“I thought—I had a vision when I was looking at the lace—it told me there was something there you had to see,” Ann said. “My intent was not malicious.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Ann did not tell Callie that—in this moment—she looked every bit the child that Ann had seen in the vision: a young girl in a blue pinafore, blood dripping from her palm as she stood staring over the edge of a deep ravine.
“Rose didn’t kill anyone,” Callie insisted. She sipped the tea Ann had made to calm her down, and sat in the sling chair next to Ann’s desk.
Rafferty sat behind the desk in Ann’s usual spot. Ann lingered in the doorway, not quite certain whether to stay or go.
“Tell me again why you wanted Callie to go to Hammond Castle,” he asked Ann, calling her in.
“I didn’t actually send her to the castle, I sent her to see Norman’s Woe.”
“Why Norman’s Woe specifically?”
“I thought there was something there she needed to remember.”
“And was there?” Rafferty turned to Callie.
It was clear Callie didn’t want to talk in front of Ann.
“I’ll be in the shop,” Ann said, exiting through the beaded curtains.
“There was a costume party at Hammond Castle the night of the murders,” Callie said. “I guess that’s the party you asked me about.”
Rafferty had read about the party in the files and knew the Goddesses had been guests. Witnesses had documented that there was some kind of altercation between the girls and some other woman that night, someone wearing a red dress. But from what he could tell, the police hadn’t taken that account seriously and hadn’t investigated further. Which shocked him. The more he learned, the more it seemed like the cops would have been perfectly happy to blame the murder on Rose and move on.
“There was a woman in a red costume,” Callie said. “Two women, actually. One of them was dressed as the Wicked Queen from ‘Snow White.’ The other one was Leah.”
Rafferty looked at her. “Leah.”
She nodded.
The files had, not surprisingly as he was discovering, made no mention of a Leah anywhere.
“I remember her now. She was at the party.” Then, recalling it only as she spoke, she said the name. “Leah Kormos.”
“That’s her last name, Kormos?”
“Yes,” Callie said, as it came back to her. “That’s the name. She was one of the Goddesses. But they had some kind of falling-out.”
Rafferty had left the folded-up yellow paper back in the office. He’d already penciled in the other names of the Goddesses on the petals with their corresponding ancestors: Olivia/Callie, Rose, Cheryl, and Susan. Leah’s first name was penciled in above. Now he typed her surname, Kormos, into his phone.
That Leah shared her first name with Rafferty’s only daughter had been something that had been difficult for him to reconcile. He felt better knowing her last name. From now on, he could say her full name and remove any mental connection.
“I think so.” Callie struggled to remember. “I remember she was around for a while, and then we didn’t see her anymore. They had some kind of argument.”
“Over that man?”
“Maybe, I don’t know.”
“What about at Norman’s Woe?” he asked again.
Callie looked at him blankly.
“Was there something about Norman’s Woe that was important to what happened that night?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did something happen on those rocks?”
“I don’t know. Nothing I remember.”
“Think about it. Is there any connection?”
“I don’t know,” Callie said, exasperated. “The only connection I can think of is that Rose made me learn the poem about it when I was little,” she offered, trying to make sense of all that had happened. “?‘The Wreck of the Hesperus.’ That’s all I can think of. She used to make me memorize poems. But that wasn’t the night of the party, that was before.”
“But you’d never been there. Before the party.”
“I don’t think so. I don’t even remember seeing Norman’s Woe the night of the party. All I remember is the castle.”
Rafferty called Ann back in. “Ever heard of a girl named Leah Kormos?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“She was evidently one of the Goddesses.”
“I don’t know the name.”
“But you obviously know who this is,” Rafferty said, gesturing to Callie.
“Callie O’Neill,” Ann said.
“Ann, come on…” Rafferty said.
Ann said nothing.
“Tell me again why you sent Callie to Norman’s Woe. You sure it was the rock and not the castle that you meant her to see?”
“I’m not sure at all. There might not be any significance beyond the general location,” Ann offered. “It’s possible for my visions to incorporate images from two different time periods,” she went on, as if she knew exactly what Rafferty was talking about. “It happens. We all know time isn’t linear.”
“We don’t all know that,” Rafferty said. “Not all of us believe in magic.”
“Nonlinear time isn’t magic. It’s physics. Quantum mechanics. It’s Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle writ large. Each observer has his own frame of reference for time. It’s also math if you want to get technical about it.”
Ann had adopted what she called a “philosophical perception of time.” Something about the spontaneous absorption of light that Rafferty didn’t understand at all.
He turned back to Callie. “What else did you see? Before you had the dream memory.”
“Nothing,” Callie said.
“What did you and Paul talk about?”
“Just the rock itself.”
He waited.
“It has a submerged reef.”
Rafferty nodded.
“Paul said a lot of ships have run aground on those rocks.”
“That’s common knowledge,” Ann offered.
“What else?”
Callie thought about it, remembering. “Paul said there were a number of suicides there, too. That Marta Hathorne’s father was one of them.”
“He worked for the Whitings back in the day,” Rafferty said. “I heard he was blamed for a bad business deal that cost the Whitings their fortune. That that’s why he killed himself.” General opinion had been that Hathorne had been a scapegoat. Everyone knew it had been that way for generations, going all the way back to the witch trials, the Hathornes and the Whitings blaming each other for anything that went wrong in their lives. “Let’s get back to the party. You said it was a masked ball?”
“Yes. A fairy-tale ball.”
“So there was an orchestra?”
She didn’t remember any music. Just the dissonant chords from the organ. “I don’t know. Maybe there was.”
“Was there anyone else you recognized? Besides your mother and her friends?” he asked. “What about the man on the bed? Did he have a name?”
He caught her hesitation.
She took a breath. “I think they were calling him Dad.”
“Dad?” Rafferty repeated, just to make sure he’d gotten it right.
Callie nodded. “I think so.”
“That’s really creepy,” Ann said.