Teresa held her breath, listening. The thuds were faint and evenly paced, and stopped after five repetitions. She could not pinpoint direction, but felt it in her knees more than she heard it. Dave was taking too long to circle the house. Maybe he had seen something. Maybe he had found the back door open and gone in. Wanting to protect her, that would be like him. Men were so annoying.
After five minutes, she started around the house in the opposite direction, to maximize their chance of intersecting. The sun was above the trees, but dropping fast. The light a low and melancholy yellow. Audrey’s car was in the garage, which was no surprise, but sent Teresa’s anxiety level up. The mudroom door was locked. No figures wandered the lawn or hid behind statues. She arrived at the front of the house again, and no Dave. Then she pulled her keys out and unlocked the door.
The house alarm did not chime its warning, and a quick check of the control panel showed it unarmed. Someone was inside. Teresa took deep and slow breaths, trying to control her speeding heart. These were screwed-up people, but they were her family. She could deal with them. She made her way down the wide and shadowed hall toward the back of the house. The study door stood open, as it should—she had left it that way. Yet she could not help expecting to see her grandfather sitting at his desk. White hair swept back from his forehead and that superior expression he always wore. An expression, she now understood, serving mostly to hide the fear in his heart. And the portrait there behind his head, where he would not have to see it. But the room was empty. No painting or old man. Not even a shrouded ghoul.
She jumped before her mind registered the noise. The thump was not faint now, but a hammering bang. Followed by another, seconds later. Then a third. After each there was a brief clattering, as of crumbling masonry. The source was no longer a mystery. It came straight up through the floor. The wine cellar. The stairs to which were only steps away, and Teresa went to them in haste. The door was open a few inches, the light on above the stairs. The banging was unspeakably loud, as if someone was trying to take down the mansion’s foundation. Hating the idea, Teresa forced herself down the creaking steps, the hammering masking her descent. At the bottom, a bizarre sight met her eyes.
The air was fogged with plaster dust. An empty wine rack had been dragged from its spot, and its former occupants were placed all about the chamber, frosted white. At least one had shattered, for the pungent scent of red wine filled the space. Along the near wall were a series of gouges about three feet from the floor. Some were shallow but a few were deep, no doubt requiring several blows. Deep enough to expose different generations of plaster, concrete and stone, piles of which lay smoking on the floor. Amid this carnage stood a phantom. Dusted white from head to foot, it lurked near one corner, a sledgehammer resting on its right shoulder. The curvy thighs and heroic breasts pushing the tank top’s limits gave the game away before she tugged the bandanna off her face.
“What’s shaking, Tay-ray?” Audrey huffed into the choked air.
“I didn’t know you were so strong.”
“Could have used you a few hours ago when I was moving this junk. Dave was supposed to do this part, but he bailed on me.”
“Men.”
“What are you doing back here?”
“I knew that you would be,” Teresa said, only then noticing the shotgun leaning against the wall. Covered in dust like everything else. Audrey followed her gaze.
“For intruders,” she said, in a tone Teresa did not like. “What do you think you know, little girl?”
“You going to patch up these walls and put everything back when you’re done?”
“Funny.”
“Seriously, how are you going to explain this?”
“Easy,” said Audrey. “Knock over a rack or two, spray-paint some graffiti. Then go upstairs and do the same in a bunch of other rooms.”
“Hooligans? Who happen to know the alarm code?”
“I guess you and Davie forgot to set it when you left in such a hurry.” It was madness. Only Audrey would think it a viable plan. Or not even Audrey. She was working backward from desperation, not forward from reason. “Where is Dave, anyway?”
“Checking out the grounds. He’ll be here in a minute.”
“No, he won’t,” said Audrey, in that same threatening tone. “No way he would have let you come down here by yourself. Little Tay is all alone.”
She could run. Audrey would be slowed by the heavy hammer, and would have to drop it to grab the shotgun. But Teresa knew she was not going to run.
“Nothing to say, mi Teresita?”
“You’re in the wrong spot. I told you where it was.”
“You did,” Audrey agreed, catching a throat full of dust and coughing. “I didn’t believe you,” she croaked. “Wasn’t where I remembered.”
“Well, you must have been panicked,” Teresa said reasonably. “Somebody might have shown up. You probably weren’t sure how hard you hit Ilsa, how long she would be out.”
“Think you’re so smart,” her cousin said, almost affectionately.
“Actually, I think I’m pretty stupid not to have figured it out years ago.”
“Nobody wanted to figure it out. They had Pete, or Philip, or your father to choose from, if they needed a scapegoat. Everyone wanted to forget.”
“I’ve never forgotten.”
“Your dad was a mess his whole life. You can’t lay that on me.”
“James has never forgotten either, has he?”
Audrey took several quick steps toward her, squeezing the hammer shaft in both fists. Teresa had no doubt that if she turned to run she would get her head caved in. She shut her eyes and stood her ground. Where are you, Dave? Where are you, Dad? Why are you making me face this alone? When she opened her eyes Audrey was three feet away, breathing heavily.
