Five
Bobby was blitzing through television channels, trying to find something to suit his tastes when Jane came back down. Shelley was in the kitchen, pacing. "Bobby, I'm going to run an errand," Jane called. "When I get back, I'll make up your room in the basement. I'll only be gone a little while.”
He kept pushing the buttons on the remote control until he finally found MTV. Then he turned up the volume. If he'd been one of her children and ignored her, Jane would have snapped the set off, but he wasn't hers—thank God!
Shelley was out the door and had started the van before Jane could even climb in. They rode in silence, the magnitude of Jane's plight having overwhelmed them both. Once Jane whimpered a little, and Shelley patted her hand.
Shelley pulled into the curved, hedge-bordered drive of Fiona Howard's house. The construc‑ tion of this home in Jane and Shelley's neighborhood had caused something of a stir a few years earlier. A conflagration (started by a grease fire caused by a notoriously bad cook and taken as a sort of divine culinary retribution) had seriously damaged two adjoining homes as well. The central house, as well as the two neighboring ones, were purchased by a couple named Fiona and Albert Howard who, to everyone's surprise, made no attempt to repair the damaged homes to the side. Instead, they leveled both of them, as well as the middle one, and built a new house on the triple lot.
This was considered an extravagant thing to do, but surprise had turned to disappointment and a certain measure of animosity when, before construction was even completed, a visually impenetrable wall of hedges went in around the entire site. Worse, the owners were seldom around during the construction process, so there was almost no opportunity to get to know them or their floor plan. This thwarting of natural nosiness was considered very unfriendly.
The mystery of the Howards' apparent secretiveness was solved, however, a scant week before they moved in. The realtor let drop an historical reference that was picked up and picked apart. The elusive Mrs. Howard, it turned out, was the former wife of Richie Divine, the late rock star whose untimely death had shaken the country--or at least the female half of it—as badly as Elvis Presley's.
Know to keep a public profile so low as to be nearly invisible, Fiona Howard was an extremely unwilling celebrity, almost a legend in a slightly pejorative sense. This made the hedge practically acceptable. After a while neighbors started to take a certain pride in it. "Oh, that hedge?" they would say to visitors who were taken blocks out of their way to "happen" to drive past. "Why, that's the Howard estate—Richie Divine's widow, you know.”
It was Jane's first time behind the hedge.
“Jane, help me with these boxes," Shelley said, opening the side door of the minivan.
Jane got out and braced herself to lift a particularly large carton. She nearly threw it over her shoulder when she gave a mighty heave. "Dear Lord, is this empty?"
“No, it's those embroidered Santa pillows the Parslow sisters made."
“Oh dear—" Jane had seen the prototype pillow last summer and had been appalled. The rosy-cheeked Santa had looked like a lecherous old alcoholic. The stitching that was meant to give him a rosy nose looked like broken veins, and to make it worse, he was leering horribly.
As they reached the front door, it opened, and Fiona Howard came out to meet them. "Shelley, Jane," Fiona said warmly in a lovely upper-class English accent that made Jane feel she'd stepped into the middle of a Masterpiece Theater production. "I didn't hear you drive up. Here, let me help with those. I can call Albert to help us if you have anything heavy."
“No, we can manage. Just point me in the right direction," Jane said over the top of the Santa pillow carton.
“Just down the hall, then. I'll have the maid help me unpack them later."
“We'll come back and do that," Shelley said, staggering under the weight of a box of iced gingerbread men. "You're not supposed to go to any trouble, since you're letting us use your house for the sale."
“I don't mind in the least. But can't you stay?”
Jane had set her carton down and come back. "Not this morning. I have an old neighbor coming to town to stay a few days." Even saying it made her shudder. "I left her at home un‑ packing. If it's okay, we'll come back tomorrow and help you sort things out."
“Can't you even have a cup of tea?" Fiona asked.
“That nice jasmine kind?" Jane asked. "If you like.”
Jane shot a questioning look at Shelley, who glanced at her watch and said, "Only for five minutes. I have to be at school pretty soon and to help the nurse weigh the third graders. Some sort of health unit.”
