Rainey still couldn’t decide how old he was. He might have been forty or sixty. His skin was virtually unlined; his light brown hair was thin enough that she could see some age spots showing through near the front. In his yellow shirt and rumpled blue seersucker suit, he was the picture of a relaxed southern gentleman.
He took the bags from the man with the ponytail. “I’ll finish up here, DeRoy.”
DeRoy nodded and disappeared through the squeaking swinging doors.
“DeRoy’s a far-distant relative of yours, by marriage. On Judge Bliss’s mother’s side. So, not blood. But then most everyone in this part of Virginia is related if you go back far enough.”
Was it her imagination, or had DeRoy looked at her differently—more critically—before leaving? She thought she saw a certain smugness in the way he turned his back on her. And the other patrons? Were they looking at her too?
“How are you doing? You must still be in shock over poor Karin Powell. Everyone here is.”
“Well, yes. It was a shock. It’s all very new.” New? Where did that come from? If she’d known people would so easily realize who she was, she would’ve stayed home until Karin’s death wasn’t so fresh.
Ethan spoke so quietly that Rainey had to lean forward to hear him.
“No one who knew Karin—and everyone knew Karin—can imagine for a minute the thing that would lead her to take her own life. But people do have depths into which we cannot see.” He shook his head. “I hope the press hasn’t been bothering you too much.”
“I considered Mrs. Powell a friend, too, Mr. Fauquier. I hope you’ll understand I’m uncomfortable talking about what happened the other night. It’s all a little overwhelming.”
She hoped that sounding vaguely helpless would shut Mr. Fauquier down. How strange it was that people would now know who she was because someone had killed herself in her house. Ignoring the phone calls hadn’t been enough. She’d drawn attention to herself by coming into the bookstore.
“You’ll have to forgive me,” Ethan said, obviously sensing her unease. “It’s a terrible habit I have. Being the owner of the only bookstore in town is a little like being the only bartender. People tell me things. Then other people come by and expect me to have information that no one else has. I gather information like a squirrel gathers nuts. Historians are the worst sorts of gossips.” He paused for a moment as he expertly tied the small stack of books together with a raffia string. “Given that Bliss House has such a notorious reputation, everyone suddenly wants to know about it again.”
“I can imagine,” Rainey said.
Will he ever stop?
“Most houses of any age, big or little, have a history of deaths of all sorts, of course. Poor Mrs. Brodsky—lovely woman—didn’t pass inside the house, you know, but there were several other deaths that were looked at as questionable. Starting with Amelia Bliss, the first Mr. Bliss’s wife. Everyone thought she’d killed herself because she was heartbroken about the death of her poor little girl.” He shook his head sadly. “But what they found out later . . .”
Rainey interjected. Hearing a litany of terrible things that had taken place in her beautiful house was upsetting her even more. At least he had mostly stuck to the house’s architectural history at the party.
“I need to get back to my daughter. We’ll talk another time, maybe?”
He got the message and smiled at her, revealing a set of too-white dentures. “Of course, of course. You get these books to your little girl, my dear. I know they’ll cheer her up. We’ll have lots of time to talk. I’ll mail you the historical society information that we talked about the other night.”
After putting the stack of books into the small shopping bag, he showed her to the door and held it open. A wave of humidity washed over them, but she was happy to escape into the heat.
“There’s so much for you to know about the area, and your fascinating house,” he said. “It’s a rare treat, Bliss House. Rare.”
Chapter 22
Rainey programmed an address into her GPS and pulled out of the parking space. She’d spoken with Ariel and was now much calmer. Ethan Fauquier, with his stories about her house, had shaken her badly, and she’d considered just going straight back home. But Ariel had only sounded a little sleepy and wasn’t at all combative or upset. No one had called the house or come to the door to bother her, so Rainey felt comfortable telling her she’d be home within the hour. The house to which the GPS was guiding her was only ten minutes away.
Beside her on the seat was a glossy box filled with individual food containers: a chicken, rice, cranberry, and walnut casserole; a cucumber salad; a sourdough baguette; a selection of hard cheeses; and a small chocolate torte. At the last moment, she’d grabbed a bottle of Pinot Grigio from the shop’s cooler and included it in the order.
Her experience of losing her own husband hadn’t been like most deaths. She’d spent the first weeks of her widowhood at the hospital with Ariel, sporadically retreating to a nearby hotel to shower and catch some sleep. There had been no stunned relatives sleeping on her couch (she had no couch, anyway), looking either for solace or to make sure she was okay. Both of her parents were dead, and Will’s mother was in a nursing home. No casseroles or gourmet fruit baskets. Only the occasional glass of wine, pressed on her by her closest friends when she could get away from the hospital. By the time she had a memorial for Will, she had moved into a sparsely furnished apartment. She’d given a lunch afterward at Will’s favorite restaurant.
Everything had felt wrong, and too late.
Gerard and Karin’s house couldn’t be seen from the road, and Rainey wasn’t sure what to expect as she drove up the twisting gravel drive. The trees met overhead, their branches and leaves creating a shifting pattern of sunlight and shadow on her car.
