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There was no body.
There was no blood.
There was only the tub, brimming over. An unused towel lyingsoaked on the floor. Beyond the windows, the vast gray expanse of the bay, now beginning to edge with ice. Nothing else.
And no one else.
For days, Mimi had been disappearing.
Now she was simply gone.
11.
We found her socks ten feet down the hall, so soaked and heavy that they’d probably fallen off on their own. After that, we found nothing.
Diana and William and Richard showed up lugging a Christmas tree, which sat abandoned in the foyer while we fanned out to search the house. For the next two hours, the six of us trudged back and forth and up and down like a live-action role-playing version of Clue. The library. The study. The kitchen. The hall. The countless bedrooms with their countless closets, all the weird nooks and crannies that were unique to the Whispers and that Mimi knew better than anyone. She could be anywhere and had to be somewhere, yet the quickness and completeness with which she’d vanished was unsettling, like the house had simply swallowed her up. The longer we looked without finding her, the more guilty and responsible I felt. I was helped along in this by my mother, who was making her disappointment known by stomping, sighing, and slamming doors, and Diana, who made her disappointment known by stepping in front of me and hissing, “This was extremely irresponsible of you, Delphine,” before stalking away.
The only person who didn’t give me grief, shockingly, was Richard—maybe just because he was so delighted that here at last was a mishap nobody could blame him for. As the sun began to disappear below the horizon, I came back through the foyer to find him sitting in the discarded wheelchair, using one hand to spin himself in circles like a little kid who’d found a new toy.
“Is this really the best use of your time right now?” I said through gritted teeth.
Richard stopped spinning and set both feet on the floor. “Oh, piss off, Delphine,” he said cheerfully. “I’m just having the tiniest moment of fun. I wouldn’t begrudgeyoua little break from the search for coffee... or something,heh-heh, stronger,” he added, waggling his eyebrows suggestively as Adam walked in from the direction of the kitchen. “And where haveyoubeen, young man?”
Adam flashed me an obvious “What’s this guy’s problem?”look before turning to Richard. “I just checked her room again. Is there a way to lock the doors after we’ve looked somewhere?”
“Now, that’s smart,” Richard said. “Strategic thinking. See, you don’t even need me.” His tone softened. “You could take a break, you know. She’ll turn up. Why don’t we all have a drink and—”
“Why don’tyouhave a drink,” I snapped. “Or seventy.”
Richard shrugged. “You are your own master.”
I shook my head with disgust and walked away, toward the shuttered wing.
“I already looked down there,” Richard called after me, but his voice faded as I turned the corner. I walked to the end of the hall, opened a door at random, and peered in. I didn’t think Mimi would have come this way. After all, this part of the house had been shut up and unused for more than a year, the vents closed and drapes drawn, and it was so cold that I could see my breath. Like most of the rooms in the north wing, this one was wall-to-wall clutter, with heavy curtains pulled over the windows and everything draped with dust sheets. But every hulking object, every shadow, looked suspicious. Even if Richard had already looked, she could easily be hiding here.
And so could somebody else.
I shuddered, thinking again of those heavy unfamiliar footsteps rushing across the floor above the bathroom, the wheelchair tipped on its side—things I’d pushed to the back of my mind after my grandmother’s disappearance threw us all into emergency mode. And maybe it was nothing; maybe what had sounded like footsteps was just the creaking and settling of the house, and maybe Richard or Diana had pulled the chair out of the closet to get at something else and simply not put it back... or maybe I was desperately trying to convince myself that there was a reasonable explanation for all of this. That the house wasn’t being haunted by disembodied footsteps or hosting a series of visitors nobody but Mimi could see.
I stepped through the door and paused again, letting my eyes adjust to the dim light, listening for the furtive movements or the quiet breathing of someone trying not to be found. I took a deep breath—and then erupted in a coughing fit so loud and so long that any hope I’d had of being stealthy was lost. The room was thick with dust. I could see it sitting like a film on every surface and smell it in the air.
“Mimi?” I called. There was a light switch on the wall and I flipped it, and a chandelier overhead brightened and then flared out just as quickly with a loudffftz!that let me know I’d blown a fuse. The light from the hallway behind me went out, too, plunging the whole room into gloomy near darkness. In the next moment, I heard two things: a faraway thud followed by a male voice—Richard, probably—shouting, “Fuck!”
And second, from inside the room, the slow rustle of a plastic furniture drape sliding to the floor.
I whirled toward the sound, yanking my phone from my pocket and turning the flashlight on, aiming it wildly into every corner and seeing nothing out of place. Every hair on the back of my neck was standing on end, and I willed myself to cross the room, sweeping the flashlight beam back and forth, finally reaching the opposite wall, where heavy damask curtains covered the windows. I yanked one back, setting offanother explosion of dust that in turn set off another coughing fit, then turned toward the window and screamed: a hideous ghostly face stared back at me, and my scream had tapered to a whimper by the time I realized I was seeing myself, lit from below like a ghoul by the glow of my own phone. I turned the flashlight off and looked out. There was the veranda, empty, with the twilit garden and bay beyond. The outdoor lights were still on, throwing a weak glow across the veranda that made everything beyond it seem darker still. Nothing moved—and then suddenly one of the shadows shifted.
Not quite empty,I thought as a fox materialized at the edge of the circle of lamplight and slunk cautiously into view. It stopped to sit, its thick tail curled neatly around its feet, and in my head, I heard Mimi’s voice.
There was a fox there,she had said, and I wondered if this was the one she’d seen, its presence just striking enough to find a foothold in her failing memory. The fox sat unmoving, its eyes huge and unblinking in the dark. It seemed to be looking at me.
I turned back to the room. The light coming through the window was enough to see by, to ascertain that all the ominous lurking and crouching shapes were nothing more than furniture—and yet I still had the unshakable feeling that I wasn’t alone, that I was being watched, that not only was I playing hide-and-seek but that somehow my role in the game had been flipped so that it was me, not Mimi, who was being hunted.
From behind me came the soft scrape of a footstep and the murmur of low voices, and I jumped. But it was no ghost, only my aunt Diana: she was standing on the terrace just outside the window, turned three-quarters away from me and talking urgently to someone I couldn’t see. The fox, wherever it had come from, was gone.
“...And tell him you need another month,” she was saying as I got close to the window. I was about to tap on the glass, to let her know I was there, but I instinctively ducked out of sight as she began to turn in my direction and I saw the expression on her face: pure naked rage.
“That’s going to be difficult,” said another voice—William’s—and Diana whirled away and began to gesture wildly.
