Part 3: Umbrella

Previously in The Vines Inquiry— Fearing the worst, Frank raced up to the family manor with dread growing every step.

The pine slab of a door exhaled as Frank disturbed the seal and walked into a thin corridor.

With dim light from the foyer, he could see a matching door at the other end of the hall. His swung closed behind and complete darkness took hold, drowning all the sounds outside the hallway with it. Frank could only hear his own breathing at first. Then his heartbeat. The blood running through his ears. The stretch of cloth against his skin as he walked.

He guided himself along the way with a groping hand, trying to focus on just the sensation of his fingers scratching, SCRATCHING, against the wallpaper. The molehills of each movement became mountains.

A tectonic madness… Where have I heard that before? 

He reached for a light switch. Was this one of the closed corridors without so much as a sconce? Another running family joke: when the light fixtures had been put in. Everyone liked to say it was only after the twins were born because Rosalind and Richard kept losing track of them in the closed off hallways.

A joke, yes. Just a joke. 

Frank made it to the other door and pushed it open slowly, a nervous trickle still sitting at the base of his skull. He tried to shake it off. To remember that Carlisle was ‘accident-prone,’ not dangerous. And if it was, if the rumors were true…he and his parents had nothing to worry about.

“Stupid stories,” he said, pushing through the door. It was the season making him nervous. That must be it. The skin crawling feeling; the skittering he’d imagined under his feet as they crunched snow. The pressure to return home triumphant. Impressive. 

He made his way towards the back of the house, going through two more doors and two identical hallways: green wallpaper, polished wainscoting and baseboards. Though there was a thin layer of dust now that he hadn’t recalled from childhood. Frank put his ear up to the next door, but all he heard was the whoosh of a bayside cavern that flooded during high tide.

Drowned. They could be drowned. Slid off the cliffs. Dead. Knocked out. His father’s throat slit by the pen Frank had gotten him. Stupid gift! His mother, blood running from her ears as she banged on the windshield, breaking her hands as she clawed through the glass. Not again. Never again.

Frank burst into the kitchen with a “HA!” Ready for battle. 

It was at just that moment that Rosalind changed her mind about which bottle of red to grab from the chiller. Richard didn’t look up from setting down a third plate in the breakfast nook. He spoke over his shoulder, towards the swinging door that led into the kitchen.

“I know, I know. It’s casual, but we were tired after our day and wanted to thank you for New York…”

“Francis!” said Rosalind, thin eyebrows apexing as she locked eyes with her son. Richard dropped the last plate. It wobbled back and forth, clattering against the table.

“Francis!” he echoed, a smile creeping onto his face.

“…me?” said Frank. The tense, thin slits of his eyes still scoured the kitchen for a crouching menace. When his parents kept staring at him—instead of being brutally murdered, which to be fair was a positive—he took a long deep breath. Even with that, he was out of practice. His guard wouldn’t relax as he tried to prepare himself, to grin and swallow his father’s well-acted enthusiasm. Sure, it was a lie. But the Charisma.

“Hey, hey!” said Richard. “Why do you have an umbrella?”

“Why do you have our umbrella?” Rosalind’s voice was clipped, edged with a matter-of-fact confidence. And, at least when speaking with Frank, had the uncanny knack to always sound like she was being held against her will.

She moved to the kitchen island, a massive slab of white marble atop garnet-colored wood. It matched her nails and lipstick; a color like bruised and bleeding rose petals. Behind her, Frank could see into the conservatory. Normally a robust shot of lively green in the otherwise moody kitchen, the plants were struggling. The conservatory itself was in the middle of the sprawling house, its arabesque roof hidden from the outside by larger, gothic towers. Beyond it all, the cliffs.

Frank lowered the umbrella, losing faith in his search for a B&E-er hiding behind the countless floor-length curtains that plagued his childhood home. 

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“I’m here to help you,” Frank whispered, the refrain of his entire life. “Blink if you need help. Where are they?”

Rosalind and Richard stared at him, wide-eyed and blinking.

“What’s happening, Francis?” said Richard.

“You blinked!”

“We’re humans. We blink. Regularly.” 

“You’re not getting home invaded?”

“Only by you,” said Rosalind. “Why aren’t you on a boat? I thought you had ‘plans’ for the day?” 

“Yeah, we thought you’d stay with Harlow tonight,” said Richard. 

Frank fluttered his eyes, trying to find a line out of this confusion. He hadn’t felt steady since the trolley. Or the drinks at Lillian’s? Why couldn’t he… Frank looked at his mother. She grinned while he questioned himself, working her hands like they were thick with hangman’s rope. 

“The ferry,” Frank said, finally. He knew it only as the words left his mouth. “Cancelled all the rides off-island tonight. I guess a big storm is coming.”

“God helps those who help themselves, Francis,” said Richard. 

A devil does it better, Frank finished in his head.

A memory. A sermon. But Frank never had much interest in the devil and believed the feeling was mutual. 

“He’ll join us for dinner,” said Rosalind.

She swiveled towards Richard and a strand of hair like black satin ribbon fell from her sort of ‘70s updo with bangs and rivulets framing the face; the kind that took forever to look effortless. It wasn’t how she’d had it when they spent the day together. It was the hair Rosalind wore when she needed to do chores. 

The impression down-island was that the Vineses had a staff of live-in cooks and maids ‘n such—a rumor Rosalind and Richard took no haste to dispel—but in actuality, Frank had only ever seen strangers this deep in the house when they’d had his mother’s 50^th birthday party catered. And, of course, when the police asked to search the property the night Dick drowned. Even then, Aunt Toni had done most of the survey and interrogated Frank while the rest of the small department looked around the back gardens, disappointed. 

“You must be tired.” Rosalind sounded canned now. Concern done in post. “No need to appease us with dinner, Francis. All the guest rooms are ready.”

“It’s like seven-thirty.” Frank checked his watch. 

Ten? He tapped the watch face. Nothing changed. How many loops did I go on? 

The whole trolley circuit, all the way around the island, shouldn’t take more than an hour. And he’d only gone halfway. Frank checked his own temperature, realized that made no sense and turned back towards the hall he’d come from. Towards the house and its tectonic madness. The chalky tingle of parental quicksand scattering on the underside of a frozen lake. 

“Ahh, right. You’re from the city that never sleeps now!” Rosalind searched through the big utensil drawer, shoving aside all the miscellaneous tools that always seemed to be layered in front of the one you need. 

“Yeah…” Frank looked around again. “Erm, yes.” He remembered that drawer being on the other side of the kitchen. “You guys are okay? There’s no one in the house?” He explained the snipped lock and footsteps in the snow, breezing past all of his slipping and falling asleep on the trolley after a generous happy hour at Lillian’s. “You guys didn’t cut it?”

“Why would we cut our own chain, Francis?” said Richard. “Don’t worry, buddy. We have plenty of security. Besides, the way everyone in town talks…it’s like they’re scared to come up here.” 

“Or at least they used to be,” said Rosalind.