Chapter 3
Olivia
The Ashwood estate was as foreboding as it was old.
At the front was a dark, wrought iron gate covered in vines along its poles. Meanwhile, the manor sat at the end of a gravel lane that curled through a forest so dense the light came through in thin, sectioned pieces.
The place looked old. Colonial, maybe. Three stories of timber and dark stone, grown into the hillside behind like it had always been there.
Moss grew along the stone foundation. The windows were large and dark, and the whole structure sat with its back against the mountain like it didn’t need to worry about what was behind it.
The Blackwater Tap folks weren’t exaggerating. I could definitely see why anyone would think this place was haunted.
My hands tightened on the steering wheel as I inched my car forward.
It was the morning after receiving the assignment.
My car was parked just outside the gate and there was no sign of anyone letting me in.
Daisy told me during the last bits of the phone call to head here as soon as I could. I contemplated messaging her, but as soon as I tried, the gate creaked open.
I jumped in my seat.
Haunted. Definitely haunted.
My eyes went to the far edge of the gate, where a woman in her forties stood in housekeeping attire. She waved at me from a distance and spoke into the wall, probably the intercom.
Seconds later, the gates swung even more open.
My car crept along the gravel road. Fortunately, it wasn’t as unattended to as the gate was.
Once I was parked, the woman nodded at me with a warm smile.
“You must be Olivia Cruz,” the woman said. “I’m Maureen. Welcome.”
“Thank you.”
“You’ll find everything you need here,” Maureen said, ushering me and my belongings through the front door.
The exterior and the interior of the manor were like night and day. Inside, everything was polished wood — clean, well-kept, lived-in.
Art lined the walls. There were old, native tapestries. Others were portraits of people I didn’t know, but looked important.
As Maureen guided me along the halls, she continued speaking.
“The house tends to be quiet,” she said. “But there’s plenty to do. There’s a library upstairs, a lovely garden, and the kitchen is available at all hours.”
As she said the last part, we paused by an area leading to the back. A tall, broad-shouldered, older man entered.
“That’s Tomas,” Maureen pointed at him. “He’s the groundskeeper.”
Tomas greeted me with a stiff but not unfriendly nod.
I was still in the entryway with Maureen, getting the general layout of the ground floor, when footsteps came from the hallway to my left.
He appeared to be in his early to mid-twenties. He wore a loose shirt over a pair of lax trousers. His hair was a golden wheat color, his skin pale, and his eyes gentle. He grinned widely.
“Ah, you must be the nurse!” the young man said. “Please don’t be alarmed about the pale skin. I promise I’m not a ghost."
“I’m the nurse, yes,” I said with a nod. “Olivia Cruz. You must be Jake.”
I offered my hand. Unlike Maureen, he shook it with both hands, enthusiastic.
“With every literal breaking bone in my body,” he said. “That’s only half a joke, by the way.”
“Jake’s condition can get a little… troublesome,” Maureen said.
“Not that I ever let it keep my spirits down!” Jake reassured.
Jake took over the tour for me as Maureen had to excuse herself to get some things ready. He showed me a few more areas: the dining room (that he claimed no one ever used), a cozy fireplace area that looked out into the fields, and some of the rooms on the upper floor.
As we passed through the hallway lined with portraits, Jake slowed and gestured broadly at the walls.
"Three generations," he said. "Logging, originally.
Timber rights going back further than anyone cares to track.
" He said it the way people said things they'd repeated so many times it had lost all weight.
"My eldest brother handles all of it now.
Investments, land management, whatever keeps the lights on. "
"So you don't have to worry about any of that," I said.
Jake looked almost amused. "Never have. Never plan to." He knocked once on the wooden paneling as we moved on. "That's the benefit of this family, I suppose. We don't run out of things. Just patience, occasionally."
“So where’s the rest of your family?” I asked.
