P. Parrish - Heart of Ice

I’m like a duck, she would joke, it’s all smooth on the top, but underneath I’m paddling like crazy.

This was the first time she had to worry about having a doctor on call.

The man came down the stairs. Maisey handed him his money and ushered him out the door. She watched him pull up his coat collar, climb aboard the dray, and urge his horses on.

She went through the archway and into the large, cold room. She stood in the center, turning in a slow circle. Mrs. Chapman had insisted on calling it a parlor, but it was what most folks would call a family room, really, because it was the only room in the huge house where the family had always gathered. At least in those early days.

More oak paneling, a mix of wicker and lumpy slip-covered furniture, bookcases crammed with board games and Mrs. Chapman’s Book-of-the-Month Club novels, a yawning stone fireplace with a mantel crowded with model sailboats, crumbling dried flowers in blue porcelain vases, driftwood, and dozens of picture frames.

Maisey went to the mantel, her eyes traveling over all the family photographs. The earliest one showing Edward and Ellen Chapman alone just after their marriage. Another of a beaming Mr. Edward, Ross just a toddler and baby Julie in Mrs. Chapman’s arms. And all the later ones-Mr. Edward playing croquet on the lawn with the kids, Ross tan and lanky standing near his sailboat, Julie on a pony.

Maisey picked up one of the larger frames. It was the last photograph of Ellen Chapman taken at the cottage, two summers after her back surgery. She was sitting alone in a glider on the veranda. A book lay across her knee, and she was staring into the distance, hand to her forehead. The sadness was there in her face, as if she knew that even as the pain pills were taking hold of her, her husband and children were slipping away.

Maisey put the frame back in its place among the others, thinking that seeing the photographs displayed like this was like watching the Chapman family age all over again, watching their small circle expand, contract, and then, with the final impact of Julie’s disappearance, slowly ripple into nothingness.

One frame had fallen over. Maisey picked it up, dusted it on her sleeve, and started to put it back. She paused. It was Julie, taken when she was just seven. She was sitting alone in a wicker chair on the veranda, staring up into the camera. Her dark eyes were wide, and there was a small rare smile on her face.

Maisey felt a tightness in her chest, and it surprised her. She thought she had dealt with the hole in her heart a long time ago, thought she had managed to put Julie’s memory away.

But Julie was still there, as real as anything, and Maisey could see her now, a little raven-haired thing running across the wide green lawn with the huge blue lake behind her, her arms flung wide.

“Maisey?”

The voice was a whisper, but she heard it as sure as a high-pitched whistle. She set the frame back on the mantel and went quickly up the staircase.

The door to the first bedroom was open, the Louis Vuitton cases sitting just inside. Edward Chapman was in a chair at the bay window that looked out over the lake, but his eyes were turned to the door, waiting for her.

The room was cold. She went to him, pulling a plaid wool blanket off the bed as she passed it. She laid it over his lap.

“The man promised the heat will be on by tonight,” she said, tucking it around him.

“I’m fine,” he said.

But she could tell he wasn’t. She knelt and checked the gauge on his oxygen. The canister was full, and the flow was good. When she looked back at his face she realized he wasn’t in want of a breath. He was in want of his daughter.

It had been bad enough twenty-one years ago, watching him deal with everything. Julie’s disappearance, the publicity, the police, the investigation that went nowhere, the memorial service with the empty coffin. It had torn the family apart. Slowly, over the years, the hole in Mr. Edward’s heart scarred, but Maisey knew it had never really healed.

But now, because someone had found bones in that old place, it had been opened again.

“Maisey?”

She looked down at Edward and took his hand. It was cold.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” she said.

* * *

It was just after four, and the afternoon shadows were creeping into the rooms. Edward Chapman was asleep, and Maisey was sitting in a rocker in front of the parlor’s fireplace. She was tired from the long day. There was a bottle of Harveys Bristol Cream on the table-she had ordered it on impulse from Doud’s-but the full glass sat untouched near her elbow.

The old Victorian house was silent around her, like a huge sleeping animal holding her in its cold embrace. Her eyes went to the bank of windows bleeding gold light and then to the game table in the dark corner where the laughter once billowed like clean white sheets in the wind.

It was so quiet, so very quiet.

She had closed her eyes and drifted off when a sharp sound drew her back.

“Hello?”

A figure standing in the archway.

“Maisey, is that you?”

A thud as the man dropped his suitcase. He came into the parlor, pausing to switch on a lamp. She squinted, and Ross Chapman came into focus.

He was forty now, she realized, and with his fine haircut and fancy clothes he had the sheen of a man working hard to impress. She hadn’t seen him in more than a year, the last time he had come to the house in Bloomfield Hills, bringing his two kids and wife for a quick visit to see his father at Christmas. But she had seen him on TV a lot lately because he was having a hard time against that Burkett guy, who was giving him a run for his money in the polls.

Money. . that was a problem for Mr. Ross right now. She had read the newspaper articles about contributions not going as well as they should and that his campaign was almost broke. She had eavesdropped on his telephone conversations with Mr. Edward, the ones where he begged for money, almost like he had when he was thirteen. She had heard, too, the anger in Mr. Ross’s voice when Mr. Edward said no more.

She stared up at him. “I didn’t expect you till tomorrow.”

“I know. I thought I’d better get here as quick as I could.”

Ross Chapman unbuttoned his raincoat, his eyes going to the bottle of sherry before locking back on Maisey.

“How’s Dad?” he asked.

“Sleeping. I gave him a pill. He was very tired and pretty upset.”

Ross Chapman nodded slowly. “We all are,” he said.

“No,” Maisey said. “It’s worse than what they told you.”

“What do you mean?”

“The police told Mr. Edward that she. . your sister. . the skeleton, it didn’t have a head. Your father was very upset after hearing that.”

She heard the creak of the wicker as he dropped into the chair next to hers. Still she couldn’t bring herself to look at him.

“Do you have another glass?”

She turned. His eyes were glistening. She slid her full glass toward him. “I haven’t touched it.”

He hesitated, then picked it up and downed the sherry in one gulp. As she watched him, she had a memory of the day she caught him sneaking bourbon from the liquor cabinet. Ross had been just twelve, and she had given him a hard swat on the butt because Mr. Edward was gone so much he trusted her to discipline the children as she saw fit and Mrs. Chapman wasn’t in any condition to care.

And she had taken that responsibility seriously. Even later when she caught him with a girl in his bedroom, even when money started disappearing from her purse. She had always handled Ross herself, never bothering Mr. Edward.

“What else did the police tell Dad?” he asked.

“He didn’t tell me very much, and I just wanted to get him back here to the house. I think the police are waiting to talk to you.”