Cordelia gawked at her sister. “Did that just happen?”
Eustace grinned back. “Shall we go in?”
She started for the front door, but Cordelia remained. “Wait,” she said, craning her head to listen. “I need a moment.”
“Suit yourself,” Eustace told her as she turned and walked across the porch to the narrow doors that reached over eight feet to meet the beadboard ceiling.
Cordelia backed down the steps and glanced up. She looked past the places with peeling paint and cracks in the mortar, past the Virginia creeper trying to reclaim one corner of the house and the wavering quality of the old windows. Instead, she listened for the spirit of the place, for the whisper.
The house held its tongue, as if it did not trust this prodigal daughter from another world, another era. But the collective drone she’d felt in the car sounded again between her ears, wrapping itself around her skull, calling from some corner of the property she couldn’t place. With effort, she pushed it aside and concentrated on the building before her, this grande dame of brickwork and lace.
And just as Cordelia had given up, Eustace opened the door. A heavy sigh escaped, as if the house had been holding its breath for too long. And with it, the first whisper, like the susurrus of a forgotten woman.
Eustace turned back to look at her, and Cordelia grinned. She grabbed her sister’s open hand.
Together, they took their first steps inside.
CHAPTER THREETHETOWER
IT WAS LIKEstanding inside a secret. From the outside, there was the distinct sense ofmore.Inside, just how much became gallingly evident. Cordelia felt like a violation and a joke at the same time. The elaborate tiles of the vestibule seemed to be mocking her with their pattern, and in the same breath, something she was never supposed to see had been laid bare, cracked open like a banned book, filling her with forbidden words. She couldn’t look away.
She lifted her chin, inhaling the house into her. She could smell antique roses—a strong floral scent underscored by peppery, lemony notes. The second she stepped out of the confines of the vestibule, it hit her with such force she sneezed.
“Figures,” Eustace said dryly. “Wewouldbe allergic to money.”
Cordelia ignored her and let her eyes wander around the grand stair hall until they began to dry out and she had to remind herself to blink. An ornate hall tree with gargoyles carved into it towered to her left, thick with varnish. A pair of balloon armchairs with emerald velvet hoods sat like empty thrones just ahead. She imagined her and her sister in them as girls, how they might have whispered back and forth to each other from inside their malachite caves. It made her heart thump with longing andbetrayal—what they might have known versus what they had. Even the black-and-tan Persian carpet beneath them upset her, too soft and delicate to be real. And yet, it all collided in a minatory impression, a burst of wicked energy just below the surface, like spiders hiding under the rug.
She searched for a flower arrangement to explain the smell, or even a dish of potpourri, but saw none. It was as if the fragrance were coming from the house itself, oiled into the parquet floors at her feet.
“Do you smell that?” she asked Eustace. “Like those old garden roses that came up under our window in the Veranda house?” They called the house so not because it had a veranda, but because it was situated on Veranda Street, which wasn’t nearly so lovely as it sounded. “Those dark ones with the squishy centers.”
Maggie had tried to dig the roses up. When that didn’t work, she hacked them down to the ground. But they kept coming back. She finally just decided to move.
Her sister fingered the anaglypta wallpaper that covered half the wall in a raised pattern, painted so dark it was almost black. The rest of the walls were papered in a rich green floral, with creeping vines and flowers and hidden woodland animals.
“Smells like bullshit to me,” she said bitterly, staring up at the massive mahogany door frame to their left, rounding overhead where it was topped with the carving of a woman’s face, wrapped in heavy braids and crowned with flowers. “Maybe you smellher.”
Cordelia stood beside her sister. Something in the carved expression tugged at her, as if it were capturing a moment in time and wasn’t just a generic rendition. She let her eyes fall through to the parlor, every inch covered in crimson velvet or brocade, like it had been hosed in blood. Even the mirror over the black marble fireplace had its own set of scarlet valances trimmed inmauve tassels. It made her wonder what she might see in the reflection if she stood before it.
Heavy furniture grouped in every corner—not a leg was left unturned or a cushion untufted, as if a swarm of grandmothers had been employed in the decorating. She was no expert in antiques, but even Cordelia could point out the spoon-back chairs and the elegant settee in silk moiré, the Regency secretary and the gothic grandfather clock—like something from Dracula’s castle. An ornate pump organ stood in a far corner, lonely and soulless, just waiting for someone to pound out theDanse Macabre. The combined assets in this room alone were well above her skill for mental calculation.
