The upstairs of the carriage house was a big open space where there had once been dances. Now it was empty except for dust and black widows. The balcony looked out on an overgrown lawn, complete with a rusty antique carriage in the clutches of jasmine vines. Sam was convinced that the cause of a powerful stench was a body someone had concealed under the upstairs floorboards. Nailed out of sight, out of mind. She half-remembered doing it herself. What had it felt like to pry the planks apart and slide the body down into the narrow opening between the joists?

When she was sixteen she met a roofer who would beat her at cards. But she knew you can kill someone with a card if you throw it fast enough. It just takes a lot of practice. Upstairs in the carriage house, Sam with a deck of cards, practicing papercuts.

She found the cards now, but the deck was incomplete. Did she know where the missing card was? Under the floorboards? Embedded deep where it shouldn’t have been in the soft flesh of a roofer’s neck? Continue reading →