Chapter 3 - The Secret in the Floorboards
At twelve-thirty, Juliet carried a wooden cutting board up the stairs, bypassing the silver tray entirely. On the board sat two sandwiches: thick-cut crusty rye, the ham overlapping the edges, pink and salty, with translucent curls of white cheddar and a smear of mustard that smelled of vinegar and whole grain.
She didn't knock. She turned the knob with her elbow and walked in.
The room was freezing.
Nico had opened the tall French doors that led to the stone balcony. The late October wind was howling through the room, lifting the edges of the Persian rug, scattering drawing paper across the floor like wounded birds. The temperature inside could not have been more than forty degrees.
The boy was not in the wardrobe.
He was curled on the floor beside the cold radiator, his knees pulled up inside an oversized wool sweater that had clearly belonged to his mother—it was a pale cream cable-knit, miles too large for him, the sleeves rolled four times into bulky donuts around his wrists. His teeth were chattering with a rhythmic, rhythmic click-click-click, his skin possessing that grayish, waxy tint that precedes hypothermia.
Juliet set the cutting board on the low table, walked directly to the balcony doors, and hauled them shut. The brass latches dropped into place with a definitive, heavy clunk.
"Don't," Nico gasped from the floor. He didn't look at her; he was staring at the floorboards between his stocking feet. "I need... I need the air."
"You don't need the air, Nico," Juliet said, walking over to the radiator. She laid her hand on the cold cast iron. The bleed valve had been loosened with a pair of pliers; a tiny trail of black, greasy water had trickled down the pipe into the carpet. "You're trying to freeze yourself so you don't have to feel your skin."
She knelt beside him. She didn't touch him—she knew better than that—but she sat down on the cold floor, crossing her legs, letting the hem of her dark blue dress pool around her.
"My mother smelled like rain when they pulled her out," the boy whispered. His voice was flat, mechanical, like a recording played too many times on an old tape deck. "Victor said she had river weed in her hair. He told me that if I get too warm, the weed starts to grow in the house."
Juliet felt something cold and hard tighten around her heart, not fear, but a sudden, murderous clarity.
"Victor told you that?" she asked softly.
Nico nodded once, his chin digging into the thick collar of the cream sweater. "He said the house is cursed because of what my father did to the men in Detroit. He said the river is waiting for the rest of us. If we turn the heat on, the river gets jealous."
Juliet reached into her pocket. She pulled out the apple she had left on his dresser earlier—a small, dark red Honeycrisp, cold from the draft. She took a pocketknife from her apron—a small, horn-handled slipjoint she used for cutting twine in the garden—opened the blade, and sliced the apple in half with a crisp, wet snap.
She held half out to him on the flat of the blade.
"Victor Dane is full of shit," Juliet said.
Nico’s head jerked up. His eyes went wide, the obscenity hitting him like a splash of cold water to the face. "You can't say that."
"I just did," she said, chewing on the other half of the apple with deliberate, rhythmic crunching. "Your mother was a woman, Nico. Not a ghost in a ditch. And she didn't smell like river weed. She smelled like almond lotion and whatever soap she bought at the drugstore, because that's what mothers smell like. Even rich ones."
"You didn't know her."
"No," Juliet said, handing him the apple slice by the stem, her fingers deliberately brushing his cold skin. His hand was trembling, but he didn't pull away. He took the fruit. "But I know men who tell stories to little boys to make them small. My uncle used to tell me that if I walked past the barn after sundown, the Devil would pull my toes off. You know why he told me that?"
Nico held the apple to his mouth, his nose twitching at the sweet, sharp scent. "Why?"
"Because he was hiding stolen car engines in the hayloft," Juliet said, "and he didn't want an eight-year-old girl asking why there was motor oil dripping through the floorboards into the horse stalls."
Nico stared at the apple. Slowly, hesitantly, he took a bite. The crunch was loud in the drafty room. He chewed, swallowed, and for the first time since she had entered the Caruso estate, his shoulders dropped an inch away from his ears.
"Victor brings me things," Nico whispered, looking toward the corner of the room where the wainscoting met the floor.
"What kind of things?"
"Papers," the boy said. "He puts them under the rug while I'm sleeping. He told me that if my father sees them, my father will send me to the boarding school in Switzerland where they don't let you have shoes."
Juliet stood up smoothly. She walked to the corner he had indicated, near the heavy oak wardrobe. She knelt, hooked her fingers under the edge of the blue-and-gold wool carpet, and peeled it back.
The subfloor beneath was tongue-and-groove white oak, seventy years old. But one of the short boards near the wall had been lifted recently; the nails had been cut with a hacksaw, their heads sitting flush in the holes without biting into the joist below.
She used the point of her knife to pry the board up.
It came away with a faint squeak of dry wood.
Inside the dark space between the joists lay a small, tin cigar box—the kind with an embossed lithograph of a Havana harbor on the lid.
Juliet lifted it out. The tin was heavy, weighted with more than just childhood treasures.
"Don't open it," Nico whispered, his voice rising in sudden panic. "He said there's a wire inside. He said if I open it, the police will come for my father."
Juliet looked at the box, then back at the boy. His face had gone pale again, his small fingers digging into the half-eaten apple until juice dripped over his knuckles.
"Nico," she said, her voice dropping into that deep, unshakable register that felt like stone, "nobody is calling the police. And nobody is taking your father. But you and I are going to have a very long conversation about why your father's lawyer has been playing hide-and-seek under your bedroom floor."
She didn't open the tin. She slid it into the wide pocket of her apron, right beside the broken Limoges china and the linen rag. Then she picked up the cutting board from the table and brought it to the floor, setting it between them.
"Eat the sandwich," she said, pointing to the ham and rye. "Both of them. If you leave the crusts, I'm going to tell Rosa you like parsnips, and she'll put them in your oatmeal tomorrow morning."
Nico looked at the sandwich. Then, with a sudden, ravenous ferocity that had nothing to do with mafia dynasties and everything to do with being an eight-year-old who hadn't eaten since yesterday's supper, he grabbed the bread and shoved half of it into his mouth.
Juliet watched him eat, her hand resting on the heavy square of the cigar box in her pocket.
The clock in the hall struck one.
May you like
Downstairs, she heard the heavy front door open, the sound of boots on marble, and the voice of Victor Dane laughing—warm, cultured, and smooth as lard—as he greeted someone in the rotunda.
Juliet leaned back against the cold cast-iron radiator, took another bite of her apple, and waited.
