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  “I don’t—” I had to work to swallow. Weekend’s whine was a vibration in his throat. When I brushed my hand along his flank, he stilled. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Everyone else will, though,” Eileen said shrewdly. “The police have been giving you a break in deference to Brendan, I imagine. But I’m sure they have questions about his last days.”

  I stared at her, ruing the expression of incomprehension I knew must be on my face.

  “Unhappy men commit suicide, Nora. And what makes a man unhappy—especially one who is widely known to love his job?” She spoke quickly now, words gathering momentum, like a train. “Why, trouble at home, of course. With his marriage. His wife.”

  “You heartless bitch,” Teggie burst out. “They buried your son today—”

  For just a second, I started to turn away. Teggie could take care of this. She would finish Eileen off, with her razor-sharp tongue, her fearless stare, better than I ever could. As a child, Teggie had her mouth honest-to-God washed out with soap more times than I could count. My father used to joke that the devil himself would turn away when Teggie got on a roll.

  I swiveled back around.

  “That’s not why Brendan did this,” I said, ignoring the shaking in my voice. “We were happy, and everybody knew that, as surely as they knew he liked his job.” I paused to take in breath. “Did you think I wouldn’t look further, Eileen? Because it’s not really my place?”

  On trembling legs, I turned and left the room, Weekend at my heels.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  My bedroom was the only place in the house I could think of to go. When I got there, the door had been pushed open. Weekend gave a lone bark as we entered.

  “Jean?” I said, coming upon Brendan’s aunt by the dresser.

  She turned with uncharacteristic swiftness. “Oh, Nora,” she said softly. “I’m sorry. I just—needed a little space.”

  “Yes,” I murmured. “Me, too.”

  Jean’s soft face folded and tears seeped from beneath her eyelids. I looked away momentarily. The dog began to snuffle around the spare pieces of furniture in the room—bed, trunk, dresser. I felt a brief pat on my back, and when I looked up again, Weekend and I were alone.

  I woke the next morning alone in bed, and I knew it must be true.

  For a moment I couldn’t think how to put one foot onto the floor, then the other; how I’d ever do something as simple as get up again.

  True, then.

  Someone had come in the night and sealed up my whole body in clay. If I moved, I’d crack apart. What did I do now? My face splintered, broke, as I wailed aloud. At least, I thought it’d been out loud. I lay there, waiting for the patter of my family’s feet.

  But no one came. That one thought—What do I do?—kept flapping and cawing in my head like a bird, until I remembered the Wedeskyull P.D. I clutched at the memory like a buoy. Brendan’s fellow officers had stayed so silent yesterday, retreating as if they’d never known me at all. And not in a stammering, well-meaning way, either. In a way that was wary.

  I could start with them.

  I sat up, my feet slapping against icy floorboards. Had this old wood ever felt warm?

  I smoothed the rumpled side of the bed, patting both pillows—one that was damp, one that was arid—into place.

  True.

  “I’ll do it, honey,” I whispered. “I’ll find out why.”

  My father and Teggie were in the kitchen cleaning up funeral detritus, a hundred half-laden paper plates, and cups sloshing with unfinished drinks. The house hadn’t cleared out till late last night, though I’d missed much of it. They worked in silence, my dancer sister upending the cups over the sink with a careless kind of grace, my dad more arduously tipping plates into the trash.

  I stared at the scene of uncommon peace, then walked to the fridge to take a look at the leftovers. I would divide up the food and distribute it to the bachelor cops. Maybe that would get them talking to me again.

  I noticed my mother as I began rummaging for supplies—Tupperware, tinfoil—in a cabinet. She was busy at the stove. “Mom? What are you doing?”

  My father looked up. “Tell Nora about her call.”

  “What call?”

  “Oh, yes!” my mother said, while stirring a pot. “Looks like you might have a customer, darling.”

  “Says his name is Ned Kramer,” added my dad.

