Now, Michael was pacing like that unseen creature. She could see his feet in their fine brown leather boots. Boots she had admired so much until she’d found herself in that room. Until she had felt the broad toe of that boot kick her in the left side only a day (three days? a week?) before.
When he stopped pacing, he addressed her again: “It’s on the table. Make it last. You’ll need it.”
He opened the door.
She moved faster than she’d ever thought she could, launching herself across the gritty-smooth floor to grab him—mid-step—by the ankles. It didn’t work exactly as she thought it would, but she got him off-balance so that he stumbled against the door, shutting it. As he fell forward, his body twisted, and he cried out.
Allison, barefoot, climbed onto his back and stood on his shoulder.
Please, God! Let the door open!
But Michael’s prone body blocked it, and as much as she pulled, she couldn’t get the thing open.
“You cunt!”
Michael bucked beneath her, unhurt. She’d surprised him, but that was all. But when he started up from the floor, she was able to pull on the doorknob. Three inches! Four!
Please, God! Thank you, God!
With one bare foot braced against her captor’s leg, Allison got her hand through the door. Her forearm. It was working! Outside the door, the air was cool. Drafty. She would be in her own little apartment soon. No. She would go straight to her mother’s house. Never mind the silly, noisy boys. How much did she want to be with her mother and never leave her again? She would be happy to share her. She’d been a fool to move out in the first place.
Then Michael rolled onto his side, and she almost fell. But she righted herself quickly—God was with her!—and had her shoulder through the doorway.
In the hallway, she saw another larger, heavier-looking door she would have to get through. No! It can’t be! The enormity of the information came over her just as Michael slammed this door against her. Crushing her. She heard a “crack,” and wondered for a curious second where it had come from.
After she fell, he pulled her inside the door again. When the door clicked shut, she felt something inside her shut as well. As he kicked her repeatedly, she retreated into that shut and shuttered place and watched from its dark, safe interior.
Chapter 13
At first, Ariel thought it was her father who awakened her. She lay, eyes wide open, listening hard. Outside the window, the sounds were the ones she heard every clear night: trucks on the distant highway, the crickets in the grass that told her summer was hurrying to a close.
“It’s like they’re saying goodbye,” she remembered once telling her father as they sat together on their darkened patio.
This sound was inside the house. Not rhythmic, but insistent. Someone running. Voices, but not happy ones.
I won’t be afraid.
Her father had said he would be there, watching over her. She pushed back the light cotton blanket and slipped into the robe that smelled like flowers. The top of it clung to her body, while the skirt floated behind her, making her feel graceful. Graceful. Why hadn’t her mother said anything about how much better she was walking? First the cane had gone, and now she had almost no pain at all.
She stepped out into the hallway and looked up to where she thought the sounds had come from. Moonlight filtered through the clerestory windows around the base of the dome, tracing shadows everywhere. Maybe there were people from the party who had stayed behind, hiding upstairs. The idea filled her with a strange mixture of fear and delight just as Jefferson’s sudden appearance upstairs had. Could it be him?
The footsteps stopped.
“Jefferson?” Ariel whispered. Her voice was small, but sounded loud to her own ears in the vastness of the hall.
But what if I’m afraid?
Across the gallery, she saw the faint glow of a nightlight beneath her mother’s door, and she had an urge to run to her mother’s room and climb in bed with her, as she had when she was a very little girl. Back then, her father was always there, his comforting, solid presence balancing her mother’s warmth.
She had two choices: to run and hide in her mother’s room, or to go upstairs alone. She pushed the thought of the ballroom out of her head. These noises were different. Definitely not children.
Someone else was whispering. She strained to make out the words.
Moving quietly down the hall to the staircase to the third floor, she listened. Someone was moving around up above her. Jefferson hadn’t admitted to being in the ballroom, and now she regretted not making him confess. He’d asked for her phone number so that they could text one another. She’d thought at the time he was just being nice. But if he was here, in the night, that was a different matter.
