Treasure Box

7. No Place Like Home

In the morning, watching through half-open eyes as Madeleine staggered from bed to bathroom, Quentin wondered why he had been so emphatic about wanting to meet her family. Not because he actually wanted to feel this nervous, worried about whether he'd measure up to their expectations—or, worse, fit them exactly. It didn't help that Madeleine had been so maddeningly vague about what was wrong with her family. Or even, for that matter, who they were. The only one she ever mentioned specifically in connection with this house was her grandmother. Quentin's own grandmothers were so funny and loving and kind, each in her own way, that it was hard to imagine that any grandmother could be awful. What would an evil grandmother do, bake cookies without sugar? Refuse to babysit?

"Wake up, Quentin."

"Did I doze off?"

"I wasn't that long in the bathroom. I think you're just hoping to avoid meeting my family."

"Maybe. Unconsciously, I assure you."

"You still haven't opened your eyes."

"Who else am I meeting today? Besides your dreaded grandmother?"

"Whoever's in residence, of course."

"I'll meet your parents, won't I?"

"I doubt it."

He felt his insides twist. "Then why are we here? Mad, I wanted to meet your parents."

"You never said that. You said you wanted to meet my family."

"And are those two separate entities?"

"My parents don't live here. My mother had a falling out with my grandmother."

"Well, why don't we go meet your mother, then?"

"Because this is home," said Madeleine. "This is my inheritance."

"You're the only heir?"

"Tin, I think you're stalling."

"I just don't get how your family is related."

"Grandmother begat Mother, and Mother begat me. Like in the Bible."

Quentin pulled the pillow over his head. She jerked it off at once, then pulled off the covers. There was a definite chill in the room.

"Come on, it's cold."

"You should have put your jammies back on last night."

"After you went to all the trouble of pulling them off with your teeth?"

"In your dreams."

"You mean I was dreaming?"

"The glass of cold water comes next, Tin. Rise and shine."

Quentin immediately quoted: " 'Whenever I hear you saying, Rise and shine, rise and shine, it makes me think how lucky dead people are!' "

"What are you quoting?"

"Glass Menagerie. Tennessee Williams. High school English class."

"Get. Out. Of. Bed." She began pulling on his foot. He let her drag him to the floor, then tried to pull her down on top of him. But instead she planted a foot on his chest and said, "Rise or die, Tin."

"Oh, well, if that's my choice."

The bathroom floor was icy. The water from the tap was icy. He ran and ran the hot water. The temperature didn't change. He stuck his head out of the bathroom door. Madeleine was shimmying into a dress. She never wore dresses in the daytime.

"How long do I wait for hot water?"

"There's no hot water in the morning here. Didn't I tell you? Grandmother believes morning baths are bad for the health. The hot water is turned on at two in the afternoon so that you can have a hot bath between four and six, in time for supper."

"Are you joking?"

"Was it funny?"

"So cold water is all I get?"

"It's good for what ails you."

He splashed the stuff onto his lace and shivered into the face towel. He toyed with the idea of not shaving—his beard wasn't all that heavy and the color was light, and he often went a day without shaving. But Grandmother—he had to make the right impression on her, didn't he? If Mad was wearing a dress...

A few minutes later, dressed in sweater and slacks—she had warned him not to bring jeans, as there would be no occasion for which they would be regarded as appropriate—he gave Madeleine his arm, opened the door, and led her out into the corridor.

A man was standing there, arms folded. He had a beard, dark and cut to a point at the chin. His bearing was military, but his clothing was civilian. A suit, and rather an old-fashioned one. "About time the two of you came out of there."

"Why should it have bothered you, Uncle Stephen?" said Madeleine in a sickeningly sweet tone. "Did you need to use our bathroom?"

"Your grandmother wouldn't let anyone eat breakfast till you came down."

"So she's in a good mood. Glad to hear it."

Uncle Stephen scowled and marched down the stairs.

"She waited breakfast for us?" asked Quentin, incredulous. "It's noon!"

"It's actually a good sign, believe it or not," said Madeleine. "If she were angry at me, she would have made everybody else eat at dawn, and then make sure there was nothing in the kitchen for us to eat."

"So she makes everybody else fast, because she's feeling well-disposed toward you?"

