The Gift of the Twin Houses Read online

  I don’t recall ever thinking, let alone feeling, that I “loved” a house. However, accepting for the very first time an emotion that tied me so completely to an inanimate object felt great. That fact alone represented a healthy sign. As a rule, I would’ve analyzed every single emotion, tried to make rational sense of each and every one, and in the end not give myself into any, particularly if I didn’t understand them. So, I delighted in simply doting over my house and the sensation that I would live here, with her, till the end of my days.

  That afternoon I went out for a long walk in the wilderness surrounding the little valley that cradled us. By the time I got back, I was soaked. It hadn’t rained but drizzled that soft, gentle spray that becomes part of you without you even noticing it.

  As I approached the house, a truck drove up. I saw Conrad step out, walk up to the porch, and ring the bell.

  “Hi there!” I called out, and ran toward the house.

  “The house isn’t on fire. Slow down,” he cried to me.

  By the time I reached the porch, I was out of breath. “Didn’t expect any visitors, just took a walk and—”

  “Catch your breath. All is well. I thought I’d come by to see how you’re getting along. Winter’s on its way.”

  “We’re fine.”

  “We?” He looked surprised.

  “The house and I.” The words blurted out. I could feel myself blushing.

  “Glad to hear.” He smiled.

  He had a nice smile, and his eyes brightened up, offering a glimpse into his state of mind. I could feel my own eyes gazing, enjoying the serenity he held.

  “I take it you have no regrets?” he asked.

  “Regrets?”

  “Buying this old house.”

  “Oh, no. I love it. Don’t worry; I’m not going to ask you for the money back.”

  “Only making sure, you not being from these parts. Nice to hear you’re staying.”

  He tilted his hat and stepped down from the porch.

  As he walked toward his truck, he exuded a virility and self-assurance I hadn’t perceived before, let alone how handsome he was. I guess I’d been too immersed in the paperwork during the sale of the house to take notice, and had only recalled how easygoing and friendly he’d been.

  “Remember,” he called out over his shoulder, “I’ll be happy to return the lot if you change your mind. This house deserves the best.”

  “Thanks, but no need. I love the house.”

  “See you.”

  “Bye.”

  He got in his truck and, with a smile, waved at me one more time. I liked his smile.

  I went into the house thinking about Conrad and the effect he had on me. The more I thought about him, the better I felt. Then I realized that from the first time I’d met him, there had been a pull between us. It wasn’t physical attraction but a sense of comfort and trust. Throughout the entire transaction of the purchase of my house, he’d been honest and straightforward. He made it so easy.

  As I entered my bedroom and caught my reflection in the mirror, I was horrified. Holy crap. My soaked hair was plastered onto my head, and I had no makeup. How embarrassing that he’d seen me looking this dreadful. To top it all off, I was also shivering. I ran a hot bath and shed my clothes. I must’ve looked pitiful to him. No wonder he worried about my leaving.

  After a long bath, I fixed a plate of fruit, cheese, and crackers for dinner. Built a nice fire in the living room, and sat there contemplating it as I sipped my glass of wine and nibbled on my dinner. I’d only taken a couple of sips when I could’ve sworn I heard someone singing a lullaby, another whispering sweet words of love, and yet another softly welcoming me to the house and letting me know I’d been expected.

  It wasn’t my imagination or the effect of the wine. The voices were within me. Oddly, they didn’t frighten me. Instead, I just allowed them to be and listened. I could hear their whispers floating in the air, reaching my soul and gently caressing it. The voices reassured me that I was in good hands, that all would be well, and that I should open myself to the experiences they were to bring forth. No need to pull away and lower your antenna, they coaxed, free yourself instead.

  The skeptic in me didn’t jump in to pull the sensitive me away. I don’t know where that part of me had disappeared to this evening—away from my house and my valley for sure. All I know is that not a drop of skepticism or the fear of yesteryears remained within me at that moment, so I eased into the feelings the voices wished me to live through.

