Chapter 2
Once outside, I can breathe easier. The night air this close to the harbor is always heavy with extra scents, which dilute that icy fragrance that so unnerved me.
I hadn’t remembered it, not really, not until I smelled it again. And then I was thrown immediately back to the night my father died. There aren’t any other similarities in this crime, besides the obvious lack of a struggle.
I have to believe that the day I find another of her victims, I’ll know.
My instincts are preternaturally good; it’s why Joren Van Engelenhoven took me on, why Dávid and Locard and other forensic geniuses have allowed me to study with them.
Why de Haas brings me in even though it’s obvious it hurts his pride and infuriates de Lange.
Tonight wasn’t about her, which means it isn’t about me.
I’ve done my part, and now I need to let it go, just like I do every other case I’ve consulted on.
Leave the horror behind so that I can greet Mama with a cheery face.
My lifelong goal is to lessen her emotional burdens.
Which is why she still believes I’m an assistant at the university where my father taught.
Leaves crunch beneath my boots as I walk away from the harbor and toward the rings of canals circling the ancient heart of my city.
There are few people out in the cold, and my walk along the Amstel, skirting the De Wallen and its notorious evening activities, is mostly solitary.
I cross a bridge, grateful that the Singel is close and I don’t have much farther to go.
When I was a girl, my mother often referred to the Singel as “our canal” and I labored under the delusion that it belonged to us.
I’d take my little rowboat out and chase down anyone I thought didn’t have our permission to be there, demanding to know their names and purposes for being on the water.
Then, with what was doubtless an insufferably superior tilt to my chin, I would grant them permission to remain.
If I’m being honest, I still think of the Singel as mine, though my rowboat was taken away long ago.
As soon as I see its water glinting in the darkness, reflecting the twinkling lights of the buildings along it, I feel at home.
I follow its stone banks and try to think of nothing unpleasant or gruesome.
It’s easy to navigate with my eyes only on the water.
Our house is always lit up against the darkness, every light on in every window, for all appearances the liveliest and most occupied house on the entire canal.
But I know better. They aren’t the lights of life and living.
They’re the lights of fear. A trembling hand pushing a candle into the darkness, demanding to know what’s out there.
The gas flames flicker, betraying their temerity. For someone so eager to devour news of progress and change outside, Mama is utterly resistant to modern marvels in her own life. At least, the ones that require strangers to set foot inside.
I sigh and look up. The redbrick exterior looks black at night, the bell-shaped roof barely visible against the overcast sky.
Beneath the lamps burning by the front door I tap the metal anchor drilled into the brick.
In the morning, when I leave, I’ll pause and count each of them to make certain my house and its precious, captive inhabitant are safe for another day.
I unlock the door and quickly lock it behind myself, then take off my cloak and hang it from the decorative hooks in the entry. The bench next to the door belonged to my great-grandparents and has seen generations of my family pause in the transition from outside to in.
How many times did my father sit here and do just this? Though his boots were not as dainty as mine, and certainly had fewer annoyingly small buttons to undo. I slip into my clogs, replace my weary frown with an easy smile, and step into the sitting room.
Mama is in her chair, glasses on, a frown on her face as she smooths the wallpaper in a miniature version of this same room.
Her house is set up on a table over her lap, and the side table is littered with her supplies.
Nearly every room is complete, but she always finds something to fuss over.
It’s an exact copy of the house she never leaves, tiny silver replicas of furniture and dishes and life replacing our own.
Sometimes when I go down in our kitchen and see pots and pans of copper instead of silver I’m briefly disoriented.
I used to sit on the floor beside her, staring into the house, imagining what my life would be like if I were tiny enough to live there.
Which was absurd, because it’s our house.
It’s just the version where Mama can control everything.
The day I realized that, I stopped looking for perfect silver miniatures to contribute.
Piled up on the sofa next to her is a stack of journals, letters, and newspapers. Whether it’s reading or writing or cooking or crafting, Mama always has something to do with her hands and her mind.
