Lie Still Read Free Page B

medieval-style gatehouse. Fields of corn always remind me of a gang of children wielding farm tools and a childhood slumber party where I didn’t sleep a wink. Thank you, Stephen King.
    I could see instantly that I had entered a land of surreal-dom. A little city of copper turrets and tile rooftops lay beyond the stone wall, a glittering mirage on the prairie. The gold letters set into the limestone wall announced T HE M ANSES OF C ASTLEGATE .I rolled slowly forward and halted at a miniature stop sign that looked like it belonged at a Renaissance Faire. For a second, I wondered if Hugh had the magical powers to transplant this place from across the Pond.
    A sun-beaten troll of a man in a beige uniform sat in cramped air-conditioned quarters, nursing a Diet Coke and watching
Wheel of Fortune
on a tiny TV. I wondered if his prior life involved tending the field across the way.
    “Yep?” he drawled, sliding open the window.
    “I’m here for a party at Caroline Warwick’s. My name is Emily Page.”
    Manses were supposed to be the homes of ministers, not vulgar rich people, a detail I remembered from a Scottish architecture course, and something I’m sure my troll friend didn’t want to hear from an uppity New Yorker. He ran his finger down a small computer screen, found my name, punched a button. The iron gates swung open easily into a pseudo-snotty fake England.
    Why did people who could afford multimillion-dollar castles like this install their 15,000-square-foot homes on postage-stamp front yards, forty feet apart from neighbors on either side? While the general impression was grand, after a block or two, the cupolas, curved stony walls, and widow’s walks blurred together like a theme park.
    A few twisty detours on cobbled streets designed to invoke the feel of the Ripper’s old London, and I turned off the ignition at 4203 Elizabeth Drive, a faux palace half the size of our New York apartment building.
    The ivy-covered brick archway to Caroline Warwick’s manor rose to the sky. Mike had told me that in Texas, the height of the front-porch arch directly correlated to the price of the house. It was like a house bragging about its penis size. And this was a top-dollar, porn-star penis.
    As for my own house hunt, I had quickly abandoned thenewer subdivisions after five days of drifting through bland, light-filled spaces with half the rooms already wired for flat screens. Our real estate agent expressed dismay when Mike and I stumbled across a wood-frame fixer-upper a few streets outside of Clairmont’s historic downtown and fell in love. A giant live oak in the front yard, honeysuckle run amuck, a stone fireplace, a wraparound porch, sixty-year-old wiring, and a kitchen that felt cramped with three people in it, including the one in the womb. Still, it was twice the kitchen space of our Manhattan apartment. Now staring at the formidable home in front of me, I considered a U-turn back to my bed.
    “Honey, open up. Don’t be shy.”
    My head whipped around to see a woman’s pudgy hot-pink manicured fist banging vigorously on the window, the other balancing a plate of something triple-covered with Saran Wrap. I switched off the ignition and opened the door two inches, straight into the rolls of her stomach pressed against my window.
    “Watch it. You’re going to spill Aunt Eloise’s Lemon Squares. They’re not quite set. Here, carry them.”
    She deigned to move a few inches back and I squeezed by, grabbing the plate dripping from her fingers. She didn’t seem to notice that Aunt Eloise’s Lemon Squares nearly fertilized the grass.
    “You must be Emily,” she told me. “I’d die to have had a little pregnant basketball like that but my family’s all big-boned. That dress is a little tight on you, don’t you think? You’re a pale one. I guess it’s New Yorky. If you want, I can get you into a tanning bed real cheap. My cousin Marsha Lynn Gayle runs the best facility, about seven miles from here, in