Chap­ter 21

By din­ner time tonight, the card­board box Enzo brought into the house is still sit­ting on the din­ing table. In the inter­est of set­ting the table, I try to move it, but it is very heavy—Enzo made it seem lighter than it was by the way he effort­less­ly car­ried it into the room. I’m scared if I try to move it, I’ll acci­den­tal­ly drop it. Odds are good there’s some price­less Ming vase inside, or some­thing equal­ly frag­ile and expen­sive.

I study the return address on the box again. Eve­lyn Winchester—I won­der who that is. The hand­writ­ing is big and loopy. I give it a ten­ta­tive shove and some­thing rat­tles inside.

“Ear­ly Christ­mas present?”

I look up from the package—Andrew is home. He must have come in from the garage entrance, and he’s smil­ing crooked­ly at me, his tie loose around his neck. I’m glad he seems to be in bet­ter spir­its than yes­ter­day. I real­ly thought he was going to lose it after that doctor’s appoint­ment. And then that ter­ri­ble argu­ment last night, where I was half-con­vinced Nina had mur­dered him. Of course, now that I know why she was insti­tu­tion­al­ized, it doesn’t seem near­ly as far-fetched.

“It’s June,” I remind him.

He clucks his tongue. “It’s nev­er too ear­ly for Christ­mas.” He rounds the side of the table to exam­ine the return address on the pack­age. He is only a few inch­es away from me, and I can smell his after­shave. It smells… nice. Expen­sive.

Stop it, Mil­lie. Stop smelling your boss.

“It’s from my moth­er,” he notes.

I grin up at him. “Your moth­er still sends you care pack­ages?”

He laughs. “She used to, actu­al­ly. Espe­cial­ly in the past, when Nina was… sick.”

Sick. That’s a nice euphemism for what Nina did. I just can’t wrap my head around it.

“It’s prob­a­bly some­thing for Cece,” he remarks. “My moth­er loves to spoil her. She always says since Cece only has one grand­moth­er, it’s her duty to spoil her.”

“What about Nina’s par­ents?”

He paus­es, his hands on the box. “Nina’s par­ents are gone. Since she was young. I nev­er met them.”

Nina tried to kill her­self. Tried to kill her own daugh­ter. And now it turns out she’s also left a cou­ple of dead par­ents in her wake. I just hope the maid isn’t next.

No. I need to stop think­ing this way. It’s more like­ly Nina’s par­ents died of can­cer or heart dis­ease. What­ev­er was wrong with Nina, they obvi­ous­ly felt she was ready to rejoin soci­ety. I should give her the ben­e­fit of the doubt.

“Anyway”—Andrew straight­ens up—“let me get this open.”

He dash­es into the kitchen and returns a minute lat­er with a box cut­ter. He slices open the top and pulls up the flaps. I’m pret­ty curi­ous at this point. I’ve been star­ing at this box all day, won­der­ing what’s inside. I’m sure what­ev­er it is, it’s some­thing insane­ly expen­sive. I raise my eye­brows as Andrew stares into the box, the col­or drain­ing from his face.

“Andrew?” I frown. “Are you okay?”

He doesn’t answer. Instead, he sinks into one of the chairs and press­es his fin­ger­tips into his tem­ples. I hur­ry over to com­fort him, but I can’t help but stop to take a look inside the box.

And then I under­stand why he looks so upset.

The box is filled with baby stuff. Lit­tle white baby blan­kets, rat­tles, dolls. There’s a lit­tle pile of tiny white one­sies.

Nina had been blab­bing to any­one who would lis­ten that they were expect­ing a baby soon. Sure­ly, she men­tioned it to Andrew’s moth­er, who decid­ed to send sup­plies. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, she jumped the gun.

Andrew has a glazed look in his eyes. “Are you okay?” I ask again.

He blinks like he for­got I was in the room with him. He man­ages a watery smile. “I’m okay. Real­ly. I just… I didn’t need to see that.”

I slide into the chair next to his. “Maybe that doc­tor was wrong?”