She hasn’t looked up yet. She knows my sounds better than anything.
“Hello, Mama.” I bend and kiss her cheek, then move some of her papers so I can sit.
She pats my back and smiles, gray eyes watery from emotion or merely exhaustion.
I make a note to recommend electric lights once more.
If she’s going to insist on reading, writing, and working on her house so late every night, she ought to at least protect her vision.
“How was your day?” she asks, adjusting her high collar.
Though she never leaves, she’s always dressed as though she might welcome company or step out to call on the other important women of Amsterdam at any moment.
As a member of one of the oldest and wealthiest families in the city, her mother used to host meetings on the queen’s behalf in this very space.
That role was taken from our family when Mama married a doctor and scholar rather than a fellow luminary of Amsterdam society.
Not that she could have kept the tradition anyway, given her temperament.
“Dull,” I say. I’d love nothing more than to unburden myself, tell her how shaken I was by tonight’s scene, ask for her help puzzling over the crime. But we’ve had too much of monsters and violence in this house, and they’ve done enough damage to her. I won’t add to it. “How was yours?”
“I fed the ducks.”
This time I don’t have to feign a smile, though it’s more shock than anything. “You went outside!” Before I can ask her what triggered this astonishing development, she wrinkles her nose with guilt.
My elation whooshes away like water through an opened sluice. “You didn’t go outside.”
“I can feed the ducks from the window.” She gestures defiantly behind herself.
If my life up until five years ago was about trying to read my father’s every mood to anticipate how I might make him happy, or at least less angry, or even to just take note of me for once, my life ever since has been about making my mother’s burdens lighter however I can.
I try to hide my disappointment and instead give her a chiding look.
“The neighbors will complain if you train ducks to congregate here. And I will complain if I have to clean up after them.”
That earns a laugh. “Tomorrow, I’ll go for a walk,” she promises, which is what she’s said every day for as long as I can remember.
“Good idea, Mama,” I say, which is what I answer every time.
I stand, worried what will find me when I close my eyes but unwilling to delay bed any longer. I have no idea when Mama will retire. She often sits sentinel until morning dawns. Did it start the night Papa was murdered, or has it gone on far longer? How much did I fail to notice before he died?
“Oh, before you go upstairs,” Mama says. “There’s a parcel for you. I left it in the study.” She meets my sudden glare with a defiant one of her own.
If I am forever trying to lure her outside, she’s forever trying to make me take over my father’s study.
It’s silly. We have enough space for the two of us to do whatever we want, wherever we want to.
A grand dining room that once hosted the finest parties in the city and is now utterly unused, Mama and I preferring to eat at the simple table for two in the kitchen.
The library with all the art and books she inherited.
Empty servant quarters, and the spare bedroom that could be repurposed, since she allows no visitors.
Two empty bedrooms, actually, but neither of us has the heart to use Pieter’s. I suppose she thinks that by reclaiming the study, we can banish at least one of the ghosts that haunts us.
“Thank you,” I say, instead of the dozen other things crossing my mind. I kiss her cheek again and walk to the back of the house where my father’s study spans the entire footprint and opens out into the garden.
I hesitate, running my fingers over the swirling metal of the doorknob. Thinking of all the times I stood right here, debating whether or not to go in.
But my father isn’t in there anymore. Instead, I brace myself to be greeted by an ethereally beautiful woman with long black hair and depthless black eyes.
She’ll be standing there, waiting for me, framed by the glass doors open behind her.
It will smell like the iciest heart of winter, despite the warm evening air.
I remember now, that scent. How could I ever forget it?
But when I push the door open, the room is empty and my heart stutters with disappointment.
That’s the real reason I can’t use the study.
It’s not haunted by my father. It’s haunted by his murderer.
Every time I cross the threshold and she’s not here, it feels like a loss.
The whole world rendered empty and meaningless by her continued absence.
I enter, closing the door softly behind me. A rule that even after five years I can’t break: His door must be closed at all times.