"It's never a question of whether there will be suffering, Tin. The only question is who's going to be the victim. So far so good."

"Who's Uncle Stephen?"

"My father's brother."

"He's here, but your father isn't?"

"My father has a life."

"So Uncle Stephen isn't even a blood relative of the family? Just an in-law?"

"I didn't say that. My mother and father are cousins."

"Second cousins?"

"Wouldn't you like it better if I told you yes? But no. Uncle Stephen's father and Grandmother were brother and sister."

"But Grandmother got the house?"

"Grandmother gets what she wants. Except me."

Madeleine's parents were first cousins. Well, that didn't necessarily mean anything. Cousins marrying didn't mean there would be birth defects, only that the likelihood was increased.

They reached the main floor and Madeleine nodded toward a pair of doors standing only slightly ajar. "During the winter we always have breakfast in the library. The sun warms the room."

"Sounds cheerful."

As they walked toward the doors, Madeleine added, "I should warn you that Grandmother probably won't speak to you."

"You've got to be kidding."

"Don't take it personally. She likes to disorient people. She can go weeks at a time without speaking a word."

"Then how do people know what she wants?"

"Oh, trust me, she makes her wishes known." Madeleine was still chuckling as they passed through the doors into the library.

The walls were lined with books, floor to ceiling, just as in the grande dame's house, but there was no ladder. Apparently no one ever needed the books on the top shelves. Quentin got the feeling that this wasn't a living library, constantly being added to, borrowed from. Rather it was a library by custom. Some ancestor had bought the books, but no one had actually read any of them in a century. They were wallpaper.

The heart of the room now was the long table that ran parallel to the array of floor-to-ceiling windows. It was of a dark wood polished so deeply that the scant morning light from the windows shone every bit as brightly in reflection as in reality. The bone-white china also had a deep luster, and the crystal was so fine that it seemed not to exist except as bright sparkles of light in the air.

Seated in formal array around the table were six adults, with two empty chairs for Quentin and Madeleine. The empty chairs were at opposite corners of the table.

Everyone's eyes were on them, of course, except for the bent, gray-haired woman, shawled and stooped, who sat with her back to them in the tall chair at the head of the table. Grandmother, obviously, since no one else in the room could possibly be a candidate. The only other woman at the table was in her fifties at the oldest, which made it impossible for her to be the ruler of this roost.

Madeleine led Quentin forward quite boldly until her hand was resting on the tall back of Grandmother's throne. "How lovely to see you all. May I present my husband, Quentin Fears. You may call him Mr. Fears. And you may call me Mrs. Fears. Quentin, darling, allow me to introduce my family."

She was going to have her family call her Mrs. Fears? Only with difficulty did Quentin keep his broad smile riveted to his face.

"Uncle Stephen you met in the hall upstairs."

Uncle Stephen half-rose from his chair. "Charmed, I'm sure."

"The pleasure is mine," said Quentin, relying more on dim memories of dialogue from high school Spanish class than on any actual knowledge of formal manners. "Am I to call you Uncle Stephen?"

"If you should have occasion to address me, Mr. Fears," said Uncle Stephen, "you may feel free to call me 'sir.' "

"Thank you, sir," said Quentin, trying to keep the irony out of his voice.

Madeleine laughed lightly. "Uncle Stephen was in the military for a few minutes during the Korean War and he allows no one to forget it—though I'm never sure whether he understood the difference between the Korean and Crimean wars. He's a Light Brigade-ish sort of soldier at heart. Ours but to do and die, right, Uncle Stephen?"

"Only Madeleine may speak to me so jocularly," said Uncle Stephen coldly, addressing Quentin. "In case you thought her jaunty airs might be tolerated in someone else."

"I'll try to avoid error, sir," said Quentin.

"The charming lady next to Uncle Stephen is Aunt Athena. She is Grandmother's youngest sister, the one who never married. Her real name is Minerva, but she hated it and chose the Greek version of the name when she was in her twenties. Aunt Athena is noted for her wisdom."

Aunt Athena smiled broadly. "Oh, Magdalena, I've missed you so much. Where have you been?"

"Busy busy busy," said Madeleine. "Isn't my husband a fine one?"

