“Who’re you?” the man said.
“Who’re you?” Trenton fired back.
“Joe Connelly,” he said. “I got my guys working the job upstairs.” His skin was webbed with burst capillaries, and Trenton smelled beer on him. But he must have been okay-looking, back in the day. Joe seemed to register the food on the dining room table for the first time. “Sorry. I didn’t know you were having a party.”
“It isn’t a party,” Trenton said. He didn’t feel like explaining what it was. “Anyway, it’s over.”
“You Caroline’s kid?” Joe asked, and Trenton nodded. “One of my guys left a ladder up there. We need it for another job. You mind if I go up?”
“I guess not,” Trenton said. Why, he wondered, were they even bothering to fix the roof? Would they ever come back? He couldn’t imagine it. It wasn’t their house anymore—it wasn’t his house—no matter what the will said. They should leave the roof open and give the birds a place to nest.
Joe didn’t move right away. He stood there, sucking on his lower lip, like he was debating whether to say something else. Trenton thought he might not know where the stairs were. “Straight down the hall,” he said.
Joe nodded. “Yeah,” he said, but still didn’t move. “Yeah. I remember this place. Did some work here years ago. It was a lot different then. Smaller.” He shook his head. “Time flies.”
Then Trenton remembered: Joe Connelly. Joe Connelly was the name of the man who’d found the dead woman, the one with her brains blown out—Sandra.
“Wait!” Trenton took two quick steps forward, nearly tripping over the rug. Joe stopped, turned to face him. “Wait. You—you were the one who found her. The woman who died here.”
Instantly, Joe turned guarded. “How’d you know about that?” he said, wetting his lips with his tongue.
“My sister dates a cop,” Trenton said. He could never explain what had really happened: the voices, the visions, the sense of touch whenever Eva came near—like a cool blade running through his very center. It was all true. There was an invisible world; there was meaning gathered like clouds on the other side of a mountain.
“Oh.” Connelly was clenching his fists and unclenching them, like he was squeezing an invisible rope. “Yeah. Wrong place, wrong time. That was a bad winter. Lots of snow. Poor lady’s roof caved in.”
“Sandra,” Trenton said, watching Joe carefully.
“Something like that,” he said. “Screwy the things you forget. She didn’t have a face by the time I got to her. That I remember.”
“What happened to her?” Trenton asked. “The police—I mean, they never found out who did it, right?”
“No,” Joe said hoarsely. He turned away. “No, they never did find out.”
Trenton grasped for another question, something that would keep Joe in the room and talking to him. His pulse was going wild. He didn’t know why it was important for him to know about some stranger who’d died here decades ago, only that Joseph Connelly’s arrival seemed like a sign. There was something he was missing, something he’d forgotten. Eva had told him that the ghost Sandra had been shot; there had been an important letter, too, which was stolen.
“What about the letter?” he blurted out, and Joe stiffened like Trenton had just reached out and electrocuted him.
“How—how’d you know about the letter?” Joe asked. When he turned around, his face was awful: white and frightened, older than it had looked just a minute earlier. “Who told you?”
Trenton didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Joe stood there, still trembling like a wire, his eyes like two dark gashes in his face. Then he pulled out a chair, abruptly, and sat down.
“Are you all right?” Trenton said cautiously.
But when Joe spoke, it was in a normal voice. “Blood pressure,” he said. “I’m an old shit. You got any water?”
Trenton went to the sideboard, where Minna had lined up pitchers of ice water for their guests. He poured a big glass of water and passed it to Joe at the table. Then he sat down.
“Thanks,” Joe said. But he didn’t drink. He just spun the glass between his hands. After a minute, he said: “I got rid of it. I thought it was the right thing to do. Seeing her like that . . . There was blood everywhere.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t help to know the reason. People say it helps. But it doesn’t.”
“Know the reason for what?”
Joe looked up, frowning. “For why they do it in the first place.”
Trenton suddenly understood. He’d been chasing this story of an old murder, feeding on it like carrion birds did, but it was a sadder story than that: digging up the old, dry bones of someone’s misery.
