Robert quickly finagled a steady stream of invitations that took him out of the house in his motorcar, as he had no patience for Dottie’s rules. That left Dottie and me alone. I ran her errands, wrote out her correspondence, and made her telephone calls—she had a distaste for the instrument and had me use it in her stead. After a small meal at my desk or a tray in my room, I would continue work in the afternoons until she dismissed me.
There was plenty to do. We sent out a volume of correspondence that rivaled Casparov’s, handling the business of the house, inviting potential buyers to view and purchase her art, and receiving replies. Dottie also took delivery of the art itself, dealing with deliverymen and the display of the works in the upstairs gallery, as well as overseeing the servants and the daily people she used to supplement them, including a woman to help with laundry twice per week and a single hapless gardener she hired to tackle the overgrown grounds.
Despite the nunnery-like rigidity of our routine, Dottie was tense and irritable, impossible to please. As she had throughout our trip home from the Continent, she nitpicked me endlessly, from my messy curls to the dull shine on my new shoes. She acquired a typewriter for me to use for her letters, then stood by like a harpy as I used it, searching for errors and complaining about the noise it made. She had spent much time at Martin’s bedside, and the sour disposition that resulted made me wonder if he’d told her about my marriage situation. Perhaps she was hoping I would quit. Or perhaps she was simply miserable, and it had nothing to do with me at all.
I was miserable myself. I was suffering from incurable insomnia, my nights plagued with sleeplessness and my few bouts of slumber weighted with dreams that were complicated and vivid, filled with images like I’d seen on that first night, real and somehow horrible. I sometimes woke weeping, or laughing, or trying not to scream. Twice I woke to find my hair and nightgown soaked with chill water and a sickly sweet smell in my nose as I clutched my sheets in panic. I would spend the rest of the night awake, until it was finally time to rise and dress and sit at my typewriter, gritty-eyed and dull. I found no more leaves in my room. If I had deluded myself into seeing them the first time, I had done it convincingly.
I barely recognized myself. I had never been like this, prone to hallucinations and dreams, even in the awful days after Alex died. My mind kept circling back to the footsteps I’d heard and the doors I’d watched swinging open—including the door of my own bedroom—as I’d stood transfixed in the hallway. No one had witnessed that but me, not even poor Martin. Either I was going mad or something uncanny was happening.
Frances.
In the haze of my exhaustion, her face was clear in my mind. I could see her that day in the small parlor. I could see her gray dress and the string of pearls around her neck, the clasp where it sat at the back of her collar. I could tell myself that I doubted her identity, that I was not sure, but pure exhaustion lowers your ability to lie to yourself, and I knew deep down that I’d seen Dottie’s lost daughter. I felt at times as if I could turn a corner or look in a mirror and I’d see her again, glimpse her image in the shadows of the huge, silent house. I thought I heard her footsteps in the corridor, ahead of me or behind me, or saw her hand on the curtain at the window from the corner of my eye. The things she saw coming through that imaginary door were dead, David Wilde had told me. She lived at home in privacy, plagued by her waking dreams.
As I watched the days grow colder and shorter through the windows, that was beginning to sound familiar.
You are acquainted with madness, are you not?
Frances terrified me—but she drew me, too. Just like Mother did. Whatever was happening, Frances was the key. Dottie couldn’t help me, and Robert was gone. As day after day dragged on, I realized that if I wanted to understand Frances, I needed Martin.
Two weeks after Martin’s collapse, I left my room one evening and stepped onto the landing, ready to ascend to the upper floor. I had just screwed up my courage to broach my cousin in his bedroom when I realized I was not alone on the stairs.
On the landing below me stood a man I had never seen before—short, middle-aged, his graying hair combed back neatly from his forehead and temples. He was carrying a case, and he had paused in his descent, looking up at me. I froze in surprise, and for a moment I wondered if he would disappear, as Frances had. Then he moved, and I realized that he held in his hand a doctor’s case.
“Good evening,” he said to me.
I nodded. He gave me a polite smile, a little apologetic. Then he turned and descended the stairs below me, unaccompanied, as if he had free run of the house. I stared after him, bemused.
“Curious?”
I turned. Martin stood on the landing above me, looking down. In the dim light of the stairwell, his face was smudged and soft. He was slowly rolling one shirtsleeve back down the length of his arm. I realized I was standing nearly where he’d fainted that day after we’d walked in the woods, the last time I’d seen him.
“Martin,” I said.
“Hello, Cousin Jo.”