10. An Empty Vessel
Avi couldn’t recall if her predawn energy stemmed from the rejuvenation of a good night’s sleep or the adrenaline rush of a sleepless night. She’d either spent the whole of it thinking those dreams or dreaming those thoughts of Hawthorne Hall, Mr. MacKinnon, and her call with Corey. Whichever it was, the change in circumstances called for her to stop living in her head and start living aloud.
Avi had already wasted so much time, lurking on the outskirts of activities like some social hermit, merely people-watching and avoiding participation. That all had to change, and fast. The only certainty surrounding Hawthorne Hall was another four full days and an extra morning to say goodbye. After that, who knew what would happen? As such, Avi rose before the sun and explored the corridors and crevices of the estate that she’d started to take for granted.
She absorbed all the details she’d never noticed before: a missing crystal from one of the ballroom chandeliers, the large ding in the grand entry stair rail, the contents of the paintings Josh had purchased only days before, the grain of the kitchen’s marble tile, even the distinct wainscoting patterns that varied throughout the house were details worth preserving in the vaults of her memory. She knew, after all, in less than a week’s time, memories may very well be the only thing left of Hawthorne Hall.
By the time she reached the library, dawn was beginning to break. Irene Iddesleigh called to her. It felt like it had been years since she’d spent any quality time in her hidden room, and with everyone still fast asleep, Avi knew it was the perfect time to remedy that. After gaining entry and pushing the secret door until the locking mechanism clicked, Avi looked around the empty room and couldn’t help but cry.
There was so much regret in that room. There was so much she had envisioned doing with it to make it even more hers, but she hadn’t even hung one picture or bought and watered a single plant. Before long, this secret may not be hers but some wealthy stranger’s whose grandkids would get more use out of it than the buyer himself. The lonely, chestnut chamber demanded her affection, so she promised herself before the week was through, she’d have its dark walls beautified and adorned with a variety of bright decor.
Rather than pass the time in one of her book’s many pages, Avi sat in the chair at her desk and tried to see if she could slow down the clock’s two uneven hands. But before she knew it, she’d spent well over an hour at her desk admiring the decadence of morning light that engulfed the grounds’ limitless array of incremental green. The reverberating silence and grandeur of nature was all so calming.
As she leaned back in her chair taking in as much of the view as she could, her eyelids grew heavy, and the last thought she remembered having before succumbing to sleep was, “It must have been adrenaline.”
Muffled voices from the library creeping in through the thin cracks of the bookcases, brought Avi back to consciousness, but it was the sudden thump that jettisoned her to her feet. She drowsily walked over to the door and pressed her ear against it.
“Alright, so we have Pride and Prejudice,” Thomas said as he pulled it down from the shelves.
“Check,” said Jack.
“Sense and Sensibility…”
“I don’t see it, Thomas.”
“Here it is,” she heard Jada say.
“What about Irene…Id..ee..slag…? Is that Jane Austen?” Jack asked.
Avi immediately stepped back from the door, expecting it to open. She scanned the room for a place to hide.
“Trust me...that would altogether ruin reading for you,” said Jada.
“What about…”
“Gentlemen, I doubt you’ll be able to finish both of these today, let alone a third novel. Let’s just start with these and we’ll come back for more when the time comes.”
“Oh Joy!” Thomas said as she heard their muffled conversation grow even more scrambled until it faded into silence.
Avi swiftly made her exit and wondered how much time she’d wasted in her unintentional slumber. Based on the fact that Jack and Thomas were about to begin their literary marathon, she assumed she had already missed breakfast, but she was determined to miss no more. Avi raced down the stairs, through the hallway and into the dining room where she saw Gracie and Helena cleaning up breakfast.
“Hey! What’d I miss?” Avi asked enthusiastically.
“Breakfast…” Gracie replied with a hint of confusion - no doubt taken aback by Avi’s boisterous demeanor amongst harrowing circumstances. “After this, I’m heading down to the field to set up for archery if you’d like to join me.”
Avi nodded in agreement and began stacking dishes to take into the kitchen.
“You doin’ okay?” Gracie whispered.
“Yea…I mean…I just need to make the most of it, right?”
“Miss Hawthorne,” interrupted Helena, “do you think I should go check on her?”
“Would you? Thank you, Helena.”
With the housekeeper’s departure, Avi noticed an untouched plate of food on the table and asked, “Check on who?”
