Bridget tore through the sitting room so fast I felt the breeze. She raced for the kitchen. The side door banged shut. A moment later, the retching began. The woman on the sofa shook her head and poked her needle through the fabric again; then, after the first stroke, she stopped. Her gaze lifted to the ceiling, where we could hear Abby bustling about. Then she tilted her head toward the back of the house. The sounds of Bridget’s vomiting continued.

The woman cautiously rose to her feet, looked around again, laid down her needlepoint, and headed for the front hall.

“I swear she looked right at me a minute ago,” I said to Kristof.

I hurried after her, with Kristof at my heels. In the hall, the woman stopped and latched the inner bolt. Then she turned and climbed the stairs.

“You!” I called after her. “Hold on!”

She didn’t pause. At the top, she walked across the hall and through an open bedroom door where Abby was making the bed. A man’s trousers hung over a chair, and shaving implements littered the bureau, next to a wash-basin filled with scum-and-whisker-coated water. On the floor was an open suitcase.

“Make yourself useful and dump that water, Lizzie,” Abby said.

The younger woman—Lizzie—didn’t move. “I heard Uncle John talking to Father last night.”

“Eavesdropping?” Abby said.

“I hear Father is going to change his will.”

“That’s his business. Not yours.”

Lizzie circled the bed, staying across the room from Abby. “But it is my business, isn’t it? You don’t think Emma and I know what you’re doing? First persuading Father to let your sister stay in the house on Fourth Street, then persuading him to transfer ownership of that house to you, and now a new will.”

“I don’t know anything about a new will,” Abby said.

Lizzie crossed the room and looked out the front window, turning her back on the woman I assumed was her stepmother. “So there is no new will?”

“No, there isn’t. If your father has written one, he would have told me.”

Lizzie nodded. She walked to the bureau and picked up the water basin. A few moments later, she returned the empty basin to the guest room. Then, without a word to her stepmother, she headed for a bedroom farther down.

Downstairs, the side door banged again. I looked toward Lizzie’s bedroom, but whatever fire seemed to have been starting up here had sputtered out. Better check out the situation below.

We found Bridget back in the parlor, washing the side windows now. From upstairs came the sound of footsteps. Then a few muffled exchanges. Bridget paused her cleaning and looked toward the dining room, as if the voices came from in there.

“At least they’re talking again,” she murmured.