He nodded and sauntered out. I poured myself a glass of iced tea, sat down in a corner of the kitchen, closed my eyes, and did my yoga breathing exercises. Breathe in on four counts. Breathe out on eight. In on four counts and out on eight. As usual, the breathing helped me tune out the surrounding chaos, and as usual, I nearly jumped out of my skin when a person whose arrival I’d tuned out suddenly spoke to me.
“Meg, dear,” Mother said. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“I was resting,” I said.
“That’s nice,” she said. “You just stay there and rest. I only wanted to ask you a couple of questions.”
“Ask away,” I said. “Though my brain’s pretty fried right now.”
“Michael has been so nice about taking me places and helping me with my designs for your house.”
I winced, suspecting from her tone that she was finding me annoyingly uncooperative.
“But it’s hard to work in a vacuum, dear,” Mother went on, with a slight edge to her voice. “If you’d just give me some idea what kind of décor you want, I could work a lot more effectively. Without any guidance, I’m left to guess what you’d like, so it’s no wonder you’re not happy with my suggestions.”
“At the moment, I don’t know what we want,” I said. “I’m waiting for the house to tell us.”
“The house?” Mother said, after a pause. “You’re waiting for it to talk to you?”
“Not literally,” I said. “I mean, I don’t expect a voice to emerge from the mantel chanting ‘Art Deco’ or ‘lime green’ or anything. But I think you have to live with a place for a while before you can figure out what kind of décor would suit it.”
“Living with it’s going to be uncomfortable without furniture,” she said. “Are you sure you’re not beginning to get some idea what’s on the house’s mind?”
“At the moment, it’s very focused on all the repairs and renovations it needs,” I said. “And it’s been so full of so much clutter for so long that I think it finds emptiness very restful.” Also silence, but I decided I’d better not go that far.
“I see.” Mother said. Her expression bore a strong resemblance to the look she used to get when one of her children—usually Rob, of course—claimed to have a stomachache on a school day.
“I suspect if we force it to give us design ideas right now, it would want something very spare and minimalist,” I said. “Like those elegant Japanese rooms with nothing in them but a tatami mat and a single flower in a simple vase. Or Shaker décor. Did you know that after every meal they’d pick up the kitchen chairs and hang them from hooks on the wall, so they’d have as few things as possible to interfere with sweeping the floor? Doesn’t that sound nice?”
“If you say so, dear,” Mother said. “You’ll let me know when the house comes up with any less extreme decorating ideas?”
“Of course,” I said, but she was already sailing off. Was she admitting defeat, or just regrouping for another attack?
Regrouping, definitely. I squeezed my eyes shut again.
The next interruption to my breathing was more welcome. A pair of strong hands began massaging precisely the area between my shoulders where the muscles had knotted up from tension.
“You can relax,” Michael said. “Rob’s putting up your signs.”
“Thanks,” I said, leaning into the back rub. “Of course, that doesn’t mean anyone’s paying the slightest attention to them.”
“No, but people do seem to be leaving, now that it’s getting dark and there’s not a lot to see.”
“Good,” I said.
“I broke up another fistfight. None of your family were involved this time.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I was,” he said. “Not about your family. I just didn’t expect two very dignified faculty members to come to blows over ownership of a Weed Whacker. And a nonworking Weed Whacker at that.”
Rose Noir could probably have said something eloquent on the insidious effects of clutter and materialism on the human character, but all I could muster was a tired head shake.
“I was thinking maybe we could go pick up Giles when they release him,” Michael said after a moment. “They have to release him before long, right? We could be there to bring him back to his car.”
“Okay,” I said. “Ready when you are.”
“Hang on while I pack a few things we’ll need,” Michael said.