Fox River

“You never want to know when things aren’t going well, Maisy. If you wore glasses, they’d be rose-colored.”

“No doubt,” Maisy agreed. “Cats’-eye glasses with rhinestone frames, and you would hate them. But trying to keep a positive attitude isn’t the same as refusing to see there’s another side of life.”

Julia felt ashamed. She loved her mother, but there was a gulf between them as wide as Julia’s twenty-nine years. She had never quite understood it and doubted that Maisy did, either. How two women could love each other and still be so different, so far apart in every way, was a mystery.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to criticize.” Julia started back toward the bed, or thought she did. “It’s just that I don’t want to make this worse for you….”

“Let’s make it better for you, instead. Tell me what’s been happening. And move a little to your left,” Maisy directed her.

Julia adjusted; her shin contacted the bed frame. “I’m going to need a white cane.” The last word caught.

Maisy took her hand and helped her sit. “Has Dr. Jeffers given you a prognosis?”

“No. He rarely speaks during our sessions, and when he does, he just asks questions. Why didn’t I seek help when the problems started? Why do I think I’m being so defensive? Why don’t I want my husband involved in my treatment?”

“Would Bard like to be involved?”

“I doubt it, but I’m sure he’s never told the doctor outright.”

“Tell me about the problems you mentioned before.”

“I was having blinding headaches.” She smiled grimly. “Pardon the pun.”

“The doctors know this?”

“Yes. They’ve scanned every inch of my brain, done every test a neurologist can dream up, called in every specialist. They can’t find anything physical.”

“What else?”

“I…” Julia tried to decide how to phrase the next part. “My work was suffering.”

“Your painting?”

Julia nodded. “I had a commission for a family portrait of the Trents. You remember them? They have that pretty little farm down toward Middleburg, just past the Gradys’ place? Two very blond children who show their ponies with Callie? A boy and a girl?”

“I think so.”

“We had three sittings. I never got things right.”

She wasn’t sure how to explain the next part. She’d had no success with Bard or Dr. Jeffers. Bard told her she was simply overwrought and making her problems worse. Dr. Jeffers scribbled notes, and the scratching of his pen had nearly driven her crazy.

She tried again. “It was worse than that, actually. I did preliminary sketches. The Trents wanted something informal, something with their horses and pets out in the countryside. The sketches were fine. I had some good ideas of what I wanted to do. But when I tried to paint…”

“Go on.”

“I couldn’t paint what I saw. I would begin to work, and the painting seemed to progress without me. Mr. Trent is a stiff, formal man who’s strict with the children. That’s all I was able to capture on canvas. He looked like a storm trooper after I’d roughed him out. At one point I even found myself painting a swastika on his sleeve.”

“Maybe you weren’t painting what you saw but what you felt. Isn’t that part of being an artist?”

“But I had no control over it.” Julia heard her voice rising and took a moment to breathe. “And it was true of everything I painted in the month before the accident. I would try hunting scenes, and they weren’t lovely autumn days among good friends anymore. We chase foxes for the fun of it, not to destroy them. But every painting I attempted seemed to center on the hounds tearing a fox to bits. They were…disturbing, and when I was finished with a session, I’d feel so shaken I was afraid to start another.”

“Maybe it was simply fatigue. Maybe you needed a break.”

“Well, I got one, didn’t I?”

Maisy was silent, and Julia didn’t blame her. What could she say? If Julia’s sight was not restored, she would never paint again.

“When you were a little girl,” Maisy said at last, “and something bothered you, you would go to your room and draw. It was the way you expressed yourself.”

“It still is. But what am I expressing? Or what was I? Because I won’t be able to do it again unless something changes radically.”

“Come home with me, Julia. If Bard doesn’t want you at Millcreek, come back to Ashbourne. You know there’s room for you and Callie. We can find a therapist you trust. Jake wants you to stay with us, too. You know he does.”

Julia loved her stepfather, who had brought balance to Maisy’s life and gentle affection to her own. He was a kind, quiet man who never ceased to marvel at his wife’s eccentricities, and Julia knew he would welcome her with open arms.

