Page 87 of Echoes of a Silent Song
“Can I get you some water?”Callum asked.
Marilee shook her head with a sheepish smile.“No, thank you just the same.I’m fine.I’m just ...”She balled her hand into a fist.“Vic has been acting strange the last few weeks.Ever since people started buzzingabout Iris Wallingford again.He’s been holed up in his study.He’s like a ghost.”
“Is he composing?”Callum asked.
“I don’t know what he’s doing.”Marilee shook her head again, then muttered to herself.“No.No.I have to do this.I have to.It’s the right thing.Regardless of where it leads, God’s made it clear.”
Blair eased closer to Marilee and put her arm around the older woman’s shoulders.“Would you like to sit down?”
“No, I’m not staying.I just need to do one thing, and then I’m taking an Uber to the airport.I’m going to stay with my sister, at least for a while.”Marilee opened a large handbag and peered inside.“I found this on a shelf in Vic’s study while I was dusting last week.I must’ve seen it a thousand times, but I’d never really looked at it.This time I did, and I think you need to see it.”
The world shifted into slow motion, and Blair knew what Marilee had brought even before the falling-apart spiral notebook came into view.
Marilee lifted her chin, squared her shoulders, and handed Blair the notebook.“This belonged to Iris Wallingford.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
March 19,1970
ANOTHER DAY, another afternoon of homework.Victor’s father had landed another job and would be gone for hours, so on this day we were studying at Victor’s house.The days were all running together.Graduation was in sight, and I just wanted to be done.To get away from here somehow.Away from Peterson.Away from my parents.
And yes, even away from Victor.
I saw him in a completely different light now.Ever since I started wondering if he was using me, all the things he’d done that had never made sense clicked into place.My suspicions explained absolutely everything about him.How fast we fell for each other.How he always made me come around to seeing things his way.
How I’d been so thoroughly enraptured with him that I gave him my best work and let him submit it as his own.
I’d stopped taking my anxiety pills a few days ago.I wanted to see whether they were making me paranoid.And since then I’d felt ...I don’t know, better.Clearer.Less sleepy.More like myself.
Did I really have anxiety, like the doctor said?Maybe.Probably.But anxiety wasn’t why I’d spent a week in bed.That wasn’t a mental disorder—that was disappointment.Dramatic disappointment, yes.But disappointment nonetheless.
Victor lay sprawled on his bed, history textbook open and propped up on his pillow.His mostly empty bottle of Coke stood on the deskbeside him, and he’d taken his glasses off to rub his eyes.I sat at the desk working on math homework.
Victor reached over and patted my knee.Nothing he hadn’t done before and nothing that used to make me uncomfortable.But now, rather than being drawn to Victor’s nearness, I was almost repelled by it.The whole left side of my body, the side closest to him, seemed to shrivel and shrink back.The muscles tensed.
Why was this happening?This was Victor.The man I loved.
But this was Victor.The man who might have been pretending to love me.
My brain may not have figured out yet whether I trusted him entirely or not, but my body seemed to have decided.
Nature called, and I stood.“I’m going to the powder room.Need anything?Another Coke?Some water?”Why was I being so nice to him?Must have been like a reflex.Like I’d been programmed somehow.
He put his glasses back on and smiled up at me, but it didn’t reach his eyes.“Another Coke would be great.Thanks.”
He handed me his empty bottle, and I took it to the kitchen and tossed it in the trash, then visited the powder room just off the kitchen.When I finished, I washed my hands, grabbed a fresh bottle of Coke, and returned to his bedroom.
Victor wasn’t on the bed anymore.He’d moved to the desk.
What was he doing?Looking at my math homework?Checking it over to make sure I didn’t have too many wrong answers?
No.It wasn’t my math he was holding.
It was my music notebook.
My blood chilled.“Victor?Wha ...what are you doing?”
He glanced up, the expression in his eyes stony and cold.“Turnabout is fair play, Iris.I’m doing to you what you did to me last week at Sammy’s when I went to the little boys’ room and came back to find you going through my stuff.”
