“One feels them very strongly in the house. It was a very important place to them,” Sybil said, trying to entice him, but not give too much away.
“That’s what my mother always said. She said that as my grandmother got older, and especially once her husband died, she was more attached to her history, her own family and her parents’ home, than the live people in her life, like my mother, her daughter. But I think they must have been very different. And my mother was very French. She said her mother always stayed very attached to all things American. And that can be a clash sometimes, culturally. My own daughter likes the idea of having some American ancestry. She thinks it’s exotic.” He laughed. It was interesting to Sybil too that Lili considered herself entirely French, since she was entirely American by blood, and her French father had adopted her. She wondered if that was why Lili was so adamant about it, to establish her identity and dispel the idea of her biological father’s family rejecting her at birth, which Bettina must have told her at some point as an adult.
By the end of the conversation, Sybil was beginning to like Samuel. He had relaxed on the phone, and had been generous with his time, and open about his own family and their quirks. “I only have one very old copy of your grandmother’s book,” Sybil told him then. “I’ll have it copied for you and send it,” she promised.
“Can you scan it to me? That might be simpler.”
“Of course. I hadn’t thought of it. I don’t think there are any other copies of the book than the one I have. She really only did it for the family, and if there were other copies, they must have gotten lost. The bank gave me this one, along with the plans and a lot of old photographs when we bought the house.”
“I can’t promise you when I’ll read it,” he said honestly. “I’m retiring at the end of this semester, and I have a lot of things to wrap up here at the university. After the first of the year, I’ll have more time.” He sounded wistful as he said it. A fifty-year career as an academic was about to end. She suspected he was finding it hard to retire, and was wondering how he would fill his time, other than with the book he said he was starting, which sounded as dry as hers on design. The Butterfields were a far more intriguing subject.
She thanked him again for his time. They had been on the phone for more than half an hour. He was an interesting and intelligent man, and he hadn’t hung up on her, as she had feared. But she hadn’t told him about the psychic dimension to the house either, which no one would have understood or believed, unless they’d experienced it, as she and her family did, and had for three years. They had been living with the entire Butterfield clan since they moved in, and sharing their lives and experiences of a hundred years before, at the same time as their own in current time. But somehow it worked, and the parallel time frames had brought them together as one family under one roof.
Sybil scanned the book for him an hour later, and had just pressed the send button when Gwyneth materialized out of nowhere, as she did at times. It was easier than walking up two flights of stairs, and Sybil teased her about it. Magnus liked doing that too, just popping in, usually in Charlie’s room. Augusta was more circumspect about it, and lumbered up the stairs with her cane, on Angus’s arm, with the two dogs behind them, panting heavily, since both dogs were old and had short snouts.
“Did you call him?”
Sybil had jumped when she turned around and saw Gwyneth right behind her. She was wearing a pretty dark blue velvet dress she’d worn at dinner, and her hemlines had recently gotten shorter and were showing her ankles. Gwyneth was a beautiful woman. They were both up late, thinking about Samuel.
“You scared me!” Sybil scolded her.
“Sorry! Did you?”
“Call who?” Sybil was distracted for a minute, and looking for something on her desk.
“My great-grandson, in Paris.” Sybil looked up and smiled at her, as Gwyneth settled comfortably in a chair in Sybil’s office.
“Yes, I talked to him. I didn’t like him at first, but he warmed up after a while. You have a twenty-two-year-old great-great-granddaughter too, who is studying architecture at the Beaux-Arts. She loves old houses.”
“How interesting,” Gwyneth said, impressed by what Sybil had been able to find out, and so quickly. “I wonder what she looks like. She would be Lili’s granddaughter, since he’s Lili’s son and Bettina’s grandson.”
“He’s retiring shortly, and starting a book on some dull subject. He’s crazy about his daughter, and sounds very proud of her. He got married at fifty, and he’s divorced.” Gwyneth took it all in. Sybil had already put Bettina’s book away. She had never shared it with Gwyneth and felt strongly that she shouldn’t since it revealed far too much about what Gwyneth didn’t know. There were too many painful things in it about their future, and it wouldn’t be fair.
“I wish they’d come to visit. I’d love to see them,” Gwyneth said longingly.
“I wish they would too. I don’t know if they have the money or the time. Let’s see what he says.” She didn’t tell her she’d sent him Bettina’s book, since she’d never discussed it with her. “Maybe he’ll think about it and want to come. I could send him a photograph of you, maybe that would do it. Or one of your mother. Or a recording of Angus playing the bagpipes,” she teased her, and they both laughed.
“You’re a wicked woman,” Gwyneth said, and they chatted for a few minutes, and Gwyneth left, via the door this time, as Sybil smiled and went back to work on the final chapter of her book, since she was too wound up to sleep now. She was almost there. She wondered if she’d hear from Samuel. She had sown what seeds she could to inspire him to want to know more, and hopefully even see the house.
—
The weeks before Christmas were as busy as they always were. They got the giant Christmas tree up in the ballroom, which was a major feat. It had to come in through the windows, and it just grazed the eighteen-foot ceiling. And then they all decorated it, with tall ladders and much consultation with one another about which ornament should go where.
It was their third Christmas together. Andy and Caroline were coming home the next day, and Max and Quinne were joining them right after Christmas and would be with them for New Year’s. She had Bert and Gwyneth’s blessing for their visit. They liked them, and Augusta loved Quinne. It would compensate a little for Bettina and Lili’s absence. It would be their first Christmas without them, and Sybil knew that Gwyneth was sad about it. Sybil was grateful that with Bert’s help, Blake was pulling out of the financial disaster he’d been in, without too much damage, but it had been a very bad scare. He still wanted to open his own start-up, but was waiting a few months to do it. And he was exploring some new ideas on the subject.