Is he looking for me?
When she put a foot on the staircase, it creaked. She wished she’d brought the flashlight her mother had put in her room for emergencies, but knew if she went back for it, whatever was upstairs might be gone when she returned.
Glancing back out to the gallery, Ariel caught a flash. She hurried back to the railing.
The shimmer came from the third floor, and for a moment she thought it might be a flag of some sort, or a swath of fabric. It shone, but was almost transparent as it quickly took the form of a young woman.
She was older than Ariel, maybe about Jefferson’s age, and so thin that her mane of red hair overwhelmed her body. The loose, pale garment she wore looked familiar to Ariel, but she couldn’t see it quite clearly. That she was barefoot comforted Ariel somehow. It seemed so normal. Maybe it was someone from the party who had been too drunk to drive home.
The shimmer around the girl didn’t reach very far into the darkness, but Ariel could hear men’s voices coming from somewhere upstairs. She could tell by the attitude of the girl’s body that those voices were making her afraid.
If they’re real. If they’re not a dream.
The girl leaned back against the railing, a sleeve of her robe—yes, it’s a robe. . . . the robe—hanging over it like a curtain. Ariel could hardly process what she was seeing. It was happening fast, but she couldn’t look away. In a blink, the girl had climbed up to sit on top of the railing.
The house was so quiet that Ariel could hear the ticking of the clock down in the hall. Her heart pounded. She thought of those seconds just before her father died, the leaden hush that had surrounded them. Like the universe holding its breath.
Slowly, so slowly, the girl leaned back into the air.
The robe floated like a rain-laden cloud around the girl, and moonlight glanced off of it like tiny flashes of lightning. Her arms were a perfect V. Her mouth and eyes open wide. Knowing. Accepting. She might have been crying out, but the only sound Ariel could hear now was the blood pounding in her own ears. Before she could look away, she saw something else: someone, a man she thought, standing at the railing where the girl had gone over.
Ariel flung herself back against the wall so she wouldn’t have to see the girl hit the ground far below her.
When Ariel awoke on the floor, her head cradled in the crook of one arm, she had a single perfect moment of forgetfulness. But as soon as she felt the worn hardwood beneath her palms, she remembered what had happened. Hardly any time had passed at all. The moonlight was no longer so strong, but dawn was still a long way off.
“Mommy,” she whispered. The glow of the nightlight from beneath her mother’s door hadn’t changed.
What will I say? Was I dreaming?
She willed herself to look.
Standing safely on the second floor gallery, she saw that there was definitely a woman or a girl lying on the big oriental rug below. She was barefoot, and had similar hair to the girl in the robe, but she wasn’t nearly as thin and was wearing a tight dress that was hiked to her hips. Even from where she stood, Ariel could tell she wasn’t wearing panties. One of her legs was twisted at a distressing angle, and Ariel winced, imagining the pain. But she knew the woman wasn’t fe
eling pain or anything else. She was too still for that. Her eyes were open.
This wasn’t the girl she’d seen fall from the third floor.
“Button.” Again, a whisper. One that she heard clearly.
Ariel looked across the hall to see her father standing just outside her mother’s bedroom door.
It can’t be you, Daddy.
He mouthed something to her that she couldn’t understand and put a shushing finger to his lips.
He had come back!
But Ariel’s flush of happiness at seeing him quickly retreated. Her father was dead, and death was all around her now. She turned and ran back into her room, slamming the heavy door. Crawling into bed, she gathered every sheet, every blanket within reach into a nest around her.
For a long time she lay there, shivering, her eyes squeezed shut. Finally, the nighttime sounds from outside her open window overcame her panic, and she buried her face in her pillow to cry until she slept.
