by Jenn Bennett
She handed him the empty water glass. “Does he know we’re here?”
“No, but I’ll have to tell him eventually, and he’s not going to be happy.”
“Bo,” she said, leaning closer to whisper. “Those other people I saw . . . What if the survivors murdered them?”
“We don’t even know if they exist. I believe you saw what you said you did, but let’s be practical. The owner of the yacht might be able to identify the survivors. If there are missing people who were on board, she might know that, too.”
“The boots . . .” She paused and stared up at him. “There was something funny about them, and I think I just realized what. I know it sounds crazy, but I think the boots were made of metal. Like, iron, maybe.”
“Iron boots,” Bo muttered. “How could you even walk in them?”
“What if they weren’t for walking? What if they were intended to weigh someone down? Think about it. Burlap bags? That’s just bizarre. What if the survivors threw those people overboard to drown?”
Quick footfalls approached the hospital room’s door. Astrid looked up, expecting to see Nurse Dupree returning, but two other people stopped outside the door: the police chief and a woman wearing an expensive crimson coat and feathered hat.
For a moment, Astrid’s mind jumped to the red-robed priestess in her vision, until she reminded herself that the priestess had been white-headed, and this one was blond and couldn’t have been a day over twenty-five.
“I can assure you of that, Mrs. Cushing,” the police chief was telling the blonde. “If they are fit to leave the hospital tomorrow, we will release them into your custody until their families can be notified. You are kind to offer them shelter.”
“It’s the least I can do,” the woman replied with a smile. “Whatever happened to them at sea, I can only say I’m thankful they’re still alive. And I’m grateful you called me about this matter. I know you’ll get everything straightened out.”
“That we will, ma’am,” the chief said.
The woman nodded and glanced past him. Her gaze connected with Astrid’s for a moment, and then the pair continued on their way down the hall.
“I wonder who that was,” Bo said as Nurse Dupree strode through the door.
“Mrs. Cushing?” the nurse said, nodding over her shoulder. “That’s the widow who owns the yacht.”
“Excellent.” Bo sprung from the bed and headed toward the door. “I need to speak with her about towing it off our property.”
“You can try to catch her, but I think she’s leaving with her driver.”
“Don’t move,” Bo said, pointing a finger at Astrid in warning. “I’ll be right back.”
As he strode away, Nurse Dupree picked up a wooden clipboard and jotted down notes on Astrid’s medical form. “Feeling better?”
“Much. I don’t think I need to see a doctor, especially since the hospital is so busy with the survivors. Have you seen them yourself?”
“Yes, and if you want my opinion, that poor woman is being taken for a ride.”
“Mrs. Cushing?” Astrid asked.
The nurse nodded. “One of the survivors she identified as her former maid, Mary Richards. Mrs. Cushing reported her missing last year, apparently. She’d given Miss Richards permission to use the boat over the weekend, so I understand wanting to help the girl out, but the rest of them are strangers. If you ask me, offering to let them all stay in her home is just begging for trouble. I need to take your pulse again, sweetheart.”
Astrid gave the nurse her arm. “Does Miss Richards remember who the rest of the survivors are and what happened?”
“No. She doesn’t even remember her own name.” The nurse pushed up Astrid’s sleeve and looked at a watch pinned to her apron. “Just between you and me, I don’t think all of the survivors have memory loss. I overheard two of them talking when Mary was being interrogated, and they sounded mighty familiar with each other.”
Astrid perked up. “You don’t say?”
“One of the detectives told me he thinks they stole the boat and had no intention of bringing it back—that the engine died and the storm swept them to shore, and now they’re playing innocent. That widow believes she’s being a Good Samaritan, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they rob her blind in the middle of the night.”
Astrid spoke in a hushed voice. “You didn’t happen to hear if there were others on the boat who are still missing, did you?”
“Mrs. Cushing doesn’t know who went out on the boat with Miss Richards last year. You were there when the yacht crashed, right? Did you see other people?”
“No,” Astrid said. She didn’t actually see them, so it wasn’t a lie. But it felt like one, because all her instincts told her that she wasn’t wrong.
“Your pulse is too high,” the nurse said. “So I think you should stop worrying about all this chaos and get a good night’s rest at home. You’ll feel better when all the excitement has died down. My advice is to forget it even happened and not make a habit of drinking so much grape juice,” the nurse said with a pat on her arm and a wink.
Astrid’s thoughts returned to her vision. Twelve people around the ritual circle . . . and the priestess in the middle made thirteen. Thirteen people were on that boat, and only six walked off. She wasn’t sure that was something she could easily forget.
—
And she didn’t.
Not when she was released from the hospital half an hour later, and not when Bo drove them back to Pacific Heights while the rain-soaked city slept. The grand homes in this neighborhood sat shoulder to shoulder on tiered streets that belted a steep hill and provided a commanding view of the Bay. Astrid grew up in an immigrant neighborhood across town, but her father moved them here after Prohibition. His decision to take up bootlegging had dramatically changed their lives.
