It had been the three of them against the world until she and Eustace went their separate ways geographically—Cordelia settling for Dallas, Eustace “finding herself” in Colorado, Maggie splitting the difference in Oklahoma.
But her sister only responded with a vague “You know how that goes.”
They quickly waned to an unsettled silence after that, staring out their respective windows, drinking in the green countryside. It was uncomfortable having a personal conversation with a stranger listening in, and they’d left too many words unsaid for too long.
The young man eventually gave them his name—Arkin. It was as weird a name as Cordelia had ever heard, but then again, she married aJohn.
Curious about the woman who’d left her whole world to two great-nieces she never met, she cleared her throat and leaned forward. “Were you acquainted with our aunt?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, not meeting her eyes in the rearview mirror.
She tapped Eustace on the knee. “What was she like?” She imagined one wild rendition after another of her mother’s aunt—recluse, hoarder, drunk.
Arkin swallowed audibly. “Imposing,” he said with no further explanation.
Cordelia looked at Eustace with wide eyes.
“She was tall then?” Cordelia assumed. Maggie had been a hearty five foot eight, and Eustace was pushing five foot nine, but Cordelia had never made it much past five foot six.
“Not particularly,” he said.
This time, it was Eustace’s eyes that widened. “Can I ask… I mean, how exactly did she die?” she pressed.
Beside her, Cordelia sighed.
It wasn’t so unusual a request. She was their relative, after all; it could affect their medical history. For her own part, Cordelia wondered about the headaches she’d seemingly inherited. What caused them exactly? Who had Maggie gotten them from? Did their aunt succumb to them at last like she had? How, then, had she managed to live so much longer? And most important, how could Cordelia circumvent the same mortal fate? She’d raised questions like these with more than one doctor over the years, only to find their answers bleak and vague. The truth was, like her mother before her, Cordelia fell into one of those maddening cracks the medical community preferred to ignore rather than admit the truth—they simply did not know.
But Eustace wasn’t worried about blood pressure or hardening arteries or even the headaches their mother suffered. She and Cordelia had graver concerns since losing Maggie.
The medical examiner called it a brain aneurysm, but the sisters knew the headaches had finally killed her. They might have left it at that except for one strange detail. How did the woman on the phone phrase it?A minor mutilation.
When they’d found her in a back parking lot next to her car,someone had taken a patch of their mother’s skin. Carved away the flesh between her breasts where her tattoo sat like a trophy. It was a bizarre, rudimentary inking of a leafless tree with three branches. Cordelia had never been sure what it meant, and Maggie refused to talk about it. What interest would anyone have in removing it? Did they find her dead and decide to keep a piece, or had the attack brought on the bleed in her brain?
These were questions the county would never answer—Maggie Bone was inconsequential to anyone except her girls. Police could only say there was no evidence of a struggle.
Cordelia had locked her suspicions about what happened to their mother inside with the all the other things she couldn’t explain. She was riddled with peculiarities. It almost seemed fitting that even her death was a mystery. Like her past, her taste in men, her hatred for music. Maggie Bone was a puzzle Cordelia grew tired of trying to solve. Until she began having the headaches herself.
But Eustace could never let it go.
Arkin locked his gaze on the road, stiffening in his seat. “She was old,” he said, as if time itself were fatal.
“Were there any parts missing?” Eustace asked bitterly.
Arkin’s eyes shot to hers in the rearview mirror. “Pardon?”
“Nothing,” Cordelia told him, glaring at her sister.
He abruptly turned the radio on. The heady, metallic twang of a Bruce Springsteen hit poured into the cabin.
Cordelia leaned back in her seat, accepting that the Q&A was over. But she could only stand it a few minutes. “Can you turn that off?” she asked irritably. “Please. No music.”
“Like mother, like daughter,” Eustace muttered.
A distaste for music was admittedly odd. It was like having a distaste for chocolate or puppies. But that was Maggie. She hated any kind of music and any kind of animal, regardless how benign. She never did yard work, detested cooking, and refusedto enter cemeteries. She wasn’t religious—never even spoke of God—but she thought gambling was a cardinal sin. And she loved bad men. Real drifter types. Men with no ties who would vanish as quickly as they appeared. Not entirely unlike herself.
Cordelia’s dislike of music was acquired. The result of having its innumerable mystifying evils pounded into her throughout her childhood. When she was very young, she used to hear strange melodies in her head. They weren’t like normal songs, and she never put words to them. She tried to hum a few, but once Maggie caught her she was too afraid to do it again. They weren’t even allowed to sing “Happy Birthday” growing up. For Cordelia, the programming had stuck. Eustace however, got right over it while briefly sleeping with the bassist in a well-known rock band.
Quiet fell over them again. Cordelia fixed her eyes on the sweeping terrain outside and tried to imagine telling her sister about John over dinner. She felt strangely lulled by the drive, as if with every mile a vise loosened its grip around her heart. The headache nestling inside her since she’d gotten up that morning, ominous and raw, was miraculously fading against the backdrop of forested hills, farmland, and a clear New England sky. Even the uncertainty she’d felt at the airport had settled from her spine into her hips as a dull restlessness, the result of too many hours sitting in one position.
