Page 44 of House of Hearts
A dusty, ancient bedroom, but a bedroom. That’s what’s at the top of the tower. Furniture hangs inside like antique ghosts, the forms draped in moth-eaten white. They’re shadowed by the night sky, starlight slipping through the cracks in the clockface window. I step inside the loft and am instantly greeted by the faint clicking of gears. Wheels whirring in place to keep the second hand ticking valiantly forward.
“Funny,” I say offhandedly.
Calvin steps out from behind me and scrunches his nose as he’s hit by a stray cobweb. “What?”
“I don’t hear anyone playing the harp.”
He arches a brow, so I elaborate.
“That’s what you told me, remember? You said I can expect baby cherubs and pearly gates.”
His eyes glint fox bright in the dark. “Oh, that’s right,” he says, playing along. “You can blame that on the budget cuts. Real bummer.We had to sell the pearly gates on eBay and kick the baby cherubs out on the street. What a tragedy.”
“What would you know about budget cuts—”
“Can you two shut up for five minutes?” Sadie hisses, her face illuminated by the blue glow of her phone.
“Who lived up here?” Birdie’s voice breaks from the back of the group. She’s the last to straggle in, and her breath hitches at the sight.
I’ve got the same question whirring around in my own brain. I scan the room like its past owner might materialize out of thin air. There’s a splintered hand mirror and a vintage tin of face powder, both of them thick with several months’ worth of cobwebs. Littered around the rest of the room is a treasure trove of old junk. There’s a collection of yellowed shawls and a single neglected kerosene lamp sitting on the counter. Everything’s been left in a state of previously searched disarray.
“Helen Hart,” Sadie answers, dragging a path through the dust with her finger. “She spent her final days up here staring down at the hedge maze, or rather, Anastasia’s grave.”
I glance back at the long staircase behind us. “I can’t imagine an old woman climbing this every day.”
“She didn’t.” Her chin juts in the direction of the canopied bed. The mesh billows out from the mattress like a banshee wailing in the night. “Everything she needed was brought up to her, so she never had a reason to leave.”
“I don’t blame the woman. It’s got a real penthouse vibe to it,” Ash declares with a sweep of his hand. “I can dig it. She even had panoramic views.”
The aforementioned “panoramic views” showcase a direct vertical 161-foot drop. That’s 161 reasons why I shouldn’t look straight down,but because I’m a sucker for self-inflicted torture, I look anyway.
It’s much higher than the last lookout, which nearly ended me. That was only a quarter of the way up, and now here I am at the tippy top.
The view is dotted with pumpkins and choked in lake fog. It’s otherworldly from this high up, a certain type of sorcery in the air that you only find at midnight. It’d almost be beautiful if it wasn’t for the dizzy rush of vertigo and the acid burning anxious holes in my gut.
Through the rising mist, my subconscious digs out a familiar rabbit hole. A sticky, dark vortex of grief. “Do you get the feeling that if you fell, you’d fall forever?” I whisper to Calvin beside me.
I can feel his eyes on me, but I don’t bother to look up.
“I’d rather not test that theory, personally.”
By the time Emoree died, our lives had already split apart like a seam tugged loose. Without me to mend her clothes, Em would always let things unravel. She had a habit of picking and prodding, ripping those careful threads apart. And this time, I hadn’t tried to repair anything; I let it fall apart.
Which was why I was surprised she called the night before she died.
“Violet,” she hiccupped. “I really need to talk to you.”
A good friend would have listened and cared, but in this tale, I was no longer the fairy godmother. I wanted to trap her in her old life and keep her small.
“Sorry, Em,” I said, and I meant it. I was sorry she left and sorry that it made me into such a jealous, hateful monster. “My shift is starting soon, I can’t talk.”
“Please! Percy and I found something we shouldn’t have. There was this old desk and this book, but it wasn’t really a book, it was—”
She continued to word-vomit, but it was too late. I hung up. Stared at the room around me. It was as miserable as I was: the shattered TVwhere Mom’s last boyfriend had run a bat through the screen, the springy couch where I’d find her after their blowup fights, the grimy spot on the carpet where I’d sat with my knees tucked to my chest and wondered if this was all my life would ever be.
If only I’d known Emoree’s would end hours later.
“So, are we doing this or what?” Tripp blurts with another puff of smoke. He’s already leaning on one of the vanities, settling his weight on what could be (and honestly probablyis) a priceless antique.
