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“I have to go,” I said, but Richard had already hung up.
I sat immobile for minutes, my mind racing.He was there,I kept thinking over and over. Not just that first day, when he’d frightened Mimi and there’d been all that commotion, but other times. Timeswe hadn’t seen him, times we hadn’t even known someone was there. I thought of the strangeness in the house in those days before Christmas. The attic, where photographs and mementos had gone missing.Everything’s tossed around,Adam had said—and I remembered him opening up the stairs, the way the dust had drifted down to join the dust that was already there, beneath his feet. Why? Because someone had been up there before him. Someone who wasn’t one of us. And that morning, when Jack had come to the house and there had been so much commotion...
Mom said she’d called him,I thought, and my hands gripped into my knees. Yes, she had said that. But not before. Not ahead of time. Not like you would, if a strange man was coming to your house early in the morning to look at the furnace and you didn’t want your family to be freaked out. She’d said it only after we’d all seen him—and only when I asked.
I picked up the phone and opened my email. I had six more messages from Tasha, the rest of Shelly Dyer’s photographs, but I just wanted to look at the first one again. The picture of me and Adam, except that as I looked again, I realized that the picture wasn’t just of us. We were standing to the side of the frame; Shelly had aimed her camera at a spot over my shoulder, where one of the long windows on either side of the front door offered a view onto the porch. Two people were framed there, talking with their heads close together. One was her son.
The other was my mom.
I looked again at that subject line—4 Mrm Crvasos family—and then shifted my gaze to Mimi’s letter, to the part where she told Shelly about the trust, and the line that read:We are both of us too old to hold on to anger. Shelly couldn’t get a message to my grandmother, but she had found a way to communicate all the same. To show us that she, too, had let go.
And maybe also to warn us that her son had not.
A horrible thought was taking shape in my mind.
Tasha answered the phone on the first ring.
“Willowcrest Senior Living,” she said. “How may I help?”
“Tasha, it’s Delphine.”
“Heeey!” she chirped. “You got the rest of those emails?”
“Yes, thanks,” I said quickly. “I was wondering, I know it’s a morbid question, but how did Shelly die?”
“Oh, I’m not really supposed to—” She hesitated and broke off, lowering her voice. “Okay, between us. She suffocated. You know how she couldn’t talk? She also couldn’t swallow that good. You’d think her son would be more careful—”
My breath caught in my throat. I thought of the voice I’d heard as I stood huddled against the wall outside the room where Shelly was dead. I thought it had sounded familiar, and now I knew why. “Her son. He was there?”
“Uh-huh,” Tasha said, her voice dropping even lower. “He came to visit with a box of chocolates, but I guess he stepped out to take a call or something? He only left her alone for fifteen minutes, but I guess she couldn’t wait. He came back and found her slumped over with her face all purple. He hit the alarm fast as he could, but there was nothing we could do.”
And now all the money my grandmother had set aside for Shelly’s care would go to Jack instead. I didn’t think he had hit the alarm as fast as he could have at all.
“Thanks, Tasha,” I said, and hung up before she could continue. I was already putting the car in gear. Already tearing out of the overlook parking lot.
And I was already too late.
His truck was parked on the piazza outside the Whispers, right up next to my mother’s car and at a strange angle, as though he’d pulled up in a hurry—or was trying to box her in. I got out cautiously, gathering my things, fighting the urge to run inside. I needed to be smarter than that. I needed to think this through.
He doesn’t know I know,I reminded myself, but rather than being comforting, the thought made me shudder: I was pretty sure that if he didn’t know, he wouldn’t hurt me or my mother. But what if he figured it out? What if the knowledge was written all over my face? I couldn’t let him see it. It would be better, I thought, if he didn’t see me at all.
I opened the front door and called out, “Mom?” hoping she would appear immediately, praying she’d be alone. I could make her come outside, maybe even ask her to get in the car. I could drive a few miles away, show her the letter, tell her what I’d found, before Jack even knew what was happening. The brightness of the day made the inside of the house seem murkier than ever. I stood still, straining to hear footsteps, an answer, anything. The usual creaking and muttering of the Whispers had paused; it was like listening at the door of a tomb.
And then in the silence, I heard it: a single, strangled sob.
I bolted through the door and toward the sound, all notions of caution forgotten, then froze as I rounded the corner into the parlor. They were together there, the two of them, sitting on the green sofa where Mimi used to spend her days, sitting close enough to touch—only worse, theyweretouching. My mother had her hands over her face, and he was leaning toward her, one hand resting on her knee, the other on her shoulder. My stomach turned over.
“Don’t you fucking touch her!” I screamed, and they sprang apart, my mother’s hands flying out in front of her as if she were trying to stop traffic. But it was Jack Dyer I was looking at, and he was looking at me. He was on his feet in an instant, moving toward me quickly, his face contorted with anger. I backed up. He kept coming. My back collided with the doorframe, and he kept coming—and I looked down at the objects in my hands and did the only thing I could think of.
My shitty McDonald’s coffee, black and bitter and barely lukewarm, hit him square in the chest and exploded in every direction, splattering his face and his shirt.
“What in the goddamn hell!” he yelled, but he stopped walkingtoward me, and I turned to my mother, the words pouring out of my mouth in a shrill cascade.
“Are you with him?! Because whatever he’s told you, it’s a lie!” I yelled. “He’s been in the house, he was here, he was hiding here, and he was trying—he’s still trying—I think he killed her, Mom, he killed her and”—I whirled to face him, my hands balled into fists—“I swear to god, you bastard, if you lay a hand on my mother, I’ll—”
“Delphine, stop!” my mother screamed, and I did. Not because of the words, but the noise: a metallic shriek, so loud I felt my eardrums buzz, so loud I stopped in midsentence and stared with my mouth open. I’d never heard her make a sound like that. I didn’t know she even could.
Jack Dyer had his mouth open, too. He put his hands up and backed away from me like you’d do from a rabid animal, not stopping until we had fifteen feet and several pieces of furniture between us. “I think I should go,” he said.
