“But you knew the Langsoms?”
“Well, of course. Everyone knows the Langsoms.” Miss Abbot looked over to me. “At one time, the Danvers and the Langsoms were quite close.”
Janie swiveled to me.
“No, I’m sorry—that’s actually not true.” I laughed, embarrassed at having to correct Miss Abbot. “My mom and Mrs. Langsom knew each other back in high school. But by the time my parents moved into the neighborhood, they’d grown apart.”
Miss Abbot sipped from her glass. “Oh no, dear. I meant your father.” She shrugged and returned to bemoaning the downfall of the Langsom name. “In any case, it was a terrible thing, seeing an established family like that packing up and moving in the night like some band of thieves. After all they’ve done for this town, they deserved better. You know, they used to host tours.” Miss Abbot nodded to herself, remembering. “Dr. Langsom’s great-grandfather—he was before even my time—amassed some of his fortune bootlegging through the 1920s. He built the house with hidden cellars and passages to store and move his product. Apparently, he shipped to the city on canoes, right up the Belvidere River. Although perhaps that bit of history is a tad too resonant, with all the gossip about Dr. Langsom’s … indulgences.” Miss Abbot clucked her tongue. “But when the doctor was a boy, the family hosted haunted houses every Halloween. I think they took a certain amount of pride in their renegade ancestry.”
Across the room, the orange cat stretched on a sill. Through the window, I could see the grand facade of 16 Olcott Place. We all sat silently for a moment, and I pictured the old-fashioned ghosts and vampires floating through the yard, parading up the porch steps with pillowcases of candy slung over their shoulders.
“Well,” Miss Abbot spoke suddenly, “I’ll take one pack of peanut M&M’s, please.” She stood up and reached for the leather coin purse that rested on top of the TV stand.
It took a moment for Janie to jump to attention. “Right! Of course. Thank you so much for supporting our team.” She dug through the candy, handing over a yellow packet. Miss Abbot took it and gazed steadily at her, still waiting.
“How much, dear?”
“Yes.” Janie nodded. “I mean, that will be one dollar.”
Miss Abbot unfolded a bill from her purse. “Those are slim profit margins. You divers should have the economics club advise you. Especially if they’re having you girls traipse around town, knocking on doors”—she paused and stared meaningfully at both of us—“randomly?”
She knew. Of course she knew. She knew everything.
Just when I thought she would simply take the dollar and slink away, Janie asked, “Ma’am, you’re pretty much an expert on Glennon Heights, right?”
“I’ve learned to be cautious about calling myself an expert in anything … but I’ve lived here long enough to know the scenery pretty well.” Miss Abbot moved to the door and reached for the knob. Janie’s eyes darted to mine. Last chance, I tried to tell her. You might as well ask.
Janie nodded. “Miss Abbot, have you ever noticed anyone taking an unusual interest in my home? I know it’s a landmark and all, but maybe someone has seemed preoccupied in a way that was creepy? You know, like inappropriate? Maybe mentally unsound?”
“Oh dear.” Miss Abbot grimaced. “You’re talking about the Sentry, aren’t you?”
I felt myself go absolutely still. My neck prickled like when you’re playing hide-and-seek—that moment right before you’re found. Miss Abbot stood, still blocking the front door. Janie jutted her chin out, as if to say, We can take her. And I reminded myself that it was crazy to consider physically overpowering a seventy-year-old woman in her own home. Besides I wasn’t sure if we could take her. We’d underestimated Miss Abbot all along.
She nodded kindly at us. “You must have received a letter.” She reached for the door. At first I had a nightmarish vision of Miss Abbot flicking the bolt and locking us forever in her home: two dolls enclosed in glass domes. But that was silly; that was nuts. That was Janie’s influence, along with this week of increasingly exposed secrets. Miss Abbot only held open the screen and ushered us out.
Janie had halted in her tracks. I wrenched her forward. Nuts or not, I was done with feeling like a mouse struggling under Horatio’s paw. We needed to scamper off. Still caught, Janie stared at Miss Abbot in amazement. “You know about the letter?”
