Chapter 7

7

It didn't take me long to empty my two suitcases. I put things into the rickety dresser drawers. I put the sheets on my bed, arranged the single throw pillow April had provided, put out my toiletries and the smattering of samples and mistakes that I smilingly call my makeup collection. And in a place of pride, on the middle of the bureau, the Midnight Rose lipstick Akilah had given me.

Maybe it was the bouncing vibes or just the fact that being new can sometimes feel like dislike, but I slipped into a funk. I had entered the time of day when, for some reason, I always felt depressed about Akilah. It was always just as the sun was going down that my mood would free-fall. It was like I could sense the ghosts of all the summer nights we were supposed to have had together. I should have called my parents, but they would have heard my bummed-out tone and worried. I texted. I sat down on the edge of my squeaky new bed and scrolled on my phone as the shadows fell over my room. I was so lost in my murky thoughts that I didn't notice it had passed seven. Only the little knock on the door shook me out of it.

"Dinner!" April said as she peered around the side.

I was surprised to find that, in my gloomy absence, April and Van had gone to some trouble to make the grand dining room into a proper little party for me.

I was ushered to a place at the mahogany table set with silver plastic dishes and a napkin that someone had attempted to fold into some shape. It was kind of a spiky triangle situation.

"It's a swan," Van said. "Napkin art is my passion."

"We just wanted you to have a good first night," April said. "And— Oh, hey! Good! Everyone's here."

Two new people joined us. The first was a stunning girl with short hair wearing a pair of white sweatpants and a cropped hoodie. From her posture and gait, it was clear that she was an athlete. She moved well, the way I think you're supposed to, head and hips and feet all properly aligned. I'd seen my reflection as I'd walked into the ballroom earlier and I looked like I was walking against the wind.

I straightened up.

"I'm Liani Harris," the girl said.

The other person was a guy, maybe two inches shorter than me, but built out by several inches. Every part of him had been worked out. Even his forearms were cut. He had a confusingly even tan and professionally white teeth. He reminded me of a potato, for some reason. A nicely baked potato, ready to burst with a little squeeze.

"Tom," the other person said, extending his hand. "Tom Keeting."

I'm not sure I'd ever done a handshake before, largely because I don't spend my time closing deals or greeting foreign leaders. Tom gripped my hand much more firmly than I expected, giving my hand a quick crunch and a shake. He was a polite potato.

"Marlowe," I said. "Wexler."

"It's good to have you here, Marlowe," he replied.

Was it? Liani seemed less convinced, and I agreed with her.

"Okay!" April said. "Let's eat! So we have the chicken thing again tonight. Do you eat chicken, Marlowe? This one is good. It's got tomatoes and onions and peppers. This mac and cheese is made with butternut squash, so it's vegan, and here's salad. And there's no nuts in anything..."

April rambled on about the meal while the others sat and began filling their plates. I was genuinely touched by all this effort. Here I was, some random weirdo who'd been thrust on them, and they were trying to make me welcome. Maybe I'd been wrong. Maybe this would be the best summer ever. I began to feel the lift. Yes. Though I had been brought low with the fire, perhaps I could rise. I could work my way back into polite society. I could convince Akilah that I probably wouldn't burn two houses down. It would be a funny story someday. And it all started here, at this table, in the room with the moss-green walls.

Do you ever get like this? Think a dozen thoughts at once and go up like a balloon or sink like a balloon with a rock in it? Just ping around with no emotional middle point? If so, get in touch with me at once. We'll go have confusing times together.

"So," Liani said, "what do you think so far?"

I tried to think of something significant to say, something that would convey that I understood she was just being nice, but also that I was paying attention to what I had seen, and also that I was funny and altogether a pleasure to be around.

What I said was "It's big."

Tom passed me the mac and cheese. "Liani and I are the outdoor people. I handle boats and the dock side, and Liani is the lifeguard at the lagoon."

"I'm sort of the opposite of a lifeguard," I said.

It was meant as a joke, but Liani cocked her head at me. There is no delete button for real-life conversations, and that is most of my problem.

"What does that mean?" she said. "You can't swim?"

"I can swim," I said. "I mean, I won't sink. But I don't think I swim correctly? My strokes are... not right, but... I won't sink?"

No one wanted to hear whatever I was saying, so I stopped.

"We grew up here, so we can all swim," April said, helpfully ending this strange interlude.

"My family is in boating," Tom cut in.

" In boating," Van repeated. "Not into. In."

