Mrs. Romano hands me the teacup, saying, “My best tea is for invited guests only.”
I am no invited guest, yet I am stuck here, on her lonesome lakeside estate, until the railway tracks are no longer covered in hard-packed snow. As hard-packed as my resolve for coming here, to the doorstep of the retired vaudevillian singer who had the whole world wrapped around her finger—until she let it go and never said why. Her story will propel me into investigative journalism, away from sensationalist freelancing, and I won’t take it for granted that I have Mother Nature on my side in this quest. No one else is on my side, after all. Certainly not the subject of my investigation herself.
“Forgive me.” I cradle the hot teacup in my lap, my manicure so bright against the porcelain that I can see where it is starting to flake off after days on the road. “But surely you can understand my position. As one woman to another, you and I—”
“You and I are not of the same generation, Miss Larsen.” Mrs. Romano pauses, the corner of her lip lifting slightly. “Why, you could be my grandchild. If one doesn’t squint too hard at that tired skin around your eyes. That’s the speakeasy living. You should mind it.”
I hear the insult, but my attention is on my teacup where a thin film of cold liquid floats to the top. Panic blooms behind my ribs. Within minutes, the entire cup will be frozen solid. Like the one I had earlier today. The cold seeps in around here, Mrs. Romano has told me all day, but I have never experienced a cold that specifically targets teacups. It scares and thrills me in equal measure. I didn’t come here for sensationalist stories, fit for tabloids rather than newspapers, but I can’t help but wonder if Mrs. Romano may have one.
“Do you moisturize that skin?” Mrs. Romano asks, turning her head towards the window. “You should, while you stay here. The cold creeps in. It’s the lake that does it.”
The frozen lake is easily visible through the windows of the parlor, lit up by the setting four o’clock sun. Pillows of snow cover the westward bank, eager playmates of yesterday’s wind that has disappeared today. By contrast, the eastward bank is bare, the ice blank as a gaping maw, dotted with white stars like a nighttime sky.
Putting my teacup aside, I breathe through the fluttery contractions in my chest. I adjust my glasses to take my mind off the nervous pressure. “Few women had the power that you had, at the time that you had it,” I tell Mrs. Romano in the straightest terms, because I only draw straight lines. “And fewer would give it away like you did.”
I know I would never give away the power I fought for with my hard-won pen, clawing through a cesspool of cocked brows, blind meat, and faux-fatherly smiles.
Mrs. Romano adjusts the folds of her skirt. “There was nothing suspicious about my retirement, Miss Larsen. It was a bit premature, I will admit, but it was never my plan to grow old on stage. There is no pride in that.”
“And there is pride in this?” I gesture around us, unable to help myself with the way my heart palpitates and my eyes keep slipping to that infernal teacup. “A life of isolation? A forgotten legacy, and for what?”
“For a family.” Mrs. Romano’s flat voice cuts through the room like a silent blade. “Had my husband not died shortly after I retired, of course.”
The effect is immediate; I shrink in my seat. “I apologize. That was mindless of me.”
Rumor has it that Mrs. Romano retired because she lost her voice, but I crossed that off my list within minutes of stepping inside Whitecrest Manor. Another rumor said she eloped with a lover, but if that were the case, she would not still be living on his estate long after her husband’s untimely death. Not unless she killed him herself, as another rumor purports. There are rumors aplenty, spider-webbing like the icy surface of Whitecrest Lake.
“I hope the tea was to your liking.” Mrs. Romano pushes up from her armchair with a grimace that tells me she is closer to her age than what her careful coiffure and robust posturing would suggest. “Even if I will not serve you my prime collection.”
I inhale. Exhale. “My tea is frozen solid, Mrs. Romano. I’m sure you’ve seen.”
She barely spares my teacup a glance. “Yes, indeed. It’s the lake that does it.”
A laugh twists my throat. “I understand that you have an appreciation for the theatrical arts, but I have an appreciation for facts, and no law of nature allows that lake”—I point out the window—“to freeze tea”—I point to my cup—“in here.”
Mrs. Romano looks outside again, towards the lake that stretches wide and luxurious in the setting sun. The snow winks in liquid gold through the hexagonal panes of the window, making a latticework of Mrs. Romano’s expressionless face.
