“She went to the library, and maybe somewhere else. She didn’t say.” She liked that he was there but was a little afraid of him after how strangely he’d acted the night of the party. With what had happened to Karin Powell, she hadn’t thought about Jefferson very much, and he hadn’t texted her even after he’d asked for her number. When she’d reached the mudroom door, his smiling face had seemed to fill the glass. He’d looked anxious, though, and had even glanced over his shoulder as she let him in.
“How come you’re here? Do you want to talk to her?”
“Not really.” He drained the last drops of soda and crushed the can between his palms. Ariel had never seen anyone do that before. “So, have the cops figured anything out?”
“Was that you they were running after a minute ago?” Ariel said. “Why didn’t you just come to the front door?”
“I hate talking to the police. They already asked me a bunch of questions about the other night. I told them I didn’t know anything. Did they talk to you?”
“I didn’t tell them anything.” The only other time she’d talked to the police was after she’d come out of her coma in the hospital. She couldn’t help but link their presence with death.
“Because you don’t know anything, anyway.”
“What do you mean?” She had no idea if she could trust him, but he’d told her he knew that things happened at Bliss House that couldn’t be explained. His father, Randolph, had lived here when he was a kid, and had told Jefferson he was glad that none of them lived here anymore. Plus, Jefferson knew about the ballroom. But that didn’t necessarily make him trustworthy.
“Did you see what happened to Karin? Did she hang around after the party?” he asked. “Come on. You were watching everything that night.” He smiled. The red flush had just about gone from his face, but he still smelled of the outdoors. Ariel didn’t think it was such a bad smell.
“Why would I tell you something I didn’t tell the police? That would mean I lied to them.” Did he hear the shaking in her voice? She suddenly knew that she was going to tell him everything.
Jefferson laughed. “Touché. But it’s not like you did anything to her, is it?”
“Sure,” Ariel said sarcastically. “I pushed her backwards off the balcony. I decided I don’t like Bliss House after all. She was a terrible real estate agent, and I wanted revenge because there are spiders in my bedroom. What do you think?”
“How did you know?” Jefferson said.
“I was kidding,” Ariel said.
“So how did you know?”
“How did I know what?”
Jefferson leaned toward her an inch or two. “That she fell backwards. You said she went off backwards.”
“I don’t know that she did. Did I say that? Maybe I heard the police say it.” Ariel knew she had said it, but why did he care? She felt her face flush—or most of it. Some of the scar tissue barely had any feeling in it.
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Bunch of dumbasses. They wouldn’t know the truth if it came up and chewed their faces off.”
“How come you didn’t text me?” Ariel said, changing the subject.
“So you saw her fall,” Jefferson said, ignoring her question.
“Maybe.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “You don’t have to tell me. It must have been pretty creepy. I mean, this house is creepy enough at night without someone about to off herself in front of you. It’s not like you and your mom have any kind of protection. It’s got to be hard, just being the two of you. Aren’t you afraid?”
Ariel held onto the edges of her hood, suddenly self-conscious. She’d been standing there talking to him, forgetting that she looked like a freak show. He was talking to her like he’d forgotten it too. Still, she was embarrassed, and looked at the floor.
“I think there might have been other people here when it happened.”
“No shit. Really? Did you see them?”
“You’ll laugh,” she said.
“Listen, I’m not going to tell anyone and get you in trouble. Who would I tell? The police?” He stepped closer to her, and his voice was low. Quieter. “Karin was good people. I just want to know what happened to her.”
“I don’t know,” Ariel said, looking down at the floor, conscious of how close he was standing. How closely he was watching her.
He touched the front of her hood, near her left cheek. “You were afraid, weren’t you?”
No boy had ever stood so close to her before, and she couldn’t decide if she should move away or not.
“It wasn’t . . .”
She stopped when she heard the doorbell chime its soft xylophone notes from the hall.
“I need to see who that is.”
