“No.”
“Any personal problems of his own? I know you were talking about the things on your mind, but did he ever relate them to something going on in his life?”
You grimace involuntarily at a sudden pain in your side, the wince traveling all the way down your arm to your fingers. Emily turns to you, and you nod you’re okay. Then you gaze at Ashley as she stands on the brick hearth by the woodstove. At the moment she seems oblivious to you and Emily and these two state troopers. She is uninterested in dolls or a playmate. She is focused solely, almost quizzically, on the long, daggerlike triangle of metal fuselage on which she is impaled, the piece of your airplane that has sliced through the side of her abdomen. She is fingering the smooth, blue edge, careful to keep her fingers from either the point or the pieces of muscle and stomach and rib that garnish the jagged lip. You find yourself wondering: Was there water in her lungs when they did the autopsy? Or had the metal killed her instantly?
B ecky Davis never did call Emily back, so Emily decided to phone her. But this time she called the woman at work, remembering from their one cryptic conversation in the diner that Becky had said she did something at Lyndon State College. From the school’s automated phone system, Emily learned that the woman worked in the library. There Emily asked to speak to Becky Davis.
“Speaking.”
“Oh, I didn’t recognize your voice,” Emily said.
“Who’s this?”
“Emily Linton.”
There was a long pause at the other end, and Emily could imagine the woman sitting a little straighter in her chair. Rubbing the bridge of her nose, perhaps, the way Emily knew she herself did when she was in the midst of a phone call that she found either stressful or unpleasant. “What do you want?” she asked finally.
Emily took a breath. Becky sounded far less friendly than she had at the diner. “Well, I’m not sure. Tell me: How was your parents’ visit? Didn’t you tell me they were coming up from North Carolina for a bit?”
“That was a long time ago. They’ve come and gone.”
“Okay.”
“Are you at your office?”
“I am,” said Emily.
“You’re calling me from the law firm,” Becky said, unwilling to hide a small wave of incredulity.
“Why is that a problem? It’s not like our phones are bugged or you and I are about to share state secrets. It’s-”
“Fine. You’re in John Hardin’s office. I get it. My husband told me you called the other night. What do you want?”
“I’m honestly not sure. When you introduced yourself to me at the diner, you were very nice. But you also kept talking about them, and you called them the herbalists. And then you left when you saw Alexander Jackson coming into the diner. Clearly you knew who he was. I didn’t at the time, but I do now. He’s married to Ginger. What was it you wanted to tell me that day about them -about the herbalists? Can you tell me now?”
“Have you ever been inside John Hardin’s house?”
“Yes.”
“Did you notice the pictures?”
“Do you mean the paintings? No, I-”
“I meant the family photographs!”
“What about them?”
“He doesn’t age! Clary doesn’t age! At least it seems that way. It’s not… natural. It’s…”
“It’s what?”
“And where is your husband’s doctor? His psychiatrist?”
“You mean Valerian? Well, she’s at-”
“Valerian? You know who I mean. Michael Richmond. He sometimes skied with my husband. They were friends. We were friends. Where is he now?”
“Look, I know something is going on. That’s why I’m calling. I have a house with bones in the basement, Hewitt Dunmore is dead, Michael is-”
“He’s dead, too. My husband and I are sure of it.”
“You were telling me about the photos in John and Clary’s house. Can you-”
“Really, there’s nothing I have to tell you. I love Bethel and I love my family and I think it’s great that you’re here.”
“Becky, please,” Emily said. But she heard a click and the line went silent.
“Everything okay?”
She looked up, and there was Eve, the firm’s young paralegal, standing in her doorway and looking a little concerned.
“I’m fine,” she answered.
“You looked like you’d seen a ghost,” Eve said.
“Nope.”
“If you need something, you’ll ask?”
“Tell me something.”
“Sure.”
“Why is your name Eve?”
“I seem to be rather talentless when it comes to plants. I seem to have the opposite of a green thumb,” she said with absolute earnestness, and then she continued on her way down the corridor.
“I t’s for the best,” Valerian said to Emily later that afternoon, sitting across the desk from Emily in her office. John leaned against the wall, ever the sage, avuncular presence. “And it’s not for long.”
“I just don’t know,” Emily said. “I’m not sure Michael would have agreed.”
Valerian turned around and looked up at John. “Do they know anything more about Michael’s disappearance? The police, that is?”
He sighed wearily. “No. I haven’t heard a thing, I’m sorry to say. And while I like to believe he’s just-what did that South Carolina governor once do?-disappeared to be with some hypnotic young siren in South America, I think we can’t help but suspect the worst.” He shook his head, looking uncharacteristically morose. “We like to believe we’re exempt from that sort of violence here in the White Mountains. Apparently, we’re not.”
“I want to think about it some more,” Emily said finally. “I don’t want us to broach this subject with him just yet. Okay?”
“Absolutely,” Valerian said. “Let’s revisit the idea later this week. I’m seeing your husband tomorrow. Maybe we’ll have a better sense of what we should do after that.”
Y ou replace the empty battery in the drill with the charged one, grab four long screws, and drop into place another new step on those rickety back stairs behind the kitchen. It takes about a minute because you measured twice and cut once. You like that expression.
Inside this back stairway, you have found that you do not hear the birds. It feels as if there are more of them here than there were in West Chester. This is probably a delusion. There were plenty of birds in Pennsylvania. But the cheeps and coos and trills sometimes seem to surround you here when you walk between the house and the carriage barn or when you stroll down the long driveway to the mailbox on the road into Bethel. You do not hate the birds. You blame them-but you do not hate them. At least this is what you tell yourself, struggling to be reasonable. You wish you could talk to Michael about this distinction between blame and hate, but you can’t.
You have come to suspect that the women were involved in Michael’s disappearance, just as you have come to suspect that they were involved in Hewitt Dunmore’s death. But you can’t see why or how. You have the sense now that they are plotting something involving you, and that Emily is complicit. She seems to be seeing more of Valerian. There are phone conversations that end abruptly when you enter a room or descend the stairs to the first floor. Emily brought home some papers from work, and when you aimlessly wandered into the kitchen and saw her reading them, she thrust them into her briefcase.
This morning Ethan visited you soon after Emily and the girls had left for the day, and he told you in no uncertain terms that your suspicions were accurate: Emily is becoming one of them. People don’t tell you things, but you are aware that secrets are rising like distant thunderclouds. A new name for Emily and new names for your daughters. When were they planning on telling you? It is possible that Emily already is one of them. Just look at the plants that have appeared in your greenhouse. Her greenhouse. The girls’ greenhouse. Ethan tried to reassure you that all of the pain you are experiencing will stop once Ashley gets a playmate-your guilt, too, will melt away-but you told him you would rather live with the pain and the guilt and the debilitating sense of failure. He reminded you that it wasn’t a question of character. It was a question of strength. And he was stronger. The fact was, someday the two of you would do it together. It was inevitable. Think back to the evening when Molly Francoeur was over for dinner and a playdate. Or that night when you tiptoed up to the third floor with Tansy’s knife. You would do it, he told you. You would.