My Husband's First Wife Died a Saint, Then I Found Her Key novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: The Attic
She tries the key in every lock in the house, finds one bag missing from the dead wife's luggage, and kisses her new husband on the attic stairs until his mother's cane sounds below.
Beatrix brought the coffee to my bedroom door at seven, and the tray held a bottle of Fleur Blanche.
"One spray at each wrist," she said. "Ivy never wore more."
I took the cup and left the bottle on the tray.
"I'll pass on the perfume."
"The pearls, then."
"The pearls I'll wear," I said, because I had learned that you give a woman like that one thing so she doesn't notice the three you keep.
She set a typed sheet on the dresser.
Breakfast at eight, lunch at one, dinner at six on Sundays and seven on every other night.
White lilies on the fourteenth of each month.
Mrs. Habersham does not work.
"I have a shift Monday," I said.
"You had a shift," Beatrix said pleasantly. "It is in the paper you signed. Call them on Monday, Edith."
I called nobody.
I spent the day in a silk blouse of Ivy's.
I tested the little brass key on every lock a new wife could reach without being caught.
It was too small for the sewing room and too thin for the trunk at the foot of the bed.
It did not fit the roll-top desk in the hall, or the liquor cabinet, or the china closet.
The house was built in 1841, and its locks were old iron mortise boxes with keyholes the size of my thumb.
The key in my pocket was a short, bright thing that belonged to a different kind of door.
Whoever Ivy was, she had not hidden it for a lock in this house.
At eleven that night I took a flashlight and went up to the attic in the nightgown from the dresser drawer.
It was white cotton lawn, long and thin, and it was the only thing there that was clean.
The attic was a long room under the slates, full of crated lamps and framed charts of the harbor.
At the far end stood a luggage rack with four hooks.
Three were hung with leather cases that had a monogram in gold, I.R.M.
The fourth hook was empty, and the dust around it was clean.
I had heard about the missing bag at breakfast, because I had asked.
"She took the little blue weekender down to the dock for her sketches," Beatrix said. "Foolish girl. The river has that too."
Nobody takes a weekender to draw herons at dawn.
I stood there with the flashlight and my own pulse in my ears, holding a thought I did not yet know how to hold.
The stair creaked behind me.
"You'll want a lamp," Patrick said.
He came up the last three steps with a work lamp on a cord and stopped about two feet from me.
His sleeves were rolled and there was plaster dust on one forearm.
"I heard the stairs," he said. "I thought it was Mother."
"It's me."
"I see that."
His eyes went down the nightgown and came up again, and he said nothing.
His breath was not steady, and I noticed that the way I notice anything on a patient.
"Are you looking for something?" he asked.
"A bag."
"There's a lot of luggage up here."
"Not enough," I said.
He didn't ask what I meant.
He stood with the lamp in his big scarred hand and his jaw working.
I wondered how long a man has to go without being touched before he forgets what to do with his hands.
The attic was narrow.
I took one step, and I was close enough to smell lime and soap.
"Patrick," I said.
It was the first time I had said it.
His whole body answered it.
I put my hand flat on his chest and felt his heart going hard under the cotton.
Then I went up on my toes and kissed him.
He made a low sound against my mouth.
The lamp swung on its cord and threw our shadows across the rafters.
His free hand found my waist, and he backed me into the post of the rack.
He kissed me hungry and unpracticed; he had forgotten how, and his hands remembered.
His hand slid down the nightgown to my hip and gathered the thin cotton up, and his palm found the bare skin of my thigh.
I heard myself moan.
"God," he said against my throat. "You don't know what you're doing."
"I know exactly what I'm doing. I'm a nurse."
His thumb moved higher on the inside of my leg, and my knees went.
He stopped.
He took his hand away and set his forehead against mine.
"Mrs. Habersham," he said, rough. "I can't."
That name again, in that voice.
"Then bring a door next time, Mr. Habersham," I said. "Because I'm not stopping on my own."
A laugh went out of him, a short startled sound.
Below us, on the second-floor landing, a cane tapped on the boards.
"Patrick?" Beatrix called up the stairwell. "Is someone in the attic?"
← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend