Rooms(35)

She found five Adrienne Cadious in Toronto. One was a college student, nineteen, with a mouth full of braces. A second woman, seventy-four, was mentioned in several articles as being one of the first female runners of the Boston Marathon. The third woman was probably Caroline’s age, with red hair too long for someone in her late fifties. Caroline couldn’t figure out whether she was still alive—several articles mentioned she’d been the victim of a recent hit-and-run and showed her with her arms around a girl, presumably a daughter, with the same pattern of freckles and wide-spaced eyes—but it didn’t matter, anyway. Richard hated redheads.

There were two others: a mother of four, a little fat but not as fat as Caroline was now, and with a pretty smile, who ran a cooking blog called TheGoldenSpoon. Caroline had spent nearly an hour scrolling through recipes, reading about techniques for peeling tomatoes and how to make a perfect omelet, searching all the time for a code layered beneath the surface of the words, a message to her, to Richard.

There were dozens of pictures, not just of meals but of Adrienne herself, and, often, her children: fat-faced, grinning, holding up chocolate-covered fingers toward the camera.

Would Richard have done it? She wasn’t sure. But she couldn’t rule it out.

The last Adrienne was forty-two, and there was a single article that appeared about her on the second page of search results. She had spoken at the Ottawa Regional Breast Cancer Benefit; she was a breast cancer survivor, and she worked as a lawyer at the Canadian Immigration Bureau. The photograph was disappointing—head only, and slightly blurry, and moreover taken from an angle that made it difficult to see her features clearly. Whether she was pretty or not, it was hard to say.

Caroline spent another hour searching for more information about this Adrienne, looking for a better picture, but had found nothing. By then it was two a.m., and she was very drunk and she knew she would sleep, finally. Still, it had taken her another half an hour to figure out how to clear the history so that Minna wouldn’t know what she was doing; Caroline knew about clearing the history because Trenton had spoken about it after she went on his computer looking for evidence that he was developing normally and wasn’t reading about assault weapons or how to make a homemade bomb, which had been suggested to her by a magazine she’d read at the dentist’s. He had caught her, and said, in the annoying smirking way he had recently perfected, “Ever hear of deleting history, Mom?” Then, of course, she was left to wonder whether he’d deleted history because he’d been researching bombs.

Caroline heard footsteps coming up the front path; she could see two men, distorted by the glass.

“Go and see what they want,” she told Minna. “Even better, make them leave.”

Minna rolled her eyes. “Fine.” She left through the garden door.

Caroline heard the doorbell ring once, sharply, and then fall silent. She heard Minna’s called greeting and a burst of overlapping voices, then footsteps, crossing back toward the greenhouse.

Minna hadn’t gotten rid of them.

For the first time since entering the greenhouse Caroline saw, suddenly, what it had become: the sad plastic simulacrum, the withered plants crying out for water, the boxes of old Christmas decorations and dirty wooden shelves, still imprinted with watermarks and ghostly rings where flowerpots and planters had once stood. This had been her place, the only spot in the house that had really belonged to her. She could make flowers grow, could coax even the most difficult orchid to life and make thick coils of plumleaf azalea overspill their planters.

Richard had left the greenhouse to die. Now Richard was dead.

There had been blood in the toilet this morning.





ALICE

The new ghost is nervous. Sandra, too. She hates the police, probably because of her many unpleasant run-ins with them. There was, for example, the time she accidentally drove her car onto a neighbor’s property and parked it nose-first against their mailbox; the time she played the Grateful Dead on full volume until four a.m. while consuming an entire bottle of Maker’s Mark; the incident of the stolen goldfish from the restaurant in Dover Plains . . .

“I don’t believe it.” Minna reenters the greenhouse, flushed, excited. “I can’t believe it. My mom won’t, either. You know I still have our prom photo somewhere?”

Two men trail after her, like marine animals riding the wake of a boat. The first is about her height, broad shouldered and balding, with a big smile and a stomach. His uniform is dark blue and looks rumpled, as though he stores it in a corner.

The second man is wearing a bright red windbreaker, dress pants, mud-encrusted leather shoes. He is tall, thin, and unsmiling.

Minna stops when she finds the greenhouse empty. “She was just here,” she says apologetically. “Mom!” she calls out. “Mom!”

The tall man frowns and checks his watch.

“I’m right here.” Caroline emerges from the pantry door, holding a cup so tightly the veins on her hand stand out. She has fastened her bathrobe, at least, although the mottled surface of her chest is still visible. “No need to shout.”

“Mom, look.” Minna gestures to the shorter man; he is still standing there, beaming, while his partner shifts impatiently. “You remember Danny Topornycky, don’t you?”

Caroline frowns. Minna charges on impatiently, “Toadie, Mom. We called him Toadie. My prom date?” Minna nudges Danny’s arm. “My very first boyfriend.”