Chapter 22
B efore dinner that evening, I headed to the library with the mission of finding Sinclair a book. After reading a few more entries in his mother’s diary, I had to stop. It became apparent that she was in a loveless marriage, trying to find a way to hold on. There were multiple examples displaying Augustus Whittier’s coldness toward her and I couldn’t bear to keep reading.
But it also made me feel a little less bitter toward Sinclair. If his father could be as cold to his sons as he’d been to his wife, it could explain a lot about Sinclair’s behavior.
And maybe I could allow myself to feel just a little forgiveness.
That was the main reason why I wanted to find him a good book. Unfortunately, the fiction wasn’t organized in any particular order; it was organized by authors’ last names—but that would make it a little harder. It was easy to find the mysteries that came easily to mind—Agatha Christie, Rex Stout—but I even found the Millenium Trilogy by Steig Larsson…which brought to mind lots of questions.
When had the rest of the family moved out? I knew his father had done it around the end of Sinclair’s stint in college—meaning less than ten years earlier—but what about his brothers? And had Sinclair been continuing to populate this library?
I thought The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was an excellent contemporary mystery, but it also had some disturbing content and so I wasn’t quite ready to recommend it.
Finally, I decided to simply browse through the titles until something jumped out at me, knowing I could always fall back on Christie. She was indeed the mistress of mystery and wouldn’t let me down—but I wanted to start with something I thought could really speak to Sinclair.
And I finally found it. A book I’d read just a year earlier, Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson, sat on a shelf with no other books by his name and I pulled it out. I remembered it taking me a few pages to get into it, but once I had, I was hooked—and inside the pages was mystery, drama, romance—and so much more. Even deeper were social themes that had made me feel like everyone should read it. Unfortunately, I could only recommend it to online friends since I didn’t have many in real life.
If he read the book, we could have so much to talk about. As I walked down the hallway toward the kitchen, I smiled, thinking perhaps having our own little book club might make the years to come far more bearable.
When I arrived in the dining room, I sat expectantly, waiting for either Edna or Sinclair to appear. Finally, Edna entered and said, “Mr. Whittier is at a function tonight. You can eat in here if you like or I can serve you in the kitchen. Which would you prefer?”
Although I liked the dining room, it lacked the warmth of the kitchen—and I felt bad enough that Edna served me as if I were a Whittier. At least in the kitchen everything would be right there. “Oh. The kitchen’s fine,” I said, standing up and picking up the book as I left.
“Found something to read?” Edna asked as we headed to the kitchen, and the scents of a delicious dinner wafted under my nose.
“Yes, but for Mr. W. We were having a discussion last week and I told him I’d find him a good book to read—something with mystery, which I think he said he ‘wouldn’t hate.’ I loved this book and thought he might too.”
She gave it a better glance. “I haven’t read it.”
“I thoroughly recommend it.”
As Edna made her way to the stove, she said, “Mr. Whittier doesn’t tend to read novels.”
“I know…but I’m hoping to change his mind.”
“Good luck.” I wasn’t sure if she meant that hopefully or with doubt, but it didn’t matter. I’d already made up my mind.
And I was trying to release the overwhelming disappointment I felt that I couldn’t share it with him tonight.
When I’d brought the book to breakfast the next morning, Sinclair all but dismissed it, as if forgetting our earlier conversation. He said, “I’ll try to get to it” before returning to that day’s WSJ . But when we left for our respective jobs, he did take it with him and seemed to glance at the description on the back.
It gave me a little hope.
Returning to the dungeon , I wanted nothing more than to pick up where I’d left off with the red journal—and I also wanted to go through the rest of what was in the trunk; but, if I did that, I’d really have to fudge the details of what I’d done down here, and it might be obvious that I hadn’t been doing the work I’d agreed to do. While I couldn’t remember if slacking off was technically a breach of contract, I thought that might be one of the things I wasn’t supposed to do. And although I’d never signed another contract in my life, I knew there were real consequences that came with breaking them. I didn’t want to be separated from my father for more than ten years, something I believed Sinclair would have no problem asserting, but that was just the beginning. It was my hope that, if I could be viewed as a good employee who did what she was told, I could earn privileges—like seeing my father on occasion during my restitution.