"Husbands are usually so overrated. But as long as he makes you pregnant and you produce an heir to this great empire of love." Aunt Athena suddenly realized what she had said, blushed, and pressed her hands to her cheeks. "Did I say 'pregnant'? Oh, what a tongue I have."

"The next empty chair," said Madeleine, "is yours, Quentin, but I fear that my chair, which is next to it at the foot of the table, is inappropriately occupied."

The young man sitting there—he could be no more than thirty—looked up and grinned saucily. "Grandmother lets me sit here all the time now, Mrs. Fears."

"But not when I'm home, Paul. We've had this discussion before."

"It's a chair, darling," said Paul. "Just a chair. You can sit anywhere."

"Paul is my mother's younger brother," said Madeleine. "He's really forty-five. He only looks so young because he wears makeup. He's also very short and wears lifts in his shoes. I have no doubt that he's sitting on a dictionary right now."

"Charming as ever, aren't you, darling?" said Paul. "Maddy was always my favorite niece, Mr. Fears. You can call me Paul, by the way. And don't go near the bluffs with Maddy. She's a pusher."

"Move," said Madeleine. "And try not to lick the forks before you do."

Paul got up and walked around the table to the other empty chair, at Grandmother's right hand. At the same time, Madeleine led Quentin around the table the other way, waiting for him to help her into the chair at the foot of the table. There really was a dictionary sitting there. She handed it to him. Heavy. After a moment's hesitation he set it on the buffet a few paces beyond the table. He rushed back to help Madeleine slide gracefully into her chair and push it up to the table. Not until he was seated himself, at her right hand, did he get a chance to look up to the head of the table and see the face of the fabled Grandmother.

She was asleep.

Madeleine continued the introductions. "To my immediate left is Simon. Simon is a friend of the family. He's been living here since... when was it, Simon? 1950? Was Truman still president?"

Simon looked bashful and confused. In his seventies, he had only the barest fringe of white hair. He ran one hand and then the other over his scalp. "The Cryers have always been extraordinarily generous to one who has nothing to offer but his meager friendship, which, despite its little value, is at least constant."

"I'm pleased to meet you," said Quentin, starting to rise from his seat.

"No don't!" cried Simon. "Don't get up! Not to me! Pretend I'm not here!" Then he hunched his head toward one shoulder and grinned as his body shook and his tongue darted in and out at the corner of his mouth. Apparently this was what passed for laughter in the obsequious Simon.

"Keeping Simon here is one of Grandmother's aesthetic statements," said Madeleine.

The comment stung Quentin with its vicious-ness. "Mad," he said softly.

She grinned and patted his hand. "He's deaf as a post, darling. And dumb as a stump."

Since Simon had just finished speaking, he could only assume that she meant "dumb" in the sense of "stupid."

"And last but not least," said Madeleine, "is my cousin Jude. I'm not sure where on the convoluted family tree he actually fits, but he's long been a favorite of Grandmother's and as long as she lives, he'll have a place at her side."

"Oh, Mrs. Fears, you're always such a lark!" cried Jude. He was a bushy-eyebrowed old codger, even taller apparently than Uncle Stephen, but stooped so far that his head was rather near his plate, and he had to lift his head to bring the goblet to his lips. "Howdy, Mr. Fears. We're glad Madeleine—Mrs. Fears—found her a fine young man like you. Welcome and glad, we are to know you. Are you really richer than God?"

"Now, Cousin Jude," said Madeleine, "you know that God's millions are counted in a more dependable currency than American dollars. There's no comparing."

Cousin Jude thought this was the funniest joke. As the old man laughed, Quentin's eyes wandered to the head of the table, where he was startled to see that Grandmother's eyes were wide open, staring at him like headlights on bright.

Quentin turned to Madeleine and spoke softly. "Your grandmother..."

"Yes, Tin?"

But glancing back at the old lady, he was chagrined to see that her eyes were closed again.

"I thought she was awake."

"Oh, she's hearing everything, be sure of that. In and out of sleep, but aware all the time. And she has the hearing of a bat, so she's listening to our little whispers right now. Aren't you, Grandmother."

But Grandmother's eyes remained closed, her face slack with sleep.

