“Sit tight. I’d like to talk for a moment.” The sheriff reached up and turned on the cruiser’s interior light, and I caught her gaze in the rearview mirror. I’d thought she’d been holding back from asking me questions on the drive, but all the while she’d been sorting through her thoughts and organizing her queries. “What’s the nature of your relationship with Nolan Turner?” she asked.
I reluctantly settled back in my seat. I didn’t like being trapped. “We’re friends, I guess,” I said, and she shot me a skeptical glance. Apparently, my answer hadn’t satisfied her. “No, really. I’m serious. Just friends,” I added.
“You’re aware that he was friends with Lark Bellinger, too?”
My heart skipped a beat at the mention of Lark’s name. “I am,” I told her.
“Are you aware that Lark paid a visit to the Turner house the night of the fire?”
“What?” That was a surprise. “No. Nolan never mentioned that.” Why hadn’t he told me? “Do you think Nolan had something to do with the fire?” I asked.
“Footage from his security cameras showed Lark entering his house and leaving roughly two hours before the fire began. Nolan remained inside.”
“Then he wasn’t involved?” I didn’t get what she was driving at.
“Nolan didn’t start the fire,” the sheriff agreed. “But I sure would love to know what the two of them talked about. When I spoke to Lark in the hospital, she had no recollection of the visit.”
“What did Nolan say?” I asked.
“He said Lark told him she’d heard strange things at night. Has he ever mentioned any of this to you?”
“He told me about the noises.”
“Have you heard anything since you’ve been here?”
I shifted in the seat. Things had gone far beyond unusual noises. I’d seen things I still couldn’t explain. I didn’t want to lie to the sheriff, but I didn’t know what to tell her, either. “It’s an old house,” I said instead. “It’s filled with strange noises.”
The sheriff peered up at the empty manor. “Looks like your uncle’s not home,” she noted. “Will he be coming back tonight?”
“As far as I know. He’s in Manhattan with Nolan’s dad. That’s why I went over to Nolan’s for dinner.”
“And where’s Miriam Reinhart? Shouldn’t she be here?”
“I guess it’s her night off. She’s probably out painting the town.”
The sheriff didn’t appreciate my sense of humor. “I’ll call her and have her come back. You shouldn’t be alone in this house,” she told me. I didn’t argue. I wasn’t exactly keen to spend the night alone, and I had a hunch Sheriff Lee knew something she wasn’t sharing.
The sheriff pulled out her phone and dialed. Miriam must have answered on the first ring. Their conversation was short. I figured Miriam had already heard the news and was on her way. The sheriff ended the call and sat back in her seat and stared up at the manor. I tried to open the cruiser’s door, but it was still locked.
“What’s the rush?” the sheriff asked.
“Are we really going to sit here in the drive and wait for Miriam?” I asked, incredulous. “Why can’t I go upstairs and get ready for bed?”
“You’re right,” the sheriff finally said. “I’ll walk you inside.”
The sheriff unlocked the doors, and I climbed out of the cruiser. She marched ahead of me all the way to the front door. Then she stepped aside to let me open all the locks. When I turned to say goodbye, she motioned for me to go inside. “I’ll see you up to your room,” she said. My discomfort grew, but I said nothing.
She took off her hat and hung it on a coat hook by the door. Without it she was a couple of inches shorter than me, and I noticed she wore her black hair in a large bun at the nape of her neck. She moved like she knew every muscle in her body. She unzipped her coat, but she didn’t remove it. I wondered if she wanted access to the gun that sat holstered on her hip.
I took the lead and headed for the stairs. Every time I glanced back at the sheriff, her eyes were somewhere else. She was either taking it all in—or scanning the surroundings for intruders.
“I guess you’ve been here before?” I asked her.
“Many times,” she replied.
When I stopped outside the rose room, I detected a flicker of surprise on the sheriff’s face. “This is where you’ve been sleeping?” she asked. “Do you realize this was Lark Bellinger’s bedroom?”
