The Art of Inheriting Secrets Read online

  When I peeked into the parlor, however, the damage was more apparent—the ceiling gaping, blackened supports hanging down. Too dangerous to navigate that direction, so I headed around the other side of the stairs and poked my head into the library, adjacent to the ballroom that had been so damaged by time and then the collapsing roof. Work had been focused here, and I could see the progress. It smelled of fresh lumber, and the floors had been cleared. New shelves waited for new books, or maybe old ones, and the old window seat was stripped, awaiting new wood and fabric. The little girl in me longed to take a book to that spot and look out toward the village—I could almost see a figure there against the glass.

  Mom, I thought. Did you sit there to read?

  And it was only my imagination offering my grieving heart a wish, but it felt as if she were with me after that, when I pushed as far as I could into the servant’s quarters, stopping short of the pantry, which was fire damaged, the servants’ stairs closed off. She accompanied me up the main stairs and down the long hall to Violet’s room, which had never frightened me at all. I stood there in the silence and closed my eyes. If I lived here, this would be my bedroom.

  After a moment, I forced myself to explore the rest of the rooms, the ones I’d never entered, the ones that scared me or gave off a creepy vibe. I was careful with anything that seemed to be dangerous structurally, but so much work had been done to the north-side rooms that I didn’t have to worry until I crossed the third story.

  Again, I entered every room I could. Carefully looked at the ones I could not. I greeted my ancestors and the disembodied spirits of dogs and children and servants. I listened to the quiet and let it tell me its tragedies, entered the minstrel’s gallery and made peace with the girl who’d flung herself over the edge for love. I climbed into the tower and looked out at the land.

  The land. So much of it. Fertile and productive and exquisitely beautiful.

  And protected.

  By me.

  My heart expanded, as if to encompass everything I saw—hills and sheep and cottages and trees. The conservatory poked up, old glass removed, panels awaiting the new. A pair of peacocks strutted up the path toward the garden. Overhead, a trio of birds flew across the clearing sky.

  And there, as if benevolently arranged by my mother, was a rainbow, its end planted in a field of gold rapeseed.

  Rainbows. Rainbows. Rainbows.

  I knew where the answer was.

  Samir and I drove to an address just north of London, in an industrial section of land. I’d found the last clue in the treasure hunt when I finally put together the rainbow imperatives—she’d painted a rainbow for me as a child, a painting that had hung in my bedroom my entire life. It had been moved with the other paintings when the Menlo Park house had been cleared out, so it took some time for Madeline to find it, but on the back was the address.

  Now we entered the building and found the proper hallway. It was not an open-air facility but had several security checkpoints for entry, and we finally stood before the door. I fitted the key the earl had given me into the lock, and it turned.

  The room was quite full—boxes and boxes of what turned out to be books, all the books from the library, in pristine condition. Samir made a sound that was half hunger, half laughter. “God, this is amazing.”

  The paintings were stacked neatly against the walls and lined up on shelves—dozens of them, all sizes. “The gold at the end of the rainbow,” I said and spied the last painting. The one this had all been about.

  Her last painting.

  It was massive, as large as her Forest #5, but it showed the cottage of her earlier paintings sitting in the middle of a forest clearing. The light was dawnlike, soft, and the animals were all facing the cottage, squirrels and foxes, birds and owls, and three little black-and-white cats with long fur. Through the window, gold lit and warm, were a mother and a child in a rocking chair. My mother and I.

  “You were her sanctuary,” Samir said, his hand on my shoulder.

  “Do you see what a beautiful person she was?” My hand covered my heart.

  “I do.”

  I laughed, suddenly. “And she set all of this up, the treasure hunt, so that I would have something to do other than fall apart over her death. She knew I would be lost, so she gave me a place to find her.”

  “It’s an extraordinary story,” he said.

  “Another chapter in the Rosemere family history.” I looked around. “Even if none of the paintings is at the level of Monet or Constable, there are plenty here to keep the renovations going.” I thought of the damage from the fire, which had completely destroyed two rooms. The kitchen had stood up to the fire remarkably well, but the parlor and the bedroom that had belonged to Roger were gone. No sign of arson. The fire chief had said simply there was no evidence of foul play. Sometimes old houses caught fire. I imagined, superstitiously, that it was the house ridding itself of the old evil. “At least for a little while.”

  “So you’re not going to sell it off to the Earl of Marswick and fly off to Saint-Tropez?”

  “No.” I turned. “I’ve been thinking about this, and the answer is right under my nose. My area of expertise is food and restaurants. The tenants want an organic concern, with meat and produce, and we can turn that into both a market and a restaurant, a destination restaurant. Maybe turn a few rooms into hotel rooms for overnight guests.”

  “I like it.”

  “You realize that if my mother was pregnant when she left England, I’m older than I thought. It might not be that easy for me to have children. Ever.”

  “Olivia.” He took my face in his hands, his long, lovely hands. “I want you. If there are children, there will be children. If not—God knows there are children in the world who need parents to love them.”

  My heart stilled. “You would adopt children?”

  “Yes.”

  I imagined my farmhouse table, in that big kitchen, filled with children. And family. And friends. The house alive again, the land thriving. “Maybe twelve?”

  He laughed. “Let’s start with a dog.”

  “We’ll have two cats and a dog!”

  “They’ll be all right.”

  “Are we doing this, then? Me and you?”

  He gave me his wide, inclusive, benevolent smile. “Has there ever been any doubt?”

  As he kissed me amid the treasures my mother had spirited away, I felt her in the room, smoking and cheerful. I felt Violet and Nandini, swirling together, at last, in us, in our blood.

  “Let’s be happy,” he said.

  For all of them, for ourselves. “Yes,” I said.

  Acknowledgments

  Sometimes, a book simply arrives, practically whole, and this one did exactly that, flying into my life on a dark Thursday morning when almost everything in the world seemed upside down. I’m so grateful to the people who helped me bring it into the world, including my agent, Meg Ruley, and the publishing team at Lake Union. My fellow G, Kaumudi Marathe, was very generous with her expertise in helping me develop the idea of Coriander and the fresh, beautiful food that would be served there, as well as the vast differences in foods across various regions in India. I learned more than I could have imagined from her books, including her cookbook, The Essential Marathi. I am also deeply grateful to Sonali Dev and Monica Pradhan Caltabiano, who made room in their busy schedules to read the manuscript and sometimes had conflicting comments, which emphasized even more that India is indeed vast, not One Thing but many, many, many. Thank you for helping me sort through it.

  Finally, I’m grateful to the Writer Unboxed gang who were gathered in Salem, Massachusetts, that week and Sarah Ramsey, who shared it too.

  About the Author

  Photo © 2009 Blue Fox Photography

  Barbara O’Neal is the author of eleven novels of women’s fiction, including How to Bake a Perfect Life and The Lost Recipe for Happiness. Her award-winning books have been published in a dozen countries, including France, England, Poland, Au
stralia, Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Brazil.

  Barbara lives in the stunningly beautiful city of Colorado Springs with her beloved, a British endurance athlete who vows he’ll never lose his accent.