“Well, yes, dear.” Miss Abbot smiled. Not menacingly, really. More like she’d read our every thought and had been disappointed. The screen door slammed and our sweet, elderly neighbor retreated into the shadows of her darkened hallway. We could barely see her as she spoke. “And you mean letters. The Langsoms received several.”
We managed to walk calmly across the street back to Janie’s house, quickening our pace once we reached her yard. As soon as we got inside, we sprinted straight up to her third-floor bedroom.
Once there, Janie paced the length of her room, occasionally flicking open the curtains to peek out at Miss Abbot’s yellow house.
“I vote we come completely clean and tell your parents about the second note immediately.”
“That serves no purpose.”
“Are we going to tell them about Miss Abbot?”
“That she’s oddly intimidating and harbors strong opinions about school fund-raisers?”
I tried to lower the drama barometer. “Nope. That she’s an elder in the neighborhood whose help we sought out.” Second attempt: “Janie, sit down a sec. That was really tense and stressful, okay? I get that. But we gathered some information, which was our goal. And really we only discovered good news.”
She leveled her gaze at me as if to say, Liv, please. But she sat down, clutching a pillow to her chest. “How is it good news?”
“Because it’s not personal.” I raised my hands to fend off her arguments before she voiced them. “It feels that way, sure. But if the Sentry started with the Langsoms, then the obsession really does focus on the house. Nobody’s angry that you moved here. Nobody’s attacking you or your family.” Janie’s hands relaxed their grip on her pillow just a bit. “But listen, there’s bad news too. It makes it creepier that the Langsoms also got letters. Whoever is sending them probably won’t stop anytime soon. If you ignore them, who knows what they’ll try next? We need to talk to your parents. We’ll show them the second note.”
“You’re a really good friend.” Janie’s voice sounded small, muffled against the pillow.
I was trying to be. Or that’s what I told myself a short time later, as I sat beside Janie in the dining room waiting for the latest Donahue family meeting to come to session. The whole crew had assembled: Ben and Lucy both looked bored, scrolling through their phones. Mrs. Donahue kept smoothing out the stitching on the tablecloth and glancing up at the doorway, where her husband stood with his eyes fixed on the kitchen TV.
I kept my face still and peaceful. On my lap, I held Janie’s backpack. I watched her eyes dart around the room and settle on the bag periodically. Each time, she looked pleadingly at me, as if I could call the whole thing off even if I wanted to. The two of us sat with our backs to the bookshelves. I reminded myself that we’d just checked the secret hideaway—there was no possible way an intruder hid there, peeking out from the darkness, listening to what we were about to announce.
“Gavin?” Mrs. Donahue’s tone sounded sharp.
“Yes! I hear you.” Mr. Donahue ran his hands through his hair, leaving the sides sticking up like two silver wings. “You all understand the concept of working at home, correct? That it involves actually working?” At least he turned around, though. His angry glower swung around the room, like a spotlight into which none of us wanted to step.
“Daddy, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Janie sounded miserable.
Mr. Donahue visibly softened. For a second, he actually looked like a kind man, a good dad. “Aww, Jane. I’m the one who’s sorry. Your old man’s just feeling the pressure a little. Everything is fine. At least on my end. What’s with the family mee
ting, guys? What’s going on?”
Ben stretched and shrugged. “Well, it’s not my meeting. That’s for sure.”
Lucy rolled her eyes. “Maybe your parole officer called the meeting.”
“I don’t have a parole officer,” he muttered in a softer voice. “I have a court-appointed legal advocate.”
“That’s enough.” Mrs. Donahue rested her head in her hands.
I’d been waiting for Janie to give a signal. The longer we stalled, the more it seemed likely that the Donahue family would completely unravel. As much as I wanted to learn more about Ben Donahue’s legal advocate and what necessitated that role, it was time to move things along. I unzipped the front pocket of her backpack and tried to pass Janie the envelope under the table.
Ben noticed and immediately swung his eyes up to mine. “Sorry,” I whispered, without being sure exactly what I was apologizing for.
