Chapter 2 - The Scent of Pine and Deceit
The drive back to the house on Maple Street took seven minutes, but to Ryan, sitting behind the wheel of his car with his father following two car-lengths behind, time seemed to stretch until every fence post and snowy mailbox along the road stood out with sharp, terrifying clarity.
Maple Street was an old road, lined with sugar maples that his grandfather had helped plant during the Eisenhower administration. The houses were large, rambling colonials and Dutch colonials set back behind stone walls that had slowly tumbled into the grass over sixty winters.
At number 44, every window on the ground floor was blazing with warm, golden light.
The Miller house had always been the center of the family holidays. Sarah Miller had possessed an almost supernatural talent for domestic warmth. She made her own cranberry sauce with orange peel and grand marnier; she kept a simmering pot of cider and cloves on the back burner from the first of December until New Year’s Day; she knew which cousins couldn't eat gluten and which uncles couldn't be seated within three chairs of each other without an argument about municipal property taxes.
Now, as Ryan pulled his Honda into the space at the end of the driveway—right behind Aunt Dorene’s brand-new, pearl-white Lincoln Aviator—he could see through the bay window into the dining room.
The chandelier, a crystal fixture his parents had bought at an estate sale in Great Barrington twenty-five years ago, was turned up to full brightness. Uncle Joe was standing at the sideboard, his thick, red neck bulging over a stiff white collar, splashing two fingers of bourbon into a tumbler. Melanie was seated near the middle of the table, holding four-month-old Leo against her shoulder, patting the infant’s back with a rhythmic, mechanical motion that looked more exhausted than affectionate.
And at the head of the table, standing where Thomas should have been sitting, was Aunt Dorene.
She was sixty-one, three years older than Sarah had been, with the same sharp jawline and high cheekbones, but none of the softness around the eyes. Her hair was dyed a fierce, unyielding shade of chestnut, swept up in a salon-sprayed wave that hadn't moved an inch despite the sleet outside. She was gesturing with a serving spoon, laughing at something Joe had said, her gold bracelets clinking against the rim of Sarah’s porcelain bowl.
Ryan shut off the engine. The silence in the car was sudden and immense.
His father’s car door slammed behind him. Thomas came up to Ryan’s window, his shoulders hunched against the snow, his eyes wide and fixed on the front door.
"What are you going to do?" Thomas asked, his voice low.
Ryan didn't answer right away. He reached into the passenger footwell, picked up the rectangular metal tin of ginger-molasses cookies, and took the bottle of Willamette Pinot from the seat.
"I’m going to have Christmas dinner with my family," Ryan said.
He stepped out into the cold, kicked the crust of frozen slush from his heels, and walked toward the flagstone porch.
He didn't knock.
He turned the brass knob—the one with the little scratch near the keyhole from when he had tried to pick it with an old nail at age seven—and pushed the heavy oak door open.
The hall was hot. It smelled of sage, roasting bird, bayberry candles, and Dorene’s heavy lavender perfume—a suffocating, perfumed fog that had completely erased the cedar-and-wool smell that had defined the house for three decades.
The laughing stopped.
In the dining room, the silver forks paused halfway between plates and mouths. Uncle Joe’s tumbler froze two inches from his lip.
Dorene turned around from the sideboard, her brows lifting in an expression of theatrical, long-suffering disbelief. She hadn't even taken off her reindeer apron.
"Ryan?" she said, her voice carrying that specific, syrupy pitch she reserved for small children and people she considered socially inferior. "I thought we had an understanding. You’re tracking water all over the hall rug. Sarah spent four months restoring that runner."
Melanie looked up from her baby. Her face was pale, shadowed with the purple exhaustion of new motherhood. Her mouth opened, closed, and then opened again.
"Ryan?" she whispered. "What... I thought you were in Montauk with your friends."
"Is that what Dorene told you?" Ryan asked.
He walked past the coat rack. He didn't take off his coat. He set the tin of cookies down on the small console table in the entry hall—right next to a stack of unopened mail addressed to *Thomas Miller, c/o Dorene Miller-Vance*—and stepped into the archway that led to the dining room.