At her right hand, Uncle Paul leaned forward with a grin. "Going to introduce me again, darling? I can change my name if you'd like."

"No need, Uncle Paul," said Madeleine. "Shall I ring for breakfast?"

"Please," said Uncle Stephen. "Some of us need to take nourishment at regular intervals."

"It's your bell, dear," said Aunt Athena.

Madeleine reached out and rang a small bell that sat beside her place at the table. It occurred to Quentin that hers was the place where Uncle Paul had been sitting. So he really had been an interloper there.

As soon as the bell rang, the same quiet servant from the day before opened the door from the butler's pantry, and two footmen came in with steaming plates, one of biscuits and one of scrambled eggs and bacon. Both began serving with Madeleine, and worked their way down the two sides of the table, crossing behind Grandmother and working up the other way. But no food was put on Grandmother's plate.

The collection of people around the table was odd, Quentin supposed, and there were certainly family tensions, but he couldn't help noticing that it was Madeleine who seemed to rule here, not Grandmother. It wasn't an idea he liked much, that Madeleine herself was the main source of family tension. And it wasn't fair, either. He had no idea of what had actually gone before. All the hostility might well have been earned. What did he know of these people? Uncle Paul, with his smarmy smile and ingratiating manner, was only fifteen years older than Madeleine but looked her age. For all Quentin knew, Paul might have molested Madeleine when she was a girl, or tried to; he might richly deserve Madeleine's goading. Not that Quentin took such speculation seriously, but after all, Madeleine had recoiled from his first attempt at any kind of serious physical intimacy with her. Wasn't it possible that Paul—or someone—had done something which made even a husband's caress at first repellent to her?

No, no, it wasn't right to start assigning unspeakable crimes to strangers. If Madeleine hadn't accused them, why should he?

The eggs were hot, the bacon cooked perfectly. The biscuits were steaming, freshly sliced, the butter still melting inside them. Whatever other failings this house might have, the cuisine had the simple perfection that approached the platonic ideal. Not scrambled eggs, but the scrambled eggs that all other scrambled eggs were imitating. The bacon of bacon, the biscuit of biscuits.

"Delicious," said Quentin to Madeleine.

She smiled, then leaned close to him and whispered, "Tin, in the upper classes one doesn't compliment the food. It's assumed that the food will always be perfect, and it isn't to be discussed."

He started to laugh, but caught himself when he realized she wasn't joking. All he could do was look at her oddly for a moment and then dig in to eat more. This was the food she was used to; he cringed to think of where he had taken her, what he had cooked for her. He had never wanted to live rich, but when they built a house, it would have to have a kitchen where a first-class chef would be glad to cook; and the chef would have to have a budget that would allow the acquisition of such ingredients. He could do no less for Madeleine, even if she said she didn't need such things.

The footmen came back for a second pass, this time with fruit—slices of pear so ripe they dissolved sweetly in his mouth almost without chewing; chunks of fresh pineapple with not a trace of acid sting to them; raspberries so plump and tart that the flavor seemed to dart through his whole face the moment he bit down on one. He closed his eyes to enjoy the perfect flavor without distraction.

"He's asleep!" crowed Simon. "Put him right out!"

Quentin opened his eyes, startled.

Simon looked crestfallen. "Oh, shame! No nap after all! Poor boy! Newlyweds get no sleep at all, do they!"

Madeleine put her hand on Quentin's knee under the table, to still his response. "Now, Simon," she said loudly, presumably to pierce Simon's deafness. "Mr. Fears is still a young man. He doesn't think of a nap as recreation yet."

"Not recreation!" cried Simon. "A feat! The great Olympic monathlon! To sleep, perchance not to dream! To obliviate one's dire sins in the wine of night!"

Grandmother was looking at Quentin again. And this time her eyes didn't close when he glanced at Madeleine and touched her sleeve.

"Grandmother," said Madeleine. "I hope he meets with your approval. He's everything I need, don't you think?"

Grandmother said nothing, but her eyes continued to drill into Quentin's soul, or so it seemed. He wanted to beg her pardon. He wanted to leave the room.

"With him beside me, I can open the box, don't you think?"

Grandmother's eyes slowly closed.

"Grandmother is annoyed with me," said Madeleine.

