She’d have preferred to stay in today. But Teddy had thought it was a good idea for her to get busy with the urban farm.
“It’s a great cause. Food insecurity is a serious crisis. Go meet the guy this afternoon and find out what you need to do, Nora. You’ll feel good about helping out and it will be healthy for you to get out of that house on a regular basis.”
Keith’s similar comment had irked her this morning. Coming from Teddy, who knows her so well, it seemed like sound advice.
But then, even Teddy doesn’t know everything.
“Hi, what can I get for you?” The female barista has full sleeve tattoos on both arms, face piercings, and a purple mohawk.
“Oh . . . pumpkin spice latte and . . .” Nora hadn’t even bothered to look at the colorful chalkboard menu. “You know what? Just . . . make it two.”
“Name?” she asks, black Sharpie poised to write it on the cup.
“Nora.”
“Short for Eleanor?”
“Um . . . what?”
“That’s my name.” She points to the plastic tag pinned to her tank top. “But I go by Ellie.”
The name hits her like a bullet.
“I’m . . . I’m just . . . Nora.”
She steps aside to wait for her order, feeling as though she’s perched on top of a rickety ladder and wishing she could dive out the door.
“You’re strong, my love. You can do this. You can do anything. You chose this path, and you’ve come this far . . .”
It’s what Teddy had said this morning, when Nora had found herself in tears.
“I should have listened to you. I shouldn’t have done this.”
“But you said you had no choice, Nora. The move was for Keith’s job.”
“I know, but . . . I should have let him come alone. Or we could have lived in Manhattan, like he wanted. I shouldn’t have—”
“Stop wasting time on should, Nora. You know you can’t go back and undo anything. You can only go forward, and you have two choices. You can stay where you are and try to make it work, or you can go.”
“Going would be complicated. Uprooting the girls, and Keith . . .”
“Then you’ve made your choice. Stay, and find a way to deal.”
Yes. She’ll stay in Brooklyn. And she’ll stay in this damned café. She’ll deal. She’s been dealing for years.
Stacey
“Welcome to my room,” Lennon says, opening the door. “It’s exactly the same as yours, so nothing you haven’t already seen, right?”
“How do you know that?”
“How do I know what?”
“That I have the same room? I never mentioned where mine is, and you’ve never been in my house . . .”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Not really.”
She pushes away the memory of the figure on the shed roof, watching her. It wasn’t Lennon. It probably wasn’t anyone. Just a weird shadow or something.
“Our houses are identical. The master bedroom is at the front of the house. The older sibling gets the next best room.” He shrugs. “I’m not wrong, am I?”
“No.”
“Okay, well . . . come on in.”
She crosses the threshold and he closes the door behind her.
His room is identical to hers in terms of layout and size, but it feels smaller and darker. Every horizontal inch of space is crammed with books, electronics, and clothing; every inch of vertical covered in blackout curtains, posters, and hooks that hold more clothing, bags, and gear. The trim and patches of wall that are visible are painted the color of blackberries.
She studies the posters, an eclectic mix of politics, modern art, a marijuana leaf, Radiohead, the Beatles . . .
“Are you named after John Lennon?”
“Yeah, and Courtney’s named after Courtney Love. Jules knew her, back in the day. She pretty much knew everyone.”
Including the dead family at 104 Glover.
“She knew the Beatles?” Stacey asks.
“She knew everyone.”
“But I mean . . . the Beatles?”
“Well, she once saw John Lennon on Central Park West when she was a kid on a class trip to the Museum of Natural History. She waved at him and he blew her a kiss.”
“My dad rode in an elevator with Paul McCartney last year.”
“Cool. Maybe they’d have named you Paula if it happened before you were born.”
“I doubt it. In my family, we’re not named after anyone.”
“Well, in mine we are, and I’m lucky Jules named me after John Lennon and not Dweezil Zappa, whom she actually knew really well.”
Stacey smiles. “I like that you said whom.”
“I like that you like that. Here, I’ll take your coat.”
He gestures at her black parka, and she can’t think of a reason to keep it on, other than that it makes her feel safer, somehow. She shrugs out of it and he drapes it over a floor lamp.
“Should you do that? I mean, isn’t it going to catch fire?”
“Not if I turn off the light.”
“Wait, don’t, I . . . I’ll just hang on to it.”
“Okay, well . . . have a seat.” He moves a heap of clothing off the bed.
It’s the only place to sit, so she does, clutching her backpack and perching awkwardly on the edge of the mattress with her army coat draped like a lap robe.
She notices a pair of binoculars hanging over the back of a chair, and her heart pumps slush through her body.
“Why . . . um, what’s with the binoculars? Are you into bird-watching or something?”
“Birds? No, hockey. Ever tried to follow a game from the worst seats in the upper level?”
“No, but you obviously have.” She looks around for more evidence of a passion for sports, and finds none. “I didn’t know you were a hockey fan.”
“My moms like it, so every once in a while, we go.” He sits beside her, takes the backpack, and sets it on the floor. “Man, that thing is heavy.”
“Yeah, well . . . books. You, uh, have a lot of them.” She gestures at the built-in bookcase, identical to her own. His, though, is overflowing. “You really like sci-fi and fantasy.”
“Don’t you?”
“They’re my least favorite genres.”
“What’s your favorite?”
“True crime.”
“Right. Lizzie Borden. Too bad there’s no book about what happened at your house. I’m going to write one someday.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I’ve read a ton of stuff online about it, and Jules knows a lot about it, since she knew them and everything. Hey, she told me about the corpse picture at your house? I want to see it.”
“Corpse picture?”
“The spooky family with the dead girl.”
“The Toskas? We don’t have any pictures of—”
“No, not them. Memento mori.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Wait—you don’t know? Your mom didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?” Stacey’s heart is pounding.
“Jules was over there the other day and she said there’s this picture of a family from the 1800s . . .”
Ah, the portrait above the stairs. “The people who used to live in the house.”
“I guess. Parents with their dead kid.”
“What? It’s not . . .”
Or is it? Envisioning the portrait, she sees the somber couple embracing their daughter . . . or are they holding up her corpse?
Lennon tells her that it was common for grieving Victorian families to memorialize their lost loved ones in one final portrait—an art called memento mori.
“It means—”