Jake looked at me with interest. “You mean my brothers?” he asked. “Somewhere, probably. Honestly, you’ll hate just how much they keep to themselves.”
Jake paused as we reached the end of one corridor. He pointed to a door that was ajar. Inside was a navy blue bedroom. A nearby end table was littered with medication bottles, bandages, and paraphernalia.
“My room,” Jake said. “Which I try to avoid at all costs, but never can.”
Jake suddenly winced and touched his arm. His legs wobbled but he kept steady.
“Are you alright?” I asked.
“Ah, that’s just the pain acting up,” he said. He tried to turn his grimace into a smile.
“You should lie down,” I didn't say it as a suggestion. “I can use this time to make my general assessment of you, too.”
Jake accepted reluctantly.
Once we were inside the room, I put down my medical bag and did a general physical examination.
He was feverish, but on the lower end fortunately.
His pulse was slightly elevated and his blood pressure high, no doubt from the stress.
Between his symptoms, his records and the way he described his bone pain to me, I was surprised he was walking around the manor at all.
But something else didn’t fit what I was looking at.
Jake sat on the edge of the bed and watched me reach over his existing patient chart.
"You're surprised," he said.
"Pardon?”
"You make a face when you're surprised." He tapped the space between his own brows. "That one."
I smiled. “There’s no clear diagnosis here,” I admitted. “You said you’ve had this condition for a while.”
“A while, yeah.” That didn’t answer the question at all.
“Do you have a ballpark figure? A few weeks? A few months?”
“I think a few months works, yeah.” Jake said, examining me. “Now you’re unsure.”
“My face can’t be that easy to read.”
Jake chuckled. “The doctors said my condition was… weird. There aren’t exactly any big lab facilities around here. But they think it’s, uh… what do you call it? Auto… imminent?”
“Autoimmune?”
“That’s the word!”
That tracked. Things like lupus didn’t always look the same from patient to patient.
I didn’t get time to discuss it further.
Someone knocked on the door.
“Don’t come in!” Jake said jokingly.
The door opened anyway.
A man stepped through it, a few years older than Jake, dark-haired, with sharper, sterner features than he did.
His posture felt distinctly different from Jake, as well.
Where Jake wore his ease in every line of his body, that man stood straight, as if he had to be alert for anything and everything.
His eyes landed on me and assessed without softening.
"Donovan," Jake said, with the tone of someone who had been expecting exactly this. "This is Olivia. She's going to sort me out. Olivia, this is my older brother."
Donovan looked at me. "You're the nurse."
"That I am,” I said.
"Good."
Not one for words, I thought.
Donovan crossed his arms and hovered over my chair. He looked at the chart I was holding and murmured.
“Pain level?”
“Four,” Jake answered for me. “Maybe a five when I breathe wrong."
Donovan's jaw moved. His eyes came back to me. "The records we sent — did they cover what you need?"
I set down my pen. "They were sparse."
"They were what they were."
"They were incomplete." I kept my voice level. This wasn’t my first difficult family.
“For a hereditary condition approaching a critical phase, three pages isn’t enough. I can work with what I have, but I want us to be clear that I'm working with gaps."
Donovan’s eyes narrowed. The line of his jaw tightened.
I didn’t back away. However, I could see Jake tense at the periphery of my vision.
"You'll have what you need when you need it,” Donovan said.
"That's not reassuring," I said.
Jake made a sound that he quickly redirected into a cough.
"It wasn't meant to be reassuring." Donovan uncrossed his arms. "You're here for Jake. Keep your focus there and we won't have any issues."
He left without waiting for a response. The door closed behind him with a quiet, final click.
Jake waited two seconds. "He's not always like that."
"He absolutely is," I said.
Jake stared at me. Then he laughed.
I spent a couple more hours with Jake before he apologized.
“I don’t like to doze off, but I can’t help myself sometimes,” he said.
I reassured him that he needed as much rest as he could get.
Maureen took this time to find me and show me my bedroom.
