“No,” Cordelia agreed. “Not those things.”
“So why leave then? Why deprive herself and us?”
Cordelia rubbed her arms up and down as if she were caught in a snowdrift. “Something must have happened to change her. Something in this house.” Something that made Maggie hate animals and dead people and standing still. Something that ripped the music out of her, the health, the joy.
She turned away from the dresser, eyes crawling aroundthe room, lured by the dusty old pillows spilling along the bed and the sable comforter, needlepoint and frayed lace. Cordelia walked over and sat down on the edge, gripping the mattress. “Do you think she died in here? Aunt Augusta?”
Her sister cast a wary look around, eyes falling on the bed accusingly. “Probably.”
Cordelia wanted to ask if her sister felt the house breathing the way she did. If she sensed the company it kept. But outside of her own mind, the words didn’t make sense, and she couldn’t bring herself to speak them. Instead, she turned and picked up one of the throw pillows, small with flowers knotted into it. Then she picked up another and another and another. She pulled and pulled until the last of them had been tossed to the floor.
Her eyes narrowed. “Look at this.”
Eustace placed a knee on the bed, leaning toward the wall where Cordelia was reaching for the beadboard.
“Do you see it?”
“See what?” Eustace asked.
“That,” she said, pointing to a series of scratches in the wood.
Eustace leaned closer, squinting. “Probably just from something she was wearing.”
“To bed?” Cordelia asked.
“Or maybe a pet?” Eustace suggested. “I had this cat—you remember Clawdius Germanicus—that completely destroyed the bamboo flooring in my guest room.”
“Only you would name a cat after a Roman emperor,” Cordelia said, ignoring her sister.
“He had a regal bearing.”
Cordelia looked closer at the wall. The marks were deep, the shape too intentional to be an accident. “It looks like… a letter? AYmaybe. Was she trying to spell something?”
Eustace shook her head. “The lines at the top are too close together.”
Eustace was right—the top two lines didn’t vee far enough out to look like a letterY. But to the right, a tiny line was just emerging, cut off before she could finish it.
“Eustace?” Cordelia asked in a whisper, her throat suddenly too dry for proper sound. “Does this remind you of something?”
Eustace started to roll her eyes and wave her sister off, and then froze as if struck. Slowly, she turned back to the wall. “Mom.”
“Her tattoo,” Cordelia clarified, meeting her sister’s eyes. The one that had been cut from Maggie’s body at the time of her death.
Eustace took a step away from the bed.
But Cordelia drew closer, her nose nearly touching the paint. She saw something sticking out of the scratched groove and reached for it, gripping it between thumb and finger. It came away easily and she laid it in her palm, immediately regretting that decision.
“Cordy,” Eustace asked in disbelief. “What is that?”
She looked up into her sister’s face. “A fingernail.”
Eustace knocked it from her hand, and it landed somewhere among the pile of pillows. “Well, that confirms it. I’m not sleeping in here tonight.”
Cordelia rubbed her palm on her thigh and stood up. She gathered the pillows and replaced them on the bed, covering the scratches. “Maybe it’s just a coincidence,” she stammered. “Would they even know about Mom’s tattoo? Wasn’t that after she left?”
“Beats me,” Eustace said. “But what are the odds? It has to mean something.”
“What do you think happened to her?” she asked, moving away from the bed. “Our aunt?”