I hesitate, my mouth too full for words. “Mrs. Romano?”
She shudders. Then she’s facing me, the latticework highlighting one side of her face. She leans towards my tea on the coffee table, the gold dragging stripes along her skin. Tapping the cup lightly with one finger, she says, “Why, look at that. It’s not frozen, after all. A trick of the light, I’m sure.”
I grab the cup, aghast at the woman’s nerve—and tea promptly spills everywhere. It is not hot enough to scald my hand, but it is definitely not frozen either. I held that cup minutes ago. I felt it. It had nothing to do with the light.
A reedy laugh escapes me. “What kind of parlor trick is this?”
“Apologies.” Mrs. Romano’s toothy smile stuns me into silence. “I threw in my lot with all kinds of entertainers back in my heyday—the one you speak so fondly of. I learned a trick or two. Forgive an aging lady her small exploits and humors, will you not?”
For a second, I can see her as she used to be. A figure on a stage, lit up to applause. Then a cloud slips across the sun, throwing the room into shadow, and the vision disappears.
“Will you really not talk to me?” I have to try again. “On the record?”
“I’ve already told you no.” She steps away, moving towards the exit. “For that matter, I’ve told you more than enough off the record. I have no qualms about suing you for slander should any of this escape my house. As soon as those tracks are cleared of snow, I’ll see you to the door myself, Miss Larsen.” A pause. “Don’t mistake generosity for friendship. That’s the path to ruin. You may quote me on that, but nothing else.”
I dig my nails into the armrests of my chair as I call after her, “I have never been afforded such mistakes, Mrs. Romano, and I won’t need them.”
She stops in the doorway but doesn’t turn around. “The first can easily be the last.”
I stay in the parlor and sip my tea after she’s left, expecting the cold water to become ice halfway down my throat. There are too many stories here for me to leave empty-handed. I will have to ferret them out and untangle them, but I will shovel heaps of snow onto those railway tracks myself if I have to; I am not leaving this house until I have answers.
I go to bed that night, holding myself to that promise.
* * *
Something wakes me. At first, I don’t know what it is. It appears too fast and is gone in an instant. But then I hear it, seeping inside the room from the cracked window.
It is the cold again, but it is not alone.
It is accompanied by song.
For a wild moment, I think of Mrs. Romano, but the song has no voice. It has only a melody. Faint. Whispery. Skittish. As if pieces are missing. Broken apart.
I want to find those missing pieces.
I slip on my glasses and throw my feet over the side of the bed, then press close to the nearest window—the one I cracked open earlier, needing air in a house weighed by secrecy so tangible, it freezes hot water solid in the matter of minutes. Cold floods to my ankles. Peering outside, I see only the lake, lit by a sickle-shaped moon made brighter by dunes of reflecting snow.
Revelation strikes me then, as clear-cut as the half-eaten moon.
I remember reading about this phenomenon recently: vibrations created from fissures in the frozen water, audible to the human ear. Singing ice, the journalist called it. The lake is singing, and that is what woke me up. I press my forehead against the window, feeling the bite of my glasses on the bridge of my nose, and scoff at myself.
How very apt, everything considered.
I close my eyes and let the melody drift over me, my toes going numb in the chill. I sigh, well aware I should close the window. Access to the manor is already poor, and it won’t do me any good to get sick where no doctor is likely to make an appearance unless they operate their business on snowshoes.
A keening wail rips the melody apart, sudden and absolute.
My eyes snap open as I stagger backwards.
This time, I’m sure; it is Mrs. Romano.
I am about to rush to her room when I see a flurry of movement on the lake, perfectly centered in one of the hexagonal window panes.
Mrs. Romano is out on the lake, in the middle of the night. Alone.
Dread spikes down my spine from where my forehead touched the window, the spot still lingering with cold. Mrs. Romano wails again, a specter below the sickle moon, and the dread spreads to my fingertips before it sends me careening out of the house.
I hit the frozen lake running, barefooted and breathless.
