Chapter 31
I SHUT AND LOCK MY BEDROOM DOOR. I DON’T KNOW HOW I’LL SLEEP, but I need to be alone, away from Alex.
I take down the box from Mary’s closet and sit with it on the bed.
I go through her things again. It somehow makes me feel stronger, braver.
With everything laid out on the bed, I wonder what Mary thought of my mother.
She obviously met her, talked to her. Something moved her to take the picture.
I page through the yearbooks, looking for more about Mary and her life.
But there’s nothing there except what you would expect.
Pictures of the seniors, sports, and club photos.
I stop on the senior superlatives page. There’s Mary, a shy smile on her face.
“Most likely to brighten your day” is printed under her picture.
That seems to be the common theme about Mary; she was kind.
I set the yearbooks aside. Pick up the doll. Mine looked just like this one. Funny how we both chose the same model from the popular set. I replace Mary’s things in the box, setting the doll aside, then put the box back in the closet.
I pull out my laptop and try to work on my novel, but after an hour, I’ve made little progress, and I start feeling sleepy.
In my dream, I hear the screaming woman.
I run through the mist trying to find a safe place.
My heart is hammering, my pulse racing. But I only find my mother sitting on the Spencers’ rope swing.
I try to speak to her, but, for some reason, she can’t hear me.
I try to tell her we have to go. We have to leave, but she doesn’t seem to know that I’m there.
The screaming gets louder, and then I’m flat on my back in the Spencer cemetery as if some heavy hand pushed me, and I’m pinned to the cold ground.
The screaming grows in intensity and the sound comes closer until it surrounds me, blotting out everything else.
I bolt upright, dripping sweat, heart pounding.
I hear a loud voice, but not in my dream.
Here in the house. My phone says two a.m. I creep to the door, open it slightly.
Downstairs, Alex is shouting, but no one answers.
He must be on the phone. I try to calm myself, slow my breathing, but the dream and now Alex have me exploding with anxiety.
I can’t quite catch what he’s saying, but I think he’s talking to his wife.
Then there’s silence. The call over. I push my door shut and lock it.
I stumble back to the bed in the dark room, only the light from my phone illuminating the way.
The doll, Mary’s doll, is perched on the nightstand.
I grab it to put it back in the box, but a wave of nausea passes over me, and I sink to the bed with it in my hand.
A memory floats to the surface, nudged there by the dream, Alex’s shouting, and my anxiety.
I didn’t have a doll like this one. They were too expensive. My mother never bought me a doll like this. But I remember playing with it. I remember playing with the doll, this doll, in this room.
My throat feels like it’s closing up. I can’t catch my breath. My mother was here at Spencer House. I know that, but now I realize that I was here, too.
I wake in the morning, the room filled with dull gray light, Mary’s doll next to me on the bed.
I feel hungover, but I’d had little to drink last night.
It’s just emotion flooding my being, like a heavy load weighing down my body and mind.
They lied to me, and I don’t know what to do with what I now know.
I was here with my mother years ago. How long ago?
Based on the picture, my mother was very young, and thus, so was I, which makes sense since I had no memory of it until last night.
Still. I remember only the doll, but a vague sense creeps over me of the house, the fireplace, and the woman screaming.
Was that real? A memory and not a nightmare?
Was it my mother? Maybe she confronted Alex and they got into an argument.
But now I realize that Alex knew about me, saw me in the flesh, and still didn’t want anything to do with me.
What do I do with this new information? I don’t want to stay here any longer, that’s for sure. I’ll pack my bags and head up to Portland. My interview is still days away. But I can find a hotel, stay in town there, and figure out what to do.
I feel a heaviness in my bones as I get ready for the day.
My mother was right about Alex, and I should’ve listened.
But I held out this hope that she was mistaken, he was a good guy who would welcome a new daughter with open arms, that I would have something of the family I had dreamed about as a little girl.
I’ll talk to Alex before I go. I don’t want any loose ends. I want him to know how he hurt my mother and me. This thought has my heart racing. I pause at the bedroom door. What if I’m mistaken? Maybe I wasn’t here. Maybe the memories aren’t real. What do I really know for sure?
