Chapter 17
“It must’ve come down the chimney,” Thora said.
“Then where the fuck did the taxidermied owl go?”
That Thora could not explain.
“How are we going to get it out of there without it attacking one of us?”
Hearing the kitchen door open and slam shut, her heart rate went wild.
“If you’re not already dead in here, Thora, I’m going to kill you myself!”
It was Mack’s voice. For the second day in a row, Thora had forgotten to send her proof-of-life text on the satellite phone.
Shit. Mack was pissed.
“Sorry, Mack,” Thora cried. “I might have remembered to text you this time if there wasn’t a fucking live barn owl in the
Bird Room.”
Mack barged past both of them, opening the door and poking her head in.
“That’s a live owl, all right.”
She stormed back through the Great Room and out the kitchen door, slamming it on her way out. Thora was alive and only mildly
in danger, so that must have satisfied her for the day.
“Should I fetch a box cutter and cut out the screen?” Lee asked. “I would take it out properly except I’m afraid of getting
clawed in the back. The owl should be able to find its way back outside eventually.”
“That’s a good idea,” Thora replied.
The kitchen door opened and slammed shut one more time. Mack reappeared, clad in leather work gloves, and swung into the Bird
Room. Before any of them, especially the owl, knew what was happening, she clamped her hands around the bird, immobilizing
its wings.
She went harrumphing past Lee and Thora on her way out of the house. Moments later, she was back, gloves stuffed in her jacket
pocket.
“What did you do with the owl?” Thora asked.
“I threw it at a tree.”
“You threw it?”
“At a tree. Eventually it started flying. It’s fine. I’m going to need you to hook up the fucking phone line, Thora. I can’t
keep switching my work shifts because a helpless little bird has you two useless bitches in a tizzy.”
“Hey now,” Thora said.
“I don’t think owls are helpless,” Lee said.
His defense of the owl defused the situation, cracking them all up.
“Where is the fucking satellite phone?” Mack snarled.
Thora found it in the Great Room and held it up for Mack sheepishly.
“It stays on your person from now on. Do you hear me?” she asked. Thora nodded. “Anyway, I have the day off now, and I’m making it your problem.” She took Thora by the arm.
Thora didn’t feel like she could resist, given how disruptive she’d been to Mack’s life in the past two days.
“Where are we going?”
“Next weekend is a Fall Festival supporting the Broadway bus. I need help sorting donations for the rummage sale.”
“Can I come?” Lee asked.
“Absolutely not,” Mack said. “Make yourself useful. Thora, put on some real clothes and maybe some deodorant. You smell like
bad decisions.”
“Your signature fragrance,” Thora shot back.
Minutes later, they were zooming down the mountain, leaving Lee to lick his wounds and check the house for additional animal
life.
“What’s gotten into you?” Thora asked. “If you’re mad at me, I need you to tell me what it’s about.”
“I’m not mad.”
“But something is up.”
Mack kept her eyes on the road. Which was extremely necessary, given the grade and the curves. “Lee is the architect in charge
of the renovations for Woodhill House and today is his first day on the job, meeting with the general contractor and walking
through the space.”
“Excuse me?” Thora had only recently learned of his new business, but Mack had already employed the man? With what money?
Her inheritance was supposed to pay for Mack’s dreams. “Where did the money come from?”
“First of all,” Mack began, “Lee didn’t charge an architect fee because he can use his work on the house to get his business
off the ground. Plus he has a little bit of that thing like Laurie in Little Ladies, where he is dying to be part of our family.”
“Little Women,” Thora corrected.
“That’s what I said,” Mack said.
Thora declined to argue. She wasn’t sure why she bothered correcting her cousin in the first place. Despite Mack’s misremembering
of the title, her theory on the book’s relevance to their life was quite astonishing. It also posited that she was the Jo
in this situation. Unlike she and Lee, Jo and Laurie had it out properly before embarking on their respective marriages. If
Lee had romantic feelings for her this whole time, he never made them clear to her. It redoubled her desire to sift through
old memories and look with new eyes.
Mack continued, “The summer after your senior year of college, when you moved to the city and Lee was here working on Juniper,
George showed me all the most valuable things in the house and told me to take them.”
“Only you?”
“I told him that Woodhill House would be going to me when Granddad died, and he specifically wanted any of the money tied
up in fucking knickknacks to be put to use finishing the renovations Granddad stalled on. He knew Lee would take care of Juniper.”
