Marguerite is at work again in the tower, obsessed with undoing the past. At dinner, when I ask if her efforts have borne any fruit, she gives me a cryptic smile. “I’m working it all out. Sorting through things. Trying to find the eye of the needle, my dear.” I’ve come to believe her task futile, and somewhat delusional, but even if it is, the effort has given her purpose and her life fresh meaning. I decide to let well enough alone, given that the hauntings seem to have diminished, and Weston has not reappeared, much to my relief.
As the days grow short and the nights long, sleep eludes me. Despite my husband’s presence, I find myself growing more and more restless. I’m distracted. Forgetful. I long for the relatively carefree days when Melva and Harriet were here to help. Marguerite’s decline has become precipitous. Between her confusion and increasing physical frailty, I’m worn thin, making sure she remains safe while also completing my daily household chores. With his tasks—weatherproofing the house and gardens for winter, and preparing our meals, I know Beckett is just as exhausted. Our marriage begins to show the strain. We’re more agitated. Short tempered. One morning, after gathering firewood for the kitchen stove, I forget to latch the screen door. A few moments later, while Beckett makes breakfast, the bitter north wind rushes across the hillside, ripping the door from its hinges with a sharp crack. I watch it tumble end over end across the lawn, before it comes to rest against a bare-limbed hedge apple tree.
“Dammit, Sadie!” Beckett scolds. “I’ve told you a thousand times to latch the door when you come in.”
“Well, if you’d filled the hod last night, like you usually do, I wouldn’t have had to go out to get more wood.”
“Watch the bacon.” He stalks outside, slamming the door behind him.
I watch the bacon sizzle for a few minutes, my eyes smarting with tears, then sit at the table, thumbing through the new Sears and Roebuck catalog. Then I remember my coffee cup, which I left in theparlor. When I return to the kitchen, the bacon is charred, acrid smoke filling the small room. I throw open the window over the sink and hurriedly wipe out the skillet before Beckett comes in and sees even more evidence of my carelessness.
I pull fresh rashers from the icebox and start again. I hear Beckett hammering new nails into the door hinges, cursing as he works. After breakfast, we spend the day in stony silence. He doesn’t apologize, and neither do I. My grudge settles in, as I consider all the ways Beckett has fallen short of my expectations since our wedding. He’s often aloof. Emotionally stilted. Driven by his work. Today wasn’t the first time he’s shown a lack of patience with my mistakes. With the weight of our responsibilities and Harriet’s departure, our pleasure in one another’s company has diminished. Our lovemaking has fallen to the wayside as a result.
As the days roll toward December, the lapses in my memory grow sharper. I find myself forgetting what day of the week it is. And when I insist that it’s 1922 and Harding is still president, Beckett shows me a newspaper to prove otherwise.
“Sadie, what’s gotten into you?” he asks. “You sound like Marguerite.”
Worse yet, my urges to seek out Weston have returned. Late at night, while my husband sleeps beside me, I find myself longing for the scrape of teeth against my flesh, for the carnal, wicked pleasures I once enjoyed with Weston. It’s shameful. Dangerous. Yet the temptation is ever near. If Marguerite succeeds in destroying his painting in the past, or never painting it at all, I may never see him again. And so one frigid night in early December, when the moon hangs low and yellow, I’m far too weak to resist my own curiosity. In the wee hours of the morning, I find myself walking, trancelike, to the library and Marguerite’s tower, where Weston’s portrait awaits.
I place a lantern on the table next to the easel and uncover the painting. It’s changed. It’s no longer in its gilded frame, and there’s a dull sheen over Weston’s features, as if a wash of translucent white painthas been applied. When I touch the surface, nothing happens. Nothing at all. I try again, frustration and longing flooding through me. “Why won’t you open to me? I’m here, Weston. Don’t you still want me?”
Sadie . . .
The whispered sound of my name startles me. I snatch my hand back from Weston’s portrait, glancing up. There’s no one there. But out of the corner of my eye, I see Iris move inside her portrait. I gasp. The background of the painting has changed—the scene by the river is gone. In its place, the same seaside bluff I saw in my dream, the soft sound of breaking waves audible even though we are hundreds of miles from any ocean. It no longer looks like a painting; it looks like what it truly is: a window into another world.
Come, Sadie. It’s time you learn the truth.
Iris’s lips don’t move, but I can hear her voice inside my head. I hesitate, for the briefest moment, my emotions tangling. I have a feeling if I go through that painting and see what Iris wants to show me, it will change everything. Still, I step toward her portrait and reach out, unable to resist the pull of my curiosity. Vertigo washes over me, sending my senses into a spin.
Interlude
Iris
Iris stands in front of an easel in a room overlooking a fog-wreathed mountain, its grassy slope angled sharply down to the shore. Sadie approaches and sees that she’s sketching Weston. “He’s such an engaging subject, isn’t he?” Iris asks, glancing up. “It’s not just his looks, but his presence. I can see why you were taken in by him.”
“You called me here, didn’t you?”
“Yes. I did,” she says. “Because you need to know the truth, Sadie. All of it.”
Sadie looks out the window at the dramatic coastline. “We’re in California, aren’t we?”
“Yes. Big Sur, south of San Francisco. In 1881. We’re here because you need to see what happened that summer. So you can confront Marguerite with the truth and help her right the wrongs of the past before she dies.”
“I’m not sure how Icanhelp,” Sadie says. “Aunt Marg said that I can’t interfere—that only she can change what happened in this world. In the past.”
“Yes, but what she’s doing is a waste of precious time. Painting over Weston. Destroying Florence’s manuscript. None of it will matter, because she still believes her own delusion.” Iris motions to the sketchof Weston. “It’s the way her mind has protected itself for all these years. How she’s justified what really happened.”
“‘Delusion.’ You’re talking about Weston.”
“Yes,” she says, “he’s merely the scapegoat.”
“What do you mean?”
Iris rises, wipes the charcoal from her hands on a scrap of linen. “Do you trust me, Sadie? To tell you the truth? All of it?”
“If you’re anything at all like your nephew, who I trust more than anyone else, then yes.”
“Good. Because what you’re about to see won’t be easy. I wouldn’t lie about this. That would be cruel.”
