Page 97 of The Dead Come to Stay
William stays so often in Allerton; we rarely speak. This house is so very empty, Ethel, and I am sick at heart. Won’t you come see me? I cannot stand to be company to myself, and you know so much of my history. You’ll come, won’t you? I think this place is haunted, yet.]
January 1935 to “Dr. Jack”:
He won’t rise again. I went in to see him, but he turns from me. You tell me to take heart, but I must know. Is this the end? There are things I need to tell him. Please don’t preserve me as a lady; the world is already so dark, death is a shadow against night.
February of the same, a letter begun and never finished:
He knows. I know he does. He will not forgive me.
Jo had thought this whole time that Gwen destroyed it out of jealousy, but it wasn’t so. She couldn’t bear the judgment of those eyes. She couldn’t stand the guilt. The garden was still in its glory, then, well fertilized no doubt with phosphates. Perhaps she found the sulfuric acid in a potting shed, property of the gardeners she was about to get rid of. Maybe she even blamed them for the deed. Daughter of a steel magnate, she would, of course, know exactly what such a corrosive would do.
Aiden ended Gwen’s tree, a solitary branch. But for William, the lines went on. Violet had become Viola. She’d been giventhe last name Taylor at a home for orphans—and then shipped, with hundred of other “home children,” to rural Canada. She’d been “received” by a farmer in Quebec in 1913 at the age of five. The trail went cold until after the First World War; Aiden located a marriage license: Viola Taylor and Edmon Bouchard to be wed in April 1922. The tree branched in 1923, 1925 and 1928. Three children.
“Three,”Jo said out loud. Her eyes had clouded, and she blinked at the sky to try and clear them. “Noah, Olivia and Emile.”
“Last name Bouchard, right?” Gwilym had been fighting to access his genealogy sites via mobile phone.
“Yes, but Noah died in World War II. He was a pilot, flew with the Royal Canadian Air Force, and later the British RAF.” Jo scanned the last pages. The handwriting grew weaker, the entries further apart. The last entry wasn’t about Viola’s children at all; it was a record of her death at the age of fifty-one. Survived by her husband, buried at Notre Dame des Neiges Cemetery. Jo checked the date; Aiden himself would have died a month after the last entry. He must have known it was coming, and that his hope for the wedding proposal wasn’t to be. Mortal, he concluded with Viola’s mortality, then locked it away beneath a ring he’d never give his lover.
“God, this is—this is...” Jo sank her face into her hands.
“A lot?” Gwilym asked, patting her gingerly on the back. Succinct. Correct. But not nearly enough to cover all the feelings Jo had swelling up.
“They’re out there,” she said, looking at Gwilym through her fingers. “At least, maybe their children are, if they had them. I havefamily.” Gwilym gave her a curious look. Then he leaned on his knees and looked Tyne-ward.
“You know, Jo. Youhavefamily. I mean. There’s Arthur, he counts. And Tula. Imagine what she’d say if youdidn’tthinkof her that way.” He hazarded a glance in her direction. “MacAdams, even. And me. I hope you count me.”
Jo found it suddenly hard to swallow.Do not, she warned her cry muscles. There had been one meltdown this week already and that was plenty, so she forced the sob into something more benign.
“You’re my friend, Gwilym. I’m not entirely sure I’ve even had one before,” she said. “Not a real one.”
“Those are the only kind worth having,” he said. Jo felt a temporary impulse to hug him. Instead, she stood up and offered a hand in pulling him to his feet.
“I want to take Evelyn home,” she said.Herhome. Abington—and Netherleigh Cottage.
“Good plan,” Gwilym agreed. Jo handed him the book; she needed to put her sweatshirt on. The day had been warm, but a cool wind was blowing and brought with it a chill. It was nearly six in the evening, and though the sun wouldn’t set for hours, the sky had grayed. If they crossed the next street, it would be a short walk back to Arthur’s flat; she’d taken that route the day she encountered the butty van driver.
“We should see about getting this into Roberta’s archive,” Gwilym said, tying up the twine.
“If Arthur lets us,” Jo added. “Today might not be the day to ask.”
They stood at the corner, checking for traffic, but someone had just run ahead of them into the street. Gwilym said something about the risk of it—at least she thought he did; the world had just fuzzed out. It happened in moments of hyperfocus: the hi-fi rush of pinpoint attention as everything else desaturated. A taxi stopped to let the crosswalker go by, everything in slow motion. When it all snapped forward again, Jo didn’t think, she just reacted:follow.Across the road, amid honks and shouts and Gwilym cursing in Welsh she went—because out in front was the woman in yellow, the one who had vanished on the moor.
***
Stanley Burnhope wore a pale blue sport coat of linen which nearly matched the walls of Newcastle’s interview room. His lawyer, a woman in deep black whose lapels, heels and facial expressions were all equally sharp, looked like she might spit venom. MacAdams took a seat, though Burnhope was first to speak.
“I’m here as a free agent and of my own volition,” he said. “I want to help Dmytro.”
MacAdams made him repeat it for the tape. Then he opened the file, the one with blunt trauma images of Foley.
“Good. You can start by telling the truth,” MacAdams said. “This morning you pretended to be shocked about the seizure of artifacts. But you knew Foley was dealing in stolen goods, and you knew Dmytro helped him. For all I know, all of Hammersmith is in on the deal and those wereyourgoons clearing away the evidence in York.”
“You have just accused my client of a crime. Do you wish to retract?” asked the legal.
MacAdams leaned toward the recording device. “No, I don’t wish to retract.”
“My client does not havegoons,as you put it,” she said.
