teeth to separate a single strand. Her lips were almost comical to me because of how puffed up they were with some filler her plastic surgeon used. The skin around her chin and over her cheeks resembled a freshly ironed silk blouse.
“Oh, hi, Elizabeth. You look so nice. I remember you wore that dress to the governor’s ball. Did we miss something big and important?”
“Dinner with the Ramseys,” Elizabeth replied. “It was scheduled two weeks ago.”
“I don’t know how we missed that. Harrison is always so careful about his calendar.”
“Where is my son?”
“He went to speak to Mrs. Marlene about some dinner for us, and then he’s off to his office for something or other,” Samantha said.
Elizabeth Davenport turned to her right as if moving too quickly might cause a wrinkle and then looked back at us.
“Are the Ramseys still here?” Samantha asked. “We’ll have a light dinner soon.”
“Still here? Hardly. Dinner has long since come and gone,” Elizabeth said. She pulled herself up like a drill sergeant for the queen’s royal guard and looked at me with her piercing gray eyes. “Is this she?”
“Oh, yes. This is Emma Corey. Emma, this is my mother-in-law, Elizabeth Davenport.”
I had no time to say hello.
“Ridiculous,” Elizabeth said, and walked back into the living room.
“She hasn’t quite made it into the twentieth century,” Samantha said. “Pay no attention. Actually,” she whispered, “she’s jealous. She wishes in vitro had been perfected when she was my age.”
She nodded at the stairway to indicate we should continue up.
I looked back toward the living room and then followed her. When we reached the top, a nurse came out of a room down to our right and headed toward us.
“Oh, Mrs. Cohen, how is my father-in-law tonight?”
“Exhausted,” she said. “Your mother-in-law insisted we bring him down to dinner. He didn’t last five minutes and was brought back up before her guests had arrived.” She looked at me.
“Mrs. Cohen has been with the Davenport family for nearly a decade in one capacity or another,” Samantha explained. “She will be assisting us later. She’s aware of it all. No secrets from Mrs. Cohen.”
“Oh, there are a few still hidden in the corners of this house,” Mrs. Cohen said.
Samantha laughed. “Anyway, Mrs. Cohen’s quite capable. Her grandmother was a midwife. Isn’t that true, Mrs. Cohen?”
“She wasn’t exactly that, but there were many times when she oversaw a delivery, yes. Welcome,” she said, then flashed a smile at me and continued to the stairway.
“Oh,” Samantha called after her, “I forgot to tell you. Her name is Emma.”
Mrs. Cohen looked back at me.
“She’s from England.”
Mrs. Cohen’s smile was a little friendlier, actually the smile of someone amused. “Oh? Your baby might be born with an accent, then,” she said, and continued down.
“She’s joking,” Samantha said. “Don’t you think?”
She looked a little worried, and I wasn’t sure if I should laugh or cry at the moment.
I had been brought to Wyndemere, in which there was a mother-in-law made of ice, who obviously didn’t approve of my being here and what her son and daughter-in-law were doing, and a very sick father-in-law, a house so cavernous that echoes from yesterday were still bouncing off the walls. For months and months, this world would be mine, too.
TEN
The bedroom that was to be mine was easily twice as large as the one in my apartment. I recognized the furniture: a dark-oak Churchill five-piece poster bedroom set. Mrs. Taylor had a similar set. This room had a light-blue and ivory area rug that looked like it had just been brought in. The curtains matched. There was a vanity table with an oval mirror on the right, also with a blue frame. On the wall to the left were two paintings of clouds and cherubs with lots of blue sky.
“I ordered some new things for your room in anticipation of your arrival,” Samantha said.
My room? I thought. Surely she meant the room of whoever took on this job. Should I call it a job?
“My mother-in-law complained, but Harrison stood up for me. Of course, she thinks when you leave, she’ll take out anything at all I bought. She’ll restore it to the drab way it was. Do you like it?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you would. Why don’t I leave you to freshen up? I will, too, and then we’ll go down to have some dinner. You should find everything you need, but if you don’t, I’m right next door. Just turn left when you walk out and knock.”