Here at the hospital. Her hospital – well, it had been her hospital until it fired her five days ago. Or more. They told her she’d been a patient since early Saturday morning. She wasn’t sure how many days ago that was, because of all the sleeping and the drugs and the surgeries and the visits. Her parents came. Her brother and sister-in-law came. They brought Olive. It was her niece’s first time in a hospital to visit someone she knew, and her eyes went very large when she saw Tuesday in that bed. “I’m not using you as a teachable moment,” said Ollie, and Tuesday said, with a snort, “Like hell you aren’t.” But it felt good to be useful. It was important to see what could happen to people, to see that people could be put back together. And part of putting people back together was reminding them that they weren’t alone.
No matter how much they thought they wanted to be.
Her right femur was shattered. She’d had at least two surgeries – she did not remember them – and would need more. For now her leg was stuck full of pins, immobilized in a cast, and locked into a device that made her feel half automaton. Olive’s eyes went even wider when she saw it, but not in fear. She looked at Tuesday, at her leg, and Tuesday said, “I know. I’m bionic.”
She didn’t remember Nat hitting her with the baseball bat. She remembered looking up and seeing Dorry, and wanting Dorry to get away and then—
This hospital room.
Which barely qualified as a hospital room. The bed was the same as on every other floor in the main tower, but the room itself was lined with dark wood trim. The door was heavy, and let in no sound, no chatter from nurses or visitors. There were two comfortable, well-upholstered chairs, a pull-out sofa, a small desk, and the curtain covering the window was almost velvet. It was, of course, a single. She was in Webster House, the floor reserved for Certain Patients who required Certain Privacies (from other patients, from the press) and Amenities. International self-payers. Scions of the city and other millionaires. Celebrities. Patriots and Sox. And apparently Tuesday Mooney. What she lacked in health insurance, she made up for in notoriety.
The first time she regained consciousness, her father was asleep on the pull-out. Her mother, she found out later, was at the cafeteria. Tuesday came to slowly, like she was rising from the bottom of a lake. She knew who she was. She knew where she’d been. Her right leg – was wrong. On a wheeled table to her left was a covered tray. Hospital breakfast. And beneath it, a newspaper. Her mental files began to flutter. She reached for it.
TREASURE HUNT ENDS IN DISCOVERY OF LOST ART, FORTUNE was the headline. PLAYERS OF PRYCE GAME UNCOVER SOLID-GOLD CEILING. There was a group photo taken beneath the full fresco on the back wall. She didn’t see Nat. She was missing too, but they’d reprinted that fantastic picture of her coming out of the Park Street T, cropping out the cops. Archie’s broken face was identified, mysteriously, as William Wilson. There were quotes, from Ned Kennedy: “We don’t even know how much art is hidden all around us.” Verena Parkman: “Thus Mr. Pryce’s legacy, his true gift to the city, is revealed.” And Lyle: “The Tillerman mansion will be fully restored and open to the public, and will serve as the headquarters of the Raven Foundation.”
Tuesday didn’t get to find out what the Raven Foundation was, or count all the gaps in the story, looking for everything that had been left out, because Ted Mooney’s gentle snoring had stopped. He was awake. His glasses winked at her from across the dim room. When he said her name, she slammed her mental files shut. The only thing she wanted to know was that her dad was okay, and her mom was okay, and she was okay. Despite all contradictory evidence.
And she was; she was fine. She was alive and safe and being repaired by some of the best doctors in the world. She was lucky.
So today, when she opened her eyes, it wasn’t the first time she’d woken up in her room in Webster House.
But it was the first time she’d done so to find Emerson Arches sitting beside her bed.
“Hello,” said Emerson.
Tuesday stared at her. Her dark brows and pale skin, her white-blonde hair, yanked back tight in a ponytail, were all as uncanny as ever. She smiled. Her small pointed teeth caught on her lips. She was dressed entirely in black, black cigarette pants and black flats and a mod black turtleneck, which Tuesday appreciated, though she was certain Emerson wasn’t doing it in tribute.
There were many things Tuesday wanted to ask. And say. But what came out first was “Where’s your brother?”
“Feeding your cat,” said Emerson. “He wanted to help.”
“That’s not the brother I care about.”