Fiona led them through the house, and Jane dawdled as much as she could, looking around. She knew Fiona only slightly from church, and she'd never been within the hedged walls, much less inside the house before. She'd expected it to be palatial. Actually, it was quite ordinary, but in a very expensive, tasteful way. The only Englishness about it was the formal living room, which was done with a busy patterned carpet that was probably eighty dollars a yard minimum, imported. The room was furnished in elegant, dark furniture that was certainly antique. The rest of the rooms they passed were just what any well-to-do American family might have. Jane was sorry there wasn't linen-foldpaneling and ancestral portraits hung from picture molding.
Fiona led them to a small, sunny breakfast room that overlooked the backyard and spacious garden, dormant now but obviously well tended. Fiona and Shelley fell into a discussion of the proper packaging and pricing of some hard candies that would be for sale at the church bazaar, and Jane studied Fiona. She, unlike her home, was satisfyingly English. Her hair was a burnished copper and the tiniest bit curly. It might even fuzz on a humid day. Her skin was as fair as milk and her eyes almost neon blue. She must have been a striking girl and was still attractive, but she had a bit of middle-age hippiness starting, and there were a few gray hairs in with the red. The large white teeth that must have made a ravishing smile in youth were the tiniest bit horsy at thirty-five. She looked like Fergie, the Duchess of York, would probably look like in a few years.
“You don't know anyone looking for a house, do you?" Fiona asked, as she poured three cups of fragrant tea.
“You're not selling, are you?" Shelley asked.
“Heavens, no! We wouldn't dream of leaving. It's the house next door to the north. The lady who lived there has gone into a nursing home, and her son is trying to sell the house. He explained to Albert about some tax thing or another that makes it imperative to sell it before the end of the year. I think he might price it quite reasonably. It's only two bedrooms, I believe, but for a single person or young couple it would be ideal."
“Single? Do we know anybody single, Jane?" Shelley asked with a smile. "I hardly remember the state."
“The only single people I know are divorced with mobs of kids. Like myself."
“I didn't know you were divorced, Jane," Fiona said, passing her an elegant china sugar bowl.
“I put that badly. I'm not. I meant I'm a single parent with mobs of kids. I'm a widow."
“Oh, I'm so sorry. I had no idea. How tactless of me," Fiona said, a genuine blush of embarrassment brightening her cheeks.
Jane almost smiled. How odd that Fiona, a rather famous widow herself, should apologize to Jane. "Please, don't be sorry. It's been nearly a year now, and I'm quite accustomed to it—" Jane stopped. "Listen to me! I'm already picking up your accent. That's a terrible habit. I don't mean to do it."
“Jane grew up all over the world, and she tends to talk like whoever she's talking to," Shelley explained. "Even if it's just a speech impediment, she mimics it."
“I never!"
“You certainly do. Remember that woman in the grocery store last week who couldn't say her 'r's? She asked you where the sausages were, and you said, 'Wight down the thiwd isle.' "
“I didn't.”
Fiona smiled and said, "Still, if you hear of anyone needing a small house, give me a call. We're uneasy about it standing empty. One hates to have an invitation to vandalism so close, you know.”
Shelley asked. "Doesn't that Finch man live on the other side of it?”
Fiona looked as if she'd been caught in something. "Yes, he does. But I really believe he's harmless!"
“Harmless! I wouldn't call anybody who poisons dogs harmless," Shelley said.
“There's no proof it was Mr. Finch," Fiona said. Her voice lacked conviction. "We've never had any trouble with him.”
Jane had been so interested in listening to Fiona's accent that she'd hardly started on her tea when Shelley started bustling her along. "Fiona, we'll be back tomorrow to help with setting up. Please don't go to any trouble on your own."
“Please feel free to bring your houseguest along if she's interested in helping out," Fiona said to Jane. There was something vaguely poignant in her voice. Loneliness? No, that couldn't be, Jane thought. You can't be rich and famous and lonely.
As they reached the front entry, a man stepped into the area from another door. "Oh, Fiona, I didn't know you had guests."
“Albert, this is Shelley Nowack and Jane Jeffry. They're on the placement committee for the church bazaar."
“How nice to meet you, ladies," Albert Howard said. He was American—a plumpish man with thinning dull brown hair and oversized tortoiseshell bifocals that made his receding chin appear almost nonexistent. Fiona had taken his arm in an oddly protective gesture and was gazing at him as if he'd just spoken words of enormous import.
“We've met before, I think," Jane said. "I substituted for Mary Ebert in the church choir one morning. You were there.”
Albert stared at her for a minute, recognition dawning, then started to laugh. 'Oh, yes! The director ended up asking you if you'd just hum."