her head and kissed the tip of his nose. “Nope. But for right now, I am willing to date you anyway.”

Nina helped Deacon up from his kneeling position, tucked the phone into her back pocket, and threw her arms around him. Dotty practically tackled them from behind, which turned into a group hug when Cindy joined in, squealing in their excitement over the engagement. Deacon shot Jake a pitiful look over the ladies’ heads. “Little help?”

“I don’t do group hugs,” Jake said, wrinkling his nose.

Cindy’s golden head popped up from the huddle. “Yes, you do!”

Rolling his eyes at the cloudless blue sky, Jake huffed, “Fine.” He wrapped his arms around Cindy and Dotty. “Yep, this is totally comfortable.”

“Have you set a date yet?” Dotty asked.

Deacon frowned down at her. “I asked her to marry me ten seconds ago.”

“June 19,” Nina said confidently.

“Can we let go now?” Jake asked, pulling Cindy out of the people knot.

Peeling Dotty off of them, Deacon asked, “Why June 19?”

Nina shrugged. “It was Gerald and Catherine’s wedding anniversary. I can’t think of a more appropriate day for us to get married.”

“You want to have the wedding here?” he asked, his face splitting into a wide grin.

Nina made a sweeping gesture toward a set of flower beds she’d just turned. “Right in the middle of the memorial garden I’m planting. I think it would be nice to look out of our window every morning and see where we got married.”

“So you’re ready to live here, full-time?”

“Well, I think we’ll need to spend some time on the mainland for business purposes,” Nina said. “But yes, I think we’ll be happy here, and I think that would make Catherine and Gerald very happy.”

“I think the point is to make the two of us happy.”

Nina giggled as he pulled her into his arms and kissed her forehead. “I thought that was a foregone conclusion.”

With the laughter of friends echoing from the grounds to the eaves of the enormous rooftop, the Crane’s Nest remained peaceful for the night.