To the Manor Dead Read Online Free PDF Page B

she was doing. That man is a narcissistic, deluded, sociopathic asshole. I’ve been here for a month and he hasn’t even asked me what subject I’m teaching.”
    “Oh damn, the mac ‘n’ cheese,” I remembered.
    “ There’s no fucking mac ‘n’ cheese! ” Claire wailed, racing around and violently throwing open the doors of three ovens. Then she plopped into a chair and began to cry.
    I’d walked into the middle of something deep and dark, intense and intractable. The worst part was that I found it seductive. If I was still in practice and had a few years to work with Claire, I think we could have come to understand her family and her place in it, could have untangled some of the mess, at least partially freed her. I was sure that she came back to Westward Farm not for her father or her sister, but for herself—like so many children with narcissistic, unavailable parents, she kept going back to the well, unable to accept the fact that it was dry.
    Janet, cool it! You came here for antiques! The Claire Livingstons of the world are no longer your responsibility.
    But I couldn’t stop myself, damn it.
    I walked over and put a hand on her shoulder. “Why don’t you see if the college has some housing for you. And maybe check Craigslist.”
    Claire looked up at me and managed a quivery, embarrassed smile. She got up and grabbed a paper towel, blew her nose and gulped some air. “That’s a good idea.”
    “Well, I should be heading out.”
    “When you do find Aunt Daphne, please give her my love.”

It was still drizzling, a gentle drizzle, but it felt good to be out in the open air. It always does.
    I made a quick recheck of Daphne’s digs. No sign of her. Her car was still in the drive; she was probably out for that walk. I headed around the side of the house. The view from the crest of the hill was fantastic—the river, Sawyerville on the far bank, the Catskills rising up in the distance. I realized I was dead opposite the spot where Vince Hammer wanted to build his mini-city. Not only would his plan fuck up Sawyerville, it would screw up a lot of views on this side of the river.
    From where I was standing, there was a path that led down to an overgrown formal garden, and beyond that to some kind of folly or summerhouse. Even if I didn’t find Daphne, I’d get to walk and clear my head.
    The path was flagstone, old and wide, cut into the slope and flanked by mossy stone walls as it descended. The garden itself had once been grand and classical, but was now overgrown, ruined and dreamy, centered around a pocked stone fountain of frolicking nymphs, highlighted by the defiant blooms of rugged old roses. I imagined it in its heyday—manicured, lawn parties, ladies in long dresses, gentlemen in hats, Daphne’s childhood in a gilded bubble.
    I headed down toward the folly, which sat on a perch above the train tracks and the river. It was rundown too, but pretty cool—octagonal, stone halfway up, then open, finally topped by an onion dome like a Russian church. As I got close, I saw a flash of blue inside. For a moment I thought it was a large bird. I stopped, focused: it was a robe … a quilted blue robe. Hanging from the rafters.
    Daphne was in the robe.
    I hurried down the path and stepped into the folly. Daphne was hanging from a noose made from the robe’s belt, her feet dangling about three feet above the ground, a chair nearby. Her head hung over her collarbone, her mouth was slightly open, her tongue protruding. Her eyes were open too, but her eyeballs were rolled back and all I could see was white. The expression on her face wasn’t that final peace we all dream about.
    It was terror.

It was quiet, wet, the world seemed very still—it was just me and Daphne’s corpse.
    I was with my friend Lena when she died of ovarian cancer, and my friend Manny when he died of AIDS. Fear at the end is common; death is a scary river to cross. But this was different. I barely knew this woman, and it looked