First Thrills - Lee Child [116]
Do I look all right? I want to say in response, as I freely stir extra sugar into my morning tea; no one to protest that shred of self-indulgence.
I couldn’t be better, I want to assure my sister—without an ounce of sarcasm, as it’s the truth.
But I just nod at her, and I sip the hot, decadently sweet brew.
She arches a dubious brow, because, like most people, she subscribes to the theory that things aren’t always as they seem—and because she herself couldn’t be farther from “all right” on this hot and sunny August morning.
She will be, though, in time. The worst of our nightmare is over at last. What lies ahead is nothing compared to what we’ve been through.
I contemplate helping myself to another biscuit. There’s no reason not to. I break one open and slather it with butter, then drench it in honey.
Before I can sink my teeth into the gloriously rich, sticky crumble, Maggie sticks her red head into the room to ask in her thick brogue, “Shall I open the drapes in the front room?”
“No!” my sister and I say in unison.
“Don’t open the drapes in any room until we tell you otherwise,” I instruct her. “Do you understand, Maggie?”
Something flickers in the house keeper’s blue eyes—eyes that seem sharper today, as they focus on me, than ever before. She used to look through me, through all of us, as the help should—and vice versa.
But now, as we exchange a glance—mine wary, Maggie’s dangerously shrewd—I wonder whether she understands far more than just my orders to shroud the windows from prying eyes.
She slinks away, and I eat my biscuit in silent contentment. My scalp is soaked beneath my thick auburn hair; it must be ninety-five degrees outside already, and considerably warmer here in the kitchen.
This, however, is nothing compared to yesterday morning, when the red- hot stove threw off additional heat. My sister wasn’t around to ask me why it was blazing away on the steamiest day of the year. Maggie was here, but of course it wasn’t her place to question anything.
In the next room, the clock chimes the half hour.
“It’s almost time.” My sister pushes back her chair. Half past ten.
Nearly twenty-four hours ago, my father unexpectedly came home from the office. He wasn’t feeling well, he said. Sick to his stomach. He was going to take a nap before heading back to work.
He didn’t bother to ask where Abby was.
I didn’t tell him.
“Aren’t you going to come upstairs?” my sister asks from the doorway.
“No need, I’m ready,” I tell her, smoothing my full skirt as I stand up.
My dress is, appropriately, black.
Earlier, I locked my bedroom door before I removed the dress from its designated hook at the back of the wardrobe in my room. Slipped beneath the dark black silk, snug as a lining, was the blue cotton dress I’d had on yesterday morning.
It will obviously have to be dealt with—but not today. So I took a plump goose-down pillow from my bed, remembering how many times I had futilely pulled it over my head to smother ghastly sounds in the dead of night.
Dead.
Again, the irony.
Even now, left alone in the kitchen, I don’t smile. I am thinking about how I carefully slit open a pillow seam to create an opening just a few inches. After wadding the blue dress into a tight little ball, I tucked it through the opening, pushing it deep into the feathers. When I had carefully stitched the seam closed again, there was no sign of tampering, no telltale lump, even when I patted the pillow hard, all over.
I’m confident that no one will ever find the dress before I have a chance to destroy it.
I eye the cold iron stove.
Unlike fabric—and, for that matter, wood—metal cannot absorb telltale stains. But wood and fabric are so easily transformed to ashes, and ashes tell no tales.
I stood over that blazing stove yesterday morning, sweat pouring down my face with salty tears—not tears of grief, but of sheer relief.
It seemed to take forever to incinerate that wooden handle, its top freshly splintered, and all the while I was aware of father lying there on the sofa in the next room, Abby upstairs,