Chapter 3
The Hearth second, that Rupert had once, in the course of his research, described the Wardwell family portraiture as ‘some of the finest in the country,’ which Englebert considered to be a compliment of the highest order (despite not personally being depicted in any portraiture at all, much to his chagrin); and third, that we were leaving straight from rehearsal anyway and he was already in the car.
“You were not already in the car,” I’d said. “You ran to the car.”
“I proceeded to the car at a leisurely pace.”
The Hearth & Stone has no policy on familiars because such a policy would be unenforceable and everyone knows it. The bartender took a single look at Englebert, set a saucer of cream at the end of the bar without comment, and went back to the taps.
“It’s real cream,” the bartender called over her shoulder. “We’re not barbarians.”
“I made no such accusation.”
“You were about to.”
He has since forgiven the establishment entirely and is now holding court over the sliced garnishes.
Bert has migrated to the dartboard. He isn’t playing darts, but rather just standing near the darts, narrating the history of the board itself to a cornered Cody, the teenage technical director, who is looking at me over Bert’s shoulder, his expression that of someone signaling desperately from a sinking ship.
“Cody,” I say. “I think Dana was looking for you.”
He’s gone before I finish the sentence.
“Nice kid,” Bert says, watching him go. “His great-grandfather wired half this street, you know. Badly, but that’s neither here nor there.”
“Bert,” I say. I haven’t seen him in a month or so, since his wife’s funeral. I’d meant to stop by the Historical Society a dozen times but never actually made it. “How are you?”
“Oh, you know.” He looks into his beer, then back up.
“Martha never liked this pub. She said the lighting makes everyone look suspicious. She only came here twice a year — St. Patrick’s Day and whenever the Historical Society team won the annual trivia night at the Community Center, which was most years, because Tom Parker always ceded the history questions to me, and Martha handled geography.
” He smiles. “She could name every county in Ireland. We never went. She just liked knowing them.”
“I’m sorry I haven’t come by.”
“You’ve come by plenty in your life, Marigold.
You get a summer off.” He waves a hand at the room.
“Besides, I’ve had Rupert. Four months of somebody who wants to hear about the 1911 boundary dispute.
Do you know what that’s like, for a man like me?
I’d have paid him.” He leans in. “Don’t tell him that.
He’d have taken it. Graduate students are poor. ”
Across the room, Rupert has been trapped by Mayor Blackwood, who appears to be pitching himself as a primary source. Rupert is nodding and, either out of politeness or true academic integrity, is actually taking notes.
“He’s promised to send me the manuscript chapter by chapter,” Bert says. “For fact-checking.”
Bert seems to be doing well enough, which is all you can ask of someone who recently lost their wife of sixty-something years.
“Come by when you feel up to it,” he says. “I’ve got a folder with your name on it. Literally. Rupert left copies of everything he found about the Wardwells. There’s a photograph of your grandmother at the 1962 Harvest Festival.”
“What’s she doing in it?”
“Complaining, I presume,” Bert says.
* * *
Damien, predictably, arrived at the party approximately fifteen minutes after everyone else.
He’s been working the room ever since, moving toward Pru one person at a time.
He’s currently two chairs away and closing in.
Pru has her wine in one hand and her phone in the other, focused on the screen like she’s reviewing a deposition, which, knowing Pru, she might actually be doing, at nine at night, at a party.
“Prudie.” He’s made it. He turns the chair beside her around and sits on it backwards, forearms on the chair back.
“Dorcas was sitting there.”
“Dorcas is at the bar.”
“She’ll be back. She left her phone.”
“Then I’ll be brief.” He tips his head at her wineglass. “Let me get you something better than that. The good stuff. They must have a bottle in the back they’re saving.”
“This is a pub in Duskboro, Damien. They’re not saving anything.”
“You know, in the city, there’s a little place in the West Village–”
“We’re not in the city.”
