“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Beatty said, rising to his feet. “It could be nothing. I’ll call you when I know anything for certain.”

“Unacceptable,” Nora snapped, also getting to her feet. “Beatty Barnes, I demand to know what that message on your phone said.”

“Goodbye, Nora.” Beatty placed his old fishing hat on his head. “It’s always a pleasure, Izzy.”

Nora dropped back down into her chair. “Infuriating.”

The three of us fell into an uneasy silence.

We knew Beatty had more than just one friend down at the station. He would be the first to know if there was any speculation we were somehow responsible for Constance’s death. But how could we be? It was an accident. Even though the bath had been running, the floor had been dry. We had the proper bathmats. Handrails. She had fallen. That was all.

But if I were to be completely honest, I wasn’t sure that was true.

Something had been bothering me since we first found Constance.

It was a small thing, and I was certainly no expert, but I couldn’t seem to put it out of my mind.

There was no blood on the edge of the tub.

If she had fallen and hit her head, wouldn’t there have been blood? She could have hit her head on the floor, but she was on her side, not her back. Surely her shoulder would have blocked a direct blow.

Again, I had no experience with this kind of thing, but it seemed odd.

And then there had been all of that banging and door slamming before Nora had gone up. Looking back, it had almost sounded as though someone had been up there with her. Faustus had been acting strangely too, and he did have a canny sense of when things weren’t quite right.

But no, there couldn’t have been someone upstairs with Constance. We would have known.

I was being ridiculous. It had been an accident. Nothing more.

Of course, in the past there was a way I could have found out for sure. But that was all a long time ago. A different lifetime. It was no longer an option.

“Brynn,” Nora said, breaking me from my reverie. When I caught her expression, I knew she had been thinking the same thing.

“We’ve been over this,” I said, putting my coffee mug down on the table with a bit of a clatter. “There’s no point in going over it again.”

“So, you’re not even going to try?” she asked.

“I have tried.”

“I can understand why you were not willing to do anything about your problem before, but, surely, given what’s happened it’s time to reconsider.”

“You’re not listening to me. There’s no point.”

“That’s not true. There are things we can try.”

“No, there are not. I’ve already tried. It’s not happening.”

“But you haven’t tried everything. You know you haven’t tried everything.”

We warred gazes, but I was not backing down. My aunt was crossing a line here, and she knew it.