It felt strange living in a house everyone knew. The sheriff brushed past me and inspected the chamber. She opened the closet, stuck her head into the bathroom, and checked the balcony outside. Her search was thorough. There was no way there could have been another human being in that room with the two of us.
“How long will you be staying here with your uncle?” she asked when she’d finished.
“A few months at least,” I told her.
“I know what happened to you in New York.” She said it as though she were simply stating a fact. To my surprise, I didn’t get the sense that she was judging me. “Why did you choose to come here, of all places?”
There were two answers to that question, both of them true. I went with the easiest option. “There was nowhere else for me to go. My mother doesn’t want me, and James is my only relative. My father—” I saw the pity on her face, and I couldn’t finish the sentence.
“I know about your father, too,” she said. “It was a terrible tragedy.”
I nodded.
“Lock your bedroom door tonight. If anyone knocks, don’t let them in.”
“Are you talking about Nolan?” I asked.
“Mr. Turner will be spending the evening with me going through security footage,” said the sheriff.
“Then who do you mean?”
She cocked her head as if to say, Stop playing around. “I think I’ve been perfectly clear. No one comes into this room tonight. No one. You have a phone with you?”
I pulled out my cell phone and held it up for her to see. “You’re really scaring me,” I told her.
“Good,” the sheriff said. “I want you that way. You’ll be safer if you’re scared.”
The door opened downstairs before I could reply.
“Hello?” Miriam called up. “Bram?”
“Remember what I said,” Sheriff Lee told me. “No one comes in here.”
I nodded. The sheriff unbuttoned one of her breast pockets, pulled out a card, and wrote down ten digits on the back. “This is my personal mobile number,” she told me. “Don’t share it with anyone. I don’t usually give it out. Call me if you need anything. Don’t bother going through 911.”
“What am I supposed to be afraid of?” I asked.
“I don’t know yet,” she admitted.
Those were the four words that finally got to me. And when I looked into her eyes, I saw that she was scared, too—and that terrified me. “What do you mean?” I asked. “You’re the sheriff. Why don’t you know?”
“Something is going on in this town. In this house,” she said. “I keep hearing that people who’ve stayed in this room have heard noises—and I don’t believe in ghosts. I’d send you back to Manhattan if that were an option. Since it’s not, I’ll do my best to protect you. But you’re going to have to work with me, Bram. Be careful. Don’t take any more risks.”
She left me standing there in my doorway with her card in my hand. Downstairs, I heard her greet Miriam. Then the two moved to another room, speaking softly so I couldn’t eavesdrop. I quickly closed my door and turned the lock. After that, I pulled the chair out from the vanity and wedged it under the door handle.
I lay in bed with my legs tucked to my chest and my arms wrapped around them. That was what I’d done in rehab when the drugs had worn off and I couldn’t make the memories go away. The pictures and audio were as clear as they
had been when I was twelve—but I processed them with a seventeen-year-old brain. I saw things and heard things I hadn’t noticed before. Every bit of it scared me, and I didn’t understand what it meant. It was like watching a movie in which key scenes had been deleted. The only thing I knew for a fact was that the heroine of the film was completely screwed.
Sometimes, if I fell asleep with my own arms around me, I’d have the dream. If it went the way it was supposed to, nothing really happened. I didn’t know where I was, or what we were doing, but I was with my father, and I felt safe. He seemed larger than life. There was nothing on earth that could ever get past him. While I was with him, no harm would come my way. In the morning, I’d keep my eyes closed, and the feeling would last a few precious minutes until the truth hit me and I knew that none of it had been real.
* * *
—
I woke the next morning to the sound of my phone ringing. I hadn’t had the dream. My father hadn’t come to me, but I hadn’t been alone, either. Someone else had been there with me during the night.