“So it was suicide,” Trenton said.
Joe put two hands on the table and pushed himself to his feet. “My dad roped himself when I was a kid. My mom told everyone he bust an artery in his brain. Aneurysm. She was embarrassed. Even changed our name back a few years later, from Houston to Connelly. Connelly was her maiden name.” He shook his head again. “It doesn’t help to know. It doesn’t make it easier. Still, I shouldn’t have burned the letter. It wasn’t my business.”
Trenton sat there for a long time, thinking of his father’s many conferences and Adrienne’s letters, unanswered; thinking of a man hanging from the ceiling and his wife lying about it because she was embarrassed. He thought about faceless women. He thought about time coming down slowly around their ears, like a roof under the pressure of snow.
It was time, he thought, to bury his father. It was time to put the ghosts to rest.
ALICE
“Don’t go.” I’ve been trying to ignore Sandra for the length of her death, trying to expel her; and now I’m begging her to stay, like a child. “Please don’t go.”
“The jig’s up, isn’t it?” Already Sandra sounds fainter, as if I’m hearing her from a distance. “It’s about damn time, too.”
“Don’t leave me.” I hate myself for saying it, but I can’t help it: she’s my other, my boundary. Now there will be no one to hear me. It’s almost the same thing as not-existing, but worse. Lonelier. The Walkers will go home, and I will remain here, alone, openmouthed and silent in the doorways; frozen in the ice box; full of the darkness of empty closets and rooms that no one enters.
“You need to let go, Alice. That’s the whole trick. Let go of everything.”
“Tell me how,” I say. “I’m ready to learn.” Silence. “Sandra? Are you there?”
The only answer is a hole, a deep bottoming out, as if I still had a body and all the bones had suddenly vanished. Then—a sudden sickness, a reverse nausea, the sickness of something good and necessary going out.
Everything comes up in the end.
Sandra was right: old crimes expiated, truths revealed, curiosities satisfied.
How could I have been so blind? Sitting, watching, waiting, like a fat cat in a patch of sunlight, for years before she came along—but seeing nothing, really, feeling nothing but the slow crawl of time and minutes hardening like plaster in my veins. I remember Sandra’s death, vaguely. I saw the last fight she ever had with Martin, and the twenty-four hours that followed: the glass refilled and refilled, the stumbling and vomiting, the crust of blood on her lips.
I saw her load the gun, of course. How could I not? We can’t choose what we see.
But afterward . . . was I happy that she came to join me? Was I secretly pleased when she elbowed her way through the soft folds of my new nonbody, like a splinter beneath a surface of skin? Probably. And so I barely noticed the cleanup, the police, the sad small group of strangers who came to haggle over her pots and lamps and sofas when they were put up for sale.
I didn’t notice little Joey Houston, all grown up to become Joe Connelly, whom I had last seen sitting next to his mother at his father’s funeral service. I didn’t see the resemblance in the proud, hooked nose and determined chin, in the ears that stick out just a little more than usual.
Joseph Houston. Thomas’s son.
&n
bsp; I’ve been so wrong—so wrong about everything.
I want to tell Sandra. You were right.
And Thomas: I forgive you.
And our little baby girl, the small promise that grew inside me like a flower under glass: I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
But those are just words, and words are just stories, and eventually, always, stories come to an end.
Caroline has changed into old jeans and a nubby sweater, and she returns to the dining room with her makeup scrubbed off and her hair tied in a ponytail. She must have snuck a few drinks. She is brighter eyed than she was just twenty minutes ago.
“Trenton, are you ready? Do you have the ashes?”
“Minna has them,” Trenton says. “I was just going to check—” Trenton is cut off. The kitchen door bangs open, and a second later Minna appears in the dining room, breathless, her hands covered with dirt.
A shadow moves across the sun; the house, my rooms, my mind goes dark. The end is very near.
“Come quickly,” Minna says, speaking not to her mom or brother but to Danny. “I—I found something. Holy shit.”
“What kind of something?” Trenton says.
