Read Online The Light of Paris by Eleanor Brown - Free Book Online Page A

Madeleine.” My mother flipped her hands into the air, her balletic fingers waving me away. “I’m right here.”
    â€œI’m not yelling,” I said, even though I was.
    â€œSharon is here to go through the house with me, and I’d appreciate it if you’d stop with your hysterics long enough for us to do that.”
    â€œI’m hardly hysterical,” I said, and that, at least, was true.
    On cue, Sharon reappeared at the doorway and my mother turned to her as though she were an enormous relief, which she probably was, for all kinds of reasons. The two of them walked into the front room and I followed, mostly because I didn’t have anything better to do. As my mother guided Sharon around as though they were on the Parade of Homes tour, and Sharon took pictures and made notes to herself, I looked around, trying to see the house through someone else’s eyes. I could hear Sharon’s tone, and I knew she was making a colossal list of things my mother was going to have to fix or change or update. I couldn’t wait to hear that conversation.
    My parents’ house had always been a showplace, more museum and shrine to family heritage than home. As a child, I had longed to touch everything, largely because it was off-limits, but also because everything was so beautiful. There were delicate bone china teacups to use for tea parties, tiny porcelain figurines I could pose and shift around to tell thestories that were always running wild through my mind (I was an only child of older parents, and often dreadfully lonely), antique furniture to climb, silver to smudge, and perfectly ironed, handmade table linens to drape myself in for costumes—bride, sheik, Greek goddess, attendant at the queen’s ball.
    When I was a child, my parents had maintained a few employees—a cook, a housekeeper as well as a maid, a gardener, and the occasional backup dancer, a handyman or a builder, usually. Having “help” had always seemed old-fashioned and indulgent, but looking at the house now, I understood. It had been built for a large family and lots of guests. The furnishings were from another time, when there had been a full staff to take care of the endless dust, the silver that oxidized without any attention, the linens in need of ironing. And my mother was busy. You could make fun of ladies who lunched all you wanted—really, it was my favorite hobby—but my mother’s work mattered. She had raised and contributed literally millions of dollars to charities. And that, even I had to admit, was more important than vacuuming.
    I carried my suitcase upstairs and tossed it into my old bedroom, watching Sharon making another note as I did. Probably “Madeleine should put her suitcase away instead of throwing it on the floor.” Duly noted.
    â€œCan I see the attic?” Sharon asked.
    â€œIt’s a little chaotic,” my mother said. She pulled at the door, but it had swollen slightly in the heat and wouldn’t budge.
    â€œLet me,” I said. I gave it a firm tug and it popped open, groaning to express its displeasure. The trapped air rushed out at me, stale and musty. “We’re in,” I said, like I was engineering a bank heist.
    The stairs were so narrow I had to walk with my feet sideways so they would fit on the treads. When I was little, the attic had been one of my favorite parts of the house, a place to find a hundred mysteries and compose a hundred stories. A dress rack with plastic bags holding my mother’s old clothes, including her wedding gown, yellowing delicately in thesilence, and enough vintage clothing to provide me with hours of dress-up entertainment. Boxes and trunks filled with the detritus of family shipwrecks, inscrutable objects from times gone by—shrimp forks, salt cellars, rolling ink blotters, monogrammed wax seals—piles of photographs of unidentified ancestors, and the occasional piece of broken