Chapter 27
The rain had stopped, and the clouds had finally let up. Daniel reached out to pull me into a hug, but I stood before he could.
“We have to go downstairs. Check on . . .” My words faltered. Check on Mom? “Check on Cynthia,” I said instead.
He rose with me. “What are we going to do about her?” he asked.
“I don’t know. If Hudson dies—”
“He won’t,” Daniel said quickly. “They said it looked good. No artery was cut.”
The tension in my chest loosened, but not by much. This wasn’t like what she’d done to Daniel’s father. This was a clear attempted murder of a good guy, even if Cynthia had been under active psychosis triggered by the storm.
I stood frozen in the hallway, staring at the front yard staircase.
“We told the ambulance that Hudson cut himself with a tool while fixing the generator.”
“What if he wakes up and confesses it all? Tells them Cynthia killed your dad and now did all this? Won’t you get in trouble, too?”
“For what? I was just a kid back then. I can say I never saw anything. I was in my room when my dad went missing. I’ll hire the best lawyers money can buy. Pull strings. Money usually buys a not guilty verdict. The right amount of money, of course.”
A chill ran up my back. It wasn’t just the cold, damp air that filled the corridor. It was the way Daniel said it—so calm. So used to covering up terrible things.
“But Hudson won’t talk,” he continued, already walking toward the yellow door. He pulled a set of keys from his pocket, unlocked the connector, and slid open the first basement lock.
“How can you be so sure?”
“Hudson and Cynthia grew close over the years, especially after I left. He became my guardian when I went to boarding school. I couldn’t stay here after you were gone. This place suffocated me.”
The last lock clicked open. Daniel stepped in front of me and gently nudged me behind him, shielding me as he peered into the dark stairwell below.
“What happened down there?” he asked. “Did she try to hurt you?”
“I don’t think she realized what she was doing. She was in psychosis. When you left, she knocked me out. Dragged me down here to . . .”
I stopped. He didn’t need the rest of the sentence. He got the idea.
“I didn’t know she was this dangerous,” he said.
“I think it was the storm. She told me that’s when ‘the monster takes over.’”
Daniel sighed. “Maybe we did it all wrong,” he murmured. “Maybe we should’ve called the police that night. Let everything be handled according to the law. The right way.”
I grabbed his arm and spun him around to face me. “You did the right thing. The system and the police don’t always protect people like her and us—we learned that the hard way when we were children.”
He nodded.
“She’s chained,” I said as we reached the bottom.
That stopped him. “Chained?”
“Yes.”
“Do I wanna know more?”
I shook my head.
His eyes scanned the shadows, like he expected to see something waiting. “I haven’t been down here. Ever, actually. Hudson always kept it off-limits.” He stared at the wall in the dark. “Is there a light?”
I moved along the wall and flicked the switch. To my relief, the overhead bulbs blinked on. They were dim and flickering, but on.
“She cut the backup power, you said?” I asked.
“Yeah. But switched it out with a new one.”
“This way,” I said. I was reaching toward the wall when Daniel grabbed my wrist and pulled ahead, taking the lead instead.
We followed the narrow hallway until we reached the familiar fork. To the left was her room. To the right was the tunnel—the one with the bricked-up dead end, the one that also led to the pantry door.
“She’s not in her room,” I told him. “She’s down that way.”
Daniel didn’t waste time. He moved down the tunnel, phone out, flashlight beam cutting through the darkness as he raised it.
But I stopped him.
He turned to face me. His expression was layered with tension: worry in his eyes, curiosity tightening his brow. A quiet exhaustion dragged down the corners of his mouth.
He looked like a man who’d carried too much for far too long.
I stared at the man I’d loved my whole life.
His hair was still damp, the dark strands curling over his forehead.
He’d changed into dry clothes, but the toll of the night, and probably the last few years, was etched into his face.
It wasn’t easy for him either. Losing his mom so young.
Living with a father like that. Watching that man nearly kill his stepsister, then seeing his stepmother shoot him dead.
And now, I had to tell him something terrible: that his father’s body had never been thrown into the ocean, like he’d always believed. That my mom had kept it, like some kind of deranged shrine. And worse, she wore his skull as a mask during storms.
“What is it?” he asked.
I couldn’t say it, not with the way he was looking at me. I was too worried about the pain it might cause him. Was this the same feeling he’d wrestled with the whole time we’d been together? If it was, I understood why he’d found it so hard to tell me the truth.
When I stayed quiet, Daniel kept walking. We passed the room where the first Winthrop had raped the maids. His footsteps slowed at the bricked wall.