Emerson paused. “Really?” she said.
“I didn’t mean—” Tuesday inhaled. Matching wits with Emerson required a clearer head than was chemically possible at the moment. “This isn’t fair,” she said. “I’m on a lot of drugs.”
“What makes you think I’m not,” said Emerson.
Tuesday felt her face contort into a grin. She coughed.
“That is, actually,” Tuesday said, “very helpful of Archie. I appreciate it. Though I wonder if the primary attraction for him wasn’t being helpful but my empty apartment. To squat in.”
Emerson’s eyes gleamed. “You’ve got his number,” she said. And then: “My other brother won’t bother you.”
Tuesday watched her eyes. The gleam was gone.
Something had replaced it.
Relief.
“He won’t be bothering anyone,” Emerson said. “Not anymore.”
Or was it triumph?
“What happened to him?” Tuesday asked. “After he hit me.”
Emerson’s gaze was flat and steady.
“He tripped,” she said. “Fell over the balcony railing.”
Tuesday jerked. “He what?”
Emerson lifted and lowered her shoulders. “I wasn’t there for that part.”
“Did he – when he fell, did he—”
“He lived,” said Emerson. She examined her manicure. “My other brother, Eddie, Archie, whatever you want to call him, said Nathaniel fell over the edge of the balcony. Landed in the great hall and didn’t move. In the confusion of calling the police, the ambulance, attending to you, apparently – at some point our brother’s body disappeared. Nathaniel must have gotten up. And run away.”
“Or he could have been dragged,” said Tuesday. “Away.”
She looked hard at Emerson.
“Were you there for that part?” Tuesday asked.
Emerson didn’t respond at first.
“It’s a poetic disappearance,” Emerson said at last, lightly. “Like father, like son. Wherever they’ve gone, I like to imagine they’re together.”
The skin on Tuesday’s arms tingled, cold.
Maybe there were some things she didn’t have to know absolutely everything about.
“What did you know—” Tuesday was fuzzy. But not afraid; Emerson was not her enemy. If she had been, Tuesday would already have been vanished herself. “Pryce’s design was two games in one. Rabbit was the banker for one. And the other game, the undergame—”
“I’m not a banker,” said Emerson.
“The undergame didn’t have a banker.” Tuesday swallowed. Her mouth was hospital-dry. “It had a blackmailer.”
Emerson didn’t move.
“Nathaniel said – he said that someone had been harassing him for years,” Tuesday said. “He thought it was Archie. And it got worse suddenly, which he thought meant his brother was in town. Archie was in town, but I think that was a coincidence. I think the harassment got worse because Vincent Pryce died. He was the blackmailer – the first blackmailer – but then he died and passed—”
Emerson smiled at Tuesday with her teeth. “You have an exceptional imagination,” she said. “Pryce passed the torch?”
“Not the torch,” Tuesday said. “The postcards.”
Emerson flared slightly.
They stared at each other.
“I’m here today” – Emerson slid forward to the edge of her chair �
� “because my brother told me you had something that belonged to us.”
“Which brother,” said Tuesday, “told you?”
“Does it matter?” Emerson blinked. “A pocket watch,” she said. “I assume it’s in your effects. The things you had with you when you were admitted.”
“That’s evidence,” said Tuesday.
Emerson said, “Of what?”
“I’m not … sure,” said Tuesday.
Emerson opened the drawer by Tuesday’s bedside, and Tuesday didn’t stop her. She took out the gaudy reproduction watch. Held it tight in her palm.
She looked at Tuesday.
“Imagine, with that exceptional mind of yours,” Emerson said, “a woman. Her husband is a brute. She’s borne it as best she can for many years, protected her children as best she can, in a life that feels, husband aside, like the best she can expect. Then she meets someone. She makes a new friend. Who reminds her that much of what she accepts in her life is unacceptable, and that she has a choice. So she chooses to imagine another life for herself. For her children.
“Now imagine her husband, as he gets older, is getting worse. He’s always been a brute but he’s beginning to pose a mortal threat not only to her – that, she can handle – but to her grown children. Imagine this woman’s new friend owns a company that makes custom reproductions, gadgets, gizmos, and imagine this woman owns – and knows intimately – a powerful conglomerate that acquires hot digital tech. This woman, by the way, is a fucking genius. Imagine that. On the record.