“Oh…Mrs. Lancaster said she wasn’t feeling well this morning and excused herself from the table. With everything you’ve got on your plate, the last thing we need right now is the flu making its way through this place. Especially with only four days left.”
Avi envisioned everyone bedridden and coughing, and ringing bells to summon sniffling servants to crumble crackers into their bowls of chicken noodle soup. She pictured her and Mr. MacKinnon; too sick to share another memory-making moment together, and chased the depressing image away.
“Do you think we should wait to turn everything off, then? At least the heat? I don’t want her to be uncomfortable,” Avi said.
“I think it should be fine. It’s supposed to get into the mid-seventies today, and the rest of the guests have already begun disconnecting. That’s their phones over there,” Gracie said, pointing with her head to a large ceramic bowl on the counter overflowing with technology.
“Is yours in there?” Avi teased.
“...After breakfast…that’s what we all agreed upon, right?”
“It is after…”
Suddenly they heard Helena shouting from upstairs, “Someone call the police!”
Whimpering, weeping, and sobs were the only sounds on the scene as the paramedics lifted the sheet-covered gurney into the ambulance. Avi already missed Ethel”s eyebrow flares, her twentieth-century bluntness, and her fearless humor. Mrs. Lancaster was more than an acquaintance or a paying customer. The time together coupled with shared experiences made Ethel feel more like family than friend, and judging by the tears of the mourning guests, Avi assumed she wasn’t the only one who felt that way.
Though they’d spent the last four days branching out into new friendships, Ethel’s passing caused everyone to regress into the comforts of the relationships they’d arrived in. The Jane Gang huddled together as Mr. and Mrs. Kensington stood welded into each other’s arms. May and Josh pressed in with their kids while Mick stood alone and afar - lost on the path of ponderment. Thomas wrapped his arm around a very shaken Jack as Kelly seemed to wish she had her phone to cling to. The visual made Avi half expect to find Mr. MacKinnon holding Bonnie in reconsiliary proximity, but Bonnie stood aloof - puffy-eyed and solo. Mr. MacKinnon was nowhere in sight.
As the ambulance turned around and made its way back over the hilly road, the guests were left staring at the ground in disbelief. As if no one quite knew what to do next. Mick eventually broke the silence.
“It doesn’t feel right to go shoot arrows without her.”
“It also doesn’t feel right not to,” said Min. “The last thing she’d want is for us to abandon the experience on her behalf.”
Silent reflection resumed.
“Uh…listen…” Gracie said. “Maybe it’d be best if we all took the rest of the day for ourselves to just do whatever it is we need to do. If still you want to…tomorrow we can do archery, but I think today just needs to be about each of you dealing with this in whichever way is most healing. Consider the grounds open to your disposal, and uh…we’ll still have meals ready for you, and…I’m sorry. I feel like I’m rambling a bit, but umm…yea…let’s do that.”
As the individuals and groups began splitting off and going their separate ways, Avi knew exactly where she needed to be.
The walk down to the chapel was less a maze than it was the first time she’d tried to find it, but it still took time. With said time, she thought about Ethel and the night she finished the puzzle. She thought about Ethel’s adorable dance with Mr. MacKinnon and all the times the old woman had brought an embarrassed smile to her face. Contrasting those memories to the image of her lifeless, expressionless body lying on her bedroom floor, Avi’s testimony of an afterlife only grew. She’d forgotten what it felt like to look into the open coffins at her parents’ funeral and think to herself, “That’s not them.”
Well, the empty vessel that laid on the floor before the paramedics arrived certainly was not Ethel Lancaster. She was somewhere else. She was no doubt reuniting with her dear husband in the revelry of redemption. Somewhere beyond this mortal sphere, the real Ethel Lancaster was flourishing and filled with expression, and spirit, and light. How Avi wished to feel so alive! But she couldn’t help but identify more with the morbid emptiness of Ethel’s corpse. She was falling to pieces, in sync with the crumbling world around her, and, yet again, her only hope for hope had to come from someplace beyond her collapsing plain of existence.
The echoing creak of the chapel door caused Mr. MacKinnon to shoot up from the pew and turn around.
“Ms. Hawthorne.”
“Mr. MacKinnon…I’m…I’m so sorry to bother you. I can come back,” she said as she turned to leave.
“Na! ‘Tis fine. Ah…ah was juist about finished.”
“No really, I…”
“Please…Ah insist.”
She let go of the chapel door and turned to face him.
“Are you sure?”
“Aye. Ah got whit ah came fur,” he said as he walked the aisle towards her.
