“I think we should leave,” June finally said.
Jim laughed. “Of course you do.”
“What the hell is your problem? Emily was attacked tonight, Jim. Yesterday she and I were locked in a steam room for hours.”
“So now you admit you were in there for hours?”
“Damn it, you’re not listening to me!”
Jim took a step toward her, his fists clenched. “I am listening to you, June. But I don’t like what I’m hearing. Leave? Are you crazy? This is the chance of a lifetime.” He looked at Mark. “And if the two of you are stupid enough to believe her,” he gestured at Emily, “then by all means, hit the road. I’m happy to stay here on my own. Less distracting.”
“She could have been killed!” June said, almost shouting.
“So she says,” Jim said, shaking his head. “But I know what I saw when we opened that door, June. No one was there. It was just Emily.”
“Well, I believe her, and I think Mark does, too. We should pack our bags, tonight, this minute, and go to a hotel. What do you think, Mark?”
Mark’s brows were lowered, his expression thoughtful. He shook his head. “I don’t know. I believe you too, Emily—” Jim snorted, but Mark ignored him and went on. “What do you want to do? Do you want to leave?”
Emily gazed around the room from face to face, and then she made herself look inward, searching her heart. The answer was already there, but she was surprised when she realized that she’d already known, even before she was asked.
She shook her head. “No. I want to stay.”
June seemed stunned, but Mark had clearly expected her to say this. Jim laughed, once, in a kind of bark.
“Of course you don’t want to leave. Having too much fun, I’d bet.”
June gave him a dark look and turned back to her. “Are you sure? Don’t you think it would be better—?”
But she was already shaking her head. “No. I refuse to let it force me out. Whatever it is.”
Mark got to his feet. “I’m with Emily. I want to figure this thing out.”
June had watched the two of them, clearly upset, but, evidently seeing their determination, she finally raised her eyebrows and sighed. “Okay. If that’s what you both think is best. But if something happens again, I’m leaving. I think we all should.”
“It might be smart to avoid being alone. As much as possible, I mean,” Mark said.
“I’m not going back in that bathroom alone. I can tell you that much,” June said.
“You can use ours for now,” Mark said. “Jim and I can use the one in the attic, if necessary.”
“I’m going to my room,” Jim said, sounding disgusted. “Some of us still have work to do today.”
“I’ll leave now, too, Emily,” Mark said. “But you know where to find me. June, do you think you could stay in here with her?”
“Already my plan,” she said.
“Good. In the morning, we can look closer at those bruises. When we go in to town, you might want to have someone examine them.”
Emily wasn’t about to talk to anyone outside of the house about her bruises. She knew how she’d sound. Still, she nodded. “Thanks, Mark. Good night.”
None of them said a word to Jim, and he more or less stormed out of the room. Mark raised his eyebrows. “I’ll try to talk to him, ladies. I don’t know why he’s behaving this way.”
“If he lets himself believe, he’ll have to be frightened,” Emily said. The others seemed surprised by her matter-of-fact tone. She shrugged. “I can understand it if he doesn’t want to feel scared. It doesn’t bother me.”
“Well, I think he’s being a dick,” June said. “I mean, my God, even if you had wanted to fake being hurt, anyone can tell you could never have done that to yourself—it’s physically impossible.”
“Stay safe now, ladies, and let me know if you need anything.” Mark turned and left, closing the door after himself.
June and Emily stared at each other in silence for a long beat. June seemed worn out, a haggard cast marring her face again.
She forced a grin. “Sorry. I smoked the last of the pot this morning. Could have used it now.”
“Would a drink help?”
June paused. “Have anything in here?”
Emily grinned and walked across the room to her wardrobe. She’d brought a small bottle of scotch from home, not sure what alcohol she’d find here. The bar downstairs was fully stocked, so she’d almost forgotten it. She held up the bottle, and June laughed.
“Of course you drink scotch.”
“Oh? Why do you say that?”
“Oh—no reason. It suits you.”
Emily decided to take that as a compliment and poured them both a small glassful. There was no ice in here, so they had to drink it neat, but June didn’t seem to mind, and neither did she. They sat there, quietly drinking, until their glasses were empty. Emily got up to move the glasses to a safer table, away from the papers, and when she turned back, June was watching her with a slight smile.
“What?”
June shook her head. “Nothing. I like seeing you in my robe.”
Emily looked down, having forgotten about it, and blushed. She’d been sitting there with her housemates, naked except for this short robe, for the last thirty minutes. June rose and walked toward her, then touched her face.
“I’m so sorry that happened to you, Emily. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to stop it.”
She shook her head. “You couldn’t have done anything. I’m glad it was me and not you.” She swallowed, a knot of emotion rising in her throat. The idea was dreadful. It would have been much, much worse had it been June in there.
June’s eyes softened. “It didn’t. It won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I don’t, but I won’t let it. At the very least, I’m never taking a bath alone in this house again. I can promise you that.”
