Chapter 17
Friday: The Night of the Party
It feels as if I’m outside alone with Marlowe for hours. Years. An eternity.
I stare at her broken body, unable to look away.
Limbs contorted unnaturally, a puddle of blood that stretches and spreads into the cracks of the patterned stone.
I close my eyes. Violent flashes emerge—memories of Marlowe earlier in the night and images from the tarot cards intertwine with the gory brutality of her death.
Flames scaling the Tower as people tumble to the ground below. Marlowe’s wild, roaming eyes.
The Devil, a beast with horns and wings on a throne. Blood blossoming from behind Marlowe’s head.
That wretched skeleton waving a black flag on the Death card. The sudden stillness that overcame Marlowe as she took her last breath.
Did Opal predict this during my reading?
Or is Marlowe’s death another casualty of the Rathbone family curse, this damned house, a ripple effect of my own actions?
These thoughts, irrational and dizzying as they are, cause a sharp pain in my head, as if something deep inside is fighting to escape.
For a moment, I’m afraid I’ll lose consciousness.
I rush forward, making it away from the patio just in time to retch behind a row of bushes.
Hot tears stream down my cheeks, my entire body rattling with grief and regret as huge, heaving sobs escape from my lungs.
Disbelief riddles me. Marlowe, my vibrant, iron-willed friend, can’t be dead.
My chest aches with pain, filled with the impossible desire to go back in time, stop this from happening.
I’m still gasping for air when the door opens and footsteps approach.
“Tippi?” Ava calls. “Marlowe? Are you out here?”
“We heard a scream,” Constance says, walking up behind her.
Beside her, Preston asks, cautiously, “What is that on the ground?”
Part of me longs to warn them, but when I open my mouth to speak, there’s only silence. Words don’t exist for this type of pain. Panting, I close my eyes and listen as they approach Marlowe’s body, one by one.
I hear Ava’s sharp intake of breath, Constance’s shocked gasp, each punctuated by dueling cries as the women burst into tears.
They cling to each other, searching for the strength to stay upright.
A fresh sob rises in my own chest, and yet it refuses to release, remains nothing more than a lump restricting my ability to breathe, to exist.
“My God,” Preston says, his voice as meek as a child’s. He stumbles backward, blocking the view of her body with his hand.
Finally, Damien exits the house, his heavy footfalls pummeling toward us. When he sees Marlowe, he doesn’t say anything. His breaths come heavy and fast as he runs forward, kneeling beside her. He mumbles incoherently, pressing his fingers to her throat.
A new memory forms, one of me being in that same position seconds ago, and I feel another wave of nausea coming on.
“Is she dead?” Ava’s tone is clipped and unsure. She still clutches Constance’s shoulders for balance.
“Yes.” My faculties start to return. Pain stings my back as I stand, my legs wobble with uncertainty. “She wasn’t when I found her. I saw her take her last breath.”
Damien’s fingers spring backward in defeat, confirming what I’ve just said. She’s gone. He stands, hands fixed on his hips as he paces between her body and the rest of us.
“You’ve got to do something!” Constance’s volume is high, on the verge of a shriek. She breaks away from Ava and approaches Damien. “You’re a doctor!”
“There’s no pulse. She’s suffered severe head trauma.” He’s almost breathless as he explains, “We could be at a hospital right now and there’d be nothing I could do. She’s gone.”
Constance wraps protective hands around her burgeoning belly, as though shielding her unborn child from the view. “This can’t be real.”
Ava clears her throat, looks to me. “What the hell happened?”
“I came outside after my tarot reading,” I say, my cadence beginning to regulate. “I heard a scream from the back of the house. Then a thud. I came around to investigate, and that’s when I found her.”
Ava and Preston look above, observing the broken railing jutting out into the night sky. Constance’s breathing becomes more ragged. Damien raises his head, smacks his lips together, as if his mouth is too dry for him to speak.
“You think she fell from there?” he asks.
I don’t have the energy to respond. Everything happened so quickly.
She must have been on the library balcony.
Somehow, she went over the edge, but Marlowe isn’t the type of person who falls to her death.
She doesn’t misstep. Just last month, the maintenance team secured all the balconies and ledges, making sure everything was up to code.
Marlowe couldn’t have made it off that landing without some type of accelerating force. Like a push.
“Does anyone know what she was doing inside the library?” I ask.
Ava shakes her head. “The last I saw her was when she came to get you for your reading.”
“I didn’t see her either,” Constance says.
“We were in and out of the cinema, exploring the different rooms of the house.” Preston approaches his wife, wrapping his arms around her, stroking the back of her head. He comforts her in silence before asking, “What should we do now?”
“We need to call the police,” Ava answers.
“How?” Constance’s voice cracks with fresh fear. “There’s no landline.”
Damien pulls out his cell phone. “No service either.”
“And none of us drove,” he points out, a detail I hadn’t considered until now. “Everyone took Ubers from the city.”
Everyone looks to me for answers. This is Marmee’s house, my childhood home. Its privacy and seclusion have always captivated me, but now, in the wake of tragedy, the remoteness presents a colossal complication. There’s no way to contact the police. Even if we could, nothing can bring Marlowe back.
Oliver’s threatening notes flash through my mind.
Don’t have too much fun without me.
Are you going to tell them the truth about what happened between us?
Maybe Opal’s tarot reading wasn’t the only omen of bad things to come. Is it possible Oliver’s messages and Marlowe’s death are connected?
A hand traces my shoulder. My eyes flicker upward to find Ava staring back at me.
“You should talk to Evelyn,” she says. “If there are no phones, she must have a car we can use.”
“Who is Evelyn?” Damien asks; his ignorance angers me.
“My grandmother,” I say. “This is her house.”
He nods but doesn’t seem to listen or care, just stares ahead as though in a trance. Somewhere nearby, I hear the swishing of Preston’s agitated pacing, Constance’s quivering cries. I taste salt on my lips from my own tears.
“Tippi?” Ava touches my shoulder again, the sensation making me flinch. She holds out her hands in a surrender. “We should go inside. There isn’t anything to do here.”
Anger rumbles inside me, temporarily eclipsing my sadness.
I force myself to look at Marlowe one last time, her angelic white dress now dyed a deep rust. Above, jagged balusters stab at the star-riddled sky, protruding into nothingness.
A fall from that angle is improbable—unforced, it’s impossible.
These details adhere to my memories of tonight, everything I know about the house’s sound structure and Oliver’s ominous messages and Marlowe’s mysterious temperament evolving into a nerve-deep understanding.
What happened tonight wasn’t an accident.
Marlowe was pushed from the library balcony.
And someone here did it.