Is there anything as gratifying as having one’s advice not just listened to, but heeded? In week two of school, Hannah obtained the key to the darkroom from Mr. Randolph and was told she could use it anytime, and order supplies for it from his departmental budget. By Halloween, she’d dated and dumped Peter Matheson — “He was such a boring lover,” she said, as if I’d know what that meant — but not before driving his Beemer all over town. And she made no effort to seek more popular friends of the Kathleen Caswell variety, seeming to prefer my quirky company instead.
I decided Hannah must value me as a guide, a docent. Except that instead of interpreting Impressionist painters at an art gallery, I was leading Hannah through high school, summarizing the ethos of each social set with pith and insight. I didn’t mind that image, of me as sage. It made a nice contrast to my regular role as the not as attractive or as smart sister to Mr. Golden Boy.
Besides, friendship with Hannah meant access to Glenwood.
Glenwood was number five on Molly’s list of puzzle book sites. After a former schoolhouse, a former golf clubhouse, a former stable — all converted since to residential use — and a former manor house still surrounded by its original stone wall. “What do you think?” Molly said. “Is it too weird if I include my own house in the book?”
We were sitting in her kitchen, where I had tried and failed to pick up any hint of ghostly vibe or psychic spark from the long-departed Jeremiah Brown about the treasure, despite a concerted mental effort on my arrival in the house that involved much grimacing and had caused Molly to ask if I was feeling sick.
“Too weird? Not at all. You must include Glenwood. Glenwood is the best thing about Rose Park, the, the — “ I remembered I was talking to a writer, considered and rejected referring to the house as a jewel on the crown, icing on the cake, or the top of the pops, settled for, “— the eye of the storm!”
Molly arched an eyebrow at me. “You’re exuberant today.”
She must have meant to say nonsensical, or maybe idiotic, but had mistakenly chosen the wrong word, an age-related habit I had noticed in my mother since my return home. I knew from experience that these slips of the tongue were better left uncorrected, so I said, “What’s this? My parents’ house is on the list? Why?”
“Because it’s the oldest in Rose Park that’s been continuously occupied by the same family.”
And was about as boring to look at as such a description would imply. “Finding a feature to highlight there will be a challenge.”
“I should mention that the feature you choose must be enduring; a flower that only blooms in June won’t do.” She twisted her mouth into a contemplative moue for a second before speaking further. “And it should be visible to the discerning eye, not to the careless glance, if you know what I mean.”
“If a discerning eye’s what you’re after, too bad Hannah’s not available to do the job.”
“Actually, Hannah did some work on the project, briefly, years ago.” Molly pulled an envelope of five-by-seven, black-and-white photographs from the file and passed it to me. “She took these pictures.”
I opened the envelope and removed the first print, a photo of Cawley Gardens, the park across the road from Glenwood, once the site of a grand mansion. Hannah’s picture of the park had been taken during what looked like a fierce summer storm — tree branches were bent over in the wind, and rain poured down in sheets.
“This is rather gloomy,” I said.
“You know Hannah and her mood shots.”
The next photo was of a wooded area. “What’s this? Part of the ravine?”
“That’s the site of a small lodge that was on Glenwood’s property when that section of the ravine belonged to this house.”
I hadn’t known about any such lodge. And given my father’s passion for local history, I should have.
Molly said,“There’s a copy in the file of an old city plan that marks the lodge site. Hannah went down to the archives and found it for me.”
I wrote,“Lodge? ask Dad,” on my notepad, and flipped to the next photo, a shadowy, mysterious one of Glenwood. Hannah had shot the picture without any cars nearby, and at such an angle that you couldn’t see the neighbouring houses, or anything modern like a telephone pole or hydro line. “Great picture,” I said. “Very atmospheric.” And much more haunted in feel than the cheery kitchen where we sat.
The next photo was of the footbridge that spanned the ravine up at Field Street, the bridge Molly had sketched at Bagel Haven. The “kissing bridge” the local kids used to call it. Noel had been there many a time in his day. Hannah, too, I was sure. “The bridge isn’t very old, is it?”
“Not that edition, no, but there’s been a bridge of some form in that location since the area was settled. There’s a picture of an old iron version of the bridge in one of the books on the reading list I’m giving you.”
There was no end to what I didn’t know. “When did Hannah take these pictures?”
“When she was at art college. She was assigned a project on some technique or other — the use of natural light, maybe. So she made a couple of my sites the subjects of her photos; to kill two birds with one stone.”
Or like a cat kills mice. I took the envelope, closed the file. “Tell you what: I’ll go home, absorb all this, and call before you leave for Nova Scotia if I have any questions. Have you arranged for anyone to keep an eye on the house while you’re away?”
“No, but we have an alarm system.”
“You’re not worried another Rose Park Burglar might come along?”
“Another? Who was the first?”
The Rose Park Burglar had haunted me the year I was fifteen, when a rash of break and enters was the talk of the neighbourhood. Most of the robberies took place when the homeowners were out, for the evening or away, but a few jobs were pulled while the victims slept, including one on my parents’ own block, at the home of an elderly widow. No harm had befallen her — she didn’t realize she’d been robbed until noon the next day — but the thought of a crime-bent stranger prowling the streets, our street, had spooked me badly.
The first night I heard the news of the burglar’s spree, I lay in bed, unable to sleep, my anxiety the only defence I could muster against our house being next. I was tormented by the idea of waking up to the feel of a gloved hand across my mouth, or a pillow pressed down on my face. I called to mind, in a murky, green-tinged palette, with surround-sound, every graphic scene of violence or horror I’d been subjected to at movie theatres during trailers for scary movies I would never see.
Long after my parents had fallen asleep, I lay and listened too closely to the night sounds. The muffled moaning I heard was our dog Angus, Tup’s predecessor. He slept on the second-floor landing and was known to have an occasional nightmare, despite a moronically sunny daytime personality. The rhythmic bangs that resounded in my room’s radiator were furnace-related, I knew, and I also recognized the sound of car doors closing outside — one, then the other — that signalled the return of our gadabout neighbours, an empty nester couple more social than my parents.
With my paranoia-enhanced, superhero-level hearing, I could isolate, from the low hum of outdoor noises that leaked inside my locked windows, the jingle of the dog collar on the greyhound down the street who was walked each night at eleven-thirty. I knew not to panic when raccoons hissed and shrieked in the alley during their territorial wars over our garbage bins. But any other exterior sound had me up and at the window, straining for a glimpse of a black-clad burglar scaling our walls or trying to jimmy our windows. Any unaccounted-for