All of this explained the timing of his visit. He was coming to Juniper to see George before this first big project for Halliday
Historic Homes. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I tried. I really fucking tried. Every time I got you on the phone, you’d gush about what it was like working for Bryony Brooks.
‘Oh, she took me to this three-Michigan-star restaurant and Lady Gaga was there! Can you believe Bryony only shops at Bergdorf Goodyear?’ Or whatever.
And then if I so much as mentioned Lee working on Juniper, you would fly into a rage.
And then you always had somewhere to be.
‘We’re getting drinks with Bryony’s agent at the Waldorf Astrology hotel bar.
’ And I didn’t have time to wait around for your permission, because who knew what other vultures might be waiting in the wings? ”
Thora was staggered by her own self-centeredness. Mack kept her life quite simple on purpose and rarely needed much of anything.
But she could have used her support on this.
And maybe Thora would have understood what Lee was trying to do sooner.
“What kind of stuff did you sell?” she asked.
“That Junk Room has a misleading name, I’ll tell you what. Our parents couldn’t afford to pay anyone’s college tuition, but
our ancestors spent money on the stupidest shit. Tiffany lamps out the wazoo. Let’s see, there were some paintings from the
University of the Hudson?”
“The Hudson River School?”
“Yeah. Some of those. Chippendale furniture? Turns out they’re not just strippers, who knew? Carpets, tapestries, old books.
Tons of shit. George pointed me to the most valuable stuff, and he was right on.”
“Apparently that money wasn’t squandered after all,” Thora said.
“That’s wealth for you. You have to try pretty hard to lose it. And now, because I’m considered the local authority on valuable
objects, I have to sort which of the donations for the Fall Festival go to the rummage sale and which go to the auction.”
Mack’s effortless mastery of anything interesting or useful to her was impressive as always. Thora beamed at her beloved cousin.
“Who’s the auctioneer?”
“Congratulations, I signed you up, Lottie,” Mack answered brightly.
“Dottie! Without asking me?”
“As if you would say no,” she teased.
Of course she wouldn’t. Being an auctioneer sounded like a dream job. No one ever says auctioneers talk too much or are too
dramatic. Thora’s qualities were assets to auctioneers.
They pulled into the school parking lot, where the donations were loaded into the gym. This week, gym classes were being held
in the weight room adjacent to the gym. The boxes and bags of donations covered nearly half the basketball court.
“How are we organizing?” Thora asked.
Mack pulled blue painters tape out of her messenger bag. “I’m making zones on one half of the court. Clothing, housewares,
toys, media, tools, sports, miscellaneous, and auction.”
As they dug through boxes, Thora decided to continue the conversation from earlier. Now that she knew about Lee and Mack’s
working relationship, she couldn’t let it go. “When were you planning on telling me about fixing up the house?”
“I figured Bryony Brooks would die sooner or later and I’d be able to catch your attention again.”
“Shit. It’s wild how selfish I was being while also thinking I was being unselfish.”
“Bryony could have paid for an army of people to attend to her while she was dying. But she wanted you because you cared.”
“Yeah,” Thora lamented. “I did. But I wish I could have divided my attention effectively. I was talking about this with Lee
this morning. My loyalty to Bryony eclipsed my loyalty to Cody, who was supposed to be my number one priority. Even if everything
I did for Bryony was, deep down, for Cody. So he could reach his goals.”
“It wasn’t for Cody, you fool,” Mack said. “It was for Uncle George.”
That remark pierced her like an arrow. Uncle George had nothing to do with this. He was a beloved if reclusive relative who died tragically and preventably alone.
Bryony Brooks was a writer with all the wealth in the world at her disposal. And two children whom she had utterly alienated
with her attachment to her work. They had the tenures at the poshest Swiss boarding schools and the therapy bills to prove
it.
Bryony never talked about her relationship with her children. Thora could intuit it easily enough. She updated them as Bryony’s
health faded and received curt, professional answers thanking her.
No one offered to visit, Bryony declined to ask, and at the end, it was Bryony, Thora, and the kind of medical team only millions
of dollars could buy.
Still, she tried to give a shitty person a gentle end, maybe because her favorite person met a solitary one. Did it balance
out? How could it?
“I never thought about it that way,” Thora said.
Mack hurled a trash bag of clothing toward the designated section of the gym floor, holding her arms up in a triumphant “field
goal” gesture when it landed squarely in the center. “No matter what your motivations were, you can’t convince yourself to
make someone your number one priority. Either they are or they aren’t.”
“But Cody was my husband.”