  I took my box of photographs and pulled out a picture of three women sitting around a wooden kitchen table. Amy introduced herself.

  Chapter 4

  Three Sisters 1880

  I felt transported into the photograph as I watched from the kitchen door.

  “I don’t recall how it began,” Amy told me. “One day we were all together again. Once more the kitchen smelled of freshly baked bread and pies.”

  “Is it the kitchen in this house?” I asked her.

  Amy, a well-composed, attractive woman in her late thirties, looked around, smiled at me, and nodded.

  “We sat around the wooden table,” she went on, “drinking coffee and looking into each other’s pasts. Laura actually sipped tea, and Cora hot chocolate with coffee. Maybe she had added a little something else when we weren’t looking.”

  Amy talked, and I remained at the door, a willing spectator.

  “We had drifted apart. They had removed themselves from home and gone as far away as they could. Mother’s death called them back and dropped us in the middle of our turbulent past.”

  “Were you together after the funeral? Did you all live here in my house?”

  Amy smiled at me and nodded again. “Cora’s hands trembled with the lingering effects of alcohol. Her hair was in disarray as usual, and her eyes focused inward, searching for a quiet place in the recesses of her soul. I don’t think she ever found it, but she kept on looking. She was so intent on finding this place deep inside her that she forgot to care for the parts that conversed with the outside world. Her hair was neglected, in a dishaveled ponytail held by an old crumbling tie. I wondered why she held her hair in a ponytail if she did not keep it up.”

  “Maybe she did it to appease that part within us that whispers that as long as we seem all right on the outside, we must be just fine,” I ventured. “Obviously Cora failed to keep up with her external appearances.”

  “How about Laura?” I asked. “It’s hard to tell from this photograph.” “Laura was different,” Amy said. “In fact, all three of us were quite different from one another. We each inherited the emotional makeup that our parents lived through at the time of our births. Cora was troubled, Laura was absent, and I was forgiving.”

  “Why is that? How did you arrive at that conclusion?” I was so eager to find out, I was getting ahead of the story. But Amy didn’t mind. She looked at me as she answered, a resigned gaze appearing in her distant eyes.

  “Maybe it had to do with the order in which we were born. Five years apart from each other—all unwanted. We knew we were mistakes. Our mother reminded us time and time again, just in case we chose to forget. As a result, Cora cared deeply about her unwelcome status in life, and Laura chose not to think about it so she wouldn’t have to feel. I, however, had come to terms with the fact that if we were all so unwanted, how come we were all alive and well?” I chuckled with Amy’s logic, and she smiled in recognition.

  “Laura needed to look beautiful, a basic requirement for her. You can see her hair neatly pulled back, her face impeccable, her body nice and trim. Only her eyes betray her beautifully composed persona. Maybe you can’t see her eyes as she sips her tea because they’re lost in fairyland. As a child I was convinced that she had leaped from one of my storybooks and become real just to make me feel loved. I was certain she had turned herself into a fairy godmother just for me. Later on I realized that she lived in a world of fantasy and make-believe all the time.”

  “And
you?” I asked.

  “I thought of myself as grounded in reality, able to deal with the world as it was. I chose not to run away from it but to accept it, and maybe that’s the reason I was different. All the years growing up, everyone always said, ‘Amy is so different.’ I thought of it as a badge of honor, but in the end it turned out to be a heavy burden, as if I had to be different all the time. No rest for the weary.”

  “Being different is difficult. I know what you mean,” I tentatively offered.

  “Laura looked at me,” Amy went on, “just before this photograph was taken, as if all of a sudden she connected with my thoughts. She was so used to doing that. We smiled at each other, but I recognized the sudden pain in her gut. She knew I was withering. Nothing of the vibrant, energetic, happy little Amy was left. Where had it all gone? I guessed that she wondered how the last twenty years had robbed me of those attributes. At least that’s what I thought she was reacting to.”

  “Was it?”

