Chapter 9
Abigail glared at the small black hole she had just found in the baseboard of the hallway. When she first arrived at the Newport house, she assumed that it was a knot in the wood or a stain, but this was now the third hole she had found.
Her knees were sore from shuffling up and down the hallway while inspecting the baseboards, and her back was complaining almost as much. She let herself groan out loud as she twisted her position to lean against the front door. Closing her eyes and leaning her head against the wood, she took a few deep breaths and listened to the rain falling quietly beyond the porch. The slightly surreal floating sensation she often got just before dropping off to sleep was just starting to edge its way into her body when there was a series of loud bangs above her.
Gunshots!?she thought wildly as she yelped in surprise, jolting so hard she hit the back of her head against the door.
A split second went by as she tried to recalculate her wild speculation.
“Ow...” she muttered, raising her hand to probe the sore spot, “what the hell?”
“Abby?” Byron’s voice called from outside. He sounded panicked. “Are you all right?”
Her stomach flipped; it was someone knocking on the door, she realized. Chastising herself silently, she turned and rose to her feet.
Because, of course, it was someone knocking—it’s the front door. Why wouldn’t someone be knocking on it?she thought, rolling her eyes at herself as she opened the door.
Byron’s broad silhouette took up most of the doorframe, both hands resting on the wood as if he was about to tear the house in two.
“I’m fine,” she said. “You just startled me by knocking at the most ridiculous time; I was right against the door.”
Her explanation soaked in, and he visibly calmed, his worry turning to awkwardness. And yet, she thought, he’s still gorgeous. No wonder he’s a heartbreaker.
“Sorry,” he said sheepishly, “I just... when I heard you yell out and a thump, I thought you’d fallen, maybe...”
“No, I just cracked my head on the door because apparently my instincts are to knock myself out when I think I hear gunshots—you knock really loud.”
Abigail had intended to sound light-hearted and joking, but even as the words were coming out of her mouth, she realized they sounded a lot more worrying and accusatory than they needed to. He was opening his mouth to reply, but she didn’t need it to get worse.
“I’m joking—sorry, my humor is a little dry,” she said. “You want a coffee or something?”
“Tea would be great,” he replied, looking relieved. “Why were you against the door?”
As they made their way to the kitchen, Abigail explained the boreholes throughout the house, speculating that they were for cameras and led back to the security system.
“But why would they be on the baseboards?” she asked as she gathered the things she needed for tea.
Byron shrugged, leaning past her to the top shelf of a cabinet to retrieve a teapot she had been too short to see, “Yeah, you’d think they’d be top corner if they were cameras... unless they were for motion sensors? Like, to trigger lights when someone walked down the hallway?”
“That… actually freaks me out just as much,” Abigail said, “like, waiting and watching for someone to come in? I dunno… it’s weird, right?”
Byron grinned as Abigail turned to face him. She threw her hand up with the universal gesture of ‘what!?’.
“Nothing, it’s just funny that you went straight for the security camera angle. Those sensors could have literally been for the lights—this was a holiday rental for years, right? Well, people staying in new places—you’ve got like three sets of internal stairs! The ones that go down into the living room at the back, the guest bathroom, and the regular stairs. Plus, there’s that raised metal cover on the study door that joins the two types of flooring. If I was stumbling around in the dark, I’d probably break my neck twice—your parents probably didn’t want to get sued for renting a dangerous house.”
The electric kettle jiggled from the force of the boiling water inside and clicked off, the sound seeming far louder than it should have in the silence between them. Her chest tightened, and she could feel the heat rising into her face—she hated feeling stupid.
“Right,” she said in a huff as she grabbed the kettle and poured the boiling water over the loose-leaf tea Byron had meted out into the pot, “of course, yeah, guess I’m being paranoid. Stupid of me really. I just... I’m not really sleeping great… lots of change and a new place...”
“Uh,” Byron said as she trailed off, “not stupid at all. You just found a fancy security system you didn’t know existed and now you’re finding random drill holes? Definitely not stupid, Abby, maybe a tiny bit paranoid.”
His tone was actually light-hearted as he teased her about the paranoia, so she smiled and made a face at him playfully. A timer on his phone went off, and he turned it off before stirring the tea.
“You know, I am a little paranoid. Regardless of how many calls and texts I get from the girls, they feel so far away... it’s easy to worry.”
She looked up and saw him watching her, “sorry, just a mother’s blathering.”
“No, it’s okay,” he said. “I get it. My ex-wife moved back to France when we divorced. We talked about it and the kids wanted to experience living over there for a while. So, we made it work, but that meant that about six months of the year, I felt like a half loaded version of myself.”
Abigail blinked and cleared her throat. She didn’t even know he had kids.
“Wow, that’s crazy hard… six months a year?”
“They spent the summer over there every year and we were allowed to do a ‘hybrid homeschooling plan’—I think it would be totally illegal now,” he said, laughing, “basically every year, they were permitted to spend half a semester overseas so long as the curriculum got taught to them and they passed a series of tests. The school didn’t mind—they still got their school fees and they had two kids scoring at the top of the country for foreign languages.”
She nodded but still, six months away from your kids every year felt harsh.
“Still, tough gig,” she said, “how old are they?”
He reached into his back pocket to retrieve his phone, “My eldest is just about to turn twenty—she’s doing her degree in Paris, and her little brother is about to turn nineteen. He graduated last year and is spending a year of traveling—finding himself, so to speak.”
