“What, Pauline? My mother was what?”
Pauline sucks in her lip. “She was ashamed, Sadie. Ashamed of you. She told Mama she couldn’t believe how far you’d fallen, to take up with a married man. She said that worrying over you would be the death of her.”
The words cut into me like thorns. Part of me pushes back—disbelieving that my sweet, caring mother would ever say such a thing about one of her children—but then I remember her words to me, when the truth came out. Words I’ll never forget.He’s covered you in shame, Sadie. I raised you for better than this.And she had, just as my grandmother had raisedher, despite the dark secrets Grandmother had kept hidden from all of us.
A secret that now sits on my dresser, with hungry, heartless eyes.
“I don’t believe you,” I say to Pauline. “I think you’re making things up to be mean. To hurt me.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because you’ve always hated me. Louise does, too, but at least she has the grace to hide it behind a smile.”
“I don’t hate you, Sadie. I pity you. You’re just ...” Pauline sighs dramatically. “You’re just soloose.”
I flinch, hearing such a crass word fall from my prim cousin’s lips, but then I laugh, my lingering kindness taking flight. “Andyou’rea prude. Perhaps that’s why you can’t find a beau, dear cousin. They take one look at you and know your bed would be a cold, barren desert.” Her mouth drops open. “Tomorrow morning, I want you gone. All of you. You can tell Louise. I’ll have Beckett drive you to the station.”
Pauline’s sallow face flares with pinpricks of red. “Louise says you’re only here because you want Aunt Marg’s money. This house,” she sputters. “She and Felix have been talking. He thinks the same thing.”
“Oh? Is that so? Well, I don’t see anyone else in this family willing to give up their precious lives for Aunt Marg’s sake. Not even one of you. Think of me what you will, Pauline. I care very little about your opinions. I never have.”
I storm out of the room, my anger souring the wine in my stomach.You’re just soloose. The word is vulgar. Offensive in what it implies. I was a flapper, yes. I’d flirted, gone to petting parties, had a handful of lovers before Ted, worked at a supper club with a topless cabaret. But I’m hardly the harlot they imagine me to be.
Not that it matters. Even if I’d been as chaste and prudish as Pauline, in my family’s eyes, I’d always be a nothing. A nobody.
I’m halfway down the stairs when I smell smoke. I pause on the landing, sniffing. It’s coming from above me. The attic.Marguerite.With Beckett occupied with the children and the hubbub over bedroom arrangements, no one was watching her. I take the steps two at a time, flinging open the attic door. The unmistakable flicker of flames reflects on the ceiling.
“Beckett!” I scream, covering my nose with my apron as smoke rolls toward me. “Help! Fire!”
I stumble upward, heat accosting me. Through the smoke, I glimpse Marguerite standing in front of my dresser, a bottle of turpentine in her hand, watching as Weston’s portrait burns, flames darting toward the dry lath above us. Time seems to slow to a crawl as I push her out of the way and grab the covers from my bed, throwing them over the burning painting. It falls to the floor, still smoldering beneath the quilts. I stomp the flames out and then turn to the wall, where tendrils of fire are beginning to catch. I remember my basin full of wash water from this morning, and haul it out of the washstand, water splashing over the rim and cascading over my arms as I rush back across the room to douse the flames. They die with a wet sizzle, and I collapse onto the edge of my bed, my legs shaking. Marguerite sits next to me, calm as a windless sea.
“Are you hurt?” I ask, looking her over. No burns, at least none that I can see in the dim light.
“I’m just fine,” she says. She gestures at the sodden mess on the floor. “That should have been done a long time ago.”
“Maybe,” I concede, “but not inside the house. You could have killed us all, Aunt Marg.”
“I had things well under control, my girl. Well under hand.”
I coax the bottle of turpentine away from her—the same bottle Beckett procured in town earlier this week. Another thing I’ll have to hide, as well as the matches she must have found somewhere to start the fire.
Footsteps clatter up the attic steps. My cousins and Beckett burst into the smoky murk, eyes bouncing from me to Marguerite to the smoldering mess on the floor. The space reeks of turpentine.
“What happened?” Louise asks while Pauline merely scowls at me over her shoulder.
“Aunt Marg decided one of her paintings wasn’t to her liking,” I say lightly. “So she burned it.”
“Oh. Ohmy.” Louise’s eyes widen. For a moment, I think she might faint, but Pauline goes to her, fanning her hand in front of her face. Louise slaps her away in annoyance.
Beckett crosses to my side, helps me to my feet. At his touch, reality comes crashing down. I might have died. Marguerite might have. My knees tremble, my heart racing as delayed panic overtakes me, stealing my breath. “I need air,” I pant. “I can’t breathe. Louise, Pauline, can you take Aunt Marg downstairs? Stay with her. Please.”
Beckett leads me outside, onto the front veranda, my head pounding from the acrid smoke. The air is cool, soothing. He guides me to the porch swing and sits next to me, rocking us slowly back and forth until my breathing steadies and my heart resumes its normal cadence.
“I’m moving into the house, Sadie,” Beckett says. “I won’t hear anything else about it. If you hadn’t ...”
“I know.” If I hadn’t noticed the smoke when I did ... if I’d lingered even just a moment longer, the outcome might have been tragic.
“I’ll take one of the bedrooms across the hall from Marguerite,” he says. “I’m a light sleeper. I’ll hear her if she gets up.”
