“I did no such thing.” Florence begins to cry, shakes her head violently. “No. No!”
“We have to fetch the constable, Marg,” Iris says, the only calm voice in the midst of this frenzied anguish. “He’ll know what to do.”
“Did no one else see them?” Marguerite asks, frantic. “Didnoneof you see what just happened?”
“Itmusthave been an accident. A terrible accident.” Weston shakes his head, wipes his eyes. He goes to Florence’s side, and she wilts against him, sobbing. “It was an accident, wasn’t it, Florence? Please tell me it was.”
“Yes, yes,” Florence says. “Of course it was. You believe me, don’t you?”
“I’ll go down to the beach,” Weston says gently, disengaging Florence from his arms. “She might have survived.”
“Yes,” Florence said, nodding rapidly. “She’s still alive. She must be.”
Something shifts in Marguerite’s demeanor. A hardness enters her eyes. “You’re mad. Both of you! She’s dead!” She stalks forward,seething. “This isyourfault, Florence. Every bit of it.” Marguerite grasps a handful of Florence’s hair, twisting it. Florence cries out, sinking to her knees. Marguerite wrestles her to the ground, teeth clenched, eyes wild as she stands over her sister.
And that’s when Sadie sees the knife clutched in Marguerite’s hand, half-concealed by her long skirts. A simple table knife, the same one she used to cut the tea sandwiches, its edge serrated.
Weston sees the knife at the same time, terror in his eyes as he hurtles forward. “Marguerite, no!”
Everything that happens after is a frenzied blur as Weston tries to pull the women apart, like two vicious, feral dogs. Suddenly, he cries out, eyes lit with shock. An arc of blood shoots forward, painting the ground crimson. Weston stumbles, clutching his neck, blood spouting like a fountain between his fingers. Marguerite screams, dropping the bloodied knife. “No! Weston!” She rushes to his side, futilely trying to catch him as he collapses, panic blanching her features as she wraps the tail of the skirt around his neck in an attempt to stanch the bleeding.
Iris rushes to Marguerite’s side as Florence begins to wail.
“God, help!” Florence cries, clambering across the ground and shielding Weston with her body, desperately clawing at his chest. “Oh God! Please don’t die, my love, please don’t die.”
The scene fades from view, the whispering sound of the sea muted. Sadie realizes she’s back in Iris’s room. She sinks onto the edge of Iris’s bed, her mind reeling from the horror she’s just witnessed.
“We dragged Weston’s body into the sea, at high tide,” Iris intones, her voice hollow. She continues sketching, adding shading to Weston’s jawline with a thin stick of charcoal. “No one questioned his disappearance. He had no living family. No one to miss him. As for Claire, Bram had enough social standing to ensure no one would ask the sorts of questions that would endanger his reputation, nor those of hisdaughters. They shipped Claire’s body in a private railcar back to Kansas City, gave her a full requiem mass, and buried her in hallowed ground without incident. Only I, Florence, and Marguerite ever knew the full truth of what happened. I loved Marguerite enough to keep her secrets. I protected her. And Marguerite protected Florence, for Laura’s sake. Florence went mad. Spent a year in an asylum. It was terrible. You can’t begin to imagine. Marguerite was never the same after that day. None of us were.”
Sadie stands and paces the room, her mind reeling. Marguerite, a murderer. Her grandmother, guilty of potential fratricide. She doesn’t want to believe any of it. She can’t. “But Marguerite said that Weston wasn’t real, that he was an invention—the hero of Florence’s romantic story that she painted into reality.”
“No. He lived, Sadie. He was a real person. Marguerite can’t face the truth of what happened that day, so she made up a story. A delusion. She’s been in denial for decades. And it’s cost all of us dearly.” Iris shakes her head. “Weston’s spirit wants vengeance. He’s angry. And so he’s punished us by destroying those we love. First Sybil, my only granddaughter. Now he’s trying to destroy you.”
“To what good end can any of this come? How can I change things?”
“The only way you can is by confronting Marguerite with what I’ve just shown you. Help her remember. So that she uses the time she has left to make things right. I’ll help her if she comes to me. If she prevents Weston’s murder, her actions will ripple down through time, to you. It’s the only way you’ll ever be safe from Weston’s vengeance ... and I have the frailest hope that if she’s successful, it might bring my Sybil back, too.” Iris looks up at me, her eyes brimming with tears. “You have to make her see the truth, Sadie. You must.”
Chapter 37
December 7, 1925
I come to my senses gradually, wading out of the fog of time and memory, warm morning light spilling into the tower’s windows. I’m so horrified by what I’ve witnessed—Claire’s fall, Weston’s death—that I don’t know if I can bring myself to look Marguerite in the eye. I return to my and Beckett’s room. He’s already up, the covers pulled taut over the mattress. As I’m dressing, he raps on the door, then enters.
“Where were you?” he asks. “You were gone when I woke up.”
“I ... I couldn’t sleep. I went to the library to read,” I say, turning my back to him. I shrug a sweater over my slip and step into my skirt.
He crosses to me, wraps his arms around me from behind, resting his chin on my shoulder. “I was just worried about you. That’s all.”
I turn in his arms and kiss him, my guilt over seeking out Weston the night before keen. I’m grateful that my temptation didn’t yield success. In the light of day, I can see how foolish I was. “How’s Marguerite doing this morning?” I ask.
“She’s in the dining room. I made breakfast,” Beckett says. “I can’t get her to eat anything, but perhaps you can. She was having a hallucination when she woke. About the lost baby again. I managed to get her calmed down.”
I know who Marguerite’s lost baby is now. My mother. A pang of sympathy runs through me. Although I witnessed Marguerite killWeston last night, my compassion for her remains. It was likely an accident—a terrible one. And according to Iris, there might still be a chance she can save him and, in the process, save Sybil. Maybe even Claire ... if I can convince her to finally face the truth.
Marguerite is sitting in a puddle of sunshine when I enter the dining room, staring out the window, her hands folded in her lap like innocent doves. On the sideboard a tray of pastries and a steaming tea samovar await. I pour myself and Marguerite a cup, add three sugar cubes to mine, and cross to her with a plateful of pastries. “Beck made all sorts of good things for us this morning, Aunt Marg. Won’t you have something?”
She waves the food away. “I haven’t been able to change a thing,” she says, her voice haunted and low. “I’ve tried. Five times now. Each time I go back, I refuse Florence’s request to paint him. I even burned her manuscript. Yet Weston still appears at her debut. They still dance. Still fall in love, no matter what I do.”