“Now imagine this woman asks her friend for help.”
Tuesday had to remind herself to breathe.
“The friend makes a watch. The woman gives him a miniature transmitter to hide inside. A recorder, tiny, like a nanny cam. The woman gives the watch to her husband for his birthday. The woman and her friend sit back and wait to record something irrefutable, something prosecutable. Which is exactly what they record, far better – or worse – than they ever hoped. One night, at sea, they record a crime. A crime that one of her sons commits, and the other son appears to help cover up.” Emerson paused. “Suddenly they are caught in a very, very bad bind: the one son is cruel and violent, dangerous, and now there is proof, something prosecutable, to put him away. But it looks just as bad for the other son, who isn’t entirely innocent but is far from being his father’s child. To hand the recording over to the police, as the friend insists, would implicate them both. The woman cannot bear this. She and her friend fight. Their friendship does not ever recover.”
Tuesday said, “Imagine,” and Emerson’s eyes flashed at the interruption. But she waited. To see what Tuesday would say.
“Imagine,” Tuesday said, “the friend, in an attempt to settle his affairs before his impending death, approaches the woman’s daughter. He’s created an elaborate blind, a game, an adventure, in part to torture the father’s son. And he can’t do it alone; he needs help. But he won’t cause his friend, the woman, more pain. Because he loves her. He never stopped. She didn’t either.”
Emerson did not react. Tuesday took a breath.
“So he will ask the woman’s daughter,” she continued, “who is very able and very willing to play. Willing to needle her brother, rile him, maybe lure him directly to the final stage. Dangle – something. The watch itself, maybe. The threat of evidence against him. The best friend needed a blackmailer he could trust to make sure the game-within-the-game’s objective was carried out after his death. To reveal the father’s son as the criminal he is.”
Emerson shook her head. “That may have been the friend’s objective, but it was never the woman’s. The woman means” – she palmed the watch – “to bury the past.”
“What does the daughter mean?” said Tuesday.
Emerson grew still.
“The daughter,” she said, and stared at the floor. When she finally looked up again, her eyes were neither smiling nor triumphant. They were tired. They didn’t know what they were looking for, but they were eyes that hoped they had earned the right to see for themselves.
“The daughter means to live her own life now,” Emerson said.
“Imagine that,” said Tuesday.
Emerson almost laughed. Her lips twitched, then flattened. She stood, tucking a blood-red Birkin bag into the crook of her arm. She slipped the watch inside and turned toward the door.
“Imagine that,” she repeated, quietly, to herself. Then she turned back. “Tuesday Mooney,” she said. “Take care of yourself. Once you’re back on your feet, I’ll make sure my brother invites you over for cocktails.”
Tuesday didn’t respond.
“Mother,” said Emerson, “makes a mean Corpse Reviver.”
Dorry came to the hospital after school on Thursday. She brought her homework with her.
“We don’t have to talk about bio,” Dorry said. “I feel pretty good for my test tomorrow.”
“I can still quiz you,” said Tuesday. She raised her eyebrows. “I love the parts of a cell.”
They looked at each other. Dorry was smiling, but too hard. Her hands fidgeted with her biology text. Tuesday wouldn’t have called the air tense, but it was full of words waiting to be spoken.
“We can talk about what happened too,” said Tuesday.
Dorry raised the book to her face and let out a whoosh of breath behind it.
“Thank God,” she said, lowering the book. “I’m dying to talk about it, but I didn’t want to stress you out. Or, like, make you feel worse, or remind you of what that – guy – did—”
Tuesday pointed at her immobilized leg. “Believe me,” she said, “I remember what that guy did.”
“Archie just said, that, uh – to go easy on you.” Dorry blushed a little. “He’s staying in your apartment.” She bugged her eyes. “He’s, like, my new neighbor.”
“Don’t get used to it,” said Tuesday.
“Is he your boyfriend now?” Dorry asked, leaning closer.
“He’s my cat sitter,” said Tuesday.
Dorry took that in. She sat back in her seat for a second and then hunched forward again.
“So,” she said, “I think I have a cat sitter too?”