“No,” he says. “No, we’re not.” He laughs. “You were luminous tonight, by the way. The letter scene. I’ve stood on stages with Tony winners, Prudie, actual Tony winners, and–”
“Dorcas is back,” Pru says.
Dorcas is indeed back, standing over him with a pint in one hand.
“That’s my chair,” she says.
Damien relocates with a bow that gets a single laugh somewhere on the opposite side of the room.
Skye, from her position near the wall, catches the bow on her phone.
She’s been filming everyone intermittently all night, including forty seconds of Englebert silently drinking his cream that I suspect will do numbers online.
Pru watches Damien go, then looks at me.
“Don’t,” she says.
“I said nothing.”
“You made a face. Hannah is rubbing off on you,” she says, standing up. “I’m going to get another drink.”
Tiffany, I notice, has watched the entire exchange from a nearby table and is fixated on Pru. She’s been in a mood all evening, since Englebert coached the witches for twenty minutes during rehearsal and spent most of them on Moonbeam.
She catches me looking and comes over.
“You should be writing this down,” she says, tilting her head toward Damien. “This is the story, right there. Famous actor chasing the washed-up lawyer around a pub. Very dignified. Very Broadway.”
“I’m off the clock.”
“Journalists are never off the clock. You told me that in tenth grade. You were insufferable about it, even back then.” She turns the stem of her glass.
“But seriously, though. You know what nobody’s asked me tonight?
Not one single person? Nobody has asked me how the understudy work is going.
I run every line she runs. I stay for every note she gets.
If Prudence Wardwell trips on a curb tomorrow, this whole production is my two hands, and the cat has never once—” She stops herself, recalibrates, and smiles.
“I’m just saying. Somebody at this party should be interviewing the person doing two jobs. ”
“I’m off the clock,” I repeat, and head to join Pru at the bar.
Annabel is on the last stool, with Skye beside her, and Skye is asking questions.
“—so like, the shop, it’s books but it’s also. The other stuff. The jars.”
“The apothecary side, yeah,” Annabel says.
“Teas, tinctures, salves. Depends what somebody needs.”
“But it’s, like, local stuff. Traditional,” Skye says, picking at her napkin. “Because I read that small towns up here have, like…Remedies. Old ones. That actually — that people say actually work.”
“Some things work,” Annabel says, carefully. “Chamomile works. Arnica works. My grandmother’s cold remedy works, mostly because it’s fifty percent honey.”
“Right. Ha. Right.” She pauses. “But like, if someone wanted something more… I don’t know. Specific. Is that a thing you can do? Do people ask you for specific stuff?”
“People ask me for all kinds of things,” Annabel shrugs. “Come by the shop. First consultation’s free and so’s the tea.”
“Okay. Yeah. Maybe. I mean… yeah.”
I collect my IPA and don’t linger. The poor girl is twenty-three and dating a man twice her age whose face has been professionally maintained for her entire lifetime. Of course she’s working up the nerve to ask a witch about beauty potions. She probably heard about it from Tiffany.
I feel briefly, uselessly sorry for her, and then Gabe pulls out the chair next to him and pats it, and I stop thinking about Skye at all.
* * *
“I saved you the corner seat,” Gabe says. “Best sight lines in the house. You can surveil the whole party.”
“You know me so well it’s concerning.”
“It’s a professional skill. In my line of work you learn to read a room.” He considers. “Granted, my rooms are usually quieter.”
“Your rooms are the quietest rooms in Duskboro.”
“Nobody’s ever sent a drink back,” he agrees, and clinks his glass against mine.
Gabe, for the record, is a funeral director.
“So, Rupert leaves Sunday,” he says. “You know he came by the funeral home last week? Wanted to know if we had the burial records for the old churchyard, the pre-1850 section. Stayed four hours.”
“He’s going to make Duskboro famous. Well. Famous to eleven other historians.”
“Hopefully the right eleven.”
Down the table, Rupert is standing — or being made to stand, really, his glass in hand, going pink under the pub lights. Someone dings a fork against a pint.