Finally, the tunnel of trees ended, bursting onto a broad, sunny landscape of grass and scattered trees that took Rainey’s breath away. Gentle hills hugged the property, making it seem secluded yet wonderfully open at the same time. The house was low and long, all wood and creekstone and glass, like a mountain lodge. Its rooflines followed the ridge behind it so that it blended into its background as though it were a natural formation. Stone paths wound through the tall grasses, butterfly bushes, and rhododendrons planted in front. The yard at one end of the house was completely shaded, and filled with more rhododendrons and bushy oak leaf hydrangeas. There was nothing stiff or formal about the place. She wondered what part Karin had played in the design. Knowing Karin, Rainey had imagined a house that was grand in a different, more polished way. Maybe even marble stairs leading up to the door. Definitely columns. She mentally chided herself for being so uncharitable about someone who was dead. It wasn’t like she lived in a modest cottage. And, of course, Gerard had probably done the design himself. She’d forgotten that he was also an architect.
She stopped behind one of the several cars that were already parked in the arc of the driveway. One of them was Karin’s Cadillac, and another Gerard’s work truck. By the time she got to the door, she wasn’t at all certain what she was doing there.
The entrance to the house was in shadow, and almost like a room itself. The underside of the tall porch roof above Rainey was copper, not yet turned verdigris, and there were two beautifully turned teak benches on either side of the door. Pots of shade flowers bloomed all around her.
When the door opened to her knock, she felt reality shift. Was this Karin? Yes, and no. This woman’s red hair was cut into a shapely bob that swung just above her shoulders, but she had Karin’s frank manner and startling green eyes.
“Yes?” The woman’s attitude wasn’t particularly friendly, and she gave no indication that Rainey should come inside.
“Is Gerard in?” Rainey said. She smiled, but not too broadly. She was used to aggressive people like Karin, and this woman was obviously a sister or other relation. Her skin was clear, her eyes lucid. If she was someone close to Karin, why weren’t her eyes red from crying, or her
face puffy? Maybe it was Rainey’s imagination, but she felt like the woman suspected her of something terrible. “I just wanted to drop some food off for him.”
The woman glanced down at the neatly-packed box with its perky pink Gourmet Away sticker on top.
“I’ll make sure he gets it,” she said, opening the door a little wider. She gave Rainey something short of a smile, as though she were about to do her a huge favor by taking the package off of her hands.
“It’s okay, Molly. I’m here.” Gerard appeared at the woman’s shoulder.
The woman turned to him. “It’s not a great time. We should be inside with Mom.” She looked back at Rainey with undisguised irritation. Rainey wondered why someone would bother to be so unpleasant to a complete stranger.
Grief, of course. It does terrible, strange things to people, Rainey thought to herself, trying to be understanding.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” Gerard said firmly.
The woman didn’t bother to excuse herself, but simply walked away, back into the house. As she went, a large yellow Golden Retriever whined and tried to push past Gerard, but Gerard held it fast by the collar.
Aside from looking tired, Gerard seemed very much himself—nothing like a man who had lost his very reason for living—and definitely more composed than even the woman he’d called Molly. Rainey recalled the loud argument he had had with Karin that horrible night. The word “selfish” had been hurled more than once, but she couldn’t remember if it had been his word or Karin’s. He’d never struck her as the selfish type. Karin, though, had seemed to be all about Karin.
“I thought I’d bring some food by,” she said. “It’s not much. Just a little dinner.”
“Smells like Gourmet Away’s cranberry and walnut chicken. We pick that up a lot.”
Rainey smiled. She didn’t quite know how to answer or what to say next. They hadn’t exchanged more than a few words the previous morning. Someone else had come by Bliss House to get Karin’s Cadillac and hadn’t come to the door.
“Karin’s family is inside,” he said. “They got here last night.”
She wondered if Gerard was going to ask her in, yet half-hoped he wouldn’t. But she needn’t have worried. He didn’t move from the doorway.
“If you’re concerned about the project, I have to say I don’t really know when things will be back on schedule.”
Rainey couldn’t believe what he was saying. “Oh, no. Did you think I’d come out here for that?”
He continued as though she hadn’t spoken. “And there’s the police. Who the hell knows what the police think.” He looked down, into her eyes. “What is it that you think happened? You were home, weren’t you? Your girl was home. Maybe you both know.” His voice sounded normal. He might have been talking about grades of lumber or project estimates. Yet his words chilled her.
“That’s not fair, Gerard. How could I know anything about it?”
There were no problems with the gas line coming into the house, Mrs. Adams. It was something—possibly an appliance—inside the house.
“You don’t know what goes on in your own home?” he said. “The police said they were questioning your daughter. What did she see?”
“Please, Gerard. We told them everything. Don’t be angry with Ariel. She didn’t see anything that would help. What can I do so you’ll understand how sorry we are?” She glanced involuntarily down at the box in her arms. It was getting heavy, and the smell of the food combined with the agitation she was feeling was making her nauseous. “Karin was a lovely, lovely woman.”
