Mildred Fischer. Mildred Fischer Dalton Taggart, as it were. Fat Mildred, now the ex–Mrs. Taggart, and ex–Mrs. Dalton, was still living in Syracuse, New York.

“Stayed near the scene of the crime, so to speak,” Mr. McAfee joked.

“Eh.” Vivian attempted a courtesy laugh, as she leaned down to pick up her pocketbook and gloves. She didn’t want to seem rude.

The office seemed to be getting smaller and smaller and Don McAfee and his messy desk appeared to be swaying as Vivian withdrew the stack of bills from her pocketbook and aimed them in the direction of the desk. She slipped on a pile of papers on her way to the door, but caught herself in time, steadying herself on the broken coatrack next to the file cabinet.

“Mrs. Dalton, call if you need anything,” the baritone voice boomed after her as she hurried away from the office that had shrunk down to a mouse hole behind her. Holding one hand on the wall, she teetered through the south end of the factory to get to the parking lot, the smell of chocolate filling her nostrils. It would never be the same for her after this, that smell. Chocolate. She would always associate it with this. This personal disaster that was ruining her life.

She made it to the Buick, opened the door, and slid onto the icy leather of the front seat, pulling the door shut. Breathing in and out and staring straight ahead over the steering wheel, she sat there. Watching her breath crystallize in the air, and remembering how she’d once sat in Edward’s Model A doing the exact same thing on their very first date. The windows of the Buick had iced over while she was inside the office, and she knew she’d need to get out and scrape them off if she expected to be able to see while driving home. But first, she wanted to see what it felt like to get close to freezing to death. Alone.

Chapter 21

Charlotte waited until she was alone in the house to sneak up to her mother’s weird office attic room. Her curiosity had previously been tempered by the fear of what she might find in there. She was reluctant to visit the room in much the same way she’d be reluctant to reach her arm into a dank, rotting log in the middle of the woods out at Christmas Run Park, but late last night, well after her mother had come home, she’d heard an incessant rat-tat-tat-tat-ing of the typewriter and wondered what it was that was so urgent her mother had to be typing it at three o’clock in the morning.

She stepped softly over the rug that ran along the upstairs hallway, and tiptoed up the short four-step staircase to the attic level, and then tiptoed some more over to the tiny terrifying attic room. The door opened with a loud creak. It wasn’t a rotting log, but the room was cramped and musty, and for some reason smelled like cigarette smoke. Charlotte quickly crossed over to the desk, leaned over the typewriter, and pushed up the window sash. The air that slowly eased in through the window was frigid but clear.