For a moment she was tempted to say yes, to return to her childhood home and bring her daughter to live there, too. Until her sight was restored or she’d learned to live with her impairment. Then reality got in the way.

She shook her head decisively. “I can’t do that. My God, Bard would be furious. He had to pull strings to get me admitted here. He’s convinced I need to be away from everything and everyone before I’ll get better.”

“And what do you think?”

“I hope he’s right. Because I don’t think I can stand being here very long. I feel like I’m in prison. I know how Christian—” She stopped, appalled at what she’d nearly said.

“You know how Christian feels,” Maisy finished for her. “It’s been a long time since I’ve heard you speak his name.”

Julia stiffened. “I haven’t been thinking about Christian. I don’t know where that came from.”

“You’ve lost your sight, he lost his freedom. Both of you are living in places you didn’t choose. The connection is there.”

“I don’t want to talk about Christian.”

“You never have.”

There was a rustling noise at the doorway. With something close to gratitude, Julia turned her head in that direction.

“A nurse is here,” Maisy said.

“Mrs. Warwick?” Karen, the nurse who had made the telephone call for Julia, entered the room, making enough noise as she did to help Julia know where she was. “Dr. Jeffers thinks you need to rest now.”

For once Julia had to agree with her psychiatrist. She was suddenly weary to the bone. She felt the mattress lift as Maisy stood.

“You do look tired. I’ll be back tomorrow,” Maisy said. “Is there anything you’d like me to tell Callie?”

“Tell her I love her and I’ll be home soon. Tell her I can see her in my dreams.”

“You’ll think about what I said?”

Julia nodded, then realized her mother might not be looking at her. It was just another of those small things the sighted took for granted.

“I’ll think about it.” Her throat was clogged with words she hadn’t said. A part of her wanted to beg Maisy to take her home to Ashbourne, to the quaint stone cottage where she had lived until her marriage. Another part insisted that she stay and suffer here at Gandy Willson, that if she suffered hard enough, she might find a cure.

Karen spoke. She had a soft, husky voice and warm hands. Odd observations, but the only ones Julia was equipped to make. “I guess you know Mrs. Warwick isn’t supposed to have any visitors except her husband, but unfortunately, Dr. Jeffers has a meeting tomorrow afternoon at three, so he’ll be away and unable to monitor things closely. Anyone could slip right in.”

“I see,” Maisy said.

“Thank you.” Julia understood what Karen was trying to do.

“Goodbye, sweetheart.” Julia felt her mother’s hand on her shoulder, then Maisy’s lips against her cheek. When Karen and Maisy were gone, the room was as empty as Julia’s heart.

2

Like their counterparts in Great Britain, the great farms and estates of Virginia were often given names. Ashbourne was one such, a large, distinctive house and three hundred acres made up of serpentine hills and rock-strewn creeks. The Blue Ridge Mountains were more than shadows touching the land; they were a presence that anchored it and coaxed the hills into craggier peaks and wider hollows. Maisy never ceased to be amazed at Ashbourne’s natural beauty or the twist of fate that had brought her here as the young bride of Harry Ashbourne, master of the Mosby Hunt.

Harry was gone now, dead for nearly twenty-five years. Ashbourne lived on, holding its breath, she thought, for Harry’s daughter Julia to reclaim it and restore it to its former glory.

The main house at Ashbourne was a gracefully wrought Greek Revival dwelling of antique cherry-colored brick and Doric columns. Symmetrical wings—two-story where the main house was three—gently embraced the wide rear veranda and flagstone terrace. In Harry’s day the gardens of hollies and mountain laurels, Persian lilacs and wisteria, had been perfectly manicured, never elaborate, but as classic and tasteful as the house itself.

Over the years the gardens had weathered. Ancient maples, mimosas and hickories had fallen to lightning or drought; the boxwood maze that Harry had planted during Maisy’s pregnancy had grown into an impenetrable hedge obstructing movement and sight until a landscaper had removed it. Over the years the meticulous borders of bulbs and perennials had naturalized into a raucous meadow that ate away at grass and shrubs, spreading farther out of bounds each season.

