After Alice Fell(22)

Outside there is sun, bright through the neat rows of trees and dappling the lawn. The pebbled road has been raked neat. Cathy sits with the reins in her lap. The mare shakes her head to drive away the flies.

I turn from the buggy, back to Mr. Stoakes.

“Will you show me?” I ask. “Where she fell.”

“Why?” Cathy asks. “Why do you need to see?”

“It’s just around the side,” Stoakes says.

We walk the edge of the road. I can’t look at the building straight on. Instead I watch his boots, square-toed, scuffed, heavy of heel. Not soft soled like the doctor’s.

The building casts a sharp, black shadow. We leave the groomed front lawn for bare rock and hard soil. The roses here are untended, the leaves a sallow yellow ruined at the tips by rust and pocks of black. The bushes vine and twist and crawl the wall as if they wish the inhabitants to look down and acknowledge them. But the grated windows are blank, and the rose blooms are drained of color.

“I think she found a way into the attic, then up to the cupola.” He steps forward, picking a petal from the rose hedge and rolling it between his fingers. He runs his gaze along the roofline. “We’d find her all sorts of places. She had a knack with locks.”

“My brother taught us how to pick them.”

He nods and flicks the petal. It sticks to his thumbnail, and he swipes his hand to his vest to unsettle it. “She would have been better not to have learned that.”

I return to Cathy, step into the buggy, and fold the step. It is quiet. Just Cathy’s breath followed by mine. Just the sharp saw of the cicadas amongst the tree limbs.

Cathy chews her bottom lip. Nods once. “Do you have your answers?”

The buggy jolts forward. “It’s not enough.”

“Let it be enough.” She flicks the leathers. Clenches her jaw and keeps her gaze forward. “Let her rest.”





Chapter Nine


“You can’t just run off like that.” Lionel wipes his napkin to the corners of his mouth, then makes a show of smoothing it back to his lap. “Leaving Saoirse to watch Toby—she’s practically dead.” He waves his hand and lifts his fork and knife. “What purpose does it serve?” He cuts a thin slice of beef tongue and forks it in his mouth.

“Let’s stop.” Cathy’s plate is full—the tongue is layered with globules of aspic she’s scraped from the Brussels sprouts. “Please. It’s all over. It’s over.”

Lionel pushes his glasses up his nose and shakes his head. “I forbid you to go again.”

“You can’t forbid me,” I say.

“I can. I will.”

“Lionel.” Cathy touches his wrist, but he yanks his hand away.

“If you’re in my house—”

“It’s my house too,” I say.

“No, Marion. It’s not.”

I drop my dinner fork to the china and push the plate away. My stomach churns and buckles. “He said she killed herself. She’d never do that.”

“Keep your voice down.” Lionel glances at the ceiling; Toby’s room is directly above.

“I know she was ill. God, I know more than anyone. But not that.” I take a breath, then another, but my chest tightens. There is the roof and the broken branches and the keen sweet smell of her body that I can’t wash from my skin. “I think they’re lying. Doesn’t that matter to you?”

“Enough.” Cathy smacks her hand to the table. Her eyes narrow, and her expression is like ice. “Stop talking about Alice.” She stares at her water glass, then grips it and takes a drink. “Stop talking about her. Everything always comes back to Alice. God.” She slams the glass and stands, the chair tipping back and smacking the cabinet behind her.

“Cathy.” Lionel’s voice is low. “Pick up the chair.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“Pick up the chair.”

Her hands tremble as she rights it. She sits with a thud, spreads her palms on each side of her plate, stares at the salt box and candles grouped between us.

“There.” Lionel leans back and looks at Cathy. There’s a wariness to his gaze, as if he expects her to throw the chair across the room and then her wineglass, just for good measure.

She stabs a Brussels sprout and shoves it into her mouth, chews and swallows with a grimace. “I visited Maud Harper yesterday. Of course, she wouldn’t come here. No one comes here, and that I will lay directly on Alice. Anyway, that’s not here nor there. Her son—you know him, Lionel. Joshua. He was in your class at St. Albans, remember? He has gained a clerkship with Senator Cragin now.”

“What’s his wife’s name again? Maisy, Mary . . .”

“Martha. Martha Quinn.”

Lionel snaps his fingers. “That’s right.”

“They’ve got luggage and boxes scattered everywhere, and Maud’s in a stir as you can well expect . . .”

A shadow flits across the mirror. I turn to the window behind me, certain someone has crossed the yard, but it’s only my reflection, shimmery and floating in the whorls and bubbles, that stares back.

“Are you all right?” Cathy asks.

“I thought I saw something. I think there’s someone there.”