Shadows gathered around the spruces and pines, forming deepening pockets of darkness where unknown figures could hide. Murphy hadn’t considered safety before. She’d only been thinking that the park was the nearest deserted, concealed plot of land.
Murderers and kidnappers probably thought that too.
Murphy staggered to her feet, wiping the dirty spade on her jean leg and picking up Siegfried’s coffin.
“Later,” she said. “When there’s more light.”
She set out from the copse in a nervous jog, keeping to the path, following it to the parking lot.
If someone were to kidnap her out here, Murphy wondered, how long would it take Eileen and Claire to notice? Hours? Days? Until Mom returned from the cruise?
Even then, they’d probably get over it fast. Mom had two whole other daughters. Claire and Eileen had each other for sisters. Murphy wasn’t essential.
I’m the spare tire of the family, Murphy thought, crossing the parking lot. No one notices me when I’m around. Who would notice if I were gone?
The lot was empty. There were no cars here. No one to see if gloved hands reached out, wrapped around Murphy’s mouth, and dragged her into the gathering shadows. A shudder drove through her spine like a metal stake.
It was a bad idea to dig out here.
A very bad idea.
In this deserted place Murphy’s jokes were pallid, powerless things. Her illusions were silly tricks, learned from library books titled Magic for All and The Art of the Con. Murphy wasn’t meant for deserted places. A magician couldn’t perform without a lively audience. Murphy was going to find that crowd eventually. It would require years of work to make it on stage, but she had what it took. The drama club advisor, Ms. Stubbs, had even confided in Murphy that she was the most talented kid in the group. One day Murphy would make it big.
In the meantime, though, she had to be careful about not getting randomly murdered. What a waste of fourteen years—the book reading, diagram studying, rope-trick solving—that’d be.
As Murphy headed for the poorly lit street, it began to mist. Raindrops stuck to her gloves. They lived for a second, visible droplets, before seeping into black knit. Murphy tucked her hands into her coat, where her turtle’s coffin sat snug between her ribcage and the coat zipper. She patted the Tupperware and sighed.
“Siegfried,” she said, “this is one screwy Christmas.”
DECEMBER TWENTY-THIRD
SEVEN Eileen
It was two in the morning and Eileen was eating a day-old donut, leftover from her most recent Safeway shift. She chewed while sprawled on her frameless mattress, raining sugar flakes on the wrinkled sheets. Her own private blizzard. And people said it barely snowed in the Willamette Valley.
It was pretty in a way, this everyday snowstorm. Two years ago Eileen would have chosen Titanium White and Pewter Gray from her acrylic set to do the scene justice.
Beside her rested a manila folder filled with several important-looking documents, which Mr. Knutsen had asked Eileen to look over carefully. The only document Eileen cared about was the paper with the address:
2270 Laramie Court, Rockport, OR
Patrick Enright’s house. Her inheritance. The way Mr. Knutsen had explained it, the house would truly be Eileen’s once Murphy turned eighteen. That’s when she and her sisters could jointly decide what to do: keep the house, or sell it. Until then, Patrick Enright had left behind enough money for Mr. Knutsen to manage the estate.
Mr. Knutsen had descended into legalese after that—mumbo jumbo about capital gains and property taxes. Eileen had stopped listening. She’d heard what mattered most.
Maybe it was the donut sugar blasting through her veins or the fading buzz of two shots’ worth of Jack Daniel’s. Maybe it was Christmas delirium, but there, on her bed, Eileen Sullivan was hatching a plan. Mr. Knutsen had scheduled a follow-up appointment with her, for after the holidays, but Eileen wasn’t one for appointments. Or waiting.
What she had was tonight. And tonight? She was going to Rockport.
She couldn’t shake what Mr. Knutsen had said, right before she’d left his office:
“Who knows what he’s kept locked away in there.”
“Sorry,” Eileen had said. “What?”
Mr. Knutsen had patted his sides and chuckled. “Patrick … well, he’s been the oddest of my clients, by far. Do you know, he found out about you by way of a private investigator? The PI’s findings brought Patrick down here, where he sought out my services. I’ve never had such a client: insisting on secrecy, informing me of his impending death—and I believed it, the man looked like hell. Directing me to not breathe a word to your mother and only send the letters out to you girls individually, when you were eighteen. Funeral? None. And a private burial. No relations or friends to speak of. Quite the eccentric.”
“Yeah, reminds me of someone.”
Eileen had been thinking of herself.
“As I was saying,” Mr. Knutsen had said, “it’s a mystery what’s in that house. Documents, photographs, antiques, maybe. Could be piles of junk. But he’s shut it all up. No estate sale. Left it waiting for you girls.”
On her bed, Eileen squinted in thought.
Documents.
Why would Mr. Knutsen have used that word? Not “knickknacks,” not “possessions.” He’d distinctly said “documents.”
Documents could mean answers.
Hadn’t Eileen’s troubles begun with documents? With the letters she’d found in the linen closet two years ago?
Documents could mean change.
The word pumped through Eileen’s heart, filling the ventricles, rushing in from veins and out through arteries: Ch-change, ch-change, ch-change.
She’d known the secret for two years. It had messed with Eileen’s head, fucking up everything—her art, her life at home, her will to do anything but drink in this drafty garage.
All because Eileen believed the secret to be true.
But what if.
What if Eileen didn’t have all the facts?
Patrick Enright. Her uncle. He had to have known the secret too.
And there were documents.
What if those documents told a different story from the ones she’d read?
Eileen hadn’t considered the possibility before. Now she craved it: a diary entry. A written confession. A letter to Eileen herself, left for her to discover—an inheritance of a different kind.
That was another thing: She’d inherited a house. So, best-case scenario, she got an answer to the question that had eaten her alive for two years. Worst-case? She was richer than she’d been a week ago. Either way, things were looking up.
This was ch-change, ch-change, ch-change.
It was after two o’clock when Eileen got up and filled a backpack with supplies: a blanket, socks, a thermal shirt, a refillable water bottle, Dubble Bubble, her flask of Jack Daniel’s, and lastly, the manila folder Mr. Knutsen had given her.
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse, and that was when Eileen crept out of the house.
Eileen owned a 1989 Dodge Caravan. It was equipped with wood paneling, a red interior, and a finicky alternator. Eileen hated the Caravan with her whole heart. It sucked that you could work hard for three years and in the end all you could afford was something you hated with your whole heart. In fact, Eileen considered this reality the running theme of her life.