"Come on," Ami said, taking my hand. "I have a big house to show you, and your room, and then we'll talk about your new wardrobe and everything or anything you want to talk about."
We started toward the door.
Wade backed out, waved, and drove off. The garage door began to come down.
It was like a curtain dropping on my past. For just a moment, a split second in fact, I thought I heard Noble call out to me, his voice shut off by the closing of the garage door. I stared at it and listened.
"Come on, silly. We have a lot to do," Ami urged. She tugged me, and I followed her into what seemed to me to be a storybook world, looking back only once, but fearfully, as though I would be turned into a pillar of salt.
4 A Level of Temptation
. Although I had never been in a mansion, I thought again that Ami wasn't exaggerating when she categorized her home as one in Mother Higgins's office. If anything, she had been understating. The only comparable place I had visited was a museum I had gone to on a school trip. I had never seen doors so tall and ceilings so high in someone's home. Two people could live in a house this big and not see each other all
day, I thought.
From the garage, we stepped into an entryway that took us past a pantry the size of the kitchen at the orphanage. I wondered, how could only two people need so much? All of the shelves were stocked neatly with cans and packaged goods. The shelves were so high that a ladder on rollers was needed to reach the top. Toward the rear was a walk-in freezer that I imagined was normally found only in good-sized restaurants.
"It looks like enough food for a hotel," I said. "We don't have as much back at the orphanage for all the girls and all the nuns."
Ami laughed, then shook her head and smirked. "Wade likes to get things cheaper by buying them in bulk. We do have a cook who orders the food, Mrs. McAlister, and she's good at that and a wonderful chef, but Mrs. Cukor hovers over her so closely, she's threatening to quit. Of course, she's been threatening that every other month for as long as I've been here," Ami explained with a smile. "Those two are always complaining about each other, not that anyone pays much attention."
As if taking the cue from the sound of her name, Mrs. McAlister stepped out of the kitchen and into the hallway to greet us. Draped in an ankle-length white apron, she was wiping her hands on a dish towel. Looking behind her, I saw what appeared to be a very modern kitchen for a house this old. The appliances were all stainless steel, and the floor looked newly tiled in a pale yellow limestone.
All I could think when I saw Mrs. McAlister was, either she was too skinny to be a cook, or else she didn't like her own food. Our cook back at the orphanage, Mrs. Putnam, weighed at least two hundred pounds and was only five feet tall.
A good three inches taller than both Ami and me, Mrs. McAlister was thin, with long spidery arms and a long, narrow neck upon which her head rested like a weathercock, making jerky little motions to the right or left when she looked from Ami to me and back to Ami.
She wore netting over her dark gray hair, pinned so tightly around her head that it resembled a helmet. Under a wide forehead dotted with brown age spots, she had untrimmed dark brown eyebrows that nearly grew into each other. Because she was so thin, the features of her long face were hard and very unfeminine. Her nose came to such a point that it looked like it could be used to punch holes in cans, and the dark line between her narrow lips made it seem as if her mouth had been cut out with a razor. I thought she had terrible posture, turning her shoulders in-ward and making her chest and small bosom look concave.
"Oh, Mrs. McAlister. This is Celeste, our --" Ami paused and looked at me. "What should I call you? I'm not calling you daughter, and referring to you as an orphan is terrible. What is the word I want?" she asked me.
"Guest?" I offered with a shrug. I was half kidding, but she leaped at it.
"Yes, that's wonderful. Guest. We're looking after her until she reaches the age of eighteen. I'm sure Wade has explained."
"He has. I've already set the table for four tonight. Mr. Emerson himself is coming to dinner, seeing as you've brought home a permanent guest to live in his house," she said dryly. "He called me directly," she concluded, adding to her sense of importance. "Welcome," she said, nodding at me, and then she jerked her head toward Ami. "I'm putting up the beef filet for tonight with my small potatoes, the ones Mr. Emerson himself likes so much," she added.
"And something wonderful for dessert, I hope." Mrs. McAlister tightened the corners of her mouth a bit and looked at me and then back to Ami.
"I thought perhaps my strawberry shortcake," she said.
"Doesn't that sound wonderful, Celeste?"
"Yes," I said.
"Mrs. Cukor said you would prefer that apple cinnamon cake, but I think it's what she would prefer for herself," Mrs. McAlister added, twisting the right corner of her mouth up so sharply I could see her pinkish gums.
Ami shrugged, threw me a conspiratorial glance, and then pulled me along.
"Did you hear the way she refers to Wade's father? Mr. Emerson himself? It's as if Wade isn't really Mr. Emerson too. And imagine Mrs. Cukor and her arguing over what to have for dessert. I sometimes wish the house was small enough for us to have just one maid who could cook," she told me.
If there was only one maid, she would be working so hard, she would drop in a week, I thought. Not only were the rooms very large, but the hallway was twice the width of the one at the orphanage. There were windows placed everywhere it was possible for natural light to come through, all of them the small-paned kind that took forever to clean. I knew. We had to clean them at Madam Annjill's orphanage, and if we missed a spot in one, she made us do all of them over as a lesson.
"Well, she does set a beautiful table," Ami reluctantly admitted when we stopped at the dining room, a room that looked like it was meant for royalty. The table wasn't longer than the one at the orphanage, but it was certainly wider, oval shaped with thick gilded pedestals. There was a matching buffet and an armoire with gilded trimming as well. The chairs were high-backed and decorated in what looked to be a cream silk fabric. There was a grand teardrop chandelier and two sets of brass candelabra on the table. Beneath it was an oval area rug with colors that matched the furniture, the curtains, and the walls.
"We have rugs in practically every room," Ami said.
"Basil, Wade's father, favors hardwood floors and hates carpeting. He permitted stone in the kitchen, but nowhere else. Wade had our bedroom floor carpeted, and for weeks that's all he and his father argued about. Imagine talking endlessly about the pros and cons of carpeting! I really didn't care what was on the floor. I don't vacuum it.