“I’m…I’m surprised. I didn’t…”
“Ye didn’t take me fur a religious man, eh?”
“Are you?” she asked.
“Aye. When ah remember tae be.”
“You mean…when it”s convenient?”
“Aye,” he said with a slight laugh, “the sae-called convenient times do make it a bit easier tae remember…bit ah remember other times too.”
She smiled an exhausted smile through stale tears.
“How are ye?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” she said as a glistening trail of moisture followed the curvature of her nose.
Mr. MacKinnon hesitated then reached towards her cheek and dried it with his thumb, leaving his hand resting against the side of her hidden smile. He clearly wasn’t trying to be romantic which only made the gesture even moreso. It was apparent that he just wanted to help her. She simply wanted him to hold her. As if sensing her desire, Mr. MacKinnon pulled her head into his chest and wrapped his other arm around her. He then gave the top of her hair a quick and nervous yet comforting kiss and let her go.
“When ye’re done here…if ye want tae talk…ah’ll be in mah room,” he said with apprehension as he closed the chapel door behind him.
Perhaps his worry could be attributed to the chivalrous desire to avoid corrupting her innocence. If so, she certainly wished he’d summoned the courage to stay. Had he only seen her eyes still closed as she stood there alone, he would have known for certain that his lips had committed no infraction. And even though their first kiss was more his than theirs, it proved to be quite healing in its finite capacity. So she kept her eyes closed for as long as it mended, and when she had depleted the sensation of all its power, she opened them and surveyed the empty chapel.
Like her hidden room, there were no plants, no provisions, no paintings, nor people. Like her hidden room, Avi had neglected to adorn it with all the accents she’d envisioned. She walked to the front row of pews where Mr. MacKinnon had stood and sat down on the same archaic bench. She bowed her head and in equal parts pondering and prayer, analyzed everything: her feelings, her fears, her righteous desires, her questions…everything she could think to think she thought. That’s when she heard the pews on the other side of the aisle creak with the body weight of an uninvited guest.
“Officer Stanswick!” she shouted in shock as she stood. “What in the world are you doing here?”
“Well, I…”
“I swear, if you’ve come to ask me if I’ve been blazin’ kif in a house of God, I’m going to…”
“Careful, madam…threatening a police officer is no meager offense in the U.K…and what is this ‘blazin’ kif’ business you’re on about?”
“You know what it means…”
He looked confused.
“You know…what you’ve twice now accused me of…smoking weed.”
“Oh! Blazin’ kif, eh? I like it. I shall have to remember that one… but, no. That’s not why I’m here. Word has reached my ear of a death on the grounds.”
“It wasn’t murder if that’s what you’re implying.”
“I’m not.”
“And I already told the other officers and the coroner and the paramedics everything I know, so if you don’t have a warrant, I’d kindly ask you to leave,” she said in an ever-increasing crescendo.
“Ms. Hawthorne…I simply…”
“Please go!” She yelled as she once more broke into tears and sat back down in the pew. Vernon Stanswick stood with a wounded sigh before slowly crossing the aisle that divided them.
He sat and said, “I simply came to say that I’m sorry for your loss.”
She wiped away her tears and nodded, looking at the floor.
“I’m sorry for shouting.”
“Shout all you need, my dear. I only wish I was better built for offering comfort. I’m afraid I’m far more suited for interrogating and intimidating criminals. This whole…consoling genuinely decent people thing is rather foreign to me…but you need…you deserve to know…I can’t believe I’m about to say this to an American…you deserve to know that I’m glad you’re here.”
Avi was touched by his compliment, and the fact that it took so much humility to say, made it all the more meaningful.
“I appreciate that…and you, swallowing your pride to say it…”
“Yes, well, the vomit in my mouth helped to wash it down,” he said as she burst into momentary laughter.
With that, he stood, gave her shoulder two awkward pats of congeniality, and said, “It will only get better.”
Had he only known her tears were as much shed for the death of Hawthorne Hall as they were for the death of Ethel Lancaster, he may have foretold a completely different story. Still, his arrival felt like an unexpected and much needed answer to prayer. The courage to yell at a police officer felt heaven-sent. The heart-warming compliment felt heaven-sent. If such things were heaven-sent, then perhaps, “It will only get better,” was less wishful thinking and more authentic prophecy. Either way, as she looked around, the empty chapel felt far less empty. Then, as she stood to leave, revelation stymied her. She knew exactly how to help the guests honor their Ethel.
