The House They Would Not Sell
“What are we going to do about Bella?”
Mrs. Shepard clicked her tongue, her face soft with genuine pity.
Worry was one thing. Taking responsibility for another person was something else entirely. Nothing about Bella had been established—not her true name, not her age, not any of it—and yet she was quick, and kind to everyone. They all thought of her as a lovely girl. That did not mean any of them could step forward and promise to look after someone else for the rest of a life, with no end in sight.
“God, it’s cold.”
Right on cue, the front door opened.
“Oh—the bread smells wonderful.”
Bella came into the kitchen rubbing her frozen hands together and drew in a deep breath of the warmth.
“There you are. I told you it was freezing. Why did you insist on going out?”
The women clustered around the kitchen counter brightened at the sight of her. From her backpack Bella drew a wine bottle rolled in paper and set it on the counter.
“I just wanted to walk a little. For the exercise.”
“Well, thank you all the same.”
Gillian worked the cork free with practiced ease, and the others held out their glasses as if they had been waiting for nothing else. Bella cut a little of the duck-liver pâté onto a cracker and took a bite.
“Mmm. This is really good. You have to give me the recipe.”
The pâté Mrs. Hoyt, who owned a farm nearby, brought to every gathering was exactly to Bella’s taste.
“I wrote it down for you already. It’s on the table in the living room.”
“Really? Thank you.”
At Mrs. Hoyt’s words Bella smiled until her eyes creased, then stepped into the living room. Neil Raymond, an old gentleman in a cardigan, sat with a bottle of beer in one hand, his gaze fixed on the television. Beside him Aiden clutched a plastic bowl of Cheerios and was busily ferrying handfuls to his mouth.
“Bella!”
Aiden shot to his feet at the sight of her and dropped the bowl. Cereal scattered and rolled. Bella scooped it up in a hurry, then swept the boy into her arms where he stood waiting with both of them flung wide. She pressed kiss after kiss to his round cheeks, and Aiden looped his arms around her neck and laughed, bright and bubbling.
“Were you waiting for me?”
“Yeah. A lot.”
“Then shall we brush our teeth and go read a book?”
“Okay.”
Half an hour later, with Aiden asleep, Bella came back to the living room. The eyes behind the glasses that had been fixed on the television turned toward her.
“Is Aiden asleep?”
“Yes.”
“Then sit with me a moment.”
Bella settled quietly on the sofa opposite. Neil opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again. He was a quiet, steady man, nothing like his sociable wife, Gillian, but there was a deep kindness in him.
“I’m sorry, Bella.”
After a short silence he let the words out, and followed them with a low sigh.
“What for?”
“I wanted to look after you to the very end, but…”
At what came next, Bella waved the apology away.
“I’m already grateful for everything you’ve done. I’m really all right, Neil.”
“Even after we go to England, I won’t sell this house. There will be times we come back to Canada, and I don’t care to stay in a hotel every time we do. I’ve arranged for the taxes and the upkeep to come out of the account on their own. So I’d be grateful if you looked after the place for us.”
“Neil, you don’t have to go that far…”
“I’m asking you.”
Bella dropped her gaze. He was speaking as if the decision were for their own convenience, but there was only one reason the Raymonds, bound for another country, would not sell the house. They could not take her with them. They meant, even so, to leave her a safe nest until the end.
“All right, Neil.”
This was not a moment in which she could stand on pride, or on shame. The kindness was more than she knew how to hold, and still she had no other choice.
“I’ve already spoken with the Hoyts. They’ve said they’ll let you work on the farm. The work will be hard, but they know your situation. They’ll be a help to you.”
“Thank you.”
Neil’s heart was not at ease. In Bella’s circumstances, the only work she could take was work that paid in cash. He feared that despair might one day push her toward something illegal.
He studied her profile in silence. A girl that young, and that pretty—how long can she endure a life like this?
As if to mock every anxious heart in the house, time went on ticking.
