“For viewing movies?” he explained slowly.
“Oh,” I gasped, understanding hitting. I gave a bark of relieved laughter. The movie screen must have been hidden behind those dusty, heavy velvet drapes.
“What did you think it was for?” Evan asked, pulling my hand and leading me along the hallway. He looked over his shoulder as he walked, his gaze on me sharp.
“I didn’t know what it was for,” I admitted, trying to hold back a jag of hysterical laughter. “Caligula’s party room, maybe?”
I thought he’d laugh. Instead, he paused. I saw him mouth my answer silently, a strange expression overcoming his face.
“Evan? I was just kidding. It was all the velvet. It seemed a little tacky, that’s all, very different from the rest of the house.”
He nodded once and resumed walking.
“It needs to be demolished completely and renovated. I asked the cleaning crew to make sure it was locked, but apparently, they forgot. All that fabric is rotting. There’s mold. It’s not safe to breathe in there.”
“It didn’t smell very good.”
“It’s past time it was renovated,” he said.
Who had ever thought designing a room like that was a good idea? Was it Evan’s first wife who had that bordello-taste, or some former owner? Hadn’t Evan said Les Jumeaux had been in the Madaster family for over a hundred years? But obviously, a movie viewing room was a more modern addition. Whatever the case, that room certainly hadn’t matched the tasteful, warm elegance of everything else I’d seen at the North Twin.
And what kind of movies had been viewed in there, exactly? Had Elizabeth and Evan entertained in the viewing room? I wondered, thinking of that well stocked bar. I winced. I even hated the name: viewing room. It struck me as dirty and furtive somehow, like a peeping Tom.
Was any of that repulsive scent a remnant of Elizabeth and her husband?
My husband?
Stop it. Stop thinking about her. About them.
“Best to stay away from that room,” Evan was saying briskly as he led me into the magnificent kitchen. He turned toward me and grasped my shoulders, waiting for me to look up at him.
“Best for you to stay in the light, Anna.”
So I did.
For the next week or so, I spent a good portion of my mornings and my afternoons painting on the overlook. The pure, saturated light and crystalline atmosphere put me into a kind of creative trance. I lost track of hours at a time. Despite the spell of the place, my focus had never been clearer, my strokes on the canvas never more sure.
I swam in the afternoons when it grew too hot on the overlook. I promised Evan I would swim alone only in the idyllic, manmade sandy enclosure. It’d been designed and engineered for safe, casual swimming, with a maximum depth of only about five feet.
Sometimes, I explored the grounds after I swam, hiking around the many mountain trails or rocky beaches, walking on Les Jumeaux’s hewn stone pathways and charming little bridges that led to dozens of small gardens and secret sitting benches, just waiting to be discovered and enjoyed.
One day, the back of my neck prickled as I painted. I had the thought I was being watched. But when I turned around, I saw nothing unusual. The tops of the enormous pines swayed peacefully in the breeze. I searched the tall branches. A bird of prey might have watched me while I painted. Maybe some primal instinct in me had sensed it. My gaze was drawn to the South Twin’s turret where it poked through the tree line. The way the light struck the windows made them appear shiny and opaque, like a dark mirror.
I turned back to my work, but that uncomfortable sensation of being watched persisted.
After I’d stored my canvas and painting supplies that day, I headed down the entrance road for my daily walk.
When I reached the fork in the road, I took the left path, toward the South Twin. Perhaps I was influenced by that feeling of being watched while I worked earlier. I could see the South Twin well enough from the front of the property and the beach, and the great south turret loomed to my left when I painted on the overlook every day. But I was curious to see the back entrance to the South Twin.
When I reached the clearing and saw the house, it was like looking at a mirror image of our home. It had the same stone carvings on the house’s exterior, the delicate, decorative ironwork on the chimneys and lanterns. I couldn’t find one difference.
A mechanical hum resounded into the still summer evening, making me jump. I realized that a door was electronically rising on the South Twin’s garage. Much to my amazement, someone was about to drive out of what I’d supposed was an uninhabited home.
Embarrassed at my intrusion on private property, I hurried out of the road into the cover of the pines. A moment later, I watched a silver Toyota sedan go past me. I saw the driver well from my position: a woman of about forty with dark hair pulled back into a thick, tight bun. She was much too young to be Elizabeth Madaster’s mother. Who was she?
Evan and I ate dinner on the terrace that night after sunset, our only source of light the candle I’d lit and the midnight dome of stars above us. I described what I’d seen that afternoon to Evan, asking him if Elizabeth had siblings who could have been visiting the South Twin.
“Elizabeth was an only child,” Evan said as he buttered a roll. I was relieved he didn’t seem irritated by my admission of walking over to the South Twin. If anything, he seemed thoughtful. Reflective. “It was probably the Madaster’s agent, or maybe just a friend checking up on the property for them? Probably better to stay away from that house, though. Madaster wasn’t exactly thrilled that Elizabeth left me this property. He threw away a lot of money on expensive lawyers, trying to find a loophole to keep me from inheriting. He might get unpleasant if he found out we were trespassing over on his property,” Evan said.