Page 90 of Old Flames

Exasperated, Jules snatched her phone back. “We’re not writing sonnets under the sun! Leo found the lines written in his notebook. We have no idea who might’ve written them.”

“No idea at all?”

“None,” Leo said. “No one had access to it.”

All three fell silent, soaking in this information.

“And you’re still at The Aurora, I see,” Vicky said. “You’re in the tower.”

Her eyes darted about as she tried to catch more of the scene behind them. She, too, was in her study, the writing nook in her apartment’s loft. Kit Kat was napping on her desk.

“The notebook was up here all night,” Leo confirmed. “I dumped everything on the desk yesterday, and now I’ve found it in a drawer opened to this page. It’s obvious someone put it there so I could find it. But no one has been here, except the two of us.”

“Not even housekeeping?” Vicky asked.

“No,” he said. “We’ve had deliveries, but no one’s made it past the door.”

“I bet!” Vicky snickered.

She was still a thirteen-year-old delighted by gossip.

“I need everyone’s best ideas,” Leo said. “Vicky, you go first.”

“Obviously, it’s a message from Aurora! Of course, she’s been gone over a century. She might not be in touch with reality. Who’s waiting for whom and where is anyone’s guess.”

“The shipbuilder!” Jules said. “We keep forgetting he built this house. He may be waiting for her on the other side.”

Leo sought her eyes. “We’re willingly overlooking the perfectly plausible explanation that someone got hold of the notebook and scribbled the note, someone who knows what we know.”

Jules held his gaze. “You keep it on you, always. No one has access to it, not even me.”

“Lock the door to the tower tonight,” Vicky instructed. “And keep me posted. I want hourly reports. This is fascinating.”

Leo offered to share his notes with her when he got back, a sweet gesture, but this was so obviously his story to tell.

“No thanks,” Vicky said, “I’m back to my vampire bullshit, outlining a new trilogy. That’s my bread and butter.”

“May I point out that you don’t lack for bread or butter?”

“Mind your business,” Vicky said. “Anyway, it’s the weirdest thing, almost as if Aurora’s hold on me loosened the minute I landed in JFK. I feel like myself again.”

Jules promised her updates, if not hourly then at least by the end of the day.

“Tell Matty we’ll talk soon,” Leo said.

“He’s taking the train from Boston tonight,” Vicky said, “and trust me, I’m telling him everything.”

Jules ended the call.

Leo fell onto the desk chair and drew her onto his lap. “Come, love,” he said. “I have something to show you.” He flipped the pages of the notebook to a couple sketches of triangles, one crossed out and the other not. “Aurora was unhappily married and depressed, but according to Amaris at the San Carlos Institute, she was in love with someone else, a cigar factory worker.”

“How does she know this?” Jules asked.

“How does anyone know anything? It’s part of the oral history. Recall, Daphne had said something similar.”

Jules nodded, accepting the lore as fact.

“According to Amaris, it doesn’t stop there,” Leo continued. “This was a love triangle. The guy was involved with someone else, someone who lived in this house and worked as a domestic servant.”