  “No. In the end I would be proven wrong, but at that moment, that’s what I believed. You see, on this particular day, we needed to go to the attic to put away the memories. Cora wanted to destroy them, but I couldn’t allow that.”

  “The attic? My attic?” I blurted out.

  Amy turned to me and nodded before she continued. “Laura wanted to take some of them with her, but Cora wouldn’t have any of it. She believed that if they weren’t destroyed, the house would be the safest place to hold on to them. They should not leave the place where they had been created. That was the intent of our parents, she insisted, and Laura would never act against Cora’s will. That privilege was reserved for me, and only me.”

  Amy smiled at me. She could see I understood her meaning.

  “That’s why the house became mine, to be the keeper of the memories. After all, given that I was ‘different,’ I could handle it. At least that’s what I said when Cora decreed that the house should be sealed until we sold it, and then we would burn the memories.”

  “So you are the one that placed all the items in the attic?” I asked, but Amy wasn’t listening. She went on whispering in my mind.

  “I could not agree with Cora’s plan. I loved the house. The house had been good to me, and I cherished it. Funny, that a person could love a house like that. So I chose to keep the house and care for the memories myself. I demanded to be sole owner since they had rejected it. I didn’t want any intervention from my sisters if they changed their minds in the future. If I cared for the house, it should be mine, and mine alone, along with its memories.

  “The reaction of my sisters to my proposal went along the lines of their true personalities. Cora discounted it as absurd and ridiculous, while Laura fantasized that the memories would come back to haunt me. They simply couldn’t understand why I wanted the house. But I did. So in the end, they transferred ownership of the house and its life history to me.

  “In point of fact, the more we sat in silence around the kitchen table, the more I enjoyed the feeling that the house was now mine. A feeling that kept growing inside me, as if the house was so relieved and happy to be wanted that it embraced me and thanked me for wanting her. So the house and I took custody of the past and looked forward to a better future in the comfort and acceptance of our common destiny.”

  “Sarah.. .Sarah,” Amy’s voice whispered in my mind, coaxing me. “Wake up,” she gently said, as I became aware of the coldness in the room.

  I’d fallen asleep on the sofa, the fire was out, and at three in the morning, the house was cold and pitch black.

  Too tired to build a fire, I turned on the heater. Needed to warm us both. Both? Amy and me? No, I was thinking of the house. She’d also become my companion, my friend.

  Amy had loved the house as much as I did, and I remained with a desire to know more about both of them and those ominous memories she agreed to care for.

  I went to the kitchen, where she’d been with her sisters, and warmed some milk on the stove. I poured some honey in a cup and dissolved it in the warm milk. I love the taste of sweet milk with its cradling effect.

  Warm cup in hand, I went back to the sofa in the living room, covered myself with a blanket, and smiled at my house. I waited to see if Amy would speak to me, but she didn’t.

  “We’ll be warm in a bit,” I whispered to my house. “Sorry I didn’t turn on the heater any sooner. I didn’t think it could get so cold so fast. It won’t happen again.” I could have sworn I felt the house smile back.

  Then a shiver of fear crept through me. “Here I am talking to a house and feeling it react, not to mention hearing the stories of the photographs. Am

  I losing my mind? Are these the effects my parents feared? It certainly isn’t normal, but it feels like it is. How could that be? Stop this, Sarah. You need to be careful; don’t lose your grip on reality. But this is reality. It has to be. If not, what is it?”

  The answers were lost in the silence that surrounded me, but I could sense that the house was hiding something. Or was it the attic? I could feel its need to be found, to be dealt with, but didn’t know what it could possibly be.

  Maybe the next morning I could search for these elusive answers when I would be more alert. I didn’t wish to dwell on the negative. I just wanted to renew my visit with Amy. I pushed the fear away and concentrated.