Minna’s hands tighten on the door frame. I feel as if every single door in the house had been slammed shut at once—tight with expectation and terror. “It’s a kid.”
“A what?” Danny says.
“A baby.” Minna swallows and pushes her hair back, leaving a smudge of dirt on her cheek, like a single tear. “In a box.”
PART XI
THE KITCHEN
ALICE
The kitchen has been emptied of its furniture. Even the Spider has been packed up and carted away, and the old fireplace stands cold, clean-swept, dark, like a mouth open in a scream. Bits of cottonseed have found their way in through the window.
There is nowhere to place her but on the countertop.
Bits of the blanket remain, shreds and tatters, most of it eaten away by insects. The box is mostly intact: dark wood, laminated, it has stood up well to time. My initials are still faintly visible, although much of the rest of the paint has flaked away. It was yellow, I remember, and decorated with painted lilacs. It had been a gift from my mother on my seventeenth birthday, for holding my Sunday hat, fitted with lace as fine as a spider’s web and smelling of the lavender salts she placed next to it.
I wrapped her up in a blanket. I thought she would be safe, there, in the small yellow box that smelled like flowers.
Her bones are thin as a baby bird’s, her skull no larger than a palm.
She was blue when she came out—blue, and so cold.
I thought she would be warm—in the blanket, in the ground, under the willow tree.
TRENTON
The bones were small, far too small. Trenton felt a swinging sense of unreality, as he did sometimes in dreams, just before waking. It must be some kind of a sick joke.
But then Danny said, “Shit. Shit,” and Trenton knew it was not a dream.
“Who—who could have done this?” Caroline said. And then, without waiting for an answer, “Trenton, I need a drink. Please.”
But Trenton couldn’t move. The baby’s head was as small as an apple. It looked like it would blow apart to dust if he tried to touch it.
“Whoever buried her, it was a long time ago,” Danny said quietly.
“Her?” Minna said. “You think it’s a girl?”
Danny lifted an edge of the blanket, now hanging in tatters, that had once enfolded the child. Pink.
“Oh my God,” Caroline said, and turned away, cupping a hand over her mouth. Trenton felt a flicker of irritation—she was making this about her—and he hung on to it, tried to coax it into anger or some other familiar emotion.
“Amy made me dig under the willow tree,” Minna said, looking around the room as though she expected to be accused of unearthing the body deliberately. “She insisted. You know how Amy gets.” She turned pleading eyes to Trenton.
“What do we do with it—with her?” Trenton corrected himself quickly. Immediately, he wished he hadn’t asked. The words sounded so awful—like she was trash that needed to be dealt with.
Danny shook his head slowly. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know.” Then he straightened up. “We’ll take her downtown. There might be something in the archives, but I doubt it.” He reached out and lowered the lid of the box gently, and Trenton was glad.
“Jesus,” Caroline muttered.
Amy appeared at the door, her face mashed up against the screen. What is it, Mom?” She opened the door before anyone could stop her. “Why won’t you let me see?”
“Trenton, get her out of here,” Minna said sharply. To Danny she said, “We’ll follow you. In our car.”
“Come on, Amybear.” Trenton lifted Amy, grateful for the excuse to leave the room. She wrapped her legs around his waist. Her breath smelled like ginger ale, and he could feel her heart beating through her ribs. He imagined all the fine, fragile bones holding her together, the caverns of her lungs, the thin tissue fabric of her organs, so easily disintegrated, and felt suddenly like crying. “Want to help me pack up the cars?”
“We’re leaving?” Amy said.
“We’re leaving.” Trenton almost added, And never coming back. He knew it was true instinctively. They would never return to Coral River.
“What about Penelope?” Amy asked.
Trenton jogged her a little higher in his arms. Minna and Danny were speaking together in low voices, planning, figuring out who would drive Caroline to the station. “Who’s Penelope?” he asked.
“Penelope is the girl in the box,” Amy said, swinging her feet.
Minna went silent. Trenton froze. Caroline and Danny stared.
“What do you mean, Amy?” Minna whispered.