Fewer than three weeks remained before the Raymonds and Aiden left for England. The emptied rooms had taken on a hushed, hollow quiet. Neil had gone to Toronto for a gathering. Gillian had taken Aiden to a friend’s house in Scarborough, saying they would stay the night. Perhaps it was only that the day she would be left alone was drawing near. Bella’s mind would not settle.
She threw open the windows that had been shut and set to cleaning. With a duster she cleared cobwebs from every corner of the ceiling and from the light fixtures, and she ran the vacuum wherever carpet lay. She wiped the window frames with a damp cloth and polished the wood floors with a steam cleaner until they shone.
When the house was set to rights, she went to the kitchen. Looking over the tea things in the glass cabinet beside the cupboards, she took down a single cup. She boiled water in the electric kettle, dropped in a tea bag, and let it steep, then sat in the chair by the window.
You could sit there all day and hardly see a person pass. The place made her feel cut off from the rest of the world.
People her age went to the cities, found work, and lived in a rush. Even that was closed to her. As things stood, she could not take a job where papers had to pass legally from hand to hand. If her memory never returned and she never recovered who she was, she would have to live exactly like this for the rest of her life.
The Hoyts had promised to let her help on the farm, but farm work followed the seasons, and in winter there was scarcely any of it. She might wash dishes or do odd jobs in a restaurant or a shop, yet with no clear identity even those places would be hard to come by. She knew that well enough.
Bella thought back to the day she had first come to the Raymonds’ house. Neil and Gillian had tried, again and again, to learn even a little more about her. Her face had the soft, youthful look common among East Asians, which made her age difficult to guess, but Bella knew how to drive. That meant she was at least old enough to hold a license—past sixteen.
She had read the architectural books Neil owned without stumbling. Words ordinary people never had cause to say came off the page without trouble, and she grasped what she read quickly. Neil had guessed that she had finished university, or at least been enrolled.
English was her native tongue, and her Spanish was better than intermediate. Above all, she knew Korean. That made it likely she was of Korean descent, or had once been close to Koreans. Whatever past she had lived, whatever future she had dreamed, her life had frozen solid along with the memory of it.
She must have fallen asleep somewhere between one thought and the next. The sound of the garage door opening woke her. A car door thudded shut, and then the door between the garage and the house opened. It was Neil.
“You’re back?”
Bella pushed herself up, still drowsy.
“Yes.”
He brushed the snow from his coat, hung it up, and came into the living room. Seated across from her, he lowered his brows and regarded her in silence. His lips parted and closed again, like a man with something he needed to say, until at last he spoke.
“Bella. There’s something I need to tell you.”
The seriousness of his face put her a little on edge.
“What is it…”
“There was an Architects’ Night at the convention center today. I saw quite a few students I hadn’t met in a long while.”
Neil had taught architectural engineering at MIT until he retired. Years had passed since he moved to Canada, and still the postcards, the letters, and the gifts from his students had never stopped.
“That must have made you happy.”
“It was a very special evening.”
Before he came to the point, he told her a few things that had happened at the gathering, watching her all the while. Bella listened with a gentle face. Unfortunately, Neil had no gift for drawing out idle talk. Within a few minutes a stillness settled over the living room.
“Bella.”
He chose his words inwardly, unsure how she would take what he meant to say. However good his intentions, he was afraid she might feel burdened by them.
“I don’t know how this will sound to you. Have you ever thought of working as a nanny?”
“I’m sorry—what?”
The question came out of nowhere. Bella stared at him, a little dazed.
“One of my students says he’s looking for a live-in nanny to stay with them for a while. He wants someone fluent in Korean and English, and I thought of you. You speak Korean, and you’ve been looking after Aiden here all this time.”
Neil felt through his suit pocket, drew something out, and held it toward her. It was a business card, black, edged in a fine line of gold.
“He wants the child to learn Korean. The boy belongs to a student of mine who recently moved to Toronto for work. A little past three, I was told.”
