5
Raquel loved to watch her husband sleep.
The sheer peacefulness of Theo’s features, from the smoothness of his forehead to the slack line of his whiskered jaw to the slight part of lips as he snored.
Some nights, the intensity of her stare would wake him, and he’d reach for her, lazily drawing her close.
“You know,” he’d whisper against the top of her head, “you can always wake me if you need help wearing yourself out.”
Some nights she did. But mostly, she savored these quiet interludes, the feel of his body next to hers, the way the shadows wrapped around them both like a lover’s embrace.
Awake, Theo was a force of nature. He bounded and chattered and leaped from task to task. He could cover three topics in a single breathless sentence, then toss together an omelet while somehow touching her cheek and smiling warmly.
She’d never met anyone who lived the way he lived, as if he wasn’t just occupying space and time, but bending them to his will.
She hadn’t known what to make of him in the beginning.
He seemed less an ambitious adult overseeing hundreds of millions in investment funds, and more an overexcited child.
She’d assumed it was a front. No one could be that cheerful that often.
He’d proved her wrong. And now a man she hadn’t even thought she’d want had become the one thing she couldn’t do without.
He hadn’t introduced her to his family until after their engagement.
In fact, he’d rarely even mentioned his parents or older brother.
In the beginning, she’d thought he was alone, just like her.
She never thought to look up a name as common as Collins, and she never discussed her personal life with her clients.
The fact she was sleeping with one of Boston’s wealthiest bachelors had never crossed her mind.
But then, there were many things they never discussed, choosing to cultivate their own little bubble, as if nobody else existed in the world but them.
She still missed those days.
When he’d finally brought her to the family home in Cambridge, she’d managed to hide her shock only because she’d worked for so many über-rich, not much surprised her anymore.
Fleur-de-lis wallpaper stamped with real gold leaf.
A blown-glass Murano chandelier that required whole new roof trusses to bear the weight.
Matching silk-covered sofas crafted for the family pets.
Whatever stereotyped images Raquel had about old money, Theo’s parents fit them to a T.
Theo’s mother—Sandra—had barely cracked a smile when Theo had introduced Raquel.
Whether the years of Botox had rendered that impossible or she didn’t want to risk smearing her rose-colored Chanel lipstick was anyone’s guess.
Theo’s father, John, had greeted his own son with a firm handshake, like welcoming a junior associate at his law firm.
Then Sandra’s gaze had gone straight to the brilliant diamond on Raquel’s left hand, her shoulders stiffening.
Theo’s father had done a better job hiding his shock, but Raquel could feel the frown developing behind the older man’s bland facade.
These were people who did lunch, hosted charity balls, and drank their gin and tonics promptly at five o’clock.
Raquel’s carefully selected Dior shirtdress didn’t fool them for a minute.
They knew she wasn’t of their ilk, and the thin set of their lips communicated their feelings precisely.
Theo, on the other hand, had remained Theo for the next three hours. He joshed with his father, worked his impish grin on his mother, and basically carried the entire lunch while Raquel and his parents had sized one another up from across the massive mahogany table.
By the end, Raquel was left with two distinct impressions: Theo’s parents would never like her, and Theo was most likely the love child from an affair his mother had had with Hugh Jackman. It was the only theory that fit.
When she’d shared that tidbit with Theo, he’d laughed so hard he snorted.
He loved his parents, because Theo was a good person and that’s what good people did.
But, he readily confessed, he wasn’t close to them.
He’d spent the majority of his life at boarding school, then college, then living on his own.
His parents were Sunday dinners once a month, power lunches every other week, and summer vacations in Nantucket.
And they were all perfectly happy with that arrangement.
Raquel had been less convinced. The idea of marriage was still new and disconcerting. Maybe they shouldn’t. Maybe she couldn’t.
Theo had resolved the matter by whisking her away to a courthouse where they were married by a justice of the peace. Two of his college buddies served as witnesses. Raquel stood alone.
Later, while stripping off her white sheath dress, Theo had murmured how fierce and sexy she’d looked, a woman who needed no one to give her away, a warrior who claimed him, rather than him claiming her.
But then, Theo always had a way with words.
Were his parents furious at their elopement?
She never asked, and Theo never said. From time to time, he would mention meeting them for lunch.
She’d join for the occasional dinner, where everyone talked, but no one said anything.
Did Theo ever realize it was his relationship with his own closed-off parents that had most likely set the stage for his relationship with her? She certainly did.
She admired her husband. She marveled at his optimism. She treasured his natural warmth and vitality. Just as she wondered, with her own dark humor, how long anything this good could last.
Did he have regrets these days? Wish he could take his crazy love and foolish impulsiveness back? She was too scared to ask.
Now Raquel slid from beneath the pile of blankets. Given the state of the upstairs, they hadn’t bothered with actual furniture, settling for a lone mattress and boxed belongings. Theo joked it was like camping, but with indoor plumbing.
Raquel patted the space beside her until she discovered the round shape of a flashlight, then used the single beam to guide her way around the gaps in the floor.
The hallway had fared slightly better, though the walls were covered with spray-painted graffiti and amateur art.
At one point, someone had stenciled a pink flowering vine growing up and around one of the doorways.
Rachel had thought it lovely, until she peered at it more closely and realized the vine sprouted from a grass-covered hill topped by four tombstones—the graves of children who’d never been seen again.
Inside this doorway was the room that had once been occupied by the boys.
Then came the adjoining bath leading to the bedroom for the girls.
The bathroom had been thoroughly destroyed.
Even the toilet and cabinets were missing.
There had to be a story there, but Raquel was pretty sure she didn’t want to know.
From her research, she knew one of the Dixon cousins had taken over responsibility for the house in Dave’s absence.