Passing under the doorway, she felt cold air stir against her skin as the room greeted her like an autumn wind. She wandered around, taking in the fringe and needlepoint, the flocked paper, the jeweled Tiffany glass. It was all so exquisite, and yet it turned her stomach like a child sick on too many sweets. The iron console behind the settee held the curious body of a stuffed fisher-cat, with near-black fur, long torso, and fierce head. It glared at her with glassy, enigmatic eyes, dead but not abandoned, something still flickering there. At a Chinese lacquered table, she dared herself to open a drawer, fearful of what might crawl out. It revealed a deck of well-worn playing cards, fussy with filigree. Lifting them, she found that little smiling skulls had been wrought into the design, but then she blinked, uncertain, and they seemed to disappear, suggesting an instant of face pareidolia.
She was about to drop the cards back inside, not wanting to think about the games played on them, things gambled away, when she noticed it lying there. It must have been beneath the cards when she picked them up. It shone dully against the glossy black wood, crusted with age, like a piece of old candy corn.A human tooth.Revulsion pulsed through Cordelia alongside inexplicable curiosity, pulling her toward it like a burning rope. The fingers of her free hand crept over the lip of the drawer, stretching, when the tooth began to wobble, clicking against the bottom like a Mexican jumping bean. Her senses flooded back to her, and she threw the cards down, slamming the drawer shut.
Looking up, she saw a tarnished silver frame with an image of a young girl, straight red hair hanging limp, barefoot in a simple cotton sundress. A waif trapped in time. Cordelia picked up the frame. She recognized her mother’s plain face and smattering of freckles, perched on the banister of the front porch like an imp from the nearby forest, more creature than girl, a blitheness Cordelia had never known in her beguiling smile.
She walked out of the parlor and passed the photo to her sister before striding to the opposite doorway, making a silent promise not to open any more drawers. This room was clearly a library, the masculine counterpart to the parlor’s feminine mystique, replete with English paneling and built-in cases crammed with thousands of leather-bound volumes, some so old their spines were eaten away at the edges, the gilded or embossed lettering nearly impossible to read. The far corner opened into a turret room, with window seats and lace panels to soften the light. Something about the shape reminded Cordelia of a cell. It felt one great iron door away from holding her hostage.
She stepped inside and danced her fingers over the nearest spine—Lord Byron—which looked like it could be a first edition. Beside him rested William Blake, Thomas Gray, Robert Frost—a cemetery of poetry. Switching on a double-globe lamp, she marveled at the hand-painted vines and small birds in flight. But they were rendered in violet, highlighted in brown and sweeps of gold, so that even the light was gloomy. A taxidermic owl with pointed, ear-like feathers and great yellow eyes stared her down. A pair of worn-leather sofas anchored the space yet looked too stiff to be comfortable. The back wall revealed a gentleman’sstudy through a broad set of pocket doors, with a bust of Homer in one corner and a rosewood desk large enough to be an operating table.
But it was the man’s portrait hanging behind the imposing desk that called to her—a somber palette of cracking oils, the workmanship exquisite. Too bad she couldn’t say the same for the model. His heavy brows and striking scowl did nothing to soften the lean and angular features of his face. Features she recognized but couldn’t place, like an actor in a play she’d tried hard to forget. Looking closer, she saw a silver plaque tacked to the bottom engraved with the nameErazmus Bone. His dark mop of hair reminded her of Eustace, turbulent and night-colored, but there was nothing of her mother’s delicate beauty in his face, or her sister’s radiance. His eyes were a storm—like her own in hue—and they made her uneasy. She felt like a child caught out while misbehaving. Turning, she found her sister standing in the doorway, the picture of their mother hanging limply in her hand.
“We’ll need to get an appraisal,” Cordelia said matter-of-factly, though her voice gave a little. She cleared her throat. “It might be best to contact an auction house. This is a lot of valuable stuff. We can’t exactly drag it out and host a yard sale.”
Eustace’s face was a mask of mixed emotion. “Mom sure has some explaining to do,” she said, passing the frame back to Cordelia and crossing her arms.
Cordelia followed her back into the stair hall. “Why would she hide all this? From us? We struggled all those years, andthiswas here the whole time.”