“The book!” Amy said, as if it was obvious. “In The Raven Heliotrope they put Penelope in the ground so she’ll come back to life.”
Minna was very white. “Oh my God.” She flinched. “Oh my God. She’s right.”
“They bury her under the willow tree,” Amy said happily, wiggling in Trenton’s arms. “It’s magic. And the tree learns to cry, and then Penelope can come back to life. Remember, Mommy?”
“I remember, sweetie.” Minna tried to smile and couldn’t. Her eyes met Trenton’s again. She looked old—older than she should have. He felt a message pass between them, strong and wordless. I love you, too. The words were there, suddenly, in his mind.
Amy was still babbling. “And then the army of Nihilis comes to raid the palace and drive out the Innocents.”
“All right, Amy,” Trenton said. He tried to sound cheerful. “You can tell me about The Raven Heliotrope while we get everything ready to go. Sound good?”
“But the Innocents escape through the tunnels and they burn the palace down so that the Nihilis die. It’s sad because they love the palace, but they have to burn it or else. The fire is so big it goes all the way to the sky.” Amy stretched her hands toward the ceiling, gesturing.
“Wow.” Something stirred in Trenton—a memory, an idea. Fire. “That’s pretty big.” Trenton pushed open the screen door with the toe of his sneaker. Outside, the sun was blazing, and the sky was white as ash.
ALICE
I didn’t mean for her to die. Believe this, if you believe anything.
I thought I could erase her. I thought I could will her back into nonexistence.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
That year, too, there was cottonseed. I remember how it trembled in the screens, like small alien creatures, sent to bear witness; how I wished that it were real snow and would bury me when I slept. Maybe I should have died. Maybe that’s what I deserved.
But I didn’t.
Ed was on his way home from the war.
I couldn’t return to my family. I had no close friends besides Thomas.
And Thomas, too, I meant to erase.
I’d heard rumors in Boston, when I still lived at home, about girls who’d
gotten into trouble. There were doctors who’d do operations, I knew, but operations cost money; there were other ways. Pills and poison. A coat hanger, even.
I thought she would just vanish. One day I would be pregnant. And the next day: a chance to start over. I would be a better wife to Ed. I would learn to love him again. I would pray to God every day for forgiveness.
At least that part of the bargain, I kept.
But she held on. Little Penelope, my poor little Penelope, who didn’t know how to do anything but live. I swallowed bleach and took pills to make myself throw up. I prayed for her to wither, like a flower on a stalk. I even tried to fall down the stairs. But at the last second I couldn’t let go of the banister.
She came at last, Queen Penelope, riding a carpet of blood: blue and cold, like someone left too long in the ice. Wise Penelope. She refused to take even one breath of this new world, where mothers were monsters; and men were at war; and nothing and no one could be believed.
TRENTON
They were done in Coral River. Minna had arranged for Holly, a local woman who’d cleaned for her dad, to come later and deal with the dishes and trash from the memorial service. The luggage was loaded. Adrienne had gone, escorted to a motel in town by Danny’s partner. Richard Walker was buried, as he had requested, on the land he had loved.
Trenton wanted to walk through the house one last time.
He went through every room, touching walls and curtains and the remaining pieces of furniture, hoping to feel some further connection to his father, to his past, to Eva, even. But they were just rooms, many of them empty and thus unfamiliar, like the rooms of a stranger’s house. It didn’t much matter. The past would come along with you, whether you asked for it or not.
In the kitchen, he paused at the window. The squad car was idling in the driveway. Trenton’s mom was just visible in the passenger seat. Minna was chasing Amy around the BMW, trying to distract her—or maybe trying to distract herself, to forget what they had just seen. Trenton could see birds wheeling in the sky, and the soft waterfall silhouette of the weeping willow. Even now, Trenton thought, his dad’s ashes were there: intermingling with the earth, someday to be swept up by the wind, spiraling up to the afternoon sky and the clouds like new milk. He thought of the girl, the tiny little child in the box, and felt an ache in his chest. So much better to be released into air and sky.