Элизабет Чандлер: Legacy of Lies

“Megan.”

The voice was low and firm, used to being obeyed. I took a deep breath and walked down the hall, stopping inside the frame of the door. The room was a library, its dark walls lined with shelves of books. It smelled of leather and old fireplace ashes. I liked it immediately; I wish I could say the same for the white-haired woman who sat stiff-backed behind a desk.

She rose slowly, surprising me with her height. I was three inches taller than my mother, and so was she. Helen Scarborough Barnes observed me so closely I felt as if she were counting the threads in my clothes, adding up them and everything else she saw to see if I passed. Fine. I could study her, too, and decide whether she passed as a grandmother.

She had pale skin and high cheekbones. Her hair, pulled back in a French twist, and tiny drop earrings gave her a kind of elegance despite the fact she was wearing slacks. I met her light blue eyes as steadily as I could.

“You may sit down,” she said.

“I’d like to stand, if you don’t mind. I’ve been sitting all day.”

There was a slight pause, then she nodded and seated herself. “Just don’t pace.”

I felt an incredible urge to pace but kept it in check.

“How is your mother doing?” she asked.

“Good-well,” I corrected my grammar. “Did you know she finished her master’s degree? Last month she started a new job. She’s at the same school, but as a reading specialist.

She loves the kids. She’s terrific with them.”

I knew I was chattering.

“And your brothers?”

“They’re great. Pete, who’s twelve, is into music. Dave’s ten and lives for sports.”

“And your trip here?”

“My father’s doing great, too,” I said, though she hadn’t asked about him. “He was honored by the Sonoran Desert Museum for his work with mammals.”

“Please answer only the questions I ask,” Grandmother told me.

“Just filling in the details,” I responded cheerfully, though we both knew otherwise. I wasn’t about to let Dad be cut out of the family.

“How was your trip here?”

“Fine.”

She waited a moment, perhaps to see if I’d fill in the details. I didn’t.

“I had expected you to come here in the summer, Megan.”

“As Mom explained to you, I go to a year-round school and had already committed myself to working at a camp for my three-week summer break. October was the next free time.”

“What is your parentage?”

The sudden question took me aback. I stared at her for a long moment. “My mother is Carolyn Barnes, my father, Kent Tilby,” I said, as if that were news.

“You know what I mean, girl.”

I pressed my lips together.

“Your coloring is. . unusual,” she observed.

I decided not to reply. I have straight black hair, which I keep shoulder length, gray eyes, and skin that refuses to tan. In the bronze land of Arizona, I stand out like a white mushroom, but I didn’t think that was the point of her comment.

Correctly deducing that she wasn’t going to get any information about my birth parents, Helen Barnes rose from her chair. “1 will show you your room.”

I followed her into the hall, fuming. I don’t know what I had hoped for from her. An effort to get to know me, a conversation that lasted longer than three minutes and revealed some interest in me, other than genetic? Some shyness or awkwardness that told me that she, too, had intense feelings about this first meeting? There was no such sign. Her eyes could have iced over the Gulf of Mexico.

“You will see the downstairs first,” she said.

I nodded. Apparently, “Would you like to?” wasn’t part of her vocabulary.

She showed me the three other rooms that opened off the center hall. Like the library, each had a high ceiling and corner fireplace, but their walls were painted in bolder colors: peacock blue in the front parlor, bright mustard in the music room. The dining room, which was at the back of the main house and across the hall from the library, was blood red. All of the rooms had paintings with heavy gilt frames; the theme in the gory-colored dining room was animals and hunting. I hoped we ate in the kitchen.

“When was this house built?” I asked, abruptly turning away from an impaled deer.

“In 1720,” my grandmother answered, “by a family named Winchester.”

“When did our family move in?”

“The Scarboroughs bought the house, the land, and the mill in the mid-1800s.”

“Is that when our family came over from England?”

“The Scarboroughs”-she said the name clearly, as if to make a distinction between that family and what I called our family-“have been in Maryland since the 1600s. This land was purchased by the seventh generation as a wedding gift for a son.” She led the way back into the hall. “Carry whatever luggage you can,” she told me, resting a thin hand on the curved banister. “Matt will bring up the rest when he gets home from his study session.”

Study session? I thought. Better not mention that my cousin had come close to hitting Ginny’s car when he was supposed to be hitting the books. I carried all of my luggage.

The trim in the upstairs hall was the same blue as the parlor’s, but the walls were softened by faded wallpaper. A mirror, darkened with age, hung on one wall; on another were several photographs, old tintypes. My grandmother grew impatient as I looked at them.

“Megan.” She waited by the door at the top of the stairs, the only one open in the hall.

I entered and set down my bags. The square room had a fireplace in one corner and a four-poster bed in the center.

Though the inside shutters had been pulled back and the windows opened, there was a musty smell, reminding me that a river was near.

“Where’s the water?” I asked, quickly crossing to a window. “On the map it looked close to the house. Oh, my gosh, the trees!” I couldn’t hide my enthusiasm. “I’ve never seen so much green, not in Tucson. Look, their tops are just turning gold.”

My grandmother, not interested in looking, remained in the doorway, “You can see the creek and river when the leaves have fallen. These old homes were not built directly on the water because of the insects. Now they spray.”

“Oh.”

“I’ll leave you to unpack,” she said. “Your bathroom is through that door. Dinner is at six. If there is anything you need-”

“What am I supposed to call you?”

She hesitated.

“What does my cousin call you?” I asked.

“Grandmother.”

“That’s cool.”

I don’t think she thought so, but she didn’t object. She reached back for the door handle to pull it closed behind her. “Just so we understand each other, Megan. I will respect your privacy and assume you will respect mine.”

I gazed after her as she shut the door. What was that supposed to mean? I had been respecting her privacy for the last sixteen years. If she didn’t want to open the door between us now, why had she bothered to invite me?

I glanced around the bedroom. The rooms in this house were big-formal downstairs, and simple, almost stark, upstairs. To my relief, they were nothing like the cozy room where I often played in my dream. That would have been a little too weird. There were explanations for the outward resemblance of the two houses. Mom might have described her home to me long ago, when I was too young to know I shouldn’t ask about it. Or maybe I’d seen a picture of a colonial house that resembled this one. Now and then Mom subscribed to East Coast magazines that had photos of old homes. There were probably just a few basic styles.

I unpacked my clothes, then lifted out several smallframed pictures and set them on the bureau, smiling at the menagerie of people and critters. Dad’s a veterinarian and Mom volunteers at an animal shelter. Our home is a small zoo, and I’m not just referring to my brothers.