And then Sophia pulls the stony knob anyway, because it is her house and her time to waste and she has every right to both.
The drawer is locked.
But nothing is locked in Arcadia Gardens. It’s not that kind of neighborhood. They don’t lock their front door at night. No one does. It’s so unnecessary. They don’t even have a key to this place—the real estate agent didn’t mention one and after a while they just never bothered to have any made. They are safe here. That’s the whole point. Nothing can touch them here.
Sophia picks up her silver brush and jimmies the thin handle into the crack between the countertop and the drawer.
It doesn’t take much. Token resistance. The sound of the lock popping free is as satisfying as her shimmying, stretching foot finding purchase on the first step of the staircase.
Sophia blinks slowly and stares into the drawer.
It is not empty.
There’s a hairbrush in there. A hairbrush she has never seen before. And beside it, a lock of hair.
The brush is enormous. The back is made of antler or bone, the bristles no soft spring rabbit, but hard, sharp, wild boar. She picks it up and turns it over and over in her hands. The size of the thing makes her feel like a child juggling some forbidden adult prize she can barely hold on to. Someone has burned runes and designs and symbols Sophia cannot understand, except to think they are beautiful in a brutal sort of way, all over the handle and body of the thing: dark, angular, slashing. Maybe they’re letters. Maybe they’re stallions’ heads. Maybe they’re something very, very else.
But it is the lock of hair that troubles her more.
It is not her hair.
Sophia’s hair is soft and fine and curly and the color of good, sweet roasting pecans. The hair in the drawer is straight, coarse, and black as a secret. Each strand is so thick you could almost write with it. No one they know has hair like that. Not Mrs. Crabbe or Mrs. Lam or Mrs. Lyon or even beautiful Mrs. Palfrey two blocks over on Olive Street.
Like a horse’s mane.
Perhaps it is a horse’s mane.
But why would anyone tie the hair of a horse so lovingly, with a white ribbon just the same as the one Sophia uses to pull her hair away from her graceful collarbones every morning?
She puts it to her nose and smells the hair. The stench of it floods her brain and makes her gag: spices and rotting flesh and sour, private sweat and hot sands stretching away into a burning, lonely nothingness.
Slowly, as if underwater, as if someone else has been given run of her limbs, Sophia unties her own hair and begins to comb it with the great bone brush.
Tears float into the crescents of her eyes, and she does not know why.
IDARED
8.??The front and back yards are to be used for leisure and ornamentation only. Flowers and hedges are acceptable if well-maintained and not allowed to obstruct sight lines into the interior of the property in order to ensure that all activity remains clearly visible from outside the home. No vegetable plantings or other agricultural activity is permitted.
9.??It is forbidden to construct outbuildings for the purposes of industry such as beekeeping, the milling of grain or the tanning of hides, beermaking, soapmaking, cheesemaking, pottery, weaving, small vehicle repair, dancing, or other.
EMPIRE
Mrs. Lyon lounges grandly on her long green sofa. Her broad, powerful hips press into the plush as she stirs her tea with deliberate slowness. Mrs. Fische has flopped casually onto the floor, her silver hair floating free of any attempt to confine it, relishing her fourth cup. Mrs. Minke perches nervously on an embroidered stool, tapping her teaspoon against the saucer in a quick, staccato rhythm like an overwound clock. The three hostess gifts lie unopened before them on Mrs. Lyon’s yellow wicker coffee table.
“I’m sure I’ve no idea what you mean,” Mrs. Lyon says silkily. She yawns, her pink tongue showing in her pretty mouth. Sophia blushes at such an intimate sight.
“A hairbrush, you say?” bubbles Mrs. Fische. “Nothing so odd about that.”
Mrs. Minke sets her teaspoon down and picks it up again. Her sleek brown hair perfectly frames her small, pert face. “You must have so many hairbrushes, Sophie, darling,” she chirps brightly. “With that great slap of a man of yours spoiling you so! That’s all it is. You’ve got so many luxurious things you can’t keep track of them all! We should all have such problems!”
Sophia frowns doubtfully.
“The simplest explanation, really,” Mrs. Fische reassures her, and reaches for the teapot for a fifth cup.
“Slow down, you guppy, you’ll slurp me out of house and home. I shall have to make another pot already.” Mrs. Lyon takes her teapot to the kitchen to put another kettle on.