Epilogue

The pot of Earl Grey sends notes of honey and bergamot swirling through the sunbeam-streaked air of the kitchen. Saoirse is arranging cups and saucers beside a sugar bowl and creamer on a decorative wooden tray when the telephone rings. She smiles when she sees who’s calling.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, honey,” her mother says. “How are you?”

Saoirse pulls out a chair from the table and sinks into it. From her periphery, two orange prescription bottles gleam in the window’s light from their shelf in the open cabinet. “Dr. Carrigan says everything looked really good at my last visit,” Saoirse says. “She doesn’t think there’ll be any long-term damage.”

She fingers the petals of a pink rose at the center of the table, listening for a voice, vain and sardonic— You were a thorn-choked black rose in a sea of pale-pink ones —but nothing comes. Saoirse closes her eyes. It’ll take time to get used to the silence in her head; no echoes of Emmit, no guilt-induced commentary from her husband. “How are you?” she asks.

Her mother laughs. “Leave it to you to ask how I’m doing after all you’ve been through. I’m well. At a bit of a crossroads, however, hoping to get an answer on something.”

“What’s that?”

“How soon is too soon to visit you again?”

It’s Saoirse’s turn to laugh. “You were here last weekend.” Her mother stays silent, and Saoirse chuckles again. “Come whenever you’d like. I’m happy to have you.”

She thinks of how she held her mother at arm’s length for most of her marriage to Jonathan. How she kept her distance from her even more aggressively after her mother had not only agreed but insisted that they say Saoirse had been in Connecticut the whole weekend, that she’d arrived home Sunday evening and found Jonathan dead, feeling the vise of guilt tighten around her heart at how she’d implicated her mother. How she’d implicated only her mother, the one person in her life she wished to spare pain. She doesn’t feel that way anymore. Like Jonathan’s voice in her head, that guilt has left. She refuses to make space for it, refuses to allow it in.

“You know,” Saoirse says, reaching down to pet Pluto, “when I woke up in that grave and the dirt was everywhere—in my mouth, in my eyes—a memory came back to me, of running through the woods as a little girl, with you. How we climbed trees to peer into birds’ nests and dug for worms.” Saoirse pauses, her throat tightening. “You were with me every moment of my childhood after Dad turned his back on even weekend custody by moving out of state. You never showed one ounce of bitterness or regret for anything you did for me, any sacrifice you made.”

The tears are coming now, streaming silently down her face. Saoirse swallows. “I think it was as much of a reason for not wanting to have a child as my heart condition was,” she continues. “I am who I am because of my amazing, patient, compassionate, and levelheaded mother. And I know myself; I’d never have lived up to even half the mother you were.”

Her mother is crying as well; Saoirse hears the muffled sounds through the phone. “You would have,” her mother says, her voice cracking. “You would have been a fantastic mother, but I’m glad you didn’t pursue it. It was too risky for you. I’m glad I have my daughter, and nothing is worth anything otherwise. Nothing.”

Saoirse cannot speak through her tears.

“I know you have company this afternoon,” her mother says after a moment. “I won’t keep you. I just wanted to check in, and—”

“Come next weekend,” Saoirse interrupts. “If that’s good for you.”

Another sniffle, and then she says, “That’s perfect. I’ll call you in a couple of days to make sure it still works with your schedule. I know you’re on a writing deadline.”

“The manuscript’s not due for a few months.”

“Who would have thought your old agent was looking for memoirs?” The slight disbelief in her mother’s voice makes Saoirse smile; that slight disbelief is exactly how Saoirse feels.

“Who knew I had a memoir in me?”

Though, is it really a memoir? The police recovered Emmit Powell’s body—no, Willem Thomas’s, for “Emmit Powell” had indeed been a pen name, adopted to distance himself from not just his hometown but his transgressions against Matilda Crabb. Everything about Saoirse’s story—the syringe Emmit had fallen on after brandishing it against Saoirse, the way she’d had to board him up in the alcove to escape—tracked, especially considering the horrific tortures he’d inflicted upon her. These are the parts of the story Saoirse will keep to herself. Or, rather, the parts she will keep between her and her mother, her and her closest friends.

After they’ve said their goodbyes and Saoirse’s hung up the phone, she returns to the tea tray, adds the small vase of pink roses, and starts through the house. In the walkout, she lets her eyes stray briefly to the trapdoor. They haven’t returned to the basement, haven’t held a séance since Saoirse escaped the catacombs, but she thinks they will. She wants to, anyway. Wants to reach out to Sarah directly. To say thank you. Or, maybe, goodbye.

For now, her friends wait outdoors by the rosebushes on a new patio Saoirse convinced Diane to let her hire contractors to install. It’s not as if Saoirse could forget what lies beneath Sarah Whitman’s house, or much of Benefit Street, but the patio serves a purpose: it reminds Saoirse to keep her focus on the world above, on the realm of sunlight and blooming flowers.

The moment Saoirse steps out of the walkout, Roberto runs up to take the tray from her.

“You didn’t have to host us,” he says. “We could have gone for coffee at Carr Haus.”

“No way,” Saoirse says. “You know I need every opportunity to use up all this tea you three have gifted me over the last nine months.”

Lucretia gives Saoirse a long hug. Mia’s gaze is on the rosebushes, but she turns to Saoirse after Lucretia releases her.

“How are you?”

Saoirse studies Mia’s face, looking for any clue as to the woman’s emotions, the thoughts swirling beneath the knife-slash part of her brown hair and the tranquil, sleepy eyes. Mia still hasn’t opened up to Saoirse about her past. Not completely. But Saoirse thinks that will happen, too, in time. “Never better,” Saoirse says, and Roberto chuckles. “Come on, make your tea while the water’s hot.”

