Chapter Eighteen
After an understandably late start, Sonya thought they made good progress in the ballroom.
She found small treasures, as she’d hoped. A Valentine’s Day card, both sweet and elaborate, to Lisbeth Poole from her Edward.
It promised they’d be sweethearts forever and a day.
Not a promise he could keep, she thought as she tucked the card and envelope in a box.
They found an old Maxwell House coffee tin holding rocks and pebbles. Though obviously a child’s collection, Cleo pounced on it.
On her systematic journey through, Sonya found a beautiful piece Owen identified as a folding card table, in carved rosewood.
And immediately assigned it to the game room.
“I may suck at video games, but expand those horizons to cards, board games? Oh, I bet I could find some vintage board games online. We’d need a cabinet to put those in, or something with open shelves to display them. Display them,” she decided immediately.
“I like it.” Cleo adjusted the clip she had holding her hair up and back. “We find a pretty old jar, display those marbles. Arrange the other toys we’ve found.”
“Exactly! Get games that’ve been around awhile. Ah, Parcheesi, cribbage, backgammon. Find a vintage poker set. For display and use. Anything new and shiny, that goes in a drawer. And there it is!”
Sonya used both index fingers to point at a bookcase with three glass doors. “Isn’t that the same wood as the table? Owen, isn’t it?”
He studied the case with a mix of admiration and despair. “Yeah, it’s rosewood, and it’s a beauty. It’s not the same era as the table.”
“We don’t need matchy-matchy. We don’t want everything to look all staged and set, but fun, comfortable. It’ll go so well, and it’s just right for what I have in mind.”
“It’s pretty big,” Trey pointed out. “And the game room’s one of the smaller spaces in the manor.”
“You’re right.” Before she deflated, inspiration struck. “But there are bigger spaces down a level. We’ve got the gym, the movie theater down there already. It’s a better place for a real game room.”
“So down, let’s see.” Tapping his fingers, Owen pretended to calculate. “Four flights of stairs. I want to book hernia surgery in advance.”
“Book mine while you’re at it.”
Sonya just patted Trey’s hand because she could see it—how it could look, how it could be used and appreciated.
“Video games—we move a couch down there, a couple of comfortable chairs. Poker, that gorgeous old table, more chairs. The display for the games. A pool table, unless you fear us—an old one. And a vintage pinball machine.”
“Pinball.” Trey stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Damn it, hit a weak spot.”
“A bigger weak spot with vintage,” Owen agreed.
“Now you’re caught in my web. But you can see it, right? Obviously, it can’t be this minute, but it’d be great. Collin made good use of the spaces he opened up down there. But there’s so much more. We shift the game room down there, expand it. And we do something else with the current game room.”
“Such as?” Trey wondered.
“I don’t know yet.” She waved a hand in the air. “We’ll figure it out.”
Plan in place, to her mind, she put a sticky note on the bookcase.
“You know what this house is missing?” Trey asked.
Owen answered, “A freight elevator.”
Grinning, Trey pointed at him. “Great minds.”
After a productive weekend—with a spontaneous poker game on the table in the ballroom, the bliss of a Sunday sail—Sonya rose on Monday early enough to find Owen in the kitchen.
“About to head out. I got a workout in.”
“I’m about to do that myself.”
“That folding card table, the chairs we found, the backbreaker bookcase?”
“Yeah, yeah.” She headed for coffee. “We’ll enlist more muscle for that.”
“You don’t need to, seeing as it’s already down there. The table, chairs, the bookcase.”
“You and Trey already got it down there?”
Owen just looked at her. “Take a couple hits of coffee, think again.”
She did, then her eyes cleared. And widened. “Oh. Ohhh!”
“Yeah. You got a hell of a team around here.” He grabbed his go-cup, turned as Trey came in. “I canceled the hernia surgery.”
“Huh?”
“Some of the residents already moved the future game room stuff down there. Catch you later.” He went out the back, gave a whistle. Jones peeled off from his companions and fell into step with Owen.
“Huh?” Trey said again.
Sonya handed him her coffee, made another cup.
“Obviously my game room idea has sparked imaginations on both sides of the veil.”
She switched cups, kissed him.
“Have a good day,” she told him as she walked out.
Trey looked down at the coffee, then drank half of it standing where he was. Since he’d started early enough, he could get in a workout at his place before he went into the office.
He switched to a go-cup, topped it off.
He thought about Sonya, down in the gym, the damn bell ringing as she did curls or squats or whatever the hell. Down there with a dog and Christ knew who or what else.