  Photograph in hand, I examined the three sisters. Aside from the fact that Amy didn’t look withered, the description of her sisters was perfect. I could see every detail she’d portrayed, even Laura’s eyes, distant and unfocused. They did look different from one another, sitting around the wooden table in the kitchen, unaware that a photograph was being taken. They weren’t posing. Someone had captured this private moment in their lives without their knowledge. Who else was there with them? Who was the photographer? The more I looked, the more certain I became that in due time I’d learn all about this moment and these women. They’d lived in my house, and their memories would emerge.

  I rummaged through the box of photographs, yet not a single one spoke to me. As before, every time I specifically looked for something, the memories remained silent.

  It was clear that I needed to get out of the way to allow them to organize themselves and be revealed when they wished to. I’d wait and visit the attic later. Maybe there were more photographs of Amy and her sisters. Maybe that’s where I would find Leonard.

  I was nodding back to sleep when I heard Jeremy say hello.

  Chapter 5

  Jeremy 1891

  “Hello.” I heard a child’s voice.

  “Who are you?” I asked as I rummaged through the photographs seeking a face to put with the voice, but none stood out.

  “Jeremy,” he answered.

  “Where are you?” I asked, hoping that insanity wouldn’t be the answer. Here I was, finally getting used to voices that emanated from photos, and now this. “I can’t see you,” I added at last.

  “That’s OK. I’m used to being alone. I like it. I get up at four thirty like this every morning.”

  I felt my breath quicken and glanced around in case a hurried exit became necessary. I searched through the pictures again with the same result as before. “Why so early?” I heard myself ask.

  “’Cause that’s when the birds wake up. They start to sing real early. It’s my favorite time.”

  “Because of the birds.”

  “Yeah. And because I can make up stories when the house is quiet like this.”

  “What kind of stories?”

  “All kinds. Want to hear one?”

  The answer eluded me for a moment. “How old are you?”

  “Ten. Want to hear my story about the cowboy? It’s a really nice story. At least, I think it is.”

  “Of course.” It seemed to be my only choice. “Are all the stories about cowboys?”

  “No, silly. They’re stories about all kinds of people. They keep me company all day long. They like to show up early too. They just pop into my head. I call them my secret
friends.”

  That concept didn’t comfort me at all. “Really.”

  “Yeah, the cowboy helped me write a story for school last week.”

  “Oh, so this cowboy is a friend of yours.”

  “I guess. He just popped into my head and told me this story. Want to hear it, even if it’s just make-believe?”

  I must have considered my answer for some time, because I heard the impatience in his voice when he asked again.

  “Well, yes or no?”

  “Yes. Of course I want to hear it. Go ahead.”

  “I gotta tell it kinda fast. Pa’ll be getting up, and Ma’ll be making his coffee. Then they’ll start waking everybody else up.”

  “OK.”

  “It’s a Christmas story. And you’re going to think it’s about me and my folks, but it isn’t. It happens on a farm like ours, but it’s not ours. And my uncle’s a cowboy, but he didn’t tell me the story. It’s about a girl named Elisa, and not about me. You got that?”

  “I understand.”

  “OK, here goes. Elisa was a little girl who lived on a farm. Her family was very, very poor, so she never got any Christmas presents. My family’s poor too.”

  “I see.”

  “OK. Her uncle was the cowboy, and he came to stay with her family when Elisa was seven years old. I’m ten, so you can see that the story can’t be about me, right?”

  “Yes. Absolutely.”

  “Her father’s farm was in a little valley. I asked the cowboy if her farm was like mine. He said it was just the same as ours. Funny, huh?”

  “Yes, that’s quite a coincidence.”

  “The cowboy was herding cattle in Montana when he got injured. That’s why he came to stay at Elisa’s house. Her pa was the cowboy’s brother. My uncle got hurt that way too once, but no one knows that at my school.”

  For some inexplicable reason, I nodded.

  “The cowboy,” he went on, “hurt the whole left side of his body and couldn’t move. So Elisa was told to take care of him. My uncle hurt his left side too. Really bad. I had to take care of him when he stayed here. Isn’t that something?”