A beat.
“I don’t think we do, Mina, no.”
“Ah. Well, then.”
Silence. I let it expand. The timer tells me I have a minute of the call left. I scuff my feet against the concrete. Oscar’s voice then, amused sounding. A ripple of static on the line.
“Interestingly, it’s called a ‘blue moon’ because it comes from the Old English word ‘belewe.’ ‘Belewe,’ meaning ‘betrayal’ because the blue moon disrupts the lunar calendar.”
“Is that right?”
I’m thinking about Bert and Mary dancing to a song abouta lunar rock so powerful it can induce madness. The same song that was playing the previous night on the record player after I’d discovered Mary’s prone, dead body. That eye, rich with blood. Blue moon. I straighten up. A belewe moon. Billie Holiday.Bill-ee.
“Oscar, I have to go.”
“When are you coming home? Mina?”
I hang up the phone with fingers I can barely feel. The handset slips from the cradle and swings on the end of the cord. There is an electrical arc in my head, spitting sparks. Mary was saying “Billy” but she’d meant “Billie.” Billie Holiday. She was talking about the record, not the boy. Sos. SOS. S-O-S. Shewastrying to get my attention.
I think of the envelope I discovered, the one that had been taped inside the record sleeve. Hidden there, right at the back. I run.
THIRTY-FOUR
I walk into the house with a strange sense of foreboding hanging over me. There is a pressure at the back of my skull as if something is pinching the nerves there. I peer into the sitting room as I kick off my shoes, heart pounding with the exertion of running all the way from the green. Sam is sitting on the sofa with the curtains drawn. There is a frame of video frozen on the television, warped by lines of static. I hesitate. I want to go and find the envelope but something in Sam’s demeanor gives me pause. Even though I can’t see his face, I can tell from the slope of his shoulders, the way his head hangs slightly, hair scraped back from his temples, that something is wrong.
“Sam?” That feeling increases as I step inside the sitting room and glance around. It’s gloomy, full of dust motes and a pall of thick cigarette smoke, but it’s tidier than I’ve seen itin days. Sam’s blankets and pillows have been cleared away and his suitcase is sat neatly in the corner, sunglasses and car keys on top.
“Sam?”
“Why did you do it, Mina?”
His voice is trembling. I stare at him in genuine confusion.
“I don’t know what you m—” That’s when I see what he is holding in his hands. A flash of yellow stitching, the gleam of a silver buckle. It’s the little shoe we found in the fireplace, the one he reached for, saying“Maggie had those.”“Sam, where did you get that?”
He looks down at it with mild surprise, as if he has forgotten he is holding it.
“Tanner’s Row, Mina.”
“You went up there on your own? You should’ve waited for me!”
“I can’t trust you.”
I throw my hands up in frustration.
“What’s going on?”
“I’ll tell you what’s going on, shall I?” Sam’s eyes are suddenly slitted in anger, voice filled with a quiet, furious heat. “You went into Mary’s bedroom, even though Bert asked you not to. You did it not once but twice!Twice!He said you were questioning her. Harassing her. She was eighty years old for fuck’s sake, Mina. She was sick and you knew that and you went up there anyway.”
“I just wanted to check on her. Because of the knocking on the w—”
“Oh yeah, that’s right. The SOS,” Sam spits, shaking his head. “I told you to ignore it, but you had to go and see for yourself. If you’d just asked Bert he would have told you.”
My voice is high with confusion, heart punching my chest.
“Told me what?”
“That since Mary’s stroke a few years back her mind’s not been right. Sometimes she thinks there’s still a war on. More than once she’s accused him of trying to kill her. He told me all this and he would’ve explained it to you, too, if you’d only asked him.”