  It took a moment, but a memory began to build. Ned Kramer was a reporter, fairly new in town. We’d met when he did a human interest piece on the start-up of Phoenix Home Corp. Local resident opens business kind of thing. I’d just completed my first big job, the restoration of a church that was being transformed into a residence. Ned had mentioned then that he was in the process of buying one of the historic homes on the outskirts of town.

  “His number’s by the phone,” my father said. “You could call right now.”

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “My head’s a little far from work at the moment.”

  The statement came out with a hitching breath. Only a few days ago a call like this would’ve been cause for jubilation. Phoenix was still in the process of becoming established; I needed every referral I could get. I would’ve told Brendan the news and he would’ve insisted on taking me to Wedeskyull’s one nice, candle and tablecloth restaurant to celebrate. The idea that my business might take off had seemed like a dream back when I was an admin assistant, stuck trying to dig a local psychologist out from under reams of insurance documents. But now Phoenix Home Corp. felt a little like a favorite doll from childhood, something you knew you’d once loved but couldn’t quite remember why.

  My mother’s hand was slowing down. She pulled the spoon around in her pot. I imagined something meaty and thick, a sludgy brew.

  “I understand,” my father said, in a tone that said he didn’t at all. “Unfortunately, life doesn’t slow down for us.”

  I began to slice a pie into triangles, wrapping each one in tinfoil. A small, tempting parcel to trade for information, and I never once wondered what I would be asking, nor why I should have to barter for it.

  The phone rang.

  I snatched it up. “Hello?”

  My whole family was facing me.

  “Hello?” I said again. Then I clicked off the phone and returned it to its console, shrugging. “Nobody there.”

  “I’m making soup,” my mother said. “And there’s also lasagna, chili, all labeled in the freezer.”

  Understanding dawned. “You’re leaving.”

  “We know you must want things back to normal,” said my father.

  Suddenly I stashed my bag of leftovers on the ice-cold cellar steps.

  My mother’s recitation of dishes, not to mention the thought of all those wedges of pie, bleeding fruit, had turned my stomach. I wasn’t up for a confrontation with the cops today.

  “The store.” My mom was still speaking. “Your dad will have customers complaining. But I’ll come back whenever you need me. Right, Jack?”

  “I’ll stay,” Teggie added. “I have an audition but not until the third.”

  Later that evening, my sister served one of my mother’s meals, and we sat over it for a while, neither of us eating. Teggie had never eaten in a way that could be called hearty, certainly not since she had started dancing professionally. But I had once enjoyed food.

  She glanced over her shoulder toward a little porch. “What’s out there?”

  I pushed aside my full plate. “That’s our balcony.”

  Teggie stood up. “I know that, but what’s out there?”

  The smell of the food was too strong. I got up to clear the plates. “What do you mean, what’s out there?”

  “Looks like glasses.”

  “Oh,” I began.

  “Nor?”

  “Brendan and I had a drink out there the night he—the other night. It was really too cold but …” I turned, refusing to look. Nor did I add—it would’ve been unnecessary, a detail that would onl
y make Teggie feel the sting of her solitary life—that as we went outside into the frigid air, wineglasses held aloft in our hands, I had known I would be warm soon enough, with my husband in our bed.

  Brendan had touched me on the small of my back; he’d called me Chestnut. He joked that instead of cocktail hour, we were having a cocktail minute. Brendan was always the one to suggest a dive into the lake, or a sudden look at the stars. Without him, I saw myself turning into a person I didn’t like, wretched and worn, someone who didn’t take delight in anything.

  Teggie unlatched the door, and white pellets instantly blew inside, stinging and small. We kept a small table and chairs out there, but they’d been unusable for months. The chairs wore extra seats of snow, twelve inches high, and the table was similarly capped.

  “What the hell were you two drinking?” Teggie asked as she came back inside.

  “Close the door!” I begged, hugging myself. “What do you mean? Wine.”

  “One of you at least,” she added.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked again.

