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“Sorry?”
She tangled her legs with his. “She doesn’t have someone to curl up with. Like this.”
“Nobody back in Boston?”
“No one special. Her grandmother told her that lovers will come and go, but she’ll have only one love, and he’ll be her anchor in every storm. That’s right up Cleo’s alley.”
“Her light’s still on.”
“She’s a night person, mostly. You rarely have a Cleo sighting before nine a.m. Ten’s more likely.”
“I won’t see her before I leave then.”
“Highly doubtful. Trey, if I start to get up tonight, you know, like before? Will you stop me? I don’t want all that tonight.”
“I’ll keep you here.” He brushed a kiss over her hair. “You haven’t done any of that before when I’ve been here. But you talk in your sleep.”
That brought her head up. “I do? What do I say?”
“I can’t make it out, not yet anyway.”
“I never did that before.”
“How do you know? You’re sleeping.”
Laughing, she cuddled closer, let herself start to drift. “The room Cleo and I shared freshman year was far from palatial. She’d have heard me, and she’d have told me. Plus, as a woman fast approaching thirty, I’ll confess I’ve shared a bed with others. Nobody ever said I talked in my sleep.”
“New then. Connected.”
“Mmm. I don’t want to go through the mirror tonight.”
“I’ve got you,” he murmured, and stayed awake as she slipped into sleep.
When the clock woke him, she sighed, and turned. He heard her say, “All right. Yes. I’m coming.”
Before she could get up, he gathered her close. “Stay with me tonight.”
She started to shift away again, but he held her. “Just stay with me.”
He thought she said Lizzy or Lissy before she went still.
“She waits.”
“She’ll wait a little longer.”
In the quiet, the piano music floated up. He heard a woman weeping before, somewhere, a door closed.
In the morning as he dressed, he told her.
“Lissy,” she said. “It must be. Owen Poole remarried just under two years after Agatha, and his oldest daughter was Lisbeth. So, I guess,Lissy. She married and died the same day. It’s listed in the book as multiple bites from a black widow—1916.”
“You remember all that?”
She tapped her temple. “I have the names of all seven dead brides imprinted now, and how and when they died. I still have to read more, but I know that. I’ll get the book back from Cleo, but I’m sure of that name. Lisbeth Anne Poole. I can’t remember the name of who she married.”
“Let’s move, Mooks. Listen, I have this Saturday meeting, but I’ll come back. I’d like to go through the storage areas again.”
“Yeah, I think we should do that.”