Maisy preferred the garden that way. The house was empty now, and the black-eyed Susans, corn poppies and spikes of chicory and Virginia bluebells warmed and softened its aging exterior. Neither the house nor the gardens had fallen to rack and ruin. She made certain all the necessary maintenance was done. Jake did much of it, a man as handy as he was good-natured. But the property was simply biding its time until Harry’s daughter decided what should be done about it.

Maisy and Jake lived in the caretaker’s cottage, a blue stone fairy-tale dwelling that was the oldest building on the property. The cottage perched on the edge of deep woods where foxes and groundhogs snuggled into comfortable dens and owls kept vigil on the loneliest nights.

The cottage was two-story, with a wide center hallway and cozy rooms that huddled without rhyme or reason, one on top of the other. The furnace and the plumbing groaned and clattered, and the wind whistled through cracks between window frames and ledges. Maisy and Jake were in agreement that the house’s idiosyncrasies were as much a part of its charm as its slate roof or multitude of fireplaces.

The sky was already growing dark by the time Maisy returned from her visit to the Gandy Willson Clinic. Inky cloud layers lapped one over the other, shutting out what sunset there might have been and boding poorly for a starry night. She often darted outside two or three times each evening to glimpse the heavenly show. She made excuses, of course, although Jake was certainly on to her. She fed the barn cats, three aging tortoiseshells named Winken, Blinken and Nod. Sometimes she claimed to check gates for the farmer who rented Ashbourne’s prime pasture land to graze long-horned, shaggy Highland cattle. No excuse was too flimsy if it kept her on the run.

She traversed the wide driveway and pulled the pickup into its space beside the barn, taking a moment to stretch once she was on the ground. Every muscle was kinked, both from sitting still and the lack of functioning shock absorbers. She vowed, as she did every time she drove Jake’s truck, that she would have it hauled away the very next time he turned his back. She had her eye on a lipstick-red Ford Ranger sitting in a lot in Leesburg, and in her imagination, it beeped a siren song every time she passed.

As she’d expected, she found Jake in the barn. There were several on the property. The one that Harry had used to stable his world-renowned hunters was at the other side of the estate, empty of horses now and filled with artists and craftsmen to whom Maisy rented the space as a working gallery.

This barn was the original, smaller, built from hand-hewn chestnut logs and good honest sweat. Jake used it as his repair shop. There was nothing Jake couldn’t take apart and put back together so that it ran the way it was intended. People from all over Loudoun and Fauquier counties brought him toasters and lawnmowers, motor scooters and attic fans. Mostly they were people like Jake himself, who believed that everything deserved a shot at a miracle cure, people who were wealthy enough to buy new goods but maintained a love affair with the past.

When she arrived, Jake was bent over his workbench. Winken crouched at the end, lazily swatting Jake’s elbow every time it swung into range. The three felines were right at home in the barn. Like so much that Jake repaired here, they had been somebody else’s idea of trash. Maisy had found them one winter morning as they tried to claw their way out of a paper bag in the Middleburg Safeway parking lot, tiny mewling fluffballs that she’d fed religiously every two hours with a doll’s bottle, despite a serious allergy to cat dander and a craving for an uninterrupted night of sleep. Now, years later, they kept the barn free of mice and Jake company. Cats, she’d discovered, were serious advocates of quid pro quo.

“I’m back.”

Jake turned to greet her. When he was absorbed in his work he forgot his surroundings. He had the power of concentration she lacked, so much that she often teased that a burglar could steal everything in the barn, including the cobwebs, while he was working on a project.

He wiped his hands on a rag before he came over to kiss her cheek. “Did you see her?”

“Yes, I did. But not without a fight.” She knew he wouldn’t ask what she’d learned. He would wait for whatever information she wanted to reveal. She glanced over his shoulder. Blinken had joined her sister, and the two were investigating Jake’s latest project. “Work going well?”

“Liz Schaeffer brought me a mantel clock that’s been in her family for three generations. Ticking fifty beats to the minute.”

“Can you fix it?”

“I’ll have to see if I can find a new part, but most likely.” He swallowed her in his arms, as if he knew she needed his warmth. “I made chili for dinner. And corn bread’s ready to go in the oven.”