"Box?" asked Quentin.

"My inheritance. My grandfather left it for me. But by the terms of his will, I was forbidden to open it until my husband stood beside me."

The words cut him to the heart. She had never spoken of this before, never a hint that she stood to gain financially as soon as she brought a husband home.

"Oh, relax, Tin," she said. "I don't actually care about the inheritance. Not like I did when I was a girl. It bothered me then, of course, to see that box every day and know I couldn't open it. I grew out of that. I would have been happy never to come back here, never to open it. But since I am here, and do have a husband...."

"I knew you weren't marrying me for my money," said Quentin. "It never occurred to me you might be marrying me for yours."

He said it with a smile and a laugh. But it was only barely a jest.

"It isn't money, I'm quite sure of that. Or if it is," said Madeleine, "it isn't much because the box isn't all that large." She laughed and patted his hand. "Quentin, you're taking all this too seriously. I called it my treasure box when I was little. I even made maps of the house to where it was buried, though of course it isn't buried at all, it just sits there in the open."

"That seems a cruel temptation to a child. You might just have opened it."

"If I open it prematurely, I can't keep what's inside," said Madeleine. "I think Grandmother always hoped I would open it, and lose it. That dear old temptress." Madeleine's laugh was light and not unkind-sounding. Yet it was unkind, Quentin thought. She can be unkind without even noticing it. Do I know my wife at all?

Madeleine leaned over and rested her head on his arm. "Quentin, I don't like who I become when I'm here. And you don't like me either. You would never have loved me if you had met me here. But when I go back outside with you, I'll be myself again, you'll see. My true self, my best self. Not this awful... whatever you think I am."

"I think you're my dear wife," said Quentin. "But going outside sounds like a good idea. You were going to show me the river."

"You had enough breakfast?"

"Full as a tick," said Quentin.

"Grandmother, do excuse us to take a walk along the bluff."

Grandmother's eyes followed Quentin as he rose to his feet and pulled back Madeleine's chair so she could also rise. But she said nothing.

Simon's voice piped up loudly. "Everyone here who is actually real, please raise your hand!"

Madeleine murmured to Quentin, "When they get to a certain age, I think they should be locked up somewhere."

Quentin laughed and shook his head. "Why, when he's already locked up in a dream?"

"Oh, you put that so beautifully." She squeezed his arm. "I love you."

The library had only the windows to link it with the outdoors. They had to cross the entry hall and go into the official dining room in order to reach a door leading out onto the back portico. It was a broad expanse of flagstones with five wide steps leading down to the snow-covered lawn. The lawn itself, interrupted only by an occasional tree that was invariably surrounded by a circular bench, flowed on to the bluff overlooking the river. The river itself was, of course, below the level of the bluff, but in the clear, weary light of a winter afternoon, they could see the dark shadows of trees against stark and shining snow on the bluffs on the opposite side of the river. Miles and miles away, it seemed, though it could hardly be that far.

"It's a little bleak," he said.

"Imagine it with leaves," said Madeleine. "Imagine it filled with life. Imagine it when the country was still young and you might hear the tootle of a steamboat on the river below, and the sound of children laughing as they ran along the bluff."

As she spoke, the pictures she conjured in his mind delighted him, and he smiled. "All right," he said. "I'm willing to admit that winter has its own beauty, too."

"This house wasn't always filled with strange old people, you know," said Madeleine. "It was once alive and bright."

"When you were a little girl here?"

"I was a solitary child when I lived here," said Madeleine. "And Paul—he was no company for me."

Quentin wondered again whether Paul might have molested her, or tried to.

"But Mother told me what it was like when she was young. She and Paul were little here, and even though that was well after the age of the steamboats, of course, they knew the stories—Aunt Athena told them—and they'd play steamboat captain down by the river or up in their attic playroom."

"The idylls of childhood."

"Whatever that means. Exactly."

"But Aunt Athena can't be old enough to remember steamboats, either."

"Oh, of course not. Just a conduit for old stories. Family memories. She has to use her head for something. Keeping the old tales alive isn't a bad occupation for it."

"Mad, you're so nasty about them."

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm always so frightened when I come here, I'm not at my best."

"What are you afraid of?"