Chapter 14
Rainey woke up feeling happy and motivated. She was a natural worker whose habit of waking up early had annoyed everyone from her mother to her college roommate at the art institute to Will and Ariel. Having daily projects to look forward to made her feel alive. She didn’t have many mornings like this now, and she wanted to savor the feeling. The party had been the sort of success that she could build on.
As she toweled her hair from the shower, she stood, naked, in the window overlooking the garden’s boxwood maze. The yellowed leaves worried her. A large number of the bushes were dead, and the rest were so overgrown that they would have to come out. The whole thing would need to be replanted if the maze was to be restored, and Ariel would be well into adulthood before it would be fun for anyone but a young child. Gerard had arranged to have all the junky trees that had spontaneously rooted near the house taken out, but a hot Virginia summer was not the best time to do major garden renovation. Before Rainey first looked at the property, Karin had arranged for routine yard maintenance. But the results of such limited care were brown and grim.
Baby steps.
This morning her primary project was to go into town and try to familiarize herself with it beyond the asphalt between the grocery store, the DMV, and the hardware store.
Although Old Gate had been founded in 1744, most of its public buildings and houses had burned down before the end of the eighteenth century. Ethan Fauquier, the bookstore owner from the party, had said it was the best thing that could’ve happened to the town. It was able to reinvent itself from a rough-edged village buried in a remote southern Virginia valley to something more sophisticated. After a year of wrangling among the town’s prominent families and politicians, it was decided that a young Italian protégé of Thomas Jefferson would redesign the town.
The result was remarkable: All the main streets of Old Gate radiated out like spokes of a wheel from a single octagon that held within its confines the courthouse, the Anglican church, a town hall, and an expanse of green reminiscent of villages in both New England and Mother England. Those main streets were connected by smaller streets that were exclusively residential, creating a complex web of the commercial, the official, and the private. And so there were small pockets of houses whose residents knew each other very well, and because the houses were often so close to commercial establishments, there wasn’t the usual acrimony between business people and regular citizens. Careful zoning kept everything attractive and harmonious.
Rainey didn’t find it particularly easy to get around Old Gate, but then she hadn’t had much practice. Most of the buildings and homes near the town’s heart were neo-classical, like the ones Thomas Jefferson himself built. But it was fun to see the progression of the town, to ease around gentle corners to discover an unexpected classical antiques shop next to a contemporary restaurant, or to drive along ever-lengthening avenues of lovely old houses. The longer the avenue, the later in time the houses were built.
She was anxious to visit the bookstore and speak with Ethan Fauquier again. He’d promised to tell her more about the history of Bliss House as well.
Rainey dressed and left her bedroom. On impulse, she called across the gallery to Ariel.
“Ariel, how about some pancakes? Come have breakfast.” She knew it was probably futile, that Ariel wouldn’t even have stirred. If that were the case, she would just surprise Ariel with a tray in her room.
She was halfway down the stairs when she noticed something below her, in the hallway.
Was it a pile of clothes?
Rainey stopped to stare, too stunned to make a sound. There was no mistaking Karin Powell. She recognized the dress and the hair and the long, pale legs. She wanted to think that perhaps Karin had simply mistakenly stayed behind after the party. Falling asleep somewhere? But no. She hadn’t passed out. There was something wrong with her leg. The angle wasn’t right.
Karin Powell’s eyes were wide open, staring past Rainey to the starry ceiling above them.
Rainey couldn’t force herself to go all the way downstairs to get closer to Karin. She was afraid, and her stomach churned so that she thought she might vomit. Karin was dead.
For Ariel’s sake, Rainey stifled a scream, and ran for her phone back in her bedroom. Stumbling inside, she realized that she wasn’t able to talk or even think about talking. She ran for the bathroom, where she retched for what seemed like an hour before she could make herself stand up and call the police.
“Ariel. Honey.” Rainey tried to be gentle as she shook her daughter’s shoulder to wake her, but her own body was trembling. She’d called the police, and they were on their way. She’d even gone so far as to find Gerard’s name in her contacts, but something made her stop before she pressed the “call” button. It was the one thing she couldn’t bear to do.
