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Also, To Mum and Dad, for believing in me.
Then I hit the Preface.
It began:
To understand what happened to Dorothy Vera Clifton, you have to understand the stories of Virginia Alcott, Joan Alcott and Rose Alcott. The broken three.
On a spiked heartbeat, I immediately closed the cover.
The broken three.
The broken fucking three.
I had not read that before Virginia said the same thing to me in a dream.
No, I had not read that before she said the same damn thing in my dream.
My heart was beating too fast, and my hands were shaking.
Those flowers weren’t right.
Someone was toying with me.
I had no idea how, or why, but they were.
Or maybe, two nights, not enough sleep, I needed to get a handle on myself and a good night’s rest.
Ian had been sharing about Virginia. I’d looked up and read about Joan. I must have read about Rose somewhere, since Virginia mentioned her in the dream. I just forgot. I’d done a lot of reading about Duncroft. I’d read about Dorothy. And the word broken wasn’t a rarely used word.
The bouquets, who knew? Maybe they only had carnations. It wasn’t like they were right next door to a flower shop. It also wasn’t like they weren’t generous with food, drink, in-house dry cleaning. They could give whole bouquets as gifts for guests. It could be their thing. All I had to do was ask.
I was blowing this out of proportion.
It was dark and it was time to go to bed, and it’d been another roller coaster day.
And truth, I was anxious about having another bad dream.
I’d accepted Ian’s sleeping pill, but I hadn’t taken it.
I got up, went to the bathroom where I put the two halves in a pretty, crystal dish set out either because it was pretty, or to put jewelry in.
I took half of one.
There was a multitude of lighting in the bathroom, including dim light that shone on the floor under the vanities.
I turned that on and left it on.
It lit my way back to the bedroom, and, once I turned off the lamps on the nightstands, the light coming from the bathroom took the edge off the dark.
I did one better, going to all the windows and pulling open the curtains.
The moon shone in.
Good.
I was learning.
I crawled into bed.
