“Because of Maggie Cooper?”
A lifetime ago Eloise had given a prediction to Maggie’s mother, Elizabeth Monroe. This prediction may or may not have saved Maggie’s life-it was hard to say in the way that these things were. Other unintended possible results of her conversation were that a not-quite-innocent man had committed suicide in prison and Jones Cooper had built his life around a terrible secret. After living in the city and getting her education there, Maggie returned to The Hollows and married Jones. Eloise had always known that Maggie would one day come to her with questions. And last year she had. Since then Eloise had felt an odd connection to Maggie. And then she’d started having her vision about Jones. Ray knew all this. He knew everything about her, she realized.
Eloise sat down at the kitchen table, and Oliver rubbed against her before heading over to his food bowl.
“Maybe,” she said. He came behind her and put his hands on her shoulders, began kneading at her tight muscles. She felt heat and release down her back.
“What about your visit with Claudia Miller?” she asked.
“She wouldn’t talk to me. And the Holt house? I poked around in there some. The place is a nightmare. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.”
“Some boxes stay locked.”
She didn’t know if he’d heard that Michael had confessed. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be the one to tell him. She’d seen Michael sitting in the back of the patrol car as she left the Hollows Wood. For the first time since she’d known him, he didn’t look haunted. Sometimes a confession is as good as an exorcism.
“I guess you heard,” he said.
“About Michael?” she said. When he didn’t reply, she said, “Yes, I heard.”
“You knew all along, didn’t you?”
“I suspected.”
“She told you.” He meant Marla. He was the only one who believed in her wholly and completely, without question.
“She hinted.”
His hands moved down her arms, and she felt her body relax beneath his palms. “This is ugly work, Eloise.”
She wasn’t sure if she agreed with this. Death was life. Maybe it wasn’t the end people thought it was. Maybe it was worse than that. People did horrific, unspeakable things to one another. And there was so much pain. But it was just one part of this gorgeous, hideous, chaotic, and wonderful mosaic they experienced from the moment they drew their first breaths until they drew their last and beyond. And wasn’t it a gift, in some ways, to see all the colors, all the sharp and broken bits, the ones from which all others turned their eyes? According to the Kabbalah, every human soul is just a fragment of the great world-soul, just a tiny piece of the cosmos, linked to every other piece. Eloise liked the idea of this and felt that it could be true. And that was as close to faith as she thought she was apt to get.
“So,” said Ray when she didn’t answer him, “I’ve never been to Seattle.” He cleared his throat. “I heard it was nice. Lots of rain, but good coffee.”
For the first time in forever, Eloise smiled.
chapter thirty-seven
Claudia Miller watched them come, as she knew they would. She’d known as soon as she saw the For Sale sign in the yard. First there was a single patrol car. Then a black unmarked cruiser. Then more. Eventually the others, her neighbors with their too-loud, bratty children, came to stand on porches and stoops, watching, too. She could feel their nervousness, their excitement. Of course, none of them had even come to the window when the paramedics took Mack from that house. No one came to stand beside her at the ambulance while they’d wheeled him down his overgrown walk and carried him away. No one cared about an old man leaving his home for the last time.
The neighbors all stood. A group of them eventually gathered in the street. Finally the lawyer with the black Mercedes (the one who snuck a cigarette in his side yard at night when he was taking out the trash) walked over to the uniformed officer standing in the drive.
“Can you tell me what’s happening, Officer?” His voice was strident in the cold, chill air. Now that the rain had stopped pounding on her roof and windows, the neighborhood seemed so quiet.
The officer lifted a hand and shook his head. But Claudia couldn’t hear what he said.
“We have a right to know,” said the lawyer. She knew he’d get peevish if he didn’t get his way. She knew why the police were there. Claudia Miller knew lots of things.
She knew that the pretty blond girl (what was she? maybe sixteen?) climbed out her window some nights, using one of those rope fire-escape ladders that people keep under their beds. Her boyfriend picked her up on the corner, brought her back a few hours later.
Claudia knew that the big-chested woman at number 180 was having an affair. She was a popular area real estate agent, flitting in and out of her house all day like a bee bringing honey back to the hive. But every Wednesday at lunchtime, she met a man at her house. Claudia would watch as each of them went casually in, casually out. Sometimes the woman’s husband didn’t get home until after midnight.
Claudia knew that the cat Misty wasn’t really lost, despite the sad signs on lampposts and pinned up on the supermarket bulletin board. It had slipped outside while the housewife at 183 got the mail. Later Claudia watched it get hit by a car, stagger up to the curb, and die. Later still, the housewife came out and saw it lying there and wept in the street. Then she carried the body gingerly and laid it on top of the trash. The truck came soon after. The kids were still looking for their dead cat, hoping Misty would come home.
Claudia knew their secrets. Each one was like a gem she locked away in a box. They belonged to her, because she was vigilant.
She’d been watching the night Marla Holt disappeared. Claudia had been waiting for Mack to come home. She waited every night to see him pull in to the drive in his sensible car. What was it that he drove then? She couldn’t remember things like that anymore. He’d climb out slowly, retrieve his satchel from the backseat. She watched him mow the lawn on Saturdays, wash the cars on Sundays. She enjoyed it when he played basketball in the driveway with his boy (even though the sound of that ball almost drove her crazy). She liked to watch him stroll with the baby in the carriage on the nights she was fussy. With his broad shoulders and perpetually tousled hair, Mack reminded her of a man she’d loved once. The one her sister had married, if the truth be told. Married and then drove him to an early grave with her spending and demands for this and that. At least that’s the way Claudia saw it, even if no one else did. She moved far away from all of them, rather than watch it unfold.
Mack Holt was the only person on the block to ever show her any kindness. He never failed to wave hello when he saw her, or to offer her a smile. He brought her newspaper to the porch from the sidewalk on rainy Sunday mornings. And so she kept an eye on things for him.
She was at her window that night. Mack was late in coming home. And instead Henry Ivy came walking up the drive. It was their night to jog. (Claudia thought it was unseemly for a married woman to flaunt herself around the neighborhood like that with another man. But she suspected Marla Holt of much worse.)
She saw the boy Michael come home, drop his bicycle in the yard. Henry Ivy left. And then the yelling started. Soon Mack came home. There was more yelling, the sound of something breaking. Then Claudia saw the woman run from the back door, the boy and husband chasing after her. She could have called the police, even put her hand on the phone. Nothing good could come of what she’d seen. But a woman like that, always putting on airs, flaunting herself, having men into her house while her husband was out working. Well, maybe she deserved what she got.
Later, hours later, Mack and Michael came back. The boy was sick, or drunk. Mack was practically dragging him. He brought the boy inside, and a few minutes later he returned to the back deck, leaned heavily against the rail, and looked out into the night. She could see him in the amber light over his kitchen door. But she had her lights out; he couldn’t have seen her, hidden as she was behind the curtain.
Then he turned and looked over at her house, as though he knew she was watching. He looked at her house for a long, long time. And she knew that he wanted her to be quiet. And because Mack Holt reminded her of what
