“Yes, but ... I want to be sure she’s at the wedding. Even if it has to be a courthouse affair.”
His eyes glaze, and he looks down. I lean into him, resting my head beneath his chin, listening to the steady beat of his heart. “It’s going to make her very happy, our marriage.”
“It’s going to make me very happy, too.”
We’re married the following Wednesday, inside the judge’s chambers at the Carroll County courthouse, with Marguerite and Harriet our only witnesses. I wear my best dress—a gorgeous ecru crepe de chine Lanvin accented with seed pearls. The drive home is filled with laughter, my heart light and heavy all at once. I’d felt my mother’s absence keenly as I took my simple vows. With some absurdity, I think of how pleased she’d be that my initials will remain the same. Sadie Frances Hill. It has a ring to it, I must admit. That evening, we celebrate over dinner by opening a dusty bottle of Veuve Clicquot Harriet found in the root cellar. Even she raises a glass to toast us, relaxing her teetotalism to celebrate our wedding. Later that night, I lead Beckett to my room, where the protective altar burns with fresh candles from the five-and-dime. My gown has hardly hit the floor before we’re consummating our union, his body melding with mine, our eagerness for one another undeniable.
“My brother will be furious when he finds out what we’ve done,” I say later, as the moon shatters silver light over us. “Even more so once he sees that will.”
“Let him be mad,” Beckett says, pressing a kiss to the back of my neck. “You deserve to be happy, Sadie. You’re the only one who steppedup to care for Marguerite. She wanted this place to go to your mother. There must be a reason for that.”
I’ve pondered the reasons ever since I discovered the will. In recent years, my mother and Aunt Marguerite had barely kept in touch. Though they got along well when me and my brothers were children, we rarely saw her, apart from our summertime visits and the occasional family wedding. But perhaps, like me, Mama was one of the few relatives who tried to maintain a tie with Marguerite. Grandmother certainly never went out of her way to spend time with her, nor Aunt Grace and my cousins.
After Beckett drifts off to sleep, I leave his side and go to the library. I stare at the half-finished portrait of Marguerite as a girl. In the background are two faceless figures that weren’t there yesterday. I peer closer. Marguerite’s brushstrokes are more erratic now, given her increasing tremors, and the shakiness of her work sets my equilibrium off-balance. The feeling of vertigo starts in my belly and spins up through my head, although when I touch the painting, the dizziness ceases abruptly, like a door slamming shut.
The other portraits remain still as well.
It frustrates me. With every passing day, and Marguerite’s health fading, the chances of uncovering the secrets in her past narrow more and more.
Unable to sleep, I light an oil lamp and make my way to the attic to finish going through the steamer trunk where I found Marguerite’s will. A feeling of unease prickles along my spine as I enter the darkened room, the lamp casting a spare ring of light in front of me. I whisper the prayer to Saint Michael as I kneel on the floor and open the trunk, wary of any small sound. Wary of being watched. I pull out the bundle of envelopes and untie them. The first is postmarked with a London address. I slide it open with my finger, drawing out the folded letter. It’s from Iris, her bold signature slashing across the bottom of the thin onionskin paper.
April 2nd, 1881
My darling,
I am sorry to hear of your illness. The London damp has me in a state as well—it is still wretchedly cold here most days, though I’ve enjoyed my studies. Rossetti is just as much of a recluse as rumored. Yet he deigned to entertain me all the same, thanks to the solicitude of Miss Wilding. His command of oils is extraordinary ... I have pages of notes to share with you. I’m eager to return to your side. This California holiday will do us good—and it will be good for you to be reconciled with your sisters as well. We’ll have a merry time, the four of us. You mustn’t hold on to the past with any sort of bitterness. I’m looking upon your portrait now and counting the days until I can kiss you.
Ever yours,
Iris
So, therewasa California holiday. Iris was there, too, in 1881—the same year Claire died. I open another envelope, this one dated January 1882, and read Iris’s slanting hand.
My darling,
There is no use trying to reason with her. She will never see your side. The three of us are bound together forever by this terrible thing, and for your own good, and Laura’s, it’s best if you try to forget. Pretend it was all an awful dream. Come to me this spring. Neil is eager to meet you. He knows about our great fondness for one another and won’t mind if you steal me away for a time. I miss you dreadfully.
Iris
Just as I suspected, something must have happened on the California trip. Something terrible. But what? I remember the interlude I witnessed when I journeyed to the past through Iris’s painting. The disturbing dream I had, of Marguerite on the edge of the cliff, a bloodied knife at her feet, and Claire’s broken body on the rocky beach below—a beach that must have been in California, despite Marguerite’s denial. Did Iris witness what happened?
The three of us are bound together forever by this terrible thing.
I open the other four letters in the packet, reading them one after another. There’s no more mention of theterrible thing—only the same sort of recounting of events I read in the letters from my grandmother. Iris’s wedding. The birth of her son. Her 1883 show at the Tate Gallery, after which she received several commissions.
I re-tie the letters and replace them, then parse through the rest of the trunk. Near the bottom, I find a small canvas turned on its face, with a lock of red-gold hair tucked beneath the bracing. I turn over the painting, my breath catching as I do. It’s an unfinished portrait of my young mother in profile, her hair swept beneath a novice’s white veil, a crucifix dangling from the rosary in her prayer-folded hands. Above Marguerite’s signature and the date, there’s a name.
Penny.
I pace the halls until the wee hours of the morning, my mind and emotions scaling up and down. I’d never known my mother entered the novitiate, intending to become a nun. No one ever spoke of it, least of all her. And why had she gone by the name Penny? Of what significance was it?
I have so many questions for Marguerite. Questions I’ll no longer delay. The temptation to wake her is strong. She’s at her most lucid early in the day. But I restrain myself.
I’m on my way to the powder room when a flicker of movement catches my eye. A flash of white, almost like the tail of an old-fashioned nightgown. A soft susurration follows, a whispered word. A woman’s voice.
I turn to go to my and Beckett’s room, suddenly afraid. But as I reach for the doorknob, a pallid form passes in front of the mirror near the staircase and gracefully descends.
Iris.
