But surely not. Surely she would’ve started with me. (I deserve that much, don’t I?)

I dashed to the corridor. Washroom to my left. Emma’s room to my right. One ringing with the delicate patter of water on water. One silent as a tomb.

I went to the left.

In the washroom, the light was not on but I could see enough to know what I was up against. The tub was filled to overflowing, and a thin trickle of water spilled slowly, dripping over the lip, splashing down to the white hexagonal tiles, into a puddle that covered half the floor. My feet were soaked before I noticed. The water was spreading, pooling, creeping out into the hallway and the floors might be ruined but I hardly noticed, and did not care.

I stood half paralyzed in the doorway, until I shook myself lucid enough to fumble for the gaslight switch. When the hiss came and the light sparked it was too much—entirely too much—and I winced against the sudden brightness, but I could not look away.

I knew what was in the tub, so full of water, with a placid surface unbroken by anything except the coiling tendrils of Nance’s hair. Moving languidly. Stirred only by the persistent stream that still trickled from the tap.

I wondered what it meant, that the tap was mostly off. Either she’d been there an hour or more to fill it, at that rate, or she’d thought to turn it off when she was finished filling the tub. I told myself that must be it—it must have been a deliberate act, and she was still alive, still herself inside that muttering shell of skin.

Honestly, I had no idea. I still don’t know. Perhaps I never will.

But there she was. Wholly submerged, unmoving.

I moved, but I did it slowly, sluggishly. The whole moment was dreamlike in its stickiness, like I could walk toward the tub forever and ever and never reach it. Except that I did reach it, and I looked down, and I saw her wearing the oversized nightdress of mine that positively swam on me, as my stepmother would have put it—and I hated the phrase, because yes, it swam and billowed, and it was almost translucent. I could see every nook and curve of her skin through the light white cotton, pouring around her body, floating there, suspended just beneath the surface. Eyes wide-open, staring up toward me, but not at me. Mouth slightly parted. Wholly submerged. Unmoving. Ophelia drowned, needing only the flowers in her hair to make it uncanny.

There were no flowers. Only the body, almost as pale as the nightdress, almost as translucent. Serene, I wanted to say.

My throat was full of fear, full of my heart—which had leaped there and stuck like the inconstant bastard it truly was.

I didn’t know what to do.