“You’re such a great victim, Teresa, but what’s really happened to you? You have seizures, like millions of people. And what do you do? Not take your medication, so you can keep having them, so you can keep playing victim.”
“I never asked for your sympathy.”
“You lost your crazy dad, big deal. You can have mine. You have no idea what real suffering is. I live with what happened to James every day.”
“How did it happen? Why was he in the study?”
Audrey took one more step forward, her breath and sweat filling Teresa’s senses. Her smile was malicious, but there was pain her in eyes.
“He was trying to save you,” she whispered harshly. Then she strode back to the corner of the chamber. “So, what, right about here?”
“How?” It was all she could say for a moment. “How was he trying...”
“You were both obsessed with that room. You would stand there with your ears to the door, listening to Ramón and Alfred discuss the fate of the universe, or whatever.” She swung the hammer back, then struck the wall savagely. “I didn’t really understand until last week. James decided the portrait was the reason for everything. Dad beating us and Mom getting wasted and Grandpa being cruel.” She struck again. Plaster and concrete flew. “And you getting sick. Don’t ask me where he got that, but he was convinced he had to do something or you would die.”
I’m going to help you, Tay. The floor seemed to drop out from under Teresa.
“He wanted to destroy the portrait,” she said. “To free the demon.”
Audrey ceased hammering and looked thoughtful.
“I don’t think he’d dreamed up that bullshit yet. But on some unconscious level, yeah, I guess. I didn’t get it.”
“Or you never would have let him into that room.”
Audrey grimaced and looked at the floor.
“Why did you tell everyone I was still in your bedroom?”
“I thought you were,” Teresa replied. “The last thing I remembered was you asleep in the window seat. I must have gone out for a while. James’ scream woke me up, and I saw someone run out. It was Ilsa, but I thought it was you.”
“Huh. And I thought you were covering for me. All these years I thought you knew.”
“I should have known. You always had keys. You had been in the study before, you used to brag about it. Used to pretend you saw the portrait.”
“How do you know I didn’t?”
“Because you’re still afraid. Not the way James and Philip are, but like a child. You want to know, and you don’t want to. That’s why you made your brother look at it first.”
Audrey ran at her, and Teresa knew standing her ground would not work. She stumbled backward and fell on her ass just as the hammer swept by her face. Missing by inches. The swing threw Audrey off balance, and she slammed to the floor beside her cousin. To Teresa’s surprise, she did not leap up again but lay there on her stomach. Eyes squeezed shut.
“He wanted to see,” Audrey cried. “He begged me to show him.”
“I know,” Teresa said, surprised she could form words. Her heart was beating so hard that her entire chest hurt. Not to mention her tailbone. “I know he did.”
They lay on the cement floor, barely a foot apart. As if the same invisible blow had flattened them both.
“I woke up and he was gone,” Audrey said. “I freaked out until I found him there, by the door.” She rolled slowly onto her back. “I was so pissed off that I thought, we’re going to end this curiosity thing right now. Yeah, I had the key. I let us in. Then I teased him for being too scared to look, but I never believed that he...”
“You had your back to the painting?”
“There was a cloth over it. It was always covered when Grandpa was gone, just in case. I turned my head for one second, and James yanked it off. He had a letter opener, that sharp one Grandpa owned?”
“The mini Toledo blade.” Teresa saw the cloth, old and discolored. Saw a hand upon it, ready to pull it free. Her mind swerved away. “Dad gave him that.”
“He slashed the canvas right across the middle. Then he screamed and fell down, like it was him who was cut open. Worst sound I ever heard anyone make. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t do anything at first, couldn’t even believe it happened. It was a nightmare. One you never wake up from.”
“Then Ilsa showed.”
“I didn’t know who it was. Didn’t care. Just someone coming down the back stairs, and all I could think, Tay. All I could think was my life is over. Cause either my dad was going to kill me, and I mean literally kill me. That’s what I believed. Or he was going to beat me blind and send me to one of those teenage lockups. That’s what my stepmother wanted. I would have hung myself if I had to go there. My life was over.”
“Unless you found a way to save it.”
“Yes,” Audrey exclaimed. With a profound gratefulness at being understood. “I grabbed that fire iron and ran behind the door. And when she came in I swung like my life depended on it, because that’s how it felt. Poor Ilsa.”
“Then you had to hide the painting. Make it look like a robbery. How did you do that without seeing it?”
“Threw the cloth over it again. Maybe I saw something, but I was too scared of being punished to worry about a picture. I remembered the crawl space, and the stairs were right there. So I came down and slid it in as far as it would go. Then ran back upstairs to get Jenny.”
He didn’t do it, Teresa thought. Tears pooling in her stinging eyes and running down her face. You didn’t take it, Dad. I’m so sorry I almost believed it.
“Afterward,” Teresa said, “when everyone was blaming everyone, and the family was falling apart. How could you keep silent?”
Audrey sat up beside her. For all the grief in her voice, her eyes were dry.
“The family was never together, Teresa. Everyone was always at everyone’s throats. You were too young to see, thought this was some kind of fairyland. Grandpa up there banging the maids while Grandma walked around humming to herself. The wives hissing at their useless husbands. Pete and Philip putting their hands all over me and my parents too drunk to notice. I didn’t owe these fucking people anything.”