Ariel groaned and threw an arm across her face to block out both Rainey and the sunshine streaming in the windows.
“Mommy, stop.” She tried to shrug her mother away.
“Baby, wake up! The police are coming . . .” God, what was there to even say?
“There’s been a horrible accident.” Rainey squeezed her shoulder again. “Honey, you must get up. It’s Karin Powell. I don’t know what happened. In the front hall.”
Ariel tried to sit up, but the memory of the night overwhelmed her, and she fell back onto the pillow.
“It’s okay,” Rainey said, worried by the shock in her daughter’s eyes. If only she could keep every bad thing away from her. Death seemed to stalk them. Why won’t it leave us alone? “Nothing’s going to hurt you. You’re safe.”
Ariel stared up at her mother, still overcome. How could she trust her mother with the truth of what she’d seen?
Rainey stroked her hair. “The police are on their way.” She looked away, out the window. “Gerard. I can’t tell him.” Her voice fell to a whisper. “He loved her so much. Everyone liked her.”
“What do I do? I don’t know what to do.” There was a childish desperation in Ariel’s voice that Rainey hadn’t heard since she was six years old.
“I didn’t know she was still here,” Rainey said, almost to herself. Then, “You don’t need to do anything, baby. They’ll take her away. Quickly. I promise.”
“But I was there, Mommy.”
Stunned, Rainey stared down at her.
“I saw her—I saw somebody—fall from the third floor gallery.” Ariel pointed up. “I wanted to tell you last night. I just couldn’t. I’m so sorry, Mommy. I was scared.”
“You saw it, and you didn’t come to me?” Rainey’s voice sounded sharp to her own ears. But they might have done something! Might have saved Karin. They had spent the night with Karin dead or dying just a few feet from their bedrooms. The idea horrified her. What could Ariel have been thinking? It was bizarre. Had Ariel become so isolated that she’d lost all sense of human empathy? No. It couldn’t be.
Seeing tears in her daughter’s eyes, she softened. She couldn’t bear to see Ariel so fragile. Again.
God, why are you doing this to my baby? To us?
Rainey pulled Ariel to her. Holding her shaking daughter made her feel strangely calm, even though their lives were about to be torn apart. Again. “You’re not alone. Ever.”
“They’re going to want to talk to me, aren’t they?” Ariel pressed her face against her mother’s chest.
No, Ariel wasn’t going to be involved in this mess if she could help it. She’d suffered enough for two lifetimes. Whatever had happened to Karin Powell had nothing to do with her daughter. If Ariel had seen anything—please, please, let her have been dreaming—it must have been the very end of Karin Powell’s long, long process of disintegration. People didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to kill themselves later that evening, right after a party. It was all very sad for Gerard. Only God knew how well she understood the sadness of it. But Karin Powell had nothing to do with them or with Bliss House. Bliss House had obviously just been convenient.
Chapter 15
Ariel stood on the edge of the bathtub looking down on the brown summer grass from her bathroom window. A woman in an EMT uniform was smoking a cigarette and talking to a male cop. The cop said something, and the woman laughed, but then covered her mouth as though remembering laughter was inappropriate.
The morning breeze felt good on Ariel’s face. She knew she shouldn’t be looking out, in case someone saw her. She was supposed to stay in her bathroom until everyone was gone, and had even made a kind of nest for herself in the linen closet. She would do anything to avoid talking to the police.
How long did it take to make a body go away? Her mother had said she didn’t think it would take too long because it had clearly been suicide.
Except . . .
There had been someone else there. If the girl she’d seen fall hadn’t been a girl at all, but had been Karin Powell, then the man she’d seen might not have been a stranger. Was it Jefferson? Or no one at all?
The only thing she could be completely sure of was that it was her father she’d seen outside her mother’s door.
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