Instead of stepping aside, Jefferson put his hands on her shoulders, stopping her.
“What?” Ariel’s head was filled with a profound confusion. Maybe fear.
Should I be afraid?
“I like you, Ariel. Don’t you like me?”
Now her confusion turned to anger. He was playing with her, again. But before she could pull away from him, he pressed his mouth onto hers.
She held her breath, stunned. His lips were warm and soft and unexpectedly gentle, and she was torn between kneeing him in the groin and letting him continue to work his lips against hers. What should she do? Was he trying to French kiss her? It felt good, but not quite right.
Just as she identified the troubling rush of feeling between her legs as not really troubling at all, it was over.
The doorbell rang again.
“Somebody wants in.” Jefferson took a step back. He wasn’t smiling, but there was a look in his eye that said he might start laughing at any moment. Was he just happy or was he laughing at her?
“Go on,” he said.
Ariel hurried from the room in a minor state of shock. What did it all mean?
“You haven’t seen anyone besides Deputy Taylor and myself near the house in the last ten or fifteen minutes?”
The deputy doing the talking was an African American woman, taller and stockier than the white male officer beside her. He was all sunburn and brushy mustache. The woman wore her hair in a thick, braided bun at the back of her neck, and the collar button of her uniform shirt was unbuttoned, probably because of the heat. Ariel looked hard at her, her own happy mood broken. She’d seen the flicker of shock in the officer’s eyes when she first opened the door. It happened every time she met a stranger, and she couldn’t get used to it.
Maybe soon I won’t have to. How awesome would that be?
“I haven’t been outside,” Ariel said.
“Did anyone come to the door? Any strangers?”
“My mom isn’t home. You should probably wait until she gets back.” There was no way she was letting them into the house. She wanted to get back to Jefferson. Alone. Though that idea was a little intimidating to her. What would happen next?
“She left you here on your own?” The two deputies exchanged quick, puzzled glances, which irritated Ariel a lot. It wasn’t like she was ten years old.
“So I probably shouldn’t let you in, right?”
Before either officer had a chance to answer, Ariel saw her mother’s car coming up the driveway.
“There she is.”
Ariel pointed with her ruined hand, bringing it within a few inches of their faces, just to freak them out. The male officer took an involuntary step back, then quickly looked to where she was pointing. His sunburned neck and ears turned an even more satisfying red.
Rainey followed Ariel into the house. After talking to her, the deputies had gone toward the woods, through the garden, to continue their search. One of them had a metal detector.
“What if it had been someone else?” Rainey couldn’t keep the panic from her voice. “It was stupid of me to leave you alone. You should’ve called me.”
“You were already coming up the driveway.” Ariel didn’t mention Jefferson, even though she couldn’t see a reason why it w
ould matter to her mother if he was there. She wasn’t sure if she wanted him to still be in the kitchen or not.
Rainey unpacked one of the bags on the hall table and handed Ariel the tied stack of books. “I know. But that doesn’t excuse my not being here.”
Ariel ran a finger over the books’ spines, her hand shaking a bit. “They didn’t have any about hauntings?”
Rainey hesitated. “Not that looked any good.”
“Sure,” Ariel said. She guessed that her mother didn’t want her to read anything scary because of the dead woman. Parents could be such worriers.
“Let’s go put this stuff away.” Rainey picked up the other bags. On the way to the kitchen, she couldn’t help but look at the place on the rug where they’d found Karin’s body, and it slowed her. Recovering herself, she asked Ariel if she was hungry.
Now it was Ariel’s turn to hesitate. Should she mention Jefferson, or take the chance that he might be gone?
“What is it?” Rainey asked.
“Nothing. I just didn’t eat any lunch yet.”
Rainey laughed over her shoulder. “Well, I may be a terrible mother, leaving you all alone in this big house out in the country, but at least I came back with éclairs from the bakery. Does that score me any points?”
