The Spirit Wood by Robert Masello Page B

Meg's. The mysterious black floor, the iron lamps, the simple but elegantly geometrical moldings that bordered the ceiling all around the room were theirs. Theirs to hold, theirs to dispose of. He had provided for his wife, after all—in however circuitous or inadvertent a fashion. And maybe that wasn't so bad; maybe that was just as legitimate, just as justifiable, a manner as any other. Maybe he had nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to deny or negate. Maybe he could begin to take joy in his good fortune, even if it had come to him by way of a virtual apparition.
    “Do you think we ought to find Leah first, before snooping around?” Meg asked.
    “Leah!” Peter called, his hands cupped around his mouth as if he were hollering down a canyon. Despite the size and emptiness of the room, the sound of his voice didn't echo off the walls, as he had half-expected, but seemed instead to be deadened, or absorbed, by them. There was a dim rectangular archway in the center of the room and a normally proportioned door that swung on a hinge just behind them. But there was no reply.
    “My guess is that way,” said Meg, motioning toward the smaller door. “I smell cooking.”
    They passed through a dark servant's passageway and into a well-lighted, well-equipped kitchen. There were broad counters, racks of copper pots and utensils, a huge refrigerator, and an equally huge freezerunit squatting beside it. Something was simmering on the stove, and something else—not discernible through the little glass window—was cooking in the oven. A yellow timer was ticking on the windowsill above the sink.
    “Nobody minding the store,” Peter said.
    “I wonder what's cooking.”
    “It's called pastitsio,” and they both suddenly turned, to see a tall, very thin girl, maybe seventeen or eighteen years old, holding open another swinging door, no doubt the one that led to the dining room. She was dressed in a white blouse, knotted above her waist, and a loose wrap skirt.
    “I'm Leah,” she said, letting the door swing shut behind her. “You must be Meg and Peter. I hope you like what you're smelling—it's your dinner.”
    Peter started to say that they hadn't expected to be staying for dinner, just as Meg was apologizing for having to put her to so much trouble. Leah looked from one to the other with an expression both friendly and grave; her complexion, Peter noticed, was olive, like her father's, though not quite so dark. Her features were delicate but sharply chiseled, and her eyebrows, black as the hair she wore in one long braid down her back, almost met in a single straight ribbon across her brow. She wasn't what you'd call beautiful, not by any contemporary American standards, Peter thought, but there was something exotic and exceptionally striking about her.
    “Oh, I'm sorry. I was told you would be staying.” She left it at that; Peter wondered if they would be now. “You must have come in the back way. Would you like me to show you the rest of the house?” She padded across the diamond-patterned linoleum floor, her feet bare, and lifted the lid off the pot on the stove; she stirred whatever was inside with a long-handled spoon, and an unfamiliar but fragrant aroma wafted through the room. “Egg-and-lemon soup,” she saidand then turned to Peter. “Oh, forgive me—your grandfather, we're all very sorry. He was very good to us. He was an unusual man, with many interests. We're sorry about . . . what happened.” Something in her voice reminded Peter of a Saturday afternoon when he was twelve, and he had had to explain to a friend's mother how her son had broken his finger in their touch football game; there was that same odd combination of apology, explanation, and unspoken complicity.
    “Thank you,” Peter replied. “It's nice of you to say so.” He avoided meeting Meg's eyes.
    “Let's go this way,” Leah said, gliding across to the door at which she'd first appeared. “The dining room is in here.”
    With its