Page 24 of Finders Keepers
Because we were definitely trespassing when we went to Sprangbur that night in 2008. (I more so than Quentin, if we’re being technical.) That we got sent home with nothing but a few stern words from the deputy sheriff is thanks purely to luck, privilege, and Quentin’s father being a state prosecutor who was owed a favor by someone high up in the Catoctin City Police Department. My parents were out of town for their anniversary that weekend, trusting me to stay home alone overnight for the first time, and as far as I know they still have no clue I was ever—however briefly—on the wrong side of the law. I plan to keep it that way.
We finally reach the downside of traveling through Riverside Park to reach Fountain’s estate: The last leg of the trip is up a steep stone staircase built into the side of the hill. Think theExorciststeps in DC, but like, narrower, and with a single railing that leaves your hands smelling like iron if you use it. Quentin and I attempted to race up it exactly once—the first time we explored Sprangbur that summer. It ended with me having an asthma attack and him throwing up in Technicolor thanks to the two bowls of Trix he’d had for breakfast. Which is why when he turns to me at the base of the stairs and suggests we see who can get to the top first, all I have to do is glare at him to send him into a fit of laughter. It’s boisterous and unrestrained, and I find it in the catalog filed underWhen we were six and he bet I couldn’t jump over a huge ditch full of mud and it turned out he was right.
He concludes with a fond sigh. “You know, I have not eatenfruit-flavored cereal since that day,” he reminisces. “I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling pretty old and tired lately.Lastone to the top wins.”
And with that he moves ahead of me and leisurely ascends toward Sprangbur.
FORM C—2
Text of Interview (Unedited)
II
My niece Isolde was quite young when my brother and his wife died. They were aboard the Titanic, you see, on their way back from visiting my sister-in-law’s family in England—Rebecca was the daughter of an earl or some such. I was never able to discover exactly what happened, how Issy became separated from her parents. Whatever chaos unfolded, I am glad of it because it meant that she at least survived.
Rebecca’s family quite reasonably didn’t want to put the babe through another trans-Atlantic crossing after what happened, so she came to live with me as I was the only stateside relative with the means to care for her. I would be lying if I said it was an easy or particularly pleasant time for any of us. I was a bachelor and business owner; I didn’t know the first thing about raising a child. I hired nannies, of course, but Issy always managed to escape the nursery and find her way into whatever room I was in. She was like a little homing pigeon who’d decided I was to be her roost. She’d appear beside me at all hours of theday and night and simply cry and cry, flashing her big doe eyes my way and reaching up as if trying to grasp the ceiling.
Then one day Lou saw this, and she said to me, “I think she wants you to pick her up and sit her on your lap.”
“But why?” I asked. “Issy, dearest, there’s a perfectly good empty chair over there.”
I see that look on your face, Mr. Aaron. You’re thinking I was impossibly dim. Well, yes, and imagine how I felt! I thought myself to be a fellow of above-average intelligence.The New York Timescalled me one of the greatest business minds of the new century! Then tiny Isolde Fountain arrived at Sprangbur and I discovered that I knew very little at all. About anything that mattered, at least.
But I did learn. We learned together.
11
Quentin and Iboth pause on the top step. He looks at me and raises one eyebrow. “What do you think, Hunnicutt? Should we go at the same time and call it a draw?”
It’s kind of him to offer. A very “clean slate” sort of thing to do, I guess. Then again, not having these stupid competitions in the first place is an evencleanerslate. I ignore him and take the final step, onto the grounds of Sprangbur.
We’ve arrived at what is technically the rear of the property, near the small eighteenth-century graveyard that Quentin labeled “the Bone Zone” on our map. Fountain left it mostly as it was when he purchased the land. Whether that was out of respect or some superstition, I don’t know. I used to find it spooky, but the historian in me lingers for a moment outside the little iron-fenced corner, attempting to read names on the eroded tombstones. I make a mental note to look up two of the ones I can glean to see if there’s any interesting research to be done there, then head for the gardens.
It’s an interesting contrast. Now, in the early summer,everything on this part of the property is so vibrant and alive. The extensive formal plantings are like a great undulating ocean of green, Sprangbur Castle rising up behind it like a curious sea monster made of stone and wooden shingles with mismatched turrets for arms. I turn to Quentin but find him yards behind me, his attention focused on the small, boxy stone structure off to the right.
Julius Fountain considered architectural design one of his hobbies. Unlike most amateurs, though, he actually had the resources to build the bizarre things he dreamed up. I do have to hand it to him—most of his creations are still standing, as far as I’m aware, so at least they’re structurally sound if not always aesthetically pleasing. There’s the mushroom folly in the gardens that lost the red and white paint on its cap long ago, so it’s now more like a phallic gazebo, and a gigantic brick arch flanked by bronze statues of haunted-looking soldiers he constructed in honor of the (relatively few, as far as I’m aware) Luxembourgian Americans who fought for the Union in the Civil War. Three freestanding Greek Doric columns, identical in height and spaced five feet apart. A tiny stucco pagoda. And the thing that’s captured Quentin’s attention: the tomb Fountain designed to be his final resting place.
It’s where I was supposed to meet Quentin that final night but didn’t.
I slowly make my way to where he stands lost in thought. “Quentin…”
“Did you ever come back here?” he asks, his voice distant. “After everything?”
It’s tempting to lie and say that I did. That I used to come here to fool around with my crushes, like the goth kids were rumored to do. But the truth is that the wound of Quentin’sabandonment was easily reopened if I wasn’t careful; I spent most of the two years before college staying away from anything that might be even a little sharp. Instead I organized my life in such a way that I was always too busy with SAT prep and debate team practices and extra credit essays to even tempt myself. “No,” I say. “Never.”
He nods once, twice. It’s almost like he appreciates that I never reclaimed this place as my own, as somewhere that meant anything to me beyond what it meant to both of us. I consider saying something that might hurt him, something about how I was too busy living my life and didn’t have time for childish games after he stopped goading me into them. That isn’t very clean slate of me, though. Nor do I think it would fool him. So I resecure the hurt that’s threatening to come loose from its chains and instead go with “Why do you ask?”
He seems to come to, refocused on me now. “I figured we shouldn’t waste time rechecking the places we already checked. I wanted to see if there was anywhere else you’d already covered.”
“No,” I say. “I only checked…”
“Where you went instead,” he finishes for me. But there’s no heat in his words, not even the subtle, repressed kind, so I order the defensiveness rising up in me to take a hike.
“And I assume you checked the cenotaph that night?” I ask.
“The what?”
I gesture in the direction of the little cave-like building.
