From some awful, guilty reflex, I flung my glass of gin at the mirror. The drink shattered there, but the mirror itself did not break—it only shuddered on the wall, and only dripped, and only dropped a piece of paper.
The paper was folded several times. It fluttered to the ground.
For a moment, I could not move. I could only glare at the note, which must have been stashed on the other side of the glass, affixed there with tape or twine. I could feel the dark-red flush rising up from my chest, creeping north of my collar, steaming the tips of my ears.
I couldn't clearly see the handwriting that crossed the paper in tight blue lines, but I already knew who it belonged to.
I was torn between the dueling desires to either seize the note or flee the house and return to the East Coast as fast as modern technology could transport me there. It was easier instead to reach for another glass and pour another fat slug of gin, four fingers deep this time. I resolved to sip this one and make it last while watching the contents of the first glass drip down the mirror, over the frame, down the wall, and onto the floor.
Until my curiosity couldn't stand it a moment longer.
When I picked up the folded paper, it was damp. It reeked of juniper and pine.
I took it to the nearest chair, an upholstered wingback with rolled arms and a high crest. It felt like sanctuary. It felt like support enough to unfold the note—carefully because it was so wet around the edges and folds, slowly because I knew who had written it. The sour acid in my stomach told me the contents would only make me miserable. I should have thrown it away. I should have left, locked the front door, and never returned.
But the handwriting was unmistakable.
Venita's script was legendary. At one point, she'd even been called upon to paint the intertitles in the quiet black-and-white movies she'd once headlined. With a fine set of brushes and paint, she'd written her own name on the cards that called her a star, and there was even talk of creating a font based upon it, something to remember her by in perpetuity.
On the exterior of the folded sheet of paper, the letters running slightly, there it was: my own name.
For a moment, all sound was sucked out of the universe. The clock on the wall stopped clicking. The engine growls of a car rumbling past on the street evaporated. The horns of passing ships fell silent. The birds in the trees lost their place and stopped their singing. A faint, high-pitched whine of static replaced them in my ears.
I could hear nothing else—even the scrape of my fingers or the crinkle of the paper where it remained dry.
First, another drink. A big one. Almost enough to empty the glass. It took me three swallows, one after the other, and each one burned harder on the way down than the one before it.
Thusly fortified, and with my heart perched in my searing throat, I read the short, terrible message from a woman who'd been dead for months.
Dear Mr. Sloan,
If you were half the detective the world pretends, you would've found this by now—but we both know you're more coward than investigator. You killed my child. We both know that, too. I don't know how, and I don't expect to understand it. I don't know why, and I shall likely never grasp that, either. But you and I, we know what you are. If Oscar had only believed me, or if he could have seen you as clearly as I do, perhaps he'd be the one holding this letter right now, before a roaring fire, having found it while moving furniture or in the course of an earthquake that rattles the walls and shakes all the small things loose. I might have forgotten it, after I changed my mind about what I must surely do next.
Maybe he and I would be peacefully drinking in front of the radio, having freshly returned from a movie or a play. We might even have a second child by now—not a replacement for my Priscilla, for such a thing does not, could not, will not exist. But someone new, to mark a fresh beginning. I'm not so old that it's outside the realm of possibility. We could've built something new, if only you'd had the decency to turn yourself in, confess your crimes, and accept your punishment.
For that matter, if you'd only been content to leave us be! If you could've removed yourself from our presence and returned to whatever filthy haunts will have you in New York.
But no. You did this. You chose this.