Avi burst through the front door yelling for her brother.
“Josh! Josh!” she shouted as Helena came down the stairs. “Helena, do you know where Josh is?”
“I think he took the twins down to the swing.”
“Thank you,” Avi yelled over her shoulder as she took off back through the front door and around the side of the house.
She held up the hemline of her dress to generate speed just as she spotted Kai swinging on the other side of the stream. Avi cleared the small white garden bridge in three long strides and completed the last thirty or so yards to her brother and nephews with only minimal sweating and panting. Josh was doing underdogs with Kai as Devin awaited his turn while throwing handfuls of dirt in the stream.
“Careful, bud. Not too close,” he said to Devin before noticing his slowing sister. “Hey Sissy.”
“Hey. I need your help.”
“What’s up? ‘Kay guys, let’s switch.”
Devin climbed up into the swing as Kai grabbed some dirt and cocked his arm.
“Could you make a run for me?” she asked.
“To the store? I could in a couple hours. May’s laying down with Bree. She doesn’t do well with death, so I’m on twin duty for a bit. Why? What’d you need?”
“A few more candles, and a large framed photo of Ethel. Kelly should have some on her phone.”
“Is the internet still on?” he asked.
“I think so. I don’t think Gracie ever shut anything off before everything happened.”
“Okay, yeah. For sure. When May wakes up I’ll make a run. Underdog!” he shouted as he pushed Devin high in the air and ran underneath his swing.
“What if I watched the twins for you?” she persisted.
“Or that…yeah. That’d work. They just ate lunch, so they shouldn’t need anything ‘til I get back…except for some quality time with Aunty,” he said as he bent over to tie his shoe in front of the swing allowing Devin to kick him square in the pants. “Oh…and I forgot…May told me about Uncle Ken and Mel. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s…it’ll only get better,” she said, repeating Officer Stanswick’s hopefully divinely inspired sentiment.
“You gonna sell it?” he asked.
“I don”t know. But everything happens for a reason, so…”
Josh gave her a one armed hug as he addressed the twins, “Okay guys, listen up. Aunty Avi’s gonna play with you for a bit. Be good. ‘Kay? Don’t bite her.”
“If they bite me, I’ll bite them back,” she said, raising her eyebrows at her nephews.
Devin and Kai showed their teeth and claws and began chasing their aunt around the tree as Josh took off back over the white garden bridge.
“Okay…okay! Timeout!” she said. “I have one thing I need your guys’ help with before the real fun can begin.”
Back at the chapel, Avi swept and dusted as the boys ran around seeing who could make the loudest echo. Ethel’s memorial was going to be perfect: dim candlelight, everyone gathered together sharing their favorite memories, a centuries-old chapel…it’d be the very sendoff Ethel would have wanted. She hoped it would also help the rest of the guests heal and move forward, enabling them to enjoy the rest of their stay; something else Ethel would have wanted.
After dusting the pews, Avi made her way to the front of the chapel to dust the pulpit. Unlike the seating and the building itself, the two-decker pulpit seemed to be the only part of the chapel that wasn’t original. It was old, but it was early-to-mid-twentieth-century old rather than late-seventeenth-century old.
“Careful, guys,” she said as she spotted them running circles around it.
Avi was more worried about them tripping on the stairs on either side of the pulpit than the pulpit itself, but as Devin rounded the corner at the top of the steps, his toe caught the edge of the baseboard. He fell down hard, skidded on his knees, and began to cry.
“Oh, bud...” she said as she dropped the duster, climbed the three steps to the backside of the pulpit, and picked up her nephew. “Are you okay? Let me see.”
She kneeled down, lifted up his left pant leg…then his right pant leg, revealing two scraped but not quite bloodied knees. Kai bent down and kissed his brother’s scrapes.
“S’okay,” Devin replied through big crocodile tears.
Within seconds, the twins were up and laughing and again, echoing down the aisle of the chapel. As Avi stood, she noticed something extremely peculiar. The baseboard had been knocked loose, but it wasn’t cracked or hanging from a hundred year old nail as one might expect. Instead, it was as if it had slid out of place…as if it was held on by some sort of track system. She leaned around the corner of the pulpit to see if the side’s descending baseboards were attached in a like manner, but they weren’t. They were all nailed down. Curious, she began to slide it back and forth an inch or two in each direction before deciding to slide all six feet of baseboard off the pulpit. As she did, the backside wood panel fell out with it, revealing Hawthorne Hall’s second great secret.