While Darcy remained in the hall, presumably to listen for her husband, Isobel made a beeline for the squat, antique windup clock that sat on one corner of the desk. In reaching for it, though, she knocked over a small picture frame.
The image within made her stop cold.
Varen’s smooth and serious face stared up at her.
Picking up the photo, Isobel studied the black-and-white image more closely. She could tell by the angle that Varen had snapped the photo himself. In it, he lay against a bed of brittle leaves. He held the camera above, gazing straight into the lens so that his hair fell away from his face, leaving his eyes more naked than she had ever seen them.
Varen’s jade irises, Isobel knew, should have appeared pale gray in the photo. But they were black as inkwells.
Pressing her fingers to the glass, Isobel wished so badly that she could reach through the expanse of months separating this moment from the one in which Varen had taken the self-portrait. When had he taken it? How long after Lilith had begun to thread herself into his life? How long after she’d started to take control?
Downstairs, the front door slammed.
Ignoring the sound and the silence that followed, Isobel flipped the photo over. The soft tick-tock of the desk clock boomed in her ears while she pried the frame open.
Just as she’d suspected, Varen’s violet writing blazed against the watermarked paper.
There was no date, though. No lines of looping poetry. Only one word.
Lost, he’d written in his beautiful and old-world hand.
Isobel shut her eyes, but the word remained, searing bright against the backs of her lids like a neon sign. She wondered where Varen’s parents had found the photo. Mixed among his things?
They had to have seen the writing on the back.
Isobel assumed that the cold, stark office belonged to Mr. Nethers; how many times had he glanced at this picture of his own son and not realized that something was horribly wrong? That these eyes were not his son’s? Had he even kept the photo on his desk before Varen’s disappearance? Somehow, she doubted it.
Something brushed against her leg. Startled, Isobel fumbled against the desk, dropping the frame onto its surface, where it clattered apart.
Whirling, she scanned the floor.
There weren’t any bugs filing out in droves. No spindly fingers tipped in claws. No birds. Only Slipper, Varen’s Siamese cat.
The creature peered up at Isobel with icy eyes, electric blue against the dark center of her face. Meowing, the feline flashed a pair of sharp white fangs, leaving Isobel to wonder if she’d been issued a plea or a threat.
“You can relax,” Darcy said, shutting the door to an inch. “He’s gone.”
Isobel looked up from the cat, meeting the woman’s gaze dead-on. “I’m not afraid of him,” she replied. “Though I can tell you are.”
Darcy folded her arms. “He’s . . . going through a lot right now. We both are.”
“I guess he was going through a lot that night the two of you came home early from that benefit party too.”
Isobel swallowed hard, both awed and cowed by her own audacity.
But something about the photo of Varen had stirred anger in her. Darcy cared. That much was clear. But it was growing more and more apparent that her reach extended only so far as it was allowed.
“What were you—” Darcy started, but Isobel cut her off.
“You’ve probably guessed by now that I was here—there. With him in his room.” Isobel flicked her eyes toward the ceiling. “We were doing homework that night you saw me drive away with him. He had put me in the closet almost as soon as he heard the front door open. He . . . was afraid too, I think.”
Darcy drew a shaky breath and let it go. Folding her arms in tighter, she gripped either elbow. “I read the note.”
“I figured,” Isobel said, “since you knew my name.”
And just like that, their conversation had jumped from one uncomfortable track to another.
Slinking between Isobel’s ankles, tail unwinding from her calf, Slipper padded to sit in front of the gap in the door.
“I’ve never known him to say he loved anything,” Darcy began again, eager, it seemed, to stamp out the awkward silence that had settled into the room. “Or anyone. Not even when talking about something like writing or drawing. Not even Slipper.” She gestured loosely to the cat. “Or Bruce.”
Isobel looked up, surprised.
“Varen didn’t use that word,” Darcy added in a murmur. “You . . . you must be very special.”
Her words took Isobel aback, though they shouldn’t have. After all, it was no secret to her that Varen treated his heart like a vault. He kept so much to himself—practically everything.