"Montauk is lovely in December," Ryan said, looking directly at Dorene. "A little windy, but very peaceful. But I didn't go to Montauk, Melanie. I spent the last three days in Red Hook making the cookies Mom used to make for you when you were colicky. The ones with the candied ginger from the Asian market in Poughkeepsie."
Dorene’s smile hardened into something resembling dried plaster. "Now, Ryan, let’s not do this. You know how delicate your father’s nerves have been since the autumn. We agreed—all of us—that this year was going to be small. Just the core family. The people who were here for the hard days."
"The hard days," Ryan repeated.
Behind him, the front door closed with a firm, decisive thud.
Thomas stepped into the hall. He didn't take off his coat either. His wet boots left two dark, shining puddles on Sarah’s precious runner.
Dorene’s gaze flicked to her brother, and for the fraction of a second, the mask slipped. Her eyes dropped to Thomas’s hands, then to his chest, looking for the paper.
"Thomas," she said, her tone sharpening, dropping the syrup for the cold efficiency of an executive secretary. "You shouldn't be out in this weather without your scarf. You know what the doctor said about your bronchial tubes. Come sit down. Joe, pour your brother-in-law a glass of that cider."
"Joe can leave the cider where it is," Thomas said.
He didn't yell. The tone was so quiet, so flat, that Uncle Joe’s hand actually trembled, the rim of the bottle clinking against the glass.
"Thomas?" Dorene said, her eyes narrowing. "What is this?"
"Where’s Arthur Pendelton’s phone number, Dorene?" Thomas asked.
The room went completely, terrifyingly still. The only sound was the faint, muffled hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen and the wet, heavy breathing of the baby against Melanie’s neck.
Dorene didn't blink. "Arthur retired two years ago, Thomas. You know that. We settled his retainer back in June. We discussed this with the accountants."
"Arthur didn't retire," Ryan said, taking another step forward until he was standing five feet from the end of the mahogany table. "I spoke to Arthur’s daughter this morning at nine o'clock to wish her a Merry Christmas. Arthur was at his desk in Rhinebeck until two this afternoon. He’s ninety-one, he has a hip that doesn't work, and he’s still practicing law forty hours a week."
Dorene’s jaw set into an iron line. "You have no right to meddle in your father’s affairs, Ryan. You abandoned this house the second the soil was turned at the cemetery. You took your little trust payment and ran off to the city to paint your pictures while Joe and I spent forty weekends clearing out the attic, dealing with the roofers, and making sure your father didn't starve."
"My trust payment?" Ryan tilted his head. "What trust payment, Aunt Dorene?"
"The eight thousand dollars," Melanie said, her voice trembling as she shifted Leo to her other arm. She was looking back and forth between her brother and her aunt with growing horror. "The eight thousand from Mom’s side. Aunt Dorene said you demanded it three days after the service. She said you wouldn't come to the marker dedication unless Dad wired it to your checking account."
Ryan felt a cold, sharp blade turn in his stomach. He looked at his sister—his little sister, who had worn his oversized flannel shirts when she had her first broken heart in high school, who had called him from the hospital parking lot when her water broke, only to have the call disconnected after four seconds.
"Melanie," Ryan said, his voice dropping into the register he had used when they were kids hiding from thunderstorms under the back porch. "Look at me."
She looked. Her eyes were swimming with tears.
"Did you ever see that wire transfer?" Ryan asked.
"Dorene had the statements," Melanie stammered. "She said... she said Dad was too upset to handle the online banking, so she was keeping the records in her leather binder."
"The leather binder," Thomas said from the hallway. He walked into the dining room, his boots squelching on the oak boards. "You mean the one in the back of the pantry? The one with the Sarasota real estate receipts tucked into the back cover?"
Dorene didn't retreat. She set the porcelain bowl down with a sharp crack that splintered the glaze along the base.
"If you think you can come into my sister’s house on Christmas Day and make accusations—"
"This is not your sister’s house," Thomas roared.
It was the first time Ryan had heard his father shout since 2008, when the tractor had rolled over in the lower orchard. The sound was deafening. The crystal pendants on the chandelier shivered, casting fractured prisms of light across the wallpaper.
May you like
"This is Sarah’s house," Thomas whispered, his chest heaving, his face dark with blood. "And Sarah had something to say before she went. Something you spent two years trying to burn."
***