I slip within seconds, but I pull myself up again and again until I reach Mrs. Romano. She’s hunched over on the ice, wearing a nightgown even thinner than mine. My glasses are foggy, her outline blurred. I push them up my forehead. She is still wailing, so I grab her shoulders and fall to my knees in front of her, twin points of pain blasting up my legs. I try to shake her gently, but my movements are ragged from panic and cold. Her eyes are open, lashes frosted with what might have been tears, but she does not see me. I can no longer hear the singing ice. Only her wailing.
“Mrs. Romano!” My voice wobbles. “Look at me!”
I move my hands to either side of her face, cradling her head. Her mouth snaps shut, and her eyes focus on mine. They tremble within their sockets, watery and wide, and we breathe together feverishly. The moon bleeds down on us, painting us in brushstrokes of black and white.
“Mrs. Romano?” I start to let go of her face. “Valentina?”
She startles. Her hands clamp around my wrists. She forces my palms flat against her ears until I can feel tissue and bone. “Don’t move your hands,” she pleads.
My teeth chatter. I ache to move, to leave, but something in that single command turns me to ice in a way the atmosphere cannot. It chills me from the inside, prompting me to ask in a voice as gravelly as Mrs. Romano’s, “Why?”
“I don’t want to hear her. Don’t let go.”
My heart pounds; I relax enough pressure on her ears to ask, “Hear who?”
She wets her lips, spittle sticking to the trembling corners, and shakes her head.
When it becomes obvious she won’t say more, I ask, “Do you mean the song?”
“You hear her singing, too?”
“I hear the ice, if that’s what you mean.” She talked about the lake as if it were a person earlier today, but I have to believe that this is what is happening. That she is confusing the lake for something else, someone else, in a moment of nighttime terror. The image of a teacup flares behind my eyes, but I shove it down, alongside the sour bile rising in my throat. If I do not, I fear neither of us will leave this lake.
“We need to go inside.” I swallow. “We’ll freeze to death out here.”
Mrs. Romano searches my face. Her eyes go flat, as harrowingly black as the ice below us, and she releases my wrists. My arms fall to my sides like lead. She stands stiffly, her head blocking out the moon.
“Only if the ice cracks—” She stops. “Inside. Yes. Let us go.”
She starts forward, but her knees buckle. I am on my feet in an instant. I link her arm with my own, and we make it off the frozen lake together. The ice does not crack; it is far too thick for that. As I heft Mrs. Romano across the house’s threshold, I wonder what made her mention that in the first place. She seemed sensible enough. In that moment, at least.
* * *
The morning after, Mrs. Romano is sick to the point of being bedridden.
I can only conclude she must have been outside longer than I knew. And, of course, she is no young woman with a body able to withstand such temperatures for that long.
“So, what do I do?” I ask the doctor over the phone, clutching the receiver in one hand and the mouthpiece in another. “There is no chance you will come up here?”
“I cannot take so much time out of my schedule unless it’s an emergency, Miss Larsen,” the doctor answers, sounding none too apologetic about it. “Is it an emergency?”
I falter. On the one hand, I feel guilty for not pulling Mrs. Romano inside sooner last night; although she is not delirious with fever, my guilt prods at me to tell the doctor yes. On the other hand, if the doctor shows up, it will severely limit my chances of discovering just what happened on the ice last night. He will likely demand I do not add any external stressors to Mrs. Romano, and I have a clear feeling that last night was a stressor. Especially if I confront her about it today, which I strongly intend to do.
“No,” I say at last, the phone damp with sweat from my palm. “No emergency.”
The doctor gives me a few instructions, and a few warning signs to look out for in case Mrs. Romano’s situation worsens, and then we hang up.
I am alone inside Mrs. Romano’s study. My eyes slide to the old and empty teacup on the desk beside the phone. A pink, dry imprint of her lipstick blemishes the rim. Frost has crystallized at the bottom, flashing up at me.
I sigh and sneak my fingers beneath my glasses to rub my eyes. When I lower my hands, I see the frosty footprints on the floor. They stretch from where I stand to the secretariat desk in the opposite corner of the room. My stomach churns once, painfully, then hardens and shrinks to a pebble. I stand still for a long time, rooted in place by this pebble with the weight of a mountain, but the footprints don’t thaw.
