Page 28 of Bitter House

Though I know we can go out and dig more tomorrow, I think Cole is probably right. We made quite a dent in the garden and the earth beneath it, and there was nothing suspicious at all.

Which makes it clear that whoever is writing the letters thought we wouldn’t check. Maybe they thought we’d take their word for it. Or maybe they thought their warning not to leave would play some sort of reverse psychology trick on us, and we’d head for the hills without looking back.

I suspect the letter writer could be Zach or Jenn—or maybe the two of them working together—but I’m more determined than ever to find out for sure. When I get out of the shower, I log in to my banking app and check my balance. There’s not much in there now that my half of the rent has come out, but there’s enough. I open my browser and search for a security camera with decent reviews that will get here by tomorrow. When I find one, I add it to my cart and, without allowing myself to second-guess the unplanned expenditure, I place the order.

Vera was always old-fashioned about security. She believed the gate was enough, but I need to know who’s leaving the letters, and as soon as the camera arrives, I’ll be able to do just that.

Downstairs, I find Cole in the sitting room with a glass of some amber-colored liquid on the rocks.

He looks up, clearly surprised to see me. “I thought you’d gone to bed.”

“Not yet.” Though my body is tired and sore enough I know the second I hit the mattress, I’m done for. “Thought I’d come down for a drink instead.”

He stands up. “Can I make you something?”

“Vodka soda’s perfect,” I tell him. “Extra?—”

“Extra lime,” he says at the same time, nodding. “I remember your preference for all things sour.”

I sink down onto the couch on the opposite end of where he’d been sitting, curling a leg up under me. My hair is still wet, slight waves forming around my face, and I tuck both sides behind my ears as he makes his way across the room from the copper bar cart to hand me my glass.

I take a sip, the burn of the drink already soothing me somewhere deep in my core. “You know, I used to be so jealous of Vera and Edna when I’d find them in this room at night. They were always so…otherworldly, I guess. They’d be having important adult conversations, always in hushed voices, drinks in their hands. I remember thinking, ‘I want to be just like them someday.’ Important, you know? Powerful. Back then, I thought Vera was the epitome of power.”

He takes a sip of his own drink, nodding before crunching on a piece of ice. “They always seemed to have it all together. That’s what I remember. I don’t know if I ever saw Vera lose her cool or even seem stressed. She was just…stone.”

“That’s a good way to describe her, actually. Stone. Unbreakable.” My voice cracks, and I feel betraying tears fill my eyes.

He looks at me but doesn’t ask what’s wrong. I don’t think he needs to. Instead, he just stares, waiting for me to speak.

“I just can’t believe she’s actually gone, can you? I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m crying. I hadn’t spoken to her in over a decade, but I guess I always thought a day would come where we’d fix it, you know? That she’d tell me what I did wrong, and I could make it right somehow. And now…” I sniffle, drying my eyes, then force a laugh. “Wow, I’m so sorry. I’m exhausted, can you tell?”

He doesn’t laugh, just stares at me with those pitying eyes that I love to hate. “You lost your grandmother, Bridget. It’s normal to be sad, no matter how complicated the relationship was. But, for what it’s worth, I hope you know you aren’t to blame. There was nothing you needed to fix. No matter what, there is nothing you could’ve done that would justify Vera making you leave. That’s not how family is supposed to work.”

I stare at him for a long time. There’s something in the timbre of his voice that makes me think he’s speaking from experience. “Do you…I mean, are your grandparents still alive? I’ve never heard you talk about them.”

“No,” he says, taking another sip of his drink. “Not the ones that matter, anyway. I never knew my dad’s parents, and Edna’s dad died before I was born. Her mom, the grandma I knew, passed away when I was twelve.”

Right around the time I moved in. He was going through so much, and I never saw it. “I’m sorry.”

He runs his teeth over his bottom lip. “Happens to the best of us.”

“How different do you think life would’ve been if we’d gotten along back then?”

He looks over at me. “Us?” His hand waves back and forth between our chests.

“Yeah. I mean, you were two years older than me. We could’ve been more like siblings.”

“I think, in general, siblings fight too,” he says simply.

“But they also love each other.”

“I fought someone for you. You wouldn’t call that love?”

His words shock me. “What?”

He swirls his drink, downing the last of it and moving to the bar cart to refill it. “Maybe in our own strange way, we showed love how we could. Just like you were jealous of Catherine Marshall.” When he looks back at me, the grin on his face is positively devilish. “Although, if we’d been siblings, I’m pretty sure that sort of jealousy would’ve been illegal or, at the very least, frowned upon.”

My face burns, ears ringing. “I was not jealous of Catherine. She was just…awful.” I think of the many days I passed Catherine and Cole walking out of his bedroom, her hair mussed, lips red. I picture the way she’d sneer at me, how she told everyone at school that I was basically my grandmother’s servant, though it was the furthest thing from the truth. Vera was far too busy ignoring me to ever ask me to do anything.

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