“I think I’m uninvited to book club,” I said.
“Eloise is sympathetic to your cause,” Vira countered. “Shelby and Abigail can go fuck themselves.”
She steered me farther into the apartment, finally pressing my shoulders down until I was sitting in one of the yellow plastic chairs around the kitchen table. The Montgomerys’home was a strange, strange place. The entire decor was 1950s and very bright and cheery, but Julia, a taxidermist in her spare time, had filled the apartment with every animal that had died on By-the-Sea during the last twenty or so years. The centerpiece on the table was a family of squirrels, perpetually frozen in a snugly, sleeping bundle of bones.
Vira got me a towel and then poured me a cup of tea from a teapot that had been warming on the stove. She sat across from me and watched as I half-heartedly toweled off and then tried a sip of the tea.
Vira in this kitchen would never get old to me. Her black dress, her black hair, the tiny silver stud in her nose—all of that set against the backdrop of bright yellows and blues and oranges was at once both alarming and deeply satisfying. The one place I felt more at home than home was sitting with Vira in her kitchen.
The tea was citrusy and light. Vira made her own tea of herbs she grew in a small garden on the metal landing outside her bedroom window. The rains had probably ruined it now.
“First things first,” Vira said. “Did she?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“I don’tlikeasking. But I have to ask.”
“I know.”
Vira sipped her tea thoughtfully.
“I promised my mom I would find out who killed her,” I said. “But I don’t know where to begin.”
“‘Begin at the beginning,’” Vira recited, “‘and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’”
“Alice in Wonderland?I don’t know what that means.”
“Sure you do. You’re here, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know where I am,” I said, brushing away a tear that was making its way down my cheek.
Oh.
I hadn’t meant to cry.
“Georgina,” Vira said, producing a tissue from a quaint ceramic tissue box, “you always cry when it rains. Come on; let’s get you out of those wet clothes.”
We moved into Vira’s bedroom. This was the only room of the apartment not decorated in chirpy fifties decor. Vira’s bedroom walls were black, and her twin bed had a canopy of black lace and her windows were fitted with black lacy curtains. Everything was black and lace, basically, which gave the room a strange Victorian, haunted-dollhouse-type feel.
The one place I felt more at home than home and Vira’s kitchen was Vira’s bedroom.
Vira rummaged around in her closet, and I stripped while her back was turned. She tossed a fluffy black robe over her shoulder. It smelled like rosewater and lemons as I slipped it on.
I moved to sit on the bed but was greeted by a furious yowl from something moving underneath the blankets.
“Careful!” Vira shouted, diving over to the bed to pull a little bundle of fur out from under my butt.
“Whatisthat? And what was it doing under your sheets?”
“My cat! Rain. Don’t you remember? She likes to sleep under the blankets.” She presented the kitten to me proudly. Rain was scrawny and twisty and very, very cute. “When she dies—in, like, eighteen years—I think I’ll have Mom turn her into a lamp.”
I scratched Rain between the ears. “May you live a long and happy life.”
Vira put the kitten down, and Rain burrowed herself underneath the covers of the bed again. Vira pushed her to one side, lit some tall white pillar candles in her defunct fireplace, and then we sat across from each other on the bed.
