“She had forgotten hers.” A swell of emotion rises up in my throat and lodges there. I think of handing it to her that afternoon at my house. That afternoon when everything felt complicated and scary, and I had no idea the sky was about to fall. “She said she’d bring it back to me the next day.”
“She also had a handkerchief with your initials in her pocket. It just makes me wonder if maybe . . .”
The breath whooshes from my lungs as I piece together his train of thought. “Lydia’s hair is red and long, though.”
“It could have been under the coat. Or under her hat.”
“But surely as soon as they got close to her, they would see it wasn’t me.”
“One would think so.” Mariano removes his hat, brushes off imaginary lint, and settles it back on his head. “I’m just wondering—combined with who your father is and the way the Finnegans keep coming up in this case—if this actually isn’t about Lydia.”
Mariano doesn’t say the words, but they dangle out there anyway—if it’s actually about you.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
TWO WEEKS LATER—JUNE 5TH, 1924
At St. Chrysostom’s Episcopal Church, on the same stage where Lydia once stood with the choir and sang hymns to her great God, the casket is closed. Mrs. LeVine had wanted it open, but the mortician had called this “inadvisable,” considering the amount of time Lydia’s body spent in the river. Instead, a framed photograph, the same one I showed Johnny Walker in my silly, girlish hope that Lydia was still alive, has been placed atop the casket lid.
I’m alone at church. Just me and the saints depicted in the stained glass.
As I make my way up the center aisle, the heels of my shoes silent on the thick red carpet, I see that the casket lid has been opened after all.
I quicken my steps, even as I ask myself if I really do want to see what’s under that lid. But the temptation to see Lydia, to capture one last glimpse to carry with me through life, is too great to resist.
Only the corpse doesn’t have Lydia’s long red hair. Rather, it’s a bobbed, honey color. And the cream linen dress . . . the same one I wore on the night she was taken.
When I peer at the face, I see why. It’s not Lydia in the casket—it’s me.
I scream and stumble down the carpeted steps. The church is full now. Father, my brothers, Walter, Emma Crane, Mariano, and even Alana Kirkwood of The Kansas City Star, all dressed in somber black. The look in their eyes is clear. You. It was supposed to be you.
I burst through the sanctuary doors, into the foyer, and find Lydia. She hovers in the air like an angel, radiant and beautiful in all white. Her red hair spills all around her, same as when we were girls, free to run and laugh.
“It was supposed to be me.” The words feel like a long overdue confession.
Lydia nods and smiles, as if it’s oh-so-good that I’ve come to this realization. “And you can’t outrun death, my dear.”
You can’t outrun death, my dear. The words reverberate in my ears as I blink awake in my bedroom. The light streaming through my window is bright yellow, distinctly midmorning. My muscles ache, and I ease my knees away from my chest, my arms from my sides. It’s as though my body tried to shrink, to disappear, as I slept.
When my feet bump Sidekick, he stands, stretches, and shakes, before leaping from the bed. Then he looks back to me, tail wagging and tongue hanging out.
“I won’t begrudge you your happiness.” I ease myself into a sitting position. “You’re quite tolerant of my depression.”
He paws at my bedroom door until it opens, and the clicking of his nails against the floor fades as he makes his way downstairs.
I look at my pillow, still dented and inviting. You need to get out of bed, Piper.
I put my feet on the floor. You have to do this day. Now, get up.
The clock reads 10:02. So many hours between now and getting to close my curtains again. I can still smell breakfast. Sausage and biscuits. Father must be going into work late.
You need to eat breakfast, I coax myself, and then you can come back to bed if you still want to.
My mother was wrong. I can’t trust myself—I have to lie just to get out of bed.
In the bathroom mirror, a thin, chalky oval stares back at me. Set against the paleness of my face, my dark brown eyes seem almost black. My hair has begun to grow out of the fashionable bob that once seemed so vital to my happiness, and it hangs at an awkward length. In the dream, Lydia had told me I couldn’t outrun death, and the ghost of a girl I see in my bathroom mirror makes me think she’s right. That I haven’t.
I unhook my kimono from the back of my bathroom door and slip my arms into the silky sleeves. In the two weeks since Lydia’s funeral, rare is the night that I don’t dream of her. Sometimes I’m standing on the sidewalk of Astor Street, watching her get yanked violently into a car. I try to scream, but I can’t. In other dreams, I’m there when the life-snatching seizure begins. There’s a gag in her mouth, and I’m trying to pull it out, but it’s never-ending. Like a circus trick.