It was on the second floor, at the end of a hallway that ran along the east side of the house.
The room was wide, with a large canopy bed at one end with a quilted blanket and several pillows.
Wide windows, no doubt the ones I saw earlier, showed the front and the way back into Greyhollow.
There was a quaint desk and a large boudoir for an amount of clothes I’ve never personally had in all my years of being a travel nurse.
Another door, on the opposite side, showed a private bath.
“I hope it’s to your liking,” Maureen said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t set it up earlier.”
“It’s beautiful,” I told her. “Is it really okay for me to be staying here?”
“But of course! You’re here to take care of one of our own, after all.”
I set my bag on the bed and didn't unpack it.
I never unpacked on the first day. An old habit — less superstition, more practicality.
Maureen stepped into the room and placed some fresh towels atop the bed. She didn’t immediately leave. Rather, she looked at me with a smile.
“It’s… a relief to have you here.”
I looked at her. "For Jake, right?"
She hesitated, then nodded. "Yes," she said. "Of course. For Jake."
Maureen excused herself.
I stood at the window and looked at the trees. I frowned, not unlike when I first arrived in Greyhollow. I drew the curtains.
I considered everything I experienced in the house. The people were nice, but I was still at someone else’s home. Rapport took time.
There was also the matter about Jake’s charts.
"You'll have what you need when you need it.”
What did that even mean?
I was aware of patients who didn’t like having their conditions announced for privacy’s sake. Especially if it was something controversial.
However, the Ashwoods were already a private family, and the way the town spoke about them suggested it wasn’t out of avoiding any scandal.
Furthermore, Jake’s condition was raising all sorts of warning flags. Pain management was one thing, but prolonged pain could be even worse. Everyone cared for Jake, from what I could tell. Why would they hold anything back?
I sighed.
I’d just have to take it one step at a time.
But something deep inside me told me that it wasn’t going to be easy regardless.
The estate quieted as evening set in.
I spent the late afternoon on a second, more thorough assessment of Jake, adjusting my notes and getting a better feel for the household's rhythm. Dinner was in the kitchen — easy and unpretentious.
Maureen and I talked. She shared some anecdotes about staff life, and then she tidied things up.
It was the most normal thing I had felt since arriving.
The kitchen was clearly where people actually lived in this house.
The formal dining room I'd walked past earlier had the quality of a room that was available but not used.
There was no sign of Donovan after our earlier exchange. And no sign at all of the head of the household. I realized no one mentioned his name earlier. I reminded myself to ask someone about him tomorrow.
After dinner, I moved through the ground floor to test if I remembered where everything was. The sitting room. The study with the tall shelves. The private library.
I found the hearth room off the main hallway — small, warm, two armchairs angled toward a fireplace, a small table, and shelves that held books alongside the kind of things people stop putting away. I stood in the doorway for a moment. Something about the room felt familiar. I didn’t know why.
I noticed a corner that Maureen and I didn’t pass by earlier. At the far end of the east hallway, past the main staircase, there was another corridor.
It was narrower than the others. The light was dim, one overhead fixture casting a warmth that barely reached the walls.
The stone showed through the plaster in places — older than the rest of the house, or at least from a different phase of it.
The corridor ran back toward the furthest part of the estate and ended at a door.
Heavy dark wood. Iron handle. It looked ancient.
I stood and looked at it for a moment, unaware that my feet had already carried me toward it.
I know I shouldn’t be snooping around, but another part of me believed there was no harm. It was just a door, after all.
I touched the handle. It felt cold under my palm. I gave it a tug. Locked.
Figures.
"What are you doing?"
I whirled around.
When I saw who stood at the end of the corridor, every part of my body froze.
A tall man with dark hair and broad shoulders stood at the opposite end of the corridor, in a dark henley shirt.
He wasn’t a stranger.
He looked like the man from my first night in Greyhollow.
Only now, his eyes were pale green.