Siri Mitchell - Chateau of Echoes

“My favorite things.”

“But what are a thirteen-year-old girl’s favorite things?”

I thought back through the years to my preadolescent days and the box of treasures that I had kept underneath my bed.

“Yo-yos, art projects, dried flowers, insect collections.” I stopped for a moment to tug at a particularly stubborn root. “Paper dolls, gum machine jewelry. Favorite books. Notes from friends.” Rain began splotting around us. The wind had begun to blow more forcefully. Three rows left. I wouldn’t be able to finish. “Time to go inside.”

Cranwell helped me to my feet and picked up my pail of gardening tools. “Would you like me to run this to the garage?”

The raindrops were starting to fall faster.

“No. I’ll just leave it in the kitchen and take it back tomorrow.”

We sprinted the fifty yards to the kitchen’s back door. Cranwell helped me shove the door shut and bolt it.

“It’s going to storm all night,” I commented as I pulled the hat from my head and stuffed it into my pocket.

“You think?”

“I know.” I’d gotten used to the weather’s rhythm during the three years I’d spent in Brittany. As if the wind’s chill fingers had followed me inside, my teeth began to chatter. “Espresso?” I asked as I made a beeline for the machine.

“Great. It’ll help take the chill off.”

Primed by the jolt of caffeine, I opened my mouth and started talking; I soon found I couldn’t stop. Before I had the presence of mind to censor my words, I heard myself talking to Cranwell about the day Peter died.

“I was always nervous when I knew he was flying somewhere. And I was always nervous when I knew he was on assignment. But that’s the funny part: He wasn’t flying that day, and he wasn’t on assignment. I always thought that if something happened to him, I would know. I would feel it.

“I felt nothing. I thought they were joking when they told me. I just could not believe that he would leave this world and that I would have no knowledge of it. That’s what was most devastating.

“That and the fact that I have no idea whether or not I believe in heaven anymore, and even if I did, I don’t know whether or not he’d be there.”

“He wasn’t a believer?”

“Not that I know of. And I knew him very well.” If Cranwell really wanted me to talk about my ongoing feud with God, I’d decided that the time was now. “I just don’t know if I can be part of a religion with a God like that.”

“What did you do after he died?”

“I went to a therapist in Paris, and that helped.” The French are great humanists and humanism is noble. It’s very big on human potential and relatively silent on guilt and sin. “But mostly I cooked. I cooked these fabulous five-course meals. For myself. It was the second year, when I moved here, that I really worked through it. This chateau was my therapy. I worked on one room at a time, contracting out what I couldn’t do myself. By the time it was finished, I had worked out the grief.”

“Do you miss him?”

“Of course.” I’d had enough of talking about Peter. I shrugged out of the heavy wool shirt I was wearing and set it on top of the island. “What made you want to be a writer?”

“Don’t know, really. I just always knew I had the ability to write a book. I finally got to the point where I had something to write about.”

“I’ve always heard you should write about things you know. Is that true?”

“In certain ways. I write about international espionage, politics, and conspiracy. I don’t know anything personally about that sort of lifestyle. But I do know about betrayal. I know about loyalty and what it costs. I know about love and the sacrifice it requires.”

I caught myself gazing deeply into his eyes, leaning toward his voice. I blinked and reoriented myself on my stool.

“If I strictly wrote what I knew, I would continually be writing an autobiography.”

“Your life must be so different.”

“Than whose? Than yours? We have quite a bit in common, I think. I go underground when I write, and you live your life hiding out.”

“I do not.”

“Yes, Freddie, you do. Why else do you refuse guests? Why else do you live twenty miles from the nearest town?”

“I need solitude.”

“So do I. When I write. But I always surface afterward. You need to reconnect with the world.”

“I go to Italy every January.”

“And visit whom?”

“I go to the Forum. I go to the Coliseum. I go to Capri.”

“To visit whom? You visit ancient sites when you travel; you live in a forest populated by ancient, mythical characters. You even try to push away God, the giver of life, the healer of broken hearts. Your whole life is one long communion with the dead. It’s time to move on, Freddie. Let Peter go.”

“That’s ridiculous. Peter died four years ago.”

“And now it’s time to move on.”

Just what I needed: an amateur psychologist. Refusing to listen, I turned my back on Cranwell and my attention to cleaning our coffee cups. After a while, he left.

I felt like swearing, but even that overwhelming urge couldn’t override a childhood of sermons and Sunday school.

The only times I’d thought of Peter all autumn were the times Cranwell had brought him to mind.

When I started on a tart crust for dessert, I’m afraid I was a little more vicious with the pastry than I needed to be. I ended up throwing it away and starting all over. It would have been too tough.

I thought about what Cranwell said the next morning as I worked in the kitchen. Although most of it was garbage, he did have a point about moving on. And I had moved on.

In my head.

But I still wore my wedding ring. I looked at it in the clear morning light which filtered through the windows. It was a simple solitaire set into a platinum band. Peter had picked it himself, and I had always loved it. But maybe it was time.

As an experiment, I took it off.

Kneading and shaping baguettes and brioches, my finger felt naked. When I went up to deliver Cranwell’s breakfast that morning, I felt exposed. The ring had protected me for so long that I had taken it for granted.

Cranwell was seated at the table, with his butterscotch-colored robe flung over his caramel and burgundy paisley silk pajamas. He looked up from his computer, glancing at me over the top of his glasses.

I handed him the tray, and then I spooned a cube of sugar from the bowl with my left hand. It rolled into the coffee with a plop.

It was just a test, to see if he’d notice.

He took the cup from my hand, looking at it, but not really seeing it.

But when I turned to leave, he caught my hand, stopping me.

“I can help you later.” He was trying to tell me something with his eyes, and I could not look away from them.

“Help me what?” I swallowed.

“Look for your ring.”

My hand trembled; my cheeks flamed. I couldn’t help it. “It’s not lost.” I tugged my hand loose and left the room.

On my return to the kitchen, I pulled the ring from my pocket and screwed it back onto my finger. It seemed safer.

That afternoon, as I made crêpes for dinner, I tried to decide what it was about Cranwell that was so attractive. I’d always thought that self-delusion was reserved for cowards, and so I could not deny that he was attractive and that I was attracted to him. That is not to say that I trusted him. I absolutely did not.

Would not.

As I slid pats of butter across the crêpe pan, poured pools of batter on the metal surface, and spun a rake across the mix to spread it out, I had to be honest with myself. Cranwell was attractive.

His eyes were hypnotic.

But my feelings for him were not all based on the way he looked. They had something to do with his laugh. It started in his chest as a ‘humph’ and then ricocheted inside him until it burst out into a chuckle.