Page 16 of How to Fake a Haunting

It’d been a while since Bea had come to work with me, though she asked often, her love of princesses, castles, and lofty stories manifesting as wide-eyed wonder for the Gilded Age mansions that’d once dominated Newport’s high-society scene.

Relieved to have convinced Adelaide to push off the meeting with the plumber until Monday, I lifted Bea out of her car seat and straightened her green-and-gold dress.

“It’s a good thing we came when the Breakers is closed to the public,” I told her, my tone serious. “Otherwise, the tour guides would think you belong in the house. They might try to keep you from leaving. A real princess from the past, come to rule us all.”

Beatrix stopped twirling and regarded my mother, who was climbing from the car. “Would someone really try to keep me here, Gram?”

My mother slung her purse over one shoulder and smiled.

“No one could take you from your mother, baby. She loves you too much.” She ruffled Bea’s curls.

“But when we walk through the halls and the bedrooms, check out the portraits on the walls. You’ll see all the fancy women who lived here one hundred years ago.

They’ll have on beautiful dresses like yours. ”

“One hundred years?” Bea’s eyes grew wide. She was still staring in astonishment when I took her hand.

“One hundred years,” my mother repeated, taking Bea’s other hand before turning to me. “Can I treat you girls to lunch when we’re done? It’s the least I can do after you invited me for this lovely afternoon.”

I pushed my sunglasses onto my nose. “That’d be great. As long as Bea isn’t too wiped.” We walked through the parking lot and toward the great iron gate, the Breakers looming before us.

“I still can’t believe you work here,” Mom said, “even after all these years. You were always so enamored of the past, more likely to reenact Shakespearean plays than talk to your friends on instant messenger. Do you remember coming to the mansions when you were little?”

“Of course. Rosecliff and Marble House were my favorites. Still are.”

“Marble House is full of marbles,” Bea said. “Like Pinecone House is full of pinecones.”

I laughed. “It’s full of marble,” I agreed. “But marble staircases and marble balustrades, not marbles like you play with.”

Bea skipped, undeterred, as we strolled beneath the gate and into the front garden.

Creamy roses and purple lupines had turned the grounds into something from an impressionist’s postcard.

As beautiful as it was, it reminded me that tourist season was around the corner.

I needed to finalize the new exhibits in the coming weeks.

I followed Bea’s gaze to the explosion of blossoms climbing a nearby trellis. “Don’t pick the roses. If I know you, you’ll be a worse thief than Peter Rabbit loose in Mr. McGregor’s garden.”

“Aww, shucks,” Bea said, grinning. My mother and I laughed.

We strolled past the empty ticket booth and entered the mansion alongside its four Corinthian pilasters.

In two weeks, the Breakers Third Floor Preservation in Progress Tour would be unveiled to the public after two years of painstaking work.

The guide-led experience of private bedrooms, bathrooms, and recreational spaces used by the Vanderbilt family and household staff for more than a century would draw thousands over the course of the summer.

Today, however, Mom, Bea, and I would be the only guests.

I watched Beatrix stare at the luminous chandelier in the massive foyer, transfixed. I leaned down and whispered, “Wherever you’d like to explore, we’ll follow.”

Bea continued to stare, the gray-gold of her eyes set off by the buttery warmth of the lights. “Who lives here?”

“No one, sweet pea.”

“But people did?”

“Once upon a time.”

“Are they ghosts now?”

I straightened, wondering what Adelaide would say if she could hear my daughter.

No one at work wanted Adelaide back on her “Make the Mansions Spooky Again” kick, least of all me, but it was hard to argue with the idea that the average tourist—maybe even the average person—harbored an insatiable appetite for all things eerie and unexplainable.

Ghosts’ capacity to be about things other than themselves was universally appealing.

Still, I wanted Joe and Morgan Tallow as far away as possible from the realism and accuracy of the properties we managed.

“Maybe they’re ghosts,” I said gently, returning my attention to Bea. “Maybe not. Why don’t we walk around, and you can think some more about it.”

We traversed velvet staircases and took detours through mirrored hallways and ornate bedrooms, my mother listening to self-guided audio tours while Bea chattered about tapestries she liked and the way the La Farge stained glass skylight threw kaleidoscopic patterns over our feet.

In one cavernous bedroom, Bea pronounced the decor to be reminiscent of a pale-pink-frosted cake, and I watched her marvel at the marble-topped nightstand, the frilly pink pillowcases and rose-patterned wallpaper, and the gold-framed photo of a little girl above the bed.

“Who’s that?” Beatrix asked.

“Gertrude Vanderbilt. This was her bedroom,” I said.

“Where is she now?”

I hesitated. “Well, honey, she died a long time ago. She lived a long time ago. Her time in this house happened long before you or I or Gram were even born.”

“So she is a ghost,” Bea said, matter-of-fact. “Like the others who lived in this house.”

My mother shot me a look.

I inhaled. How the hell do I not say the wrong thing here?

“No one knows if ghosts are real, baby. The people who lived here, after they died, their bodies returned to the earth, but their souls could be anywhere. They could also be part of the earth. Part of the trees. The grass. The wind. Or, maybe they’re still themselves, in the form of what we think of as ‘ghosts.’ No one knows.

And so, everyone is free to believe whatever they want about what happens after we die. ”

Beatrix nodded, as if this made perfect sense. “Some kids at school said ghosts were scary,” she said. “I said they weren’t. They’re like the characters in the books we read at Halloween-time. They teach us things, right?”

“Right, sweetheart,” I managed.

Bea shrugged, as if to say, Well, that’s that, and the gesture was so innocent and happy-go-lucky I wanted to pull her into my arms and never let go.

Instead, I watched her run ahead to inspect an antique rocking horse, her curls falling forward and framing her face so that she looked like the portrait of five-year-old Gertrude Vanderbilt on the wall.

My mother’s headphones were still in her ears, but based on her pursed lips and the way she held her head, I knew she’d heard our conversation and was wondering what kind of books I was reading to Beatrix.

Did ghosts teach us things? Maybe. In Callum’s case, I hope they’d teach him how to get the hell out.

But I couldn’t help noticing that, like Adelaide—and the Tallows—my daughter’s inclination upon stepping into the mansions was to consider those who’d walked these halls before us.

My job was to preserve the past, and yet all I could focus on was the future.

Future guests. Future exhibits. Future profits that would lead to future artifacts.

A future life for me and Beatrix away from Callum.

I followed Bea and my mother into the hallway, stopping beside a large vase set into a recessed niche of the wall.

Amid the vines and clusters of grapes decorating the vase were several small painted birds.

I’d never paid them much notice before, but their white wings and black chests led me to think they were magpies.

The magpie, a symbol of duality. Black versus white.

The opposite of how I was meant to be thinking.

It was dangerous to believe that, as long as I stayed in control, I could keep my life from careening off the rails.

Past. Present. Black. White. I went about curating museums—and staging hauntings—as if there was a “right” way to put the pieces back together.

As if I could forge the future by keeping the past—and my secrets—at bay.