The Carriage House Read Free

Diana.
    His daughters’ absence darkened William’s mood enough that he couldn’t afford a false smile when Jack Weld trotted out from the clubhouse to sit beside Adelia. “William!” Weld said, grinning excessively across the line of her shoulder. He was the kind of man who sheathed his calculating nature in an overabundance of cheer, the type of enthusiastic spirit who might stab you in the back and pretend he was just playing tag. William did not return the greeting; Weld’s presence revived his headache. “This should be a great match,” Weld was saying, but it would not be a great match. Abigail Weld was not even remotely in the same league as Diana. Weld stretched his legs. They were clothed in khaki shorts, culminating in a pair of weathered boat shoes. No socks. William hated sockless men in general, and in this case there was something particularly infuriating about the coiled athleticism of Weld’s bare calves. “What a day for a match!” he said. Neither William nor Adelia was responding to him; he was engaged in a conversation with himself, forcing them to listen in. “Listen, William! I’m glad I ran into you here. I’ve been meaning to talk to you. I wanted to say that I’m sorry about the way things worked out with the carriage house petition. I find Anita Schmidt as odious as you do. But it looks like people are just ready to let it go.”
    “That’s fine, Jack,” William said, although it certainly was not fine. He refused to look at Weld. He wanted to be alone with Adelia. There was a clarity to her presence that he needed. She was so intently focused on the match that her nails had dug eight red crescents into her palms.
    “Look, William,” Weld continued. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m with you. I understand the value of history on Little Lane. We have a past, and it wouldn’t be right to let it go like that, with the snap of a finger. It will break my heart to see that carriage house torn down. But we have systems in place. Rules for governance. We can’t just ignore the vote of everyone else on the street.”
    Adelia put one hand on William’s thigh. “What a point!” she said. “Focus, William, she’s playing, you’ve got to watch this.”
    But William couldn’t focus. His eyes were losing their grip on the match. An image of his carriage house, decaying in Anita Schmidt’s backyard, rose in his mind. It was a beautiful building once. Designed by his own grandfather, described in the papers as one of the foremost examples of shingle architecture in the United States. While other men of his generation dreamed of making their fortunes in industry, William’s grandfather dreamed of perfect spaces, of rooms designed so that within their walls you became a better version of yourself, more capable and brave. That was the kind of blood that ran in William’s veins. Inside the carriage house, there was one cavernous room and a loft under thick cedar beams. Encompassed by slabs of hewn wood, the air was hushed. It held promise. One corner was rounded into a turret shape; the roof was a series of intersecting gambrels, one for the turret, one for the carriage room, one for the owl’s nest that peeked up over the loft. Outside, the shingles were white on the siding, dove gray on the roof, weathered by decades of wind. It was the kind of house that belonged on a windswept beach, confronting the tumult. When William was a boy, there was a telescope in the owl’s nest, pointed out over the downhill slope of Little Lane. As children, he and Adelia, best friends by proximity, played pirates in the loft, surveying the houses beneath them and crying out their barbaric yawps. What she lacked in gender and years, Adelia made up for with ferocity. One evening she very nearly cut off her finger for the sake of a complicated escape; William had to hold her hand above her head, in the cathedral light that filtered through the owl’s nest, in order to prevent catastrophe. That carriage house,