“I mean, who else could it have been?” He ticks off on his fingers. “Not her sister, Emma—she was out of town. Not the uncle John Morris who was visiting them—”
“Morse. But close.” Amazingly close.
“Yeah, Morse. He had an alibi. Definitely not the maid Bridget. I bet she knew something, though, right?”
“Probably. I . . . I mean, wow. I can’t believe you know so much.”
“Why? You do.”
“Yeah, but I’m . . .”
“Smarter? Special?”
“No! I was going to say . . .”
Not crazy. Because she isn’t crazy. She might not even be all that unusual, though it’s the word she chooses to complete her sentence.
“Yeah, well, unusual is a good thing,” Lennon says. “Beats the hell out of boring any day.”
For the first time in a long time—or maybe ever—Stacey decides it might be true.
Nora
Any other time, Nora might have enjoyed afternoon coffee and chitchat.
Jules is fun, fascinating, and pleasantly opinionated. She’s as comfortable discussing politics and pop culture, literature, and even horticulture as she is her sordid past, curtailed career, and being a “burnt-out fallen star,” as she calls herself.
“I don’t know what would have become of me if I hadn’t met Heather. She convinced me to stop hating myself, because it wasn’t my fault. Addiction is a chronic illness, just like anything else, you know?”
Nora doesn’t, but she nods.
“It’s not easy getting past all that. You do whatever you have to do, and if you’re lucky, you survive, you know?”
Nora does. She nods again.
Jules looks at her watch. “Guess I should go. The kids will be home soon.”
She should probably offer a polite protest, but it’s all she can do not to grab her visitor’s arm and manhandle her toward the front door. The journey back through the house seems endless, with Jules pausing along the way to pet Kato, now sleeping on a dining room chair, and to admire the décor.
In the front hall, she double-takes at the sepia family portrait on the stair wall.
“Wait, is that . . . ?” She walks to the foot of the steps, peers up at it, then turns to Nora. “It is! Where did you get this?”
“It came with the house, like everything else. Why?”
“Damn, I was just thinking I was pleasantly surprised this place isn’t creepy after all, considering—you know. But that—” She gestures at the picture. “That is creepy. You know what it is, don’t you?”
“The family that used to live here?”
“I don’t know if they lived here, but one of them is definitely dead.”
“They’re all dead. It’s from the 1800s.”
“No, I mean, dead in the picture. Look at the daughter. See how her eyes are gaping at nothing? And how the parents are holding her? They’re propping her up between them because she’s a corpse. Those Victorians were morbid freaks. Post-mortem photography was a thing back then.”
Nora stares up at the old portrait, heart pounding. “How . . . uh, how do you know this?”
“A few years back, the Met was opening an exhibit on Victorian mourning culture, so Heather dragged me and the kids to a historical museum that had a similar collection. There was a display of pictures just like this—families posing with their dead loved ones. Memento mori. Know what it means?”
She shakes her head.
“‘Remember you must die.’” Jules shudders and steps toward the door. “Thanks for everything, Nora. I can’t wait to tell Ricardo about you.”
“Ricardo?”
“At the urban farm. He’ll be thrilled to have a volunteer who actually knows something about agriculture. We can get together this week so you can meet him. Sound good?”
“Sounds good.” Nora reaches past her, turns the dead bolt, and opens the door. “Thanks for coming, and for lunch. It was delicious.”
“Fennel aside, right?”
“No, I mean it.”
“It’s nowhere near as good as they make it at that place on Mulberry. You and Keith will have to come with us. Maybe next weekend. Sound good?”
All around the mulberry bush . . .
“Sounds good,” she tells Jules, again. “I’ll wash your salad bowl and get it back to you later.”
“Oh, I forgot—you don’t have to do that. I can just grab it.” She starts to turn back.
“Don’t do that!” Nora protests more sharply than she’d intended. “I mean, why walk down the street with a dirty bowl? Unless you need it right away? I can send Piper down with it—I’m sure she’d welcome the chance to see Courtney.”
“Or maybe Stacey will want to bring it back so that she can run into Lennon? Is it just me, or did those two click the other night?”
It’s just you.
The last thing Stacey needs is a friend who thinks it’s “cool” that she lives in a house where three people were murdered in their beds.
She says only, “You never know with kids that age.”
“You’re right. Oh, well. Thanks again, Nora. See you soon!” This time, Jules steps over the threshold and is gone.
Nora turns the dead bolt, checks her watch, and after a moment’s consideration, slides the cast-iron chain. Piper won’t be home for a while, but Stacey could show up any minute. She’d texted well over an hour ago to say she was heading for the subway.
This won’t take long.
Out back, she finds the garden cast in shadow now, and the morning hush long gone. She hears sirens and honking traffic, a construction site jackhammer, planes buzzing overhead. Children are shouting and laughing beyond the bramble hedge, in the yard behind 106 Glover.
The shed door creaks when she opens it. A shaft of sunlight falls in, and she can see dust floating like glitter. The metal box is precisely where she’d left it. She brushes away the dirt and gives the lid a tug. It sticks.
She looks around for something to use to pry it off as the voices of her unseen neighbors float outside.
“Joshua, don’t climb so high!”
“I’m not scared, Mom!”
“Well, I am. Get down from there.”
Nora picks up the box, wraps it in a yard waste bag, and peers out of the shed to check for nosy neighbors peeking over the hedgerow, or watching from walls of windows. Clasping the bundle to her chest like a schoolgirl embracing her textbooks, she carries it toward the house, trying not to run.
She locks the back door. No chain here because it only opens to the walled-in yard, but that strikes Nora as a serious security breech. She again scans the area for intruders and sees nothing out of the ordinary.
Opening drawers looking for a pry tool, she settles on a butter knife, then turns toward the table.
No. Too many windows here.
She hurries up the stairs, avoiding the dead girl’s fixed stare.
Memento mori.
In the master bedroom, she finds Kato napping on the bed. He stirs, eyeing her sleepily. He’s just a dog. It’s not as if he’ll tell anyone about the mysterious box she dug up. Still . . .
“Sorry.” She nudges him. “You’ve got to go.”
He closes his eyes.
Nora sighs. “Fine. Stay. I’ll go.”
The bathroom has no windows, and the door has a lock.