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  Abigail looks up at me, her face tinged with green. She doubles over, and then jerks upright, mouth opening to spew vomit across the table.

  CHAPTER

  26

  The second time Abigail opens her mouth, she screams.

  My father’s head snaps to me. “What the hell is going on here?”

  Abigail hunches over her plate, heaving. Her hand goes to her throat. The scent of bile curls under my nostrils and in an instant, I’m queasy.

  “She’s choking,” Father says, his face white.

  Abigail shakes her head and moves her hand from her neck to her mouth. “Water,” she says, voice raspy and raw. “I need water.”

  My father goes to her. He takes one of the linen napkins and I stand frozen, watching as he pats at her cheeks. Gently he pulls his hand away and cleans up her mouth. I’m transfixed by his sensitivity, but there’s an undercurrent of jealousy that thrums through my blood too. I remember when he used to be this tender with me.

  Abigail lifts her head. Our eyes connect. “I need a bucket.”

  I run to the kitchen and root through the cupboards. Pots and bowls clank together, reverberating off my temples. A dull ache throbs at the base of my neck. I can’t find a dang bucket, and with every passing second, I imagine Abigail’s spool of patience unwinding.

  Bucket.

  Where in the world will I find a bucket?

  As the answer becomes clear, unease creeps across my chest. The cellar. I grab a flashlight from the kitchen drawer, walk to the basement door, and unhook the thin latch with my thumb. The door groans open. I stare down at the darkness, every hair on the back of my neck rigid with tension.

  I take my first tentative step.

  Breathe in.

  Take another.

  Exhale.

  The flashlight beam passes over thick cobwebs that dangle from the low wooden ceiling and tangle in my hair. I swat at my face. By the time I reach the bottom of the stairs I feel like an insect, silken threads coiled around my neck. I pull at them, but the choking sensation won’t go away.

  From upstairs, I hear Abigail’s high-pitched scream.

  I pan the small cement room with the flashlight. Images flit through the beam—a rusted saw, an oversize hammer, a broken hatchet. Wooden crates overflow with discarded junk. Behind them, I spot two pails and stagger toward them. A shiver slips under my shirt and crawls down my spine.

  Get out.

  It’s been forever since I’ve been down in the cellar, but the feelings are as fresh today as they were five years ago. My first blackout—first menstrual cycle—where my mother found me, broken and scared, a puddle of blood between my legs.

  Tears spring to my eyes. Mom never told me I was unstable, didn’t blame me for my condition. I never asked for this.

  Holding tight to the handles, I carry the buckets up the stairs, each step bringing me closer to the light. To air that isn’t dense with memory and pain. I close the door behind me and lean against it, gulping for breath.

  Upstairs, the toilet flushes and the pipes creak and groan.

  The noise is enough to snap me out of memory and into action. In the kitchen, I gather water bottles from the fridge and hurry to the dining room with one of the buckets and my supplies. Father and Abigail are gone. I run to the stairway that leads to their private room and bound up the steps.

  “Lizbeth?” Abigail croaks, which I take as invitation to enter.

  She lies on her side, staring blankly at the door. Her eyelids flutter. “Come closer,” she says, and then licks her lips.

  I inch toward her, repulsed by the smell. There’s a patch of wet vomit on her pillow, and chunks of vomit cling to her stringy hair. I set the bucket down, holding my breath. She wraps her cold fingers around my wrist and squeezes. I’m shocked by her strength.

  “You did this.”

  I shudder. “I’m sure it’s just the flu,” I say, though it’s a lie I’m trying to convince myself of. Something about this doesn’t feel quite right.

  “Food poisoning,” Abigail says, her voice cracking.

  I shake my head. “The meat was cooked all the way through.” Chef Emeril taught me all about food safety, and how to prepare every type of animal protein. I’ve watched those episodes twice. Steak can be rare, a little pink is perfect, but not hamburger. Ground meat must be cooked all the way through. The rules are ingrained in me.

  Abigail holds her hand close to her throat. “Poison.”

