SHILO DINNEGAN HALTED her creaky, old vehicle on the weedy, flagged drive and leaped from the ancient Ford; she threw her skinny arms around me, hugging hard. Despite the fact that we had just had dinner three days ago—during which I wanted to tell her my plans, but was afraid I would burst into tears—it felt like I hadn’t seen her in months.
I hugged her back, then held her away from me. “Shilo, what are you doing here?” I asked, shaking her.
“You invited me to come stay,” she said calmly, cocking her head on one side, her black eyes snapping with good humor.
“I . . . but . . .” I spluttered, then broke into laughter. “Shilo, you know that’s not quite true, but I’m so glad to see you. And you know you’re welcome to stay.” My depression vanished like mist, as I considered what a difference having Shilo around, even for a little while, would make. Arm over her shoulders, I turned to the Bobcat driver, and found it was Jack McGill, wearing battered blue jeans, a soft, old, plaid shirt, and a huge grin. “So you’re the cut-rate hole filler?” I said.
“Yup, I am. Borrowed this machine from a friend. I’ll get going. I want to get these filled for you so you won’t break your neck.”
He started work immediately, and Shilo linked her arm in mine and tugged me away. “Isn’t he cute?” she said, watching him over my shoulder.
“You think he’s cute?” I glanced back at McGill, who had begun at the hole closest to the castle. Really?
*
“SO YOU WERE LAST HERE WHEN YOU WERE HOW old?” Shilo asked.
“I was about five, I think,” I said, pulling a boho-chic dress out of one of Shilo’s many suitcases and shaking the wrinkles out of it.
The room I had chosen for myself was one with a “Jack and Jill” bathroom and a room on the other side. I had vaguely thought I might make the other room an office, of sorts. Instead, I put Shilo in it, figuring that would be only one bathroom to clean rather than several. The castle already felt smaller because of her boundless energy and enthusiasm. The cage with Shilo’s bunny, Magic, was on top of a dresser, and the rabbit stared at me with witless focus through the square mesh.
While McGill worked steadily on filling holes, a gentleman in overalls had arrived—summoned by McGill, who knew exactly what needed to be done—and turned on the boiler, lit the pilot lights, and explained how it all worked, checked that everything was functional, then tipped his John Deere hat and left. I had sheets and blankets in the laundry, not trusting my uncle’s housekeeping, and would be able to make up our beds with fresh linens shortly. The washer and dryer were industrial-size, so it was all in one load.
“Why didn’t you look up your uncle, after your mom and grandma died?” Shilo asked.
I sat down on the mattress as Shilo finished her unpacking and talked about my family, something I rarely did. “I didn’t remember the trip here very well. Still don’t. And I only have a dim memory of Uncle Melvyn. We came here by train, I remember, and Uncle Melvyn met us at the station in an old car, something that looked like it was from a forties gangster movie, the kind my grandmother liked to watch on TV.” I wondered if that car was still in one of the outbuildings that dotted the landscape, and that I had yet to look into.
Why had Mom come all the way to Autumn Vale, I wondered. I told Shilo the rest of the story: It was a long trip and I was tired, which is why I don’t remember much of the castle, I guess. I tumbled right into bed, which I shared with Mom, but I woke up the next morning alone. A little scared by the movie-set weirdness of the castle, I found my way down to the kitchen. Mom and Uncle Melvyn sat in the kitchen talking, and I remember the smell of strong, burnt coffee. I lingered at the door of the kitchen, shy, I suppose, as the conversation between the two of them became an argument. I don’t remember what they said, but the tone of an adult argument is familiar to any child.
Mom stormed out of the kitchen, grabbed my arm, and hauled me upstairs. I sat cross-legged on the bed while she packed our bags and called for a cab to take us back to the train station. Though I was hungry, there wasn’t even time to eat; I remember that vividly. The cab pulled up, honked its horn, and we stormed out of there, followed by my shouting uncle. I knelt on the seat of the car and looked out the back window. Uncle Melvyn stood at the huge oak double doors, shaking his fist.
“What did they fight over?” Shilo asked, shutting a drawer now filled with her confused jumble of clean underwear.
“To this day, I don’t know. My mom wouldn’t tell me. But we never came back here, and she never mentioned him again. You didn’t know my mother, but she had those kind of arguments with people all the time. If someone didn’t share her political views or her moral ideals, then they were the enemy.”
“Wow. Judgmental much?”
“I know. She said compromise was for those who couldn’t stick to their ideals. I mean, she was right, usually, about the stuff she was passionate about, but it didn’t make it any easier to have friends. I don’t think I ever had a friend with Republican parents. Mom wouldn’t stand for it.
“Anyway, I asked a few times about Uncle Melvyn, but finally stopped after the umpteenth dirty look from Mom. We moved to New York and lived with Granny, Mom’s mother. You know the rest; when I was twenty-one Granny died, and Mom just months later. I never even thought of looking up Uncle Melvyn. I supposed I didn’t realize he’d still be alive. He seemed ancient when I was five, though I guess he must have only been in his fifties.”
Shilo danced into the bathroom with her cosmetics bag and dashed back out without it. “We met when you were . . . what?”
“I was twenty-eight.” That was the year I’d met Miguel Paradiso. Everything changed when I met Miguel, a photographer who confessed, on a Lane Bryant shoot in St. Tropez, that skinny girls frightened him. Hunger of any kind frightened Miguel, except for the hunger for love he saw in my eyes, he said to me.
It was a great pickup line. He was such a romantic, and had a genius for flattery, useful in his work as a photographer. Every woman felt more beautiful around Miguel, more womanly, softer, vulnerable. Cared for. I fell in love almost that same moment and couldn’t believe my good fortune when he fell in love with me, too. We got married just six months later in that Connecticut castle, which Miguel knew from a shoot. We had two glorious years together before he died in a car accident while on his way to a job in Vermont, leaving me a widow at the age of thirty-one.
Shilo reached out and touched my arm. “You’re thinking of Miguel.”
“How do you always know?” I asked, the view of my friend shimmering through the veil of tears.
“It’s not hard to figure out,” she said, her pixie face drawn down in a sad expression. “If you’re crying, you’re probably thinking of him. We all loved Miguel,” she said, referring to the community of photographers, artists, stylists, designers, and models who made up our friendship circle.
Most of whom had now abandoned me. The Leatrice effect, again. Even those who didn’t believe the woman’s outrageous claim thought I had sold out by going to work for her, instead of continuing my work as a stylist. “I know,” I said. “I still miss him.”
After a brief pause, she said, “So seriously, dearie; what are you going to do with this monstrosity of a castle?” Shilo got up and twirled around in the room, her arms spread wide.