“This came today.” Janie placed the letter in the middle of the dining room table. “It’s just like the other one.” Mrs. Donahue gasped. Janie rushed to keep talking. “I don’t know why I kept it from you. It’s another scary message. We picked it up—” Janie looked toward me and corrected herself. “I mean, I picked it up and just didn’t feel like dealing with it. Olivia tried to get me to tell you right away.”
“You didn’t feel like dealing with it?” Lucy sounded unnerved. “Who are you—Ben?”
“Give me that.” Mrs. Donahue reached out for the card and whipped it out of the envelope.
“Careful. It’s evidence,” Mr. Donahue said. But Mrs. Donahue was too busy reading.
“Gavin, it’s terrible. It’s sickening.”
Ben leaned forward to read the message but his mom snatched the card up and held it closer to her chest. “No. I will not have my children reading this filth any longer.”
“Mom, Janie’s been carrying it around like an invitation to the prom.” Ben held his hand out, but Mrs. Donahue shook her head.
“Absolutely not.”
Lucy looked at her mother and then me. “Can you just paraphrase?”
“I said no.”
“Gory like the last one?” Ben asked me. I nodded. “Blood in the walls?” I lowered my eyes to my lap.
“Gavin, we need to call the police.”
“Let’s just think on it. There’s no rush …”
“Now,” Lucy finished his sentence. “There’s no rush now, hours after the evidence arrived.” She glared at Janie and me. “What were the two of you thinking, holding on to that? And not telling anyone?”
Janie pushed on. “We also talked to Miss Abbot, who lives in the yellow house on the corner lot. She’s kind of like the town Wikipedia. She knows everything.”
“Gavin, we need to call the police,” Mrs. Donahue repeated.
“For instance,” Janie continued, “she knows that the Langsoms received letters from the Sentry too.”
Mrs. Donahue stopped ignoring us then. Mr. Donahue stopped ignoring Mrs. Donahue. Even Ben started paying attention.
“How many letters?” Lucy asked.
“She said several.”
“Why were you talking to this woman about the Sentry?” Mrs. Donahue asked.
Janie’s eyes darted to me and I rushed to fill in the silence. “Janie stopped by Miss Abbot’s house with me. She likes when people from the neighborhood visit and somehow we got to talking about the letters. Janie and I were nervous because the new note had arrived. I thought maybe—”
Mr. Donahue interrupted. “Janie, this is a family matter. We talked about being discreet about these letters.”
“I hardly think that’s the priority, Gavin,” Mrs. Donahue said.
A cloud passed over Mr. Donahue’s face. But he said only, “We discussed this.”
Mrs. Donahue clutched the second card closely, reading it again. “That woman told you the Langsoms received letters?”
Janie nodded. “Several.”
And I added, hoping to placate her dad, “She mentioned it pretty matter-of-factly. Like it was common knowledge in the neighborhood.”
“But it wasn’t, right?” Ben asked me. “You didn’t know about it.”
“Yeah, but I’m fourteen. And it turns out we didn’t know a lot about the Langsoms. No one even knew they were moving.”
“It just seems strange that Ned wouldn’t have mentioned these letters.” Mrs. Donahue tapped the corner of the envelope on her pursed lips.
“Yeah, it seems strange. It seems like nondisclosure. And it seems like good ol’ Ned didn’t want to interfere with his own huge commission.” Janie’s dad stood up and began pacing around the room.
“It’s pretty clear that we should call the police—”
“Stop.” Mr. Donahue slammed his fist against the ornate doorframe arching between the living room and dining rooms. “We’re not calling the police. Not before I go down to see McGovern and find out what he has to say. And believe me, I’m going to record the whole conversation. Because if he admits to knowing about these letters ahead of time—this campaign of terror—well, then he will see himself named in a lawsuit. Along with the Langsoms and the mortgage company and anyone else involved in this deception.” He held out his hand, waiting. Mrs. Donahue seemed to look pleadingly at him even as she placed the envelope in his hand. “That’s all there is to it, Lindsay.”