She didn't answer and she didn't answer, and then they were at the bluff and the river scene unfolded below them. Even with patches of ice along the edges of the river, it was formidably wide. Quentin remembered paintings by the Hudson River School and tried to apply those magnificent pastorals and landscapes to the scene before him. It wasn't hard. Before the river was a highway, it was a habitat, and now that the traffic was gone, perhaps that old life was coming back. Some old docks still touched the icy river edge, but at other places the verge of the river had been given back to the woods. How many squirrels were living off stored nuts in those trees in the lee of the bluffs? How many coons and rabbits, field mice and weasels lived without the sight of man for months on end?

Her hand stole around his waist and she leaned into him. "Oh, Quentin, I do love this place, I do love it. This is what brings me back, even though I hate who I become when I'm here."

"So let's open the treasure box and go. I can buy you another place on the river with a view just like this. Or better."

"There is no place just like this."

"You don't want me to look for another Victorian mansion?"

"Pre-Victorian, dear," said Madeleine. "Victorian is so... nouveau."

They laughed.

They walked on the path along the edge of the bluff. In a few places the drop-off was rather steep, and the path did skirt rather close. He couldn't help remembering Uncle Paul's jocular warning: Maddy's a pusher. And he was walking on the side by the river. But she wasn't pushing, she was holding him, and he loved the feel of the way their bodies moved, not quite together, but rubbing against each other, hip to hip, his arm across her shoulders, her arm around his waist. The breeze was a little chilly, but the sun was warm.

They reached the end of the family property and turned back to the house. They took a different path this time, and it led around a small stonewalled graveyard with an arched entrance. "Isn't it kind of morbid, keeping the family dead here on the property?" asked Quentin.

"It depends on how you regard the dead," said Madeleine. "They were part of us in life. Shouldn't they be part of us in death?"

"Will you be buried here someday?" he asked.

"I intend never to die," she said.

"Statistically, almost every woman who marries is signing on for widowhood at some time in her life."

"Do you want to be buried here?" she asked teasingly.

"Not unless I'm really dead," he said. "No fair burying me while I'm still snoring."

"You admit you snore?"

"Everybody snores," said Quentin. "But they only hear the other guy's snoring."

"And sleep through their own," said Madeleine. "Isn't that the way it goes."

"Does my snoring annoy you?"

"I think it's sweet," she said. "And when it keeps me awake, I pinch your nose and then you think you woke up to go to the bathroom and while you're in there trying in vain to aim somewhere near the toilet, I fall asleep very very quickly."

"What an efficient system. By the way, I may miss sometimes, but I've never yet peed on my feet."

"Or if you did, it didn't wake you," she said.

"You're as gross as a kid," said Quentin.

"It's one of the things you love best about me, though."

"Maybe," said Quentin. "But you have to promise to act shocked when our children talk gross. It's no fun if your parents can match you, ick for ick."

"I promise to be shocked."

They were back at the house. The dining room was empty. So was the library, and the table had been de-leafed and turned the other way, so it didn't take up the whole space between the vast walls of books. It wasn't as warm and inviting as the library in the grande dame's house had been. Instead of ladders, there was a balcony around three sides of the room, with a narrow spiral staircase leading to it. It all looked cold and uncomfortable, like a high canyon that you could only scale by taking your life in your hands climbing up a rickety narrow ladder. He went to the shelves to examine the titles, but Madeleine caught his arm almost at once. "Quentin, there's nothing readable there."

"In a house this old," he said, "there are bound to be some real finds."

"There aren't, trust me. Nobody actually reads. When this room was remodeled into a library, they bought books by the yard."

"Oh." Quentin was disappointed. He had once held a first edition, first printing of Uncle Tom's Cabin. In his hands, a book that started a war and changed the world, perhaps one of the very copies that had done it. But if the library was recent instead of old... still, even books bought at estate auctions sometimes had gems.

Nevertheless, he understood that Madeleine was more eager to open her treasure box than she wanted to admit. He let her lead him out into the entry hall and then into a parlor in the northeast corner of the house. It was lighted only by the windows, which on a winter afternoon meant the room was dim indeed, especially because heavy brocade curtains were closed at the top and swagged open near the base, so they more than half covered the glass.

