Lost Among the Living(58)

Though I was no longer on chaperone duty, I had been tasked with occasionally satisfying propriety and checking on them. The first time I did so, Martin saw the look on my face and took my hand. He gave it a brief squeeze and shook his head once in silent communication. He was not back on morphine, then. I squeezed his hand in return.

Robert, now freed from the work of courting the Staffrons, fled the house in his motorcar. He spent evenings at the neighbors’ again, though he sometimes stayed home for dinner and curbed his all-night assignations. He never looked at me or spoke to me, for which I was grateful. As soon as the ink was on the marriage certificate, we might never see him again.

Life went on. I slept as little as ever; my nightmares were vivid and horrible. I watched the pageant before me, made lists of linens and silverware, flowers to be ordered and invitations sent and responded to, and at night I paged through Frances’s sketchbook, looking at the shadows she’d drawn over the town I visited and the house I lived in, staring at the face she’d drawn in the window of my bedroom. Twice I ventured to the upper gable again, standing and waiting, hoping Frances would tell me how it had happened, who had done it. I lived separate from the family, alone in my visions and dreams. I wondered if I was suffering from what Mother’s doctors had politely called “nervous exhaustion.” I vaguely realized I had begun to let go of my life, to let it march without me.

And then the morning of the party dawned, and I decided to take out my camera again.

? ? ?

I hadn’t planned to do it. After the encounter with Robert—I could still remember the shock of seeing the figure of Frances past his shoulder—I had packed the camera away and left it. But I lay awake as dawn broke one morning and remembered that Frances had placed the camera on the floor of my room that day. And when I had taken the camera out, she had appeared. It was the last time I had seen her.

I could feel her somewhere close to me, watching, waiting. Perhaps the camera was the key.

I rose and dressed quickly, putting on layers to keep warm. Thick stockings, the plaid skirt Dottie had forbidden me to wear, and both a blouse and a sweater over my chemise. I twisted my hair back in an unkempt bun. Then I took Alex’s camera from its case and, shoeless, crept out my door into the hall.

The corridor was silent; there was no sound behind Cora’s closed door, or from her parents’ room down the hall. The servants would be up soon, so I moved quickly.

Downstairs, I padded through the kitchen to the back door. In the vestibule there, I pressed the small button for the electric light and looked at the array of outerwear hanging from hooks and lined in rows along the floor. I did not own shoes that were warm or thick enough for November in the countryside. Setting down the camera, I rifled through the belongings of the Forsyth family, looking for something that fit. I ended up with a slick black mackintosh that was tight in the shoulders—Dottie’s, perhaps?—and a pair of large, ungainly rubber boots that fit my feet perfectly and came halfway up my calves. I contemplated the boots as I wiggled my toes in their chilly interiors. I could not imagine Dottie wearing rubber boots even at knifepoint, and they were too small to be Robert’s. It was quite likely that they had been Frances’s.

I found a mismatched green woolen scarf, tucked it around my neck, and set out.

It seemed that morning that I had the world to myself. The air was pungent with cold, frosted leaves, and my breath plumed in the air. Dawn had lightened the sky just enough so I could see the knobbed trunks of the trees and the path as it wound into the early-morning mist before me. The night’s chill fog still shrouded the woods, so that the trees seemed to vanish upward into unseen eternity, and cries came from invisible birds. The few leaves left on the trees dripped water with a persistent wet sound, and the loamy path sponged frostily beneath the soles of Frances’s rubber boots.

I had not brought the tripod with me. I carried only the camera as I traveled the path, my boots sliding in the mud. Thick, cold water trickled down my mackintosh, the droplets catching the light. I could feel my own damp breath on the edge of the scarf that touched my lips. I headed for the lookout where I’d read Mother’s letter the last time, settling into a strange state of meditation as I walked, watching and listening. On some level I was afraid, but on another I was excited, alive with almost painful anticipation.

At the lookout, the fog blurred the edges of the view. The sea was a deep, hollow roar, its churning faintly visible through a layer of mist; the Ministry of Fisheries was a ghostly outline of walls and right angles. I stood for a moment, drinking the salty air, feeling the wind brush my damp cheeks, and then I fumbled with the camera.

I sank to one knee on the rocky ground and placed the camera on my other knee to steady it. I took off the cap, advanced the film, and bent to the eyepiece, framing the misty ocean in my view. I snapped a photograph, then moved back to get a wider shot, knelt again, and took another.

“Where are you?” I shouted into the wind.

I changed my angle as the wind rose in the trees behind me. The dawn light was just perfect, making the edges of everything soft, the mist diffusing the rising sun. A single boat on the ocean drifted into my line of vision, and I bent to the eyepiece again, watching the dark speck move on the lonely expanse of ocean, placing my finger over the button.

Something moved on the path behind me.

I straightened, the hair on the back of my neck prickling. “Frances?” I called.