How would she react? Would she send me away? Or, by the time it happened, would I be so entrenched in life here that there would be no fallout? I’d seen her annoyed at Agatha, but she never punished her. You couldn’t punish someone who was so sick that she had no idea what she was even doing most of the time. And maybe you couldn’t punish an orphan, either.

Barrett would be home soon, and then I could observe up close the way a normal teenager acted around Laura.

If he even was normal. Laura loved to go on and on about his achievements at school: star of the lacrosse team, student government VP, honor roll . . . and how he had dated two different state senators’ daughters last year, when he was only in tenth grade. I’d heard enough about the extraordinary Barrett Sutton to make me wish he would stay away for the rest of the summer.

AS DISAPPOINTED AS I was about being left behind, it was surreally relaxing to have some time by myself. On the other hand, the pressure to make good use of these few, precious hours was immense, and almost paralyzing. Should I go search the pantry for junk food? Should I fire up one of the ancient TV sets and see if it got any trashy daytime TV?

Or . . . should I see what else I could find out about Lily?

No, Margot. Don’t you dare.

Right. Obviously that was a terrible idea. If Laura wanted people wandering the green wing, she wouldn’t have locked the door.

Without a clear idea of where I was going, I left the nursery.

I let my hand rest on the banister, and as I did, I wondered how many people before me had touched the gleaming polished surface as they went up or down these stairs. How many of them had been important or famous? How many of them had secrets? How many had tragedies in their pasts—or futures? How many lived to be a hundred? How many died young?

An unpleasant tingle spiraled down my spine as I imagined the stairs crowded with the ghosts of all those people. Because if there were such things as ghosts, wasn’t this where they would be—stuck in the space between spaces?

No. That was foolish. Even if I believed in ghosts, which I didn’t, the last ones I’d be concerned with were rich strangers.

I imagined my own family, waiting in the shadows of the foyer, their skin the color of molding bread, puffy and moist. The image was so vivid that I could almost smell the scent of stale canal water wafting up toward me.

I stopped halfway down to catch my breath and reassure myself that this was just my crazy imagination. Obviously my family was not waiting for me in the foyer.

But what if they were?

I turned and went back upstairs.