Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
I could already tell that this series would turn out brilliant, moody and striking at the same time. I had the choice of leaving it dark, obscured by a veil of rain, or add light to pinpoint the fractured glass, the burn marks on the wall.
Gothic or horror, romantic or dangerous.
Smoke and mirrors.
I’d always liked that about the camera, the awareness that photographs weren’t a true impression of reality. So much of it was art. The photographer’s eye, the photographer’s mind and heart.
Except for Bea.
I’d never fiddled with her images except to correct a mistake.
Never needed to.
My camera forgotten under the poncho and fine streams of water dripping down my neck, I stared at the rain. I could see Beatrice dancing within the crashing droplets, her dark hair dazzling against the golden grass and her skirts flying around in a burst of color. She’d gone through a boho phase at one point, her entire wardrobe hippie skirts and floral headbands. I’d called her a fey goddess.
Lovely and sensual and beautiful and bright.
She should be here.
She should be laughing with us and tasting the wines from the old cellar with me.
She shouldn’t be dust far, far from home.
Why hadn’t Darcie let us say goodbye?
No matter her explanations, the question haunted me, a thorn embedded in my soul. I couldn’t help gnawing at it. And as, chest tight, I turned to walk to the graveyard to take images of it under the storm sky, all I could see was the headstone that wasn’t there.
That was when I realized: by cremating and throwing Bea away, Darcie had also erased her from their family history. Two hundred years from now, any curious soul who walked this graveyard would find only a grouping of three when it came to their nuclear family, the inscriptions long since worn away.
No sign that there’d been a fourth.
No remembrance of Bea.
31
Ashiver rocked my chest.
I woke out of my frozen daze to realize that I’d been standing there staring unseeing at the gravestones.
My teeth clattered.
That was it. I sloshed my way inside the estate house, pushing at the doors until one swung open. The place had so many entrances and exits; the idea of a stranger slinking around seemed more and more viable with every second that passed.
This door spilled me into an unfamiliar section of the house.
After locking it behind me, I wiped off my shoes as well as I could, took off the poncho and scrunched it into a pocket, then walked down the dark-paneled hallway lit by only a weak little light. I wondered who’d unlocked the door, turned on the light, couldn’t help darting my eyes to the pools of shadow.
“Logic says one of the others went for a walk and wanted to step outside for a bit,” I said under my breath, frustrated with my own fear. “Maybe Nix, sneaking a smoke. Forgot to turn off the light because this place would be grim even without the weather.”
I couldn’t make myself turn it off, either. Everything was too dark, the lights too dim—and the artwork straight out of a haunted mausoleum. My jeans and socks were drenched, but I had no idea where I was; might as well take my time finding my way back. Because while uncomfortable, I wasn’t—yet—in any danger of severe repercussions from my state.
The paintings were standard formal portraits of ancestors dressed in more modern clothes compared to Clara and Blake. My eye caught on the painting of a tall blond woman who stood with a dark-eyed man in what appeared to be their wedding finery. That smirk of satisfaction . . . I’d seen it before.
Oh.
The girl whose name I didn’t know.
Blake and Clara Shepherd’s only surviving child.
Sole heir to the Shepherd estate.
Just like Darcie.
“If it was only one of us, they wouldn’t ever have to work. With two, we’re not exactly paupers, but not set up for life, either.”
I couldn’t remember which one of them said that to me. It must’ve been an offhand comment, or one made on a drunken night out. Money, of course, was a motive repulsive but powerful.
But Darcie didn’t murder Bea.
She’d just murdered her memory.
Once we were gone, who would remember Bea? Would Darcie even talk to the child in her womb about the sister who’d been a part of her life for nearly two decades? Or would she brush Bea under the rug, treat her as a forgotten embarrassment?
Jaw tight, I carried on down the hall. The most disturbing thing in this part of the house wasn’t actually the artwork. No, that honor went to the black-and-white photographs. Of people sitting motionless, no expression or life in their faces.
Dolls in human form.
It couldn’t be explained by the technology of the time. If I was right about the vintage of these images, camera equipment had advanced to the point that people no longer had to pose in a frozen position for minutes at a time.