I sat up and threw my legs over the side of the bed. I was starting to reach for my phone on the nightstand, when I realized the nightstand was no longer beside me. I lifted my eyes, and my gaze fell on the door to the hall. The chair I’d wedged under the handle was still there. So was a bureau that had been on the other side of the room. I hadn’t touched it. Someone else had pushed it in front of the door and stacked my nightstand on top. My phone was ringing from inside the drawer.
I should have been terrified. That would have been the normal reaction. While I’d been sound asleep in my bed, someone had moved all my furniture. But the sheriff herself had checked the whole room the previous night. There had been no one in there but me when she’d left. I knew that the girl in the white satin dress was responsible. She wasn’t a hallucination. She was real, but now I knew I had nothing to fear from her. I could see she’d done her best to protect me.
I was sliding the bureau back across the room when my phone started ringing again. I grabbed it out of the nightstand drawer and accepted the call without looking at the screen. There was only one person it could be. I wasn’t in the mood for a chat, but I knew she’d only keep calling if I didn’t answer. It wasn’t often that my mother felt like parenting, but when she did, there was no denying her.
“Mom,” I said.
“Bram! Where have you been?” she demanded. “I’ve been calling all morning.”
“It’s not even nine o’clock yet, and you’ve only called twice,” I corrected her. “The first time I was busy.”
Nothing I ever said, no matter how minor, was ever accepted without scrutiny. “Doing what?”
I wasn’t going to make something up just to suit her. Not anymore. “Moving my furniture back to where it should be. Someone rearranged my bedroom in the middle of the night.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. Then, “Is this one of your jokes?”
The response was so utterly predictable that I didn’t see any point in getting pissed off. “Think what you want, Mom,” I told her. “You always do.”
“What’s going on up there? Have you started taking drugs again? Do I need to call your uncle?”
I’d planned to humor her, but my temper flared. “Go ahead and call him. Call a doctor. Call the sheriff. Call anyone you like. I’m one hundred percent clean and sober.” Then I turned the tables. “By the way, I’m glad you phoned. There’s a question I’ve been meaning to ask you. What did you do with Dad’s belongings?”
“Your father’s belongings?” She understood the question perfectly. She was just buying time. That made me even angrier. She must have known I’d ask at some point. She’d had five years to come up with an answer.
“After Dad died, seventy-two boxes were hauled away from our house. Where did they go? Did you put them in storage?”
I could imagine her sitting at the desk in her tasteful office where she spent her days talking to other rich women and swapping checks for their favorite charities. “The items of value were auctioned off. The rest was donated to worthy causes.”
A full minute passed before I could speak. Everything was really gone. I think I’d always known it was. That’s why I’d been afraid to ask. “Did it ever occur to you that I might want some of it?”
“Where is this all coming from, Bram?” my mother asked. “Why are you asking these things now?”
“Because I was twelve years old when my father died. I didn’t know what to ask. And for the last five years the only people who would talk to me about any of this were the therapists you paid to listen. What do you think they’d say if they knew you erased every last trace of my father two days after he died?”
“What was I supposed to do?” she snapped. She wasn’t used to being questioned. “Dwell on what happened? Let myself get mired in the past? I had to move on, Bram. I tried to help you move on, too. But you couldn’t accept what your father had done. It drove you to drugs. It drove you to crime.” She whispered the last word as if it were too shameful to say out loud.
“How did the leak in the basement start?” I asked. “No one ever told me.”
“The leak?”
“You know what I’m talking about. How did carbon monoxide leak into Sarah and James’s house? Answer the question!”
“Don’t you dare speak to me like that,” she hissed. “I’m not an engineer, Bram. I don’t know exactly how it happened.” She was desperate to get off the subject.
“Then tell me what you do know.” I wasn’t going to give in.
