"Monday's child is fair of face."

They found the body on a Monday, face down and gently bobbing along the lake, hair spread like a dark macabre halo.

Within an hour, the entire town had gathered, curious and horrified at the morbid scene in front of them. They had fished Evelyn Young out of the lake, and as she lay on the soft August grass, she looked no more dead than merely sleeping, resting out in the lazy summer sun. Her cheeks were still red with rouge, her dark eyes closed, and the wind giving her downy eyelashes an illusion of trembling. Her mouth was twisted into the most curious smile, grim and almost sad, as if she knew, in her last moments, what was coming. The only thing that ruined the effect; the sleeping girl in the meadow, was the way she was posed on the ground. They had set her in an awkward position, limbs splayed and thrashing, the effects of rigor mortis having set in.

Nevertheless, Beatrice thought, Evelyn Young looked beautiful, as lovely as she ever did in life, a porcelain doll on the verge of breaking. 

January. New York. 1933

Johnny died on a Monday too, sometime between lunch and afternoon tea.

 Beatrice wasn't with him, she had been out at the farmer's market. When she returned however, searching the pocket of her old fleece coat for a set of keys, she knew something was wrong. The entrance to their shabby tiny apartment, perched precariously above a pharmacy, was ajar; the key still half twisted into the lock. From inside the room she could hear muttering; grave voices and soft syllables. There must have been a break-in.

It was typical for Johnny to have left the door unlocked, and despite the many passive aggressive comments Beatrice had made about it, he never seemed to have particularly cared. Beatrice pursed her lips. She would chastise him when he got back that was certain.  Perhaps, Beatrice noted as she grabbed a heavy walking cane from her elderly neighbour's umbrella stand, their poorly furnished dwelling was a blessing.

They certainly weren't well off, that should have been evident from the fact they lived in a crumbling cramped flat amidst the rough part of town. She knew Johnny had come into some inheritance back in Illinois, some withering old uncle or grandmother. But they had both agreed quite a while ago that neither wanted to set foot in Winthrop's Hollow ever again.

The memories were simply too painful.

Beatrice tentatively pushed the door open, gripping tightly onto the wooden rod like a swinger's bat. An officer, a stiff old fellow with a handlebar mustache, was reclining leisurely on her couch, while another, a seedy sort of man, sat in the parlour, looking pensively at a notebook. As they heard the door open, both glanced up, clearly expecting that someone would return to the apartment. The older one, who had introduced himself as something- Walter- or Harold- or Percival, smiled benignly at Beatrice. "Please sit down," he said casually, as if it had been him inviting a guest into his home.

"What- who on earth are the two of you?" Beatrice cried, her nails digging into the wood of the cane.

"How dare you just break into my apartment like this. Where's my husband? When he comes back I swear-"

Neither of the officers reacted, their faces were as stiff and cordial as ever. Walter- Harold- Percival looked almost sympathetic at the shrieking woman, who after a few minutes without reaction from either member of the police force, resigned herself into sitting quite placidly on the ottoman.

"What-"Beatrice continued, finally realizing the abnormality of the situation, "Are two officers doing in my home?"

"We found the pocketbook of one John Downing, and this was listed as his address. Are you familiar with him?"

"Yes, of course I am, he's my husband," she said softly, shuddering.

She couldn't figure out, for the life of her, why they were in her apartment on a midday Monday. Much less why they had his pocketbook. Perhaps Johnny had been in an accident. She immediately regretted the dark thought, struggling to push it out of her mind. It couldn't be. Johnny was so alive with his bright eyes and she still remembered very vividly the way he kissed her on the forehead as he headed out to work in the morning.

It couldn't be- not again. She refused to entertain even the possibility of it, as she stood up and made tea to distract herself.

Yes, she decided, he was probably out with those awful friends of his. Gotten involved in some sort of public indecency. He must have dropped the book and the officers felt obliged to return it.

One look at the gaunt face of the seedy man and her stomach sank. His face was lined, weary with stress and had a sort of hard quality to it- a seasoned ability to block out the harshness of his work and the reality that came with it. Walter still looked very sympathetic, though Beatrice now doubted she had been imagining the faint expression on his face. His pity was very much real.

 "Mrs. Downing?" He asked, looking down at Beatrice.

"Yes?" she said, hands fiddling nervously inside her pockets.

"I'm afraid I am some news about your husband,"

"Oh,"

The single syllable tumbled out of her mouth as she began the feel faint.

"Your husband is dead," the man said, confirming her suspicions.

Her throat as she remained still, her face a stoic mask, void of emotion. And the waves of grief washed over her, draining her quietly so that she wasn't quite a quivering mess but something arguably worse. It had been years since Beatrice had cried and the fact that she hadn't didn't make the anger, the bitterness and guilt any less raw. She was too tired now for hysterics. Pain had smoothed it all away, persistently until all that remained was defeat and the acceptance of her misery.

So it had happened.

It finally happened.

When they had first eloped, when they took the midnight train to New York and every moment afterwards, it was a thought that had haunted her. The possibility of his death was an oppressive mantra that clung to her like a shroud- ever present and looming.

