Free The Shadow Cabinet by W. T. Tyler Page A

George died—two goddamn months. It was like living with someone out of Midsummer Night’s Dream , Jane used to say. Then she left this painting behind. You know what it was? A bloody Matisse; I’m not kidding. For the house, she said—for the room and the house. It belongs there. When George was drying out in North Carolina a couple of years before that, she stayed with us for six weeks. Six weeks. That’s when I learned—she won’t talk about money, doesn’t know anything about money, and doesn’t care anything about money. For her, it doesn’t exist. So after George died, that house sat empty up there on the Potomac because she refused to think about that house and money—for three goddamn years. So her New York lawyer and I finally got her to sit down and talk about that empty house. It was like a séance, a séance with a Ouija board—that’s the way that New York lawyer and I had to talk to her. She wasn’t even there in the same room with us. You don’t understand what I’m saying, do you?”
    â€œNo,” Wilson admitted.
    â€œWell, you won’t—not until you meet her. She doesn’t live in our world.…”
    The landscape had changed. The fields were cultivated and the pastures closely grazed within board and stone fences. Old stone and brick houses, circa 1780, lay within boxwoods and azaleas at the end of oak- and cedar-lined lanes.
    They had lunch in Middleburg, at a stone inn off the main street. The cellar restaurant was darkly paneled under a beamed ceiling, like a rathskeller, but the old pine tables, the copperware, and the hand-painted hostelry and ironmonger signs were early American. In the rear, a few tables and booths were arranged around an old brick fireplace where a few logs smoked without flame, but the room was acrid with unventilated kitchen smells and they returned to the front room, where a tall young woman showed them to a table. She didn’t look like a rural waitress and Donlon noticed her immediately. She wore a cardigan, a flannel skirt, and boat moccasins; her dark hair was tied in pigtails.
    â€œI’ll bet she’s got a college degree,” Donlon said, watching her return to the end of the bar for menus.
    â€œProbably,” Wilson said, looking the other way. Two middle-aged women in flowered dresses and garden club hats sat at a nearby table drinking daiquiris. A young couple in riding boots and identical hounds-tooth riding jackets leaned with their heads against the wall at a side table, talking softly.
    â€œSure she has.” Donlon’s smile brightened as she came back to the table.
    â€œSomething to drink?” she asked. Wilson guessed she was in her early thirties. They ordered martinis on the rocks.
    â€œWhat was it in?” Donlon asked agreeably. “Psychology, sociology? Maybe history?”
    â€œWhat was what in?”
    â€œYour degree. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were a teacher.”
    â€œPsychology—psychology and English lit, but that was a long time ago. What made you ask?”
    â€œIntuition. You’ve probably got a horse.”
    Wilson looked away, embarrassed. Asking a waitress in Middleburg if she had a horse was like asking a skiff owner in rubber boots on Chesapeake Bay if he was an oysterman, but to his surprise the waitress seemed flattered. “Three,” she said, smiling.
    â€œNot Appaloosas, either.”
    â€œNo, not Appaloosas.”
    She went back to the bar. “I told you,” Donlon said, invigorated. “A thoroughbred.”
    â€œWhat time’s McVey expecting us?”
    â€œAnytime after lunch. He suggested lunch, but that’s no good. The afternoon will be long enough as it is.” His eyes still lingered on the young waitress standing at the end of the bar. “She’s not bad. What do you think?”
    Wilson studied the menu, trying to ignore him. If the waitress had been