Chapter 2 #2
It doesn't. Instead, on the final turn, the lid springs open with a small, sharp ding — the closing note of the melody — and I flinch back so hard I nearly drop it.
Inside, nestled where a dancing figurine should be, there's a rose.
Black. Fresh. Petals so dark they look wet, though the box has been shut for who knows how long.
Black roses aren't rare in a town like this — every gift shop on the harbor sells them dyed and dried for the tourists — but not fresh.
Not blooming, this deep into autumn, tucked inside a music box that was empty an hour ago.
I reach in and lift it free, turning it once between my fingers, and that's when I see the mirror.
The little oval glass, angled just so inside the open lid — and reflected in it, standing directly behind me, close enough that I should have felt his breath on my neck, is the man from the counter. Watching me. Through the glass.
The scream tears out of me before I've even fully understood what I've seen. The box falls from my hands, clattering to the floorboards, the rose skidding somewhere beneath the shelf.
I spin around, heart in my throat, hands raised —
There's no one there.
By the time I climb the stairs that night, I've changed out of my working clothes — the black Victorian dress I'd worn all day, high-collared, buttons to the throat, the kind of thing that makes me feel armored even when I know perfectly well it isn't — and into my nightdress, though sleep feels like something that's happening to someone else tonight, not to me.
I sit at the edge of my bed with the poster spread across my knees, the black rose resting beside it on the coverlet, and I stare at both of them like they might rearrange themselves into something that makes sense if I look long enough.
Six women. A man with a camera. A mirror I never should have looked into.
I'm still staring when the door opens.
I startle so badly I nearly knock the rose to the floor — I sweep the poster and the flower both behind my back in one motion, heart hammering, before I even register who it is.
My father. Sober-eyed, at least for now, standing awkward in the doorway like a man who's forgotten how his own house is arranged.
"Ophelia." He says my name carefully, the way you test ice before you put your full weight on it. "How are you?"
"Fine," I say, which isn't true, but is easier than the alternative.
He nods, looks at the floor, then back at me. "I wanted to say — about last night." His jaw works. "I'm sorry. I know that doesn't — I know it doesn't fix anything, saying it after. But I am. Sorry."
I don't answer. I've learned it's better not to, at this stage.
"You're my only child," he goes on, quieter now, the words coming loose and unsteady, like something spilling rather than something spoken. "My last hope. I wouldn't — I wouldn't be alive, some days, if it weren't for you keeping this place running. You know that, don't you? You have to know that."
I nod. I say nothing.
"I'm sorry," he says again, and this time his voice cracks on it. "You're all I have left."
"Okay," I say. It's the only word I can find that won't ask for more than either of us can give tonight.
He nods, satisfied or exhausted, I can't tell which, and steps back into the hall. "I'm going to the bar," he says, already turning, already gone in every way that matters. "Don't wait up."
I don't answer that either. The door clicks shut behind him.
I lie back against my pillow and stare at the ceiling, the poster and the rose still tucked beneath me, and let myself go still and empty for what feels like a long time — ten minutes, maybe more — before I hear something in the hallway.
Footsteps.
"Papa?" I call, sitting up. "Did you forget something?"
No answer.
The footsteps come closer. Slow. Even. Deliberate in a way my father's never are — his are always uneven, catching and stumbling, drink-heavy no matter the hour. These are precise. Measured. The kind of footsteps that know exactly where they're going.
I get up, my heart already climbing into my throat, and cross to the door. I press my ear to the wood and listen. The steps stop directly on the other side.
I hold my breath. My mind offers up two possibilities, both terrible: a thief, drawn by God knows what — there's nothing left in this house worth stealing, nothing but grief and dust — or something worse, something I don't let myself finish thinking.
I wait. One second. Ten. An eternity folded into the space of a held breath.
And then, the footsteps retreat. Slow, unhurried, fading back down the hall until the house is silent again.
I count to twenty before I dare to open the door.
The hallway is empty. Dark, ordinary, exactly as it always is — except that the moment I step out, my bare foot comes down on something soft.
I look down. A black rose, laid across the floorboards like an offering.
A small paper tag hangs from its stem, tied with black thread. I crouch and lift it into the dim light spilling from my room, and read the words written there in a narrow, elegant hand:
Even buried things bloom again, if someone loves them enough to dig.
My stomach turns to ice.
I don't remember deciding to move. I'm simply back inside my room a moment later, door shut, lock thrown, breath coming too fast. I cross to the window on instinct — some animal part of me needing to see the street, needing to know — and there he is.
Standing on the cobbles below, dead still, looking directly up at my window.
The flash goes off before I can step back — a white burst of light against the dark, his camera lifted to catch the exact moment our eyes might have met, if I'd let them. He lowers it slowly. And simply stares.
My hand finds the black veil on the sill without my telling it to, settling it over my eyes with fingers that won't stop shaking, and only then do I look again, properly, through its safe dark mesh.
It's him. The same man from the shop. The same coat, the same unhurried stillness, as though he has nowhere else in the world he'd rather be than standing in the rain outside my window.
Call the police. The thought arrives and dies almost instantly — I don't have a phone. I've never needed one. The only telephone in this entire house sits behind the counter downstairs, and getting to it means leaving this room, walking past that door, out into the dark.
Below, as if he's read the thought straight off my face, the man reaches into his coat and produces a mobile. He lifts it. Dials.
A moment later, faint but unmistakable, I hear it — the shop's landline, ringing, shrill and insistent, echoing up through the floors of this too-quiet house.
I look back down at him through the veil. Phone pressed to his ear. And on his mouth, just visible even at this distance, the ghost of a smile — small, certain, patient. Like a man who already knows I won't answer, and finds that, too, entertaining.
I yank the curtains shut so hard the rod rattles in its bracket, and stand there in the dark with my back pressed to the wall, my heart slamming so loud I can hear nothing else.
Downstairs, the telephone keeps ringing. Once. Twice. A third time.
I don't move to answer it.
Who is he? What does he want?
The phone rings on into the empty house, and no one, tonight, is going to tell me.