I wait until their footsteps fade on the stairs, and then I crack open the side door to walk in the garden. The air is cooler than I thought it would be. I look up, expecting to see stars spread out overhead like a dewy web, but instead the sky is black and endless, punctured only by the stark white moon.
I circle the garden pathway and lie down on one of the benches, watching the moon until the iron laths dig into my back. I sit up, sneak a look to make sure no one is watching, and stoop to smell the flowers. Nothing, just like before.
When I straighten, voices are murmuring from the second floor.
“I tried to talk to Aila earlier, but I didn’t get very far,” Mrs. Cliffton says. My ears prick.
Dr. and Mrs. Cliffton’s bedroom window is cracked just enough to carry out their drifting conversation. I move out of sight beneath the window and perch on the fountain ledge, waiting. I pretend to examine the fountain’s statue. It’s of a stone girl, frozen in a skip across the water’s surface.
“We’re working on borrowed time at this point,” Dr. Cliffton says. “I can’t believe they haven’t noticed something by now.”
“I can tell Aila is suspicious,” Mrs. Cliffton says. “Maybe I should have told them first thing. I just didn’t want to scare them, after they’ve already been through so much. I thought they could settle in a bit first. But you’re right. It can’t wait any longer.”
“Do you really think they know nothing about it? If Juliet hid all of this from them, it complicates things even more.” Dr. Cliffton sighs. “Maybe this was a mistake . . .”
“Malcolm,” Mrs. Cliffton says, her voice sharpening. “These are Juliet’s children. I could never live with myself if I turned them away when they had nowhere else to go. We said we would try it, and if it doesn’t work out, then we’ve at least bought Harold some time to find another arrangement.”
She pauses. I slide along the wall and crouch under the window, holding my breath until Dr. Cliffton’s low voice begins again.
“All right, Matilda. I agreed to try it, and we will. But their being here is going to stir things up again at the worst possible time. And I just don’t want them to walk into a hornets’ nest.”
There’s a long pause, and I wonder if the conversation is over. But then Mrs. Cliffton asks softly, “Do you really think we made a mistake?”
“No,” Dr. Cliffton says. “Well, I don’t know,” he clarifies. “Let’s just hope Sterling treats them better than it treated Juliet at the end.”
The hair on the back of my neck prickles. I lean forward, pretending to look at my reflection in the fountain, waiting for him to elaborate.
But I don’t see anything. The water is cool and clear and dark. No stars or moon reflect above me. I wave my hand above the water, but it is opaque. Blank. As though I have disappeared.
I stumble backwards into the steadying bricks of the house.
What is this place?
“Juliet must not have wanted them to know, if she never told them,” Dr. Cliffton says. I gulp at the night air, barely able to hear his voice over the thundering of my own heart. “But now that they’re here, Sterling isn’t going to hold on to her secrets for long before it starts giving them up.”
Chapter Four
Date: 8/29/1940
Sketching of bay-breasted warbler
Bird: Warblers. Type of songbird (oscine).
Songbirds aren’t born knowing how to sing.
They learn by listening to their fathers.
The night I met Phineas, I’d been planning to jump in front of a train.
But I was thirty-three years old, and something made me want to see him first. So I took the train an hour’s ride to his house.
I’d actually tracked down his address the month before. Even went so far as to visit his street. But I’d ended up sitting on a bench that time, sketching song sparrows. Watching them as they flew up in sprays from the ground to land in branches. Like falling leaves, in reverse.
It’s possible that the very first seed of my idea was planted then, in those moments when I’d sat watching the birds, wishing for a hit of courage. Wanting to shoot it into my own veins like an inoculation.
But the night Phineas and I did finally meet, I didn’t need courage quite as badly. I had already decided to jump. There really wasn’t much left to lose.
So I went to the door and knocked.