They don’t go away.
If anything, the frost builds until the footprints rise from the floor. Soon, they will have legs. Then maybe a body. And a head. A face.
The pebble explodes, releasing me. I stumble forward, towards the secretariat where the footsteps stop. An icy handprint crinkles to life across one of the drawerless panels, from one breath to the next, and then I’m standing before that print, my own trembling hand a hairbreadth away. My pulse thunders in my ears.
I retract my hand, thoughts whirling.
I told Mrs. Romano that I am a woman of fact, not theater, yet I feel like an actress caught in a play to which I do not know the script. This is not me. This house is making a fool of me. Whatever this is, I know better. This is not the story I came for.
I let my hand fall to my side, clenching it.
I am about to step away when pain flares across the bridge of my nose. I hiss and grapple for my glasses, the metal so cold that it feels hot for the instant it takes me to rip the frame off, nearly sucked tight to my flesh.
Vision blurry, I look once more at the handprint.
I might be a woman of fact, but I am also a woman of assessment; the risk of not touching that desk is far larger than the risk of doing so.
With that in mind, I prod at the panel, steering clear of the frost that slowly melts away from my hand. When I push against the wood, it doesn’t budge. That means there’s only one other option left. Chewing the inside of my lip, I run my fingers along the edge of the ornate panel, digging my nails into any crevices. My heart twangs like a cracked church bell when the wood shuffles from side to side. Sliding my thumbnail into the extra inch of wood, I’m suddenly left with a square box between my hands. A removable compartment.
Twisting it around, I discover there is no backside. Instead, there is a gaping hole that hosts a single scrap of paper. I pinch the corner of that paper between my fingers and remove it, half-expecting frostbite to blacken my fingers.
“Not a scrap of paper.” My voice is ashen. “A picture.”
The photograph is of two dark-haired adolescent girls standing next to each other. As I hold the picture in a hand that no longer feels like my own, the face of one girl freezes over, like the footprints and fingerprints. The frost spreads over her body in angry pulsations, like a cut artery. Then it stops. My brain shudders and clicks. A theory forms, rough around the edges, but with a molten center that burns everything it touches.
I pocket the photograph and return the secret compartment to the desk.
Mrs. Romano is sick, but not too sick to stand accountable.
* * *
“You have a sister that you never told anyone about, do you not?” I confront the older woman minutes later at the footboard of her bed. One hand brushes the photograph in my pocket. “She’s dead, isn’t she? She’s why you retired. Isn’t that right?”
“Never told anyone,” Mrs. Romano repeats with a wry twist to her mouth. “Never told the media, you mean. So why do you, a journalist, find yourself entitled to that answer now?”
Her hands are folded neatly atop her duvet. They tremble slightly. From fatigue, no doubt. And from me, most likely, acting as a stressor, but I cannot make myself care enough to stop. After yesterday and today, I deserve some answers. Some respect. Some gratitude for last night, at the very least, of which I have been given none.
“I may be a journalist,” I say, “but am I also not your caretaker now?”
“And did you not force your way in my door, initially?”
“And are you not grateful for that now?”
We fall silent, glowering at each other. Her breaths come shallow and stringy, mine deep and heavy. Aquatic plants against an avalanche. She looks away first. That is when I pull out the picture from my pocket, holding it up like a sword or a shield; I cannot decide. Mrs. Romano’s eyes shift.
“So that’s how you know.” Her hands fidget over the duvet, one thumb crossing the other repeatedly. “You think your theft entitles you to my cooperation, then?”
I know she is partly right. As much as I feel I deserve answers from last night, I also recognize I may not deserve all the answers, save the simplest ones. The photograph in my hand is not a simple answer.
Even so, I find myself saying with increasing volume and fervor, “I’ve been denied a proper promotion into investigative journalism for five years now. Every time, they give it to a snot-nosed newcomer who’s proven no loyalty or skill, but is given the benefit of the doubt because daddy has their back. They’ve got so much blind meat to go around, you’d think they’d choke on it. I came here for my own meat. For your retirement story. And do forgive me if I’m wrong, but I think that story is one of frozen teacups and singing lakes.”
