Chapter 3 THE TOWN

IVY'S POV

He didn't shout, which was almost worse.

I stepped out of the dark with my hands open, the way you approach an animal you aren't sure is tame. "I am sorry. I heard something and thought someone had broken in."

"At two in the morning. Barefoot. Without waking Mrs. Pell."

"I didn't want to alarm anyone."

"How considerate." He pocketed the keys, and I noticed his hand was steady again, as if he had put his grief away somewhere I couldn't reach. He stood so close in the narrow corridor that I could feel the warmth coming off his shirt. "Go to bed, Miss Calloway. If you wander at night again, I'll assume you came here for something other than the job, and I won't be as patient as I was today."

That was all. He made no threat and gave no explanation, only stood there watching until my door clicked shut behind me. I leaned against it with my heart going like a fist on a drum and the recorder digging into my ribs, and I whispered, to nobody, "You're an idiot, Ivy."

Four days, I thought. I wasn't going to last four hours.

DOMINIC POV

I waited until I heard her lock turn. Then I went back to the east wing and opened it.

The sitting room smelled of dust sheets and old rain. Four nights ago the chair by the window had been empty. Now white lilies lay across its arm, tied with plain string, the petals still cool with dew.

I stood there with the key biting into my palm. I had changed that lock after Lena, using a locksmith from two towns over, and I had paid him to forget my name. The windows were latched from the inside. The dust on the floor held no footprints but my own.

It was the fourth bouquet in six weeks, and every time I had locked the door myself.

Somebody was coming into my dead wife's room to leave her flowers, somebody who didn't need a key. I told myself grief does strange things to a man, that I'd done it myself and forgotten, that I was finally losing my mind. Then I thought of a girl with Camille's eyes sleeping thirty feet away, and I carried the lilies down to the kitchen and fed them to the fire, because the only thing worse than a haunting is one that somebody else has seen.

IVY POV

Morning came grey and quiet. I made pancakes with faces, and Milo gave his a mustache. Theo ate his without a word but didn't push the plate away, which Mrs. Pell told me, in a whisper, was progress.

By ten she had handed me a grocery list and a set of car keys. "Town's five minutes down the hill. Mind the speed limit. Sheriff Hollis loves a reason."

Ashford's Landing belonged on a postcard. Cobbled main street, striped awnings, flower boxes in every window, a stone clock tower presiding over it all. In the square stood a bronze statue of two bearded men with one hand on a plow, and the plaque beneath read: Josiah Ashford and Edmund Thorne, Founders, 1887. Built on faith. Held by blood.

Held by blood. What a strange thing to carve into a town.

Everyone on the sidewalk turned to look at me when I parked. They didn't stare, because that would have been rude. They smiled and nodded and tipped their heads, and the conversation in the bakery died when I walked in and started up again only after the bell stopped ringing..

"You wil be the new girl up at the manor," said the woman behind the counter. She was round and silver-haired, with flour on her forearms and the warmest voice I'd heard in weeks. Her apron said DELPHINE'S. "Don't mind us, we're a nosy bunch. The Ashfords built this whole town, so anything that happens up that hill, we all feel it."

"I am only the housekeeper".

"Oh, honey." She slid a warm roll across the counter, free. "Nobody is only anything in that house."

She was humming as she wrapped my bread, a slow old tune I couldn't name, and it followed me out the door and down the street for no reason I could explain to the back of my neck.

I had barely reached my car when a shadow fell across the hood.

"Morning, miss."

Sheriff Bram Hollis was built like a refrigerator wearing a badge. Mid-fifties, mirrored sunglasses, a smile that never got near his eyes. Behind him, on the town hall steps, a thin man in an expensive suit watched us while everyone on the street took care not to look at him, which told me he was the mayor.

"Heard you got hired yesterday," the sheriff said. "News moves fast around here. Where'd you come from?"

"The city."

"Long way for a housekeeping job." He leaned one hand on my roof. "Friendly advice. The Ashfords are good people, and this town owes them everything. But that house has had a lot of bad luck, and folks who poke around in bad luck tend to find more of it."

"I'm just here to clean."

"Good." The smile widened. "Keep it that way."

He tapped my roof twice, slowly, like a man knocking on a door he intended to open later, and walked off. The mayor lifted two fingers in a little salute and went inside.

I sat with my hands shaking on the wheel. Nobody had threatened me, and that was the frightening part, because nobody had needed to. A sheriff and a mayor knew my business before I'd finished unpacking. Nobody in a clean town warns a stranger off dirt that isn't there.

That was when I understood the shape of what I was up against. Not one killer in one house, but a whole town standing very still, hoping I'd go away.

On the drive back I turned off at the little stone church. I told myself it was only to see her.

Camille's grave was easy to find, because it was the only one with fresh flowers. White lilies tied with plain string, the petals still cool with dew. I stood there a long time and let myself cry for exactly one minute, then wiped my face, because crying was a luxury and I was on a clock.

"Pretty, aren't they?" An old groundskeeper was clipping the hedge nearby. "Somebody brings fresh ones every Sunday, for all three Ashford ladies. Eight years of Sundays for the first one. Funny thing, though. In all that time, I've never once seen who."

I looked at the neat, patient knot of string, and a small cold finger touched the back of my neck. Somebody in this town loved those women enough to visit every week. Or hated them enough to make sure they stayed put.

By the time I got back, the sun was going and the house had gone quiet. I carried the groceries into the kitchen, put the kettle on, and went upstairs to find the boys. Milo was asleep on the playroom rug with a dinosaur on his chest. Theo lay on his stomach beside him, drawing on a huge sheet of paper.

"What are you making, sweetheart?"

"Mommy."

My chest tightened and I knelt beside him. He had drawn a tall woman with a big smile and stairs behind her, built from careful, wobbly lines. Seventeen of them. I counted. At the top stood a second figure, black and shapeless, scribbled so hard the paper had torn.

"Who's that?"

Theo pressed down until the crayon snapped.

"Auntie Birdie," he whispered.

Nobody alive called me that but Camille. My mouth opened and nothing came out.

"Mommy kept your picture in her special box. Where Daddy doesn't look." His hazel eyes, enormous, lifted to mine. "I won't tell. I promise." Then, so quietly I almost missed it, "Are you going to fall down the stairs like Mommy?"

The room tilted. "Baby, what do you mean?"

"Mommy didn't fall by herself," he said. "The singing lady was on the stairs. And she was humming."

Downstairs, in the quiet kitchen, the kettle began to scream.