Molly Harper - Better Homes and Hauntings

Catherine fussed with her apron as Gerald pressed kisses along her neck. “Do stop congratulating yourself, and help me get out of this dress.”

“Ordering your master around?” He chuckled. “You are a naughty housemaid.”

Nina sat on the bed, a dazed expression clouding her eyes.

“What did you see?” Dotty demanded. “You had a vision, didn’t you?”

“Naughty housemaid. Catherine,” Nina wheezed.

Dotty’s eyebrows rose. “Catherine and Jack?”

Nina shook her head, struggling for deep breaths. “No. I assumed that’s what it was, but Catherine wasn’t with Jack. She was with Gerald. And it was . . . not a marital duty. Catherine was having a very good time. A naked good time.”

Dotty shuddered. “I’m so glad it was you and not me. I don’t think there’s enough therapy in the world to fix spiritually reenacting your great-great-grandparents doing the deed.”

“What sort of cheating wife has hot, yummy sex with her cuckolded husband?” Nina asked.

“The guilty sort?” Dotty suggested.

Nina shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, I felt what she felt. And she was happy. Really happy. Naked happy.”

“ ‘JACK IS BECOMING more and more insistent,’ ” Cindy read aloud from the latest diary find in Deacon’s office, her face red and her voice winded from her dash down the stairs. Deacon sat back in his desk chair, unsure if he wanted to hear Catherine’s final thoughts before she died. But Cindy had barged into the office with Jake in tow, insistent that he had to hear the last entry.

He said I won’t be able to avoid him forever, and he’s right. He keeps finding reasons to stay on the island, extra features and projects to add to the house to extend his tenure here and allow him to be near me. He’s got it into his head that I’m going to leave Gerald for him, that the completion of the house is the beginning of a new life together.

“He’ll have his house and his children, that’s all he’ll want,” Jack tells me, no matter how many times I tell him that he’s wrong, that I don’t feel that way about him. But he says I’m lying to myself, that I’m too frightened of Gerald to admit how I really feel. As if I could ever be afraid of the husband I love so much.

There’s no arguing with him. No matter how many times I tell him it’s not so, he simply tells me I have been fooled. Jack tells me that I’ve been lied to for so long that I can’t tell fiction from truth. He says that I’m too comfortable in the golden cage Gerald has built for me, too frightened to step out into the sun. He wants me to “paint the world with all the colors of my soul,” which, of course, means leaving my husband, whom I love, and my children, whom I will not live without, to run off to live a life of shame with a man I have no feelings for beyond ruined friendship. Ruined by his presumption, his insistence that he knows my feelings better than I do.

He’s gone too far this time. This afternoon, he showed me a bundle of my jewelry he took from the safe in Gerald’s closet. He’s babbled on and on about an “escape” for the two of us in two weeks’ time. He has timed it for my birthday party, Gerald’s attempt to make up for the horrid “coming-out” party we had a few months ago. Jack expected me to praise his cleverness, to begin planning along with him. And when I didn’t, he acted like a spoiled child, turning red in the face, shoving me into my room, and telling me that I had to “think about the consequences of making the wrong decision.”

“Well, it makes sense,” Jake said from his perch on Deacon’s office couch.

“How does that make sense?” Deacon asked.

Jake shrugged. “Maybe some of the things we’ve attributed to Gerald have been Jack? The rage he feels toward Catherine? The hostility toward women in general? And what about Dotty’s creepy shadow-man experience in bed?”

Cindy suggested, “Maybe it was Jack, looking for another chance to hurt a Whitney.”

“Do you smell something?” Jake asked, sniffing. “Do you smell smoke?”

Deacon’s chest ached with a sudden surge of disquiet. He wondered what Nina was doing at this moment. Was she alone? Was she safe? Catherine. It all came back to Catherine, Deacon thought. And so far, the only one in the group to have an experience from Catherine’s perspective was Nina. He reached for his phone and had just found her spot in his “favorite numbers” list when he heard Anthony scream, “Boss! Fire!”

NINA DIDN’T SMELL smoke. She smelled rose water.

Her feet were moving, toward the nursery wing. The scent grew stronger with every step. How had she gotten here? She had been following Dotty up to the main house to report her latest experience, casting Gerald as a playful, affectionate husband, but then her feet had led her to this part of the house. She didn’t even remember climbing the stairs to the third floor.

There were no work crews in the nursery wing yet. She was alone, standing in front of a square panel in the wall. That didn’t make any sense. There were no other panels in the wall. Why would Jack Donovan put the panel there? It certainly wasn’t there to hide wiring. Why had she been led here?

Biting her lip, she pressed the panel. And with a harsh squeal, it slid to the right, its hinges rusty and dry. The smell of dry rot was overwhelming, overcoming the sweetness of roses. Nina coughed, waving the dust away from her face as it billowed out into the hallway.

Shuddering slightly, she reached into the space and gingerly patted around until her fingers closed around a lump of fabric. Sneezing, she pulled it into the light. It was a mauve silk scarf, tied into a sort of hobo sack around hard, irregular lumps. She set it on a side table and carefully unwound the bundle.

Diamonds. Large, brilliant stones, undimmed by time, arranged in ornate floral settings. A chunky bracelet made from diamond daisies. A choker consisting of two ropes of pearls, centered around a large citrine in a sunburst setting. A golden peacock brooch with emeralds and sapphires set in the tail. A multipaneled Bohemian-style garnet necklace. But what caught her eye was the wedding-band set, two small gold rings connected by small interlocking hinges. The engagement ring was set with a large cushion-cut diamond.

Nina picked up the set, examining the inscription inside the band: “Love always, Gerald.”

She could see it. The ring set was snatched off Catherine’s still finger . The swirls of color in Nina’s head made her knees go weak under her. Still gripping the ring, she fell against the wall, sliding down to the floor. A large male hand ripped the ring from Catherine’s finger. The same hand that had wrapped around Catherine’s throat, choking the life out of her.

A series of images sped through Nina’s mind and then reversed as if on rewind—a boat turning upright, Jack sailing it backward toward the shore, Jack pulling the mauve bundle out of the wall, Catherine’s dead weight sagging against Jack. The cycle of images raced by until Nina saw Catherine fighting against Jack’s grip on her throat, her fingernails digging viciously into his hands.

Nina groaned as she felt the vision shift. Jack held the Whitney ring up to examine it, then shoved it into the soft silk bundle, huffing in frustration. He shoved the bundle into his jacket pocket, peering dispassionately down the widow’s walk steps, where he’d tossed Catherine’s body once she’d finally stopped struggling. Over the edge of the roof, he could see the staff forming a bucket brigade to deal with the fire he’d set in the south wing. They were like ants from this height, he mused. Huffing under the weight of Catherine’s body, he moved down the widow’s walk. Ungrateful bitch, he thought. If she’d just listened to him, if she’d just loved him the way she’d promised, none of this would have happened. He was sure he would mourn eventually, but for right now, he couldn’t feel anything but righteous anger over her betrayal.