Chapter 23
T he next day, Friday, was a week before the “special event.” Although I was still fuming when I woke up, I didn’t share the details with my father and I planned not to let it get to me. Instead, I hoped to use it as leverage to make sure my father could get to his October appointment. By playing a maid and doing extra work, I could demonstrate that I’d been willing to do whatever Sinclair required. When asking for permission, I’d also remind him that, at one point, he’d said he wasn’t heartless .
That would be his chance to prove it.
At breakfast, I hadn’t said much, which was probably to Sinclair’s liking, allowing him to peruse the pages of the WSJ uninterrupted. But, as he was leaving, Edna said, “Mr. Whittier, I’ll be picking up the ingredients for the Brandy Alexanders next week. Is there anything else you’d like for me to pick up while I’m out?”
The way he answered sounded almost as if he’d forgotten I was there. “Check if Ms. Miller needs anything.”
“Of course. I’ll be doing the usual shopping as well.”
“Anything else?”
“No, that’s it.” As soon as he’d left the room, she said, “He’s been under a lot of pressure lately.” Was that an excuse for his awful behavior? I simply nodded to acknowledge her words and returned to my bowl of oatmeal. “Is there anything you need, dear?”
“Not that I can think of.”
“Well, I won’t be going until after lunch, so let me know if you think of something.”
What I thought of shortly after I’d gone to work downstairs was that I would be all alone with the keys …and I could finally do some snooping on the second floor of the east wing. Although I knew the driver and his wife occupied some rooms on the third floor, I had never heard them and I hadn’t seen Greg much—except sometimes in the morning when he’d walk down the hall past the kitchen toward the garage.
And, because it was forbidden to all, I didn’t expect to see anyone there.
Well…I didn’t know for certain that everyone else was forbidden, but that was the vibe I’d gotten. More than once, Edna had said that space was unused—so the cleaning women didn’t go in there, nor did anyone else. And it was in my contract that I would not enter that area. But no one had said why . If someone had indicated that it was in horrible disrepair or that it was infested with rats or some disease, I would have avoided it without question.
But it couldn’t be anything like that. If it were in disrepair, I would have thought it would be dangerous to inhabit any floor of that wing for fear that the second floor could collapse—and there seemed to be no such trepidation. And if it had been some sort of health hazard, surely they would have simply said so, because no person in her right mind would want to get sick simply to satisfy her curiosity.
To find out what secrets they were hiding, though? Sign me up.
The only thing that made the wait until the afternoon bearable was reading the journal. I only spent a couple of hours doing the job I was supposed to and finally returned to devouring the words of Sinclair’s mother. Sometimes, it was hard to read because her handwriting would become small and cramped, but I managed. Sadly enough, it was more of the same—day after day, month after month, she lamented her husband’s continual lack of affection. Sometimes she’d leave a simple one-sentence entry like New lingerie didn’t work , but most of the time, she spent pages upon pages laying out the evidence that she was beginning to believe he had a mistress somewhere in Europe.
One entry in particular struck a chord with me.
Gus came back late last night from another trip to France. After he’d left for work this morning, I started rifling through his luggage before his valet got a chance to unpack—and there it was: a purple-and-black bustier, sexy and feminine. It was smaller than what I’d wear, so I tried to picture the other woman in my mind…slight, petite maybe, rail thin? For some reason, I imagined her with dark hair and painted red lips, long false eyelashes batting at him to give in.
The valet actually caught me going through his things, looking for more evidence. I told him I was trying to help, and I know he didn’t buy it, but he’s smart enough to know not to contradict me. Instead, he insisted upon doing his job and I stepped aside.
Later on, Gus gave me a present, something he hadn’t done in years when it wasn’t Christmas, my birthday, or our anniversary—and, lo and behold, there was that stupid bustier. I know the valet had tipped him off and he’d done what he had to do. But Gus seemed so sincere and was more loving and doting than he’d been in years. For him, I tried to put it on but it was too small, and he promised to get me something that would fit.
But I smelled the perfume on it—whatever that nasty whore had been wearing when he fucked her.
So why did I let him make love to me?
I guess it was to assuage some of the loneliness.
Ugh. I hated this man even more—it just added to what I already felt about him for the destructive mining he’d done in Winchester that my father had eventually been able to stop.
As I kept reading, that hatred festered. Sinclair’s mother had gotten pregnant that night, and I thought maybe she had conceived her third son—but she wound up having a miscarriage a few months later. She hadn’t even told her husband about the pregnancy by that point because she’d had a miscarriage the last time. She was hoping that a new baby would keep his heart at home instead of across the Atlantic Ocean…but it wasn’t meant to be.
An hour after lunch, Edna hollered down the stairs. “Lise, I’m leaving. Did you think of anything else you’ll need?”
“Nope. Thanks, Edna.”
“All right. I’ll be back in an hour or so. Text if you think of something.”
