“Papa, I demand you punish Cora! She’s gone too far this time. First she ruined my new hat—”
“It was an accident! I didn’t mean to trample your stupid hat. You were just in the way.”
“Then she runs off like a loon, and when I tried to catch her, she pushed me in the pond!”
“That’s not what happened—”
A corner of Kitty’s mouth twitches upward. Ruby left out the part about trying to drown her sister in the green, murky pond after she tripped over a tree root and fell in herself. The younger girl had laughed, understandably, so Ruby grasped Cora by the ankle and pulled her down into the water too. Aiden had to fish the two of them out.
But the specifics don’t interest Everett Cooke any more than they do his eldest daughter.
“Enough!” he roars, staring down the gaggle of children filling his library.
“Everett?” a woman’s voice says into the silence that falls over the room. She’s pale and delicate, like the china in the cupboard. She sits with her legs crossed at the ankle and a cup of tea poised halfway to her lips. Her eyelashes are so light they seem almost to disappear. “Exactly how many children do you have?”
Mr. Cooke slams his brandy glass down and stands. This time, even the Cooke girls notice he’s seething.
“Three,” he says darkly. “I have three undisciplined, untidy, untamed offspring who don’t have the sense the good Lord gave them. Step forward.”
Ruby and Cora hesitate but finally do so, at last comprehending their peril. Cora peeks up at her father’s guests, resplendent in their fine clothes and clearly shocked by the tableau in front of them.
“You too, Peter. Stop hiding back there,” Everett says.
Peter glances quickly up at Aiden, who nods to the boy. He slowly makes his way forward to stand with his sisters.
The Donnelly siblings step back, grateful for once that their mother is only the housekeeper and they’re not expected to be in that line. They do what children of servants learn to do at a young age and fade into the background as best they can, waiting for the opportunity to flee.
“These are my children. Ruby, Cora, and Peter,” Everett Cooke says, his voice shaking with barely restrained anger. “And this, children, is your new stepmother, Helena.”
The door of Kitty’s memory closes softly now on the scene, but not before she recalls the horror on the faces of the Cooke children.
Once again, she’s in an empty room filled with dust and memories. Kitty pulls her old bones from the piano bench to make her way slowly home. Deirdre will worry if she’s gone too long.
The lure of the past and those who live there doesn’t hold the same fascination for Deirdre, who likes to pretend they never existed.
But Kitty can’t help staring over her shoulder at what once was. The Cooke children were right to be distressed.
After Helena, everything changed.
9
TESSA
Everything has changed.
Tessa hides in the bathroom of the house she grew up in. In a few hours, she’ll watch her mother’s casket be lowered into the ground.
But neither Oliver Barlow nor the press salivating over his story stop for Tessa’s loss. A second video has been released. She bites her hand to keep quiet while Oliver’s face fills the screen of her phone, and his voice echoes off the cold tile.
“My parents put everything they had into getting me out of jail. Their time, their money. Their lives. My mother died. Did you know that, Winters?” A flicker of grief crosses Oliver’s face, though it’s quickly overtaken by rage.
“What would her life have been like if you hadn’t done what you did? What would your daughter’s life have been like? Will your wife survive the pain? Will she forgive you, do you think?” It’s dark wherever Oliver is, and shadows hide much of his face. Tessa thinks he smiles then, but it’s brief, there one moment, then stolen by darkness the next.
“Behind my parents’ house, on the backside of the property, there’s a shed. It’s old and falling down. It’s been there since I was a kid. Go take a look, Winters. I left something for you to find.”
The video ends abruptly.
Tessa catches sight of herself in the mirror. With wide eyes set off by dark circles and pale skin, she looks like a ghost, and feels as substantial as one. As if she might fade entirely away at any minute.
Pull yourself together. Today is about Mom.
No matter how much she wishes it was different, she can’t do anything about Oliver. Tessa needs to focus.
She splashes water on her face and forces herself to leave the bathroom. A little while later she’s putting fresh water in the vases of flowers sent by well-meaning friends and neighbors when the notifications on her social media feeds light up. She braces herself and clicks a link.
A body has been discovered on the Barlows’ property. Video shows emergency services in Bonham removing a distinctive covered shape on a stretcher.
The vase of lilies Tessa is holding slips from her grasp and shatters on the floor.
Running feet sound in the hallway, and she quickly kneels to pick up the larger pieces of glass.
“Tessa?” Margot says as she rounds the corner into the kitchen.
“Careful, there’s glass,” Tessa tells her sister.
Margot opens her mouth to speak, but she changes her mind. Instead, she walks to the cupboard and pulls out the broom and dustpan. She hands them to Tessa, then exits the kitchen without another word.
It’s been this way since Tessa arrived. She’d packed an overnight bag, but never expected to be sharing her childhood home. Margot and Ben live on the other side of town, closer to the bakery her sister owns and operates.
Yet Ben’s relationship with Margot is as shaky as Tessa’s.
She tried to talk to her sister about Ben the night she first arrived home. It didn’t go well.
“I know how it looked, Margot, but Ben and I aren’t sleeping together,” she insisted.
“I’m not going to discuss my husband with you, Tessa,” Margot said darkly. “Drop it.”
“He loves you,” Tessa said, unable to let it go. “I love you. Neither of us would ever—”
Margot stood so quickly the kitchen chair she was sitting in toppled to the floor behind her. She elbowed past her sister on her way out of the room.
“Margot!” Tessa cried.
Margot stopped, one hand gripping the doorframe so hard that her knuckles were white. She turned her face halfway back, her profile taut.
“Sex isn’t the only way to hurt someone, Tess. You ought to know that.”
Tessa hasn’t brought up the subject again. The few days since have been filled with funeral arrangements and an uneasy truce. At night, the two of them sleep in their old bedrooms, mirror images with an adjoining bathroom, barely speaking.
The memorial service passes in a bittersweet haze. Her mother was well loved in the community and among her family, and sadness mingles with happy memories. But Tessa can’t shake the sense that she’s failed her mother.
I’ve only made things worse, Mom.
The guests return for a reception at Jane’s farmhouse. Tessa stays busy refilling glasses and keeping a safe distance from her sister. She knows that once the last guest has gone, and the food and the plates are cleared and put away, she’ll get back in her car and leave Margot to sort out the rest of her life.