Previously in the Vines inquiry— Frank woke up ill in his childhood bedroom. Determined to do familial healing while trapped on the island, he marched down into the manor proper; but was stopped when he stumbled onto some secret relations.
After his mother’s declaration, a gentle chatter took over in the parlor; broken only by short gaps of that crackling vibration. A familiar sound, but off-limits.
The record player, thought Frank.
An antique that was (wisely) kept out of his sweaty, accident-prone grasp. It had always sat in the parlor’s corner, contained in a gorgeously decorated pine box with a crank on one side. Now, it sounded like the record was still spinning long after the music had ended, caught in the limbo of a large party where everyone sees a spill but decides someone else will take care of it.
Why didn’t they invite me?
Prepped for guests but barely used, the parlor had a gargantuan fireplace—a conversation starter Frank had been told as he’d looked up and into the stone carapace towering at least two feet above his six.
The room had chairs that looked comfortable but were hard and unforgiving (on brand) and the sort of old Austentinian items that felt at home in this vaguely-public section of the manor. The sort of ephemera that said “We’re wealthy, we’ve been that way for a while, and we’d appreciate it if you noticed.”
“Cheers,” said a woman in the crowd. She sounded bored, or tired. A head nurse three years from retirement. It was a voice like a news anchor; someone Frank knew but wasn’t used to hearing in the next room. “Well done all.”
Neither she nor his mother employed the homey aspects of a rural Maryland accent, sanding down the Rs and letting the Ws rest a while. For all of Rosalind’s put-on affect, the familiar voice pulled in the other direction. Her tongue was gilded in long hours; a purposefully difficult life seared into her voice box as punishment. Rosalind stuck more to the Vines family tradition—for it was her name that Richard took—of shedding every ‘townie’ aspect that she’d allowed to creep into her dialect due to ‘sloth and neglect.’ Her own father’s diagnosis.
Both Frank and his mother were from Carlisle, born-and-bred; and both wore it falsely, in parts. Rosalind had consciously worked to shed herself of her natural skin while as a child, Frank tacked all her discards on, desperate for a sense of home turf. It was only after Dick’s death, when he moved away and was encouraged to stay that way, young Francis realized what he’d been doing. Listening now, to the old accents, the ancestral hellos, he wondered where his voice had gone.
“Cheers!” said Richard. A clinking of glasses.
“Cheers,” said Rosalind. “Though ‘all’ feels a bit dishonest. What exactly did you accomplish, Nia?”
“We’ve all contributed, Linda,” said the woman, this Nia. Frank knew nothing about her, save that she apparently completely ignored how nicknames work. “It has been a long, annoying fourteen years. And it’s all going to end. You’re going to get what you want. And if there’s any justice, you’ll finally leave the rest of us alone. That, Linda. That brings me enough joy to last til Valentine’s. Shit, it makes me so happy not even you could ruin it.”
His mother took a long pause. A slurp of champagne.
“Challenge accepted.” Rosalind honeyed her words in petty pleasure.
“Ladies,” said Richard. “Sisters-in-arms. We have work ahead of us. The storm is coming. The clock has started ticking…and we won’t get a third chance.”
Frank heard Nia clear her throat at the sobering comment.
“Rick, how is it that you can smile and schwarm your way through anything, and still make it sound like a threat?” A few chuckles from the crowd.
“Now, that is a question. And there’s…” The women joined him. “No such thing as a stupid question.”
“Here, here,” said Rosalind.
“It will be nice, though,” said Nia. “After the storm. Just to be able to ask some new ones. Or at least to some new people.”
“And old friends” Rosalind’s voice brushed against the crackling logs as she stoked the fire; a whispered bedtime story to a newborn. The whole party held its breath, as if watching her tend to the fire; calming and nurturing it, even as the flames towered over her.
A piercing smash from outside broke whatever coziness the moment may have spelled.
A clatter arose, thought Frank.
The record skipped as bodies shuffled around the room, suffocating any rising chatter and theories from the party. The room was silent.
Frank jumped and crept back up a few steps, joining the shadows around him as his father appeared at the doorway leading to the foyer. He held one hand up by his head with his thumb and middle finger hovering near each other, like a child doing a shadow puppet of a fox.
“Rosalind!” he seethed into darkness, never looking back.
“I’m with you.” She looked over her shoulder. “We’re close, Nia. Guard up.”
Rosalind handed Richard a leather notebook open to a page full of cramped writing. There was a sound like gurgling champagne rumbling high in his throat.
Together, they crept towards the front door. Rosalind’s eyes were huge and scanning in the dark. She scrunched her forehead, trying to open them wider and intermittently waved one hand over her face as if to refresh the view.
Safe with his parents moving towards the front door, Frank crept down the stairs behind them and bent one eye into the parlor.
The room was empty.
The needle on the record player rode an unetched groove. The chairs sat stiff with no butt indents. On top of the wood, heaped in a pile the height of a toddler, chestnuts scorched. The smell coated the room, but something else swam under the surface of the nutty aroma: it smelled like Stella’s bedroom the first time she’d used a curling iron.
Frank’s heart quickened. The pristine guilt and instant knowledge of realizing he’d seen something he shouldn’t. His age and bravado were no match for his old reflexes as he scuttled back up the stairs. Halfway up, a fierce cold pinched his Achilles tendons.
Richard stood with a front door open, one hand still held tense and hovering while Rosalind flattened herself against the other door. They held themselves, vibrating and ready to pounce. When nothing happened, she strut forward, brushing past her husband onto the stoop. A few flurries immediately began to collect on her dark clothing as she stared at her feet. Her shoulders shook and she began to sway back and forth before Rosalind bent quickly, cracking three snaps in her back, and snatched something up from the ground.
She retreated inside, the snowflakes already melting as they mingled with the burning nuts and something else, but wouldn’t meet Richard’s eyes.
“Rosalind…” He raised her chin with his hand, finally relaxed. “Rosa, what’s going on?”
She was giggling, smiling so wide it threatened to split her cheeks. A few thin droplets of blood fell from her shaking hands.