“Papa, don’t start.”
Robert gazed closely at his son through the haze of alcohol. “Do you think I didn’t worry about you?” he asked with a suppressed tremor of emotion in his voice. “Your mother isn’t the only one capable of worrying, you know. I did my share these four years, while the doctors took you to pieces. If you would just gather some gumption and get off the morphine—”
Martin winced, so fleetingly I knew I was the only one who saw it. “Yes, I know.”
Swaying faintly, Robert took a step forward, put a hand on the back of Martin’s neck, and looked into his son’s eyes. “She’ll find someone to run over you if you’re not careful,” he said, his voice low. “Someone who will make you as miserable as she’s made me. I thought I didn’t care who I married, either, but I was very bloody wrong. Do you understand?”
Martin returned his father’s gaze, unwavering. “Yes,” he replied. “I understand. But this has nothing to do with Cousin Jo, so please leave her alone.”
“I’m trying to give you advice,” Robert said. He dropped his hand and stepped back, and I could only dimly see his features in the half-light. “Let’s go in and get this over with, shall we?”
Martin watched his father’s retreating back, then turned to me. “I beg your pardon for my father’s behavior,” he said softly. “He can be crude when he’s been drinking.”
“Martin,” I said.
“He’s right,” Martin said. “Mother is expecting us both to dinner for the first time in weeks. I need to go inside and get it over with.”
? ? ?
I took a tray to my room and set it on the small writing desk—bread, cheese, a slice of cold meat, some fruit, and a glass of wine, a treat I didn’t usually partake of. I turned on the bedside lamp—I had long ago put the shade back where it belonged, and it had not been moved again—and stood, looking down at the tray and around at the rest of my room.
I could sit here and eat quietly, reading a book. I had done so for many a night. I could sip the wine, hoping it would help me sleep and keep away the dreams. I could think about what was happening downstairs, what the family was talking about at the dinner table, if they were talking at all. I could be alone with my memories and my questions and my traitorous thoughts.
Instead, I left the room and moved quietly into the corridor.
With the family and the servants busy downstairs, the rest of the house was quiet. I had at least another hour before anyone would come upstairs at all.
I climbed the stairs to the second floor, then on upward to the attic floor. This time, I did not open the door to the roof. Instead, I approached Franny’s bedroom door, dark and silent, and turned the knob.
The room wasn’t locked. It was hushed and still inside, and I noticed a dusty, unlived-in smell that I hadn’t registered before. Though kept clean and tidy, a room that isn’t lived in announces itself—the clothes that are tucked away in perfect stacks, the bedspread and pillows that lack a single dent. I moved silently across the thick rug and turned on the lamp Dottie had lit when I’d found her here, sitting in the rocking chair. The circle of light bloomed.
If someone had killed Frances, making it appear like she’d jumped, the first place I could think of to find evidence of it was somewhere in this room.
I was brisk and quiet, trying my best not to disturb anything. I searched the bed, including under the pillows and under the bed itself. I searched the wardrobe, running my hands along the insides, brushing the pockets of Frances’s few dresses—she’d been tiny and slender at age fifteen—and going through her drawers, lifting neat stacks of her underthings and letting my fingertips trace the bottoms and the sides. I searched the closet, which was nearly empty but for cold-weather coats and a few rows of shoes. I folded back the corner of the rug, got on my knees and peered beneath the dresser, looked carefully into the recessed window seat. My final stop was the bookshelf, where I even removed each book and shook it, looking for a clue to fall out.
Dottie had said that Frances liked to sketch; it was odd that the shelf contained no sketchbook. But when I pulled out a book called World Atlas for Girls, a folded packet was revealed on the shelf, tied with a faded ivory ribbon. I held the slim packet in my palm and tugged on the ribbon, revealing a small stack of photographs.
The first photograph was of a baby, dressed in a plush, frilly dress, sitting up and staring with baffled solemnity into the camera. Even in infancy, I recognized Frances. I turned over the photograph to find a single sentence written on the back in a blocky hand, the pencil nearly too faint to read: