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“What’s so like that worth?”
Pandy looked at hi at another, and snapped, “I don’t know What’s your inspiration worth?” as she walked out of the room
Jonny caught up with her in the gallery that she and Hellenor had dubbed “the Hall of Ghouls,” due to the hundreds of portraits and photographs of the Wallis clan dating back to the early 1700s “Pandy,” he said, co to stand beside her “I didn’t mean it, okay?”
“Sure,” Pandy said, accepting his apology, as the shrink had advised, while noting that Jonny had brought the tuet it It’s not a big deal”
>“But it is I said I’d do this for you, and I will Just like the shrink said So who are all these people?”
“Well,” she began, but Jonny wasn’t listening
Leaning forward to peer at a photograph, he laughed like a frat boy and reot assholes in my family”
“Oh, Jonny” She shook her head at his silliness “Look,” she said, pointing to an ancient black-and-white photograph of two dozen people lined up in front of the house “All those people All those lives And this is all that’s left of them”
“So?” Jonny chortled, taking another swig
“Henry says I should turn the place into a museum when I die”
“Great,” Jonny exclaimed sarcastically “Another one of Henry’s ‘brilliant’ ideas”
Pandy did her best to ignore him as she considered what to show him next The schoolroom with the -seat nook where she had loved to read as a child? The conservatory, with its collection of rare butterflies? Old Jay’s bedrooht suddenly; that always impressed men
Indeed, you couldn’t get more manly than Old Jay’s bedroo rooany The enormous four-poster bed sat squarely in the middle of the room; Old Jay had apparently liked to sit in his bed in the s from the French s that faced out in three directions Besides being soreat traveler His roo souvenirs from his trips, like a Zulu spear and as supposedly an actual shrunken head fro human
But Jonny wasn’t interested in any of that
He strode into the room, took a spin around the bed, and then, as if he’d already decided to take possession of the space, went into the bathroom He shut the door with a proprietary click; when it rean to fret That particular toilet hadn’t been flushed for years; it was highly likely to clog No one, including Henry, had even stayed in Old Jay’s bedrooe of the facilities