Fox River. Emilie Richards
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long time since I’ve heard you speak his name.”
Julia stiffened. “I haven’t been thinking about Christian. I don’t know where that came from.”
“You’ve lost your sight, he lost his freedom. Both of you are living in places you didn’t choose. The connection is there.”
“I don’t want to talk about Christian.”
“You never have.”
There was a rustling noise at the doorway. With something close to gratitude, Julia turned her head in that direction.
“A nurse is here,” Maisy said.
“Mrs. Warwick?” Karen, the nurse who had made the telephone call for Julia, entered the room, making enough noise as she did to help Julia know where she was. “Dr. Jeffers thinks you need to rest now.”
For once Julia had to agree with her psychiatrist. She was suddenly weary to the bone. She felt the mattress lift as Maisy stood.
“You do look tired. I’ll be back tomorrow,” Maisy said. “Is there anything you’d like me to tell Callie?”
“Tell her I love her and I’ll be home soon. Tell her I can see her in my dreams.”
“You’ll think about what I said?”
Julia nodded, then realized her mother might not be looking at her. It was just another of those small things the sighted took for granted.
“I’ll think about it.” Her throat was clogged with words she hadn’t said. A part of her wanted to beg Maisy to take her home to Ashbourne, to the quaint stone cottage where she had lived until her marriage. Another part insisted that she stay and suffer here at Gandy Willson, that if she suffered hard enough, she might find a cure.
Karen spoke. She had a soft, husky voice and warm hands. Odd observations, but the only ones Julia was equipped to make. “I guess you know Mrs. Warwick isn’t supposed to have any visitors except her husband, but unfortunately, Dr. Jeffers has a meeting tomorrow afternoon at three, so he’ll be away and unable to monitor things closely. Anyone could slip right in.”
“I see,” Maisy said.
“Thank you.” Julia understood what Karen was trying to do.
“Goodbye, sweetheart.” Julia felt her mother’s hand on her shoulder, then Maisy’s lips against her cheek. When Karen and Maisy were gone, the room was as empty as Julia’s heart.
2
Like their counterparts in Great Britain, the great farms and estates of Virginia were often given names. Ashbourne was one such, a large, distinctive house and three hundred acres made up of serpentine hills and rock-strewn creeks. The Blue Ridge Mountains were more than shadows touching the land; they were a presence that anchored it and coaxed the hills into craggier peaks and wider hollows. Maisy never ceased to be amazed at Ashbourne’s natural beauty or the twist of fate that had brought her here as the young bride of Harry Ashbourne, master of the Mosby Hunt.
Harry was gone now, dead for nearly twenty-five years. Ashbourne lived on, holding its breath, she thought, for Harry’s daughter Julia to reclaim it and restore it to its former glory.
The main house at Ashbourne was a gracefully wrought Greek Revival dwelling of antique cherry-colored brick and Doric columns. Symmetrical wings—two-story where the main house was three—gently embraced the wide rear veranda and flagstone terrace. In Harry’s day the gardens of hollies and mountain laurels, Persian lilacs and wisteria, had been perfectly manicured, never elaborate, but as classic and tasteful as the house itself.
Over the years the gardens had weathered. Ancient maples, mimosas and hickories had fallen to lightning or drought; the boxwood maze that Harry had planted during Maisy’s pregnancy had grown into an impenetrable hedge obstructing movement and sight until a landscaper had removed it. Over the years the meticulous borders of bulbs and perennials had naturalized into a raucous meadow that ate away at grass and shrubs, spreading farther out of bounds each season.
Maisy preferred the garden that way. The house was empty now, and the black-eyed Susans, corn poppies and spikes of chicory and Virginia bluebells warmed and softened its aging exterior. Neither the house nor the gardens had fallen to rack and ruin. She made certain all the necessary maintenance was done. Jake did much of it, a man as handy as he was good-natured. But the property was simply biding its time until Harry’s daughter decided what should be done about it.
Maisy and Jake lived in the caretaker’s cottage, a blue stone fairy-tale dwelling that was the oldest building on the property. The cottage perched on the edge of deep woods where foxes and groundhogs snuggled into comfortable dens and owls kept vigil on the loneliest nights.
The cottage was two-story, with a wide center hallway and cozy rooms that huddled without rhyme or reason, one on top of the other. The furnace and the plumbing groaned and clattered, and the wind whistled through cracks between window frames and ledges. Maisy and Jake were in agreement that the house’s idiosyncrasies were as much a part of its charm as its slate roof or multitude of fireplaces.
The sky was already growing dark by the time Maisy returned from her visit to the Gandy Willson Clinic. Inky cloud layers lapped one over the other, shutting out what sunset there might have been and boding poorly for a starry night. She often darted outside two or three times each evening to glimpse the heavenly show. She made excuses, of course, although Jake was certainly on to her. She fed the barn cats, three aging tortoiseshells named Winken, Blinken and Nod. Sometimes she claimed to check gates for the farmer who rented Ashbourne’s prime pasture land to graze long-horned, shaggy Highland cattle. No excuse was too flimsy if it kept her on the run.
She traversed the wide driveway and pulled the pickup into its space beside the barn, taking a moment to stretch once she was on the ground. Every muscle was kinked, both from sitting still and the lack of functioning shock absorbers. She vowed, as she did every time she drove Jake’s truck, that she would have it hauled away the very next time he turned his back. She had her eye on a lipstick-red Ford Ranger sitting in a lot in Leesburg, and in her imagination, it beeped a siren song every time she passed.
As she’d expected, she found Jake in the barn. There were several on the property. The one that Harry had used to stable his world-renowned hunters was at the other side of the estate, empty of horses now and filled with artists and craftsmen to whom Maisy rented the space as a working gallery.
This barn was the original, smaller, built from hand-hewn chestnut logs and good honest sweat. Jake used it as his repair shop. There was nothing Jake couldn’t take apart and put back together so that it ran the way it was intended. People from all over Loudoun and Fauquier counties brought him toasters and lawnmowers, motor scooters and attic fans. Mostly they were people like Jake himself, who believed that everything deserved a shot at a miracle cure, people who were wealthy enough to buy new goods but maintained a love affair with the past.
When she arrived, Jake was bent over his workbench. Winken crouched at the end, lazily swatting Jake’s elbow every time it swung into range. The three felines were right at home in the barn. Like so much that Jake repaired here, they had been somebody else’s idea of trash. Maisy had found them one winter morning as they tried to claw their way out of a paper bag in the Middleburg Safeway parking lot, tiny mewling fluffballs that she’d fed religiously every two hours with a doll’s bottle, despite a serious allergy to cat dander and a craving for an uninterrupted night of sleep. Now, years later, they kept the barn free of mice and Jake company. Cats, she’d discovered, were serious advocates of quid pro quo.
“I’m back.”
Jake turned to greet her. When he was absorbed in his work he forgot his surroundings. He had the power of concentration she lacked, so much that she often teased that a burglar could steal everything in the barn, including the cobwebs, while he was working on a project.
He wiped his hands on a rag before he came over to kiss her cheek. “Did you see her?”
“Yes, I did. But not