Bella had been listening with her lip caught quietly between her teeth. Now she spoke, careful.
“And the child’s mother?”
“They seem to have parted. It didn’t sound like a happy story, so I didn’t press. He was one of the most capable students I ever had, and one of the most promising. These days he’s making his name as an architect of international standing. The nanny they had fell ill and can’t go on. His schedule keeps him away, so he’s looking for someone who can stay at the child’s side.”
“But would he hire someone like me as a nanny? Someone whose identity isn’t even certain?”
A small sigh left her, and she lowered her eyes.
This was the only home she knew, and her only shelter. Could I really leave it and live among other people? Not everyone would have the Raymonds’ goodness. Not everyone would ache over her circumstances as if they were their own.
“I’ve introduced you as my niece. Go to the interview, at least. Of course, if they mean to hire you, you’ll have to tell them the situation exactly as it is. Even so, I’ll vouch for who you are, so don’t worry. You’re gentle by nature, and tender. Before the accident, you were surely a good child.”
Bella said nothing.
Neil lifted his head slowly and looked at the shadow that had come over her face.
“When a person succeeds, his eye for others grows with him. I’m certain he’ll see in you the same thing I did.”
“Ah…”
Bella pulled a pillow against her and curled tighter beneath the blanket.
The cold had dropped to twenty-five below zero, and the wind made it feel like forty. It woke in her a want to hide under the covers and sleep the winter through. She lay groaning, unable to leave the bed, then pushed herself up on a long sigh.
Today was the day she was to meet Neil’s student. He had offered to drive her as far as the train station in London, Ontario, but even then, changing from train to subway to reach the place would take more than three hours at the least.
Fresh from the shower, Bella wound a towel around her hair and opened the closet. What do I even wear? Her pale hazel eyes rolled from one side to the other. The closet was packed so full there was hardly a gap to be found, because Mrs. Shepard had brought her a suitcase crammed with clothes her daughter had outgrown.
Bella took out a gray tweed suit and laid it on the bed. It was a little thin for weather like today’s, but with a coat and a muffler she thought she would manage.
“Did you sleep well?”
Gillian poured a cup of coffee and held it out as Bella came into the kitchen, already changed. Two creams, two sugars. The sweetness spread through her mouth.
“It’s snowed a great deal, and the roads will be slow. You’d do better to leave early.”
Neil said it with his cup at his lips, glancing up from the newspaper his eyes had been fixed on. Bella wrapped both hands around the warm mug and nodded. She would go and see. That was no promise she would be hired. Better to think of it as an outing, the first in a long while, than to arrive full of hope and come home disappointed.
“When you’re on your way back, call me from Union Station. I’ll come and fetch you.”
Neil said it after he had parked at the station. Snow had been falling since the night before, the plows had not kept up, and the roads were choked with backed-up cars. Getting to the station had taken more than twice as long as usual.
“I will. Drive safely.”
Bella shouldered the backpack she had set at her feet, drew her coat closed, and put on her hat. In the red scarf and gloves Gillian had knitted, a tumbler in one hand, she stepped out of the car.
She bought a ticket and was soon aboard the train for Toronto. Across from her sat a pleasant-looking old woman. Bella gave her a nod of greeting, then turned to the scenery sliding slowly backward beyond the glass. Outside, everything was white.
Victorian houses flashed past, their roofs buried in snow, and they looked for all the world like paintings. A hundred years old, most likely, and scarred all over if you stood close enough to see. But snow had a way of making anything seem graceful, and lovely. Even, she supposed, a reeking old trash bin.
The train ran on for a long while, then began to slow, and stopped at Woodstock. Bella stayed in her seat and watched the passengers get off. A woman who had just stepped down ran across the platform into the arms of a man who was waiting. Even at a glance, they were close.
To be recognized by someone, you needed a past you had shared. There had been a time when she waited for a person who would know her face. But in all the countless faces she had met over the last three years, not one had ever smiled at her in welcome.