“So, you’ll help me?” Eustace asked, brightening.
“Do what exactly?”
“Dig!” Eustace insisted. “Investigate. Turn this place over until we find enough clues to fill in the blanks between this photo, our mother’s death, and the family she made sure we knew nothing about. This time is a gift, Cordy. This place… it brought us back together. What if that was for a reason?”
“Okay.” She couldn’t deny her sister after leaving her to face surgery and chemo all alone for the last year. And she could no longer deny herself. Whatever the cost of knowing, it couldn’t be higher thannotknowing. Could it? “Just promise me one thing.”
Eustace beamed. “What?”
She pointed at the photo. “You’ll never ask me to wear that much eye makeup.”
CHAPTER EIGHTTHEFUNERAL
“THAT’S THE LASTof them,” Gordon said, eyeing Cordelia darkly as he carried a black trash bag through the kitchen, heavy with the lifeless bodies of her assailants.
Feeling culpable, she took a step back. “Thank you for taking care of this.”
He nodded briskly. “I’ll have to report this to the wildlife department.”
“Why?” Eustace asked, emerging from the pantry. “We didn’t do anything. We just found them like that.”
“That’s exactly why,” Gordon told her. “They’re a protected species. They’ll want to investigate, see if there’s a new virus or disease that could be responsible. Something they need to protect the other colonies from.”
“They sort of did it to themselves,” Cordelia supplied, knowing it sounded ridiculous even as she said it. But he’d heard them that night beating against the door. She needed him to believe her.
He stared at her, one brow cocked, appraising.
“It was a mass suicide,” Eustace said plainly, and Gordon’s eyebrow arched so high it practically disappeared into his hairline.
“What she means is they seemed driven by something. In a frenzy,” Cordelia rushed to clarify.
A shadow passed across Gordon’s face, unreadable.
“Do we need to… I don’t know… fumigate the room or something?” Cordelia asked him, rubbing her hands together.
He ran a palm over his flanneled chest. She couldn’t help noticing how the sleeves strained to contain his arms. “No, nothing like that. There’s a vacuum on the third floor if you want to give the room a cleaning. But I would warn you against sleeping in there again just in case the disease is zoonotic.”
“I doubt I can bring myself to go back in that room at all, let alone sleep in there,” Cordelia told him.
“I set the rest of your personal things in the hall. In case you felt that way.”
She looked down, flustered to know he’d handled her things.
“I, uh, couldn’t help but notice the bathroom,” he said now, and waited for either of them to respond.
“Oh that,” Eustace said with a nervous laugh.
“The knob was stuck,” Cordelia chimed in. “Eustace couldn’t get out.”
Gordon didn’t respond, but his expression was layered heavily with skepticism.
“I was trying to shoulder it open,” Cordelia attempted to explain, suddenly aware of how dainty her shoulders seemed.
“She pushed when I pulled,” Eustace added.
“Yes,” Cordelia said. “It was both of us.”
His eyes narrowed, pinging between them.
