Page 8 of The Manor of Dreams

Lucille stood up and stretched, facing the bookshelves in front of her. She’d spent weekend afternoons reading across from Dad in the armchairs, the glow of the green lamp between them, books stacked high on the table. They’d talk about the news and internationalinstitutions and moral fallacies, until Ma came in and told them it was dinnertime. President Lucy, Dad used to call her, the affectionate moniker he bestowed upon her when she argued at the dinner table. President Lucy. What an embarrassment. In the end, she couldn’t even win her own congressional district.

The book that stuck out was a collection of poems by Yeats. What had made the girl choose this book? Lucille pulled it out and cracked open the book.

Something fell from inside the brittle pages. A dried rosebud, and then a line, in faint penciled underline.

When all the wild Summer was in her gaze.

Lucille slammed the book shut and shoved it back on the shelf. She sank into a chair. She held up the rosebud and it crumbled in her hands. A slow, cold awareness washed over her, as if she were inching herself into an ice bath, until she plunged in all at once. Her breath quickened. She was out of her body, watching herself panic. She could do nothing but sink into it and wait.

Eventually—after a few minutes? An hour?—her heartbeat slowed. Lucille pushed herself to stand, feeling dizzy. She took a moment to steady herself on the desk. She had to leave this library for now.

Eventually she ended up at the dining table, watching the dining room chandelier gleam dully above her. The expanse of mahogany stretched out before her. An hour ago she’d faced off against Elaine. In many ways it had been like it used to be. The two of them sitting across from each other over dinner. Locked in ongoing debates. Both sides refusing to let up. But now this wasn’t about lofty subjects like socialist collectivism or nuclear disarmament; this was about her mother’s death.

I do everything for you. I am setting you up to be great. Remember that.Ma told them this on the nights she came home late from days on set and film premieres, her permed hair loose around her shoulders, her sweet, velvety Guerlain perfume settling around them as she shrugged off her fur coat and slid out of her slingback kitten heels. After filming on location, she would come back to tell them how much she had missed them. How much she loved them; how she couldn’t wait to seewhat they would do to make her proud. What happened? Had her love dried up? Had they disappointed her so deeply that she wanted to bar them from their childhood home?

Did you even care for her in her last years?Elaine’s spiteful words tormented her now.Or did you just abandon her in this house and leave her to die?

Elaine didn’t know that Lucille had tried to help. For years and years. Lucille was the eldest daughter who tried to pull what was left of their family together. Every year she invited Ma to holidays; to recitals; to family vacations. Ma never showed up. Not even for Madeline, her granddaughter, who used to ask about her all the time. Each time Lucille called, Ma would say she was fine out here by herself. Whenever they visited the house, Ma hurried them out. When Lucille hired her a nurse, Ma fired her. Ma exiled herself here, in this house that they had all grown up in, and that they were now severed from.

Reid hadn’t even been able to look her in the eye this morning when he read the terms of the will. He knew something was wrong, too. Lucille stood and her chair scraped behind her, rattling across the floor. She picked up the business card that Reid had left behind on the table. His name was printed in spare font. There was an office number and a mobile.

Her fingers trembled slightly as she started a text message.

This is Lucille. I need some clarification on the will. Can we talk?

Her fingers hovered over the send button. It was too easy to reach out to him like this. She remembered when she used to stare at the phone in the library and try to guess the precise moment Reid would call. Was this a good idea? She was still smarting from her conversation with Daniel. But she’d reached out to her ex-husband out of vulnerability. This was a necessity. She needed more details from Reid. He was one of the last people her mother had communicated with.

Lucille sent the text and set her phone face down on the table. She looked around the room. Certain parts had kept well. The tablewas still smooth. The teal-blue bar cart in the corner was covered by a thick layer of dust but in pristine condition, untouched. She watched the muted light shift across the floor. She remembered her ten-year-old self, with a full set of cutlery and dishes before her, watching the chandelier glimmer while her parents talked to their guests at the other end. She observed the way important people talked, with volume and vigor. At fourteen she had read Woodrow Wilson’s biography at this table. At seventeen, in the summer of 1990, she had poured a drink from that bar cart and met eyes with a cute boy. He had been talking to someone, so she headed to the back of the house. Whitney Houston and the Talking Heads streamed through the living room and the windows were flung open, the curtains billowing out like sails. Lucille had stepped out onto the terrace, looking out at the roses and lavender and bougainvillea that draped the terrace and the fountain that poured lightly as a fresh spring. And then the same boy from the dining room had stepped out onto the terrace, too. That was the first time she spoke to Reid Lyman.

He’d wanted to become a writer. He was headed to Princeton to study English and carried a quiet intensity about him; she told him how her dad called her President Lucy and he didn’t scoff. They had talked for hours that afternoon.Tell me when you win that Pulitzer, she’d said. He grinned.You can congratulate me from the Oval Office, he’d responded. When he spoke to her, she got the feeling that they were fastening into orbit around each other, like fusing stars. It hurt, how clearly she remembered that moment. She thought that night would earmark the beginning of the rest of her life.

Her phone buzzed.

Of course

Come to my office

I have availability tomorrow morning

She exhaled and typed.

See you then.

RENNIEknew how to be quiet.

That night she padded across the second-floor hallway. Her bare footsteps skimmed over the old floorboards. She passed by the rooms where her older sister and niece slept and pried open the door to her mother’s bedroom. The air was colder. The large bed stood in the center of the sparse, moonlit room. There was a nightstand, a dresser in the far corner, and a vanity. She knew Lucille would come soon to pack the clothes and possessions away for storage and to argue over. Rennie had to claim things while she still could.

She walked across the room and sat in front of the vanity. She wasn’t as nimble as she used to be. She went to look at herself in the vanity mirror, but realized suddenly that it wasn’t there anymore. She’d looked into that mirror so many times as a teenager. She used to come in and open the little drawer with a tiny golden key she’d slip from Ma’s key ring. She’d try on her mother’s jewelry for fun. Later, she’d learned how to pick the loose lock so she didn’t even need the key.

Now it was muscle memory. She slipped a bobby pin from her bun, pulled it open, and jammed the metal tip against the rusty pins. The drawer stuck for a bit, but with a bit of wiggling, slid open. Pearl necklaces gleamed in the low light. There were fan-shaped drop earrings and bulky chain bracelets. A herringbone necklace; a solid golden cuff; a dragonfly pin with a smattering of jade—oh, wasn’t it all so beautiful?

Rennie’s eyes were drawn to something new. A ring that glimmered in the corner.

Dad’s signet ring.

Rennie picked it up, feeling the solid weight of pure gold curled in her palm. She turned it over, looking at the leaves that crawled up the sides, the initials engraved on the surface worn away over time. Dad had worn it on his pinky. Rennie had a vivid memory of falling asleep between her parents on the couch as a kid, her father’s arm tucked around her, the television humming in the background, the ring winking in and out of her vision like a star.

She slipped it onto her index finger and stood. Before she couldlose her courage, she swiped the emerald drop earrings, a solitaire bracelet, and the herringbone necklace and slipped them in her pocket. She waited another moment, and then took the jade dragonfly pin and the golden cuff bracelet, too. Who would stop her now? Lucille would never know; she never poked around here. Rennie could sell them all if she had to. Each item would be worth a couple hundred apiece. She felt bad, but she knew that her sister would just lock it all up in airless safes, where it would never see the light of day. And that would be a pure pity. Better it went to Rennie.

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