“Through here?” he asked, pulling a knife from his pocket. The steel glinted under his flashlight.
I nodded. However, just as he stepped toward the gap in the wall, I grabbed his arm. “Daniel, wait.”
He looked at me. “If you want to talk about what we’re supposed to do with all of this, I don’t think I have an answer.”
“That’s not it. I mean, it is, but there’s something else you need to know.”
He waited. The silence thickened.
“Your dad . . .”
“My dad what?”
“He . . . he’s not in the ocean. His body, I mean.”
“What?”
“I mean . . . his body. It’s in there.”
His face twitched in confusion. It was like his brain was rejecting the information.
“She kept it, Daniel. The body. She never got rid of it.”
His eyes widened. “What do you mean she never got rid of it? She threw it into the ocean. It was gone.”
I shook my head, reaching for his hand. “It might be better if I go in first and—”
And what? Put the skull mask back where it belonged?
But Daniel had already turned and stepped through the opening. I followed him into the room. The air inside was thick and cold, metallic. His flashlight swept over the walls and landed on the remains.
His father’s skeleton.
His breath caught. His eyes were locked wide open.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he whispered. “This is fucking hell.” He shook his head in disgust. “Cynthia!” he shouted.
No answer.
I walked into the room behind the wooden door. Daniel followed closely, his flashlight sweeping across the strange wooden table and the weird machines.
The light hit Cynthia who was sitting on the floor, and she flinched.
One hand flew up to block the light. Chains rattled at her wrists and ankles.
The skull mask lay beside her on the floor.
She looked more like herself now, calmer.
However, blood still streaked her forehead and the side of her head, probably from where I hit her.
“Emily? Is that you?” she asked, her voice tight with pain.
“Yes,” I said.
“Help me. The monster chained me up in here during the storm. I think he wants to hurt Hudson. He says Hudson’s trying to take me from him.”
Daniel lowered the flashlight so it wouldn’t blind her. The light shifted and hit Daniel. Cynthia’s eyes widened, and her pupils dilated as if she’d seen a ghost.
“Michael?”
“No,” he answered. “It’s me.”
“D-Daniel?” she wondered, uncertain. “I—” Her mouth hung open. It was the first time I’d seen her speechless. “You look so much like your father, for a second I thought . . .”
Daniel walked past me and picked up the mask from the floor. His fingers ran along the curved bone.
“Is this what’s left of him?” he asked coldly. He stared at the skull with a mix of sadness and something hotter. Maybe hate.
“Yes,” Cynthia said quietly, standing up. “That’s all I have left of my Michael.”
He nodded once. “Well, say your goodbyes then, because Michael is going into the ocean today. Like he should have, all those years ago, when he destroyed all of our lives like the monster he was.”
“No!” she shouted, but Daniel didn’t care.
“Are there keys?” he asked me.
I nodded and patted my jogging pants. Then I stopped. These weren’t the same pants.
“I threw your wet pants away,” Daniel said. “And I’m sure there were no keys in them.”
“Probably lost in the water,” I muttered.
Cynthia’s eyes flicked between us with curiosity.
“I’ll grab a tool from the garage,” he said. “You should come with me.”
“I’ll stay here and keep an eye on her.”
He was about to protest.
“She’s chained,” I added quickly. “And I don’t think she’s dangerous right now.”
Daniel didn’t like that. It was written all over his face. However, after a moment, he nodded and handed me the flashlight—and the knife. “Stay out of her reach. Use this if she gets close. I’ll be right back.”
“All grown up now, huh, Daniel?” Cynthia called after him as he disappeared into the hallway. “Just like your father!”
“He’s nothing like his father,” I barked.
Her eyes snapped toward me. They were sharp and full of fire. “All men are like their fathers,” she said, scanning me from head to toe. “Just like all women are like their mothers. Some more than others.”
“I don’t think I’m much like you,” I said. “You stabbed Hudson.”
“What are you talking about?” Her tone shifted. “Hudson is hurt?” She looked genuinely rattled, caught off guard in a way that didn’t feel staged.
“He’s in the hospital,” I said. “Hopefully he’ll make it.”
Her hand rose to her chest. “I didn’t do that! I’d never hurt Hudson!”
Her eyes darted around the room, frantic and wild. It was like the answers might be lying somewhere in the shadows.
“The monster,” she said, nodding sharply toward the shrine. Her mouth twisted with disgust. “He did that. That’s what monsters do. They hurt people. Remember?”