“There was something wrong with the furnace. Your uncle was supposed to have someone come take a look, but he hadn’t gotten around to it. James and Sarah had both been out of town for days. The house was sealed up tight. Sarah left her cat with a neighbor and gave the maid the week off. While everyone was gone, the gas must have built up in the house. The police said the carbon monoxide detectors probably went off, but there was no one around to hear them. The batteries ran down before Sarah got home. At that point, the carbon monoxide had built up to lethal levels.” She paused. “It’s not that unusual. These things are a lot more common than you’d think, Bram.”
Suddenly the air seemed to grow thicker. I couldn’t draw enough of it into my lungs.
“I have to go, Mom,” I said. “I’ll call you back later.”
I’d remembered something—the last thing my mother had said to James when she and I had paid our one and only visit to the manor together. After everything that’s happened, you really think you can run an inn? she’d demanded. How many guests will you kill with your negligence?
At the time, it had seemed needlessly cruel. Now it felt like a warning.
I threw on some clothes and rushed downstairs. Miriam greeted me on the landing, but I raced right past her. My coat was still unbuttoned and my boots unlaced when I sprinted down the drive toward the hardware store in town. I got there fifteen minutes before it opened and paced the sidewalk in front of the shop. A few townsfolk bundled up in thick down coats waddled by, eyes narrowed. Cars slowed as they passed, as if I were an accident on the side of the road. I kept my head down and tried not to look back.
At ten to nine, the store’s owner showed up and let me in. It must have been a bit odd to find a seventeen-year-old girl waiting in the cold to purchase carbon monoxide detectors. It probably seemed even weirder when he found out I’d forgotten to bring money.
“Everything okay up there at the manor?” The owner was a big, burly guy with a John Deere hat and a week’s worth of stubble. I wasn’t surprised that he knew who I was. I was shocked that he seemed to care.
“My uncle’s worried there might be a leak,” I said, praying James would never find out.
“Then don’t worry about the money. I’ll add these to the manor’s account,” the man said, putting the boxes in
to a thin plastic bag. “If one of those alarms goes off, you need to phone the fire department straightaway, all right? Carbon monoxide’s no joke. And call me if you need anything else. I’ll have one of the boys run it up to you.”
“Okay,” I said. I probably stood there for too long. He’d sounded just like my dad.
“Be careful up there, sweetie,” he told me.
I felt my eyes starting to well up. “I’ll try,” I told him.
I left the hardware store and stopped to wipe my eyes. When I looked up, I saw the sheriff parked across the street. She rolled down the passenger-side window and beckoned to me. I took a moment to collect myself before I crossed over to speak to her.
“Morning, Miss Howland. I phoned your house a few minutes ago, and Miriam Reinhart said you’d flown out the door like a bat out of hell. Everything go okay last night?”
I almost confided in her. I should have told her everything. But I’d been called a liar for so long that I didn’t trust anyone aside from myself. “Yep,” I said. “Woke up safe and sound.”
“What you got there?” she asked, pointing at the bag in my hand.
“Carbon monoxide detectors,” I said.
The sheriff arched an eyebrow. “You woke up safe and sound this morning and decided to come down to purchase carbon monoxide detectors?”
“My father died from carbon monoxide poisoning.”
“Yes, I know,” she reminded me. “As did your aunt, I believe.”
I nodded.
“Are you worried there might be a leak at the manor?” the sheriff asked carefully. She knew something was up.
“It’s better to be safe than sorry, don’t you think?” I wasn’t ready to talk.
“I do,” the sheriff agreed. “I’m glad you’re starting to take your safety seriously. And I hope going forward, you’ll be pickier about who you spend time with.”
I assumed she was talking about Nolan. Though she hadn’t come out and said so, the sheriff clearly thought that Lark going to Nolan’s on the night of the fire meant something. The fact that Nolan had never mentioned Lark’s visit made me suspect the sheriff was right. I just couldn’t figure out what it might mean. Nolan had stayed at home when Lark had left. Had he said something that had inspired her to trek up to the manor in the middle of the night?
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