The neighbors had mixed feelings about their living here. Her family was new money, her brother a well-known criminal. They didn’t hide their success. Their turreted Queen Anne mansion took up two lots to most of the other homes’ one, and several fine cars lined their gated driveway, including Winter’s black-and-red Pierce-Arrow limousine. They kept a sizable staff, mostly Swedish immigrants, and Winter employed several hundred workers across the city.
They were not poor, and they were not humble. But whatever the neighbors said about her family behind their closed doors, they were all smiles in public. Astrid had learned the value of holding her head high. And as the silhouette of their imposing home came into view through the light-falling rain, a rush of relief made her shoulders relax and gave her a brief respite from the evening’s odd events.
On the car ride here, Bo had told Astrid about his brief talk outside the hospital with the widow, Mrs. Cushing. He said she was polite when he approached her, promising she’d have someone move the yacht in the morning. The police chief, on the other hand, was insistent that no one touch the boat until they’d had a chance to look through it in the daylight.
“And she didn’t seem happy about this, not at all,” Bo said. “Went from gracious to frosty”—he snapped his fingers—“just like that. Definitely someone who is used to getting her way.”
Astrid didn’t know what to make of this. She’d told Bo what she’d learned from the nurse, but by the time they’d made it home, she was weary of thinking about all of it.
Bo parked his car behind the others in the driveway, and they quietly entered the house through a side porch. Inside, the Queen Anne was dark. Astrid took off her ruined wet pumps and carried them by the heels as she padded down a chevron-patterned runner. Bo followed. After a dozen steps, a narrow hallway opened up to a large foyer that smelled of orange oil and lilies. Home.
A dog as big as a small horse shuffled across the floor, claws clicking on the hardwood, and greeted her with a wagging tail.
“Hello, Sam,” she said, bending to scratch
his ear. The brindled mastiff officially belonged to Winter’s wife—though Winter treated it like a second child—and was an excellent guard dog. He nuzzled Astrid’s hand and then rubbed his head against Bo’s leg and left a trail of wiry hair, which Bo complained about beneath his breath—but not without giving the dog an affectionate pat on the rump. Then the mastiff shuffled back the way he came and disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Bo and Astrid alone in the empty foyer.
An awkward silence grew between them. Now that the shock of the night’s events was receding, Astrid’s mind circled back to where it had all started, and hurt feelings began to reemerge. She didn’t want to fight with him anymore. She just wanted him to give her a rational explanation for why he’d been ignoring her.
And an apology. One that he meant.
“Suppose I’m going to head downstairs,” Bo finally said in a low voice. The help’s quarters were down there, as well as Bo’s room. “I guess you better get some sleep, too.”
“Are you going to tell Winter?”
“Tomorrow.” Which was probably only a couple of hours away. He stuck his hands in his pockets and jingled loose coins. “Not much of a birthday.”
“Oh, now you remember?”
“You still mad at me?”
“Probably. Are you planning on ignoring me again for no reason?”
“What makes you think I didn’t have a reason?”
Her breath stilled. “Do you?”
He didn’t answer, and she couldn’t see his face very well in the dim light. After a long moment, he just said, “Go get some sleep, Astrid.”
If he thought she was going to keep pressing, he was sorely mistaken. Without another word, she strode toward the grand staircase at the back of the foyer. Next to it sat a small birdcage elevator fashioned with wrought-iron whiplash curves—a luxury Pappa had installed before he died. But it made enough noise to wake the dead, so she walked past it to climb the stairs. A hand gripped her arm on the first step.
She spun around and stared at Bo, his face all sharp lines.
“Have you been up to the top of the turret yet?” he whispered.
“No,” she said, unsure why he’d be asking that.
“When you go, check the hiding spot.” He released her arm and faded into the dark foyer, leaving her speechless.
When she was sure he was gone, she raced up the stairs to the second floor. Her room was on the right. Everything was just how she’d left it when she went to Los Angeles in the fall: pale pink rose patterns on the four-poster bed, the rugs, and the curtains. A little too feminine, she’d decided earlier today when she’d first arrived home from the train station. But she didn’t care about that now. She dumped her handbag and ruined heels on the floor and headed down the second-floor hallway in stockinged feet to the back stairs.
This particular staircase was rarely used; after the elevator was installed, most of the house’s activity had shifted to the western side, and, consequently, the primary staircase near the kitchen—which began near Bo’s room and ascended to the third floor, stopping outside Winter’s study. However, the back stairs that she now climbed went all the way to up the attic, a low-ceilinged half story at the top of the house that her father had begun renovating for her mother, and which included the top of the Queen Anne’s “witch hat” style turret.
The top of the turret, though stuffy in the hotter months, had the best view of the Bay and the rooftops of Pacific Heights. And it was here that Astrid bent down in front of a window seat, eager to find what Bo had left her.
When Winter first met Bo, he was a fourteen-year-old pickpocket in Chinatown. And because he was so good at it, having successfully stolen from Winter at a boxing gym, Winter hired him to do odd jobs—delivering messages and packages, spying, that sort of thing. But when Bo’s uncle died of a heart attack two years later, Winter permanently took in the former pickpocket, and Bo proceeded to live with Winter and his first wife, who later died in the accident with Mamma and Pappa. And after that, when Winter moved back into the Queen Anne three and a half years ago, he brought Bo with him.
