Page 127 of Dying to Meet You

“Rowan?”

I look up to find Beatrice watching me. “I was just about to ask if you’re okay, but then I remembered that you hate that.” She gives a tired smile. Actually, it’s a very tired smile. She looks more haggard than I’ve ever seen her. “How’d last night go at the thing with Hank?”

“Fine.” I’m never telling her the truth. Not about the drunken kiss, and not about the way Hank asked me about her. “The speeches were too long. And I cut myself off after three glasses of wine to be a professional. But three felt insufficient.”

She laughs. “Been there. Was this one at the art museum? Or in that design studio? That place feels like a basement dungeon.”

“The art museum,” I murmur. But my brain snags onbasement dungeon. “Hey, Beatrice? Do you remember what was in the basement? Before we started the demo?”

She blinks at the non sequitur. “Bunch of old metal furniture. Why?”

That’s what I remember, too—metal baby cribs and folding chairs. Plus, another creepy old birthing table with stirrups at the ready. I rub my eyes, forgetting how much concealer I’d applied. “I was just trying to remember what all was down there. Like”—I grasp for an excuse—“hopefully, an old section of the third-floor banister?” I push back from my desk. “Maybe I’ll take a look and jog my memory.”

Zombielike, I walk out of the room. I turn toward the back of the mansion and head for the door to the servants’ quarters.

“Rowan, hold up.” Beatrice is on my heels. “It’s locked.”

“Oh.” I wait for her to catch up. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” she says, going ahead of me with her giant key ring.

In the stairwell, we head down to the left. The first turn of the stairs is well lit. But then we reach an old-looking arched door that predates all the mansion’s nineteenth-century finery. It’s a rare glimpse into the earliest section of the house.

Beatrice flips through her keys and locates the one that fits the old door. It swings open, and she takes a step down, feeling around in the dark for the light switch.

Even when she flips it on, the light is barely adequate. “Watch your step.” I don’t want her turning an ankle just because I had a wild hair.

The stairs were hammered together from plywood several decades ago after the original staircase rotted. We’ve got a dehumidification system running down here now.

It still has that scary-old-basement smell, though. And as I descend into the gloom, the air temperature drops.

“So... what are we looking for?” Beatrice asks as we reach the mottled concrete floor.

If I answer that question truthfully, she’ll think I’ve lost my mind. “The first time we were down here, all the furniture was at this end.” I point toward the front of the house. “Metal bed frames and baby cribs. Rusty folding chairs.”

“And that big old incubator.”

“Right. But that was on this side.” I turn my body toward the back of the house, where the shadows are deepest. My memory is visual, which is why I need to stand here, taking in the space again.

Suddenly I’m sure I saw an old chest freezer down here. Gray. Boxy. I can picture its shape against the wall. Edging in that direction, I let my eyes adjust to the gloom. Freezers need electricity. And, yeah, there’s an electrical conduit running along the wall, with an outlet about knee height.

There, on the wall a few feet away from the outlet, is a shadowy patch,freezer-shaped. My guess is that the freezer’s coils had caused condensation on the wall behind it, encouraging mold to darken the surface.

I lean down and rub my finger against the wall’s rocky surface. Dark, powdery mildew comes away on my finger.

“There’s a reason this room isn’t on the new floor plan,” Beatrice points out. “What are you looking at?”

“Do you remember a freezer?” I ask slowly. “I think I do.”

Beatrice squints at me a moment before shrugging.

“It was big,” I say, indicating the size. “And yet there was another freezer upstairs in the galley. A walk-in. Why would they need two?”

“No idea.” She shakes her head. “There were a lot of people living here during the sixties and seventies. You’d need a lot of food storage?”

They said they brought him from the morgue.

I turn once more in a slow circle, picturing the room as it was the first time I saw it, before everything was cleared out. The birthing table shoved up against the incubator. The old furniture crowded together.