Chapter 8
Summer wore the low boots she had tried on first. Their heels sounded loud on the society’s front steps, and she was still wondering whether she had dressed too casually when someone called through the door that it was open. Jonah let her go ahead into the smell of furniture polish and wet wool.
She had expected more darkness. The long windows beside the front door admitted a pale afternoon light, and at the far end of the hall a staircase rose to a broad landing before turning back above them.
The banister had the warm shine of something touched more often than it was cleaned.
Near the foot of the stairs stood a cardboard box of light bulbs, a vacuum cleaner, and an umbrella opened to dry, which did more than any greeting could have done to make Summer feel she was allowed inside.
“We’re in here.” Jonah’s mother appeared in the doorway on their right with a pencil in her hair and a strip of paper held against her chest. “Come and tell me if this looks ridiculous. I can’t get anyone to stand far enough away.”
Lorraine kissed Summer before waiting for an answer, one hand firm on her upper arm.
She smelled of the same soap Summer had once used in the downstairs bathroom at Jonah’s parents’ house.
Her sleeves were pushed up, and there was a small streak of something white on the side of her watch.
Summer took off her gloves and put them in her coat pocket.
Summer followed her into a room with two tall windows and a shallow fireplace. “The portraits? They’re rather frightening down there.” Three frames leaned against the wall, their lower corners cushioned on folded blankets.
“The lettering.” Lorraine put the strip of paper on a table and weighted it with her phone.
“The printer says cream is cream. That one is yellow.” She pointed to another sample, then walked away from the table as though distance might settle the argument.
“It’s the entrance sign. People have to be able to see it when they come through the door. ”
Summer preferred the cream sample with the plain black letters. She pointed to it, and Lorraine looked at Jonah in triumph.
“Thank you.” Lorraine drew a circle on the back of the chosen sample. “Your father said they were both perfectly legible,” she told Jonah. “Which was not useful.”
“He did get your pictures here.” Jonah bent to look at the nearest frame, holding his jacket away from its carved corner. “All of them, or is there another trip?”
“All three. And nobody dropped anything, whatever he told you.” Lorraine touched the top of one frame with a satisfaction that made Summer look more closely.
The painted woman within it wore a dark dress and had one hand tucked out of sight, leaving the other to rest, rather unconvincingly, on a book.
“They’ll look better once they’re hung. At the moment everyone keeps asking where we found the haunted relatives. ”
Summer bent to look at the gilding, worn away in small patches around the frame. At the bakery she spent hours making new things look old enough to be sinister. Here somebody had merely carried the painting in.
“Kylie’s checking the labels for me,” Lorraine said. “She wouldn’t let us call this one a Victorian lady. Apparently the sleeves make that impossible.” She sounded pleased rather than corrected. “I told her she could choose the words if she could fit them on the cards.”
Jonah straightened. “I didn’t see her car. Has she gone home?”
“Coming back. She went to print them because ours is putting a black line through everything.” Lorraine gathered the rejected samples into a folder. “Leave your coats there. I’ll show you where we’re putting the music, Summer. I want you to see it before the chairs go back in.”
Lorraine led them through the ballroom to the smaller refreshments room.
Summer stopped to look back at the tall windows and the empty floor, judging whether her skirt would have room if she bought the one she’d been considering.
Jonah caught her eye and made a small movement with his shoulders, recalling their dance beside the lamp.
The refreshments room had a sideboard against one wall and a long table beneath the windows. A second doorway led directly into the main hall. Summer went back to set her bag on a ballroom chair. Lorraine was searching among the papers on the sideboard when she returned.
“I was going to ask you something about this,” Lorraine said. She drew the pencil from her hair, releasing a strand that she tucked behind her ear. “We’ve got someone doing the savory food. I’d like something sweet that isn’t a plate of those little things with cream squirted on top.”
Summer could offer cakes before Lorraine asked and be left wondering whether she had meant to pay for them. She looked at the penciled figures, most of them crossed out, and waited.
“How many people?” Summer asked. “And do you want something they can pick up? Or are they sitting down?”
“We’re selling a hundred and twenty tickets. I don’t expect everyone to eat everything.” Lorraine looked back at her. “Could you give me a price? Something we can put out ourselves. I wouldn’t ask you to be in the kitchen all evening.”