“It wasn’t a euphemism,” said Tuesday. “But anyway. You mean Ned?”
Dorry nodded. “He’s so cool,” she said. “I like him. So much. I’m just – like, glad that I know him. He’s the first boy” – she paused dramatically – “friend I’ve had in as long as I can remember, and I’m pretty sure he wants to be my boyfriend and I want to be his girlfriend … but maybe not? I don’t know. For now, we’re just – friends.”
“I hate that,” said Tuesday. Dorry looked stung, and Tuesday put a hand on her arm. “I hate that phrase. I know you don’t think of being friends with Ned as being just anything.” Her voice felt thick and she coughed it loose. “Don’t cheat your friendships. Don’t ask them to mean less to you than they do, or think they only have value if they’re a stop on the way to a real relationship.” Dorry rolled her eyes. “All relationships are real,” said Tuesday. “Friendship can be as deep as the ocean. It’s all a kind of love, and love isn’t any one kind of thing.”
They smiled at each other.
“These drugs are making me deep,” Tuesday said, nodding toward the heavy IV bag.
“Deep as the ocean,” said Dorry.
Tuesday felt her eyes fill. She blinked and moisture pooled at the corners.
“Oh, don’t cry!” said Dorry. “I can’t believe I said that. I didn’t mean to make you cry. Archie told me—”
Tuesday laughed and sat up as straight as she could and opened her arms and Dorry leaned in. And they were both here, alive, together for the moment in the in-between.
When Dorry sat back she was rubbing at the corners of her own eyes with her thumbs. She sniffed and asked if Tuesday would quiz her for a little bit. There’s no cure for feelings, said Tuesday, like separating the endoplasmic reticulum from the mitochondria. They studied. Dorry was, as she said, perfectly p
repared for her test the next day. They talked about the Earhart goggles, and everything Dorry had and hadn’t seen through them. For the first time since she’d known her, Tuesday heard a degree of calm in Dorry’s voice when she talked about her mother. The shock seemed less severe, the pain less acute. They talked about Dorry’s dad, and how he was more relieved that she was safe than pissed that she’d snuck out to Vincent Pryce’s funeral without his permission. And impressed, even, by what the game had revealed.
“I had to tell him about what happened to you, though,” said Dorry. “He got a little I told you so, I knew it was dangerous then. But he says hi. And he hopes you get better soon.”
“He knows where you are right now,” said Tuesday. “Right?”
Dorry nodded. “And – like, all the stuff about – that guy hitting you.” Dorry’s brow darkened. “We agreed, all of us, not to – it would have been one thing if he died. Then we would have had to report it and everything. But he didn’t. He got up and ran away. We didn’t want that jerk to be the story, you know?” Dorry looked pained. “But now he’s, like, out there. And he got away with this. I guess we should have asked you what you wanted.”
“I don’t think he got away with anything,” said Tuesday. “And I would have wanted that.” Regarding Tuesday Mooney, and why she was absent from the group photo, all the papers said was that she’d suffered an accidental, nonfatal injury. Which of course made the press rabid for more, and which was why she’d been put up in the hospital equivalent of a four-star Hilton – on Lyle Korrapati Pryce’s dime, which seemed vaguely like a hush payment. Tuesday had decided she didn’t care. Her leg was getting fixed and she didn’t have a whiff of insurance. It was the least Lyle could do.
Not that it was Lyle’s fault Nathaniel had wormed his way into the final thirteen.
Tuesday’s mental files fluttered.
“Dor,” she said, “hand me that paper.”
Dorry passed her the Globe with the front-page story about the mural’s discovery. She wanted to see the group photo.
Tuesday remembered what she’d forgotten.
“There she is,” she said. “Number thirteen. I forgot – I forgot I saw her. For a split second, in one of the rooms upstairs, when Nat and I were fighting, I saw what looked like a dead body.” She sighed. “My first thought was that he’d killed her so he could take her place as one of the thirteen. She was wearing a green dress and it was bloody. But that must have been her costume.” She turned the paper around to Dorry, with her finger at the girl’s face. She was tall, standing on the end of the back row. Her reddish hair was pulled back, and she was wearing a sixties-style grass-green dress, high-necked and curvy and splattered with red.
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