Mrs. Romano’s response is delayed by a coughing fit. Once she settles, her eyes are red-rimmed and watery despite the mocking grin on her face. “Oh, you are a fine specimen of your kind, are you not? Seeking to wring sympathy from me? Solidarity?”
It stings. It stings because it is true, yes, but not the entire truth. Perhaps I have to give a little if I want to get a little. Perhaps I can make mistakes, after all.
Drawing a breath through lungs so thick with thorns that they crisscross like knitwork, I say, “My mother had your autograph on a napkin. She carried that napkin everywhere. Like a rabbit’s foot. She held it through labor. Through my birth. Imagine that, will you? You were with me when I was born, Mrs. Romano, and you never left me. Not until my mother died and took that napkin to her grave. In the very literal sense. I dropped a shovelful of dirt on it myself. I’ve buried you with my mother. My own mother. You can show me some respect for that, can you not?”
This time, there is no coughing fit. Mrs. Romano’s mocking grin has withered, replaced by something not unlike what I saw on Whitecrest Lake, beneath the dull sickle moon. A white-starred blankness that rivals the depths of the lake itself, pained and all-seeing. I want to cower before it, driven by age-old instinct, yet I stand my ground.
“I thought I heard my sister sing last night.” Mrs. Romano’s voice is all gossamer and fine thread. Malleable. All fact, no theater. “Out on the lake. It happens. At times.”
I swallow. “Your sister was a singer, too?”
Mrs. Romano nods. “Oh, yes. I was never much of a singer myself.”
The false modesty rubs me wrong. As if I am still being mocked. It bothers me enough that I ask with none of my journalistic finesse, “Is this on record, then?”
When Mrs. Romano locks her gaze on me; the taste of victory runs sour and bloody on my tongue. I am unprepared when she says, “I killed my sister. I pushed her into the lake, and she was sucked under the ice like a reed. Yes, you may take this on record.”
The air crackles around us, snapping taut with cold. Instinctively, I look for icy footprints, but I see none. Shock ties my stomach into knots. I suspected the sister, but not the rest. Nobody in their right mind would have suspected that.
“And”—I cough my throat back to life—“your sister’s name?”
She shifts against her pillow. “Valentina Romano.”
I wait for her to settle. Then, slowly, I say, “But you are Valentina Romano.”
“I am now.” A small smirk. A tired tilt of the head. “I was not before.”
The knots in my stomach twist harder. So hard that my knees buckle. I grab the footboard with both hands. “Valentina didn’t retire, then? She died? By your hand?” It is bad journalism to put the words in the mouth of my subject, but I am floundering. This is so far from fact. “Is that what you’re telling me, Mrs. Romano?”
Two frosty handprints breathe to life on the footboard beside my own. I stagger away from those prints, keeping my balance, but only barely.
Clenching my fists, I shake my head and look at Mrs. Romano. “This is your parlor trick again. All of this. I was wrong in forcing my way here, but you’re no less right for messing with my head after I pulled you away from the lake. I want the truth on record. Not another act. I will not be another spectacle for you. I’m done with those articles. I’m here to be done with them, for good.”
Mrs. Romano’s eyes remain fixed on the footboard when she answers. “Valentina was my twin sister. We came here from Italy. Together.”
Something about that last word lands harder than the rest. Enough that my curiosity overrules my self-preservation. “But you didn’t stay together?”
She looks up at me. “Oh, we did. In this house, in fact.”
The frosty handprints on the footboard ripple, as if pressure is added; as if someone stands behind them. I feel that pressure in my chest, like too much gravity in one place, tethering me to the floor.
“However good she was, Valentina made little money singing.” Mrs. Romano’s voice is light, but threaded with something darker. “She married into this money. This house. Married into this country, I should say. And I followed along. There was no marriage for me. No legal identification papers, that is. Valentina got those through her marriage. But at least I had a roof over my head, even if I couldn’t work. Couldn’t do anything. And what a fine roof it was. What a fine roof it still is, don’t you think?”