I wasn’t even going to wait. I tiptoed up the stairs to the door, already shut again, listening to the sound of Edna’s shoes as she walked down the main hallway before turning down the east rear hallway toward the other garage. I’d already learned that her personal car was parked in the big open space on the west side, a concrete area that could hold six vehicles, but Edna drove one of Sinclair’s cars when she did the household shopping. She’d already told me she loved driving the black Honda Accord, especially because it was only a year old. There were two other cars she said she was allowed to use and Greg was the one who maintained them and kept them fueled. “If Mr. Whittier ever lets you drive, it’ll be one of those cars,” she’d said, trying to convince me I’d like the Mazda.
I would have considered taking it earlier if I’d known where the keys were.
When I was certain I thought the mansion had grown silent, I waited another minute for good measure. Then I peeked my head out, scanning the main hallway and what I could of the rear west hall.
I couldn’t hear anything other than the usual mansion sounds—which was almost nothing. The place was designed to be silent.
Fortunately, my sneakers on the hallway floor kept my steps quiet as well as I headed east. As I continued walking, I kept looking everywhere—because I couldn’t be certain no one was around. At the junction of the antechamber with the main hallway, I looked not just toward the door but also upward at the second and third floors—and there wasn’t a soul to be seen.
So I went straight to the staircase and walked up. Even here on the landing around the antechamber, I could claim I was walking around to the west side. It wasn’t until I actually turned to walk down the east wing that I knew I was in violation of the contract.
But if no one knew, it wouldn’t matter.
This hallway looked almost identical to the one my bedroom was on, only going in the other direction. There were lots of locked doors and artwork on the walls—but I wasn’t going to turn on a light to see. At the end of the hall, there was a door, unlike the opposite wing that had a window.
It simply emphasized just how dark and cold that wing was.
I walked the length of the hall first, just to verify that there were the same amount of doors as on the other side—but there weren’t. There were fewer doors on this side, and I wondered why. Because I hadn’t been in the other rooms on the west wing, snooping over here wouldn’t answer my question, either. But I might figure it out later. I decided to enter one of the doors at the end of the hallway—and, as I tried to turn the knob, learned it was locked. So I tried another door and another…and another.
They were all locked.
But I was positive I knew where the keys were: on the keyring in Sinclair’s desk drawer in his office.
So back down the stairs I went once I was sure no one was looking. When I got to the rear east hallway, I glanced all directions again—and then went straight to Sinclair’s office door.
I almost just walked in but then felt a rush of panic. What if he was in there? I took a deep breath to steady myself and then rapped on it three times. If he was there, I would make up some dumb excuse, like I accidentally locked the trunk again.
When I was positive there was no one in there, I slowly turned the knob. Then, once I had it open enough to fit my head in, I did so, looking throughout the entire office. Seeing no one, I entered.
It wasn’t until I noticed my hands were shaking that I realized how nervous I was. Really, though, what would be the consequences if I were caught? Was snooping in a place where you lived considered illegal?
Surely not. I wasn’t breaking other rules of the contract, like stealing or vandalizing. I simply wanted to see what was in that wing.
The top drawer on the side of Sinclair’s desk was locked, and my heart dropped into my stomach as I believed all this had been for nothing. But I tried the second drawer just the same and my heart leapt back into the space where it belonged.
In the second drawer was that black ring of keys—and nothing else.
When I picked them up, the metal keys clinked against one another, sounding like an explosion in my ears. So I held them tightly together in my fist to keep the noise to a minimum. Glancing around like a mouse hoping not to attract attention of the cat, I then moved quickly back to the stairs and into the east wing on the second floor.
The air there seemed cooler, as if I were entering a dark cave—but I knew that was all my imagination, even though there wasn’t any light in that hallway except what came from the antechamber. I stopped at the first door to my left and examined the lock. When I looked at the keys, I had no clue if any of them would fit—so I decided to simply do trial and error. I found the most unusual key to start with and tried it in the lock.
It didn’t fit.
I wasn’t surprised because the odds were against any key fitting. I just had to be patient and try all of them, hoping one of them was on the ring. None of the next five fit, nor the five after. I tried another and another and another, and I was beginning to believe the key I wanted wasn’t on this ring, even though I had several to go.
But then a key fit—and it turned.
And I was twisting the doorknob open.
It was an ordinary bedroom. Well, maybe not ordinary . It was far more extravagant than my bedroom had ever been, present accommodations excluded. The room I used here didn’t count, because it wasn’t actually mine . My bedroom was in Winchester in the house I shared with my father.
This room felt bright, with its light curtains and plentiful windows, especially after coming in from the dark hallway.
