A Darker Shade Read online

  I asked for details.

  “Sprained ankle. He’s being measured for crutches right now. And a bruised rib. It’s not fractured, so no need to worry about a lung puncture or anything, but it will hurt nonetheless. They’re icing it right now to take down some of the swelling and they’ll send him home with pain medication.”

  A sprained ankle and a bruised rib. I could almost be annoyed at how perfectly he’d diagnosed himself were I not so relieved for Liza’s sake.

  The emergency room staff had been efficient, but nonetheless the setting sun had draped the land in a charcoal shroud by the time I dropped Prescott and Liza in front of the house. I pulled the truck into the garage and then sat in the front seat for a long moment, trying to expel the tension from my body. In that silent darkness, my mind returned to the sabotaged ladder. Could I have been mistaken? Everything had happened so fast. We’d been upstairs, then there was the crash, and… but that line of thought reminded me of the peculiar incident on the third floor. With distance, it had taken on the patina of a dream or fairy tale. Yet I could not dismiss it so easily. I could not discuss it with Prescott or Jennifer, either, or I’d certainly lose my place. No one wanted a crazy woman taking care of their children, especially when those children faced psychological problems of their own.

  I could call Nadya or Ali. Out here, there was a single bar of cell service. I tapped the phone against my hand several times, considering. I could not burden Ali with this, however. Besides, she retained enough of my mother’s superstitious nature to insist I leave immediately, regardless of the benefit to both of us if I stayed on. Nadya, on the other hand, would scoff and tell me I was imagining things. I did not need to call her to hear her opinion; it lived, homunculus-like, in the back of my head. I tucked the phone back into my pocket and forced myself to leave the peace and safety of the truck.

  The thick darkness of night, so much deeper than evening in the city, weighed on me as I trudged from the garage to the house. Even the door seemed heavier than usual. But once inside, the scent of Mrs. Vogel’s excellent casserole greeted me. A fire crackled cheerfully in the library grate, chasing away the chill.

  “Thanks for starting dinner,” I said to Jennifer, who stood in the kitchen slicing scallions for salad. “And the fire’s a lovely touch for a gloomy day.”

  “That was Hailey’s idea. We used the broken bits of the ladder for kindling. Knowing Thane, he’d insist on fixing the damned thing if we didn’t burn it before he got home. It’s high time he bought a new one. Aluminum or the like. Something wood boring bugs won’t get into.”

  She’d burned the ladder. All the evidence that Prescott’s fall was not an accident was gone. Not that I harbored any illusions about miraculously finding fingerprints or DNA or a big red arrow pointing at who’d tampered with it, but I felt its loss, as must Prescott.

  “Thane seems fine, thank goodness.” Jennifer scraped the scallions into the salad bowl. “He said the doctors found nothing serious. Is that right? He’s not hiding a concussion or torn tendon to be macho, is he?”

  “No, he was very lucky.”

  She laughed, and a bitter edge sharpened the sound to steel. “He always has been.”

  The man had lost his wife and brother and was unable to communicate with the daughter he clearly loved. He didn’t seem particularly lucky to me, but I kept my mouth shut.

  Dinner was a subdued affair. Even Hailey, after a short burst of chatter about the cool notebook she’d found, slid into silence.

  “I’m sorry.” Prescott ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t think I’m up for game night. I have a client coming in the morning. I need to be in better shape than I am at the moment.”

  “Of course,” said Jennifer.

  Liza patted her father’s hand, but then she flicked her eyes at me and I repressed a shudder. The time had come to open the book of spirits.

  Hailey announced her plan to take advantage of the lack of board game time to catch up on recorded episodes of General Hospital with her mother.

  “I’m a little embarrassed to admit to watching it,” Jennifer admitted while she helped me clear the dishes. “I became addicted when I was her age. My mother and I used to sit down every day when I got home from school and have a snack while we tuned into the goings-on in Port Charles. Hailey and I took up the tradition when she was in sixth grade. Her school day ended later than mine did, so we got in the habit of recording it and binging several episodes at a time whenever we had time.”