My glasses threaten to slip off the clammy skin of my nose. I don’t dare take my eyes off the bed, not even when Mrs. Romano gestures to the ceiling. “You said you pushed your sister under the ice,” I say. “She drowned. She died. You…”
She nods. “She could do so many things I could not, you see.”
The footboard groans under the frosty handprints that have yet to dissolve. From a ghostly Valentina’s hands. The first Valentina. The right one. I have to believe that worse would have happened by now if it could. That those icy hands would have circled my neck, or Mrs. Romano’s, if they truly could. Without that belief, I will not be able to finish this interview. And I must finish it. It will plague me forever if I do not, night and day, and so I forge ahead despite the rapid flutter of my pulse.
“You took your sister’s legal identity because you had none yourself, but what of her husband? Did he not object? You killed his wife.” I pause. “You killed your sister.”
The footboard splinters, the wood cracking into fissures that spread from ten points of pressure. From ten fingertips.
My heart spins in my throat while Mrs. Romano rests against silken pillows that cannot tell the difference between her and her sister. A faint smile plays on her lips. The skin around her eyes sag with blues and browns. My heart settles to a dull ache, the death of winter resting beneath my skin. My convictions are frayed at the edges, fact merging with fiction, but I will get my story.
“He was already dead,” Mrs. Romano says. “Valentina retired to take care of him, and she inherited his estate and fortune after he died.” Her smile widens. “And then I inherited that, and more, after she died.”
She could have continued to act out Valentina’s part until I left. She could have simply told me this days ago, and then she would not have had to confess to the rest.
“You could have just told me that,” I say, my mouth dry. “And not everything else.”
“I could,” she agrees. “But I didn’t. Maybe it was that pitiful story you told. About your mother. Or maybe I’d like to see more bylines written by women. Or maybe I’m pitiful myself, wasting away up here, even with legal papers. I could leave. I haven’t.”
The moment rests on a precipice. I step forward.
“Do you regret it?” The question burns my tongue.
Mrs. Romano throws her head back against the pillow. She laughs, sickly and sweetly, and I fear this story is so much larger than my pen. Than me. “Of course I regret it. Were you not with me last night? I didn’t take you for a fool until now.”
I stare. Then I stare some more, because my words are sand in the wind, gone between one heartbeat and the next. Mrs. Romano laughs, and laughs, and laughs—until the frosty handprints slip from the footboard and up the sickbed. They flicker in and out, crawling, until they’re on either side of Mrs. Romano’s face. She looks into thin air, and her laughter fades to a smile. My skin is alive over my bones. So alive it could jump off and scramble away.
“You may leave us alone now.” Mrs. Romano doesn’t spare me a glance, but I know she’s talking to me, her words airy. “We will be fine.”
I leave, happily, before I am unable to.
* * *
Mrs. Romano dies the next day. I find her on the lake in the morning, curled up on the ice. Her body is frostbitten. Some of the markings look like fingerprints. Caresses gone wrong. My stomach wrings itself out until I am back inside the manor.
The doctor cannot apologize enough—“I’m terribly sorry, Miss Larsen. I have not done right by you or Mrs. Romano. I am so ashamed.”—but I am not sure it is his fault. I am not sure it is one person’s fault, but I know many people deserve blame. Myself included.
The train tracks open the next day. I stay behind and wait for the doctor to show up for Mrs. Romano’s body. I have not touched her. She is still out on the ice. I tell myself she is better preserved there, even if the thought makes me want to hurl myself down a well. Better that, however, than to touch her lifeless body where those blue-black markings look so very much like handprints. I can only hope the doctor will think nothing of that. If not, I am not sure how to prove what happened without being sent to an asylum. Or jail.
“I have the story,” I tell my boss over the phone, puffing on my first cigarette in years, after the doctor has left the premises and taken Mrs. Romano with him. “I can give it to you in a couple of days. I want to stay here while I write it. There might be details I was never told, and nobody has asked me to leave yet. So, I’ll stay. You’ll want to clear the pages for this one. Maybe make a serial out of it.” I pause. “She’s dead, Carmichael. And she was not Valentina Romano at all. This story will break records, I’m telling you.”
On the table, a thin coating of frost covers the rim of a lone teacup.