The Fate of Mercy Alban Read online

  I must’ve fallen asleep because the next thing I knew, the light that had finally begun filtering back into the sky awakened me. I slipped out of bed and into the shower, standing under the stream until the water ran cold, washing the previous night’s “visitation” from my mind.

  “The minister called early this morning,” Jane informed me at breakfast. “He wants to go over the service with you.”

  I sipped my coffee. “I guess I’ll need to decide on a date for the funeral. I’m thinking Friday, if nothing else is scheduled in the church for that day.”

  She nodded. “Would you like me to get him on the phone for you?”

  I stretched and looked outside. It was a bright blue day, not a cloud in the sky, and the water was shimmering like diamonds. I had an urge to get out of the house and into the world. “I think I’ll walk over to the church to talk with him,” I told Jane, and then turned to my daughter. “Do you want to come with me?”

  Amity finished the last of her eggs and shook her head. “I’m meeting Cody in the garden in a few minutes. Mr. Jameson said I could help them with the weeding.”

  Jane and I shared a grin. My daughter had never pulled a weed in her life. As Amity ran upstairs to brush her teeth, Jane whispered: “It’s the young man.”

  “I met him yesterday,” I confided when I was sure my daughter was out of earshot. “He’s harmless enough. And anything to get her away from that phone and out into the fresh air is a welcome change. But ask Mr. Jameson to keep an eye on her, will you?”

  Jane nodded, chuckling. “Don’t you worry. He won’t let the lass out of his sight.”

  A short while later, I had grabbed a light cardigan and was headed down the patio stairs through the gardens to the lakeshore, where a path snaked its way from our property through the woods and the cemetery beyond to the church, about a mile away. The walk would do me good.

  The church was an enormous stone building, much older than Alban House, where my family had been attending services for generations. My brothers and I had been baptized there; my parents were married there. My brothers and father, along with generations of Albans before them, had had their funerals there. Now it was my mother’s turn. It was truly a place of life and death for my family.

  I reached the church’s red wooden front door just as a man, whom I didn’t recognize, pushed it open from the inside.

  “Oh,” I said, jumping back a bit, not expecting to see anyone except our longtime minister.

  He smiled at me and leaned against the doorframe. “May I help you?”

  “I-I’m here to—” I stammered, oddly tongue-tied around this man. Then, trying again: “I’m looking for Pastor Olsen.”

  “You’re a bit late for that, I’m afraid.” The man grinned. “Chip retired five years ago.”

  I could feel my face heating up. “Sorry. I haven’t been here in a while, I guess.”

  “Not a problem,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Matthew Parker, the new guy. What can I do for you?”

  I squinted at him as I took his hand. He was the minister? This man, who was about my age and wearing jeans, a denim shirt over a faded T-shirt, and running shoes, didn’t exactly look the part.

  “I’m Grace Alban,” I said to him finally. “Our housekeeper told me you called. I’m here to talk about my mother’s funeral.”

  He smiled, the recognition evident in his face as he put his other hand over our clasped pair. “Of course,” he said. “Your mother has shown me so many photos of you, I should have known who you were right away. I’m so sorry about Adele. What a great lady. She made me feel so welcome here when I took over for Chip. I’m really going to miss her. I got rather used to seeing her in the front pew every Sunday.”

  “Thank you,” I croaked out, my throat filling up with sorrow. The grief that I had been trying to hold back ever since I heard the news of her death began to claw at me. I couldn’t say anything further to him without unleashing it, so I just stood there, holding his gaze.

  He put his hand on my shoulder. “I was just headed down to the lake,” he said gently. “Why don’t you come with me and we can talk there?”

  As we walked in silence down the path to a pair of red Adirondack chairs on the rocky shore, I tried to compose myself, breathing in and out, taking strength from the power of the lake itself. It was something I’d done since childhood. Long ago, the native people in this area believed that the lake was a living thing, creating myths about the Great Spirit that embodied the water. Many people still believed in its otherworldly power and its wrath. I know I did. I had seen it firsthand. It was as close to religion or faith as I got.

