Chapter Sixteen #2
“These windows! Aren’t they special? They’re original to the house. They don’t make them like this anymore.” The real estate agent’s voice rises and falls. “This house has so much space. It’ll be perfect for a family. How many children did you say you have?”
Diana escapes down the hall, away from the kitchen.
Turned about in the house’s mazelike layout, she tries another door, only to find herself standing in the pantry.
Mason jars of jam and cans of soup are stacked on one side; toilet tissue is on the floor next to a bag of dog food.
Most of the shelves are bare. This is the opposite from Diana’s pantry, which overflows with options to feed her kids and their friends.
She tries one more door, hoping it leads outside. As the door opens, Diana realizes she’s in the sunporch, looking right at Grace O’Connor.
The older woman is propped up on a wicker sofa, a knitted afghan spread across her lap. A black Labrador perches at her feet. He lazily raises himself and sniffs as Diana enters. Through the window, Diana spies her car, a few hundred feet away.
Grace is an older version of the woman on the horse in the photograph, with tapered cheekbones and gray hair in a loose bun.
Diana’s first impression is that Grace is unhappy.
She understands, of course; she’d be pissed off having strangers stomping around her house, poking in her closets and drawers, and examining her life.
“I thought this was the door to the outside. I didn’t mean to disturb you,” Diana stammers, clutching the real estate brochure in her hand, folding the corner back and forth to stave off her nerves.
“It’s not a problem,” Grace replies, patting her dog’s head until he lies down again. “The seller isn’t supposed to be home during an open house, isn’t that right?”
“Your house is lovely,” Diana says impulsively. “How did you come to live here?”
“My husband grew up in Hamilton, and he took over this farm from his uncle when we were newlyweds. It’s my favorite in the spring, when wildflowers bloom in the yard and the land comes alive, especially the apple trees.”
“What kind of apples did you grow?”
“McIntosh,” Grace says. “Do you have any questions about the house? Anything the very efficient Ms. Sousa couldn’t answer for you?”
Diana can tell Stacy Sousa isn’t Grace’s favorite person; how can you possibly like someone who is working to dismantle your life?
She saw Tom’s hospice nurses the same way.
She appreciated their help as her world fell apart, and she hated them, too.
Hated they were in her life because Tom was dying.
Diana gestures to the backyard. “What was the fence for?”
Grace frowns. “A paddock. It was next to a barn my husband built for me. I used to raise and train horses. Local folks boarded their horses with us, too.”
“What happened to the barn?”
“There was a fire, many years ago.”
Diana mops sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. “I’m sorry,” she says. “What happened to the horses?”
“We saved most of them. Opened the doors and they went running out into the fields. Took hours to catch them again.”
We saved most of them, Diana repeats to herself. The coverage of the fire in the Hamilton Star indicated two horses perished in the flames.
“You didn’t rebuild?”
“William put up that barn for me.” Grace tucks the afghan around her body. “I couldn’t accept another building in its place.”
Diana asks the question that’s been nagging at her since she first learned about the fire: “How did it start?” The Star’s reporting indicated the police thought Carson had set the fire, but not how he did it.
Understanding her inquiry is so close to bringing up William’s death, which she knows all too well can be painful, Diana adds an apology of sorts. “If you don’t mind me asking, that is.”
“The fire wasn’t caused by faulty wiring, if that’s what you’re asking. The authorities ruled that out.” Grace’s dog lifts his head to rest on her knees, and she rubs behind his ears.
“I wonder if I could ask—”
“I must let you return to your tour,” Grace interrupts. “If you go through that door on your left, you’ll be at the back porch by the kitchen. Ms. Sousa will be there, I assume, and she can answer any other queries you may have.”
Grace’s formal tone tells Diana she is dismissed.
She reluctantly leaves, looking back only as she closes the door.
When Grace believes she’s alone, her posture gives way.
She collapses against the cushions; her eyes close and her hands fall into her lap.
Diana suppresses the urge to comfort the older woman, forcing herself to continue walking across the porch.
The temperature dropped while she was inside. Diana zips up her coat and stuffs the real estate listing into her pocket. She strides through the yard and around the paddock, past an old tree stump and a pile of abandoned ladders, until she comes to the barn’s crumbling foundation.
She’s frustrated she didn’t ask Grace more questions, that she didn’t push harder, that the answers to Tom’s letter still aren’t clear. And she is sad. So sad he didn’t confide in her.
Her phone swooshes, indicating the arrival of a text. Diana fishes it out of her purse; she missed several messages while she was in Grace’s house.
From Chris: Hey, where’d you get to? Dad has the steaks ready to go.
From Lakshmi: How are you? What did you find out? I’ve been keeping an eye on your house. So far, no visitors.
From Jonathan: Just checking in. Have time for a chat?
From Andrea: Hope you’re having a good visit. Can you bring me home some maple syrup?
Instead of responding, Diana sticks the phone back in her purse and bends down.
Among the remaining chunks of the foundation, she selects a small, bronze-colored rock with gold streaks, smooth on one end, pointed on the other.
She clenches it tightly as she stands up, and the rock pierces her skin, making her gasp.
Drops of blood rise to the surface. Hypnotized, Diana stares at her palm as a red puddle forms.
An upstairs window slides open, and Stacy Sousa’s voice rings into the yard. Diana blinks and remembers where she is. Swiftly moving toward her car, she keeps a tight hold on the rock as droplets of her blood stain the snow underfoot.