"Uncle Jim's? The boat you rode in on? My dad and my aunt own it. It's been in the family for fifty years. My grandfather started it. We do tours, fishing, boat rentals."

Tom reminded me of someone running for office. I wouldn't have been surprised if he concluded this by saying I'm Tom Keeting, and I approve this message .

"So," Van said. "You're from Syracuse, right? Why do you think Henson brought you here?"

He was saying what they must have all been wondering.

"My history teacher knows her. Maybe I could learn the stuff fast enough? I'm good at memorizing. And you're short a person or something?"

This had a strange effect on the assembled.

"Short," Van repeated, toying with his fork. "I guess we are. Short a person. It's a weird phrase, right? Short. You're short. Short..."

Liani drilled her gaze into her mac and cheese. April fluttered a bit and leaned in, about to speak, when someone else entered the room. Riki, headphones around her neck, leaking sound, dropped into a chair next to me.

"Riki!" Van said. "Joining us tonight?"

"There a problem with that, Van?"

"You know I have no problems with anything. I'm utterly frictionless . We never see you, is all. Not for dinner."

April's eyes went wide. Tom began forking up a massive amount of mac and cheese and shoveling it in with fervor. He ate like he knew something you didn't.

"So," I said, "I'm going to be an indoor guide? I guess I'll be going on tours for a few days. I learned a bunch of stuff from the guidebook. Dr. Henson was saying people like to see that rocky bit outside, where the girl fell? Clara?"

"People love damage," Riki said, digging away at her mac and cheese.

"Thanks for that," Liani said.

"It's true, though. People like to hear about crime, about war. They like to see the scars. People come here because they want to look at a big, expensive house where some people died."

"Not everyone is a freak," Liani said.

Everything was vibes. Vibes in all directions, bouncing around like sunbeams. I couldn't duck them.

"Nothing freakish about it, and nothing wrong with freaks. People love, have always loved, dark shit. And this place has a good story. Strange rich family, little boy drowns when no one is looking, older sister dances off the roof, house is left to rot, brother leaves a treasure..."

"Treasure?" I repeated. "That wasn't in the guide."

"Because it's bullshit," Liani said.

"Here are the facts," Riki went on. "Benjamin, the last surviving Ralston, used to come to the island every year until he died. He last came in 2002. He insisted on coming onto the island alone. As he got off the boat, he told the others he was going to bury a treasure, and he had something with him that he didn't have when he got back on the boat."

"Bullshit," Liani repeated.

"You're both correct," Dr. Henson said from the doorway. I hadn't heard her approach. It was unsettling. She had changed out of the green stick insect outfit and was now wearing a loose dress in light gray linen, with a heavy statement necklace made of gold beads with an owl pendant resting on her sternum.

"Riki is correct in that Benjamin is reported to have said it," she said. "Liani is correct in that I imagine it was a joke. You'll get to find this out quickly, Marlowe. Water people—sailors, people who live near oceans, rivers—they love a story. And these islands do have a lot of stories. My grandfather was a bootlegger. He smuggled whiskey in from Canada. He told me stories of how they used this island and this house, both while it was being built and when the family was here. In the fall and winter they had a free-for-all, but even in the summer, with the Ralstons in the building, they kept it going. The builders built in a little hiding spot in the house that wasn't on the plans."

"A hidden passage?" Tom asked.

"Nothing that exciting. More like a dank closet, far from anywhere the family might go. And there's no way that space is structurally sound, so I'm not telling you where it is. But it's also not very interesting. It's basically a closet. I've been in it. There's no treasure. It's full of old bottles and dead mice. Don't worry about the secret places. Look at what's around you, on display."

She waved her long-fingered hand around, indicating the room we were in, but I didn't see any potential evils. Just chicken and vegan mac and cheese.

Dr. Henson squinted at something on the other side of the room.

"Is that mirror crooked?" she asked. "I can't tell. I had corrective eye surgery last year. Before, if I had looked at that mirror without my glasses it would have been a blob on the wall. Now I don't know whether to trust my eyes."

Everyone turned. I couldn't tell if the mirror was crooked either, as the irregular gold pattern on the wallpaper made it impossible to tell which way was straight.

"Sometimes I wonder if it was worth getting my eyes fixed," she went on. "The past looks better when it's a little blurry. Soft focus. That's how we like our past. That's why we never learn."

I got the feeling that we'd been set up for that remark, that she'd never cared about the mirror and this was her opener for everything she ever did—history lectures, general small talk, drive-through orders.