  “I spend a lot of time down here,” he said, sinking into one of the chairs. “It’s a great place to think and get centered. I write a lot of my sermons right here.”

  I let out a deep sigh, finding my voice again. “I thought I never wanted to see this lake again, but the truth is, I hadn’t realized how much I missed it until now.”

  “You’ve been away a long time,” he said.

  I stared out over the water. “Almost twenty years.”

  “Why did you leave, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  This man got to the heart of things, didn’t he? No typical Minnesotan small talk about the weather, no chitchat. Right to the real stuff.

  “There were a lot of reasons,” I deflected.

  He was quiet, waiting for me to go on. But I couldn’t stomach that conversation, not right then. I saw it all—the dark, angry water, the stark white of the boat’s keel against the gray sky, the blue jacket Jimmy was wearing.

  “I’d rather—” I began, meaning to say that I’d rather just talk about the funeral, this funeral, thanks, but the words wouldn’t come without a torrent of tears behind them. So I just sat in silence, looking out over the water, so calm now, so gentle, so comforting.

  “Grace,” he said, “whatever it was that kept you away from here, you need to know your mother loved you very much. She was so proud of you—she talked about you all the time.”

  I managed a smile. “Mom and I made our peace a while ago. After Amity was born. She came out to visit me; we talked on the phone. I sent Amity here for a few weeks each summer when she was old enough. I just haven’t come back myself. I couldn’t. Not until now.”

  He nodded and leaned forward, putting his hands on his knees. “Are you doing okay? The grief of your mother’s death paired with being back home for the first time in a couple of decades—it’s a lot to shoulder. A lot of memories here, and not all of them pleasant. I know about your brothers and your dad.”

  I thought about the troubling dream I had had the night before, but as I sat with this man on the sunny lakeshore, it didn’t seem out of the realm of possibility that I could have simply conjured up the image of my dad out of grief on my first night back at the house in two decades.

  “I’m fine.” I managed a smile. “I’m fairly certain there’s enough wine in the cellar to get me through the next few days.”

  “Regardless, anytime you need to talk, I’m here,” he said. “Night or day. It’s what I do.”

  He held my gaze for a moment. As I looked into his eyes, it occurred to me that I had never seen eyes that were quite so deeply turquoise, with rings of indigo at the edges. I fidgeted in my chair and cleared my throat.

  “Well, I’m muddling through the arrangements,” I said a little too loudly. “The caterer and funeral director and all of that.”

  “We can get one thing off your list right now,” he said. “Do you have any thoughts about what you’d like to include in the service—hymns, readings?”

  I fished my mother’s list out of my pocket and handed it to him. “She left some instructions.”

  As he read, a smile grew across his face and he chuckled. “That’s Adele, all right. She has the whole thing planned.”

  “We should decide on a date, too,” I said. “I was thinking about Friday. Does that work?”

  He pulled a phone o
ut of his pocket and checked his calendar. “That works. How does eleven o’clock strike you?”

  I nodded. “Perfect.”

  He perused my mother’s list again and grinned. “I see she didn’t want a reception in the church basement after the service. ‘No ham sandwiches!’ she wrote. Funny.”

  I felt myself smiling back at him. “I guess she couldn’t imagine the governor sitting in one of those little metal folding chairs eating potluck provided by the church ladies. We’ll have a reception at the house, just like she requested.”

  Still looking at the list, he asked: “She’s going to be cremated, then?”

  I nodded, even though he wasn’t looking at me. I couldn’t get the words out to respond. He lifted his eyes from the sheet. “It says here she wants part of her ashes scattered in the main garden by the fountain and the rest put in an urn in the family crypt.”

  “That’s right,” I croaked out. “Part of them in the garden she loved, the rest with my dad and all the Albans.”

  He smiled at me, a sad smile of understanding and empathy. “She gave this a lot of thought. It’s nice you don’t have to wonder about her last wishes. I’ve seen a lot of families at loose ends when this time comes.”

