She smoothed the stricken expression from her face. “How what, muro shavo?”
“How do you tell the future?”
“Ah! Yes.” Ella picked up her mug and swirled the last bit of tea before drinking it. She set the cup in front of him. “There. You see it?”
“See what?” His cherub face scrunched into a question mark.
“The tea leaves, yes?”
The soggy brown leaves sat in the bottom of the mug in a half ring with several little lumps to one side. He stared at them. “What do they mean?”
“It all depends, shavo. What do you see?”
“Umm . . .” The boy looked so close he nearly put his nose in the mug. “I see a cow.”
“Yes. What else?”
“A . . . tree. That one there”—he pointed into the mug—“that looks like a fire.”
She frowned at this, but the boy didn’t notice.
“And a sword! You see it?” Walter was loving this game. “Look at the birds! In the sky. See ’em? They’re flying upside down.”
Ella pulled the cup a bit closer to her nose, turning it this way and that, worry creasing her face deeper and deeper.
“What does it mean, Miss Ella?” the boy asked eagerly. One look at the lines on her face tempered his excitement. His lower lip curled in dismay. “It is not bad, is it?”
Ella forced out a chuckle and said, “Of course not! This means great adventures for you. Pirate ships, maybe.”
“Like Peter and Wendy?” The boy’s face lit up.
“Maybe with a sword fight, yes?”
“Really?” Walter laughed, leaping up and pretending to sword fight an imaginary pirate.
“Good. You go practice your sword. I be up in one minute.” She took the cup and the apple plate to the sink as Walter scampered up the back stairs to his playroom. Once he was out of sight, she held the cup up to the light of the window and peered in again, slowly turning the fortune over, hoping for better. The frown returned, and she quickly rinsed the leaves out and all the way down the drain. Shutting the water off, she mouthed a few words and made the sign of the cross over her chest.
She glanced back toward the office before waddling her thick frame up the back stairs. Walter’s battle cries, “Take that and that . . . ,” greeted her when she reached the second floor. Ella smiled at the ruckus, but the worry lingered on her forehead.
Down at the other end of the long, dark hall, Mrs. Rawlings’s door was shut as usual. The woman had been in bed for days. There were never any words spoken about it in the house, but Ella knew. Ella knew from the hours in bed and the blood on the linens. Another baby lost. This was the third since Walter had been born. The maid padded lightly down the hallway to the closed door.
“Missus Rawlings?” she called through the wood.
Inside, the younger woman rolled away from the voice and gazed out the window into the treetops. She’d spent most of her time that month in bed, hoping for the baby to quicken, but it hadn’t mattered. Tiny birds flitted from branch to branch on the other side of the glass. Sweet little girls she would never meet. Fresh tears burned her eyes.
“Missus Rawlings, I come and check on you in one hour. You must eat then,” Ella said softly.
Georgina buried her head under the sheets as though the maid could see her through the wood. Doubled over in pain, she wept silently to herself, wondering what she had done to deserve such a curse. Somewhere from deep beneath the house, she heard a sound. She sat up with a start and listened. A song? A cry?
With a heavy sigh, Ella turned and headed back to Walter’s room. He was lying on the floor when she opened the door. A wooden stick stood up from between his side and arm. His eyes stared lifelessly at the ceiling, his face frozen and pale. On reflex, Ella clutched her chest. “Walter?”
“Shh,” he whispered, eyes not blinking. “I’m dead. Hook got me.”
Ella inhaled sharply at this, still visibly shaken at the sight of him on the ground but unwilling to let on. “Aha, little mulo. Then you must rise up. Rise up and haunt his days and nights!”
A floor below them, Mr. Rawlings downed his second glass of whiskey and yanked open the center drawer of his desk. The crumpled newspaper on the leather desk blotter screamed its headline.
STOCKS CRASH! INVESTORS PANIC!
He pulled a silver pistol from the drawer with a shaking hand. It dropped to the desktop with the cold metal thunk of a dead bolt hitting the strike.
13
The Spielman Family
July 27, 2018
Myron sat in the garage, staring at the closed door. The engine ticked as it cooled. He ran a hand over his face and picked up his cell phone to read the message on the tiny glass screen again. Finally, he pressed a few buttons and put the phone to his ear.
“Paul? It’s Myron . . . Yes, I got the message. I know how it looks, but you have to realize that this is a matter of professional opinion . . . I know what the Mayo Clinic says, but they didn’t perform the examination. I did . . . Yes, I understand I’m under a microscope here, but that doesn’t change my clinical diagnosis. Okay. I’ll talk to you then.”
He hung up and pressed his sweating forehead into the palm of his hand. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered. “What the hell am I going to do?”
The house was quiet as Myron slipped in through the back door, locking it behind him. He was later than usual. “Hello?”
The smell of the greasy take-out dinner Margot had picked up from the local Chinese restaurant still lingered in the kitchen. Pork and steamed vegetables. She’d stuffed the leftovers in their new refrigerator, which sat dejected in the middle of a blank wall, buzzing. Myron closed the fridge, not hungry. The flickering light of a television pulled him toward the glass doors of the den.
Margot was curled up on the leather sofa, napping to some home-remodeling show. An empty martini glass sat on the coffee table in front of her. He peeked in on her a moment. Sleeping peacefully. Blissfully silent.
He carried his briefcase up the front stairs, stopping at the top to gaze down the long hall of closed doors. A faint glow lit the bottom of Hunter’s door as usual. Myron frowned at it. Did the kid even leave the house today? At the bend in the hallway, the attic door stood slightly ajar. The light upstairs had been left on again. He paused, considering it a moment, before shuffling past four more closed doors to the master suite at the far end.
His massive walk-in closet had its own entrance. Myron opened it and strode past the custom shelves of designer shoes and perfectly ordered suits to the door on the opposite side. Their contractor, Max, had transformed the seventh bedroom, originally designed as a dressing room or nursery, into an enormous master bath. A crystal chandelier hung in the middle of the vast expanse of brass and cold marble. The brightness of the white counters and flooring was jarring as he clicked on the lights. The floor joists strained painfully under the weight of the stone slabs and the oversize soaking tub beneath the window.
Myron flipped on the in-floor heat and headed to his half of the room with his own sink, vanity, and private cabinets. He set his briefcase down and thumbed the combination into the two dial locks on the latches. Inside lay ten white boxes, each rattling with pills. The names of manufacturers splashed across the cardboard along with flashy brand names that promised high-tech chemistry and clinical results. Stacking the boxes up, he grabbed two brown plastic prescription bottles from his medicine cabinet and popped each open. Glancing at the reflection of the closed door in the mirror, he popped two white pills into his mouth and swallowed without water. He let out a long exhale of relief.