I glance at Morrison, whose gaze bores down at me like an X-ray. Someone talked. Probably one of Blanche’s little friends. My mind scrambles for answers. What the hell do I tell them without incriminating myself?
“She got upset over nothing. Rich women like to create drama,” I reply with a shrug.
“What kind of drama?”
“She grabbed one of my bras and accused me of trying to seduce her fiancé. Then she threatened to hurt herself if he didn’t fire me on the spot.”
A voice shouts from behind the house. “Detective! We found something!”
I stiffen. Hayes and Morrison exchange glances that make my skin crawl.
The older one turns to me and says, “Ma’am, we need you to stay right here. Don’t go anywhere.”
Before I can ask what the hell is happening, they hurry down the steps and across the courtyard. My legs quiver. My heart thrashes loud enough to drown thought. I lean against the doorframe, watching them disappear around the corner of the house.
What did they find? My mind races through the possibilities and comes up blank. There’s a corpse in the attic, another in Adele’s room. According to Rowland, there are others. Women like me, who came here under the false pretense of a nanny job.
I shuffle my feet, wishing I’d left at the first sign of suspicion. It’s too late to run now that the cops have seen my face. Dogs bark in the distance, and the morning air carries jumbled voices. Whatever they’ve found has to be big.
Acid churns in my gut when an ambulance enters the courtyard. I duck behind the door as paramedics rush past with a stretcher. What the hell is happening?
Minutes crawl by like hours. I wrap my arms around myself, shivering in my woolen dress. I’m almost certain this isn’t about me, but everything feels wrong. Like the world has skewed sideways and I’m about to slide off.
Finally, Hayes appears from around the corner, his face grim. Morrison trails behind him, speaking into his phone in urgent, clipped tones.
“Ms. Burlington, we need you to come with us for an identification,” says the older man.
My throat closes up. Identification means a body. “What did you find?”
“We’d rather show you. This way.”
On trembling legs, I follow them around the house. Gravel crunches underfoot as we pass the rose bushes where I hid yesterday morning when Rochester released me from captivity. Once again, I regret staying, as each step brings me closer to something I don’t want to see.
We reach the back gardens where the paramedics wait at the pond’s edge with the cops and canines.Officers in waders stand waist-deep in the water, floating something between them that’s shaped like a body.
My blood curdles. It’s a woman in a white dress floating face-down on the surface. Her black hair fans out around her head like spilled ink. Her arms drift at her sides, pale and lifeless. The fabric of her dress billows around her body, melding into the water.
I recognize that dress.
I recognize that body.
It’s Blanche.
As we reach the edge of the water, darkness closes in around my vision like a tunnel. My gaze skips from her pale skin to the white fabric moving with the gentle current because anything is better than facing the truth. Blanche is dead. Like she finally followed through on that threat to drown herself.
Or did she?
“Oh god.” The words slip out as a whisper. I press a hand to my mouth to stop myself from saying anything else.
“Is that Mrs. Rochester?” Hayes asks, his voice gentle.
By now, they’ve turned around the body. Her face is slack and pale, lips parted, eyes clouded. Her fingers hang limp, wrinkled and white from the water. An officer crouches at the pond’s edge, scooping small baggies of white powder into an evidence pouch.
Terror seizes my throat. I can’t speak. Can’t breathe. Can’t process what I’m seeing. My pulse thuds in my ears, drowning out all sound.
Hayes grips my shoulder and gives me a hard shake, snapping me out of my fugue. “Ms. Burlington?”
“I... yes. That’s Blanche.”
