Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Harriet
I can’t stop staring at Kingston Manor. I can just make out the spire from my bedroom window. It looks intact. Like they’ve rebuilt it.
I grab my phone and text Josie to see what she knows.
Any word yet who bought Kingston Manor? Like WTF they’re REHABBING IT????
sooooo weird. I think they’re doing a pretty good job tho they have some really high-end woodworkers re-creating some of the original parlor off-site. They redid the entire foundation. Owners are an LLC out of Delaware.
ME: A company? What are they using it for?
Permits are residential. Apparently, they plan to live in it??
Have they seen the place? Are they aware that their backyard is a literal cliff?
LOL no idea. Dave Skelly’s doing some consulting—you know he’s all up in the historical society and he says they’re going all out right down to getting window casements handcrafted to match old photos.
Crews around the clock. Electricians out of Creighton getting overtime up the wazoo. Unlimited funds, elite crews. $$$$$
They could’ve torn it down and rebuilt for so much less money.
It’s a good thing for the town to preserve the history
History of squalor
LOLOLOL
I take a deep breath. Of course, it’s good for the town. I don’t know why I have such a negative feeling about it.
The owners... just nothing?
No. Nobody has ever seen them
What’s the trust name? Just curious........
A series of dots appears, disappears, and then reappears. Finally, a text comes through.
They haven’t filed with town hall yet so...
NM!! I was just curious. It’s no big thing. I totally respect your councilperson cone of silence.
Work on Kingston Manor continues at an impressive pace. The new thing now is tradespeople smuggling out pictures—hasty shots of chandeliers, carved ceiling roses, ancient stone basins restored to showroom perfection.
The pictures get sent around on group chats. The money being poured into the project is just shocking.
Granabelle thinks I should turn my true crime forum friends loose on the mysterious building project.
Not likely.
I’m still stinging from their smackdown over my wedding sabotage theory, which, for the record, I still a hundred percent believe.
I’m not stupid. I know that people think I’m obsessed with spreadsheets and with tracking crimes on spreadsheets because of what happened to James. Because of the trauma and the guilt that I hold from it.
Yes, I feel guilty. If I hadn’t selfishly run across the street to see a boy at the ice cream shop, leaving James to play by himself, he might still be around today.
But it doesn’t make the patterns that I see less obvious.
And I’m not, as a therapist once speculated, using spreadsheets as an attempt to control an uncontrollable world.
And yes, I also understand why people side-eye my wedding serial killer theory, especially when they find out my grandmother was injured in one of the less serious accidents.
I get how it looks.
But I can’t help it. I can’t unsee it!
One of the few good things to come out of my time at that castle was meeting siblings who are all about bringing order to chaos, just like me. I felt seen.
The only other person who ever really appreciated it is Serena.
And maybe Alexandru, but he doesn’t count.