OCTOBER 1915
The basement of the Barlowe mansion was dank. Crates filled with who knew what were stacked against the walls. There was a half-empty bottle of whiskey perched on top of one of the crates. Leaning against the crate was a rifle. What kind, Greta had no idea, but she eyed it, wondering if she were to get hold of the rifle, if it were loaded, would she even know what to do with it?
Mr. Barlowe urged them ahead of him until they stopped at the door of a large vault. The black iron looked unfriendly, and when Barlowe began to turn the mechanisms, Greta’s breath caught in her throat.
If he locked them in the vault, they would die! There would be no air!
“Please, Mr. Barlow,” Greta begged. “Please let us go. I promise I won’t say anything—”
“Shut up!” he growled.
Alma caught Greta’s eye and gave a tiny shake of her head. Her face was void of color, her body sagged with resignation, and the sorrow that was always part of her countenance seemed deeper, more poignant.
The vault door gave way, and Barlowe motioned impatiently. “Get in.”
“Mr. Barlowe . . .” Greta procrastinated as Alma obediently stepped into the vault.
The man pressed his face up to hers, and she smelled alcohol on his breath. “Get. In.”
Tears escaped her eyes. Barlowe shoved Greta into the vault, her whimper turning into a hollow echo once inside. There was a piece of art leaning against the far wall of the vault. A few money bags. Some liquor. A pile of ledgers.
“You know the rules, Alma.”
She nodded, holding her fingers to her lips as if to stifle her crying.
The door swung shut, enveloping them in darkness. Greta crumpled to the floor. Alma slid down the wall, and Greta felt the woman’s hand take hers.
“Shhhh. Papa will come back. He always does.” Alma’s faith in him was far greater than Greta’s.
“Why?” Greta felt that word encapsulated far more questions than she could put in words.
Alma didn’t answer. Her body shifted, and she settled in. “Just wait, Miss Mercy.”
Greta lost track of time as the minutes ticked by. Her eyes could not adjust to the blackness of the vault because there was simply no light at all.
After a while, she sensed Alma shift, moving to her feet.
“Alma?” Greta ventured.
Alma didn’t say anything. Greta heard her moving along the back wall of the vault. Alma grunted, and then a scraping sound commenced. A latch giving way. A small crack of light invaded the vault, coming from the back wall.
“Papa doesn’t know that I know,” Alma said. “When we were little, Papa would send us to the vault as punishment. The rules were no crying, no screaming, and no playing with his things. But he didn’t know that we figured out the secret.”
Greta pushed to her feet. She could barely make out Alma’s form in the faint light as the back of the vault swung out into a passageway. A lantern hung from a beam that stretched across the low ceiling. The walls and the ground were of earth, shored up and secured by a wooden framework. A pipe ran along the ground. Alma pointed to it.
“That pipes air into the tunnel,” she explained. Alma began to transform in front of Greta as she led the way toward the lantern. She reached up and unhooked it, holding the lantern out so it shed light farther down the tunnel. Alma turned to Greta and smiled. “Come.” Her expression had lost all signs of sorrow, and in its place was an odd look of anticipation
Greta followed, her bare feet against the cold earth. Alma made her way with a familiarity that told Greta she had done this many times before. The tunnel twisted to the right, and they continued. Soon another light shone at the far end of the passage.
Greta squinted, trying to focus on what lay ahead. An opening. Smaller than the vault. Barely wide enough for someone to fit through and perhaps a crate the size of what Mr. Barlowe had stored in his basement.
As they neared the opening, Alma’s excitement heightened. “Emily.” The whispered name floated through the air, escaping from Alma’s lips. She reached the opening and lifted her leg to crawl through it, and then she was gone.
“Alma!” Greta hurried to catch up, her reticence giving way to terror of being left alone in the passageway. She climbed through after Alma, her feet landing on lumps of coal. She ducked, for the box she found herself in wasn’t high enough for her to stand. It stank of dirt and oil. Coal dust swirled around her. Greta crawled a few feet farther until the box opened into a room. She maneuvered her way out of the box, the floor cold against her feet.
Pipes creaked around her. A boiler was positioned at the far end of the room. There was barely enough light to see.
“Alma?” Greta whispered loudly.
There was no reply.
She explored deeper into the room and spotted a doorway with light coming from beyond. Moving toward it, Greta noticed a short hallway, and beyond that a series of rooms, unlit and unused. Frowning, she followed the shaft of light. The sound of feminine voices came from up ahead.
Greta ran her hand along the wall as she tentatively explored the hallway. She turned a corner and reeled backward, clapping a hand over her mouth. A woman stared back at her, eyes wide, hand over her—
Wait.
Greta’s breath came in short gasps.
It was her reflection in a tall mirror at the end of the hall, where a set of stairs climbed to an upper level. The light came from the top of the stairs.
Greta tiptoed toward them, ignoring the reflection of herself that only served to frighten her more. At the bottom of the stairs, she looked up. “Alma?”
Alma spun around, and her smile swiftly faded into a panicked expression. Beyond her was a face, then a flash of white as a woman fled into the shadows.
“Greta, please, no.” Alma held out her hand to make Greta stop.
But Greta had seen the woman in white just before she disappeared, after leaving behind in Alma’s arms an infant swaddled in a blue blanket.
“This is the theater.” Awareness seeped into Greta as she climbed the stairs toward Alma, who clutched the baby to her breast. “Who was that woman?”
Alma shook her head. “No, no. You mustn’t . . .”
Greta reached the top landing, her feet momentarily relishing the feel of the velvety red carpet of the theater. “That’s the baby,” she realized aloud. She stared at the quiet bundle in Alma’s arms. “The baby I saw fall from the boxed seat.”
Alma backed away, up the slanted floor of the hall that wrapped around the auditorium and main theater with its row upon row of empty chairs. The houselights were off, making the hand-painted domed ceiling and its magnificent chandelier impossible to see.
“Is the baby all right?” Greta tried to approach Alma, who looked at her as though Greta might steal the babe from her arms. “Alma? The baby, is he all right?”
Alma spun and hurried up the corridor, holding the infant so tightly that Greta feared she would crush it. Greta ran after her, reaching the foyer, the stairway to the upper level ladies’ room, and the box seats rising out of the darkness on her left. The double doors to the main lobby of the theater were before her. Greta knew from the nights searching the theater with Oscar and Eleanor that she was mere steps away from freedom.
Alma stood stock-still, staring at her from farther down the lobby toward the far side of the horseshoe hall that bordered the auditorium.
“Alma?”
“Go,” Alma said.
Greta saw her shift the bundle in her arms. “Alma, the baby—”
“Please go.” Alma’s arms lowered, the infant lowering with them.
Greta started. Alma was going to drop the baby! She launched forward as Alma flung the infant from her chest. Spinning, Alma sprinted away, her bare feet silent on the carpet, her nightgown a flash of gray.
The baby fell to the floor with a sickening thud. Greta cried out. She’d seen it fall once from the boxed seat. How was it no one else had? How was it plausible the infant could live only to be thrown again?
Greta fell to her knees beside it. She reached for the blanket, flinging it off the infant. Her breath caught in her throat.
Bright, glass eyes stared back at her.
The white face of a hairless doll made to imitate a baby. The torso of the doll was clothed in a white nightdress, tied with silken thread at its neck.
The baby didn’t blink. It didn’t cry.
It couldn’t because the baby wasn’t real.