Chapter 75
“Sweetheart? Honey? I’m on the plane and they’re going to make me turn off my phone in a minute, but I wanted to say how much I love you.
And miss you all.” The flight attendant had given Tessa a baleful look, pointing to her phone.
And then to the chunky watch on her wrist. Tessa nodded; I get it.
“We’re about to take off. But yes, isn’t that funny that the picture was in Maine? Did you know about topography?”
“Mom?” Zack had interrupted. “Dad’s trying to get the phone back, even though I told him you have to go. Can you get me a Philadelphia hat?”
“I’ll get you all the hats you ever wanted. Give Linny and your father a hug for me, and I’ll call you the minute I land, okay? Do you miss me?”
“Did you make the Times list?” Henry’s voice now.
“Hen, you are too much.” Tessa rolled her eyes. “I won’t know until tomorrow. Got to go. I love you though, Hen, I really do. No matter what happens…”
“No matter what happens with the Times ?”
The flight attendant was now flat-out glaring at her.
“No matter what happens with anything. I have to go, darling. I love you.”
“Love you too. And, oh, can you send me your schedule again? It’s not—”
“Ma’am?”
Tessa turned off the phone. “Done.” She held it up for the flight attendant to see. “Thank you so much for your patience.”
The flight attendant hustled away, leaving Tessa with her thoughts.
She was grateful for the empty seat beside her: she did not need recognition, or scrutiny, or chitchat.
Her future, and her family’s, hung in the balance.
A balance she could only regain by agreeing to a limitless, bottomless persecution.
Dark thoughts tiptoed into her mind. Blackmail never ended, not until someone was arrested. Or killed.
Remember when you tried to get me to kill someone? Annabelle said. In the book?
You wouldn’t do it , Tessa thought, remembering the moment in her first manuscript draft where the only option seemed to be for Annabelle to shoot someone.
Tessa remembered sitting at her computer, stuck, blocked, unable to find the words.
And realized she was trying to make her character do something she wouldn’t have done.
“Out of character,” she’d said it out loud then, realizing what the phrase meant.
Exactly, Annabelle said. You thought of something else. A better idea. Now’s the time to do that again.
Harper had not been on the plane, and that gave her some solace, at least, as she trotted up the steps to the Free Library of Philadelphia, still in her airplane clothes, the muggy gray sky streaked with clouds.
A green-framed historical marker, emblazoned with a portrait of Benjamin Franklin, promised “free books for all” since 1891.
This particular branch, according to the sign, had been open for almost one hundred years.
Harper could not possibly be here. Not immediately at least. Had that woman been the person in the gray wig in Denver?
The person in Seattle who asked about her summer vacation?
Tessa saw so many people every day, and Harper looked different each time she saw her.
Technically, though, geographically, it could have all been the same person.
If Tessa could physically get to those places, so could she.
Tessa had checked in and dumped her stuff at the boutique hotel—longing for sleep and lusting over the voluptuous four-poster bed and luxurious comforter. She had two hours to see what she could find.
The library’s central room, with lofty white molded ceiling and Palladian windows and with the unmistakable fragrance of sharpened pencils and aging paper, reminded her of the power of words. And the power of history. She followed a floor plan upstairs to the room marked Reference.
“You’re…” The woman at the desk, whose name plate said Constance, pointed to her. “Annabelle.”
“In a way,” Tessa said. “Thanks. Can you help me with some research?”
Constance, with a coronet of gray braids and prim Peter Pan collar, might have worked there since the beginning. Fragile, with slender fingers resting on her keyboard, reading glasses dangling from a chain around her neck.
A row of long wooden tables had a green-shaded lamp at each seat, but all were empty.
“That’s my job,” Constance said. “Is it for a new book?”
“It is,” Tessa lied. There would probably never be another book.
“I need to—well—you know how they say books are based on real life? That works for true crime or nonfiction. But in fiction, it’s the opposite.
We want to make sure something didn’t happen in a certain place, so readers don’t think we’re referring to it. ”
Constance nodded. “You want the book to feel realistic, but not step on toes.”
“Exactly.” Tessa checked their surroundings again. Coast clear. “Can you look up deaths in general? By the specific place?”
“I can try. I mean—it’s possible.”
Tessa bullet-pointed place and date. “So I need to find out whether anyone was killed there then. Or died. Doesn’t matter who or how.”
Constance clicked her mouse.
“ Any deaths in Blytheton on that date,” Tessa went on, wondering if the now-even-more-despicable Sheriff Owen had pulled some strings to make it look like the person—Tessa’s heart dropped to her feet, and she tried to ignore it—had died another way.
She had to pursue this. “Or even around there. Even a few days after.”
“Not a problem.”
For you , Tessa thought.
“I know you have other work—”
“Hush,” Constance said. “Sit.”
Tessa couldn’t bear to sit, so she pretended to examine the dingy oil-painted portraits on the wall. Trying to keep herself from running out the door as fast as she possibly could.
Was she about to discover the name of a person she’d killed?
Not her, specifically, but they, her and Emily.
In their forest primeval, they’d spun out the stories of their futures; promising to live next door to each other in someplace cool, and have careers as famous authors and smart, loving husbands and perfect children who loved to read.
And then it had happened, and Tessa had never returned to Maine.
Physically, at least. All of her clandestine letters to Emily had gone unanswered.
But that’s what always happened when you told about the bad thing.
And Emily probably hated her for getting her in so much trouble.
Finally, Tessa had given up. Let Emily go.
“I’m in,” Constance said. “Deaths, village of Blytheton and in the entire county, that one week in August. Starting the eighth. Okay, I’m underway.”