No one took me up on my offer to roam the house, which gave me an idea. After breakfast, I went upstairs to grab my equipment—and I made sure to give everyone plenty of time to set themselves up with whatever they were doing for the day. At which point, I crept back downstairs as stealthily as possible.
Should anyone bust me in the kitchen, I planned to say I was grabbing a snack to take along. But luck was with me and I found the kitchen warm but empty. The woodstove murmured away in the corner, but that was the only activity.
The dishes had been done—Vansi and Ash had volunteered for that—and the counters wiped down. A couple of cans of green jackfruit sat on the counter. Aaron had told me what he intended to do with those, but he wouldn’t be starting on lunch for at least three hours yet.
He was in the living area with the others—I just barely caught the mellow tenor of his voice, followed by Kaea’s deeper tones. The part of me that liked to be involved, to know what was going on, was tempted to join them, but I had bigger fish to fry today.
Opening the kitchen door, I slipped outside, taking care to pull it quietly shut behind me. It didn’t take long to get to Kaea’s boots. I would’ve far rather taken them up to my room, but didn’t want to be caught with them and have to explain what I was doing, so instead I took them around the corner to one of the alcoves I’d noticed on an earlier walk outside.
I’d borrowed Grace’s small flashlight for my roaming, so didn’t have to rely on my phone as I examined the shoe that had given way. At first glance, it appeared that the leather had simply torn away from the sole. Except that made no sense for a shoe from a major hiking brand that was designed for rough use.
I squinted in an effort to see more clearly.
A pounding behind my eyeballs, a silent and insistent reminder that I couldn’t just think my eyes better. Especially in this light that cloaked the entire world in impenetrable gray.
Forcing myself to release the squint, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, held it.
Once. Twice. Three times.
Dr. Mehta would’ve been proud of me, I thought as I opened my eyes once more. And that was when I saw it: a cut mark on the inner sole, next to the stitching. My heart thumped.
The saboteur hadn’t touched the outside of the shoe, had done nothing that Kaea would’ve noticed during his routine checkup of the boots prior to use. Instead, whoever this was had taken great care to go inside his boot and cut away the glue and stitching just enough that it would hold for a while.
A failure engineered to take place in slow motion.
The cut I’d spotted must’ve been a mistake, a tiny slip of the blade.
Lowering the boot to the ground, I considered when the sabotage could’ve taken place. He’d gone hiking with Vansi and Nix prior to our arrival at the estate, and his gear had been in the back of the vehicle after that. And this kind of delicate sabotage would’ve taken time. It wasn’t a quick grab and slash.
No, it had to have been done after we reached the estate.
Perhaps even before Kaea had organized the hike. This insane weather notwithstanding, it would’ve been a good bet that Kaea would end up on a trail within the first few days of our time here.
As for how . . .
We’d been all over the place that first day. Kaea had hauled firewood with Ash, for one. And he might’ve decided to take a long shower later—the way the pipes clanged, it wouldn’t have been hard to figure out when he was in there.
“What exactly are you thinking, Luna?” I challenged myself.
There were only two options: one of us, or the stalker-stranger Kaea had posited.
It was tempting to shrug off the latter as fantasy, but from all Kaea had said, that break-in at Ash and Darcie’s place had been vicious. Abnormal. The person behind it could be disturbed enough to come here, lie in wait for them. Not difficult to discover where they were going if they had their flight tickets on their nightstand, for example.
Ash liked to print things out—or he had back at uni. Never satisfied with an electronic copy. Or it could be as simple as notes jotted into a day planner. Darcie liked physical planners and diaries, had always kept lovely ones. Thanks to her social media, I knew she did that to this day. Neither one of them was a last-minute planner, either. They’d have made any necessary bookings back when we’d first agreed to the reunion.
No need to follow the couple here and get caught. Just come first, and wait.
Why Kaea, though?
He’d been with them that night, and if the stalker had been watching, they might consider him complicit with Darcie and Ash.
Goose bumps broke out over my skin.
“Stop telling yourself horror stories,” I muttered and, after checking the coast was clear, stashed the boots back in the hiding spot that had protected them thus far.
And though fear crawled a cold snake in my gut, I didn’t return to the safety of the group. I began to search the house under the guise of taking photographs, looking for any sign that we weren’t alone in this sprawling manse with endless dark corners, hidden rooms, and corridors that looped in on themselves.
My lungs worked overtime when I eventually made my way up the narrow and winding steps to the turret that we all called “the tower.” Once at the top, I bent over with my hands on my knees until I could catch my breath.
The circular space was empty, the view from the windows breathtaking.
I forgot the danger for several minutes and took image after image of the black clouds riven with lightning, the rolling thunder background bass. Though I was shooting in color, I knew the images would come out in a palette of blacks, grays, and white. Because that was all there was beyond the old glass.
By the time I let the camera fall to rest at my abdomen, the strap a familiar weight on the back of my neck, I’d all but convinced myself that it had to be an intruder. I couldn’t imagine any of us hurting Kaea, I just couldn’t.
I see you’re not thinking the same thing about my big sister.
Bea’s ghost, whispering in my ear in that sharply amused tone she could get at times. I winced. She’d always been too clever, seen too much. And today, her ghost was one hundred percent correct.
Darcie had a way of pushing people.
I could well imagine that she’d irritated the wrong person, and that person had decided to get back at her, with Kaea collateral damage. Interesting that Ash hadn’t been targeted—but he looked like hell anyway, so whatever he yet felt for Bea, he did love Darcie enough for her pain to affect him.
Mind swirling, I made my way back down the stairs and outside, my goal a spot that’d give me a vantage point of the ruined wing. In preparation, I flipped my hood over my head, made sure my jacket was zipped, then took a clear plastic poncho from my pocket and threw it on over the top.
I’d carry my cameras inside the poncho, then arrange the plastic cape to protect the equipment from the elements while I took multiple rapid-fire shots. I did the latter in quick succession, shooting the ruined wing while the rain pounded at my head and back, and drenched my jeans.
I could already tell that this series would turn out brilliant, moody and striking at the same time. I had the choice of leaving it dark, obscured by a veil of rain, or add light to pinpoint the fractured glass, the burn marks on the wall.
Gothic or horror, romantic or dangerous.
Smoke and mirrors.
I’d always liked that about the camera, the awareness that photographs weren’t a true impression of reality. So much of it was art. The photographer’s eye, the photographer’s mind and heart.
Except for Bea.
I’d never fiddled with her images except to correct a mistake.
Never needed to.
My camera forgotten under the poncho and fine streams of water dripping down my neck, I stared at the rain. I could see Beatrice dancing within the crashing droplets, her dark hair dazzling against the golden grass and her skirts flying around in a burst of color. She’d gone through a boho phase at one point, her entire wardrobe hippie skirts and floral headbands. I’d called her a fey goddess.
Lovely and sensual and beautiful and bright.
She should be here.
She should be laughing with us and tasting the wines from the old cellar with me.
She shouldn’t be dust far, far from home.
Why hadn’t Darcie let us say goodbye?
No matter her explanations, the question haunted me, a thorn embedded in my soul. I couldn’t help gnawing at it. And as, chest tight, I turned to walk to the graveyard to take images of it under the storm sky, all I could see was the headstone that wasn’t there.
That was when I realized: by cremating and throwing Bea away, Darcie had also erased her from their family history. Two hundred years from now, any curious soul who walked this graveyard would find only a grouping of three when it came to their nuclear family, the inscriptions long since worn away.
No sign that there’d been a fourth.
No remembrance of Bea.