  “No, it has to be something else.” My hands tremble, and my stomach twists and roils. “One of the guests is sick too.” It’s a bald-faced lie but I’m grasping at straws, deflecting the accusation, which rings a little too true at the back of my mind.

  Abigail turns her neck toward me, and her eyes flash with evil. “You will pay for this.”

  My blood flushes with anger and I stiffen my spine. “I won’t accept the blame, Abigail.”

  I won’t.

  Not this time.

  Even if it is food poisoning, it’s nothing I did. I remember measuring the ingredients, cracking the egg, folding in the crackers, the spices and herbs. And still, a nagging sensation lingers, a loose thread that needs knotting. Swipe. I stand at the kitchen sink, an unmarked bottle in my hand. Swipe. Swipe. The bottle tilts downward. A single drop curls over the lip . . .

  Swipeswipeswipe.

  Dear God, is it possible? A chill seeps into my bones. I glance nervously at Abigail. Her face is so pale . . . it’s almost ghost white.

  Her eyes flutter closed and her breathing stills. My heart leaps. I press my fingers to her clammy temple and pray for a pulse. It’s faint, but there. My shoulders slump with relief. If she dies . . .

  I shake my head, clearing the fear, leaning on logic. Food poisoning. That’s all. Something sour in the eggs, or maybe tainted meat. I pull the blanket up to Abigail’s chin and turn off the bedside light, then tiptoe to the bedroom door.

  A low murmur of distress from the en suite bathroom freezes me in place. “Lizbeth?”

  Father? I blow out a slow breath and creep to the bathroom door.

  “Lizbeth,” he says again, louder now. “I hope you brought a second bucket.”

  His request is punctuated with a spine-tingling retch.

  CHAPTER

  27

  The stench hits me first. Metallic, like blood.

  I press my hip against the barn door, one hand on the handle, and draw in a steadying breath. Something evil lurks on the other side. My heart thump, thump, thumps against my rib cage.

  Go inside.

  Instinct tells me to run, to wait until morning. But I’m drawn to the barn, in search of refuge, safety, the kind of absolution the church is no longer able to provide. Abigail’s voice rings in my eardrums. Poison! My father levels an accusatory stare at me, his lips swollen from throwing up.

  I’m exhausted, beaten down by their relentless accusations. Now that they’ve finally fallen asleep, I am free to sneak out to the barn, find comfort in the family of pigeons I’ve been nurturing.

  Except something isn’t quite right.

  Heat from the sun, long ago set, warms the handle. And still, my hands are cool, as if ice runs through my veins. My entire body vibrates.

  I inhale a deep breath. The smell of death is cloying, seeping through my pores. Almost as though the smell is emanating from deep inside me.

  I blink to clear the image and press my ear up to the door. The silence is eerie. Unnatural. I knock, a subtle tap, tap, tap. Rodents don’t scurry. The pigeons don’t flutter or chirp. I should hear life.

  The sound of dead silence is almost worse than the smell.

  Sweat trickles down my spine. I should call Bridget, my father, maybe even the police. But who would believe me? What evidence do I have? And of what?

  Go back.

  My mind, ever the prankster, is playing tricks on me. I have nothing to fear in here. Steeling myself for whatever ghost lurks behind the door, I shove it open. The handle rattle
s with enough noise to entice the deceased.

  And still, nothing stirs.

  I step across the threshold and stagger backward at the weight of the smell. It’s the stomach-churning rot that I imagine blankets most murder scenes left too long before discovery.

  Bile rises up into my mouth.

  I flick on the light switch and the room clouds in a hazy red glow. Photography equipment sits on the workbench, most of it still in boxes and bags. A stack of glossy paper in thick wrapping, bottles of chemicals and strange-looking tools the salesman claimed necessary, but only Bridget will be able to explain. I’d hoped to finishing setting up her darkroom tonight—a way to get my mind off the evening’s chaos—but my eyes burn and my throat is on fire.

  I brace myself against the door frame and hang my head to temper the nausea.

  My eyes lock on a stain on the floor. A rusty patch of burgundy, the color of dried blood. I cup my hand against my mouth and double forward. My palm fills with sticky saliva.

  Not blood.