As it was, I still needed to get Sinclair to agree to have my father taken to the clinic in Colorado Springs in October—but I was waiting for the perfect moment to again broach the subject.
When I reached the bottom of the now-solid staircase, I surveyed the room. It really didn’t look like I’d done much, considering there were boxes and big things everywhere. So I decided to tackle more of the boxes, because I’d discovered with the few I’d already opened that many of them only had a few items in them. I was trying to organize by category, but it was difficult when almost everything seemed to be decorative rather than functional.
I opened a bigger box first—one in front of all the others—and nearly gasped at its contents. Framed photographs. But, as I lifted one after another, that wasn’t all. There were also several photo albums and loose snapshots on the bottom.
All those personal pictures I’d asked Sinclair about and they were all right here, neglected and forgotten about. There were some old black-and-white photos that I couldn’t date but, if I’d had to guess, were early 1900s—a man, a woman, both unsmiling, and another photo of four children, among others. Some of the color photos had that sepia tone, looking much older, but the facial resemblance among many of the people was undeniable.
These were pictures of the Whittier family.
As if to confirm my suspicions, I found lots of pictures of the two older Whittier boys, as well as their mother and father—together and separate and even of the whole family pre-Sinclair. But what I found odd was that there were few pictures of Sinclair and also not many of the older boys past early adolescence—which led me to hope I might find other boxes of photos down here.
I spent far too long looking in the photo albums, making the same discovery. Then it dawned on me: Sinclair’s mother died when he was a baby—and perhaps she had been the main chronicler of their visual history. Her husband had seemed to lack much emotion, so I doubted he cared about capturing pictures of his sons in their youth. Had all that died with Sinclair’s mother?
Even if I believed so, why was everything down here? Hadn’t his brothers wanted any of the pictures? Why weren’t they displayed throughout the mansion? Considering they were in frames far superior to anything I’d ever owned, I knew they must have been hung in the mansion at one time.
Why not now?
Another mystery about Sinclair I hoped to understand at some point.
Once again, though, I’d allowed myself to get slowed down by my curiosity, so I spent the rest of the day cataloging bigger items, moving them to their spots, and then evaluating their worth on Mrs. Whittier’s laptop.
One painting in particular I suspected was quite valuable—another reason why it shouldn’t have been stored down here untended. It was by an artist named Ellen Downey, someone I’d never heard of. But I looked her up and, in the past five years, she’d become quite respected, her paintings desired by the rich and famous. One painting sold at an auction for over one million dollars—so if this was one of her earlier works, I didn’t know how much it would bring, but surely her current celebrity status would increase its value.
Unfortunately, I had no time to return to the journal—but there was always tomorrow.
I wasn’t sure if I should say anything about what I’d found or wait for the weekly turning in of the tracking sheet to advise Sinclair of the painting.
I decided dinner would be the perfect time. Not only would it show that I had , in fact, been working, but I thought it would underscore my value.
I’d spent so much time downstairs, I only had a few minutes to clean up for dinner—and I already knew Sinclair expected punctuality. After changing clothes and taking my hair out of its ponytail, I rushed downstairs to the dining room, ready to share news of my day’s work.
When I entered the dining room, I knew I had barely made it on time—mainly because of the way Sinclair glanced at his watch and scowled but didn’t say a thing. His furrowed brow made him appear intimidating but oh, so gorgeous. Edna rolled her cart in right behind me, placing drinks and salads in front of us, along with the usual basket of bread and selection of dressings.
We ate in silence for a bit, which I found unusual, because Sinclair usually had plenty to say—so I decided to go ahead and talk. “The project downstairs is going well. And thank you again for having the stairs fixed.”
