Free The Unloved by John Saul Page B

“Right. All it does is decompose,” she pointed out.
    “Except that it hasn’t. And all the rest of what you see is just cosmetic. Every time I do something around here, I’m amazed. It’s as though the house has been taking care of itself all these years, just waiting for someone to come along and give it a new coat of paint.”
    At his words a faint alarm sounded in Anne’s head, and her eyes darkened as she looked at her husband. “Is that what you’re thinking of doing next?” she asked. “Painting it?”
    Kevin’s grin faded slightly. “What if I am? It needs it, and—”
    “And you only have another ten days of vacation,” Anne reminded him. “It’s one thing for you to fix a few things, but I hope you’re not planning to spend the whole time working on this place.”
    “I wasn’t, really, but why shouldn’t I?” Kevin asked, his manner suddenly defensive. “My mother and sister live here, Anne. What am I supposed to do, just let everything go?”
    Anne struggled with her conflicting emotions. In a way, of course, he was right—there was a lot that needed to be done to the house, and most of it was work Marguerite certainly couldn’t do. And, obviously, there wasn’t any money to hire people. But what about herself and the children? Weren’t they entitled to have some fun with Kevin sometime during these two weeks? “It just seems a little strange to me that someone who didn’t want to come down here at all is starting to act like he doesn’t ever plan to leave,” she said finally, then her heart skipped a beat as she saw a veil drop behind Kevin’s eyes.
    “You know that’s not true,” he said, but his voice seemed to Anne to lack conviction, and she suddenly had a feeling she didn’t want to pursue the subject any further.
    “Well, I didn’t come out here to give you grief, anyway,” she told him. “But something’s bothering me, and I wanted to talk to you about it.”
    Kevin looked at her quizzically. “And you wanted to talk to me alone,” he said, reading her mind.
    Anne nodded briefly, then told him what had happened inthe upstairs hall that morning. “Do you know what’s in that room?” she asked when she was finished. “There was something about the way Marguerite was acting that gave me the strangest feeling. Like there was something she didn’t want me to see.”
    Kevin’s grin returned, and his eyes glinted with humor. “So you think you’ve detected a mystery in the mansion?” he teased. “Well, I hate to burst your bubble, but if it’s the room I’m thinking of, it was the nursery.”
    “The nursery?” Anne repeated.
“Your
nursery?”
    “First Marguerite’s, then mine,” Kevin agreed. “And there’s no mystery about it. If you want to see it, ask Ruby to unlock it for you.”
    But Ruby, who was slicing okra when Anne came into the kitchen a few minutes later, refused. “There’s some things best left alone,” she said, her eyes avoiding Anne’s.
    For a moment Anne considered demanding the keys, but then changed her mind. It was not, after all, her house, nor was Ruby her own employee. But for the rest of the day she found herself pausing repeatedly in front of the locked door, staring speculatively at it. And once, late in the afternoon, she felt eyes watching her as she stood in the hallway. But when she turned, the long corridor was empty.
    Helena Devereaux’s eyes blinked open in the darkness and she twisted her head automatically to look at the fluorescent hands of the clock by her bedside.
    A little after midnight.
    Usually she didn’t waken until two-thirty in the morning, and then her wakefulness only lasted a few minutes. But tonight, as the sound of insects droned in the darkness outside her open window, she was certain that something was wrong.
    The creatures of the night suddenly fell silent.
    A floorboard creaked softly somewhere beyond the closed door to her room.
    She listened intently for several seconds that seemed to