  It can’t be. I’m hallucinating, suffering some kind of episode, another trick of my mind. What is happening? Breathe. I inhale air that smells like death, and it slithers down into my stomach. Blink, blink, blink. The puddle is still there.

  Not a puddle, a drop.

  A tiny speck.

  Just a pinprick’s worth.

  Swipe.

  I close my eyes again, as though to reset my vision, and look away. A silvery-gray feather catches my gaze. The edges are torn, stained deep red. My adrenaline jacks up. I stumble toward it, making excuses, rationalizing, trying to explain. A cat, yes, that’s it. It’s come into the barn and—

  Kill the pigeons.

  A muted sob escapes from somewhere deep inside of me.

  I stagger toward the ladder, my feet leaden with grief. I grip the side with one hand, the other dragging behind me as I climb to the loft. With each step, the smell heightens, grows more pungent and dense. I pause on the top rung, terrified to keep going, to turn back.

  To see.

  I already know what’s there. Dead pigeons, their sanctuary violated, the result of some animal attack. A fluttering in my stomach warns me not to look.

  I must.

  At first I see nothing, and relief turns my head light. The makeshift nest looks intact, not destroyed. But the smell won’t go away, won’t disappear.

  Carefully, I climb across the mattress and lean over the nest.

  Swipe—

  Blink.

  —swipe.

  I suck in a gasp. Swipe. A silhouetted figure stands above the nest. Swipe. Swipe. The sharp edge of a hatchet glints under the moonlight. Swipe. My eyelids blink closed and I squeeze tight, as if I can push, shove, push the images away.

  But when I open my eyes, the horror is still there: a half-dozen baby pigeons, stacked neatly on top of one another, their necks severed by the bloody hatchet that lies at their side.

  Swipe.

  The silhouette turns so that I can make out the face.

  My breath hitches.

  Swipeswipeswipe.

  It’s me.

  CHAPTER

  28

  A guttural scream bursts from my chest.

  I grasp the hatchet, raise it over my shoulder, and swing down at the thin mattress. The blade slices, hacks, tears through the surface. Tears stream down my cheeks and trail into my mouth. I chop away at the mattress, funneling my anguish, my grief, my feral anger into it.

  Without even touching the pigeons, not one bloodied feather, their corpses are all over me, the decay and sadness—in the grooves of my thumbprints, threaded through my hair. The reek of evil and loss, creeping out from a disjointed memory and back into life.

  Swipe.

  I blink through my tears, try to blink, blink, blink the images away.

  They don’t fade.

  Refuse to disappear.

  Could I have done this?

  Another cry belts from my lips. I crumple to the mattress and lay my head against the bloodstained hatchet. The cool blade digs into my skin. I cry out in pain, and then burst into tears.

  My shoulders shake.

  “Lizzie?”

  The voice is so quiet, a whisper through the dark. I lift my head and listen. The thick silence makes my skin tingle.

  “Lizzie?”

  Bridget.

  There is an undertone of fear in her voice this time, and my stomach begins to churn. I can’t hide. I’m not able to disappear. But she cannot see me like this.

  I peer over the edge of the loft, look to where she stands below, and hold my hand up to shadow my face. A thin nightgown billows at her feet. She looks up, our eyes meet . . . I am paralyzed by shame.

  Bridget looks at me in a way that makes me feel like a thing that crawled from the sewers. Like I’m a decrepit, crooked, beastly thing, an evil to be feared. Is this who I have become?

  “What have you done?”

  The stark cruelness of the question takes my breath away. “My father . . .”

  Her voice trembles. “Should I go get him?”

  My head snaps upright and I feel my eyes go so wide, it’s conceivable they may pop, pop, pop out of my head. My first instinct is to blame someone else, but this is not my father’s work. “Please, no . . .”

  Bridget moves to the base of the ladder, and my stomach twists and turns. I can’t let her see this morbid scene.

  See what I have done.

  “I’m coming up there,” Bridget says.

  I slowly lift the hatchet.

  She steps on the first rung, looks up. Her eyes lock on the weapon and she freezes midstep. The color drains from her face. “You should come down here,” she says, working hard to sound calm. The tremble in her voice betrays her fear.