No actual words seemed to come out of his mouth as he instead grunted an unintelligible reply.
If I wasn’t mistaken, he was… grouchy , for lack of a better word.
So I decided to ask a question instead. “Have you heard of the painter Ellen Downey?”
“No. I don’t pay much attention to contemporary artists. I have interior designers worry about that.”
Was this another one of his ways to lord over me the fact that he had unending sums of money to play with? But I finished chewing my bite of salad, hoping to let that little flair of annoyance go before talking again. “Well…she happens to be famous and respected and, nowadays, her paintings sell for millions of dollars.”
He simply looked over the rim of his glass and, as he lowered it to the table, raised his eyebrows in question—but still didn’t speak.
“You own one of her early paintings. I found it downstairs today.”
Still, he appeared unmoved. “Obviously someone here didn’t find her art so captivating.”
“You should see it for yourself. It’s…interesting. It’s obviously a painting of a city street, but the colors are unusual and the lines are…” I found that I didn’t have the vocabulary to fully express what I’d seen, particularly because it had been abstract—and, from the research I’d conducted, that was what most people liked about her style: she didn’t paint typical landscapes. The line between reality and fantasy was blurred.
“Ms. Miller, I rarely enter the gallery, full of art curated to my tastes, so why would I go out of my way to look at a painting in the dungeon I probably won’t like? I’m a practical man concerned with practical matters. Art is not practical.”
There went my hope of us bonding over a mini book club—not that I’d expected that to go far. I could have argued passionately with claims learned from several teachers over the years about the merits of literature, art, music, and more—but I knew I wouldn’t win. If someone like Sinclair Whittier didn’t value art, there would be no changing his mind. I’d always thought that wealthy people were the ones who encouraged art—and, obviously, I wasn’t completely wrong. After all, I didn’t personally know anyone who’d pay seven figures for a painting.
So I decided to get to the point. “Would you say money is practical?”
At that, he didn’t sigh; he huffed impatiently. “What are you getting at?”
“The painting downstairs is worth a lot. I looked it up and found that when an artist becomes famous, their earlier work is even more valuable than their current work. You could make a lot of money if you sold it.”
I didn’t know what I was saying that was making him angrier, but he was clearly ready to lose it like he had those first few days I’d been here. His neck appeared red as if he were holding it all in and it was ready to blow. “I don’t need money and I have far more important things to concern myself with.”
“But—”
“Inventory what you find and we’ll discuss it another time.”
And that was it. Case closed. I could sense I’d get nowhere if I continued.
After some time, Edna came in, swapping our salad plates for dinner. Every meal had been an adventure as I experienced new flavors and spices and ways of eating. Most were enjoyable but I yearned for the familiar. I would have loved a bowl of mac and cheese or French fries just once.
When Edna exited the room again, Sinclair cleared his throat. “I need to make you aware of a special event next week that will involve you.” Was this the news that had him grumpy and on edge? “On Friday night, I will have several business colleagues over for dinner to discuss the end of the quarter. Ordinarily, you have Friday night off but, as you know, sometimes a job requires you to work additional hours, and you will be assisting with this dinner. Edna will stay late to supervise but I’ve hired a local chef who will be catering the meal. He usually brings a staff with him as well.”
“What will I be doing?”
“Whatever Edna and the chef tell you to do.”
“Okay, but what will my job be?”
It was as if a mask lowered over his face—the grouchy, surly expression was suddenly replaced by a cold, emotionless visage. “You will be serving dinner—as a maid.”
Why? Wasn’t the work I was doing enough? If extra servitude would have really made a difference in what I owed, I would have been asking to do anything and everything—but it was more a matter of time than money —he’d said it himself before—and it made me angry that he wanted me to serve him and his friends as part of the deal.
This felt like just another power play, a reminder of who was in charge.
My cheeks burned as I looked down at the broccoli on my plate…because this was yet another reminder that we were not friends and would never see eye to eye, regardless of what transpired.
I needed to remember that this man was and would always be my enemy.