“If I didn’t, I know now,” I said, closing the door behind me.
He looked from me to the house and then back at me. “Anything wrong?”
“No,” I said, now beginning to feel bad. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound so sharp.”
“No problem. I have Band-Aids in the car,” he joked, and reached for my hand. He stopped us halfway to his car and turned around to look at me. “Something has your blood up, but I have to say, it’s pretty sexy.”
Now I really did feel the blood rush to my face. Kane was the first boy who had ever said I was sexy. “Thanks. I think,” I said, and we continued to his car.
After we got in and he started the engine, he turned to me with that winning soft half smile of his and asked, “Why did you say ‘I think’? Don’t you like being sexy?”
“I’m not sure what it means. Some of the girls are so obvious about it. Boys call them sexy, but I don’t want to be that sort of girl.”
“You’re definitely not.”
“What am I, then?”
“I told you. You’re a surprise. At least, to me.” He started to back out but then put his foot on the brake and turned back to me. “And maybe even to yourself.”
“I heard from some other girls you’ve driven crazy that you like to speak in riddles.”
He laughed and continued backing out, turning, and heading us away. “It’s not a riddle. I’m having trouble explaining it, that’s all. I feel like I’m at the grand opening, the revealing of a new model.”
“Like a car? One of your father’s new-model cars?”
“Use what you know, Mr. Stiegman says in English class.”
“Check my tires,” I quipped.
“I plan to. Later.”
“All right. I’ll bite. Why am I like a grand opening?”
“You’re discovering who you are, and I’m with you at just the right moment,” he said. “Is that okay?”
I was silent. He was right about me. Kane wasn’t simply a good-looking, popular, rich, intelligent, and athletic boy. He was sensitive, too. And that was something I really had not expected. Could you really fall in love with someone when you were this young, and if you did, what would happen? You had so much further to go in your life, so many other people, boys, men you would meet. How was it possible to make any sort of real commitment to someone before you experienced any of that?
I did once read that you should fall in love many times, each time just a little more deeply. It was like drilling a well. Each affair brought you closer to understanding what it was going to be like when you were finally there. Was that all romantic gobbledygook?
As if he could read my thoughts, Kane glanced at me and said, “Relax. Let’s just have a good time and not be so analytical.”
“Said the spider to the fly.”
He laughed hard for a moment and then shook his head when he looked at me again. “Kristin Masterwood, I think I’m going to fall in love with you, and you’re going to break my heart. But I’m going to enjoy every moment,” he added.
His words had the ring of honesty and for the first time, I wondered if I could trust him with what I was reading. My father would be very angry if I did, but something inside me was longing for another pair of eyes, another mind to help me understand and clearly see what really did happen in Foxworth Hall decades ago to four innocent children, two of whom were, like me, just discovering who they really were.
The moment I set eyes again on Kane’s home, this time knowing I was going to go inside, another question about Christopher occurred to me. Was the impression the huge mansion made on him when they had first arrived, even at night and at a back entrance, at least part of the reason he was so trusting and hopeful?
To think that his mother’s family, estranged as they had been, owned something so regal must have given him confidence in his mother’s plans. Just as clothes, cars, and jewels could convince you of someone’s importance, a mansion like Foxworth Hall had to have filled Christopher with a sense of real hope. Those people, his grandparents, could easily save them from disaster. It would be a drop in the bucket to them.
Seeing the Hill house from the road as Dad and I rode past it was one thing, but approaching it through the elaborate cast-iron gates and going up the winding driveway with its perfectly spaced maple trees lining the sides, even now nearly leafless but still impressive, overwhelmed me. It was easy to believe important things happened on this elaborate estate and that the people who owned it could easily change, influence, help, or hurt so many other people.
My eyes went everywhere, like the eyes of someone feasting on a world-famous place like the Taj Mahal in India or Buckingham Palace in London. Beneath the trees that lined the driveway was a bed of multicolored leaves not yet cleared away. Kane told me his mother liked the colors to linger as long as possible. His father wanted “the mess” cleared up, but he always waited for her to give him the word every year. The driveway lights were subtle and low, all solar-powered, which I knew was more expensive and something recently done. At the top, the driveway became circular and had an island of plants, trees, pottery, and stone at the center. And at the center of that was a statue of a lion with water flowing from its mouth.
“Where did you get that fountain?” I couldn’t help asking immediately.
“My mother had it imported from Florence, Italy,” he said.