  “I’m glad of that, at least,” I said, blinking the tears back from my eyes. “So, Friday, eleven o’clock it is.”

  He nodded. “I’ll call the funeral director and make the arrangements so you won’t have to deal with that. Then you and I can go through a rundown of the service so you’ll know exactly what to expect.”

  He stood up, offering me a hand. I took it and he pulled me to my feet. “I’d love to get the particulars of the service nailed down right now, but I really should get going,” he said, and for some reason, I found myself wishing he hadn’t. I’d have liked to sit there on the lakeshore with him for the rest of the afternoon. But he went on: “I’m visiting parishioners at the hospital today. I don’t like to go there too near to mealtimes—the smell of that food …”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “We could go over the particulars of the service tonight, if you’d like to come to the house for dinner? I’m sure Jane will make something that’s a bit better than hospital food.”

  Why did I blurt that out? I quickly did damage control. “And bring your wife, of course.”

  “I don’t have a wife, and I’d love to come.”

  “An unmarried minister?” I teased as we walked back up toward the church. “I’ll bet the ladies of the congregation are in a frenzy trying to marry you off.”

  He laughed. “You have no idea.”

  We reached his car, an old green Volvo, in the parking lot. “Six o’clock, then?” I said.

  “Six it is.”

  I headed toward the path back home, feeling oddly lightened.

  CHAPTER 8

  When I told Jane about our dinner guest, she flew into high gear, calling in Candy and Michelle to help with the cleaning, laying a fire in both the parlor and the dining room fireplaces, polishing the silverware, baking bread, and preparing a chicken to roast.

  “It’s not a state dinner, you know,” I said to her, walking into the kitchen just as she plunged her hands into the bread dough. “It’s just dinner.”

  “Nonsense,” Jane clucked as she kneaded. “When people are invited to this house, they have expectations.”

  As she buzzed around, she spread joy in her wake. She clearly loved what she was doing. A visitor was coming to Alban House and Jane was in her element, there was no doubt about that. All at once, I wondered what she was going to do when the funeral was over, when Amity and I went home and this house was empty, for good this time.

  I sighed and leaned my chin on my hands, looking out the window and wishing my brothers were around to help me make some of these decisions.

  Later, I sat with a book in one of the oversized leather armchairs in the library, my legs curled up under me. It had turned from a beautiful, sunny morning into a gray, wet afternoon, and I watched as the rain hit the windows in bursts. I had nearly forgotten what a chilly, sodden mess June could be in this part of the country. Jane had laid a fire in the fireplace earlier in the day, and now it was blazing, just the thing to take the dampness out of the air.

  I caught sight of Amity stomping through the hallway, a pall of negative energy radiating from her. “Hey!” I called out, and she stopped under the library’s archway. “What’s the matter, honey?”

  “Nothing,” she groaned. “It’s just that I was having fun helping Mr. Jameson and Cody in the gardens all morning, but now this.” She flailed an arm toward the rain hitting the window.

  “Why don’t you come in here with me and grab a book?” I suggested. “The library’s full of interesting stuff.”

  “Right,” she sniffed. “I don’t think so.” She started to walk away, but then a thought came to me, as clearly as if it had been whispered into my ear.

  “If you don’t feel like reading, we could explore the secret passageways instead,” I said as nonchalantly as I could manage, pretending to go back to my book.

  This stopped her in her tracks, just as I knew it would. I tried to stifle a smile as she turned back toward me, a scowl on her face. “What are you talking about?”

  “Didn’t Grandma ever tell you?” I said, leaning forward in my chair. “This house is full of hidden doors, secret passageways, rooms within the walls. There are tunnels to the lake and the gardens and even to the cemetery.”

  She raised her eyebrows and crossed her arms over her chest, jutting one hip out to the side. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously,” I said, closing my book and setting it on the end table nearest me. “My brothers—your uncles—and I discovered them when we were kids, and we used to play in them all the time.”

  “Why would old John James Alban the First have built this house with secret passageways?” she wanted to know, taking a few cautious steps into the room. I held my breath. It was as though I was coaxing an elusive wild animal to come near.

