Page 82 of The Manor of Dreams

“Go,” her mother demanded. She frowned as if it pained her to look at her own daughter. “Get out.” She advanced and Nora stumbledback, past the threshold. The door swung shut in her face. Nora stood, stunned, as she listened to the lock click into place.

“Ma!” She knocked. “Ma. Let me in.” She wrenched the doorknob and rattled it. “Comeon!”

The pacing footsteps started up again.

thirty

AUGUST 1990

VIVIANlay in bed alone and did not sleep. Her entire body felt numb with fear. She clutched the bedsheets already damp with her sweat, while the pressure mounted between her temples.

Her plan had been set in motion. It was only a matter of time.

Vivian had harvested what Sophie had grown, root and flower, so that no traces remained. Her husband had come back from filming and was only home for the weekend before he went back to New York, which was all the time she needed. He had three sleeping pills left in the bottle she’d found in his suitcase. She’d tapped the contents of each capsule out, washed it down the sink and refilled the casing with her own mixture.

Then she waited. First for him to pack, then to leave for the airport. He had phoned when he arrived at the hotel a few hours ago. It was three hours ahead in New York, and nighttime there. He could have already taken the pills. He would have.

But she could have measured wrong. Or chosen the wrong combination. A part of her wanted to halt the clock hands that ticked toward her husband’s fate. Let her exist right now, in the peaceful night, with her husband out of the house and her daughters sleeping soundly around her. A part of her knew that she would never get peace after this.

This was the only way to keep her life.

She heard muffled footsteps on the stairs. She bolted straight up. Was there someone walking around the house? Richard? Could he havecome home? Had she been found out? She wanted to move but she was also seized with dread. Her sheets had cooled under her. Vivian forced herself to step out of bed.

She heard the soft sound of laughter. In the dim light of the moon, she looked at the digital clock on her nightstand: 5:04. She edged toward her door and peered out. No one was on the landing.

The night dragged into morning. Just when she thought it was too late, that nothing had happened, just when she was about to prepare breakfast for her daughters, the telephone rang, sharp and shrill.

Vivian froze. She walked down the stairs toward the living room in a surreal state.

She fell into the seat and picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“Is this Vivian Lowell?” The voice was shaking.

“Yes,” she answered slowly. “It is.”

“This is Mount Sinai Hospital calling. Your husband Richard Lowell was found unresponsive at the Warwick Hotel this morning.”

She couldn’t speak.

“They… think it’s a possible drug overdose. Paramedics were on the scene to try to revive him, but they were too late.”

The phone dropped from her hand and clattered to the table.

Just barely, she registered “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Lowell.”

Vivian slid to her knees on the living room carpet and started to scream.

Ada was the one who found her first. “Ma! What’s wrong? What happened?”

Then Vivian felt hands on her back. She knew that if she turned around, she would see the faces of her daughters.

Herdaughters.

She was struck with a slow horror. Richard hadn’t just been her husband. He had also been the father of her children. And she had taken him away from them.

She heard the voices of Edith and Josiah, stirred from sleep, who came into the living room.

She rose to her knees and saw them all gathered through the blurry film of her tears. She told them what had been said to her in the call.And she watched the light fade from her daughters’ eyes when she told them that their father was dead.

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