Tears filled my eyes, and I was lost in time. Two years later, the same music played as his friends carried his casket from the church, and the mingled joy and sadness I feel when I hear it takes me back to that lovely, perfect wedding, and the hauntingly sad finale of our marriage. So much joy for two short years. I hugged myself, willing the tears to dry. Had this place ever held such beauty? Would anyone ever fondly say “Oh yes, the Wynter Castle! We had our wedding there.”
It was possible. Chairs could be set up on either side of the stairway to form an aisle, and the officiant could stand with the beautiful, old, oak double-doors as a backdrop, under an archway of orange blossoms. Or . . . oh! A winter wedding, with a roaring fire in the fireplace that was along one wall, the enormous oak mantel decked in white orchids and crystal candlesticks, and the chairs facing it, instead of the doors. When I came out of my reverie, I had my hands clasped to my bosom, and was staring in rapt joy upward, where I saw, for the first time, the rose window above the winding staircase, as one beam of light blazed scarlet through it.
“You see it, don’t you?” McGill said gently. “You see what this place could be.”
I cleared my throat and asked, “How many rooms are there?”
“Well, the main floor here has the kitchen in the back, a dining room, parlor, a library—it’s in the turret room—along the east side and a long ballroom along the west, with a breakfast room in the other turret room. Upstairs, there are twelve bedchambers, two with attached sitting rooms, and three more rooms that could be converted into bedrooms, including two neat ones in the turret rooms above the breakfast room and library. There are also two big rooms with a bathroom between them. Melvyn had new bathrooms put in the two suites, but that’s as far as he got.”
“So that’s . . . how many?” I did a quick calculation. “Seventeen bedrooms in all?”
“I guess so. Lots of small country inns have less.”
I didn’t answer his suggestion; I had already thought it would make a lovely country inn, but it would need a lot of work, and it was more than I would or could do myself. “You knew my uncle, right?”
He nodded. “I did. And I liked him. Don’t believe what Binny says. Melvyn didn’t kill her father. We don’t even know if the guy—meaning her pa, Rusty Turner—is dead. No one knows what he was up to.”
“Why didn’t this place sell? Besides the giant gopher holes?”
“No vision,” the realtor promptly said. “No one could see what you just did.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re like Melvyn; you see the castle’s potential. Actually, probably more than him. He muddled along with this place for almost forty years but never got done.” He paused, staring at me in an odd, intense way. “I don’t know what was going on in your head a few minutes ago, but you saw how this place could be used.”
I nodded. “As an inn, an event venue, for weddings, symposiums, retreats . . . so many possibilities!”
“Exactly! There’s a place not too far from here, Beardslee Castle. You should see it. That’s what they’ve done—four-star dining, weddings, the whole bit—and it’s beautiful!”
I looked up at the rose window, and the light increased as the sun climbed in the sky. Brilliant color played across the floor, a pinwheel of indigo, eggplant, rose and ochre, and tears prickled in my eyes again. I owned this place, owned it! But for all that I saw the hidden beauty and potential beneath the drab façade, I couldn’t keep it. Alone, just me in this vast behemoth? It was too much. My life was in New York, not in some backwater near the pea-size town of Autumn Vale. I needed to bring it up to scratch with whatever modest repairs I could afford, sell it, and get the heck out. “Is there anything wrong with this place besides neglect?” I asked.
He shook his head, but I wasn’t convinced. “Let’s see the rest of it. If I stay, it’s only going to be to fix it up to sell, McGill.”
“Of course,” he said. “What else?”
We peeked into the ballroom first, but the place looked haunted, and I shivered. It had to be forty feet long, and a cold breeze shuddered out of it. Something over in the corner was shrouded in white; it looked like a pipe organ from some off-Broadway version of Phantom of the Opera. I slammed the door shut. The turret rooms were cool, but dusty and dark.
The castle interior, aside from the flagstone floor and stone walls in the great hall, was warmed by a lot of wood: natural handrails supported by oak balusters winding up the staircase, wood floors in most of the rooms—some were herringbone patterned, others just straight hardwood with a patterned edge—and lots of natural wood paneling in the family rooms, like the dining room and parlor. It was also almost fully furnished with some lovely old pieces and some modern ugliness, especially in the rooms my uncle had used.
Most of the furniture was tented in white sheets, like the ghosts of furnishings past, so what I noted here was only what I saw as I lifted the edges of the covers to peek. As we walked, and McGill talked about room dimensions and other boring details, I reflected on what little I knew of the Wynter side of my family. My father was the only son of Melvyn’s late younger brother. When my dad died, we were living in Tarrytown. We stayed there for a year afterward, then came on the infamous trip to Wynter Castle, and moved in with Grandma—my Mom’s mother—on the Lower East Side in New York.
After that, I don’t remember my mother ever voluntarily mentioning my father’s side of the family, and I have never known why. Grandma and Mom died within six months of each other when I was twenty-one, and had already embarked on my short-lived modeling career. There was never any knowledge or sense that I was the heir to anything as amazing as Wynter Castle until Andrew Silvio, my uncle’s lawyer, found me and told me of my inheritance.
I suppose that was one of the reasons why I didn’t even want to see the place at first. I felt afraid, but also like I would be dishonoring my mother’s memory by going to a place she would never talk about. You had to know my mother to understand. She was rock solid on her ideals. A true remnant of the sixties flower-child movement, she belonged to Amnesty International, Women for World Peace, and End Apartheid Now. She burned her bra and marched on Washington. She was there when they tore down the Berlin Wall. If she didn’t want to associate with Melvyn, there had to be a reason, and it likely had to do with her passionate idealism. Mom and I weren’t alike in many ways—I don’t have the guts to be that idealistic—but I admired her, even when her passion took her away from me and left me feeling alone.
So there were many reasons I had just wanted to sell the castle and be done with it. But now that I was here, I was curious. Who was Melvyn Wynter? Why had he left the castle to me? Surely he didn’t owe me anything? And why, if he was going to leave me the castle, did he not try to find me earlier so I could ask him about my father’s life and their family and maybe find out what had really happened during that last visit with my mother?
The flood of emotion was probably what I was hoping to avoid by not coming to Wynter Castle, but now that I was here, I’d have to deal with it.
“So, are you staying?” McGill asked as we returned to the main floor.
“I am.” Did I really have any options, now that I had given up my life in New York?
“For how long?”
“I don’t really know yet.” And I didn’t.
Chapter Three