“You were just going to leave it hidden forever?”
“I only came back a couple of times. I had this idea to hide it in the woods where someone could find it. But when I reached into the space I couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t tell if it was gone or just out of reach, and I was too big to climb in and look. Then they sealed the damn thing up.”
“Where would it have gone?” Teresa asked in confusion. Audrey leaned over and looked into her eyes with those mad blues.
“Good question. Because there were only two people small enough to fit.”
“Come on, you don’t think I took it. And faked not knowing all these years? While people were accusing my father?”
“It seems unlikely. But facts are facts. That’s why I was following you and James around last week.”
“In the woods,” Teresa said angrily. “That was you.”
“Figured I could save myself knocking down a wall if one of you could lead me to where you had stowed it.”
“Why was your head covered?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” She looked genuinely puzzled.
“Never mind. If either of us took it, why would we have left it here?”
“Because you were children. How would you have taken it away?” Audrey stood and dragged the sledgehammer behind her, back over to the cratered corner. “But since I’ve started and there’s no going back, let’s stop guessing. Come here and show me exactly where that opening was. Now.”
Like a sleepwalker, Teresa rose and went to her. She knelt by the cool, damp wall and felt around. Keeping Audrey and the hammer in her peripheral vision at all times.
“I already tried tapping. There’s no hollow sound anywhere.”
Teresa tried it anyway, and found an area where the acoustics seemed slightly different. All of Audrey’s blows were too high, even if she had found the right spot.
“Here,” Teresa said. “But lower. It wasn’t more than about two feet high.”
“Christ, how am I supposed to...” Audrey dropped to her knees, facing sideways to the wall. Then she took a high grip on the shaft and swung. The first two blows barely chipped the surface, but she found her stroke, and the next few dug deep. On the fifth blow, a dark hole appeared. The women froze and looked at each other. Then Audrey seized Teresa and kissed her furiously on the forehead.
“Nice work, Tay,” she said, switching to a punching motion with the hammer, opening the hole wider. “Cut you in for twenty-five percent, how does that sound?”
“Who are you planning to sell it to?”
“I got a guy lined up, don’t worry. We’re talking millions. You understand? Screw Ilsa and all of them. They can squabble over this mausoleum.”
In a few minutes the hole was big enough for one of them to squeeze through, and that one was not Audrey. Teresa figured she could crawl in voluntarily, or be stuffed in after her cousin hammered her to death. Which she might do anyway, but with life there was hope. Unless something really bad had happened to Dave.
“Flashlight,” Teresa said.
“It’s here, somewhere.” Audrey’s voice had grown shaky, and there was a fresh film on her face that was not about exertion. If the portrait was in there, could she even face it? Or might Teresa be able to rush it out of the cellar without interference? They found the flashlight and examined what they could of the small chamber beyond the wall.
“Nothing,” Audrey said anxiously. “I don’t see it.”
“It’s bigger inside,” Teresa replied, her own voice becoming constricted. Now, she told herself. The longer you wait, the more afraid you’ll be. The danger is here next to you, not in there. But it was hard to make herself believe it. She lay carefully on her stomach, pushed the bright beam ahead of her, and wriggled in.
And there it was. Sitting inside the dark alcove that she and James had shared so many times, in some faraway life. Not a painting, but an old and empty wooden frame. The canvas that had once been stretched upon it was gone, though there were paint chips scattered about. And very small nails of a type that might have been popular in Madrid a hundred and fifty years earlier. Teresa held the nails in her palm and understood everything. She saw him huddled here in voiceless terror. Saw him work his fingers bloody to remove the nails. Her tears came again, in a hot torrent this time. Not for herself, or her father, but for the little boy whose soul had died here fifteen years ago.
“What’s going on? Tay, is it there?”
“Pull me out.”
She had the paint chips and nails in one fist and the frame in the other, and could not use her hands. Audrey grabbed her ankles and dragged her from the hole, not gently. Teresa’s jeans and sweatshirt were smeared in filth, but she kept hold of her discoveries. Audrey stared at the empty frame in incomprehension, then looked at her cousin. Teresa only sat there wiping her grimy face.
“James?” Audrey said faintly. As if testing the word before shouting it aloud. “How? How could he do that? He was afraid of it.”
“Where is he?”
“Now? I don’t know. You think he has it with him?”
“Maybe,” Teresa said. “It was in the attic for a while. Maybe for a long time. I saw nails and paint chips like these. I just didn’t put it together.”
“Could it be there now?”
“He might have put it back since I’ve been gone. I’m guessing he has other places.”
“Where?” Audrey demanded. She sat down hard, exhausted. Defeated even, which was how Teresa felt. Yet neither of them could afford that. It was no longer about Audrey’s crazy scheme. It was about helping the cousin and brother they both loved.
“I don’t know,” Teresa sighed, her mind racing through the house ahead of her. Every room and corridor, every secret place they had ever found and forgotten. Then out the door and across the lawn and into the trees and... “Wait. I do.”