Her mother had such a pretty laugh. Everything about her mother was pretty. No wonder everyone liked her. Ariel wanted—really wanted—to stay angry with her mother, but it was getting harder.
“I probably need to taste one, first,” she said.
Rainey went through the dining room to get to the kitchen, still not much liking to use the disguised panel door in the hall. The kitchen was empty, but the air was disturbed and she had a sense that someone had just left the room. Whether that person was alive or dead, she wasn’t sure.
A moment later, seeing that Jefferson was gone, a relieved Ariel grabbed the bakery bag from her mother and dug for an éclair.
Chapter 24
“God, it stinks in here,” Michael said. “Light another candle. And tie up that bag from your bucket and put it by the door.”
He’d stayed away longer than he ever had before. All the fruit was gone from the cooler. Allison hadn’t eaten any of the bread, or the peanut butter. She only wanted the peaches.
Before he’d brought her here, the roadside stands had just started to sell them. The first peaches he brought her had been small and soft and covered with light red skin that faded to gold. Definitely local. But these last had been harder and hadn’t ripened well at all. He’d probably gotten them from one of the bigger grocery stores that shipped them in from Texas or Mexico, out of the Virginia season.
Why hadn’t she ever begun to count the days? No. She knew why. There was no day here, just as there was no night. It never mattered.
“My stomach. I had diarrhea,” she said. “I always do, now.”
Suddenly tender, he put a hand to her cheek. “Poor thing. I’ll bring you Pepto-Bismol or something.”
She knew he was lying. Pretending, like he always did. He didn’t care at all how she felt. If he did he wouldn’t leave her here. Shrinking away, she said nothing.
He smiled. “You’re such a flirt, Allison.”
“I smelled something from outside,” she said, hoping to distract him. “Smoke. Was there a fire?” She had definitely smelled smoke. There were two tiny vents up near the ceiling, and she had gotten in the habit of climbing on top of the dresser to press her face against one of them.
He looked confused for a moment, and then his face cleared. Sometimes she forgot what he looked like when he wasn’t sweating over her.
“Someone was probably burning brush.”
Immediately, she regretted asking him. It had been her secret. A message from the outside to let her know she wasn’t completely alone in the world. If there was a fire, she knew that there must be other people close by.
“Wash yourself,” he said. “I brought you another towel.” He pulled a thin towel with a green stripe down its middle from the backpack he’d brought, and tossed it onto the tiny sink.
Ignoring him, she moved to the niche that held an unlighted candle. How many had she burned? She’d lost count. This one was ridiculously ornate, with orange, yellow, and white stripes, and wax curls decorating its sides. She’d made similar candles with her cousin when she was a kid and they’d sold them to ladies in the neighborhood. Just the sight of this one plunged her further into dull misery.
When she was done with the candle and the bucket, she came back to stand in front of him, and, without comment, began to take off her clothes. She dropped her panties on the floor and moved them to the side with a desultory kick.
“Where’s the romance?” He laughed. “Remember when I showed up at your apartment and you did that little striptease thing? What about that?”
She bent to pull off the socks he had finally given her to wear as well. (He’d taken her sandals that first day.) Already, they were wearing thin.
“You need to wash your hair again, too.” He tried to run his fingers through it, but they became quickly tangled. “I used to like your hair. Maybe I’ll cut it for you.”
Moving to the sink, she turned the water on. It trickled out, just like always. Each time she turned it on, she wondered if it might be for the last time. Where did it come from? It had a heavy, mineral taste to it that reminded her of well water.
Shivering, she cupped her hands beneath the rusted tap until there was enough to splash on her face, and did it again, and again.
As she stood there, not wanting to ever lift her face from that stained, ancient sink again, she felt him press against her backside. He’d unzipped his pants, or taken them off. It didn’t matter to her which. She kept the water running, cupping it into her hands, drinking it, letting it run onto her chin and neck, as he rubbed against her.
