Bran New Death(19)

We walked through the castle, but she clearly knew it a lot better than I did. I felt like I was being guided the whole way, by how she turned into a room I hadn’t intended to enter, or walked along the gallery, showing me the view from above of the gigantic crystal chandelier that was still draped in what she called a “Holland cloth.”

“When I was planning my wedding,” she said, leaning on the oak railing, “back many years ago, I always thought I’d like to be married here. I’d have a harpist up here so the sound would float down, like it was coming from heaven.”

When we descended the stairs to the main floor, she headed for the breakfast parlor, one of the two turret-shaped rooms in the front corners of the castle. She flung open the double doors and walked into the middle near a cloth-draped dining table. “I always pictured this as a tearoom.”

Shilo had rejoined us, and followed her in, while I was last. My brain flooded with images as I slowly walked around the circular table in the center . . . I could see it. Shelves with my best teapots covering one wall . . . the antique sideboard—it was covered in a Holland cloth right now, but Shilo and I had peeked under the cloth, and it was a gorgeous Eastlake beauty—adorned with silver trays of treats . . . small tables dotted around the large room, and lots of people at the tables, enjoying tea and muffins.

Gogi was smiling as I looked up into her eyes, and nodded. “Jack is right about you,” she said. “You’ve got the vision.”

Shilo and I exchanged glances. “I was only here once, when I was about five,” I said.

“I know.”

“You . . . know?”

“Melvyn and my husband used to drink together at the tavern. Mel was upset about something that happened between your mother and him. He wanted to make it up to her, but she would never take his phone calls, and sent back letters with ‘deceased’ written on them.”

Why had my mother shut out my father’s only living relative like that? Life had not been easy. We had to move in with Grandma because Mom just could not make ends meet on her own. She was a typist for many years at a law firm that took on a lot of pro bono civil rights cases, but eventually arthritis crippled her hands and she couldn’t work. So why had she shut out the one family member who may have been able to help?

I had been assuming it was some kind of argument related to my mother’s quixotic sense of right and wrong, but it could have been other things, things I didn’t know about. It could even have had to do with my father, or his inheritance, or . . . who knew? Had Mom gone to Uncle Melvyn for financial aid, and he refused? I asked Gogi that.

“I don’t know what happened,” she said with a sympathetic smile. “I wish I did. I can see you’ve got a lot of questions.”

“Why didn’t Uncle Melvyn come see us in New York, if he was so concerned?”

“I think he did, but Charmaine still wouldn’t see him.”

“Maybe we should go to the kitchen. I have a few muffins for you to taste.” I felt numb, flooded with strange new insights about my father’s side of the family. I had been relatively content for the last thirty-four years with not knowing anything concrete about this part of my past. But by coming to Wynter Castle I had pried the lid off a can of worms, the story of the Wynter side of my DNA.

I needed time alone to process what I was learning. In all the months of having this inheritance, I had never once thought that coming to Autumn Vale would answer some decades-old questions. And pose a whole lot more.

McGill came in from the butler’s pantry just as we entered the kitchen from the other direction. “Hey, Mrs. G, Shilo! I got five more holes filled in, Merry,” he said, eyeing Shilo with a bit of a smile. “I’ve got to go, but I’ll be back tomorrow. I’ve locked the Bobcat; maybe that will keep your late-night gopher out of it.”

Gogi looked from one of us to the other, and I told her what had happened the night before, surprised that her son hadn’t filled her in on the event.

“And you say something attacked your hole digger?”

“Some kind of cat, I’d say.”

“Becket!” Gogi exclaimed.

“Do you think so?” McGill asked.

“What are you two talking about?”

The realtor said, keeping his eye on Gogi, “Melvyn had a cat named Becket, but that animal disappeared the very night after Mel died. I thought he got himself killed.”

“This was no housecat,” I demurred.

“Oh, there is nothing ordinary about Becket,” Gogi said. “He’s a big fellow, a ginger tom.”

“Ginger,” I said. That was another word for orange, like the flash of orange I had seen at the edge of the woods and in the attack on the unknown hole digger. But still . . . “No housecat could survive in the woods for almost a year, and all through the winter,” I said, shaking my head. “We’ll see you tomorrow, McGill.”