‘It is someone I’d like to forget I know,’ I told him, sotto voce. ‘But it does seem to be someone who’s been invited.’
Sage Livingston wasn’t a girl who might graciously accept cooling her heels on the front doorstep, especially if she’d arrived with an entourage. With a sigh of resignation I threw open the doors. I was in for yet another unpleasant surprise.
‘Oh no – the Botany Club.’ Key took the words out of my mouth.
She meant the botanically named Livingstons, all of them – Basil, Rosemary, and Sage – a family of whom Key liked to quip: ‘If they’d had more children, they’d have called them Parsley and Thyme.’
But in my youth, they’d never seemed much of a joke. Now they were one more puzzle on my mother’s invitation list.
‘Darling! It’s been truly forever!’ gushed Rosemary, as she swept into our constricted mudroom before the rest.
Sporting dark glasses and swathed in her extravagant, hooded lynx cape, Sage’s mother looked even more youthful than I’d remembered. She briefly enfolded me in her cloud of endangered animal skins and bussed me with an ‘air kiss’ at either cheek.
She was followed by my old archnemesis, her flawlessly perfect ash-blond daughter, Sage. Sage’s dad, Basil, due to the clear constrictions of our broom-closet entry chamber, lagged with another man just outside the door – no doubt our ‘new neighbor’ – a craggy, sun-leathered chap in jeans, sheepskin jacket, western boots, and hand-blocked Stetson. Alongside the haughty Basil with his silvery sideburns and haute couture Livingston women, our new arrival seemed somewhat out of place at this ball.
‘Aren’t we expected to come inside?’ Sage demanded by way of cheery greeting, though it was the first time we’d laid eyes on each other in years.
She glanced past her mother toward the inner doors where Key stood, and raised one perfectly plucked eyebrow as if astonished she should find her here. There’d been little love lost over the years between Nokomis Key and Sage Livingston, for a variety of reasons.
No one seemed about to remove wet togs or to introduce me to our external guest. Vartan parted the wall of hanging coats and furs, stepped over some luggage, and addressed Rosemary with a charm I didn’t know chess players possessed.
‘Please permit me to remove your wrap,’ he offered in that soft voice I’d always regarded as sinister. Under these close conditions, I realized it might be interpreted slightly differently in a boudoir.
Sage herself, a longtime collector of designer men as well as clothes, shot Vartan a meaningful look that might bring a bull elephant to its knees. He didn’t seem to notice, but offered to take her coat as well. I introduced them. Then I squeezed past this intimate threesome, heading outside to greet the two men. I shook hands with Basil.
‘I thought you and Rosemary were out of town and couldn’t make it,’ I mentioned.
‘We changed our plans,’ Basil replied with a smile. ‘We wouldn’t have missed your mother’s first birthday party for the world.’
And just how did he know that it was?
‘So sorry, we seem to be here earlier than expected,’ Basil’s companion said as he peered into the luggage-and-coat-jammed entryway.
He had a warm gravelly voice and was much younger than Basil, perhaps in his mid-thirties. Pulling off his leather gloves, he tucked them beneath his arm and took my hand in both of his. His palms were firm and calloused from hard work.
‘I’m your new neighbor, Galen March,’ he introduced himself. ‘I’m the person your mother convinced to buy Sky Ranch. And you must be Alexandra. I’m so glad Cat invited me today so I could meet you. She’s told me a good deal about you.’
And nothing at all about you, I thought.
I thanked him briefly and headed back to help clear a path for the new arrivals.
Things just got stranger and stranger. I knew Sky Ranch well. Well enough to wonder why anyone would ever dream of buying it. It was the last and only private parcel in these parts. Over twenty thousand acres, with a price tag of at least fifteen million dollars, it spread across mountaintops between the reservations, national forest, and our family lands. But it was all bleak rock high above timberline, with no water and air so thin you couldn’t raise herds or grow crops. The land had sat idle for so many decades that locals called it Ghost Ranch. The only buyers who could afford it today were those who could exploit it in other ways – ski areas or mineral rights. And these wouldn’t be the sort that my mother would ever welcome to her neighborhood, let alone to her birthday party.
Mr Galen March’s story deserved investigation, but not right now. Since I couldn’t postpone the inevitable forever, I invited Basil and Galen to enter. With the men in my wake, I elbowed my way through the mudroom past Vartan Azov and the doting Livingston ladies, grabbed up a few more valises for Key to stash beneath the billiard table, and went back inside to stir my pot of stew.
No sooner had I set foot inside than I was confronted by Lily.
‘How do you know these people? Why are they here?’ she hissed.
‘They were invited,’ I told her, mystified by her closed expression. ‘Our neighbors, the Livingstons. I was only expecting their daughter, Sage – you heard the message. They used to be social muckety-mucks back East, but they’ve lived out here for years. They own Redlands, their ranch just near here, on the Colorado Plateau.’
‘They own a good deal more than that,’ Lily informed me under her breath.
But Basil Livingston had just arrived to join us. I was about to introduce him when Basil surprisingly bowed over Lily’s hand. When he stood, his distinguished face seemed also to have taken on a tight mask.
‘Hello, Basil,’ said Lily. ‘What brings you so far from London? As you see, Vartan and I had to leave rather suddenly ourselves. Oh, and tell me, were you able to continue the chess tournament after the dreadful death of your colleague, Taras Petrossian?’
A position with extensive interlocked pawn chains and little room for manœuvre by the pieces. Most men will still be on the board and most of the pieces will be behind the pawns creating a cramped position with few opportunities for exchanges.
– Edward R. Brace, An Illustrated Dictionary of Chess
The sun sets early in the mountains. By the time we’d gotten the guests and luggage moved inside, a silvery glow was all that still sifted through the skylights above, casting the animal carvings overhead into sinister silhouettes.
Galen March seemed to be quite taken with Key the moment he met her. He offered to help and followed her around, pitching in as she turned on the lamps around the octagon, threw a fresh bedsheet over the billiard table, and drew up the stools and benches all around it.
Lily explained my mother’s absence to the newcomers by claiming a family crisis, which, technically, it really was. She lied to the others, saying Cat had phoned with apologies and the wish that we’d enjoy ourselves in her absence.
Since we lacked the necessary number of wineglasses, Vartan filled some teacups with vodka from the tray on the sideboard and some coffee cups with hearty red wine. A few sips seemed to loosen everyone up a bit.
Taking our seats around the table, it was clear we had too many players to sort things out – a party of eight: Key and Lily and Vartan, the three Livingstons, myself and Galen March. With everyone looking a bit uneasy, we raised our cups and glasses in toast to our absent hostess.
The only thing we all appeared