I neared the front door as it opened. Emma came out with two suitcases, had a fraction of a smile. Lizzie called out, ‘One more chance.’ Emma said nothing, walked down the path to the edge of the street. A yellow Cameron Runabout pulled up and a man got out, took Emma’s bags as she stepped inside the car. The engine revved.
My last chance to make everything right. The front door closed as the car drove away. I heard the neighbour—‘I’ve warned you, now I’m calling the police’—and I took quick, short steps to the front of the house, walked over the word Maplecroft tattooed into concrete. The axe head bounced around in the rucksack. I imagined the sweetness of my fist flowing into Lizzie, the bright red she’d be. After I’d finished with her, I’d ransack her house, take what was mine and run away as fast as I could, run until I found my mama, run until I felt better inside. Inside the house Lizzie sobbed and I knocked on the door and waited for her to answer.
SIXTEEN
EMMA
4 August 1892
JOHN WEAVED IN and out of the house like a spectre, made me look over my shoulder more often than I would have liked. I wanted him to leave, to take the police with him, to take the bodies too. But the idea of being alone in the house with Lizzie was too much. I couldn’t bear the idea of not having someone to talk to other than my sister, to help occupy my mind.
I asked Alice Russell to move temporarily into 92 Second Street.
‘But, Emma, what if the murderer comes back?’ she said, her hair thick from sweat.
I tried to reassure her. ‘We can all sleep in Lizzie’s room. Stay together.’
When we went upstairs to see Lizzie, she had other plans. She sat plump against her pillows, looked both tired and well rested, the strangeness of a face grieving. ‘There’s no need for us to be cooped up in here. Alice should take Father and Mrs Borden’s room.’ Lizzie smiled. ‘And you’ll still be nice and close to me and Emma, help us lift our spirits.’
Alice knocked her knuckles against her chin. ‘I don’t feel comfortable going in their bedroom.’
‘I’m sure they wouldn’t mind, would they, Emma?’ Lizzie chewed on a nail.
I shook my head. ‘Lizzie, this doesn’t feel right somehow . . .’
‘Nothing about today feels right, Emma. But we do what needs to be done.’ Lizzie mimicked the sound of reason. I wanted to shake her stupid.
Downstairs the clock struck three and my thoughts returned to Fairhaven. I would’ve finished my art class by then.
‘Alice is my friend and I think she should stay in the room. It’s the only decent room left in the house with space for all of Alice’s things,’ Lizzie said.
For a moment I had the feeling to push Lizzie in the ribs, tell her, ‘Alice was my friend first. Without me you’d never have her. I should decide what happens.’ I didn’t want to upset things now, not when there was so much left unanswered. Alice stroked Lizzie’s hair, and I wished Alice to do the same for me. As girls and young women, the three of us used to sit in a semicircle and draw on each other’s backs. ‘Guess what shape I’m drawing now,’ I would say.
‘A square?’ Alice said, missing the finer details.
Lizzie pushed into my fingers. ‘A hexagon.’
‘Yes!’
Lizzie always guessed right, made me want to boast, ‘Look at what I taught her! She’s the smartest one in the room.’
Alice gasped, like lightning had struck. She turned to me and said, ‘I just remembered that I was speaking to your father the day before last.’
My heart surged, expected divine final thoughts. ‘What did he say?’
‘He asked about my mother and father. He wondered if they might like to stop by for dinner one evening.’
‘That’s odd. He didn’t tell me about those plans,’ Lizzie said. ‘He’s barely spoken to them in months.’
‘Maybe that’s why he invited them,’ I said.
Alice snaked fingers over her lips. ‘But I forgot to tell them. I haven’t told them. It completely slipped my mind . . .’
A part of me wanted them to arrive for the dinner, for Father’s goodwill gesture to outlive him.
‘It seems so sad now to remember.’ Alice continued stroking Lizzie’s hair and Lizzie nuzzled into the motion, a mewing cat.
‘It is sad, Alice,’ I said. ‘My father died. You got to speak to him one last time and you forgot all about it.’ I was a pain inside, the kind without a central source.
‘Goodness, I’ve said something wrong. I’m sorry.’ Alice’s face crumpled.
I stood from them. ‘I think it’s time to leave Lizzie alone now.’
Alice slid out from under the weight of Lizzie’s head on her lap, let her land softly on feather pillows. ‘Of course.’
When we were in Father and Abby’s room I shut the door. I felt comfort, relief that we were away from Lizzie, that I could have my friend to myself. ‘I’m glad you’re here, Alice.’
She ratcheted her head around the room, then stiffened and said, ‘What’s that strange smell?’
I sniffed. A hot room that had been closed off most of the day. I sniffed again, caught the tail end of sulphur, of singed hair.
‘It smells like something died.’ Alice pinched her nose, pinched away the putrid smell. ‘I don’t think I want to sleep in here, Emma.’
I wanted her to stay, wanted her near, wanted something familiar. ‘What if I try getting rid of the smell?’
‘I’m not sure . . .’
I searched the room—perhaps a piece of rancid meat from Abby’s late-night feedings, a dead mouse trapped behind a wall. I searched, found nothing but a used handkerchief underneath the bed.
As I pulled myself up from the floor I caught a hint of decay in the corner. I took a deep breath and let the smell momentarily take over. ‘There’s something horrid in here,’ I said, sniffed the corner again, followed the scent up the wall as far as I could reach on tiptoe. It was flooding down from the ceiling.
‘I can’t believe how strange all of this is, Emma,’ Alice said.
‘Nothing is normal.’
‘I mean, it’s so strange to believe that this all happened, just as Lizzie feared.’
I turned sharp, a knife. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Last night Lizzie told me she had a premonition. I feel like this has already happened.’
‘What did Lizzie say?’
Alice took my hand and she told me about the night before, how Lizzie had come to her after supper and reported that the entire household had fallen ill. ‘Lizzie was so very upset. It was most unexpected to see her, Emma.’
I could imagine Lizzie running across the road towards Borden Street, the way she had many times before, filled her lungs with chalk-dirt air, knees locking from the exertion. She would have rounded the corner, her cheeks rosing like she’d been running a lifetime. By the time she arrived at Alice Russell’s house, Lizzie’s heart would have been in her mouth.
Alice said, ‘I heard all this fuss and I opened the door and there she was. I said, “By God, Lizzie! You look a fright. What’s gotten into you?”
‘“Alice, someone is trying to poison the family.”’