John Saul - In the Dark of the Night

“This is way too much house for the rent,” she said, still making no move to get out of the car. “Something’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Dan assured her. “We got a good deal is all.”

Merrill wasn’t convinced of that, and as Dan and Marci got out of the car, she sat where she was, staring at the big stone house.

“If you’re not even going to get out of the car, then you better let me have the key,” Dan said.

Finally, Merrill got out and handed the key to him — a single key on a pewter Phantom Lake Real Estate fob — as if the act of relinquishing it might somehow absolve her of any responsibility for having rented the house.

Eric was already unloading boxes and suitcases and taking them up to the front porch. “C’mon, you two,” Dan said to his wife and daughter. “Marci, why don’t you help Tippy and Moxie get adjusted?”

Merrill followed him to the front door, and when it swung wide, she gasped again. But this time it wasn’t so much at the house itself, but at the panorama of the lake visible from where they stood.

“Wow,” Eric said. Picking up two suitcases, he stepped into the foyer — actually more like an enormous entry hall — and gazed in awe at the ornately carved mahogany woodwork, the marble floors, and the arched ceilings.

“Okay,” Dan conceded, grinning at Merrill. “You’re right. It’s a lot bigger than it looked, and a lot fancier. But the rent’s been paid, and they can’t raise it. So let’s just count our blessings and spend the summer pretending it’s a hundred years ago and we own a railroad or something. S’pose there’s a butler hiding around here somewhere?”

Merrill advanced to the foot of the broad staircase leading to the second floor. “Why don’t you go up and find your room,” she said to Marci.

The little girl shook her head. “I don’t want to go up there by myself.” She had let Moxie and Tippy out of their cages, and now snapped the leash on Moxie’s collar to keep him close, while Tippy began prowling through the room, sniffing everything, her tail twitching. “Tippy doesn’t like it here,” Marci announced.

“Tippy’s just poking around,” Dan countered. “She’ll love it as soon as she gets used to it. And so will you.”

Eric grabbed both his bags and managed to hold one of his sister’s suitcases under his right arm. “C’mon, Marci,” he said. “Let’s go up and find our rooms. First one upstairs gets first pick.”

Unable to resist her brother’s challenge, Marci dashed up to the top of the stairs and pushed open the first door she came to.

The room behind the door was larger than their living room in Evanston, and even the view of the lake through the large picture window couldn’t overshadow the huge four-poster bed that dominated the room. It was hung with heavy brocade curtains in a pattern of dark reds and greens that matched not only the bedspread, but also the drapes at the window, the cloth on the tables, the wallpaper, and even the carpet. A life-size painting of a man on a horse occupied most of one wall, and another was dominated by two enormous dressers made of the same heavily carved mahogany as the four-poster bed. Two large chairs and a chaise occupied the ample space left unfilled by the bed and its nightstands.

“Pretty neat, huh?” Eric said.

“I hate it,” she replied. “It’s too big.”

“Don’t be a baby. It’s a great room!” Eric dropped her suitcase on the floor, then took his own bags to a room that differed from Marci’s only in its hues: in this room there were dark blues and browns, rather than the reds and greens of Marci’s. He went back out to the car for his parents’ suitcases, took them up to the master suite, and set them at the foot of their bed, which was even larger than the four-posters in his and Marci’s rooms.

Going back downstairs again, he helped his father bring the last load of groceries into the kitchen, set them down, and started toward the door. “Okay if I go down to the boathouse?”

“Sure,” Dan replied, starting to unpack the bags onto the huge counters where a chef and two assistants could easily have worked. “Maybe I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

Eric went through the dining room and out the patio door into the late afternoon sun. Shadows stretched across the lawn, and as he started toward the lake, crows cawed from the trees.

The old stone boathouse had the same architectural style as the main house, tall and faintly gothic. There was a small terrace in front of its main door, a few large windows set into its walls, and it was situated near the dock, with double doors that opened directly onto the lake. He and Kent had tried to look in the window when he was here last summer, but the windows were too dirty to see through and the door had been padlocked. Now, the windows were washed, chairs were on the terrace, the weeds had been replaced by flowering plants in an old oak wine barrel, and the padlock on the door was gone.

Inside, the boathouse was dark and silent, the only noise coming from the lapping of the water against the old and badly dented aluminum boat that was utterly unlike the gleaming wooden runabout that Eric had been picturing. In the corners of the concrete walkway that ran around the three walls of the boathouse were old tackle boxes, crawfish traps, and some tools that he didn’t recognize. A sling hoist with enormous wheels for raising the boat had been installed in the center of the structure, and seemed the only modern thing to have entered the boathouse in a hundred years.

The cover was off the boat’s outboard engine, and a tool kit was open on the boat seat.

A fouled spark plug lay on a rag on the floor of the boat.

Clearly, he wouldn’t be taking the boat out tonight.

THE KITCHEN WAS bright and roomy, if a little dated, but surprisingly well stocked with better cookware than she had at home, and by the time Merrill had put all the groceries away, she was starting to feel better about the place. Except that the big kitchen and formal dining room seemed to demand something a lot more elaborate for dinner than the hot dogs and potato salad she had planned.

“I’m going to start the barbecue,” Dan said as he came out of the pantry, heading toward the dining room and the terrace beyond. But the expression in his wife’s eyes stopped him. “Are you okay?”

Merrill did her best to hide her misgivings, though she knew her whole family — and especially her husband — could read her like a book. “Oh, it’s nothing, really,” she sighed. “Just another of my stupid thoughts.”

“Which one this time?” Dan asked, coming over and slipping his arms around her.

Merrill sighed ruefully. “A really stupid one. Namely, should we be eating hot dogs and potato salad in that gorgeous dining room?”

Dan laughed out loud. “Absolutely not. So we won’t — we’ll eat our hot dogs and potato salad out on the terrace like the civilized people we are. And we’ll save the dining room for formal occasions.”

“I don’t intend to have any formal occasions,” Merrill protested.

“Then we’ll ignore the dining room,” Dan told her. “That’s the nice thing about renting — since we don’t own the house, we don’t have to use any of the rooms we don’t like. It’s not like we bought the place and have to get our money’s worth. So figure out which rooms you like, and ignore the rest.”

He continued out of the kitchen, and Merrill took the hot dogs from the refrigerator and cut the package open. If only it were that simple, she thought. Then she decided to put her worries aside. He’s right, she told herself. All I have to do is ignore the rooms I don’t like. It’s only for the summer. It’s not forever.