day 1, afternoon
It took a second for Claire’s eyes to adjust. Once all the tiny receptors in her retinas had acclimatized to the dim light, she had to fight the urge to let out a long, low whistle.
The foyer was soaring. There was really no other word for it.
The ceilings weren’t quite skyscraper high, but they were definitely fancy-bank high, the kind under which every cough would echo and refract.
A blue-and-green stained-glass window above the door was the only source of light she could see, filtering the sun onto the rich carpeting, woven in the same subtle rippling pattern of the pillars outside.
The carpet looked blue and green, too, from either the light or a very matchy interior decorator.
After the carpet was a grand staircase, lined in statuary whose exact details she couldn’t quite make out.
But the staircase didn’t lead up. It led down.
Claire didn’t have time to puzzle over the staircase, though, because standing in front of it was Elias’s entire extended family. Audrey must have texted someone on the drive, let them know the exact moment they’d be arriving. Claire shifted, her new heels pinching her toes.
“Claire.” A man with salt-and-pepper hair and a strong jaw stepped forward, offering a hand.
His face looked like if you’d taken Elias’s and left it out in the woods for a couple years to season, hard and weathered yet still good-looking.
“Wellington Ashbury the Fifth. We’re so glad you could come, and so sorry for your loss. ”
There it was again, the apologizing, as if grief needed a designated handler and they’d all chosen her for the job. She guessed she was suited for that, seeing as she never let the feeling get a foothold. It was probably too heavy for them to carry, and she had practice. “Thank you, Mr. Ashbury.”
“Wellsley.” He smiled and pumped her hand again.
Claire just smiled back. She didn’t think she could make herself call this man Wellsley.
Mr. Ashbury gestured behind him, at the other arrayed family members.
A man he called Patrick, Elias’s uncle; his other uncle, Greg; Greg’s husband, Theo; Patrick’s wife, Dierdre.
There were no children present. Claire shook all of their hands, heard all of their condolences.
They all had extremely bright-blue eyes, just like Elias’s, even the spouses.
Ashbury genes were strong, apparently strong enough that Ashburys selected blue-eyed mates, too.
She was suddenly very conscious of her plain brown pair.
“Excellent to meet you.” Patrick pumped her hand, his blue eyes assessing behind the gleam of glasses. “We’ve wanted to for so long.”
Claire just smiled, again. Patrick had a really nice voice, deep and smooth. Maybe he did commercial voice-overs or something on the side.
It wasn’t until all the Ashburys fell silent, their litany of introductions concluded, that Claire realized which name she’d been waiting for.
“Is Wellington not coming?” She felt a preemptive burn of anger at the thought.
Of course he wouldn’t be here. Of course he’d leave Elias to shoulder all the burdens that should’ve been his and then not even show up for his damn funeral.
She’d never met the guy, but she really wanted to punch him in the gut.
The line of Mr. Ashbury’s mouth flattened. “Wellington will be arriving later,” he said. “In time for dinner, he promises.”
“Which is in two hours, Lucille tells me.” This from Dierdre, Patrick’s wife.
Not the model-caliber beauty that Audrey was, but still extremely pretty, her dark hair perfectly shiny, her shape gym-kept thin beneath her expensive black sheath dress.
“That gives Claire plenty of time to settle in before things begin.”
The way she said things made it sound like more than dinner, but Claire guessed that was to be expected. Houses like this, families like this, made dinner a much bigger deal than takeout on the couch.
At least, according to what she’d seen on TV.
“We’ll show you to the part of the house we actually stay in.” Dierdre turned, headed for the deep staircase that led down into the lower reaches of Harrow Point. “The castle is far too gloomy.”
Claire’s heart climbed halfway up her throat—she didn’t like being underground. She’d managed to avoid the basement in her and Elias’s house the entire time they lived there. When she was in an apartment, she’d gone to a laundromat down the street rather than the included basement facility.
But what was she supposed to say? Claire stepped forward to follow the others.
The cool breath of deep earth wafted up the staircase, and her skin prickled at the sensation of stone on every side.