Summer asked about the rest of the food and the serving time. Lorraine showed her the menu, and Jonah went back into the ballroom while they talked.
“Small apple cakes would keep well,” Summer said.
“Or ginger. Nothing that has to be filled at the last minute.” She could already see them in shallow paper cases, dark on top, easy to lift with two fingers.
“I’ll work it out tomorrow. I’ll need an answer this week, though.
I can’t hold the space right up to Halloween. ”
“Send it to me, and I’ll get it approved.” Lorraine gave her a measuring look. “Your proper price, Summer, not a family discount. If it’s too much, we’ll have fewer.” She wrote cakes on the rejected yellow sample and handed it to Summer.
They were still discussing whether people actually needed napkins when Kylie came into the room carrying a document wallet and a paper cup.
She had a scarf looped loosely around her neck and the slightly pink face of someone who had walked quickly.
Seeing them, she stopped with her hand on the door from the hall, then smiled.
“You made it inside.” She set the cup on the sideboard and came to kiss Summer’s cheek before reaching past her to put the wallet in Lorraine’s hand. “These are the better ones. The first batch had a spelling mistake. Mine, unfortunately.”
Lorraine slid the pages out and immediately began reading.
Kylie looked toward the ballroom, where Jonah was trying to separate two chairs whose legs had become caught together.
“Don’t pull that one,” she called. “Lift the back one first.” He glanced up, changed his grip, and freed them with a clatter that made Lorraine close her eyes.
“They charge people to hear music here,” she said. She put the pages down carefully and went to inspect the chairs, leaving Summer and Kylie beside the empty table.
“How was yesterday?” Kylie asked. “Did the table fit?” She unwound her scarf and laid it over the back of a chair. Summer told her it had fitted, then mentioned the restaurant. Jonah had booked them a table by the window.
“Good,” Kylie said. “I’m glad. We were all right with the pictures, once we stopped trying to carry them through the narrow door.
” She took a sip from her cup and made a face at its temperature.
“Your father-in-law thinks I’m afraid of spiders now.
It was the dust. Something fell directly into my mouth. ”
Summer laughed. Lorraine came back with Jonah, carrying the scissors she’d found beneath a chair.
“That reminds me,” Lorraine said to Kylie. “Have we decided how the birds are going above this? I don’t want anyone drilling into the paneling.” She looked along the wall over the sideboard, then at Summer. “How heavy are they?”
Summer’s first thought was of the wire cutting into her fingers when she had made the feet.
She had suspended the ravens with line from an existing rail in the bakery window, and even there getting them balanced had taken an entire evening.
She looked at Kylie, expecting her to explain that these were different birds.
“Mine?” she said when Kylie did not immediately speak. “The ones in the bakery are staying there.” She kept her voice ordinary, but she could feel Jonah’s attention turn toward her.
“Oh.” Lorraine looked at Kylie too. “I thought you said we could have some.” Her pencil remained poised over the paper, waiting for the answer to become useful. She looked toward the sideboard. “You showed me where they would go.”
“I said Summer could show me how she’d made them,” Kylie said. She put her cup down. “I must have made it sound more settled than it was. We were talking about decorations, weren’t we?” She addressed the last part to Summer, with the expectation of a shared recollection.
“I offered to explain it,” Summer said. “You’d need to start soon. They take ages to dry, especially the wings.” She stopped before she could volunteer the newspaper stacked behind the bakery door. “Mine are staying in the window. I told you that on Thursday.”
“Of course,” Kylie said, her smile tight. “I wasn’t asking you to take them down.” She slid the unused paper into the wallet, catching one corner and bending it.
Lorraine crossed something out. “Then we’ll use the decorations we already have. I can’t ask anyone to start making birds as well.” She looked disappointed at the wall, which was somehow worse than disappointment directed at Summer. “It would have been lovely, but never mind.”
“It’s probably just crossed wires,” Jonah said. He lowered his voice and leaned toward her. “Kylie hasn’t brought a van.”
“I told her no,” Summer said, too loudly for the joke he had meant to share. She stepped away from him. Lorraine handed Kylie the scissors, and they went to the front room to cut the labels.