Marcia Talley - The Last Refuge

Amy sniggered. ‘OK.’ With a nervous glance over my shoulder in the direction of the dress shop, Amy bent her head over her iPhone and swiped it back on. I watched as she typed: OK. F U Drew, where did we first have sex? She tapped Send. Together we watched the status bar creep along the bottom of the screen as the message went on its way.

But it didn’t. According to a red exclamation point in a circle on the screen, the send had failed. ‘Shit, it didn’t go.’

‘Try it again.’

Amy tapped the screen, but once again, the send was aborted. This time, a message popped up in a gray balloon: Error Invalid Number. Please re-send using a valid ten-digit mobile number or a valid short code .

‘See, I told you. Somebody hates me and is doing this to make me crazy.’

‘If Drew is alive and on the run,’ I suggested, grasping at straws, ‘maybe he’s using a satellite phone or a throwaway cell.’

‘Ten months ago, I might have believed you, Hannah, but now? If Drew were alive, he would have contacted me long before this. Trust me, this is just some bastard’s idea of a cruel joke.’

‘Yoo-hoo! Hannah!’ It was Melody, fully dressed, bouncing on her toes, calling to us from the back door. Chad had backed out of the house and down the steps ahead of her and was filming the whole episode. ‘Wait till you see what I’ve picked out!’

Amy hastily slipped her iPhone back into her pocket.

‘Why did you keep your phone?’ I whispered as we both rose to our feet. I scooped up my hat from the lawn, then linked my arm through hers. ‘You know phones aren’t allowed.’

‘Security?’ she said as we hurried to join Melody inside. ‘A lifeline to the outside world?’

‘You can walk out of Patriot House any time you want, Amy. We’re not prisoners.’

I felt her shrug. ‘I’m one of those A-type, adult child of an alcoholic who doesn’t like to admit failure. I’m a workaholic – when I have a job, that is. When we married, Drew and I agreed I’d be a stay-at-home mom.’ She paused, tugged on my arm, holding me back. ‘We were planning on starting a family.’

Chad executed an about-face and aimed the camera in our direction. Thinking about Amy’s shattered dreams, I wanted to bawl, but I beamed at the camera instead.

‘Wanna know how I got the phone past the barbarians at the gate?’ Amy kept her voice low.

Since I’d considered trying to hold on to my iPhone myself, I felt a bit guilty giving Amy a hard time about it. ‘How?’

‘In my shoe.’

‘Clever girl.’

She leaned closer, whispered into my ear. ‘Made me limp a bit, but nobody noticed. Don’t know why I bothered, actually, because of the jamming.

‘I wish I were having a gown made, madam,’ she chirped a few seconds later, purely for the benefit of Chad and his camera.

‘When my gown is finished, Amy, you may wear my old one to the ball.’

‘Oh!’ she gushed. ‘That peachy one with the flowers on it?’

‘The very one.’

Amy flung out her arms and wrapped me in an impetuous hug. ‘Oh, madam, thank you! That will be wonderful!’

Chad zoomed in for a close-up, but I didn’t pull away. Even in 1774, hugging one’s maid couldn’t have been a sin. And if anyone needed a hug at that moment, it was Miss Amy Cornell.

That evening after supper – as was the colonial custom – the women, Amy, Melody and I, prepared to retire to the parlor leaving the men, Jack, Michael and Alex, to linger over their port in the dining room, smoking their pipes and hand-rolled cigars. Gabe had fallen asleep in his chair, clutching a pack of cards, having exhausted himself (and his audience) with fledgling feats of legerdemain.

Using a little silver bell, I summoned French to begin clearing away the dishes. Jeffrey slouched in behind her, carrying a wooden box which he opened and offered to Jack. ‘Cigar, sir?’

‘Ah, yes,’ Jack replied, leaning forward to peer into the box. He selected one of several long, cylindrical-shaped objects that looked more like mummified ape fingers than cigars. ‘Rolled ’em myself,’ he said, sliding a candlestick across the tablecloth and using the flame to light the loathsome object.

‘French, would you please take young Houdini up to bed?’ I asked.

As French left the dining room with a drowsy Gabe, Alex made a face at the acrid cloud of burning tobacco smoke wafting in his direction. ‘I didn’t think cigars were invented until sometime in the eighteenth century,’ he commented, reaching for a European-style pipe with orange and brown geometric designs incised around its belly-shaped bowl.

‘Nope.’ Jack drew smoke into his mouth, held it there for a moment, then let it escape in a thin stream from between pursed lips. ‘Cigars arrived here in 1762 with a fellow named Israel Putnam who’d been serving with the British army in Cuba when they captured Havana.’ He gazed at the glowing tip of his cigar like a proud father. ‘My tobacconist on Maryland Avenue was able to acquire some for me.’

Michael began stuffing the bowl of a plain white clay pipe with tobacco, tamping the leaves down with his thumb. ‘Thank God I don’t have to inhale,’ he said as Jeffrey touched a burning taper to the bowl and Michael fired it up.

I rose, fanning the smoke away from my face with my hand, suppressing a cough as I said, ‘Well, if you gentlemen will excuse us.’

A few minutes later, I settled down in the parlor with a book, leaning as closely as I dared to the candles without setting my hair on fire, and Melody flounced in and plopped down on the loveseat to have another go at her embroidery. After lighting all the candles in the room, Amy began to browse through the sheet music that was arranged in piles on top of the harpsichord. Slowly, dreamily, she dusted her fingers lightly along the whole length of the keyboard and said, ‘I think we should have a little music, don’t you? Would you like me to play something?’

My head jerked around so quickly I was in danger of whiplash. ‘You play?’

‘A well-kept secret, but yes, I do. What would you like? Scarlatti? Mozart? Bach? Beethoven?’

‘Beethoven wasn’t born yet,’ I said.

Amy grinned. ‘Was too. He would have been four, but I don’t think he was composing yet. He wasn’t as precocious as Mozart.’

‘Mozart would be lovely.’

Amy scooted the bench out, sat down and settled her skirts around her. She rested her fingers lightly on the keys, cocked her head, and began to play from memory. I recognized the tune: Mozart’s march from the Marriage of Figaro . When she finished the short piece we clapped madly and I said, ‘The only thing I miss is the hysterical laugh at the end.’

Melody shot me a what-are-you-crazy kind of look, so I asked her, ‘Did you see the movie, Amadeus ?’

Melody shook her head.

Why was I not surprised? Amadeus came out in 1984, years before Melody was born. I felt old as Methuselah. ‘When you get home, Melody, rent it from Netflix, and you’ll get the joke about the laugh,’ I said, before turning back to Amy and urging her to play another piece.

In the middle of Bach’s little ‘Minuet in G,’ the gentlemen joined us, Alex in the lead. He laid a finger against his lips and quietly selected one of the straight-backed chairs that had been lined up in the shadows against the wall and dragged it out into the candlelight. Michael followed suit, while Jack sat down with a grunt on the loveseat next to his daughter.

When the last note died away, Alex Mueller – who was clapping louder than everyone else put together, or so it seemed to me – leapt to his feet and shouted, ‘Brava! Brava! Encore! Encore!’

Amy twisted round to face him, bowed her head slightly, smiled and apologized. ‘I’m afraid that’s all I know by heart. Why don’t you play something for us, Alex?’