Then she’d spend most of the day at her desk. Alone, but not alone. With Dobbs slamming doors and windows, or much, much worse. The mirror could pull her who knew where or when.
And there was nothing he could do about it.
He hated when he could do nothing. Day after day, he worked to find solutions for clients, to find a way through difficult situations, issues, obstacles.
But for Sonya, he had no system, no precedent, no clever argument to help pull her through the maze.
This house, he thought as he walked through it. He’d always loved it. He’d not only accepted but enjoyed knowing its history and that many who’d made it still existed inside it.
He stopped at the game room.
He’d always been welcome there. He’d had good times there. With Owen, Manny, other friends, with Collin. Dobbs had never tried to run them out.
But then, he—and they—hadn’t been an obstacle, a competitor, a threat. Not then.
“I’m all of those now.”
He hoped she knew it.
In the Quiet Place, the hands of the old clock stood at three. He could change them, but they’d only move back. Annoyed, he walked in, changed them anyway.
He paused at the music room, scanned the portraits. Five of the seven. What would happen when they found and hung the last two? No way of knowing, but by any logic, it had to matter.
He paused again at the base of the stairs, and looking up, heard doors creak open. Heard, and felt in his bones, the low hum from the third floor.
Dobbs baited him. Even knowing it, he took a step up.
Diana Ross sang out “Stop! In the Name of Love” from Sonya’s tablet in the library.
“Damn it, Clover.”
However much it grated, he did stop. Not because of the warning, but due to the reminder he’d made a promise to Sonya not to go into that room. He could regret the promise, and at that moment, he did. But he’d made it.
“The time’s going to come she’ll have to let me off the hook for that promise. The time’s going to come,” he repeated.
He went out, called Mookie. And with a last glance at the manor, drove away.
Winded but righteous after her workout, Sonya showered off the well-earned sweat. Since she had a couple of virtual meetings scheduled, she spent time on makeup.
She came out to find white cropped pants and a navy V-necked shirt on the bed.
“I guess you heard I’ll be on-screen today. This works.”
She dressed, added simple stud earrings, then wound Clover’s rainbow beads into a modified choker.
“I like it. Very presentable. Okay, Yoda, time to go to work.”
She’d held the first meeting before Cleo came down the hall.
Cleo stopped, yawned.
“Once I wake up, I’m going to take advantage of the day. I’m getting in a sail. I’ll either paint at the cove or find another spot. Then I’ll run some errands, buy the groceries—including the pork chops I’m planning to grill for dinner.”
“That sounds like a full day.”
“It is, so I’m leaving Pye here.”
Sonya nodded, waited a beat. “You want to know if I’m okay without asking if I’m okay.”
“I figure you’re sick of the question, because I would be.”
“I’m moving in that direction, so I’ll just say situation normal.”
“Isn’t the rest of that: all fucked up?”
Sonya laughed. “Well, it’s the manor, so some fuckery is expected. I’m good, promise. I’m going to FaceTime Mom after work, and tell her about seeing Dad. I wanted to settle in with it all the way before I did that. We’ll both cry, and that’ll finish the job.”
“All right. I’m going down to wake up with coffee.”
“Bring me a Coke when you come back? I’m about ready.”
“Can do.”
Yoda went down with her and the cat, another part of the morning routine. He’d have his romp outside, Sonya thought as she resumed her work.
He returned when Cleo dropped off the Coke. Sonya smiled her thanks as she continued her conference call with her first clients, the sisters of Baby Mine.
By the time Cleo came out, ready to go, she’d moved on to the final testing of another client’s website.
“Have fun!”
“No doubt about it. Make sure to get outside for a while. It’s one of those perfect days.”
“On the schedule.”
Clover used Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic” to wish Cleo bon voyage.
“Good one.”
With music playing, and Yoda settled under her desk, Sonya sank into the work.
When her alarm went off, she got up. She paused at the top of the stairs as the ball bounced below.
“You can take him and Pye outside if you want. I’m going to be at least another hour.”
She took a quick bathroom break, refreshed her lipstick.
When she came out, the manor held silent. Happy someone was enjoying Cleo’s perfect day, she went back to her desk, reviewed her notes for the meeting.
“No music till we’re done, Clover.”
Forty-three minutes later, she sat back with a sigh.
“All done, and I’m ready for a snack and a walk outside. Which means I need shoes.”
As she pushed up from her desk, stretched out several hours of sitting, she heard voices.
Not Cleo. Even if her friend had slipped into the manor without Sonya noticing, she recognized the deeper timbre of male voices.