Chapter 2 - The Scent of Lavender and Silt
The sound of the deadbolt sliding into its strike plate was the loudest noise in the kitchen.
Emily did not put Lily down on the runner rug. She carried the child through the hallway, mindful of the dark, viscous liquid seeping through her own clothing. The mud carried an alkaline, sulfurous odor—decayed grass roots, stagnant rainwater, and lawn fertilizer that had fermented in the unlit drainage pocket beside the tool shed.
"Mama," Lily whispered against Emily’s neck. Her voice was cracked, barely rising above the rhythmic hum of the baseboard heaters. "My dress is ruined."
"Dresses can be replaced, Lily," Emily said, her boots squeaking on the pine risers as she carried her daughter up the staircase. "Dresses are just cloth."
"It was the Easter one," Lily said. "With the buttons."
"I know, baby. I know."
In the second-floor bathroom, the light was clean and white, reflecting sharply off the subway tiles. Emily set Lily down carefully inside the porcelain tub before turning the brass handles of the faucet. The pipes shuddered once in the wall, followed by a rush of steaming water that filled the room with white vapor.
Emily knelt beside the tub, her jeans soaking up the moisture on the tile rim. With gentle, methodical movements, she unfastened the cloth-covered buttons down the spine of the yellow dress. The wet cotton had shrunk and clung to the skin like wet paper. When she peeled the collar away from Lily’s nape, she paused.
Across the delicate curve between Lily’s left shoulder blade and collarbone was a purplish-yellow discoloration—an oblong bruise, about the size of an adult hand’s spread. It was not fresh; the edges were already turning that sickly greenish-gray that indicated an impact from several days ago.
Emily’s fingers went rigid. The air in her lungs seemed to turn to chalk.
"Lily," Emily said, her tone level, stripped bare of panic so as not to startle the child. "What is this on your shoulder?"
Lily turned her head, looking at the water swirling around the brass drain. She tucked her chin toward her chest, her lips pressing into a thin, colorless line.
"Lily-bug. Look at me."
The girl looked up. Her eyelashes were spiked with dried gray sediment. "Connor shoved me into the iron coat rack on Wednesday. When Grandma was watching me downstairs."
Emily held her breath for a beat of four seconds. "Did you tell Grandma?"
"Grandma said I tripped over my own shoelaces," Lily whispered. "She said Connor was just running to get his tablet, and that if I told you, you’d make a big scene and nobody would get to have the Easter egg hunt."
Emily did not speak. If she spoke, the heat in her throat would shatter the composure she was preserving for her daughter. She picked up the bottle of lavender bath oil from the shelf, tipped three drops into the churning water, and began to work the muck out of Lily’s fine blonde hair with a wide-toothed horn comb.
The silt turned the clear water into an opaque, gray broth. It pooled around Lily’s waist, carrying dead fragments of oak leaves and dried garden fertilizer toward the overflow valve. Emily scrubbed the child’s ears, the delicate hollows behind her collarbones, the skin beneath her small fingernails where the black swamp dirt had packed tight.
Downstairs, the heavy front door opened and closed.
Footsteps echoed in the entryway below—the heavy, shuffling tread of Richard Vance, followed by the rapid, erratic tap of Diane’s orthopedic mules. Then came the unmistakable clatter of aluminum folding chairs being dragged across the hardwood floor of the lower hall, accompanied by the muffled, tense exchange of angry murmurs.
Emily did not look down at the floorboards. She continued rinsing Lily’s hair with a plastic pitcher, pouring cup after cup of clean, warm water until the suds ran clear down the porcelain.
"Close your eyes," Emily said softly.
Lily squeezed her eyes shut. The water cascaded over her forehead, washing away the last traces of gray slime.
"Mama?"
"Yes, sweetie?"
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"Are we going to Aunt Claire's house now?"
"No," Emily said, reaching for the oversized Egyptian cotton towel warming on the heated rail. "We are staying right here. Nobody is going anywhere."