Stop it. She set her teeth. Get over yourself. You can deal with it for Elias.
Would he be down there? His corpse, peacefully arranged, calm and pale and in a suit he never would have picked out for himself?
She still didn’t know what they’d done with him, though at this point she assumed the Ashburys had somehow received the body.
There was usually a viewing at a funeral, right?
Unless the body was mangled from some accident, instead of sniped by an aneurysm.
Would he be buried here? These were all things she should know, obviously, but she didn’t, and she was only now recognizing what a failure of a partner that made her.
An unfit wife, for a family like this. Not worthy of inclusion.
She suddenly didn’t want to see him. She suddenly hoped that the Ashburys had kept his body far away, that she’d never have to think of him in any other way than as he’d been when he left the house that morning.
(or hovering beside the laundry, looming and yellow-eyed, or rotting in the cabin of a private plane, skin falling off and something growing from his eye socket)
Everyone else had turned toward the staircase when Dierdre did; apparently the family didn’t spend much time up in the castle at all. But Dierdre glanced over her shoulder at Claire as the rest of them descended, a slight line between her dark brows. “Are you all right, dear?”
“Fine.” Claire made herself nod, made herself smile. “I’m just not a huge fan of being underground.”
Dierdre laughed, the sound high and tinkling.
“Don’t worry, it doesn’t really feel like underground once you get there.
” She started down the stairs, past the strange statues.
Claire’s eyes had adjusted enough for her to make out more of their particulars now—odd, monstrous mermaids, tentacles where hair and legs should be, mouths open in snarls full of sharp teeth.
Her nose wrinkled. She’d never really understood fine art.
“And besides,” Dierdre said up ahead, “you can get used to anything if you have to.”
○ ○ 2. ○ ○
The staircase turned spiral beyond the line of gloom that obscured it from sight of the foyer, but was still wide enough for all of them to walk abreast if they chose to.
They didn’t. Mr. Ashbury led the way, followed by Patrick, then Greg, then Audrey, then Theo, then Dierdre.
Claire trailed behind them, her suitcase bumping down the stairs and running into her heels.
None of them spoke, the only sound the faraway crash of waves on some unseen shoreline, and the sound that silence itself seemed to carry in large enough places—an echoing nothing, too much air trapped somewhere with no sky.
Down they walked, followed by the rhythmic thump of Claire’s luggage.
Hallways branched to the left and the right at evenly placed landings, the corridors dark and seemingly unused.
She expected to see staff in a place this large, the apparent inhabitants of the white beach houses.
But other than Alton the driver and Lucille, the cook Dierdre had mentioned, there didn’t appear to be anyone here but the Ashburys.
“What’s down there?” She didn’t really intend to speak, but the deeper they went into the labyrinthine house, the more Claire’s flesh felt like it was going to shrink right off her bones, and talking at least gave her something else to concentrate on.
No one else paused in their walking, but Dierdre glanced over her shoulder, a bland smile on her face. “What do you mean, dear?”
Claire waved her hand listlessly at the darkened corridor to her right, on the third empty landing they’d passed since leaving the foyer.
The motion almost made her lose her balance, her suitcase slamming into the back of her foot again.
“I was just curious what’s down these hallways.
They don’t look like they’ve been used much. ”
“Oh.” Dierdre nodded toward the hallway. “Bedrooms for the help, mostly. Only the staff with families have the beach houses.”
Her eyes darted back toward the front of the procession, where Wellsley and the others were still tromping doggedly down into the depths of Harrow Point. None of them looked back at Claire, but Patrick, close to the front, slid his gaze toward his wife for just a moment before turning around again.
“Bedrooms,” Dierdre repeated, “and the apses at the end, of course.”
Apse. The word sparked half a recognition in Claire’s brain, though she couldn’t quite grasp the whole of it. She frowned, fingers working to fists and back on the handle of her suitcase. “Like… like in a church?”
Dierdre’s smile widened, and she seemed genuinely pleased. “Exactly.”