“You’re too good to me.” She relaxed against him, looking up at a face that was growing increasingly lined with age. Jake had never been a handsome man, but he had always been distinguished, well before the age the adjective usually applied. His hair was snow-white, but still as thick and curly as it had been the first time she saw him—and still, as then, a little too long. His eyes were the brown of chinquapins, eyes that promised patience but of late showed a certain fatigue, as well. Sometimes she was afraid that he was simply and finally growing tired of her.

“Let me put things away and I’ll be in to finish the meal.”

She moved away in a flurry of guilt. “Don’t be silly. I’ll put the corn bread in the oven and make a salad.” She paused. “Do we have lettuce?”

He smiled a little. “Uh-huh. I shopped yesterday.”

“Where was I?”

“Holed up in your study.”

“Oh…”

“I like to shop, Maisy. I always see somebody I know. I do more business between the carrots and eggplant than I do on the telephone. Go make a salad.”

She made it to the doorway before she turned. “Would you mind if Julia and Callie came to live with us?”

He looked up from his workbench. “Was that Julia’s idea?”

“I made the offer.” She paused. “I pushed a little.”

“Like a steamroller on autopilot.”

“She shouldn’t be there, Jake. You know that place. She’s miserable.”

“You know Julia and Callie are welcome here.”

“Was I wrong to push?”

“You’re a good mother. You always do what you think is best.”

She knew the dangers of acting on instinct, yet she was pleased at his support. “I’m going back tomorrow.”

“Bard won’t be happy if you interfere.”

She stepped outside and peered up at the sky, now a seamless stretch of polished pewter. The temperature was dropping, and she shivered. Autumn was exercising its muscle. Maisy decided that after dinner she would ask Jake to make a small fire in the living room, then she would tell him in detail everything that Julia had said.

She wondered, as she did too often now, if he would find the recounting of her day too tedious to warrant his full attention.

Julia knew Bard would visit after dinner, not because his schedule was predictable but because he needed to see for himself that everything at the clinic was under control. In the early days of their marriage, that quality had reassured her. She was married to a man who had answers for everything, and for a while, at least, she had been glad to let him have answers for her.

She felt a vague twinge of guilt, as she always did when she had disloyal thoughts about Bard, the man who had stood beside her at the worst moment of her life. Bard could be overbearing, but he could also be strong and reassuring.

In some ways Bard was the product of another era. He was older than she, almost twelve years older, but it was more outlook than age that separated them. Bard would have felt at home in King Arthur’s court, a knight happiest slaying dragons. But Bard would never be a Lancelot. He wasn’t motivated by religious fervor and rarely by romance. Dragons would fall simply because they stood in his path.

At seven o’clock Julia found her way to the dresser where her comb and brush were kept. Her black hair was shoulder-length and straight, easy enough to manage, even when she couldn’t see it. She brushed it now, smoothing it straight back from the widow’s peak that made it difficult to part.

She didn’t bother with cosmetics, afraid that lipstick poorly applied was worse than none at all. Earlier she had changed into wool slacks and a twin set because her room was cooler than she liked. Maisy always insisted she’d feel warmer if she gained weight, but Julia doubted she was destined to add pounds at this particular juncture of her life. The clinic food was exactly what she’d expected, low-fat and bland—garnishes of portobello mushrooms and arugula notwithstanding.

She was just buttoning her sweater when a gentle rap on the door was followed by Karen’s voice. “It’s chilly in here. Would you like a fire tonight? Dr. Jeffers has given permission.”

She supposed permission was necessary. After any time at Gandy Willson, even a patient in her right mind would want to throw herself into the flames.

“You’re smiling,” Karen said.

She realized it was true. “It’s the thought of a fire,” she lied. “What a nice idea.”

She fumbled her way across the room and sat on a chair by the bed, listening as Karen brought in logs. The sounds were all familiar, as was the burst of sulphur when the match was lit.

“Just a tiny one,” Karen said. “Nothing more than kindling. But it will warm you. We’re having trouble with the heat in this wing.”

Julia thanked her, then sat listening as the wood began to crackle.

