“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” I say, my voice splitting in two.

Bee nods solemnly. “After everything he’s done to her, I want to help. I want…”

She trails off, that familiar faraway look on her face. I hate it when she gets this way. So melancholy, so strange.

“We have plenty of room,” I say, trying to be helpful.

Bee brightens again. “Thank you, Lucy. I knew you’d understand.”

And with that, she’s gone again, returned to Jane in the other room.

Except she’s wrong. I don’t understand this at all. Why would she ever want to help the woman who replaced her, the second wife who let her burn to death in that attic? Someone I always thought was no more than a stranger to her.

But they’re not acting like strangers. Late afternoon whispers in, and the two of them are still together in the parlor.

“How many people were in the house in San Francisco with you?” Bee asks.

“Too many.” Jane heaves out a tired laugh. “You know how Edward always loved a party.”

I try not to listen. Instead, I concern myself with the decay. It follows me everywhere I go, the rot of me leeching into the plaster. Without Bee to help, it comes quicker than usual.

A blot the color of cancer swirls on the wallpaper in the hall, and I pursue it with a broom, eager to beat it from existence. But it’s faster than I am, slithering along the crown molding, hiding in the cracks, taunting me.

“You can’t stay up there forever,” I say, glowering, but I’m wrong, because it hovers there for hours until nightfall. When it finally starts to drip down in the corners, thick as tears, rank as roadkill, I chase it farther down the hall, crushing it with the bent bristles of the broom. Over and over until there’s nothing left. Triumphant, I look up, and my cheeks flush. I’m standing in the doorway of the parlor, and Bee and Jane are both watching me.

“Lucy,” Bee says, as though she hasn’t seen me in years. “Come sit with us.”

But I don’t move, the broom drooping in my grasp. The rot hasn’t settled in the parlor today. Everything around the two of them looks gleaming and new. Jane’s curled up on the fainting couch, watching Bee as she hums along to the Victrola.

“I’ve always loved your singing,” Jane says. “I could recognize you from anywhere.”

Unease shifts inside me. “Is that how you found us?” I ask. “By listening for Bee?”

By eavesdropping, I mean.

Jane goes rigid, her face gaunter than before. “Yes,” she says finally. “Once I left him, I knew this was the only place I could go.”

I look to Bee, but this revelation, this blatant intrusion, doesn’t seem to bother her.