“Twenty and nineteen?” she asked, staring at Byron—he couldn’t be that much older than her, surely.
“Yeah, Camille and Pierre,” he said, flicking through a series of photographs on his phone showing the pair. Catching her unspoken question, he laughed, “I know I look so young. I’m thirty-nine. Their mother was an exchange student. We fell helplessly in love and got married in secret. Her father hated me so much, which I totally understand now that I have a daughter a year older than Delphine was when we got pregnant.”
“Oh, sure,” Abigail said, “kids put a lot of things in perspective. I remember being eleven and being utterly enraged that my parents wouldn’t let me and Cleo go to Providence on the ferry by ourselves, but the thought of my twins on a ferry heading to the city makes my stomach churn.”
They shared a knowing laugh, worries being a universal language for parents it seemed. There was a series of knocks, and Cleo’s voice rang out.
“Yoohoo! Door’s unlocked—put your clothes on. I’m coming in!”
“Cleo!” Abigail exclaimed, feeling her face heat, “Byron’s here!”
A laugh flittered down the hall, “then both of you put your clothes on!”
Her stomach twisted, and her face now felt like it was on fire. “I’m so sorry about her.”
Byron was looking purposefully into his tea, but was he also blushing? Catching herself before Cleo could, Abigail wrenched her gaze away from Byron’s face and tried to look nonchalant as Cleo waltzed into the kitchen in her nurse”s uniform.
“Hi folks,” she said, grinning broadly, “how are we today? Oooh tea! Any left for me?”
She leaned in to give Abigail a quick hug, reached past her and swirled the teapot to feel how much was left.
“Plenty,” Byron said, “It’s a white tea and jasmine blend.”
“Nice,” Cleo replied, looking to Abigail, “you like it?”
“I actually haven’t tried it yet,” she said, “we got talking about our kids.”
“Ohh, so you did know each other before!” Cleo joked, poking Abigail in the shoulder and grinning even wider.
“Oh, shut off,” Abigail said, laughing while praying Byron would find it funny and not be upset.
He had returned with another cup and was pouring Cleo her tea; he chuckled and quipped, “Oh yeah, sure, that’s the deal, she has a kid, and I clean the gutters. Here, it’ll be a bit stewed, but you’re so sweet it’ll even out, right?”
“Hah!” Cleo replied, taking the cup and sipping. “Absolutely right, sweet as honey.”
With a sigh of relief, Abigail picked up her own cup and breathed in the soft flowery scent of the tea. She had never really drunk fancy tea before, but something had moved her to pick up the gift box Shelley had given her before she left. The hot tea had cooled to a drinkable temperature, and she tentatively sipped. The flavor was so light she wasn’t sure it was there, but as she breathed in and let herself relax now that Cleo and Byron were bantering away like old friends, she picked up on the nuances of the drink. Abigail realized why Shelly had given it to her, this was basically a meditative practice.
“I have something interesting for you,” Cleo said, breaking the calm Abigail had been cultivating.
“Oh?”
Cleo nodded, “I did do some digging on Jacob. Despite all those rumors calling his disappearance a mystery and unsolved—it wasn’t too hard to find.”
A printout of a poorly scanned piece of paper emerged from Cleo’s large tote bag. At the top, in capitalized letters, it stated ‘THE CITY OF NEW YORK. VITAL RECORDS CERTIFICATE. CERTIFICATE OF DEATH’.
“He’s dead?” Abigail said, picking up the paper edged in an intricate pattern and stamped with a seal of some kind.
“State of New York says so,” Cleo replied.
As she read the form, Abigail felt a knot forming in her stomach, which tightened painfully as she came to the cause of death.
“Immediate cause of death: asphyxia caused by hanging. Due to the circumstances of: decedent hung self with rope.”
Silence fell in the little kitchen, which had been, just minutes ago, filled with jokes and laughter.
“That... that should be hanged,” Abigail said weakly.
“What?” Byron asked, his eyes flicking from the paper to Abigail’s’ face.
“A painting is hung, a man is hanged,” she said, her voice wavering, “because the painting—it’s a temporary state. It can be taken down, hung somewhere else, but when a man is hung, it’s final. The hanging is.. permanent. Sorry, I just—”
“No, Abby, that’s the thing, look at the date...”
Abigail blinked and refocused, searching for the date, “September... first.”
A second sheet of paper slipped on top of the death certificate.
“Exactly,” Cleo said, “You actually did have a visitor log; the police were investigating it as a suspicious crash, so they restricted your visitors. Coby Venn visited you four times—every day from the thirty-first of August to the fourth of September.”
Abigail looked up at Cleo, “Coby Venn!? Jacob Givens. It has to be...”
“And not to mention your sketch of him in your hospital room,” Cleo added.
“It was dated the fourth,” Abigail finished, looking from Cleo to Byron for support that she wasn’t being crazy.
“So,” Byron said, “there’s no way he could have been dead in New York and in your hospital room.”
Abigail shook her head.
“Which means there’s definitely something weird going on. Not just with this certificate but about the whole thing! I mean, I was literally never told it was being investigated... or at least I don’t remember it. But my parents had to have told me if I was interrogated or anything,” she paused, half afraid of her next words, “And… maybe, I mean, what if he’s alive?”