30 #2
When she returned to New York, she’d tell Vicky the whole story. For now, they could focus on this mysterious message.
“I’m confused. Are you writing secret love poems for each other?” Vicky asked, recovering from her laughing spell.
Exasperated, Jules snatched her phone back. “We’re not writing sonnets under the sun! Leo found the lines written in his notebook.
We have no idea who might’ve written them.”
“No idea at all?”
“None,” Leo said. “No one had access to it.”
All three fell silent, soaking in this information.
“And you’re still at The Aurora, I see,” Vicky said. “You’re in the tower.”
Her eyes darted about as she tried to catch more of the scene behind them. She, too, was in her study, the writing nook in
her apartment’s loft. Kit Kat was napping on her desk.
“The notebook was up here all night,” Leo confirmed. “I dumped everything on the desk yesterday, and now I’ve found it in a drawer opened to this page. It’s obvious someone put it there so I could find it. But no one has been here, except the two of us.”
“Not even housekeeping?” Vicky asked.
“No,” he said. “We’ve had deliveries, but no one’s made it past the door.”
“I bet!” Vicky snickered.
She was still a thirteen-year-old delighted by gossip.
“I need everyone’s best ideas,” Leo said. “Vicky, you go first.”
“Obviously, it’s a message from Aurora! Of course, she’s been gone over a century. She might not be in touch with reality.
Who’s waiting for whom and where is anyone’s guess.”
“The shipbuilder!” Jules said. “We keep forgetting he built this house. He may be waiting for her on the other side.”
Leo sought her eyes. “We’re willingly overlooking the perfectly plausible explanation that someone got hold of the notebook
and scribbled the note, someone who knows what we know.”
Jules held his gaze. “You keep it on you, always. No one has access to it, not even me.”
“Lock the door to the tower tonight,” Vicky instructed. “And keep me posted. I want hourly reports. This is fascinating.”
Leo offered to share his notes with her when he got back, a sweet gesture, but this was so obviously his story to tell.
“No thanks,” Vicky said, “I’m back to my vampire bullshit, outlining a new trilogy. That’s my bread and butter.”
“May I point out that you don’t lack for bread or butter?”
“Mind your business,” Vicky said. “Anyway, it’s the weirdest thing, almost as if Aurora’s hold on me loosened the minute I
landed in JFK. I feel like myself again.”
Jules promised her updates, if not hourly then at least by the end of the day.
“Tell Matty we’ll talk soon,” Leo said.
“He’s taking the train from Boston tonight,” Vicky said, “and trust me, I’m telling him everything.”
Jules ended the call.
Leo fell onto the desk chair and drew her onto his lap. “Come, love,” he said. “I have something to show you.” He flipped
the pages of the notebook to a couple sketches of triangles, one crossed out and the other not. “Aurora was unhappily married
and depressed, but according to Amaris at the San Carlos Institute, she was in love with someone else, a cigar factory worker.”
“How does she know this?” Jules asked.
“How does anyone know anything? It’s part of the oral history. Recall, Daphne had said something similar.”
Jules nodded, accepting the lore as fact.
“According to Amaris, it doesn’t stop there,” Leo continued. “This was a love triangle. The guy was involved with someone
else, someone who lived in this house and worked as a domestic servant.”
“That’s complicated.”
“Want to know the guy’s name?” he asked. “Leonardo or Leopold or some shit.”
Jules jerked away from him. “Are you kidding?”
“Nope.”
“And the servant girl? Do you know her name?”
“Nope,” he repeated. “But according to Amaris, the shame of losing out to a lowly servant might’ve driven Aurora over the
edge.”
“You mean a Black girl,” Jules said. Unless the servant was a governess imported from Europe, it was more likely a Black girl
imported from Africa or the Caribbean.
Leo went still. Why else would Aurora react so violently? The girl’s race should have disqualified her from the romance Olympics.
Her sole function would have been to serve and make do with whatever scraps were thrown her way. To lose out to such a rival
would have been inconceivable. Aurora’s humiliation would have been complete.
“Could this be his message to Aurora, apologizing for being messy?” Jules asked. “Maybe he’s aware that she’s been trapped in this house, wandering these halls, and he wants her to know that he’s waiting on the other side.”
“That’s one theory,” Leo said. “I’d like to have more information on the servant girl. I’m not willing to discount his feelings
for her. That’s likely the mistake Aurora made.”
Jules lost her fingers in his thick hair as she considered their options. “We need more information.”
“Emily once mentioned that she researched all the romantic ghost stories,” Leo said.
“This one would fall in that category,” Jules said. “Want to stop by the bookstore and ask?”
“Sure.” Leo snapped the notebook shut. “We keep this to ourselves.”
“Of course,” Jules said. “Who’d believe us?”
“One more thing.”
“Yes?”
“May I, please?” he asked, before gathering the T-shirt at the hem and slipping it over her head.
Jules twisted in his lap and offered herself to the free exploration of his hands and his tongue. He coaxed an answer, a blanket
“yes” to anything and everything he wanted.