“Mom?” she calls through the crack in the door. She rings the doorbell, and then she knocks. “Mom!”
“Locked out?” Lennon asks from the sidewalk.
“I have a key, but the stupid chain’s on the door.” She knocks again, harder, using the side of her fist.
“You can come to my house if you want.”
“Thanks, but she has to be here. I just—”
Struck by a frightening thought, she goes still.
What if something happened, like . . .
What if the Toska family’s killer broke into the house while Mom was here alone?
“What’s wrong?” He backtracks toward her as she dials her mother’s cell phone. It rings once . . .
Twice . . .
It’s going to go into voice mail. Dammit. Dammit! She has to call her father, or 9–1–1—but which?
Dad. He’ll tell her that Mom is out running errands and—
But no, she can’t be out. The door is chained from the inside.
She’s about to hang up and dial 9–1–1 when she hears her mother on the phone. “Stacey?”
“Mom! Where are you?”
“Upstairs. Where—oh, no. Don’t tell me I left the chain on the door. Sorry. I’ll be right there.”
Mom hangs up.
“All good?”
She looks down to see Lennon poised at the foot of the steps, hand on the railing as if he’s about to come up.
“All good. You can go.” She gestures toward his house. “She’s here, and she’s coming to open the door, so . . . But thanks again. You can, um . . .”
“Go. Yeah, got it. You want me to run, or can I walk?” The smile is back, and so taut she doesn’t need to see his eyes to know he’s insulted. Maybe a little bit hurt, too.
“What? No, I . . . no.”
“Hey, it’s not exactly breaking news that mothers don’t like me. My own included. So don’t worry. I’m outa here.”
Maybe he wasn’t just interested in getting inside the house. Watching him saunter off down the street, she wishes she could explain that not wanting Mom to see him here has nothing to do with him.
She’d be annoyingly relieved that Stacey’s made a new friend, or think she’s finally found a boyfriend, like it means there’s hope for her loner loser daughter after all. She’ll tell Dad, and of course Piper will find out because she always does, about everything. The three of them will ask questions, or just give Stacey these probing looks and exchange glances with each other, and it will be a freaking nightmare.
By the time her mother opens the door, Lennon has already disappeared inside his house.
“Sorry, Stace! I forgot about the chain.” Mom is flushed and breathless, like she’d run a great distance instead of just down the stairs. She’s wearing the same jeans and T-shirt she’d had on this morning, her blond hair in a straggly ponytail, and there’s dirt on her clothes and hands.
“Were you in the garden?”
“Earlier. I was just about to take a shower when you knocked.”
“Oh, well . . . I was worried that something happened to you.”
“Nope. All good.”
She doesn’t seem worried that something might have happened to Stacey, though she should have been home nearly an hour ago. Nor does she ask where Stacey’s been, or about her first day of school.
That’s a good thing. A great thing. She should be relieved. But as her mother turns back toward the stairs, Stacey finds her preoccupied smile unsettling.
“Mom? Should I put the chain back on the door?”
“Hmm? Oh—no, that’s okay.”
Her mother hurries up the flight, goes into the bathroom, and closes the door. The pipes groan as she turns on the tap.
Stacey’s gaze falls on the Victorian portrait above the stairs. Father, mother, teenage daughter, same as the Toska family who’d lived—and died—here a century later. The people in the portrait are unsmiling and stiffly posed, as was typical in the era, with the exception of Lizzie Borden. Poring over historic photos of her as a young woman, Stacey had noticed that she appeared to be biting back amusement, despite living in a miserable household with her father and stepmother. The smile, she decided, was a maniacal gleam of insanity, like Jack Nicholson in The Shining when he went on an axe-murdering rage against his family.
Climbing the steps beneath the previous residents’ solemn stares, Stacey notes that these parents have their arms around their daughter, and hopes all of their lives played out much more happily than the Toskas’—and the Bordens’—had.
Nora
Back in the bathroom with the shower running into the empty stall, Nora retrieves the metal box from the hamper where she’d stashed it.
Stacey’s arrival had interrupted her contents inventory—relics of the lives the Toskas had left behind before they came to New York, and cash. So much cash.
The rubber bands around the inch-thick stacks of big bills have dried and snapped. She riffles through one and calculates ten grand. There are at least a dozen packets the same size, maybe a few more, though she doesn’t bother to count them. The money isn’t as compelling as the personal items.
There’s some jewelry—a man’s thick gold watch, a woman’s sapphire necklace, a baby ring engraved with the initial A. Brass candlesticks and a hand-embroidered sash, antique and from a foreign land. A key attached to a simple hardware store ring.
A photo album.
It’s wrapped in layers of tissue, the edges disintegrating beneath her fingers as she peels them away.
This is not a vintage leather-bound heirloom volume, but a cheap, spiral-bound one. The pages have space for writing along the margins, and the mounting area is sticky and overlaid in shiny plastic sheets.
She flips through the first few pages of baby pictures. Glossy black curls frame a chubby face, huge eyes with dark lashes, and a delicate rosebud mouth that’s smiling in every shot. She’d been such a happy baby, a sweet and innocent little thing. The snapshots are accompanied by notes: two weeks; first Christmas; first tooth; first birthday; favorite toy . . .
Hands trembling, Nora snaps the book closed and reaches for a manila envelope. She pries the rusted metal clasp prongs, lifts the flap, and pulls out a stack of paper.
The first is a muddy black-and-white photocopy of an Arizona driver’s license issued to Stanislav Shehu and set to expire on his birthday in 1982.
The man in the photo, clean-shaven with a crew cut, is unmistakably Stanley Toska. His eyes are hard. His mouth quirks in a smirk.
Nora flips the page. Another photocopied Arizona driver’s license from the early ’80s shows a pretty brunette. Her name, before she became Lena Toska, had been Magdalena Shehu.
Like the baby, her daughter, she has dark, wavy hair, big eyes, and thick lashes, but there’s nothing sweet and innocent about her. She’s wearing heavy makeup, and a sly smile.
Nora’s seen enough for now. She shoves the papers back into the envelope.
There’s just one more thing in the bottom of the box.
A handgun fitted with a suppressor.
Jacob
“Where are you going?”
Emina has come up behind him in the hall, watching him zip up a jacket that’s too warm for September. But it’s black, with a hood, and deep pockets for the new binoculars he bought on the way home from work.