  “Weird, isn’t it?” Teggie said, holding up a glass. “It’s not just frost—that’s what I thought at first.”

  I reached for the cold glass and stared at it. It was coated with a cloudy white film. The other glass was clear except for a scum of crimson at the base.

  I brought the filmed glass to my nose, and sniffed, the act accompanied by an icicle of panic. That awful morning. How late I’d slept, my thick-headed stupor.

  “There’s something in this glass. In my drink. It knocked me out.”

  “Who would’ve drugged your drink?” Teggie asked, uncharacteristically naïve. But then my sister had always reserved unique faith for Brendan. “Oh, no. You think that Brendan—”

  “He must’ve known what he was going to do,” I whispered, cutting her off. The way he’d stroked my fingers after, instead of just dropping like a stone into sleep. How I’d felt him studying me in the dark. “And that he’d need privacy for it.”

  I didn’t realize that my grip had loosened until Teggie snatched the glass out of the air, just before it would have splintered on the floor.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The next day my sister was at it again.

  “Look, I know you don’t exactly like to deal with the tough parts.”

  I frowned, but not at her. Not at anything. At everything.

  “Come on, Nor,” Teggie went on, all but scoffing. “Unicorns and sunrises. Light stuff, happy stuff. That’s the world you inhabit. Why do you think you couldn’t hack it in the city?”

  A strange memory appeared in my head. I’d been young—six or so—and I’d fallen down in my father’s store. The floor was rough—I could still remember the scuffed wood that generations of workmen and contractors had trod upon—and my knee had bled for a long time. My mother had floated the possibility of stitches, but my dad had cast that idea aside in a tone not unlike Teggie’s right now. “Scrapes,” my mom had said a little while later, pressing a gauze pad very tightly to my knee. “Your father does better with scrapes than cuts.”

  I still had a jagged white line on my knee.

  Teggie began talking again. “Why do you think Brendan did it the way he did?”

  When I looked at her blankly, she went on. “Brendan was a cop. He knew his way around weapons, had access to them. So why a rope? Why hanging?”

  I fiddled with a cup of tea.

  “Wait a minute—you know something,” Teggie said. She must’ve sensed that I wasn’t going to answer, because she stood up. “Where’s the rope? It must still be around here somewhere.” The gruesomeness of the suggestion didn’t seem to strike her.

  “No, Teggie,” I said, fidgeting hard enough that the amber contents of my cup threatened to overturn. “Please.” She was younger, but she’d always been the bossy sister, the one who assigned us fake names in our games, and choreographed the shows we put on.

  Teggie turned, a dancer’s spin, and left the kitchen for the pen of garbage bins outside.

  When she came back inside, I averted my head from the unraveling mess of rope she held against her shivering frame. But I’d already caught a glimpse of rough, splintering fibers.

  “No one’s gone to the dump,” my sister said. Tears filmed her eyes, and I was struck by two things. How seldom Teggie cried, and also by how much she’d loved Brendan.

  I stood up and went over to the phone. There was only one person I could imagine seeing right now. Someone else who had known this rope in its deadliest incarnation.

  “Nor?” My sister spoke as I dialed.

  “Not now,” I said. “Don’t say anything else right now. Okay? Can you just for once in your life—”

  The ringing ceased and I said, “Club?” into the phone before he’d even answered.

  “Yeah?”

  Teggie raised her voice. It was steady again. “Take a look at this.”

  “Can you come over?” I went on, loudly, to drown out my sister.

  “Now? I guess so. Shift starts at four.” Club paused. “You got any news?”

  Why was Club the only person who seemed to believe there might be news?

  “I’ll be there in a few,” he told me.

  My sister stepped forward, still clutching her burden.

  “I already looked at that rope.” My voice held a dreadful calm. “I wonder if you even know what’s strangest about it. Me, I couldn’t really help but know, what I do for a living and all.” I began to chuckle, a low, lilting laugh that scared me.

  “What are you talking about?” Teggie demanded. Wisps of dry hemp drifted from her fingers like flyaway hair.

