Interior Designs by Pamela Browning

Author:Pamela Browning [Browning, Pamela]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ePublishing Works!
Published: 2015-06-04T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

By the next weekend, her mood had taken a turn for the better. Furniture for Drew's apartment had been delivered and the new lighting installed. Drew professed to be delighted with the change, especially with Selby's room, which Cathryn had transformed into a floral bower in pink and peony-red, with curtains of white organdy ballooned at the windows.

On Friday evening they drove to the beach house for the weekend, as usual. As Drew turned his key in the lock, he said, "Seeing my apartment change before my very eyes has made me want to do something about this house, too. The house seems so different now, since we've been staying here on weekends. It's like another place altogether."

"It's a fantastic place, Drew," Cathryn said, following him inside. Because of the slanted Bahama shutters, it was still dark inside, but she didn't think of it as gloomy anymore. The weekends they had spent there—the nights making love and sleeping in the master bedroom, the days lounging on the deck and the beach—had purged the house of its ghosts.

She recalled the Saturday several weeks before when she and Drew had stripped the furniture of its covers. They'd come in from sunning on the beach one morning, and Drew had suddenly grasped the bleached muslin that covered a large chair and tugged at it until it slid off, revealing an armchair covered in a nubby white fabric.

"Help me with this, will you, Cathryn?" he said. "Grab the other side of the couch cover."

"What are you doing?" she asked, puzzled.

"You and I are going to be staying here almost every weekend, and there's no need to keep the furniture covered. I can't stand to look at rooms full of shrouded furniture."

"Drew, we spend most of our time on the deck or the beach, anyway."

"No, Cathryn, this is something I really need to do. I once thought that putting everything back the way it was when Talma lived here would remind me of her. But now..." His voice trailed off as he stared down at her and she steadily returned his gaze.

Suddenly he strode across the floor to the wide window, where he yanked at the drapery cord until the fabric swept back from the glass to admit more light.

Seeing that he was serious about this task, Cathryn said, "Okay, I'll take this end of the couch cover, and you take that one."

"That's it," he encouraged, "we'll roll the fabric toward the middle to stir up as little dust as possible." Despite their care, they couldn't help raising puffs of dust, and Cathryn's nose twitched at the musty odor of the upholstery. As she folded the cover, Cathryn tried not to look at Talma's wedding portrait smiling at her from the gallery, her heart-shaped face tilted to one side.

Drew relieved her of the heavy fabric and tossed it in a corner. And then, almost as though they were operating on the same wavelength, he hurried to the wall where Talma's portrait hung, removed it from its hook, and stowed it in a nearby closet.

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