“And leave Constance alone with him?”
I march across the room to the armoire beside the fireplace. My fingers search beneath the wooden edge for a key, the hook function a memorable design feature from my childhood. I unlock the cabinet and pull out the bottom drawer. Just as I remember, there are two loaded handguns placed side by side.
“Would it make you feel better if I carried this?” I say, removing one from the drawer.
“Tippi!” Ava says.
Preston raises his hands instinctively. “Is that really necessary?”
“Do you even know how to use that thing?” Constance asks.
When I was a teenager, Marmee taught me how to shoot. It was a departure from our usual forms of entertainment, that’s for sure, but one she deemed necessary.
“If your grandfather were here, he’d teach you how to do this,” she said, “which leaves the responsibility to me.”
The landscapers tacked targets to various trees in the distance. Marmee held one gun, gave the other to me. She showed me how to keep my arm steady, get used to the weight of the weapon in my hands, prepare for the unsettling jolt after discharge. When I finally pulled the trigger, my aim was better than either of us had expected.
“It’s for protection,” I say, training my eyes on Ava. “Let’s go.”
I slide the gun into one of the bulky pockets of myBirdscostume’s jacket. The ensemble’s boxy shape keeps the weapon easily concealed. If there is an intruder on the grounds, another person who has arrived uninvited, they’ll never guess I’m packing.
Once outside, I lead Ava and Damien to the garage. Hope flickers in my chest at the possibility Marmee is wrong, that there is a car after all, maybe one a landscaper left behind she doesn’t know about. No such luck. There are a few riding lawnmowers, trowels, and gardening tools, and two four-seater golf carts that appear barely used, the chrome hardware twinkling beneath the fluorescent strips on the ceiling. I jump behind the wheel of one, Ava beside me. Damien sits on the rear-facing passenger seat, his back to us.
The golf cart rumbles into a drive; the speed of the vehicle is faster than I expected, smoother than the older model I remember driving around the property during my youth. Weak headlights illuminate the path before us, the manicured hedges on either side of us appearing and disappearing as we zoom by. The scent of damp earth and gasoline is all around us.
“Marlowe was right,” Ava says.
“About what?”
“I hate when Preston tells that story,” she says. “He had nothing to do with starting my business.”
“We know that.”
“But Damien doesn’t. Or the countless other people he’s told it to over the years,” she says. “It’s bad enough people assume I’m a gold digger. When I start to build a name for myself, they still think it’s because of him.”
“Preston couldn’t tell the difference between a salad fork and a soup spoon,” I say. “Your success with the business comes from your talents alone.”
“Why can’t he let me have it, then?” she snaps. “When he had a career, I let him have the limelight. I didn’t insert myself into his achievements. I could have bragged about the nutritious meals I cooked and the physical trainers I researched, the supplements I encouraged him to take, but I never did. At the end of the day, he was the person putting in the work. He deserved to take the credit.”
She wraps the shawl tighter around her shoulders as the passing wind shifts, tangling her hair.
“I never asked him to hire anyone to look into the competition,” she says. “When he tells people he did that, it makes it seem like I didn’t earn this life. Like it was just something else handed to me. Marlowe picked up on the tension between us. She was trying to comfort me, and I was rude to her in return.”
“Don’t focus on that,” I tell her, my advice futile. In the wake of tragedy, it’s natural to reprocess every detail, every missed sentiment. Sadness scratches the back of my throat. That final conversation with Marlowe will torture Ava in the years to come, a vicious time loop of a memory inflicting heartache over and over and over.
She stops talking as we approach the front gates, and my heart stalls when I see that they’ve been left open.
“That’s strange,” Ava says, clearly thinking the same thing. “Wouldn’t the gates have closed after the drivers left?”
“They should have.” Either Opal or Mrs. Wilson would have been the last to leave, and I remember the latter assuring Marmee she’d lock everything up. If the gate has been open the majority of the night, does that mean someone else might be on the property? I consider driving the golf cart over to close the gate manually but deem accessing a phone more important.
I’m struck by the irony of seeing the Morning Cottage at night. Low-hanging tree branches hover above, crafting a canopy that conceals the house in gradient shadows.
“It doesn’t look like anyone is home,” Damien says once I’ve killed the engine. He hasn’t said a word since we left the house, the rattling engine preventing him from hearing my conversation with Ava.
“No one’s home,” I say. “We just need a phone.”
“Where is Mrs. Wilson?” Ava asks.
