Greenbriar Manor

The Reason and The Revenant

Chessie waited outside the library door listening to Daniel's conversation. She thought of Fern and how she had given her a piece of the real story. The woman in blue was lingering now on the darkest halls of the maid quarters where the manor itself was starting to settle. It was not decaying yet but time had made it less strong and so they would no longer permit entry to that west wing of the house. Their childhood rooms would be relegated to ruin until someone cared to call in a contractor about reparation. Somehow, she knew that would not happen until Daniel was ready to leave and let Jake and Vivian uncover all of the history they had purchased in this famous family estate. The house in Vermont was condemned or so the dispatcher told him. He mentioned the guest house and to have a dog check the maids quarters. He mentioned that Brittany had lived with her mother there before she died and maybe she had returned to seek solace now that her father was working and her grandmother was gone. The word hung a little in the air. An admittance to himself. Salem was not his sister anymore she was a shade of what she had once been. They all tried to keep alive the vibrant dancer but she had lost that long ago. Crippled by her greed she had become a common criminal and worse clinging to some long held right she no longer had to cheat the Greene's and fate.  He remembered long ago being told there would only ever be one way to shift the order of things and that was to change the outcome of at least one occupant. He had hoped it would be Fran or Brookie. But time had called for a different Greene and a different Grey. 

The dispatcher asked the usual questions for a missing persons report and where to look first. He hoped that he was not wrong for a tiny blunder could make things even more complicated.He gave them clues and gave them Sallie and  Fern's numbers. Hopefully, she would understand why she would need to contact Johnathan and He knew with her training Brittany would be in better hands that those of his sister. He also knew that  Chessie was listening outside the door. She had come back to help this come to be. Fran and Mack were keeping Mabel busy but she would soon meet the newest house guest. A woman who lost a daughter in a flurry of rage long ago. A mother who was looking for her daughter. A woman whose granddaughter was helping to catalog his own past. Mari and Brooklyn came here after Martha became the maid to replace Fern's grandmother. They were all Grey's. But the laundress had never really connected the dots. Not even with Chessie's tales. Yet, he knew that Fern's mother would begin to remember and try to return to the Manor. Somewhere also far away Vera would be coming by bus to the ruinous house in Vermont. When the police arrived she would be ready to face her mother's ire one last time. Sallie and Mabel must leave before that happened and return to Vermont to meet Vera. Without her returning to release Brittany from Myrna's clutches the house would continue it's shifting selection. Daniel must act quickly. 

He thought of Brooklyn pacing the fenceline again with Ingrim's horse. A near copy of his own. Gone was his family. But he was continuing to wait til the last Greene was safe to wander off the property. Maybe he would always watch over this place much as Vera had in Vermont. He hoped for his friend that when Mabel met the maid Brooklyn's father would come home to give that horse his day. Ingrim had become quite the established jockey the last few weeks and Jake was determined to get him a medal before he grew too old and tall to ride Sultan. He could see in that black steed's eyes that even he was ready to break and run the time was drawing near for changes. He placed another call to a room in a convalescence home in Bear Glen. The nurse answered and connected him to a man who he had known all his life. The man cleared his throat. "Hello." "It's me Daniel. How are you doing? The man sighed heavily. Whether in pain or resignation to the order of the call he did not know. He had been in the home now several weeks. Over the bridge believing himself to be too far away to be touched by the Greene's demands. Martha has gone as well. She had left one morning for the bus and he was not sure where she had gone. The house always required some kind of change. When he had left all those years ago he had never planned to come back to work on another horse race. It had robbed him of his son and that is the only reason he would make this right. Daniel had been Thad's best friend in boyhood. He owed this younger Greene one last run. Maybe this time Ingrim would change the memory to a good one. He told Daniel that he would not be able to ride the horse or care for him that the new stable boy would have to do all the hands on training but that if they could get the horse ready in two weeks he would come back for the opening race. Daniel smiled and looked out the window at his oldest and dearest friend his father had agreed against all odds to take the bus and come home one last time. 

 As he hungup the phone with the dispatcher who had already sent out an APB on Brittany and promised him that the hounds would begin their search there first he felt a steady calm rise over his normally anxious bones. Daniel had been holding things in a  very long time. He was always keeping appearances and relaxing boundaries to keep this place together and everyone in it happy--the past and the present--occupants blurred and flurried like photograph negatives in his mind. He had not been his own for a long time.  He owed it to Vivian and Jake to give them and this place a new beginning just as he and his family had all this time with the Greys and Fran and even wandering Greenes. Briarwood was a place that stuck you and held you in its endless embrace and if you were not careful you too could remain part of its attic secrets and dusty cellars. For as long as he had remembered he was to carry a secret. Now he would finally take his leave if just for a season. His sister could not be a wandering dark thing forever . She must face her fears and go on. As Mari and Vera had done. 

Salem had taken too much from GreenBriar all these years and now things would be forever changed. The last act of bravery her brother had was to turn the tide in Vermont from engulfing Brittany Greene as it had her father and grandma. Myrna had made the decision for Vera. She had pressed into her daughter's hand a possession of greatness and vanity. One that Vera was too young to understand. After that horrible piano recital secrets grew larger and loomed wider in two places and almost choked the family whole. She and Daniel alone knew the truth about this place. Over and over the house brought back people and past indignations to retrace and reconfigure. This time Daniel refused to let his sister and Myrna create another link in the chain. Salem and Myrna has used success as a weapon and jealousy as a storyline for the reasons that others had to meet untimely ends. Yet they persisted only in dark and cold places where something needed was missing. Greenbriar may look like a place where nightmares are born but when he was done not a single Grey or Greene would ever again wander out into the world alone or abandoned. He would bring them home to rest and he would go on to somewhere else. 

Meanwhile in Vermont, Myrna was teaching Brittany how to dance. She pushed her body into tiny shoes and did circles like that broken music box ballerina until she could not spin anymore. She wrote stories about her favorite animals: not narwhals or bunnies but lions and believed that somewhere out there she would become stronger than her father or her See See. Every night she left that bedroom window cracked with a piece of cellophane paper from a candy box visible to glimmer light. She waited and hoped that out there some wandering person would see that inside the dark house was someone waiting to go home. The police dogs searched the property and they got no scent. Thrown off by squirrels and loud noises of the house creaking in the wind. A flashlight searched the foundation and the land around that old Manor house as Johnathan slept in a hotel room completely exhausted from fear and bourbon. They passed against an old plank board window sealed up for years to the outside. It had once been Vera's childhood bedroom. Opaque glass shimmered in the light. Something caught their eye but it might be some kind of anomaly. It seemed to be a piece of shimmery paper. They took pictures but did not approach at first. The man at the edge of the property walked toward a gnarled tree stump with a large hole in the center as he ran his finger over the bark he felt a strange dizziness and then a painful blow to the top of his head. Something blunt. He crumpled on the lawn unconscious but before his vision went dark he made out a dog running towards him and the leering smile of a woman wearing a tattered apron. Someone lived here and it was not Johnathan Greene.