  “That sounds lovely. Why be embarrassed?”

  “It’s hardly highbrow.”

  I shrugged. “She’ll miss that time with you when she goes off to boarding school. You can worry about highbrow then.”

  For once, I appeared to have struck the perfect note, because she smiled at me. “I never thought of that.”

  Hailey and Jennifer would be watching television in the playroom, so I suggested Liza ready herself for bed and promised to meet her in her room once I’d tidied the kitchen. My original idea to use the old nursery for reading and handwork lessons had flown like a bat in the night after the strange event preceding Prescott’s fall. No way was I discussing communicating with the dead in that room. Had I the right to board up the door entirely, I would have done so without hesitation. As it was, I resolved simply to ignore it, never to enter there again.

  Once I heard the shower running, I ran upstairs and retrieved the book from beneath my mattress before returning to my work in the kitchen. I had the uncomfortable belief that Liza saw—and heard—more than she ought, and with only the flimsy connecting door between rooms she could easily discern the hiding spot. It was not that I didn’t trust her, but youth imparted heightened importance to everyday occurrences, and the book might prove irresistible.

  Liza made a great clatter leaving the bathroom, which I took as a summons. I wiped my hands on the dishcloth, gave the counter a final swipe, and gathered my things to go join her.

  “Shall I read to you or will you read to me?” I held the book out as I settled into the wide wingback chair beside her bed. I knew the answer, of course, but I intended to treat her as if eventual speech was a foregone conclusion. She pointed at me and then sat cross-legged, tilting slightly toward me, avid interest animating her face. I began with the introduction.

  We like to believe that tales of haunting were the product of gullible and overwrought Victorian imaginations, that we are too sensible, too intelligent for such fancies. And it is certainly true that stories of visitations from the dead have decreased in the Information Age. But it is equally true that the noise of culture has increased.

  The dead are not loud. Our ancestors noticed the sudden, minute changes in temperature, the small objects out of place, the shifting play of impossible shadows. We, occupied with earbuds and smartphones and two jobs before dinner, ignore such clues. We are consumed by busyness.

  The dead are not busy. And we ignore them at our peril.

  As I read, the room closed in, shadows clustering and reaching for us until it seemed the walls themselves leaned forward, listening. So clear, so sure was the sense of presence that I could not help sneaking glances toward the dusky, darkened corners, searching for whoever might stand there. But we were alone.

  I stopped at the end of the chapter about the Fox sisters and their rapping, knocking, alphabetic communication with the spirit of the murdered peddler. Liza’s big eyes implored me to continue, but I closed the book, resolute.

  “No more tonight. We can continue tomorrow or the next day, whenever we get the time.”

  Her mouth set, but I ignored the expression. If she wanted to protest, she would need to use words.

  “You don’t have to go to sleep yet if you don’t want to. You can join your aunt and cousin in the playroom or read to yourself or you and I can play a game.”

  She shrugged, retreating into sullenness.

  “Okay, then. I’m going to shower, but if you want me later I’ll be right next door.”


  Chapter 9

  I slept surprisingly well and resented the ring of my alarm all too early in the morning. The radiator was popping and cracking, but the room still held a chill and I curled under the heavy duvet for several minutes before forcing myself up. Dragging myself down the stairs in search of coffee, I found Prescott alone, his crutches propped against the table. His dark face had a gray cast and tiny lines spread around his mouth and eyes. He was not taking the pain medication the doctor had sent home.

  “Can I pour you some coffee?” I offered.

  “No, thanks. And please don’t hover. Mrs. Vogel’s done entirely enough of that this morning. I had to send her to take Rocky out just to get her to leave me be.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m fine.” The emphasis on the last word made it clear that he was tired of answering the question.

  I lowered my voice. “I’m sorry Hailey and Jennifer burned the ladder.”

