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“Who?” I said, but she ignored me and kept walking.
Adam sighed quietly beside me. The circles under his eyes were darker than ever, and I fought the urge to squeeze his hand.
“You look tired,” I said to him.
“I am,” he said, and gave me a wry smile. “I haven’t been sleeping well.”
I smiled back. “Maybe you need some company.”
“Don’t tempt me,” he said, leaning in so that I could feel the warm tickle of his breath against my ear. He paused, and then, with one last glance at Mimi’s retreating back, he took my face in both hands and kissed me hard, hungrily, on the lips.
Mimi had gotten far enough ahead of us that we had to hurry to catch up, coming up on her heels as she passed through the lower entrance to the garden. She was moving fast, faster than I’d known she was capable of, and seemed to have forgotten all about us. When I fell into step beside her, she glanced at me with surprise, then turned sharply away, taking the flagstone path toward the house’s side entrance.
“She’s supposed to have a bath before dinner,” Adam called from behind me. Mimi had finished climbing the steps and didn’t look back as she slipped through the door. I caught it just in time to keep it from slamming in my face, then caught her by the arm just inside the kitchen, where she’d paused as though she wasn’t sure anymore where she was going.
“Am I—” she began to say, and faltered.
“Late for your spa treatment? Nope, you’re right on time,” I said,nodding at Adam as he came through the door behind me. He gave me a thumbs-up. “Everything’s ready for you,” I said, gently steering her forward. There wasn’t actually a spa at the Whispers, but one of the first-floor bathrooms—the one adjacent to the suite that used to be a getting-ready room for bridal parties—was luxurious enough to pass as one. Her face brightened as soon as we walked in, and she sat obligingly on an upholstered bench, smiling and humming to herself while I unlaced her boots and eased them off her feet. But as I twisted the knob to set the warm water running, unfamiliar footsteps suddenly thudded across the floor above me, fast and heavy. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.
“Hello?” I called. The answer was a series of thuds as the steps picked up speed, then the slam of the front door.
“Mimi, I’ll be right back,” I said. I left the room at a run, taking a left down the hall and a sharp right through the back entrance to the dining room, coming through the pocket doors into the foyer just as Adam appeared in the opposite doorway.
“Are you all r—” he started to say, and then abruptly stopped as we both stared at what sat on the floor in between us. It was a wheelchair, the one I’d folded and stowed in a closet the day Mimi arrived at the house. Now it was sitting in the foyer, turned on its side, with one wheel lazily spinning in space. We both watched as the rotation slowed, then stopped.
“That,” Adam said, “is spooky.”
The sound of footsteps came again, these ones lighter and familiar, and I looked up to see my mother at the top of the stairs. She peered over the banister. “What’s that doing out?” she asked.
“Are you okay?” I said. “Who was here?”
“Here? Nobody.” She stared at me. “Last I knew, you three were out walking. Richard and Diana and William took Diana’s rental to go look for a tree. And I was just up in the attic—”
“A tree?”
“A Christmas tree?” Mom said slowly, looking at me in the same way she had back in high school when she’d asked, very seriously, if any of my friends were into “smoking drugs.”
I shook my head. “Sure. Okay. A Christmas tree. You didn’t hear someone running around on the second floor?”
Mom’s facial expression shifted; now she thoughtIwas smoking drugs.
I approached the wheelchair carefully, half expecting that wheel to start spinning again. I sniffed the air. “Do you guys smell that?”
“Smell what?” Mom said.
“It’s like cloves, or... I don’t know.”
“Is that...” She paused, and as she did, I listened—and felt my skin ripple out in gooseflesh. I heard it, too: the sound of water. Not just running, but splashing, splattering. For one horrible moment, we locked eyes.
“Where’s your grandmother?” Mom said, her voice rising shrilly toward panic, but I was already running. Back through the dining room, back down the hall, back to the bridal-suite bathroom with its copper tub, the one Mimi liked best. The sound of water got louder as I neared the door, and I realized with horror that the carpet under my feet was soaked. I felt my lips moving, forming one word, half mantra and half prayer:Please.
Please let her be here.
Please let her be okay.
Please don’t let me come around the corner to see her dead and pale and facedown on the floor, a pool of blood spreading from the place where she hit her head on the side of the bathtub.
Then I came through the doorway, my feet slipping beneath me on the wet tile, and the word died in my throat.
