The Vanishing by Wendy Webb Read Free Book Online Page B

the second floor with no trouble. As she disappeared into the dark hallway, I turned and walked back down to the foyer alone.
    After what had happened that morning, I didn’t want to venture too far afield into the house. I found myself in the living room once again, with the massive portrait of the man in the kilt. I had been drawn to this painting, so I decided to sit down and spend some time with the man who already seemed like an old friend. The room was rather dark—all of that wood paneling seemed to capture whatever sunlight was coming through the windows—so I flipped on a table lamp and gazed upward.
    “I see you have found Mr. McCullough.” It was Mrs. Sinclair with Marion behind her holding a tray with two cups and a pot of tea. Mrs. Sinclair settled onto the sofa next to me while Marion lit a fire that had already been laid in the fireplace.
    “I thought you were having a rest!” I said, surprised to see her again so quickly.
    “It didn’t feel right, leaving you on your own on your first day,” she said, patting my hand. “We can both rest here.”
    Marion served the tea and left us. We sipped in silence for a while, both gazing at the painting.
    “Most visitors to Havenwood are curious about its origins, Julia,” Mrs. Sinclair said, as the flames began to crackle and dance.“The man who built this house, Andrew McCullough, the handsome fellow right up there, was quite the colorful character. Would you like to hear about him?”
    I smiled broadly. Adrian had told me his mother wanted to talk about stories with another writer—this must be just the kind of thing he meant. I couldn’t believe it. I was about to hear a tale spun by the great Amaris Sinclair.
    “I’d love to!” I said.
    “It’s not a sweet and gentle tale, however,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “Not all of it, anyway. I’ll just warn you of that. Are you sure you’re up to hearing it?”
    I nodded, eager to learn more about the man in the painting.
    Amaris Sinclair folded her hands in her lap, stared into the dancing flames, and began to speak:
    “The year was 1850, and unlike life on the East Coast of this country, things here in the wilds of Minnesota near the Canadian border were anything but civilized, at least by the standards of a young and rather spoiled Scottish nobleman sent here to run his family’s fur-trapping business. Despite a few settlements here and there, this was the wilderness, darling, pure and simple.”
    She paused to take a sip of her tea, so I asked a question. “You said he was a young man? I imagine coming here would have been quite an adventure back in those days. Probably not something that an older gentleman would have undertaken.”
    “You imagine correctly. As the eldest son of an aristocratic family, Andrew stood to inherit his family’s considerable wealth and position. But his father simply couldn’t bear for that to happen, not to the man that young Andrew was at the time.” Mrs. Sinclair’s eyes sparkled. “He was what we might call a wild child. Gambling, drink, women—if there was a vice possible to have, Andrew succumbed to it. By all accounts, he was a spoiled, self-centered, entitled playboy with no sense of direction and no sense of responsibility, either. I’m sure you know the type.”
    I wondered if she was referring to my husband, and at thethought of him, my stomach curdled. “It sounds like he needed to man up a bit,” I offered.
    “Indeed,” she said, raising her eyebrows and taking another sip of her tea. “Andrew’s mother, Marcelline, was French Canadian, the daughter of a prominent fur trader in Montreal. Her father had given her a line of his business, the fur trade along the Canadian border with Minnesota, as a dowry when she married Andrew’s father, Hugh. And when the wild Andrew turned twenty, Hugh charged him with a task: he was to run the fur business and make it successful, before he would be eligible to inherit the family fortune, lock, stock,