Now there was silence between them, except for the occasional whines from the dog. Rainey could hear sobbing from the inner reaches of the house, and a deep male voice offering comfort. She couldn’t bear it any longer.
“I’ll go,” she said. “I’m sure they’ll find some answers.”
She wasn’t quite sure who they might be. The police? Where would they find those answers? Bliss House was empty of Karin Powell. She was dead. Rainey had stood outside her bedroom, watching, as the medical examiner’s technician and police eased Karin’s body into a bag and onto a stretcher to be wheeled out of the house. There was no question that she was gone forever.
She took a step over to one of the teak benches and set the box down on it.
“Lovely,” she whispered.
Was it the bench she referred to? Or Karin? Neither of them knew. It had just slipped out.
Rainey didn’t hear the front door close behind Gerard, and she didn’t look to see if he was still standing there as she drove away. She suddenly felt foolish for bringing what might have looked like a romantic dinner to a man who had just lost his wife. What had she been thinking, bringing him wine? But there was more. Gerard had suggested she was hiding something, that Ariel had seen something more. Worse, there was the subject of what Rainey herself knew. What she might have done, or caused. Although she hadn’t really been hiding anything important, she felt like he’d seen through her. It made no sense at all because there wasn’t a thing that she could have done, or anything else she could have told him except for Ariel’s vision of the girl, but what did that have to do with anything? Nothing about this was logical.
Chapter 23
Ariel awoke, stiff, in the big leather chair. The study was like a tiny, protected cove in the vast house, and she was nearly as comfortable there as in her own bedroom. She’d fallen asleep over a biography of Joan of Arc that her mother had been bugging her to read for months, lulled by the sunshine coming in the window and the ticking of the clock out in the front hall.
Thirsty, she went to the kitchen for water and came out with both water and a grape Popsicle from the freezer. She felt like she was probably too old for Popsicles, but her mother kept buying them, and she kept eating them. She thought of the swing set they’d had in their back yard in Kirkwood, before they’d moved farther out of town to the new house and her mother had opened her shop. How many Popsicles had she eaten in the four-person swing with the twins from next door? Purple, orange, red frozen syrup melting down their hands and arms. Too busy or too lazy to run to the house and turn on the hose, they’d wipe their hands in the grass and go on playing, their fingers dotted with grass clippings and dirt and the occasional mashed ant.
It was easier to think about those friends, the ones she’d known several years ago, than the ones she’d left behind when she got out of the hospital.
Would they even recognize her if they saw her? Maybe. She knew she was looking more like herself every day. In the hallway, she stepped into the powder room, turned on the light, and leaned close to the mirror. If she turned a certain way, her skin looked perfect. But that wasn’t the horror-show side. Tilting her chin just a little, she could see how new, pink-white skin was replacing the textured scar tissue.
What will the Charlottesville doctor say?
She’d be some medical miracle. Maybe she’d even be written up in medical journals. And what about dancing? She looked down at her feet.
No, not quite yet.
Behind her, all signs that the police and Karin Powell’s body had been there were gone. Ariel went to the place where Karin’s body had lain, the wool rug rough on her bare, tender feet.
She walked in a wide circle, spiraling in closer and closer, until she could look up and see right where the woman had leaned back on the balcony railing.
Maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe she had been dreaming.
But what about Daddy?
Looking up at the balcony and the strange star-filled dome in the ceiling, she felt frozen. The hall was drafty despite the heat outside, and she could feel the tepid air conditioning moving through the house, between the floors, and down over her body. Sounds started coming to her from a distance.
Please, not from upstairs. Not from the ballroom.
She wasn’t afraid of the rest of the house, but whatever was in the ballroom confused and worried her. It had seemed to both want to hurt her and save her. It felt dangerous. U
npredictable.
There was a shout from outside, and something knocked against an outer wall. Ariel ran to a window. Two people, a man and a woman wearing uniforms, were running in the garden. The man was shouting something she couldn’t hear, and the woman was talking into a radio. Ariel pressed against the window, standing on her toes, though her right foot hurt when she did that. She saw nothing. She finally remembered that the detective had told them that someone would be coming to look for evidence outside.
When she stepped back, she realized she was breathing hard.
I won’t be afraid. Daddy is here. Daddy is watching.
The police were out of sight now, and she strained to hear their voices. That was one thing about Bliss House. When the doors and windows were closed, it was sealed as solidly as a tomb.
Someone pounded on a door at the rear of the house.
Ariel looked out the window again for the police, but she could neither hear nor see them. There was no way they could’ve made it to the back of the house without her noticing. She had no weapon, not even her cell phone. The closest phone downstairs was in the kitchen.
I shouldn’t look. I don’t want to.
But even as she thought it, she knew she would go.
Jefferson took the soda Ariel handed him, flipped the tab on the top of the can, and drank like he might never get another one. When he finished, he turned to release a large burp behind his hand. His short hair was drenched in sweat and stood, spiky, where he’d run his hands through it.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You didn’t,” Ariel said.
He tore several paper towels from the roll hanging over the counter and ran them over his forehead and the back of his neck. Ariel could smell the sweat and grass.
“Your mom’s not home?”
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