Chapter 3

After the night on the stairs, I stopped letting myself sleep deeply. I'd heard Dione say the locket was cold, which meant the locket had been touching me. I wanted to know when.

It took two nights to find out. Around three in the morning, the bedroom door opened without a sound. I kept my breathing slow. The blanket lifted away from my shoulder, and something small and cold pressed into my collarbone and stayed there.

Beside me, Julian lay still. Too still.

He was awake too.

The cold thing lifted away. The door clicked shut. Dione's footsteps went down the hall, slower than they'd come.

In the morning her eyes were red and she burned the toast. When Julian asked if she was all right, she said she hadn't slept well. He squeezed her shoulder on his way out. Neither of them looked at me.

I thought it over at my desk while Nugget worked through her breakfast. A cold locket meant the smoothies weren't working. If the smoothies weren't working, they would try something else, and I might not see the something else coming. What I needed was for the locket to be warm.

That afternoon I told Dione the old house was getting cold at night and dug the hot water bottle out of the linen closet. She watched me carry it upstairs and said nothing. It was just a hot water bottle.

I went to bed with it hugged high against my chest and kept it there while I waited.

She came at three. The blanket lifted. The locket settled into the hollow of my collarbone — and her breath stopped. I heard it stop. The chain trembled against my skin, and then it was gone, and she was gone, and her footsteps down the hall were almost a run.

The next day Dione cooked three dishes for lunch and hummed while she did it. Julian came home early with a dozen white roses wrapped in paper and kissed me on the forehead. I told him they were beautiful.

He put them in water himself. He knew where the vase was without looking.

Two days later I ran into Ellen from the flower shop outside the bank. She grabbed my arm like we were old friends.

"Did Julian like the Damasks? I save him the best of every shipment, you know. Same order every month, five years running, never missed once." She patted my hand. "You're a lucky girl. Most men around here buy flowers twice a year, funerals and anniversaries."

I smiled and said I was very lucky.

The standing order was five years old. Julian and I met three years ago.

Sunday morning Dione went to church. The whole town goes. She'd started sitting with the choir mothers, and they passed her tissues when the hymns ran long. That gave me two hours.

Her room smelled like the smoothies. I took a picture of the closet before I touched anything, then worked from the top down. Under the sweaters was a shoebox of Celeste's things — a hairbrush, a hospital bracelet, a pink diary with the lock cut off. Under the shoebox, a brown folder.

The folder held a one-page agreement with no letterhead, signed at the bottom by Dione and a name I didn't know — a V, then careful, old-fashioned handwriting. Under the agreement was a sheet of lined paper with seven names on it.

Six of the names were crossed out. The seventh was mine.

I photographed every page, put the closet back the way the picture showed, and was shelling peas on the porch when Dione's car came up the drive.

Julian opened a bottle of wine at dinner that night, the kind he saved for occasions.

"Friday night," he said, filling my glass. "I've got somebody coming over. Madame Vesna — she's been helping me with my grief work, up in Fairview. You'll like her. Just the four of us, something quiet."

"That sounds nice," I said. "Should I cook?"

"Dione will handle it." He touched my hand across the table. "You just be there."

I did the math while he smiled at me. Friday would be the thirtieth day.