After Alice Fell(46)

My stomach drops. “How many?”

“Twenty-seven. You’re not innocent, either. She submitted a complaint that you smothered our dear mother with a hand pillow. Embroidered with spring peas.”

“Why do you have the complaints?”

“Constable Grent was kind enough to return them to me so I didn’t go bankrupt paying fees for delusions. Thus precluding the need for a ridiculous investigation.”

“She never did that when she lived with Benjamin and me. I don’t . . .”

“Maybe Benjamin intercepted them all.”

“He’d have told me.”

“Would he? Or would you have taken them—believing them true, even if it was about you murdering your own mother? Would you have walked that down to the station and filed it yourself?”

“Of course I wouldn’t.” My skin prickles with sweat. I swipe the back of my hand to my forehead, hold back the clatter of memories. “Those are fantasies.”

“So is this book,” he says. “I’d like to have a talk with the woman who gave you this and filled your head with some inflated conspiracy.”

“I believe her.”

Cathy twists to face me. Her lips are drawn taut. “Your obsession is ruining this family.”

“She wouldn’t be dead if she’d stayed here. She didn’t deserve—”

“Enough.” Lionel’s face is purple with rage. “Stop defending her.”

I fist my hand, then stretch it out. “She couldn’t get out of that room without someone opening the door. Someone obviously did. She knew it was going to happen. She knew it.” I point to the notebook. “It’s all there. It’s . . . someone had to have pushed her. She wouldn’t have . . . She’s telling the truth. I’m sure of it.”

Cathy twists the book toward her, lifts the cover, then lets it drop closed.

“What if I’m right?”

She gives a nod, then moves next to Lionel. She stacks the papers, runs her palm down a side to straighten the pile, then sets the papers on top of the notebook. “So, someone at the hospital took it into their head to let a patient run free. Sorry. Pushed a patient from a roof. To what purpose? I mean, really?” She lifts her palms. “To what purpose?”

“I believe Kitty. I believe her.” I look toward my brother. “I would have taken care of her.”

“How?” Cathy asks. “You have nothing now, Marion. She’d be right back here and it would all be as much chaos as it was before. She killed herself.” She lifts a shoulder and drops it. “It should have been expected. She tried once before.”

“When?”

She crosses her arms and bites at her lip. “She was in the greenhouse. When it burnt. Barricaded herself in with the pots and stuck something in the lock. Poured oil from the lamp all along the floor. If Elias hadn’t come from the barn . . . I don’t want to think what would have happened.”

The cabinet drawer scrapes as Lionel opens it. “Give me the book,” he says. But it’s in his reach, so he grabs it up and drops it to the papers.

“Please listen.”

Lionel locks the cabinet. “No more, Marion. Take one moment to see your sister as she really was.”

I push aside the chintz curtains in Toby’s room, tug the roller blinds until they lift and open with a snap, then pull up each window. The stump of the old tree looks like a wound in the yard. It’s split in places, dark fissures where the tar has been painted to stop more growth. The roots that once fanned across the ground have been lopped. Still the dahlias rise, inky purple and ruby, the flowers the size of dinner plates.

“What would you like me to read?” I ask, then step around the toy train track and move to the side window.

He rolls the top edge of his sheet between his chin and neck.

I push the windowpane with the heel of my hand to unlodge it. This is the window Alice held him out. Below is the kitchen. The roof sags just near the far edge and needs new shingles. The frame slams shut the moment I turn from it. My heart jumps at the noise.

Toby’s lashes flutter as he blinks, then he rolls the sheet once more. “You need the pole.”

“Where is it?”

He presses his chin to his chest and shrugs.

I flick the curtain back into place and kneel at the low bookshelf. “Now, which book would you like me to read?”

“Five Weeks in a Balloon.”

My finger drifts across the picture books to the Jules Verne. “Is it a good tale?”

“Oh yes. It’s got condors and Timbuktu and they fly in a balloon and hunt the tantelopes.”

“Well, then. I think a few pages.” I hold it up. My skin is clammy, fingers cold, though the room is still stifling. I’m overtired and the thump of my pulse echoing in my ears is deafening. I force a smile, as if everything were all right, and an antelope hunt were the height of excitement for the day.

He turns on his side to give me room on the narrow bed, plumping the pillow and then resting his head on his arm.

There’s enough room to sit with one leg stretched out and the other bent with my foot to the floor. I lower the oil lamp’s flame and settle the book to my lap, opening to the bookmarked page.

“‘No; it is a swarm.’”