The Drowning House by Elizabeth Black Read Free Book Online

of them. A silver flask rested on the tufted leather, as though it had just been set down and left. The carriages were beautiful, but even horseless and still, they had a top-heavy, precarious look. I had not realized what an act of faith it must have been to step up into one of them.
    They looked old, but of course they couldn’t be. It was silly even to think that one of them might be Stella’s carriage, the one she’d tried to escape in. Surely it was gone, the wood rotted by the salt air, the springs rusted to nothing.
    But looking at all those straps and buckles, it was easy to see the fingers of a groom working them. A short man, with the sleeves of his stiff-collared shirt rolled up, his eyes worried above a thick mustache. Easy to see Stella, in her white kid gloves, clutching a small reticule. To hear patches of conversation, pauses, high-pitched, nervous laughter.
    Otis held out the keys to the station wagon. “Don’t make trouble for Faline.”
    “I’m not a child,” I said.
    “There’s all kinds of trouble.” He folded his arms across his chest.
    Then I knew who he was. The gesture gave him away. I had thought of it as Faline’s alone, something defining, that pose with the chin tucked, the arms folded. Now I saw that, like a fleck of color in a woven blanket, it would appear and reappear within extended family. And I remembered something Faline had told me one night in the Carradays’ kitchen.
    “You’re related, aren’t you?” I asked. “You and Faline?”
    There was a toolbox on the ground. Otis squatted on his heels and opened it. “Cousins,” he said.
    “I know about you, too. She told me.”
    “Nothing to tell.” He closed the toolbox and snapped the metal latch as if that finished the conversation.
    But I wasn’t done. “I bet you never had a wedding portrait, did you?” I asked. How could they say no to a present?
    In the photo, the similarities are uncanny. It’s not just the dark hair, the sloe eyes, although, seen side by side, they are strikingly alike. It’s in subtler things too—the flat planes of their forearms, the long, straight fingers. Their arms are folded, in the gesture characteristic of both.
    Only their shoulders touch, as though that were all they needed, one point of contact. I tried to remember whether Michael and I had ever had that kind of connection, one that could flow like current through the smallest opening.
    Mr. and Mrs. Otis Lagarde, First Cousins . The title was Jules’s idea. When I saw the prints, I did wonder how it would feel, making love with someone who looked so much like you. Seeing yourself in him. Would the similarity be reassuring? Would you think, Yes, I know that, and that? Isn’t that what we all want on some level? I remember once when I was small seeing Frankie kiss a mirror, and startled, rub the evidence away with her sleeve.
    Otis shifted slightly and I knew he was listening. Then I heard it too—whistling, but not the usual kind, the thoughtless, under-the-breath noise that signals boredom or nervousness, three or four dry notes. These sounds were as firm and clear as birdsong.
    So even before I saw him coming across the lawn, or registered the boyish air that his whistling and his jeans and his casual friendliness only underscored, he was not what I expected.
    People say he was tall. In fact, he was several inches under six feet. But he moved with an easy economy and none of the stiffness most athletic men acquire as they get older. And there was an energy about him that was only partly physical, that left a sort of afterimage, so that when he had gone, you continued to feel his presence. His hair was thick, close-cropped, white. His eyes were the kind of blue you picture when you think of a summer morning.
    He took my hand in both of his and held it. “Do you remember me?” he asked. There was something wistful about the way he posed the question, as though it were more than a pleasantry. As though it really mattered to