  He pressed two fingers to the center of his forehead. “Rotten luck. I didn’t expect to get anything particular from it, but I’d have liked to have it to show the police in case anything else happens.”

  “You still have no idea who might have done it?”

  He shook his head. “I did send Henry to buy a lock for the shed, though. Told him I thought some things had gone missing. We’ve never had cause to lock it in the past but if someone’s sneaking onto the property, there’s a tremendous amount of damage they could do in there. It’s been months since I used the ladder, though, so I have no idea when it was tampered with. And I do wonder in the light of day whether we didn’t imagine it. Maybe it was rot or beetles and not deliberate mischief.”

  I didn’t believe it, but I had no proof. Before I could voice my suspicions, however, distinctive squeak and thump of Jennifer’s tread on the steps put an end to the conversation.

  “Are you ready to start lessons?” she asked as we both made up plates. I had let her go ahead of me. Even after a week, I hadn’t gotten used to the amount of food available to me as a member of the Prescott household. My elderly clients mostly nibbled and drank nutrition shakes rather than having actual meals. I brought my own food for those jobs, and when I worked with children I was generally expected to eat what they did. Not wanting to appear greedy, I took my cues from Jennifer. It wasn’t easy—she ate barely enough to keep a bird alive—but better a bit of hunger than to be thought a pig.

  “I am. We’ll see whether the girls are.”

  “It’s up to you to be certain they do their work.” She wrinkled her upper lip and a bit of her delicate nose. Jennifer, I was coming to understand, was the type of person who needed to remind people of their place in the world. All of us who worked for Sandy had run across her type before. Sandy claimed that they didn’t mean anything by the sniping, that having people in their homes who didn’t fit neatly into the “staff” versus “family” categories was as upsetting to them as it was to us, but I found that hard to believe. Jennifer had the natural authority of one born to privilege. It would take more than a hard-to-classify member of the household to upset her.

  She turned her attention to Prescott. “Is Mr. Simmons coming today?”

  “He is.” Prescott glanced at his watch. “In about forty minutes. He’ll keep me talking forever before he gets around to going over the plans.”

  I listened intently. I had no idea what went into boat building. I had always assumed buying a boat was similar to buying a car—you went to a dealership and found something you liked or you looked in classifieds for used ones.

  “What’s he looking for?” Jennifer asked.

  “A picnic boat, near as I can tell from what he’s said about his lifestyle.” Prescott glanced over at me. “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

  I shook my head. “Sorry.”

  “No reason to apologize. Jenn has worked in the business ever since she and Danny got married, so she knows all the lingo. A picnic boat’s like a small yacht, set up for nice weather, calm seas, hanging out with friends and family. You might drop a line into the water from it, but it’s not a fishing boat. We call it a Downeast picnic boat because it’s a bit more sturdy than the typical lake-water day boat and is modeled after a traditional lobster boat. Not designed for open ocean, you understand, but it can manage a bay or cove or sound just fine.”

  “Has he mentioned his budget?” Jennifer asked.

  “Nope. But he owned a Hinkley a few years ago, and he’s well aware that custom is going to cost him more.”

  “A boat like the one Thane is talking about costs between a million and two million depending on size, configuration, and materials,” Jennifer said. “So sometimes you can tell by a person’s budget what they’re expecting you to build.”

  Two million dollars for a boat. What kind of person spent that? That figure succeeded in reminding me that I was nothing more than staff far better than any comment of Jennifer’s.

  The girls arrived in the new schoolroom at nine-thirty. We started the morning with math. Geometry had been far from my best subject in school, but now the figures and formulas provided welcome stability. No matter that my senses failed, that warm was cold and footsteps sounded where no one walked, the surface area of a sphere would always be equal to its radius squared times four times pi. Was that what Ali found so appealing about medicine? She’d told me once that the body was a machine and she planned to be the world’s greatest mechanic. We could not be more different, my sister and I, and my aunt had remarked more than once that our career choices should have been reversed; the fey doctor made no more sense than the pragmatic psychologist.

