He reached for the brass knob and turned it, easing the door open. It creaked on its hinges and swung inward.
He poked his head into the shadowy house. It was a deathly quiet void. He slipped through the door and lit a lamp. Golden light cut a path through the shadows.
He closed the door behind him and went to the base of the stairs. "Mariah? Are you up there?"
Still no answer.
"If you are, Im gonna take my shower. " He started to turn away from the stairway, then stopped.
Mariahs room was at the top of stairs.
Up there, just a few short feet away, lay her secret sanctuary. Somewhere, amongst her personal items, was the trinket or doodad that would explain the sadness in her eyes and the bitterness in her smile.
Before he knew it, he was walking up the stairs. At the landing he paused and looked around again. The corridor was dark and empty.
"Mariah?" He called her name tentatively, hoping now that she wouldnt answer.
She didnt.
He crept toward her bedroom and gently turned the knob. With a single push, the door swung inward on its arc.
The room was austere and cold, lit only by the bloody red haze of a dying sun. No fresh flowers brightened the dresser, no scrap of lace softened the scratched wood of the washstand. A white coverlet lay stretched across the four-poster oak bed like a layer of new-fallen snow. Not a single wrinkle marred the stark linen. There was no hint, no evidence at all, of the woman who slept beneath it.
He felt . . . disappointed but had no idea why.
The dresser caught his eye. Slowly, feeling keenly out of place, he crossed the shadowy room. The top of the dresser was empty but for a meticulous pile of hairpins in a cracked china saucer, and a wooden hairbrush. There were no knickknacks, or photos, or mementos. No dried rose from a long-ago love affair.
Gently he eased the top drawer open and found it filled with precisely folded undergarments. He closed the drawer quickly and opened the others, one by one.
It wasnt until the bottom drawer that he found anything even vaguely enlightening.
There, folded in a small, neat square, was a thin blue blanket, its edges lovingly embroidered in yellow and green flowers and puffy white lambs. Beside it lay an old-fashioned baby bottle and a tarnished silver rattle.
He thought of the hours that embroidery had taken, the time that someone had spared to make the hem just right, the blossoms perfect. Greta, no doubt. The woman had made certain that the blanket was just right for her baby. And Mariah had saved it all these years along with her bottle and rattle. Wasnt that how women did things? Pass special items down from generation to generation.
For the Throckmorton women, it all ended here in a half-empty, forgotten drawer.
Mariah had no children to wrap lovingly in the blanket. But she kept the baby things all these years, obviously hoping for the future.
Frowning, he eased the drawer shut. Did she still hope for a child, had she ever? Or was this the resting place for forgotten dreams? The questions made him feel edgy, opened the way for feelings he didnt want to have.
>
Straightening, he moved cautiously toward the ar-moire. He knew what hed find before he opened it, and he wasnt disappointed. It was filled with dozens of drab, brown dresses and tired aprons.
She didnt even own a dress of another color. Why? he wondered. Why was she so obsessed with looking drab and unobtrusive?
Feeling unaccountably sad, he left the room and went into the hallway, closing the door behind him. He was halfway down the stairs when he realized why he felt uncomfortable.
He stopped and glanced back up the stairs. It dawned on him, what hed found in her room.
It was a room exactly like his. Empty, impersonal. The room of a person who chooses not to exist. It was a place with a bed, but no memories. A place to sleep; not a place to dream.
His frown deepened. Hed made a mistake in coming here tonight. Hed wanted to see a room filled with ruffly knickknacks and lacy gewgaws. A room like any other, to indicate that she was a woman like any other.
What hed found was the lonely, empty refuge of a woman strikingly disconnected to the world.
A woman he understood all too well.