He kneaded her buttocks and gave a contented moan. Then he slipped one hand between her legs, fitting his middle finger into her vagina. She was dry, and his fingernail was sharp. When he moaned some more, she knew that he had his other hand on his cock. He slipped a thumb into her anus, and she understood that that was what was going to happen today. She had healed from the last time, but it still ached deep inside.
After a couple of minutes, he pulled away and told her to get onto the bed. She didn’t want to look at his face—she never wanted to look at his face anymore, couldn’t believe that there was ever a time when she had looked forward to seeing it when she opened her apartment door—but there he was, sunk down on the end of the bed. His face was red and slack and his eyes had lost their focus. He was no longer there in the room with her. She knew it wasn’t the same place she would be going in her own head. How strange that neither of them wanted to be in that room.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she tried to keep her hold on the bed as he entered her. But when he tore his way into her body, she screamed and screamed.
He didn’t even bother to stop her.
Chapter 25
Tuesday mornings were for doing laundry. Bertie tucked one of the telephones in her apron pocket as she went down to the basement, thinking she might try calling Rainey one more time.
Most of the women of her status had someone in to both clean and do the laundry, but Bertie found a sense of peace in doing the family laundry herself. It made her feel closer to the Judge and her Jefferson, and the Judge had had the ancient laundry area in the basement remodeled when Jefferson was a baby so it would be more cheerful for her. For years, Jefferson had played with his trucks on the well-scrubbed tile floor while she worked. Since he’d come home from UVA for the summer, he’d resumed dropping his laundry down the chute so she could take care of it like she had before he left home. It was no trouble, and she thought she might as well get used to doing it again. The Judge didn’t know it, but Jefferson would be going back to UVA under academic probation, and he might be forced to leave if the fall semester didn’t go as it should.
The Judge hid it well, and appeare
d to give Jefferson all the encouragement a father should, but Bertie knew Jefferson was a disappointment to him. The Judge had been at the top of every class he’d ever attended, and had known what he would do with his life since he was ten years old. But her Jefferson was in love with life, just like she was. He saw beyond books and making money and hundred-year-old traditions. He’d loved to explore their house and grounds and the woods and trails around Old Gate. She’d taken him on trips, too, that the Judge didn’t want to bother with. In addition to all the Civil War sites, they’d seen Yellowstone, San Francisco, New York City, and had even been out to the Grand Canyon, where they’d spent an exciting, dangerous night camping with a group and guide in the canyon’s basin. Jefferson understood adventure, just like she did.
Even now, when he was supposed to be relaxing during his summer break, he was out of the house all day and most nights. She didn’t ask where he went. He needed his freedom, and he was happy. That was all that mattered to her.
She took the laundry from the chute and sorted it into loose color piles on the floor, then removed the Judge’s shirts and set them aside. Laundry was one thing, but ironing the Judge’s shirts to his strict preferences was a different matter. The cleaners did a much better job than she could.
Pulling the phone from the pocket of the apron she wore to do housework, she started to dial Rainey’s number but stopped halfway through and ended the call, worried she might be intruding. She felt such a kinship with Rainey, and wished that Rainey would let her meet Ariel. It was a shame they weren’t related by blood because then she might have a real claim on Rainey’s time. There had been talk in Bertie’s mother’s and grandmother’s generations that Randolph Hasbrouck Bliss, who had built Bliss House, had fathered a number of children on the wrong side of the blanket. It was hinted that her great-great-aunt Flora might have been one of those children, but there was never any proof and the possibility was only spoken of among the women of the family.
Practically everyone born in this part of Virginia was, in some way, related to everyone else, she knew. Black or white, it didn’t matter. The boundaries of flesh and emotion had never been as clearly drawn as people liked to pretend they were. It gave Bertie a daring little thrill to know that she and her own husband were tenuously linked in history, as though they were living characters in a great Gothic drama.
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