  “Molly,” said Hailey, yanking me out of my memories, “what’s the point of this? When am I going to need to know how to calculate what the diameter of a circle is if I know the circumference?”

  “What do you want to do for a living?” I asked in return. Liza looked up from her workbook, her eyes following the conversation as if it were a tennis match.

  “I’m fourteen. How should I know?”

  “Exactly. What if you want to go into architecture or engineering or even fashion design? All of those rely on an understanding of two- and three-dimensional shapes.”

  “Fashion design? How’s that geometry?”

  “If you have three yards of fabric fifty-two inches wide, how many A-line skirts can you make if each skirt is twenty inches long with a fifteen degree slope on the A and a one-inch hem?”

  She stared at me, mouth slightly agape. “Fashion design is math?”

  “It’s one of the sad truths of life for those of us not great with numbers that almost everything is math. You want to redecorate and figure out how many gallons of paint you’ll need? Math. Out to dinner and need to calculate the tip or divide up the check? Math. Managing your household budget so you don’t go into debt? Math.”

  She wrinkled her nose, looking exactly like her mother. “I don’t like math.”

  I forged ahead. “The nice thing about math, though, is that it never changes. Once you understand how it works, really understand it, you can apply it in any realm from figuring out how many skeins of yarn you need for a sweater to programming computers. And doing proofs, like we do in geometry, teaches you how to create an argument, how to speak with authority.”

  “Huh.” Hailey didn’t look happy, but she settled back to her work without further complaint.

  By the time three o’clock rolled around and the girls went to put on hiking clothes so we could take Rocky out and get in our scheduled exercise, I wanted to crawl back into bed. I had two girls. How did teachers who had full classrooms hour after hour manage?

  The sky had gone gray on gray, a flat dusty silver with heavy, low-hanging charcoal clouds scuttling over the trees. Rain was coming. Still, my fear of the old nursery shored up my determination to take the girls outside. I slipped on my sweatshirt and jacket and went down to get Rocky ready for his run.

  I yawned widely as I put his collar on, then s
tarted when Nathaniel’s voice sounded behind me. “They wore you out, did they?”

  “Oh! No, no. They were fine.”

  He smiled and the wrinkles beside his eyes tilted upward, softening the sharp lines of his face. “By the way, Mrs. Vogel has gone home. Her son has the flu, so she’s gone to take care of her grandchildren for a few days. She left a few meals in the fridge so you wouldn’t be too put out, but I didn’t realize how much the energy the girls would take or I’d have asked her to leave more.”

  “They’re fine, honestly. I’m adjusting to the schedule, same as they are. It will work out.”

  “If you say so. I wouldn’t want to attempt to teach two tween girls. I’d rather spend the day listening to Simmons drone on about his wonderful girlfriend and how he’s simply dying to take her out for afternoon cruises so they can be absolutely private .”

  I’d seen Simmons. I’d also smelled his thick miasma of pine cleaner-scented cologne. Teaching Hailey and Liza had been exhausting, but drowning in Simmons’s odor might have killed me.

  Hailey got to the kitchen first, so I allowed her to take the leash. Liza, arriving a minute later, merely bent down and scratched Rocky’s ears.

  “Let’s go to the pond,” Hailey suggested as we stepped outside. “You haven’t been there yet, have you?”

  I had not. In fact, I’d almost forgotten its existence. During Matt’s visited, we had regularly traipsed all across the cleared part of the yard, playing soccer and tag and capture the flag, but I had seen no sign of water.

  Hailey, holding tight to Rocky’s leash, headed in the direction of the family cemetery, which I’d managed to avoid after our first visit. “We have to go through the woods a little ways.”

  Rocky followed eagerly until we got to the two crosses. Then he planted his feet, sitting so sharply that Hailey almost tripped, and growled low in his throat.