She touched the side of Emily’s neck at the shoulder, and Emily hissed a little in pain, flinching. The marks hadn’t hurt before, or she hadn’t felt the pain earlier, but now she stung all over. June made an alarmed face, and Emily tried to relax. June continued to examine the bruises closely, touching her lightly at times as she found them, and Emily bit her tongue when it hurt.
June shook her head. “They’re horrible. I really think you should see a doctor tomorrow.”
“And say what? How could I explain? Any doctor would think I’m being abused.”
June sighed a moment later. “I guess you’re right. But we should put some ice on them, anyway, to help with the swelling. I have some ibuprofen in my room.” She turned as if to go get it, and Emily grabbed her hand. June turned back, appearing confused.
“Don’t leave,” she said. June looked at her for a long time as if she might not listen, and then she smiled. June turned to Emily’s bed, and Emily followed.
Chapter Ten
Emily and Jim stayed home when Mark and June went into town the next day. Emily didn’t go primarily because of her appearance. By morning, all the marks had bloomed into a purple so dark it was almost black, the edges of all the bruises red and painful. She couldn’t hide the marks on her shoulders, collarbone, and neck with anything less than a turtleneck, and with such hot weather, that wasn’t an option. After staring at herself with horror in the mirror, she told June she was staying and dressed in her lightest clothes, unconcerned with how she looked as long as she was here. Her shorts and T-shirt showed off the bruises in all their glory, but neither piece of clothing hurt to wear, which was key.
Jim refused to acknowledge her presence at breakfast, almost as if by seeing the bruises he would have to believe her. She detected a bit of regret in his eyes the couple of times their gaze met, as if, in the light of the morning, he was second-guessing what he’d said. Anyone could see what had happened—she simply couldn’t have done this to herself. But Jim wasn’t ready for what that meant, and she refused to try force him to change his mind. He was
clearly the kind of man who needed to make his own decisions.
Jim and June were hardly civil to one another as they all ate, June snapping at him and Jim barking back at her. This fight was clearly the main reason Jim had decided to stay instead of go to town, but he also agreed that no one, especially Emily, should be left on their own in the house. The new rule was that, except for bedtime and bathroom use, they should move about in pairs as much as possible or stay in adjoining rooms. Last night, Mark made Jim prop his bedroom door open so they could hear each other if anything happened.
After June and Mark left, Jim seemed surprised when Emily suggested that they get back to work, almost as if he’d expected her to beg off. She didn’t acknowledge his surprise, and, within an hour of starting, things between the two of them seemed normal again. She would show him a juicy tidbit from the poem she was working on, and he would point out an exceptionally interesting passage from the diary he was examining, and then they would go back to work. As far as she was concerned, he was the best kind of colleague to have—enthusiastic and hardworking. She didn’t expect anything else from him.
Once or twice, she caught him staring at her or, more specifically, her bruises, but she always turned away first, not wanting to catch him. Again, she knew he needed time, and she wasn’t going to force it.
The next few days passed in a similar pattern. While June waited for the internet to be installed, she helped Mark search the town archive. It was, they explained, as expected, a disorganized mess, and they were gone for most of every day searching in a dark basement of the library. Emily and Jim would start on the Lewis papers after breakfast and finish sometime in the early evening. By Wednesday, June and Jim were on speaking terms again, more or less, or at least civil to each other, and evening cocktails resumed. June spent every night in Emily’s room, but they didn’t talk about that arrangement during the day. If Mark or Jim knew what was going on at night, they didn’t let on, and that suited Emily completely.
Nothing unusual had occurred after her near-drowning, and she couldn’t help but feel like the house was waiting, somehow, almost as if it wanted them to forget and relax. Once or twice she saw Mark or one of the others out on the lawn, looking up at her window as if waiting for the woman to appear, but if they saw anything, they didn’t mention it. They didn’t even talk about the bathroom incident again. Everyone, including the house, seemed to be holding their breath.
On Thursday, a little restless after so many days of straight work, she and Jim decided to take the day off. He agreed to help Mark for a few hours in town, and Emily offered to help June do a photographic inventory of the paintings in the house.
“I can’t keep twiddling my thumbs,” June explained. “I can always label the paintings later, when I know who painted them, but I can do a lot of work simply examining them before I know who painted them.”
“That sounds a little like some of my archival work with anonymous literature. I can make a lot of educated guesses about time period and literary movements without knowing the author.”
June was starting the inventory in the sitting room, and Emily sat on the sofa watching her set up. She wasn’t sure what help she could offer today, as the photography seemed fairly straightforward and solitary, but she was happy to get to spend some time with June outside of her bedroom. She hadn’t asked June a single time why they seemed to avoid each other when they weren’t sleeping together or having sex, and she wasn’t about to start, but that didn’t mean she didn’t crave her company all the time.
“Right,” said June, stepping away from her tripod. “I think that’s good. Gosh. This is going to take forever.”
“How many paintings are in the house?”
June sighed and looked up at the ceiling, counting silently. “Maybe as few as fifty? Possibly as many as seventy-five?”