Astrid was fifteen when her parents died. And though she’d seen Bo off and on before that summer, when he moved into the Queen Anne with Winter, it was the first time she’d really talked to him—here in the top of the turret, in fact. It was Mamma’s favorite spot in the house, and Astrid found solace here, reading.
And chatting with Bo.
He’d lost his mother at an even younger age than Astrid, and it was easy to talk to him. Comforting, even. After school, she’d come up here and he’d teach her words in Cantonese or share childhood memories about growing up in Chinatown. Astrid especially liked the Chinese fables he’d learned from his mother, which he would retell to Astrid with enthusiastic irreverence, mischievously changing the stories to brighten her mood.
It was during one such retelling that Bo found the secret cubby below the window seat, quite by accident when he kicked it open one afternoon. And as their friendship grew, they began leaving small treasures for each other inside it. Notes. Candy. Found things. Pranks.
They hadn’t used it in over a year.
Astrid’s heart raced madly as she hit the top corner of the panel with her fist, once, twice, and then it popped off. Darkness filled the small hiding spot. Astrid stuck her arm inside, warily feeling around, until her hand touched something.
She pulled out a small box wrapped in rose-patterned silk fabric. The bow was almost too perfect to touch, but in her curiosity she tugged it open after a few reverent seconds. Inside, winking up at her in the darkness, was a silver wristwatch.
It was simple and beautiful. And of course it was, because Bo had excellent taste and was the best-dressed man she knew. But the most important thing was that it was from him. He’d read her letters, and he’d remembered her birthday, after all.
Her breath hitched. Joy flooded her chest. She gingerly picked up the dainty watch and traced the long, rectangular face and the mesh bracelet-style band. The pad of her fingertip felt something on the back plating. She flipped it over and held it up to the thin moonlight that filtered in from the window. Elongated script slanted over the metal. The engraving read:
One day, three autumns.
A Chinese idiom that Bo had taught her years ago. It meant, When you miss someone, one day apart feels as long as three years.
Astrid pressed the watch to her breast and promptly fell apart.
FOUR
Bo didn’t sleep well that night. He’d kept the door to his room cracked for an hour after he left Astrid on the staircase, listening to the rain on the narrow window above his bed, half hoping she’d come down after she found the gift. In the past, she’d occasionally sneaked down the servants’ stairwell to talk to him at night. There were six private rooms along this corridor, as well as a community room and dining area. And though his room wasn’t the biggest—the head housekeeper, Greta, claimed that one—it was, by far, the most secluded, around a sharp corner from the stairwell, away from everyone else. Easy enough for Astrid to manage without getting the attention of other ears.
But she never came down.
Stupid of him to be wounded by that. Hours ago, he’d worried she might be dead or cursed. Well, he still wasn’t sure about the cursed part, to be honest. But as for the other, she was exhausted. She probably just went to bed. It didn’t mean she hated the wristwatch.
He’d spent too much money on it. His car had used up most of his savings, so he needed to be careful. A difficult task when Astrid was involved.
When he’d felt certain she wasn’t coming, he’d shut the door and sat up in bed, staring at the bookcase across the room. It was jam-packed with old magazines and books. Forty-two books, to be exact, and one ragged, ancient copy of Webster’s International Dictionary that he often consulted to improve his vocabulary. Apart from that one, he’d read all the books s
everal times over. Some were missing covers or their spines were broken. Water damaged and dog-eared. It didn’t matter. They were his, bought with hard-earned money.
On the top shelf, bookending his five most cherished tomes, was one of the few things he’d salvaged from his childhood in Chinatown: a chipped ceramic white rabbit. His cheap bastard of an uncle said it once belonged to Bo’s grandmother, who’d illegally emigrated from Hong Kong at the turn of the century as a bride for sale. She’d given it to Bo’s mother, who’d died in the Spanish influenza epidemic ten years back, leaving him orphaned at the ripe old age of eleven—three years before he first spied Winter at a boxing club and picked the big man’s pocket.
The day his life changed.
He didn’t have any photographs of his mother. Only the rabbit remained. But he did have memories of her recounting old Chinese fables of animal spirits that played tricks on men. He loved those stories. After she died, he used to pretend that her spirit watched him from the rabbit’s shiny black eyes. Perhaps he’d pretended so much that he actually believed it now.
“Do not look at me like that, Ah-Ma,” he said to the rabbit now, turning it around to face the wall so that it couldn’t watch him being miserable. “I know I can’t have the girl.”
Of course he knew this. He couldn’t sit with Astrid in all but a handful of restaurants around town. He couldn’t walk into a movie theater with her on his arm. Statewide anti-miscegenation laws said it was outright illegal for him to marry her. Hell, he could be thrown in jail for even so much as holding her hand in public.
So, no.
Bo knew he shouldn’t want her. Knew he couldn’t have her.
But his rebellious heart refused to acknowledge any of this. It tormented him with whispered provocations, urging him to action and kindling hope.
His heart said: when have you ever given a damn about laws?
—