For the first year, nothing had changed, because surely the family would return shortly.
Then, after the second winter, when a burst pipe took out the basement furnace, some of the furniture had been removed to allow for repairs while a property management company started to tend to seasonal maintenance.
More summers, falls, winters, springs. Bit by bit, the house emptied out.
Precious art, family mementos, personal clothing.
Followed by rugs, then furniture, then all the everyday detritus that accumulated in cupboards and closets.
Raquel had searched for some of the larger antique pieces, working off images she’d spied in old photos. She’d never tracked any of them down, so maybe they were never sold off, but tucked away in a storage unit to await a day that never came.
If the family had vanished in one dramatic instant, their home had degraded bit by bit.
The initial for-sale photos showed a solid structure with an overgrown yard.
By the time the true crime show had sent a camera crew to shoot footage, the front porch was sagging, while the interior was littered with beer cans and empty pizza boxes.
From then on, things had only gotten worse.
Until the day Raquel tracked down the property listing, ending a months-long obsession that had started with a single piece of jewelry and, well, led here.
When she read the full story of the Dixons, her heart had quickened.
She found herself taking a deep breath, then exhaling slowly through parted lips.
The 1840s daguerreotype she’d found in a Charlestown antique store had given form and substance to her grief.
But the story of the Dixon family, their idyllic happiness followed by shocking tragedy, spoke not just to her bitter anguish, but also to her unfocused rage.
She couldn’t fix her pain. But this…It was like light bulbs exploding in her head.
For reasons she could not explain to anyone, least of all herself, she was determined to make this right.
When Theo had returned home and seen her face, he’d nearly crushed her with the fierceness of his embrace. He didn’t have to say anything for her to understand. After weeks of being adrift in an endless gray sea, she’d suddenly sparked back to life and begun the journey to shore.
Now she entered the boys’ room where someone, most likely the vine artist, had used pastels to color a teddy bear down low in one corner and a yellow dog scurrying along the bottom edge of a different wall.
In between was a jumble of initials, swear words, and teen declarations of undying love.
More of the same had been carved into the window ledges and wooden door trim.
She traced the shapes with her finger, feeling the roughness of the patterns, the scars that cut so deep no amount of sanding would ever smooth them away.
There were water stains above her head, decades of mouse droppings and vomit stains below her feet.
This room had been alive once. Outfitted with a sturdy bunk bed and matching dresser.
Bearing a bookshelf crammed with board games, favorite novels, and LEGO building sets.
Decorated with a lamp sprouting up from a carved wooden moose while prints of bears and foxes hung upon the wall.
When Raquel closed her eyes, she could see the initial newspaper photos of the scene, the piles of clothes on the floor and the jumble of discarded sporting goods.
She could feel the disparate wildness of two boys, one twelve, one six, both on the verge of something, even if they didn’t understand what.
She could imagine mutual fights and frustration, interspersed with shared mischief and laughter.
Brothers. Would they have remained friends and confidants as they aged? Or would the age gap have proved to be too much, Henry disappearing off to college while William spent another seven years at home without him?
It’s the not knowing that kept bringing her back. The sense of limitless possibilities combined with finite tragedy.
You could wonder who the boys might have been when they grew up, but first you had to accept that they were never growing up.
Which was something she understood too well. And not just after three bitter heartbreaks in a short span of time, but because to this day…
Ushering the little ones out of the trailer. Tucking them behind whatever meager cover she could find. “Shhh…”
“Bunny, I’m scared.”
“Shhh…” Looking around for some kind of weapon, anything, as the mobile home door crashed open, a fresh howl splitting the night.
“Bunny, I’m scared, I’m scared, I’m scared.”
Herself still searching, searching, searching. And then, she saw it:
“Lilly, Charlie Boy, this is very important: Close your eyes…”
Now she wandered into the girls’ room, another dark, empty space. More graffiti and scarred windowsills and petty vandalism. Additional remnants of the unknown artist, coloring a bouquet of heart-shaped roses, the slender form of a darting red fox, the peering face of a curious gray raccoon.
Raquel wondered about the artist. Probably female. Young maybe, but touched by this family and their fate. Driven to make sense of the senseless, to commemorate people she didn’t know but could still feel.
Raquel had never found any record of an actual memorial for the Dixon children and their parents. Because thirty years later the larger clan still held out hope? Or because sometimes, by the time you realized the worst had happened, you had no energy left to cope?
This house, this badly bruised and battered shell, was all that remained. A reminder of summer adventures and family fun. A nod to generations past. A failed promise to the future.
For two hundred fifty years there’d been Dixons on this property. And now, her and Theo.
Raquel roamed the upstairs. She descended to the hushed silence of the great room, where she could see the moon peeking out from behind silvery clouds.
She ran her fingers along a mantel older than she would ever be, across a stone hearth built with boulders the Dixons themselves had pulled from the ground when first clearing.
She pictured generations of puzzles and board games, of shared meals and midnight snacks.
She imagined a family life she’d never had and never would, the fingers on her right hand beginning to drum restlessly against the top of her thigh.
This house with its own tragic history. Like calling to like. Two tired, exhausted women, just trying to feel whole again.
Raquel roamed from room to room, stepping into beams of moonlight, disappearing back into bands of shadows.
Over and over again. Until finally, worn out, she returned to the bed she shared with her husband and tucked herself beneath the sheets.
Even in his sleep, Theo rolled toward her and wrapped his arm around her waist.
Eventually, she slept.
When she opened her eyes again, daylight streamed through the windows and Theo was peering down at her, his boyish expression particularly animated.
“Hey there, Sleeping Beauty. Guess what? We have a dog!”