“Wow. I hadn’t realized.”
“I’ve been keeping a running tally, and from what I’ve seen, there are at least three or four paintings in every room. More, of course, in here, in the dining room, and in your room. I haven’t even been to the attic yet, so God knows what we’ll find up there.”
Emily liked the “we” in June’s sentence and warmed from within. They might just be sleeping with each other for now, but she could tell that June also didn’t seem to mind having her around. She hadn’t annoyed her yet, at any rate, and she wanted to keep it that way by being helpful.
“So tell me the plan for today.”
June perused the room. “I’m going to have to remove each painting from the wall so we can photograph both sides and the frames.”
“Oh?”
She nodded. “It’s fairly common for painters to make notes on the backs of canvases. They sign them there sometimes, and other times you’ll see the title there. I find it very interesting that none of the frames I’ve examined have titles on them. It was common practice in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but I haven’t seen a single example here. And, aside from the Turner here—which is worth a fortune, I might add—none of the paintings I’ve seen are signed. I mean, a few painters don’t put signatures on their work, but not many. It’s a way of advertising your work, after all—almost like branding. Yet I haven’t seen a single one except Turner’s.”
“Do you think the others are by the same artist?”
June immediately shook her head. “No. I’ve examined the ones in here fairly closely now, and I can see different brushwork and paint pigments. A lot of these paintings seem to be by different artists.”
Emily glanced around the room, surprised. All of them seemed similar to her, all very like the Turner. His painting took up the largest space on the biggest section of the wall between the sitting room and library. Most of the other paintings were much smaller, both in here and in the rest of the house, but they all were in the same or similar style—sweeping vistas of nature and industry mixed with portraits. She shook her head, amazed. It must have taken a lifetime to accumulate this kind of collection. It represented a very specific taste and an enormous amount of money.
She turned back to June. “You also mentioned something about photographing the frames. Why are they important?”
June laughed. “It’ll sound funny, but very occasionally, the frame is worth more than the painting, especially if it’s period and especially if the artists are relatively or completely unknown. And even when it’s a well-known artist, the frames can be almost as priceless.”
“So what do you need me to do?”
“If you can hold the lights as I take pictures, that would be incredible. That’s so much easier than using light stands, since I can tell you where to hold them and how high. I’ll also need help getting some of the heavier pieces off the walls. We need to take all of them down before I can do the initial pictures, but we should do them one at a time.”
“Sounds easy enough. Do you need me to take notes or anything else?”
June smiled and stepped closer to her, leaning down to kiss her forehead. “No, sweetie, though it’s lovely of you to ask. I have a notebook and a little recording device, which I’ll turn on soon. It will sound like a lot of gobbledygook as I speak, but please try not to talk when I’m speaking.”
Emily saluted her. “Aye, aye!”
June’s face broke into her heartbreaking smile, and she stepped closer to her again. “You’re darling, you know that?”
She grinned. “Yes, I do.”
June’s expression became serious. “No, Emily, I mean it. I really like you, like being around you. I don’t know what I would have done this week if you weren’t here.”
She blushed. “Thanks.” She cursed herself after saying this, realizing too late that June was opening the door for a real conversation about what was going on between them. June raised her eyebrows and turned around back to her tripod, and Emily thought she’d seen momentary hurt in her eyes.
“And I do, too,” she said, lamely.
June turned back, appearing confused. “What?”<
br />
Clearly the moment had passed, but Emily went on anyway, desperate to salvage it. “I like being with you, too.”
June gave her a weak smile and turned back to her tripod to adjust the camera. Emily could have slapped herself for being so stupid.
“Okay,” June said, pointing at a large light. “Pick that up and hold it about three feet to the right of the painting and about two feet from the wall.”
Emily complied, and June had her move it several times by a few inches until she had it where she wanted it. Within seconds, Emily’s arms started shaking, but she held the light as steady as possible until June let her relax. June muttered under her breath, and Emily realized she was talking into a little microphone on her collar. June looked at the photo she’d taken, made notes in her notebook, and read out a long series of numbers from the camera into her microphone before turning it off from the device clipped to her belt. She smiled at Emily.
“That’s one.”
It was backbreaking labor, and an hour later, despite what she’d thought earlier, Emily was starting to regret volunteering. She simply wasn’t strong enough to do what June wanted her to do for long lengths of time. June snapped at her a couple of times for moving the light, despite her visibly shaking arms. After what was only the fourth completed picture, Emily finally had to ask for a break, and after June agreed, she collapsed onto the sofa.
When she opened her eyes a couple of minutes later, June was grinning at her and holding out a glass of ice water. She took it gratefully and chugged it down.
She let out a deep breath. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” June said, sitting next to her. “I’m sorry about earlier. I forgot what it was like to be an assistant. As an undergrad, I worked for a professor who was a complete asshole—always yelling and screaming at everyone when we did photos like this. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad.”
Emily shrugged, not willing to admit that she’d been hurt. June touched her chin and made her meet her eyes.
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