While Roberto and Lucretia argue over whether it’s unhealthy to drink caffeine in the afternoon, and Mia pours herself half a cup of Earl Grey, Saoirse stares beyond the rosebushes, to where the gravestones cast shadows on the spongy grass. The grave that Emmit desecrated to stage Saoirse’s premature burial was repaired by the historical society. Grass has started sprouting from the expanse of fresh dirt.

“I spoke with Aidan yesterday,” she starts, and three pairs of eyes fix on her. “He called to see how I was doing.” She pauses, sighs. “I still can’t believe I was so scared of what he knew of Jonathan’s death, I never let him close enough to explain it. That he knew Jonathan had been abusing me for years and planned to keep the existence of Jonathan’s last text message a secret as reparation for not confronting him.”

“As he should,” Mia says. “He’s an obstetrician, for goodness’ sake. I would think his code of ethics would have bound him to do something when he realized how hell-bent Jonathan was on having a baby regardless of the danger to you.”

“Though, coming to check on you after realizing there was something weird about Emmit was sweet too,” Lucretia chimes in. “Who knows ... if we hadn’t stormed the Shunned House, maybe Aidan would have been the one to save the day.”

Mia shrugs, and Saoirse bites her lip to keep from smiling. She knows Mia is wary of Aidan, isn’t keen on his simple promise to keep Saoirse’s secret. But Saoirse doesn’t fear Aidan any longer. Aidan’s shared things with her, things about his relationship with her late husband, things that spoke to the imbalance of power between the two men. The secrets Jonathan forced Aidan to keep, from cheating to get into law school to siphoning money from the charity organizations he oversaw.

She looks to where Benefit Street intersects with Church and says softly, “It wasn’t much of a surprise to find out Jonathan’s manipulation extended well beyond me, into his relationship with Aidan.”

There is silence, and then Roberto asks, “Wasn’t the restoration crew here last week, working on the, um, grave Emmit disturbed?”

She nods. “I came out to see what they were doing. I guess part of me wanted to see the place I’d dug myself out of again. To view it in the light of day. A man started speaking with me. Mostly small talk—he had no idea who I was. Until he saw the pendant around my neck.”

Saoirse reaches up to finger the metal coffin. It’s never felt strange to continue wearing it. On the contrary, she likes what it reminds her of: Security. Resourcefulness. Escape.

“It was Levi Leland. Emmit’s contact from the historical society. He told me the pendant I was wearing, the one Emmit”—Saoirse makes air quotes—“‘found’ there?” She points to the rosebushes. “It had been part of the Athen?um’s Sarah Whitman collection since her death in 1878. Emmit made an appointment to see it with a member of the library’s staff, then supposedly never showed. When the librarian returned to the Art Room, the pendant was missing.

“A staff member reported the theft to the police, but there were no leads, and of course, no one thought to suspect Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Emmit Powell. He was questioned as a formality—why he had made the appointment, why he hadn’t shown up, that kind of thing—but was quickly dismissed.”

Saoirse pauses. “I thought Levi would ask for the necklace back, and I put my hand to my throat, ready to unclasp it, but he stopped me. ‘I read about Emmit,’ he said. ‘What he did to you.’ I nodded, surprised, and told him the pendant was how I escaped. ‘You should keep it,’ he said, and winked at me. ‘Sarah would want you to have it.’”

“I still can’t believe Emmit stole it in the first place,” Lucretia says. “And pretended to find it in your rose garden to convince you that the two of you were manifesting magic, possessed by the spirits of Sarah Whitman and Edgar Allan Poe.” She pauses, staring at Saoirse from under her long, dark lashes. “Did you believe him?” she asks gently.

Saoirse is quiet for a long time. Roberto pours her a cup of tea, adds a generous spoonful of honey, and pushes it across the table. She smiles and sips from it. Finally, she says, “I think a small part of me did.” She waits to have to defend herself, to say she knows how stupid it sounds, but no such demands come.

“Why Poe, do you think?” Lucretia asks.

“What do you mean?” Roberto says.

“I mean, why did Emmit fixate on Poe’s life and career for his authorial road map and cast Saoirse as his Sarah? Why not Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes? Or Mary and Percy Shelley?”

Saoirse bites her lip. “Who knows? Pure chance? Bad luck? But whatever was inside him that made him believe this path was the only way to success, it was kicked into overdrive by his arrival in Providence, by his proximity to this house.”

“It’s hard,” Mia says, “because there was a residual haunting that was happening.”

Roberto looks from Mia to Saoirse and back again. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, it wasn’t a coincidence Saoirse came to Providence. Sarah’s energy called her here. Residual hauntings don’t have to be negative.”

Saoirse considers this. “She did get me writing again,” she admits. “I knew all along it was her. It was never Emmit.”

They are silent for several minutes until Lucretia starts riffling around in her purse. She comes out with a deck of tarot cards and slaps them onto the patio table.

“Who’s up for a reading?” she asks. A glint of mischief lights her eyes behind the thick-framed glasses.

Roberto and Mia exchange glances. “Saoirse?” Roberto says. “I think it should be you.”

Lucretia looks at Saoirse, and Saoirse nods. She watches the mesmerizing flick of Lucretia’s fingers as she shuffles, the glint of her rings, then allows her gaze to wander, up the red siding of Sarah Whitman’s house, along the boughs of the trees lining the graveyard, to the gold statue atop the statehouse, floating among the clouds.

She ponders what she will ask the cards. How long she’ll live here? How long she’ll call the people before her friends? Or should she ask whether the voice in her head will remain hers and hers alone? She’s not sure. But she doesn’t worry about it. In a moment, when Lucretia asks her to pose her question, that question will come. Because the voice inside her persists, crafting stanzas, forming paragraphs. Telling her story.

Hers, and hers alone.