I wandered around, trying to figure out why a room like this was locked away and forbidden to be entered. As I took in details, I realized this was a teenage boy’s room. It wasn’t just that the room was decorated in hues of blue and browns. There was a baseball on a shelf but it was the books that confirmed my suspicions: Holes by Louis Sachar was a giveaway and, I suspected, so was the Unwind Dystology , although I’d never read those books—not to mention the décor of navy blue and browns. But I couldn’t see a thing that would make me want to lock this room away.
Maybe it wasn’t this room in particular that made Sinclair shut off this wing—unless it was his childhood bedroom filled with bad memories.
So I kept digging, curious as hell about what secrets that man was hiding. Closing the door to the hallway in case anyone walked by or could even see it from another floor, considering it was nearest the stairs, I then began opening drawers and even looked under the bed. This room had its own bathroom like so many of the rooms in the mansion and I even peeked in there. As I was ready to give up, I headed for the door, noticing another book on the highest shelf—but it was laying flat. I was barely able to reach the shelf, but I managed to pull the book down. The back, facing up, had a thin layer of dust on it and I wiped it on my jeans as I turned it over.
It was a yearbook from Colorado Rocky Mountain School. I’d never heard of it. But I went straight to the back of the book for the index, looking for the name Whittier . And there it was—except it wasn’t Sinclair. It was Augustus III.
His oldest brother.
So this had to be Augustus’s childhood bedroom. Again, I didn’t see the reason to lock it away but that simply meant I had to keep exploring.
Fortunately, I was able to lock it on the inside knob and, after I was back in the hallway, I pulled the door shut, testing it to make sure it was secure. As I glanced out toward the open space of the mansion, I chided myself for not checking for noise or movement before I opened the door all the way. I had to be careful.
After finding the key to the door across from Augustus’s room, I unlocked it. This, too, felt like a boy’s room—only the color scheme was hunter green and dark brown. There was an unmistakable feel of money but there were no books. Was this Sinclair’s old bedroom? On a shelf in the walk-in closet, I found not one but three yearbooks. One was from the same school as Augustus but the other two were from a school called Phillips Exeter Academy. When I checked the index, I found that it was Warren, the middle Whittier brother, who had attended that school. As I rifled through the pages, I realized these weren’t colleges—they were high schools…what I’d heard described as prep schools, a luxury people of my class couldn’t afford.
But I wouldn’t have wanted to attend school away from home anyway. My teenage years had been rough and I couldn’t have handled them as well without my father’s support.
Then again…maybe if I’d been able to get away from the people who lived in Winchester…
But there was no sense dwelling on something that couldn’t have happened. Besides, that was all past. There was nothing I could do about it now.
My mind was swirling with this new knowledge. It wasn’t much, but it was beginning to paint a picture. The Whittier boys—the oldest two, at least—had been shipped off away from home for school, and I wondered if it was something they’d wanted or if it had been at their father’s insistence. Maybe even rich kids didn’t always have it so well, just in different ways.
I was distracted as I locked that door behind me and ventured across the hall to open the next door, curious if I would finally find Sinclair’s old bedroom. And, as I tested the keys, I wondered again why this wing was off limits. It made no sense.
It wasn’t until I had found the right key and turned the knob, the door squeaking as it opened, that I heard a sound other than the noises I’d been making.
Footsteps downstairs.
Oh, shit.
Was Edna back already? I’d expected her to be gone far longer. And I wasn’t sure what to do. Had she heard the door squeak? The way all the sounds often echoed through the vast antechamber and main hallway made me suspect she might have.
So what should I do? Should I go downstairs and confess to being a curious cat—or should I try hiding here until I thought the coast was clear, returning the keys and heading back downstairs? Now that the dungeon stairs were fixed on the east side, I could maybe do it without being caught. But what if Edna had already checked for me and discovered I wasn’t down there? Could I pretend I’d been using the bathroom or something?
My heart pounding in my chest made it almost impossible to think—but I decided I needed to control the outcome as much as possible. So I tried to quietly pull the door shut as slowly as I could and, even though that helped, it still whined as it closed.
Damn it. I hadn’t locked the door. Should I risk opening it again to lock it from the inside or should I fumble with the keys to lock it that way? As I began feeling for the keys, I thought I heard footsteps coming closer.
Up the stairs.
That meant only one thing: I would be caught here in the east wing red handed.
For a split second, I again considered sneaking in that bedroom and maybe even trying to find a place in there to hide, but I mentally calculated the trouble I would be in. If I claimed I hadn’t been in any rooms, maybe the punishment would be less than if I’d said I’d only entered the hallway.
But I had been in three rooms and had opened a fourth—and I didn’t think I had a poker face. So, not bothering to lock the room, I began walking toward the wing exit as my stomach churned, ready to confess to Edna that my curiosity had gotten the best of me. I knew her loyalty was with Sinclair and she would tell him, but maybe her words could soften the blow.
Regardless, I’d been caught.
As I exited the wing, though, Edna wasn’t the person who’d caught me red-handed.
It was Sinclair…and I’d never seen him look as angry as he did at that moment.