  I shake my head. “Go away, Bridget.”

  Her spine goes rigid. “I won’t leave you like this, not when it’s clear you’re—”

  Not well.

  My sister’s words echo at the back of my mind and make my pulse race. “There is nothing wrong with me.”

  Bridget’s response jumbles up in my head. Everything she says is like radio static, amplified as though I’m listening over a stereo.

  . . . episode.

  . . . we . . . get you . . .

  . . . help . . .

  “Enough,” I say, covering one ear. “Just go, Bridget. . . .”

  “Lizzie, you can trust me.” A vibration of untruth cuts through her bravado.

  “I didn’t do this. . . .” A sob leaks into my voice, a touch of denial that doesn’t quite ring true. “I didn’t kill the pigeons.”

  See what I have done.

  “Of course you didn’t,” she says quickly, but I can read the truth in her furrowed brow. Panic sweeps across my flesh as I realize she intends to come up the ladder. I can’t let her—no one should ever see the severed heads of these poor pigeons. Bridget exhales a sharp breath. “But who would do this, Lizzie?”

  I have no response.

  “Maybe we should call the cops,” she says. “Or . . . ?”

  The question of my mental health hangs in the air, and I’m sure she’d call Dr. Driscoll if she had the number.

  “No police,” I say quietly, and then with more force. The madness inside me pulses like a second heartbeat, growing stronger, more intense. I have to get Bridget out of here. “No police!”

  Bridget nods.

  I shuffle forward and perch on the edge of the loft bed, dangling my feet. A bloodied feather drifts from the bottom of my shoe, somehow stuck there. My arm feels heavy, so, so heavy. I slump forward. . . .

  Bridget screams my name and I jerk alert.

  “You need to come down here right now,” she says.

  Numb, I climb onto the ladder. Step one rung at a time, down, down, down, until finally I reach the floor. I don’t turn around right away, afraid to face Bridget’s disgust, her disappointment, her doubt.

  She puts a hand on my shoulder and spins me toward her.
<
br />   I stare down at the floor so as not to look at her, but her thumb catches under my chin and lifts it so we’re eye-to-eye. Her gaze flits to my forehead. She licks her finger and rubs at my skin, gently, erasing the blood I know is wedged in the creases.

  “The pigeons—”

  “They’re dead,” she says.

  I swallow hard.

  She leans closer. “Did you—?”

  I choke on a sob and shake my head. “I don’t know.”

  But I know Bridget will see through the lie. Fresh tears gather in my eyes. My chest feels heavy, weighted down by a torrent of emotions that rise and fall like tidal waves against a jagged rock cliff. I stand at the precipice, ready to jump.

  “We’ll get you help, Lizzie,” Bridget says.

  She sounds sincere, but there’s something else in her eyes, and it makes my stomach sick. Bridget finally looks how she should in Fall River: scared to death.

  CHAPTER

  29

  The pigeons are dead.”

  My father’s jaw tenses, but he doesn’t look up from his desk, doesn’t have the respect to listen when I talk. Nothing new there.

  “What are you going on about now, Lizbeth?”

  A wave of nausea washes over me. It’s been a week and I still hear their chirps in my mind. Their baby heads—or whatever was left of them—float behind my eyes at breakfast, in the kitchen, plucked from the middle of my dreams. It’s like I’m carrying a chalice of those severed heads with me everywhere, their beady eyes following me from my nightmares into the waking hours of morning light.

  I stiffen my spine and ball my hands into fists at my side. “The pigeons in the barn.”

  He glances up, his eyebrows pinched with confusion, and shakes his head. “For God’s sake.”

  My father’s tone nips at the last vestiges of my calm. Beneath the surface I’m broken and confused, still grappling with the belief that I could actually kill the very birds I’d sworn to protect. But it’s the anger that simmers on top that scares me, turns my thoughts dangerous.

  Murderous.

  Swipe.

  I brush away the tears gathering in the corners of my eyes. “I found them in the loft, their heads severed,” I say, swallowing. “But then I guess you already know that.”