  “The same reason castles have them, I’d expect,” I told her. “Quick getaways, clandestine operations, evading people. Do you want me to show you?”

  “Yes!” she cried, her eyes shining. A minor miracle: I could still impress my daughter and I was going to get to spend some time with her. As I unfolded myself from my armchair, I gave silent thanks for the rain.

  “Come on,” I said, putting a hand on her back and steering her toward the kitchen. The passageways had electricity, but I had no idea if it was still working. “We should get a couple of flashlights just in case.”

  A few minutes later, flashlights in hand, we were climbing the stairs. “This is so cool,” Amity murmured, her face aglow as she scanned the walls with new eyes, wondering what secrets lay hidden within them.

  “All the bedrooms have hidden doors that lead to the passageways,” I explained. “It really is quite an extensive network of tunnels.”

  I opened the door to the master suite and led Amity through the study to the bedroom and pointed toward the wall, where an enormous tapestry, a medieval-looking image of a girl sitting in a garden surrounded by animals, stretched from the ceiling all the way to the floor.

  “Pretty much anytime you see a tapestry hanging in a bedroom in this house, you’ll find a hidden door behind it,” I told her, remembering now. My mind drifted to the long-forgotten rainy days of my childhood, when my brothers and I would sneak through these secret doors into, we thought, magical worlds where anything might happen. Our imaginations in overdrive, we pretended we were going back in time to the days when Alban House was first built, when Minnesota itself was fairly new. We believed we just might encounter our grandfather as a boy, playing in the same passageways. I felt that way now.

  I lifted the tapestry’s edge and ran my hand on the wall behind it, stepping sideways toward the rug’s center. Amity followed. “See this panel?” I showed her. “It’s spring-loaded. All you have to do is press on it like this—” I put both hands
in the center of the panel and pushed. It sprung back open toward me.

  “Awesome,” Amity whispered, her eyes wide.

  I pulled the door open farther to reveal the dark, dusty passageway behind it. I felt around for the light switch and flipped it a couple of times. Nothing.

  “I’m sure these bulbs must’ve burned out long ago,” I said to my daughter. “I can’t imagine Grandma used these passageways very much.”

  “No,” she murmured, peering around me into the darkness.

  “You’re sure you’re up for this?” I asked her, teasing a bit. “You never know what we’ll find in here.” I knew there was nothing to be afraid of, nothing more terrifying than the odd spider or bat, but it was fun to give my daughter an adrenaline rush.

  She nodded. “Let’s go,” she said, nudging me a little.

  I pressed the button on my flashlight and watched as the shaft of light illuminated the passageway beyond, where the years hung in the air, clung to the wood-paneled walls, and blanketed the dark floorboards. Spiderwebs were stitched in intricate patterns, their weavers at work undisturbed for decades. It smelled of the past, of countless childhood afternoons when my brothers and I would explore here. Our footsteps echoed in the emptiness as we walked along, and I could hear Amity’s shallow breathing soft and low in my ears.

  “This leads to your room,” I told her, pointing to a door that was nearly indistinguishable from the wall on either side of it. It groaned as we pushed on it, voicing its displeasure at being awakened after such a long rest.

  “I didn’t even know this door was here,” Amity whispered as she pushed aside a tapestry and peered into her room, its light and color and brightness contrasting sharply with the dingy, shadowy passageway in which we stood.

  “Come on,” I told her, gently shutting the door and leading her farther down the hallway. “You won’t believe what’s down here. It’s almost like a house within a house.”

  And then I noticed it, what seemed to be a darkness within the light-colored dust on the wall. I shone my flashlight beam in its direction and saw, for lack of a better description, a trail along the passageway’s wall, roughly at hand height. I squinted at it. Had someone been walking there recently, absently trailing one finger through the dust as they went? That just couldn’t be. It wasn’t like my mother would’ve been creeping around these passageways, and Jane certainly wouldn’t, either. A workman, perhaps? One of Mr. Jameson’s lads?