But then he, and some silly, irrational, idealistic part of her, thought that maybe, if she ran away and left behind the deaths and tears and heartache that haunted her in Winthrop's Hollow, and started anew in the city that never slept, it was have been as if it never happened.

The lovesick and heartbroken girl in her had been wrong.

For some months she had been nearly convinced that perhaps the deaths that surrounded her were coincidences. Very unfortunate events that happened to very unfortunate girls. They had lived in a dangerous town for so long that for brief, giddy, exhilarating moments she thought them invincible, persuaded by the belief that her luck came to pass.

She was sure of it the night Johnny staggered home after a drunken brawl, bloody, bruised but very much alive and robust.

"I'm so sorry, Bea," he had croaked, "I shouldn't have done such a thing and left you alone."

She had hugged him and cried.

She became certain when she went to the hospital to visit him, after a heavy wooden beam had fallen on him in his construction work. He had bruised organs and four broken bones. "I'm sorry that I keep putting you through this," he had said quietly.

That time, Beatrice laughed.

But she was so wrong. So wrong.   

"How did it happen?" she asked flatly, having practiced and recited the line countless times before.

"A motor car accident down at West 125th St. Some lads had a lot to drink, got into a vehicle and just ran him over, left him lying on the street with blunt force trauma to the head. If it's any consolation Mrs. Downing, I'm told it was painless. He died instantly."

"Well it's hardly a consolation, given that he still died in the end," she spat bitterly.

Beatrice's dead eyes looked ahead, straight past the peeling grey wallpaper and into nothingness. "May I see him?"

Harold looked at the young widow, her eyes glassy and her jaw slack. "He's at the morgue down the block."

Beatrice didn't say another word and ran down the street, her soles clicking unevenly on the cement ground.

 Johnny died instantly and it had been painless.

The thought of it troubled her. How painless could his death have possibly been? It was utter agony to her, hearing about it hours after it had happened. Surely, as he lay on the hard ground, skin raw and angry, his chest collapsing in on itself, taking shallow quick breaths, he would have felt pain. Even if it was only for a moment, a fraction of a second, he would have felt it.

She certainly felt the painof his death.

When she gained access to the morgue, Beatrice saw her Johnny lying on a metal cart. The sickly fluorescent lights made his skin seem paler and more sallow than ever, though it did nothing to disguise the ghastly bruises across his flesh. The sharp pungent chemical smell invaded her nostrils as she looked down at the face of the man she loved. His eyes, his sparkling blue eyes that lit up when they saw her, were flat and dull. They seemed to be staring past the ceiling, past the sky and into some unknown oblivion, captivated forever by what Beatrice could not see.

And death to her; so constant, lurking in the shadows like fog, clinging to every inch of her, surrounding her, following her, was almost beautiful. She would never have to see him grow old, slowly wither. Her memories of him would be forever pristine and lovely.

Almost beautiful.

There was nothing beautiful about the fact that she remained, when they were all gone, with no one and nothing- fading away with age and sorrow and tears- one or the other or all at once.

She kissed him on the forehead, wiping away his fair curls.

...

The next week was a blur of black and feigned condolences. It seemed awful to Beatrice that on such a sombre occasion, especially in chilly January, that the weather would be nice. It was blindingly bright, the winter sun filtering pass the perpetual layer of clouds that hung in the air. It was as if, she thought in a spiteful, hateful moment, God was mocking her.

There wasn't enough money to bury Johnny.

She didn't even know where he was interred. It was some unmarked grave God knows where. It was a shameful burial and marked the end of a shameful life, another on a systematic list that would torment her until the day she joined him.

There wasn't enough money after his death to do anything.

Johnny had been the sole breadwinner, taking a position as an accounting assistant. But after the stock market crash, he was left go and money had been tight. He'd taken odd jobs advertised in the papers, at the urging of Beatrice, at factories and lumberyards.

She couldn't afford to stay in New York anymore.

The bills were piling up, crisp stack upon stack and she didn't have nearly enough to keep herself afloat. The landlord had showed up one day, kicking open the flimsy door and threatened, his booze sour breath against her face, that if she didn't pay rent in the next few days, she would surely regret it.

There was enough, Beatrice calculated, wincing at the odd crumpled bill and the thin layer of coins that filled the money jar, to purchase a one way train ticket.

Back to Winthrop's Hollow.

Frances was very well off, Annie as well, and Beatrice wondered, mortified, if either of her old friends would allow her to borrow some money until she got back on her feet.

She had left her hometown at the age of seventeen, filled with hopes, dreams and ambitions. It was weeks after Evelyn's drowning and she could no longer take the constant rumours and accusations that surrounded her and the entire affair. And then Johnny had proposed with a pawn shop ring, along with plans to run away to the big city, to start life over. She had said yes and they were gone the next day with barely enough clothes to last a week and a dusty bottle of illegal liquor.

She had to go back.

Back to the sleepy, monotonous town where she had spent her formative years, the lake and the woods and the constant songbirds with their shrill metallic voices.  

Back to the dizzying summer of 1929.