Read Woman in Black for Free Online

she’d crossed a line even before she watched the color rise in Lila’s cheeks, saw her eyes flash and her chin tip up in a haughty pose worthy of her mother, but she was too angry to care. She slammed the lid down on her suitcase. When she looked up, Lila was gone. She’d left without even saying good-bye.
    Ames Meriwhether was another one. She heard him come back from his ride while she and her mother were loading the car, but any hope that he would come to their rescue was soon crushed. He never even showed his face. Abigail lingered a few minutes longer, praying he would intervene … that Vaughn would show up … but in the end there was no one to see them off when they finally rolled down the driveway of 337½ Vermeer Road. Abigail thought she saw a flicker of movement behind the window of the upstairs bedroom that was Lila’s, but it could have been merely a reflection playing against the glass.
    Rosalie had placed a few frantic calls, and now they were on the way to an aunt and uncle whom Abigail had never even met. They lived in the hill country up north, in a town called Pine Bluff. All Abigail knew about Aunt Phyllis was that she had taken their mother’s and stepfather’s side when they’d booted Rosalie out after learning she was pregnant. What it must have cost Rosalie to swallow her pride and phone her sister, Abigail could only imagine.
    They were at the railroad crossing on their way out of town, waiting for a freight train to pass, when the strain finally became too much and Abigail broke down. “ Why , Mama?” she asked, weeping. For a long moment there was only the rhythmic rickety-rack-rack of the train wheels and the strobe-flicker of light and shadow reflecting off the dusty windshield of their ’72 Dodge Dart. The sun was high, and the moist heat blowing in through the vents swirled lazily as stirred soup.
    Rosalie sat there, gripping the wheel and staring straight ahead. Her face was as lifeless as that of someone who’d died and hadn’t yet caught on to the fact. “It wasn’t what she thought,” she croaked, in a voice as lifeless as her expression. “I didn’t love him, not that way. I did it for her . I did it to keep him from leaving.”

1
    NEW YORK CITY, PRESENT DAY
    Lila had saved the storage bin for last. It was all the way down in the basement of their Park Avenue apartment building, along a concrete corridor lined with identical steel-mesh cages, seemingly a world away from the walnut-paneled lobby with its antiques and tasteful floral arrangements, just one floor up, and quite frankly, it gave her the creeps. There was all that stuff to weed through, too: skis and snow gear to remind her of their family vacations in Aspen and Telluride; beach blankets, coolers, and a well-used picnic basket; the antique regulator clock out of their cabin at Lake Mahopac, which she’d brought home years ago, meaning to have it repaired, and which had been languishing down there ever since; stacks of photo albums; Neal’s baby clothes and old toys, plus twelve years of her son’s school report cards and various certificates and awards; and, last but not least, the scrapbook of press clippings documenting her husband’s meteoric rise to the top, which seemed richly ironic to her in light of their present circumstances. Heading down in the elevator, she felt a familiar clutch in her stomach at the thought.
    The first thing that greeted her when she unlocked the door and switched on the overhead fluorescents was the set of Mark Cross luggage, monogrammed with her initials: LMD—Lila Meriwhether DeVries—a wedding gift from her late mother. Shrouded in plastic, it sat wedged against the steel-mesh divider separating their unit from the adjoining one: a three-piece matched set in burgundy leather that looked back at her like a reproach. It must have cost a small fortune, money her mother could ill afford at the