“I’ve never been to Brooklyn,” Sam admitted.
“Well, when you go, you should visit Green-Wood. It has the very best mausoleums.”
One of them belonged to my aunt, Sarah. I used to skip school and take the train to the cemetery. I never saw anyone there, but I knew my uncle visited. The flowers were always fresh, and there was always a handwritten card that read Love, James. After I said goodbye to Sarah, I’d walk all the way to the other side of the graveyard to spend some time with my dad. My mother hadn’t shelled out nearly as much as James had. Sarah had stately columns, a marble floor, and a statue of a weeping angel. My father rested beneath a simple tombstone with his name inscribed on the front. I tried to make it up to my dad. I’d sit with him for hours and tell him everything that he’d missed.
It had been months since I’d been able to visit the graveyard. Before I left for Louth, I asked my mother if I could go out there one last time. She was busy with the gala, she said. She didn’t have time to escort me to Brooklyn, and she couldn’t allow me to go on my own. It would have taken a couple of hours to let me say goodbye. She didn’t want to go.
Now I stood inside Dahlia Bellinger’s mausoleum. The fire kept the space warm, and its smoke rose from the pyre like a charmed snake and disappeared through a hole in the ceiling. Beyond the fire was an alcove where Dahlia’s marble coffin lay atop a pedestal. The sides were carved in a pattern that resembled an explosion of petals. They belonged to the flower for which Dahlia had been named. Benches sat on either end of the alcove, but there was no space in the mausoleum for another coffin. Dahlia would be spending eternity alone.
“Does my uncle come here?” I asked.
Sam’s answer surprised me. “Every day,” he said. “Sometimes he sits here for hours.”
“He really loved her,” I said.
“Everyone loved Dahlia,” Sam said, coming to stand next to me. His manner had changed. Outside it had been as brusque as ever. Inside the mausoleum, he seemed almost reverent. I had a hunch that if I asked the right questions, he might break the rules and tell me about Dahlia and her daughter.
“Why did everyone love her?” I asked.
“She was kind,” Sam said. “We knew she’d had a rough time, but she was always doing whatever she could to help other people. My mother says she wishes Dahlia had spent just a fraction of that time on herself.”
“Why did she need help?” I asked.
Sam shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “Anyway, it’s a shame you never met her.”
It was among my biggest regrets. But I didn’t say that. “What about Lark? Was she a saint, too?”
“God, no.” Sam laughed. “Lark’s nothing like Dahlia. She’s a born troublemaker. Even when we were little, she never wanted to be told what to do. Apparently, she gave your uncle so much grief that he made her go live with her dad.”
That wasn’t quite the tale James had told me. “I heard Lark was losing touch with reality,” I said. “They had to get her out of the manor because she’d become obsessed with Grace Louth. Is that true?”
Sam glanced over at me, and I knew I’d pushed it too far. “You know I’m not supposed to talk about any of this. I can’t afford to get fired.”
“Just give me a yes or no,” I pleaded. “Is Lark mentally ill?”
“I have no idea what she is now,” Sam admitted. “Losing your mother like that would be enough to make anyone lose it, don’t you think? But the girl I grew up with seemed perfectly healthy.”
“So you don’t think she went berserk and burned the house down?”
Sam wouldn’t bite. “All I can tell you is that Lark was always one of the smartest, nicest kids I knew. She wasn’t for everyone, but I liked her a lot. I think you would have liked her, too.”
“I have a feeling you’re right,” I said.
For the first time since we’d met, Sam smiled. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll give you a tour of the grounds.”
* * *
—
In February, there wasn’t much to see. The manor’s glorious gardens were nothing but vast stretches of snow with a few prickly lumps protruding here and there. “You’ll have to use your imagination,” Sam kept saying. By the time we’d walked all the way to the front of the house, it had become a running joke.
I’d decided I liked him. Sam didn’t seem to want anything. The tour wasn’t an excuse to spend time alone with me. He was obviously proud of the work he’d done—even if most of it was hidden under a foot of snow. I felt so comfortable in his company that it wasn’t until we were walking between the topiary bushes that lined the drive that I remembered I hadn’t been alone with a guy my age in months. I shivered at the thought and put my guard back up.
“These are some creepy-ass bushes,” I said, looking up at the topiary. The wind had swept away much of their snowy coats, and misshapen monsters were beginning to emerge. The humanoid hedges had been intimidating enough when they were being kept perfectly pruned. Now that they were returning to their natural state, they were truly disturbing.
“Yes, this is the one spot where I don’t recommend using your imagination,” Sam said. “I keep asking James if I can trim the hedges, but he always tells me to wait. I have a hunch he likes them this way. Maybe he thinks they scare off unwanted visitors.”
I remembered how they’d looked in the dark the night I’d arrived. They’d almost succeeded in scaring me away, too.
“Speaking of creepy, I saw something out here the night I arrived,” I said. “Whatever it was walked on two legs. I watched it run across the drive from one bush to another.”
I saw Sam stiffen. He looked out into the trees. “Lot of deer around here,” he said. “They come out at night and eat everything they can find. It’s a constant battle to keep them from destroying the gardens.”
“Do the deer here walk on two legs?” I asked.
“They can if they want to,” he said. I sensed he was on the verge of clamming up, so I stopped asking questions. Then, as I turned to look back at the manor, Sam asked one of his own.
“Why are you here, Bram?” he said. “And why have you been asking so many questions about Lark?”
If he’d asked me a moment earlier, I might have told him. But by the time the words were out of his mouth, I was unable to answer. My eyes had been drawn to movement on the balcony outside the rose room. Someone was standing there. A figure in white, watching the two of us. I was too far away to get a good look at her. Her features were little more than a blur, but I knew it couldn’t be Miriam.