In the hospital, immediately after the accident, she had found it impossible to measure time. Without visual clues, one moment still seemed much like the next. The sun or the moon could be sending rays through her window and she wouldn’t know. The overhead lights could be on or off, the news on her neighbor’s television set could be either the morning or evening edition.

Little by little she’d learned new cues to guide her. The buzzing of the fluorescent lamp in the corner when light was needed in the evening, or the scent of disinfectant when the hallway was mopped each morning. The cues were different here, but just as predictable.

She had also learned that time passed more slowly than she realized. Without the constant distractions of a normal life, each second seemed to merge in slow motion with the next. She had never understood Einstein’s theories of time and space, but she thought, perhaps, she was beginning to.

After she was sure she’d been sitting for at least a day, she heard Bard’s perfunctory knock. He always rapped twice, with jackhammer precision. Then he threw open the door and strode purposefully across the floor to kiss her cheek.

Tonight was no different. He was at her side before she could even tell him to come in. She smelled the Calvin Klein aftershave she had helped Callie pick out last Christmas, felt the rasp of his cheek against hers.

“You look tired.” He had already straightened and moved away. She could tell by his voice.

“Sitting still all day will do that to you,” she said.

“You need the rest. That’s why you’re here.”

She was here to keep from embarrassing him. She suspected that not one of their mutual friends knew exactly what had happened to her, and she wondered what story he was telling. “I would get more rest at home. I could find my way around. Get a little exercise. I’d feel more like sleeping.”

“We’ve been over and over this, Julia.”

The forced patience in his voice annoyed her. “You’ve been over and over this, Bard. I’ve had very little to say about it.”

“I understand your sessions with Dr. Jeffers aren’t going well.”

“If you mean that I haven’t miraculously regained my eyesight, then yes. They haven’t gone well.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

She could feel her frustration growing. “Bard, stop talking to me like I’m Callie’s age, please. I’m blind, not eight. Exactly what did you mean?”

“Dr. Jeffers says you’re not cooperating. That you’re resistant to treatment.”

“I am resistant to spilling my guts so he’ll have something to write on his notepad.”

“How do you know he writes anything?”

“I can hear the scratching of his pen. I have four senses left.”

“Why are you resisting his help?”

“He isn’t offering help. He’s a Peeping Tom in disguise. He wants to see into every corner of my life, and I don’t see any reason to let him.”

“You’d prefer a guide dog?”

She clamped her lips shut. As he barreled through his days, Bard had developed a theory that life was an endless set of simple decisions, for or against. Accordingly, he had boiled down Julia’s recovery. Either she let Dr. Jeffers cure her or she remained blind. He didn’t have the inclination to consider the matter further.

“I guess that means no.” He sounded farther away, as if he’d taken up her favorite spot at the window.

“What do you see?” she asked. “I’d like to know what’s out there, so I can imagine it when I’m standing there.”

For the first time he sounded annoyed. “That sounds like you’re making plans to live with this.”

“It’s a simple, nonthreatening question.”

“I see exactly what you’d expect. Trees, flower beds, lawn. A slice of the parking lot. Hills in the distance.”

“Thanks.”

“I hear Maisy came to visit today. Against orders.”

His voice was louder, so she imagined he was facing her now. She pictured him leaning against the windowsill, long legs crossed at the ankles, elbows resting comfortably, long fingers laced as he waited for her answer. She remembered the first time she had really noticed Lombard Warwick.

She had known Bard forever. The town of Ridge’s Race—nothing much more than a gas station, post office and scenic white frame grocery store—was named for an annual point-to-point race that extended between two soaring ridges on either side of town. It was also the address of dozens of million-dollar farms and estates, including Ashbourne and Millcreek Farm, which was Bard’s family home. Ridge’s Race had a mayor and town council, churches along three of the four roads that intersected at the western edge of town, and a community as tightly knit as a New England fishing village.

Because of the difference in their ages, she and Bard had never attended school together. Even if they’d been born in the same year, their educational paths wouldn’t have crossed. Bard was destined for the same residential military school his father had attended. Julia, the product of an egalitarian mother who believed class segregation was nearly as harmful as racial segregation, was destined for the local public schools.