But we have to find that stock, first.
All along I’ve assumed that Harold took the children on some sort of trip. Believed that with the house still and with all their things in it, they must be coming back. With the Stone. One of them must have it, and if I had to guess—?my money’s on the girl. Because history always repeats itself.
But it is as if they themselves have disappeared. The dust is disturbed only by me. My shoes leave footprints on the wood that I have to sweep away. Being inside that abandoned house, surrounded by the smiling faces of their photographs, makes me feel like I’m going mad. Like I’ve entered into a family of ghosts.
I can tell the Quinns’ neighbor is suspicious as soon as I knock on the door. Something about me always seems to set people on edge.
She opens the door a crack and squints out at me, with her windswept hair and her overly rouged cheeks. Reid, it says on the mailbox.
I paste a smile on my face. “Mrs. Reid,” I say—?
“Who are you?” she asks. “I’ve seen you creeping around. What business do you have with the house next door?”
“Juliet and I grew up together,” I explain.
“I didn’t see you at the funeral,” she says, pursing her lips.
The old taste of rot fills my mouth, and I clear my throat. “We’d . . . lost touch until recently.”
She remains unconvinced. My patience is wearing thin.
“I need to get in touch with her family. If you could tell me where to find them—” I take a step forward.
“Don’t know where they are,” she says, and closes the door in my face.
I hear the click of the lock—?an easy one I’ve picked a hundred times before. I’m almost certain she’s lying, and I half consider barging in and drugging her with the chloroform in my pocket. I could get her to a Sister City and collect a new Virtue. See how much Victor can get for it.
Instead I turn away with a weary sigh. It’s too much effort for such a grumpy old bag. I need someone young. Someone closer to childhood, when life is easy and carefree and joyful. At least—?it’s supposed to be.
I glance at Aila’s window one more time.
I flip up the collar of my coat to conceal my face and turn back toward the train station, my head swimming with thoughts of Juliet, and I can’t think of the few bright spots of my youth without thinking of the one person who created them. The girl I fell in love with when I was all of ten years old—?her, and no one else ever again.
Matilda.
Juliet’s best friend.
My little red bird.
I duck my head into the wind and feel my limp come back ever so faintly when I start to jog.
Even now. Even still, I love her. Ever since the endless winter I was ten years old and my foster mother, Eleanor, wouldn’t let me go outside. I sat all day by the window, though the heat from the fire fogged up the panes. The world beyond them had started to seem like nothing more than a muted photograph.
But then one day Juliet and Matilda spilled through the front door, and I did not turn to see them shake the snow from their hair. Their cheeks would be flushed where cold and skin met, both of them so full of life. I kept looking down at my bird book, and I jumped when Matilda came up behind me.
“Do you like to watch the birds?” she had asked kindly. “Juliet said you watch them from the window.”
For a moment I couldn’t find my voice. “Yes,” I finally said. “But there aren’t many to see in the winter.”
“Which one is your favorite?”
“Matilda!” Juliet had called, her voice spinning down, already halfway up the staircase.
“Coming!” Matilda called back.
But instead she turned, expectantly, to me.
I stuttered, flipping through the pages until I found the one I loved to look at. The bleeding shock of colors of the painted bunting. I showed it to her, shyly, as if it were a part of myself.
