“Dear, it’s not you, no, no, it’s the house!!” And with that she plunges the knife, meant for me, into the stair just beneath me and . . . at the very same moment, I hurl the chinoiserie vase at her head. It lands with a crack on her skull and then falls down the stairs, breaking into a hundred pieces, and in the silence, then, she is left, staring up at me with horrified eyes.

I stand there on the top of the third-floor landing, as a drop of blood comes down from her orange hat, followed by a streamlet, then a stream. Her eyes are fixed on me, startled, but then, something else . . . a glimmer of something, almost a smile.

“You see, deary . . .” The blood is now dripping down over her blouse, her skirt, onto the floor. “. . . it’s the house.”

And with that she stutter-steps backward, and that step is too faulty, too uneven, to keep her, but in a moment there, she seems suspended in the air, with that half smile and that blood coming down. And then down she falls backward, over the chinoiserie vase shards, over herself, into the railing.

Onto the landing below.

Chapter 25

I stand there now, at the top of the landing, looking over the banister, frozen.

Below me, on the second-floor landing, is a crumpled mass of filthy, disheveled, mismatched patterns now splotched in blood, a new pattern, a blotch pattern, and the body, inanimate, the orange hat, displaced, and a stream of blood making its way across the floorboards, heading toward the rug. A Persian rug, probably worth a fortune.

What did I just do?

I can’t even say the words. Or think the thought.

Did that just happen?

But clearly it did.

I mean, look at her. There she is, for all the world to see, splayed out on the parquet floor.

Jesus Christ.

No, not a swear word. Really, just . . . Jesus Christ. Help me. What do I do? What have I done?

Okay, this happened to me once before. I remember . . . Grandma was teaching me how to drive, and a man ran out into the road, and I had to swerve, and we almost crashed into a wooden pole, but then I turned just in time, and we were fine, and and and . . . I just had to do deep breaths . . . and count back from ten . . .

Ten. Nine. Eight. Yes, breath. Seven. Six. Slow it down. Five. Four. There you go. Three. Two . . . One.

Daffodil. Calm down.

You can do this.

I take a moment to assess.

Okay.

This is bad. Yes, solve the problems. Take them in order.

What is the immediate problem?

Exhale.

The immediate problem is there is a dead body on the landing.

A dead body that you put there.

You are a murderer.

Okay, back to one.