  “Look at that thing,” I burst out, blindly thrusting my hand toward one frayed end of the rope. My sister was right: I couldn’t face it. But I would never forget the way it had disintegrated on the back stairs. “It’s a goddamned antique.”

  My sister frowned. I probably cursed as rarely as she cried.

  “That particular piece of rope,” I went on, “has to be over twenty years old.”

  UNDERGROUND

  The urge came upon Eileen as it always did, when the winter sun began to fade after its brief appearance in the sky, and another long night stretched ahead. Did she spend more time in the basement below during the frigid months that dominated the calendar, seven of them at least? Eileen Hamilton wasn’t sure, and she’d never been a woman given to examination of her habits.

  She got up stiffly from the chair in the parlor, a basket of mending forgotten beside her. Her knees creaked as she rose, a tight, brittle sound, which if she had been more inclined to study herself might have unnerved her.

  She paused to locate her key ring.

  Eileen had stopped locking the upstairs door sometime in the years after Bill died and Brendan had left home. There was no reason to secure it anymore, no one to keep out. But some habits died harder than others, and she couldn’t bring herself to leave the final door unguarded.

  Her knees sounded again, taking the narrow column of stairs, but her stride evened out as she crossed the vast space, keeping pace with the setting sun. By the time it was full dark, she intended to be hidden away.

  It was warmer down here than in the rest of the house. Eileen kept the furnace set low, but a stone foundation provided good insulation, and buffered the house from winds. She unlocked the door and went in.

  As always, a feeling of deep peace descended as she took in her precious collection, only to be stolen away by a wild, rocking fury. Her gaze grew muddy, then she couldn’t see at all. The hands that had dropped to her sides balled into fists. Her shoulders rose as high as her head and she looked like a bull, ready to charge.

  If she made noise down here, no one would know, even if someone came around; the stone walls were too thick. So perhaps she did, probably she did, for sometimes her own ears rang after she’d been in here for a while, as if they’d been subjected to a high, shrieking wind. There was other evidence of upset. Eileen sometimes ha
d to spend hours cleaning up afterward, restoring her perfect displays, slicking things down with fingers wetted by tears. Her nails were often bent back, their beds dark with blood, as if she’d been tearing at concrete.

  She began to quiet, her thin chest heaving. Once that chest had been lofty, lush enough to nourish children. It settled to its normal flat plane, motionless, no sign of her beating heart. The only remaining movement in Eileen lived in her hands, which continued to twitch and tremor, and would, she knew, for hours, long after she escaped upstairs.

  Eileen watched her fingers as if they belonged to somebody else, moving as they were of their own accord, twisting and turning the remaining section of rope.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Weekend bounded in with an energy that belied what a large dog he was. Like his master, I thought, almost smiling as my hands got their watery massage.

  “Here.” Club’s voice drew my attention and I looked up to see the bouquet of carnations he was thrusting in my direction. “From Dave.”

  “Dave?” I asked, beginning to peel off the cellophane wrapper.

  “Yeah.” Club shrugged. Only then did I recall that at the funeral, the Chief’s brother was the only cop to approach me.

  Teggie took the flowers before heading into the kitchen. “I’ll just make some lunch or something,” she said on her way out.

  “Your sister’s name is Terry?” Club said, still standing in the same spot. Not long ago, this house had been like Club’s own. The sofa cushions took on his shape when he sat down; he even had his own special glass. But with Brendan gone, it was as if he didn’t fit here anymore. Or maybe it was I who didn’t fit, and everybody was just waiting around awkwardly, wondering when I would figure that out.

  “Come on in,” I said, flinching at Club’s formal thanks. “It’s Teggie,” I went on, trailing him. “A family name,” I added vaguely. Well, that was true enough, in a manner of speaking.

  We sat down on the edges of our chairs, Club’s a chintz that didn’t suit him. Club blew into his hands, and I jumped up. “I can turn up the heat—”