“I know the feeling,” said Harper.
He gazed at her, sympathy in the blue depths of his eyes. “You, too?”
She nodded. “Slept better last night, though. Now that we’re all here, shall we go in?”
“Of course.” Asher pushed the back gate open wide. “After you.”
Harper steeled herself, remembering what they had found in the garden a few days ago, and then what happened when she was here with Detective Serrano. She was not at all sure she wanted to set foot inside again. Maybe she should have listened to Tariq.
The backyard was strictly utilitarian: an apparent staging area for the ongoing renovations of the house, a padlocked storage shed, and a two-car garage. Gardening tools were scattered here and there, and an inexpensive set of white plastic garden chairs and a table sat in one corner, one of the chairs lying forlornly on its side.
“Delilah…” Asher cleared his throat as he stepped up to the back door and opened the lock. “My sister added on this mudroom when she was doing the renovation. She didn’t want people tramping dirt into her beautiful home.”
He paused upon entering, as if listening for something.
“Everything okay, Asher?” Harper asked after a moment.
“Of course,” he said, letting out a breath and rolling his shoulders. “Ghosts in the walls, that’s all.”
“Ghosts where, now?” said Highbaugh from the garden.
Asher flashed a smile. “Memories. Regrets, hopes dashed. That’s what ghosts are, right? Come on in.”
The small room was more solarium than mudroom, its walls made of numerous small-paned windows. A series of brass hooks along the inner wall held an apron, a couple of jackets, a straw hat. Resting on the floor below was a shelf on which sat a pair of old sneakers and muddy boots.
Harper was struck in that moment, in a way she hadn’t been before, by a sense of Delilah as a person and not just as a victim of a shocking crime. She was someone who used to put on a straw hat before walking out into the sunshine or pulled on her jacket and boots to ward off a chill from the damp fog rolling in off Monterey Bay. Delilah had been a living, breathing person, a soul walking this earth.
And now she was a glimmer of a memory.
The mudroom door opened onto a spacious kitchen decorated in rustic but beautifully finished wood cabinets, with bunches of herbs and braids of onions and garlic hanging from roughhewn beams overhead. A large window above the sink looked out onto a side garden.
Beyond this was another small room lined with books. Next to the window was a big, comfy-looking armchair with a fuzzy blue blanket draped over the back and a matching footrest. It was easy to imagine Delilah snuggling up here with a novel and a cup of tea, or a glass of whiskey, a purring cat in her lap.
As their trio advanced farther into the house, Harper began to feel the strange sensation that had overcome her thelast time she was here: Her feet seemed to be moving without moving, the walls were closing in on her, and she felt dizzy, detached, as if she were in a fugue state. Everything seemed to blend together, the past and the present, the living and the dead.
She tried to regulate her breathing, hoping to calm herself.
In the hallway, she glanced toward the basement door. It rattled slightly. She could not look away as the knob began to turn…
“Harper?”
Harper let out an undignified yelp.
“What’s up?” continued Asher.
The knob on the basement door was still.
“Nothing,” she said. “There’s no one except us in the house, is there?”
Asher frowned. “I certainly hope not.”
Me, too.
Harper joined the men in the main living room, which was chock-full of paintings and collectibles. As before, she noticed that many surfaces were covered in fingerprint dust, the dark powder casting strange, ethereal shadows here and there: on a wineglass, around the doorknobs, and on the stair’s newel-post.
She glanced at the mirror over the fireplace, still cloaked by a dark gray cloth. It repulsed and frightened her, and yet at the same time her fingers itched to remove the shroud and gaze into the shiny surface of that looking glass.
“Did Delilah always drape the mirror like that?” Harper asked.
