“Can you help us?” Eustace asked, louder this time. “Can you save my sister?”
A key on the pump organ dropped and a booming note filled the air. Cordelia swooned.
“We call on Maggie Bone!” Eustace roared, encouraged to a near frenzy. “Mom! Are you here? Tell us what happened to you! Who hurt you?”
Several keys on the pump organ pressed down, releasing a devastating noise, loud and dissonant. Between her slitted eyelids, Cordelia could see the shuffling energy of hundreds of spirits crowding into the room like a wall of pearly vapor. Faces vied for their position in the mist—a row of jutting teeth, a protruding nose, an open, empty mouth, angles that could be elbows or shoulders, the press of a palm. She shuddered as they rolled into and out of view, squeezing around her and Eustace, brushing against her ear or the back of her neck, every touch a cold sting.And through them all, a voice she knew too well: their mother, Maggie, calling with such distress Cordelia thought it must be the sound of her very death.
Something in her head snapped. Cordelia jerked her hands free of her sister’s and the candle flames between them all snuffed at once. She couldn’t be here in this room, with their frigid, sucking presence, like leeches from the grave, and with the helpless dread in her mother’s voice, an echo of her final moments.
Leaping from her chair, she upset the table and urn, the book and photo and candlesticks all plummeting to the floor. She pushed past her sister and bolted out the front door into the night, leaving Eustace calling her name.
She didn’t stop running until the soft lights of the carriage house swam into view.
Before she knew what was happening, Cordelia found herself pounding on the glass of Gordon’s door.
He opened it, concerned. “Cordelia?”
“Can I come in?” she asked, pushing her way inside without waiting to hear his answer, gripping the door frame, then his arm, then the table as if she were drunk.
He slid the door closed behind her, searching the night for answers. Then he turned. “What’s going on? Are you okay? Your sister?”
She pushed herself off the table, standing awkwardly in the center of his room, arms wrapped around herself. “I’m sorry. I just… I don’t know why I came here. Or if I can talk about it. Can I get a drink?”
Looking baffled, he approached her slowly, her legs and torso tensing. He lifted her chin with a finger, looking her over as if the imprint of what had happened were stamped across her body. She trembled under his careful glare before pulling her face away. “I’m not hurt.”
“You’re scared,” he said bluntly, and an angry vigilance flashed across his face.
“How about that drink?” she asked again, not wanting to relive it.
Reluctantly, he walked over to the kitchen and pulled a glass from the cabinet. “Is water fine? You want ice?”
She forced a smile. “Do you have something stronger?”
Gordon lowered the glass to the counter. “Stronger like Pepsi?”
“Stronger like bourbon,” she said.
“Is that wise?” he asked before reaching into another cabinet and pulling out a bottle of Old Fitzgerald. “Will this work?”
“Bless you,” she muttered, practically ripping the lowball glass from his hand as he passed it to her. She sipped deep, finally able to catch her breath through the burn.
“That kind of night?” he asked after a minute.
“You have no idea.” She took another deep sip.
“You gonna tell me what happened or drink all my good bourbon and leave me in suspense?” The words were light, humorous, but his tone deepened with wary intensity. Her torment clearly upset him.
“Eustace happened,” she said bitterly.
“Ah.” He nodded in understanding. “I take it you two aren’t seeing eye to eye about the house.”
Cordelia sighed. “Don’t get me wrong. I love my sister. But when she gets an idea…”
He grinned then, relaxing a little. “I can imagine.”
“I’ll be fine,” she told him, taking another swig of bourbon, not sure if she needed to convince him or herself. “This has all been a lot to process.”
He leaned against his counter, watching her. “Why didn’t your mom ever bring you here? I know it’s none of my business.It seems an awful lot to turn your back on, though—family, fortune, heritage. She must have had a good reason.”