Everyone was gathered here, though all but Uncle Paul and Grandmother seemed to hang back as close to the walls as the furniture allowed. Grandmother stood firmly, despite her shrunken, ancient appearance, her hands atop an intricately engraved mahogany box that stood on a small table in the middle of the room. Uncle Paul hovered near her, looking down at the box and then up at Madeleine and Quentin.

"Oh, darling, do hurry," said Uncle Paul. "I'm so eager to see what's left for you in there."

"I can bet you are," said Madeleine dryly. "Try to contain yourself."

Nevertheless, Paul's hands kept darting down toward the box, though he never quite touched it.

Grandmother's eyes stayed fixed on Quentin.

"Tin, dear," said Madeleine. "Why don't you open the box?"

"Oh, it's really not my place," said Quentin. "Your treasure, after all, and wanting to open it all these years."

Grandmother's eyes bored through him.

"Tin, I know it's silly, but now that it's come down to it, my hands are trembling so much I—isn't it silly? I guess this meant more to me than I thought. Won't you please help me out?"

"Is there a key or something?"

"No key!" Uncle Paul offered.

"Do keep your helpful information to yourself, Uncle P," said Madeleine.

"Oh, I know, darling, it's your prize."

"It is," said Madeleine. "There's nothing in there you can use. Count on it."

"Oh, I know," said Paul. "But we're all just so... intrigued with it. Like Christmas—you're dying to find out what's in everybody's packages, not just your own."

"Quentin," said Madeleine. "Please don't say no to me."

Quentin sighed and stepped to the box and put his hands on it. The wood was warm and smooth, the surface clean and polished. The geometric etching was intricately done, almost lacy in places. It was a beautiful box.

It was also a box with Grandmother's hands on it. Not to block him; her fingertips touched only the back corners of it. But her eyes still drilled into him, and even though she said nothing, he couldn't help but assume she was forbidding him to open it.

"I don't think your grandmother wants me to open it."

"Did she say so?" asked Madeleine.

"She hasn't been very chatty so far today," said Quentin, "but as you said, she lets people know what she wants."

"Quentin, everybody else here knows it's my right to open it. And my husband's right—what's in there is as much yours as mine, isn't it? You didn't ask me to sign a prenup, and I didn't ask you to sign one, either."

"You know what just occurred to me?" Quentin said, laughing. "Wouldn't it be a kick if it turned out that the box itself was the inheritance? You know, a keepsake. Nothing in it at all, just the box itself. The magical dreams of childhood, preserved forever."

"There's something in it, all right," said Madeleine.

"It's just chock full of stuff," said Uncle Paul.

"Something is chock full of something, anyway," said Madeleine. "You're not helping, Uncle Paul."

"I'm not?" said Paul. "Oh, foo. Fum. Fee fie foe."

"Tin, aren't you going to open it for me?"

"Sure, of course," said Quentin.

"Then do. Just open it."

"I am," said Quentin.

"You are what?" said Madeleine.

"Opening it."

"The evidence of my eyes says otherwise," said Uncle Paul, leaning close and looking him right in the eyes. "Open the damn box, you impotent lickspittle."

The venom in his voice almost stung. Quentin took a step back, removing his hands from the box.

Grandmother was still looking at him, but was she smiling a little?

"Tin!" wailed Madeleine. "Just go to the box, take hold of the corners of the lid, and lift it up. There's not even a latch!"

He stood there in embarrassment, unsure of why he couldn't quite bring himself to do this simple thing for his wife. "Is this a joke? Is something going to pop out at me?"

Madeleine abruptly began to beat the air with her fists like a tantrum-throwing child. "Open it open it open it!" Her face twisted into a grimace of weeping.

"Good heavens, Mrs. Fears, what a display!" cried Uncle Paul.

"Madeleine," said Quentin. "What's going on? This is too weird for me."

Abruptly she stopped the tantrum and was in control of herself, but the damage had been done. Quentin had seen a side of her he didn't know existed. Like a spoiled child. That's how she had acted ever since coming into this house. Like a bratty kid who was used to being able to say anything to anybody and no one would reprove her.

"It's her stopping you, I know it," said Madeleine. "Grandmother won't let me have what's rightfully mine."

