Page 108 of The Beast's Heart

My mind drifts, between sleep and wakefulness, thinking about Adam and how lovely he is, and about all the false, unfair things the world believes about him, and about his foundation. About the gala that’s never going to happen. If only there wasa way I could help. There must be some way to raise funds. A social media campaign. A GoFundMe?

His room blurs in and out of focus as I struggle to keep my eyes open. I find myself staring at the rolls of wallpaper.

Genuine Morris & Co wallpaper.

I suck in a breath, at once wide awake.

Adam pushes up on his elbow behind me. “What’s wrong?”

“How many rolls of this wallpaper do you have?”

43

JONATHAN

“An auction?” Meredith asks.

We’re all gathered in the foundation offices for what Adam told everyone was an urgent morning meeting. The children aren’t awake yet and we haven’t slept.

Meredith and Ray are sitting together, Lily-Iris is nibbling on one of the scones Ray baked yesterday and Angus is cradling a warm cup of coffee. Rain drums against the windows and roof and I hug myself, trying not to let my nerves show.

“An auction,” Adam confirms. “This house is packed with furniture, fittings and art worth a fortune.”

“But it washis,” Lily-Iris says at the same time that Meredith says, “You want to strip the house?”

Adam glances at me and I feel a stab of guilt. It was my idea, but it’s not my place to make this decision. I don’t have the emotional attachment.

“This house was more than just a country sanctuary, it was a dream,” Adam says. “Lloyd sought out the very best for a life he imagined but never got to live. This would be an opportunity for it all to go towards something he cared about far more.”

“Just how would it work?” Meredith’s arms are still folded. “We can’t have guests.”

“We stream it,” Adam says.

“Streamit?”

“It’s all the rage during the pandemic,” I jump in. “My friend Zane was telling me. People are streaming everything from ballet to conferences.”

Meredith shifts her focus to me. “Just how do you mean to stream fromhere?”

We spent a long time talking about this last night. The geosynchronous satellite that supports the terminal in the control room is the only one that can handle video. It’s expensive and it’s slow. We can’t have delays during an auction, that would never work.

“Well, we have to be clever about it,” I answer. “Certain elements would be pre-recorded. We host the gala—the gala you were planning all along—in the ball room. The children will love it. It will be like a party, just for us. We could arrange some entertainment?—”

Ray holds up their hands. “Hold your horses, Maria. You can’t pre-record an auction.”

I appreciate the Sound of Music reference, despite how unconvinced Ray sounds. “No, quite right. We would need assistance with that. We can line up a host, someone charismatic, a celebrity perhaps, with a strong internet connection, who could do all the real-time parts and play the recorded parts at opportune times. Adam is going to make some calls.”

“This could be the solution we’ve been looking for,” Adam says, forging ahead before anyone gets too caught up in the difficult logistics. “It’s a way to keep the foundation afloat until we can host in-person events again. But I need your buy-in. All of you.” He looks around at our small group. “If you have doubts, we can go back to the drawing board. Come up with another plan.”

Fortunately no one objects to the auction. While they don’t seem as excited about the idea as I was, I guess they figure the foundation has little to lose.

The next few weeks go by in a blur of auction preparation and excitement. The children take on the project whole-heartedly, despite their misgivings about the original gala. I suppose it’s because it feels more like a party and less of a test.

On any given evening or weekend, they’re helping Lily-Iris polish and decorate the ballroom, they’re assisting me with cleaning and packing the auction items, they’re teaching each other dances or quizzing Ray about the food. The best part is that Mal shows a renewed interest in learning the piano. This triggers a frantic afternoon of following WikiHow tutorials to tune the thing, which is a comedy of errors until Adam calls an expert and has him walk us through the process.

After the children are tucked up in bed, I work late into the night boxing up paintings and rare editions in the library. Lloyd talks to me through his sassy notes in ledgers about his collections, and through the collections themselves. There are illustrated Hans Christian Andersons, which reflect his fondness for Art Nouveau, and leather-bound Histoire du Canada volumes that speak to his French-Canadian heritage. He has landscapes by Tom Thomson, Emily Carr and Lawren Harris—some of Canada’s best—and genuine Victorian daguerreotypes. Among all this, I find an original edition of The House on Pooh Corner and an Alice in Wonderland with full-color book plates. These I set aside.

Alisha volunteers to film some “BTS content”, which I at first believe to be a band, but she informs me is “behind the scenes”.

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