He tucked the envelope into his jacket. It seemed to me like there was a lot more to it, actually. He hadn’t even taken the time to read this latest note in the so-called campaign of terror. He didn’t want the police involved but had already planned out a possible lawsuit.
Janie stood up. “See, this is what I worried about.” Her dad didn’t even turn around, though. He headed out the front door and let it slam behind him.
Mrs. Donahue bit her lip, watching him go. “Everything’s going to be fine. You’ll see. There’s got to be a perfectly reasonable expectation. A silly prank or one of those quaint small-town traditions.” She trailed off and then said more to herself than to us, “I should give Ned a call and just let him know your dad’s on the warpath.”
Ben watched her wander out of the room, his brow furrowed. “Sure, because when your husband sets off in a homicidal rage, you definitely don’t want your realtor to get the wrong impression of where your loyalty lies.”
“Shut up,” Lucy snapped.
Janie and I tried to retreat back to her room then, to lose ourselves watching videos about kittens in bathtubs and baby goats bouncing on trampolines—anything that wasn’t the Sentry. But after only about ten videos, Lucy summoned us back down to the dining room. It seemed she and Ben had stayed there the whole time, conferencing.
It became immediately clear that I was going to be the subject of a cross-examination.
Lucy started by asking me, “What’s Ned McGovern like?”
“What?” I saw Aunt Jillian’s face in my mind. “Why?”
Ben leaned back. “Is he single? Dreamy?” He must have seen the look of dread drift across my face. “Uh-oh.” He slammed all four legs of his chair back onto the floor with a thud.
“He’s not single.” And then because all three Donahue siblings were still staring at me: “I don’t think he’s dreamy.” Then I sat frozen, unable to move past using the word dreamy in front of Ben Donahue. “He’s married, but there are rumors …”
“Aha!” Ben punched into the air. “I told you, Lucy,” he crowed.
“It’s just so not the point right now.”
“You don’t think so? Why do you think Dad charged off to go talk to him? I bet it’s less about the possibility that he’s the Sentry and more about how often he’s been texting Mom.”
“You don’t know that’s who’s been texting her.”
“Okay, we literally just moved to this town, so thankfully there aren’t a ton of candidates. Yet. And you heard how she just said his name: Ned.” Ben breathed out the name and managed to make its one syllable sound obscene. “We’ve been down this road before.” Maybe he
was reminding his sisters. He might have been explaining it to me.
“I was surprised,” I offered tentatively, aware that I was stepping across a minefield. “Your dad didn’t seem so interested in what the note actually said. He didn’t even look at it.”
“I guess when you’ve read one piece of hate mail, you’ve read them all,” Ben said.
“Yeah, I guess,” I muttered.
“You guess what, Olivia? There’s obviously something you want to say.” Lucy folded her arms across her chest, daring me to speak up.
But there was nothing. What could I say? We didn’t really have family meetings in my house, but I never imagined that the parents would simply wander away from them, leaving the kids to worry about the anonymous letters left in their mailbox. Was I supposed to confess that it seemed to me that Mr. Donahue had a rage problem, right after the Donahue kids confessed that their mom might have a flirting problem? Should I have spelled it out for them? That clearly their dad was financially overburdened? That maybe he regretted taking on the expense of their mom’s dream house, especially if Mrs. Donahue was getting too close with the guy who brokered the deal for that dream house?
I stared at the grained wood of the dining room table and wished I could just disappear right into the wall.
Janie spoke up then, in the same uncertain voice she always used around her family. “What’s going on?”
“You know how we had our suspect list?” Lucy answered her, but kept her eyes fixed on me. “Olivia thinks the order’s off. She thinks our own dad should be at the top. That he’s writing hate letters to his own family.”
“I didn’t say that.” I rushed to defend myself, but really all I meant was, I didn’t say that out loud.
While I was still searching to find the right words to tell Janie and Ben and even Lucy, a police car pulled into their driveway.
Even from the dining room, we could all see that it was Mr. Donahue hunched over in the back seat, looking defeated as he stared up at the house.
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