Chapter 36
A WALL OF EVIDENCE
The next day, Jude isn’t at school.
Each period crawls by at a snail’s pace.
By the time U.S. History rolls around, I’m about to come out of my skin. I stare at the clock, bouncing my knee and tapping my pencil to such a distracting degree, Harper gives me an exasperated look halfway through Langley’s lecture about the First Continental Congress.
But I can’t seem to help myself.
My body won’t settle. Neither will my mind. It keeps jumping from one peculiarity to the next. The portrait. The gemstones. My dreams. The loose floorboard in Simon’s room. My mother. The mark beneath her collarbone, which leads back to the portrait, and Molly, and now, Lydia Mabel.
After our discovery in town hall, Jude hardly spoke.
He snapped pictures of the report, then asked to see the coroner’s inquest for Violet Underwagon, who died in an animal attack alongside Ruth Vandenberg in 1832.
But there was no coroner’s inquest to be found, even though this was after the fire.
The whole time, he remained silent and brooding.
All in all, I saw him for no more than thirty minutes.
He got his information about Lydia, he tried to get more about Violet, then he left.
And he’s been ghosting me ever since.
Too bad for him, I refuse to be ghosted.
As soon as the final bell rings, I head straight to the manor. Mr. Tulane answers the door with his trademark bow. I tell him Jude invited me. He doesn’t call my bluff, but welcomes me inside. I hurry up the stairs, march through the upper hall, and rap on Jude’s door.
A moment later, it opens.
He stands on the other side like a tortured poet on a bender—his shirt untucked, his hair a mess, the shadows beneath his eyes so dark they’re like bruises. The look has no right to flatter anyone, and yet somehow on him …
“Where were you today?” I ask, shifting in an attempt to see past him, into his private quarters.
But he shifts, too, like he’s hiding something. “I think you should go.”
“Why?”
He drags his hand down his face. His jaw is tight, and when he speaks, his words are, too. “Because something is obviously going on here, and I think it’s better if you’re not involved.”
I blink up at him. “You’re joking, right?”
He doesn’t answer. He just stands there looking miserable.
“Jude, I’ve been involved since the day I was born. Two centuries before then, actually.”
“Selah.” He says my name like it’s a torment.
And I’ve had enough.
I barge past him.
He doesn’t stop me. I’ll give him that.
Dreary sunlight filters through his windows, illuminating a wall that looks like a murder board in a squad room. It’s been covered in paper—copies of pictures, letters, journal entries, newspaper articles, death records.
Without realizing it, I’ve moved closer.
All the tragedies I’ve been keeping on a notecard in my bedroom are here on his wall. In chronological order and carefully documented.
Pre-Revolutionary War: Molly Ludwig dies by suicide. There’s the sketch of Molly. Or rather, a printed copy of the sketch. The symbol in the corner has been circled in red ink, along with three words written in bold handwriting—Ezra loved her.
Post Revolution: Lydia Mabel dies by arsenic. Next to it, he’s pinned her autopsy report. The symbol has been circled in the same red ink. Three words have been written in the same bold handwriting—Amos loved her.
Fire of 1822: Florence Wessel is one of the victims. He’s included the scandalous love letter. It’s obvious Amos loved her, too.
Pre Civil War: Ruth Vandenberg and Violet Underwagon die in animal attack. There’s the letter about Gabriel grieving not only his twin sister but the girl to whom his affections were so tenderly bound.
Post Civil War: Elijah commits suicide. Jude has made a copy of the suicide note, where he has not just highlighted, but underlined the ominous phrase—I know of no other way to stop this curse.
There’s the article about the train crash in 1890, including a caption that hinted at a courtship between Isaiah and Helena Pisel, who perished alongside his family.
Then there’s the article of the bank robbery.
Poor Enoch lost not only his parents and his left eye, but Mary Donovan, to whom he was betrothed.
There’s information about Rose Vandenberg, who died in The Blitz wearing the ruby necklace.
And then my mother.
He’s made a copy of the yearbook photograph. On it, he circled the mark beneath her collarbone with the words Simon loved her scrawled underneath. Next to her is a photograph of Jude’s mother, a woman who bled to death on a delivery table after his father’s profession of love.
And there, in the midst of all that evidence, is an item I’ve not yet seen, plucked from the timeline. A journal entry written by the scorch mark’s mother. Dated one year after her son penned his suicide note.
I turn to Jude, who’s still standing in the doorway, his hand on the crown of his head, fisting his hair.
“I found it Sunday morning,” he says.
November 12, 1873
It has been a year, one full, ruinous year since Elijah cast off this world, and still, I cannot accept that he is gone. My son. My heart. I miss him with every breath I draw.
At night, I dream of him as a child chasing butterflies in the orchard, his curls golden in the sun. I wake, and the pain of his absence is suffocating. It presses against my chest like stone. So does the shame.
My husband weeps behind closed doors. He prays late into the night.
But prayer cannot mend what he has broken.
He gave our son poison. This wretched curse.
And Elijah believed it. Enough to choose death, convinced it was the only way to protect those he loved.
Yet in his final words, he begged his father to pass the poison onto his own son, to warn Isaiah.
Pray tell, how would that protect his precious boy?
Gabriel will not grant him this request. He says he has learned.
But what good is wisdom earned too late?
The blood will forever stain his hands. I will never forgive him.
“To love brings death,” he told Elijah, and he dared tell me the same. I wanted to strike him. To scream. If love brings death, then why am I still here? My heart beats on. I am his wife, am I not? So then, he does not love me?
I want to follow my son to the grave. Let Gabriel contend with the wreckage. Only the children keep me here. They are too young to understand the shame they will carry all their lives. Sweet Esther. Precious Deborah. Little Isaiah.
I will not leave them with more sorrow.
But I am forever emptied.
—A.V.
My fingers linger over the phrase “to love brings death.” I look again at the evidence Jude has gathered.
Ezra loved Molly, and she died.
Amos loved Lydia, and she died.
Then he loved Florence, and she died, too. The whole town caught on fire.
Gabriel lost Violet.
Elijah took his own life.
He begged his father to tell Isaiah everything, but Gabriel refused, and Isaiah not only lost Helena, but his entire family.
Enoch lost his betrothed.
Daniel lost his wife in The Blitz.
Jude’s father lost his mother in the wake of Jude’s birth.
And Simon loved my mother only to vanish alongside his family.
All these stories of affection.
Every one ended in tragedy.
To love brings death.
It should fill me with sadness.
Instead, all I feel is anger.
“You think this is an actual curse?” I spin around, indignant. But he’s not in the doorway anymore. He’s standing right behind me, close enough to see exactly what conclusion he has drawn. I let out a hollow laugh. “You? The cynic? The skeptic? Suddenly now, you’re a believer?”
He jerks his hand toward the wall. “Are you not?”
“Of course I am. I’ve always been a believer. You, on the other hand, have white-knuckled logic like your life depends on it, even when it was completely illogical to do so. But now, now, you want to believe in curses?”
“I don’t want to believe in anything.”
I shake my head.
“But the evidence is pretty overwhelming.” For a moment, he closes his eyes. When he opens them again, he won’t meet mine. He simply walks to his door, his face as guarded as it was the first time we met. “I really think you should go.”