"As a historian," she continued, "a lot of times I find that people ignore the obvious. Evil, especially. People act like if a thing is in front of them—if people come out and say or do something in full view of everyone—that somehow it must be okay. Because how can they be doing anything wrong if they're doing it for everyone to see? Evil isn't always smart. Some evil deeds are done through complex maneuvers in secret, but the biggest evils, the ones people get away with most often, are the ones done right out in the open."

"Are you talking about the dickheads who bought this place?" Van asked.

"Oh. Them." Dr. Henson's phone pinged and she picked it up, glancing at it. "I think those particular dickheads, as you put it, work both in the open and privately. Hence buying a castle on an island. Public, private—the lines can be blurry."

"Well, they're continuing the Ralston curse," Riki said.

I don't believe in curses, exactly, but I'd had some bad luck this summer and it seemed like the universe was sending Marlowe Wexler a message to keep her head down and lower her expectations.

"Curse?" I said, turning to Riki.

"Nothing good happened to that family," she replied.

"What happened is this," Dr. Henson cut in, unable to risk hearing history told incorrectly. She pulled out the chair at the far end of the table, keeping a little distance from us, and sat down. "On July twenty-seventh, 1932, Max Ralston drowned in the afternoon when he was left unattended. His sister Clara fell off the roof that night, presumably jumping due to grief. Faye Ralston, Max's mother, didn't recover from the shock. A month or two later, Phillip Ralston sought the advice of his medical colleagues, and decided to take her to the first private psychiatric facility in the United States, Craig House. Craig House was a modern facility run by Dr. Clarence Slocum. It's outside New York City in the town of Beacon. It was a very fancy place—Zelda Fitzgerald was there when Faye was. Marilyn Monroe would stay there later."

"Fancy," Van said.

"That's where Faye was during Christmas 1932, just five months after the deaths. Phillip rented a large house in the woods nearby so the family could spend the holiday together. But on the twenty-eighth of December, Dagmar, Phillip's sister, and Unity took a walk through the snow. They didn't know the area, so they didn't realize the snowy ground they were walking on was a frozen pond underneath. They fell through the ice and drowned. That's four members of the family dead between July and December.

"So now there were four Ralston children: William, Victory, Edward, and Benjamin. Victory attended Yale University, where she graduated from medical school with honors. William studied music at Juilliard, and Benjamin studied painting at Beaux-Arts de Paris. None of them were slouches. Benjamin got out of Paris before the Nazi invasion in 1940 and encouraged Victory and William to join him in London to aid the war effort. They got a house together. Victory worked in a war hospital, William helped refugee efforts, and Benjamin worked with British intelligence. He was away on the night in 1941 when a bomb landed on their street and blew up the house. Victory and William were both killed. Phillip had a heart attack when he got the news. He survived that one, but not the next one, which happened five months later. So, in 1941 that's three more Ralstons dead."

This was a cheerful countdown.

"Meanwhile," she said, "Edward had been in New York. He had a serious alcohol addiction. Technically he worked as a banker, but really he spent his time gambling and partying. He was driving drunk one night in 1944 and drove his car into a river and died. Faye never left the hospital and died there in October 1947. That left Benjamin as the very last Ralston. He was a decorated war hero and well respected in the art community. He came out as a gay man to his siblings quite early on. Benjamin was a champion for people with AIDS, long before the disease had its formal name. He poured much of his remaining fortune into housing and treatment programs for those with the disease. Moreover, he was known to help people on a personal level—going to hospitals, sitting with people who had lost partners, providing food, shelter, and comfort wherever he could. He paid bail for people who were jailed during ACT UP protests."

"Raise one to Benjamin," Van said, raising his can of Coke. "Here's to a real one."

"And the only one who made it to old age. And that is the story that the Ralston curse is based on. In reality, it was a strange family that made its own bad luck, though some members of the family tried to be beneficial to society."

Lecture finished, Dr. Henson stood to go, focusing on her phone and not looking at us again.

"Going to dinner in town," she said as she left the room. "Make sure to clean this up."

Suddenly, Riki's I Like Spooky Shit made a lot of sense. She had been following the story as it was told, hooked on every word, though she clearly knew all the details. She was into it. There was no missing it. Now that it was over, she too got up, leaving her dirty plate.

"Are you going to help clean up?" Liani asked.

"No," Riki said. "I'm an independent contractor."

"I can think of other things you are."

"Happy for you, Liani. Nurture that imagination."

As Riki walked toward the door, she stopped as she was about to pull her headphones over her ears.

"Oh, by the way," she said to me, "did anyone mention you're taking over for a dead guy?"