"Madeleine, I just don't feel right about opening it," Quentin said. "Can I help that? If it's so easy, you open it, not me. I want you to, really. I'm just not part of this. Open it."

She slapped at him, though she was too far for her hand to reach him. Bursting into tears she screamed, "Why did I marry you if you can't do the one thing I want most for you to do!"

"Look, I'll open it!" Quentin said. "But I hope you know this isn't the most attractive you've ever looked in your life."

"Open it!" She was frantic now, almost panicked.

Quentin touched the box again. It was so warm. His ringers tingled. This whole business is turning me into a basket case, he thought. Obviously this box was far more important to her than she had let on. And yet she had kept it a secret from him through their whole engagement and these months of marriage. Plotting and planning. It meant that he had been manipulated and he hated that. Hated manipulating and being manipulated.

"Mad, I really think this isn't a good time to open the box," Quentin said. "You're upset and I'm upset and we need to have a talk about this first."

She wailed at him, sinking to her knees. "There's nothing to talk about! It's mine!"

"I know it's yours. But it's waited all these years, can't it wait till we talk this out?"

"Do you think talking will help?" she retorted. "She's stopping you. She's getting her way and I hate her for it! I'll kill her, I swear it."

"She's not stopping me, for heaven's sake, Mad!" But in a way she was, those fingertips on the box, those piercing eyes.

"What do you know about it!" Madeleine wailed. "All this work, all these months, I'm so tired! All for nothing!"

"I hope you're not referring to our marriage," said Quentin, trying to sound like he was joking. But of course he was not joking. He was frightened.

"If you loved me," said Madeleine, rising again to her feet, her face a mask of fury. "If you loved me like you say, you would open this box right now. This minute. This second."

Quentin turned to the box again, put his hands on the lid. The box trembled. "My hands are shaking," he said. "I don't think—right at this moment, Madeleine, I'm wondering—you make me wonder if our whole marriage is a sham, just so you could get me to open this box. Tell me that isn't true, Mad. This whole thing is so crazy, it can't be true."

"Open," she whispered, her face a mask of fury. "The. Box."

Quentin took his hands away from the trembling box and pressed them to his face. "Mad. Mad, what's happening to us?"

She screamed. Not the scream of a child in tantrum, but a high wail that sounded like a woman keening with grief. He turned to her, reached out his hands in pleading. She recoiled from him, spun around, and ran, staggering, from the room.

Confused and frightened and hurt, Quentin turned back toward the box. "I'll open it, Mad! Come back, I'm opening it, see?"

But Uncle Paul's hand was on the box now. "Not without Mrs. Fears in here, Mr. Fears," he said, smiling. "It's in the will."

Quentin looked around the room. Somehow, without his noticing it, all the others had slipped out of the room. Well, he wasn't surprised—this hadn't been a pleasant scene to watch. Only Uncle Paul and Grandmother remained, both of them touching the treasure box. Quentin looked Grandmother in the eye. "Doesn't she love me, Grandmother?" he asked.

The old lady's lips began to move. Slightly, no sound coming out.

"I should follow her," Quentin said. "I'm going to follow her and bring her back and we'll open the box and then we'll get out of here and everything will be all right. That's what I should do, isn't it?"

Her lips moved again. He leaned close, to hear her.

"Babbling old woman," murmured Uncle Paul, but he removed his hand from the box and stepped back out of the way.

Grandmother, almost nose-to-nose with him now, whispered to him. "Find me," she said.

It made no sense at all. The woman was senile. She was no more in control of this house than Quentin was.

Madeleine. Somehow she could explain it all. She could make sense of it. She was his wife, after all. She loved him, he loved her, they had everything in common, they had their lives together, she was his and he was hers forever. This was just some insane quarrel, some stupid misunderstanding.

Where was she? He ran out of the parlor into the entry hall. He checked the library, the drawing room, the dining room. The door to the back portico was open, the winter chill already skimming the floor so his feet went cold as soon as he entered the room.

He ran to the French doors leading out to the portico. She wasn't there. He cast his gaze out across the lawn of snow just in time to catch a glimpse of her, her hands at her face, as she ran awkwardly into the walled graveyard.

Immediately he took off after her across the snow.