Hidden Riches

soon become apparent—just as the consequences of her rashand impulsive declaration of love.
    Rather than dwell on what was to come, Dora sat back and tried to enjoy the scenery, the beautifully restored homes and storefronts, the glitter of crystal and gold in the shops, the charm of the cobblestones beneath the T-Bird’s monster tires.
    Far up the hill the trees were old and stately, the homes trim and elegant. It was a neighborhood of minks and diamonds, of heirlooms and fat portfolios, of country club memberships and well-behaved lapdogs. She wondered fleetingly how it had appeared to a small boy growing up.
    Jed pulled up in a narrow driveway beside a lovely old Colonial. The brick had mellowed to a soft dusky rose and the trim was an elegant and unfaded Wedgwood blue. Tall windows glinted and winked in the strong sunlight, tossing back reflections while preventing the curious from seeing the secrets within.
    It was a fine house, Dora mused. Beautifully maintained, perfect in its setting and somehow strongly feminine, with its neat lines and dignity. If she had picked it herself, she realized, for herself, it couldn’t have been more perfect. The age, the tradition, the setting all clicked quietly into place with her image of the ideal family home.
    She imagined it in the summer when the roses planted beneath those tall windows would be sumptuously blooming, carrying bold color and womanly scent. And in the fall when the big, leafy trees would burst into golds and scarlets. The picture was completed with lace at the windows and a dog in the yard.
    And because she imagined so well, her heart broke a little. She doubted very much that Jed saw the house as she did.
    Saying nothing, she alighted from the car to stand and study. Only a discreet portion of the city noise traveled up here, on the hill. There would be no camera-snapping tourists here searching for monuments, no bold flash of a blade skater careering down the sidewalk, no temptingscents of pizza and hoagies from a corner deli.
    And wasn’t that what she wanted? she asked herself. The noise, the smells and the freedom of being in the center of it?
    “This is where you grew up?” she asked.
    “That’s right.” He led the way to the door flanked with lovely beveled glass inserts. When he’d unlocked it, he stepped back and waited for Dora to go in ahead.
    The foyer was two stories, tipped with a many-tiered chandelier that would graciously light the way up the grand oak staircase. The floor was tiled with large black-and-white squares of marble. Her soft suede half boots barely made a sound as she crossed it.
    There is something richly fascinating about empty houses. There is the thin, echoing air and the sense of vastness. There is the curious wonder of who had lived there, and what they had lived with, and the automatic projection of self into the rooms. There I would put my favorite lamp, and here my little table.
    Dora felt that fascination now, but it was tinged with a deeper curiosity for where Jed had fit into the architecture and design.
    She couldn’t feel him here. Though she knew he stood beside her, it was as though the part of him that mattered most had stepped back at the threshold, and left her to enter alone.
    The wallpaper with its tiny tea roses had faintly lighter rectangular sections where paintings had hung. The bare foyer cried out for flowers, she thought. Tall urns with freesia spilling out, bold stalks of lilies lancing up and some pretty, welcoming rug over that cold marble to soften the rigid formality of the entrance.
    She ran her hand over the gleaming newel post at the base of the banister—a banister, she thought, fashioned for a child’s bottom or a woman’s trailing fingers.
    “You’re planning to sell it.”
    He was watching her, carefully, as she wandered fromthe foyer into the front parlor. Already, by simply entering, his muscles had tensed. Dora was right, Jed wasn’t seeing pretty flowers or welcoming rugs.
    “It’s on the market. Elaine and I inherited it fifty-fifty, and she wasn’t happy with any of the offers we received. I didn’t really give a damn one way or the other.” Because they wanted to fist, he tucked his hands into the pockets of his jacket. “So since she had a house of her own, I lived here awhile.” He stayed where he was when Dora walked over to study the scrubbed and empty hearth. “It’s mine now, and the realtor’s starting over.”
    “I see.” There should be family