Maria is quiet for a moment, and Sally leans against the wall and takes a deep breath. Elliott can be charming when he wants to be, but any man who would talk to his sister this way is not a man she wants to know.
Finally, Maria speaks. “It was in the middle of that hellfire that I saw Cecily.”
Sally slides to the floor and pulls her knees up to her chest. Is Maria really admitting to having seen her? And what will this do to Elliott, who is already completely preoccupied with her disappearance?
“What was she wearing?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” says Maria. “Whatever she wore to the theater, I suppose.”
“And what did she do?”
“She just looked straight at me. Like she could see inside my soul.”
Sally can hear a chair scrape across the floor, and imagines Elliott pushing himself out of it.
“Do you hear this, Mother?” he says. “She’s alive.”
“I don’t think that’s what your sister is saying,” says Mrs. Price in a measured voice.
“It’s not,” says Maria. “Elliott, will you listen to me?”
“Iamlistening.” Sally can hear him pacing on the other side of the door.
Maria continues. “It was a vision. A visitation. Cecily was dead, and she was waiting for me to let go of the last cord tethering me to earth.”
“So, you’re saying you think Cecily meant to usher you into heaven?” Elliott’s voice is thick with condescension.
“I never said that.”
“What, then?”
“I think she meant to drag me straight to hell.”
“God damn it, Maria.” Elliott has clearly had enough. Sally can hear it in the timbre of his voice. “Would you think about what you are saying for a minute?”
Sally is tempted to knock on the door and interrupt the argument, pretend she has to check on that doomed girl in the other bed, but she thinks it might be too late for that. They’ll know she’s been listening.
“Your sister has been through an ordeal,” says Mrs. Price. “And I don’t think it’s helpful to—”
“To what?” Elliott interrupts her. “Demand she speak sense? Tell us something true?”
“Iamtelling you something true,” Maria insists.
“Maria, hear this,” says Elliott, his voice low enough that Sally has to move closer to the door to hear it. “If you saw Cecily Patterson on the theater green, there are only two explanations. Either she’s alive, or you’re a raving lunatic.”
Before Sally knows quite what is happening, the door to Maria’s room swings open, and Elliott Price is standing in front of her, teeth bared. When his eyes light on her, she thinks they might bulge out of his head.
It is obvious she’s been listening at the door, but nothing can be done about it now. “Good morning, Mr. Price,” she says coolly.
He places his hat on his head. “Mrs. Campbell.”
JACK
Placide is at the tavernby seven o’clock in the morning, calling upstairs to the second floor, where all of the unmarried actors sleep three to a bed. Ordinarily, Jack rooms with Robertson and Burke, but last night, Anderson insisted he sleep on a pallet in his room. “In case you get any wild ideas,” he said as he drifted off to sleep.
In the early hours of the morning, Jack dreamed that Anderson had led him into a theater much like theirs, only larger. When the two of them were standing at center stage, looking out into the dark and empty auditorium, Anderson pointed up at the ceiling, where hundreds of lit chandeliers hung from the rafters. There were so many candles burning that the flames looked like stars in the night sky. Jack could pick out whole constellations—Hercules and Orion and Ursa Major and Minor—and he wanted to tell Anderson how beautiful the effect was, but when he turned to say something, he realized Anderson had disappeared out the stage door, locking Jack inside the theater, alone. He didn’t panic, not at first, but then the chandeliers began to spin, slowly at first and then faster and faster, until the flames looked more like comets than stars. Jack pounded on the door, screaming to be let out, but Anderson wouldn’t open the door, and when it occurred to Jack that he would die, right there in the theater, he woke up, covered in sweat.
Jack hasn’t been able to fall back to sleep since.