I draw a deep breath, pull my shoulders back, and head down the main staircase.
I hear Alex in the kitchen. I screw up my courage and head into the room. He’s fussing with the coffeemaker and turns when he hears me. His dark hair is mussed, and his eyes are heavy with fatigue.
“Good morning, Emma. I hope I didn’t wake you last night.” He pulls two mugs from the cupboard. “My sister-in-law called at some ungodly hour. I don’t even know what time it was. Anyway, she and I never did get along.”
“Nothing wrong with Liliana or the baby, I hope?” My voice is surprisingly strong and steady.
“No. They’re fine. Beatrice was just giving me hell for being up here at the lake again. I think she’d had a few drinks. She’s getting bored staying at the apartment, and I guess she decided to take it out on me. Sorry if I woke you.”
“It’s fine.”
He hands me a mug. I don’t know where to start, what to say to him. I can’t do this now. I take the coffee and turn back around to leave the room. “I think I’ll go for a walk.” I take a few sips of the coffee, set the mug on the counter.
“Nice day for it,” Alex says. “Not too cold anyway. I’ll be in my office, working.”
The sky is a murky gray, like rain is on the way.
I walk out to the dock, gaze across the choppy dark waves.
The little boat bobs and bumps against its moorings.
I think about taking it out, gliding across the water away from Spencer House.
But the wind keeps kicking up in stiff bursts and I shiver.
What am I going to do now? I should’ve talked to Alex in the kitchen, but I just couldn’t.
Maybe I need time to pump up my courage.
Quick footfalls sound on the boards behind me. I whip around. Noah. I cross my arms over my chest.
“Hey, Emma. How’ve you been?”
“Okay.” I glance off over his shoulder to avoid meeting his eyes.
“Look. I’m sorry if things went a little too fast the other night. I know that you’ve been through a lot with your mom and now with what’s happened here. But I want you to know that I’m here for you.”
I feel myself wanting to give in. Noah is the only person I’ve felt completely comfortable with at Cheshire Lake and now I feel adrift. “Have you heard from Aubrey?” I ask.
He shakes his head. His eyes narrow. “No. Why? Have you heard anything?”
“No.” I step back, toward the end of the dock. I want to leave, but Noah blocks the way and for a second, I’m afraid he won’t move. I start past him and brush against his shoulder trying to get by.
Noah is behind me, walking in step with me. “Has something happened, Emma?”
I come to a stop. I don’t want to talk to him about us, or Aubrey, or what I’ve just learned about myself and my mother. “Did you know that they took Jeffrey down to the police station for questioning?”
“Yes, I heard.”
Of course he heard. “Do you think they’ve got anything on him? They didn’t arrest him.”
“Hard to say.”
“What do you know, Noah? It seems to me that nothing around here escapes you. Ruth and Detective Bellman were talking about Jeffrey, saying that he apparently did something before that makes him a target for the investigation now. What did he do?”
Noah pulls up in front of me. The wind whips my hair in front of my face, and I hastily scoop it away.
“About three years ago, Jeffrey’s grandmother—she raised him after his mother died when he was little—was found dead at the bottom of the cellar steps in the cottage.
She’d fallen and broken her neck. Jeffrey admitted that they’d been arguing at the top of the stairs, but he said that the fall was accidental.
There was some talk that he pushed her, but there was no evidence of that.
She was old and infirm. She’d fallen a couple of times before.
But the people in town talked anyway, and so there’s always been some suspicion about Jeffrey. And you know how he is. Different.”
“Why is Ruth so protective of him?”
“She’s like that. She wants to mother everyone, and she and Jeffrey’s mom were really close friends. When Agnes died of cancer, Ruth took it hard, and she helped Agnes’s mother look after Jeffrey after that.”
“He’s creepy, and he scares me.” I shove my cold hands in my pockets. I shudder thinking about Jeffrey in the cellar with the axe in his hands.
“I wouldn’t be alone with him. I don’t think that he killed Simon.” Noah’s eyes meet mine. “But somebody did.”
“Do you think they’ll ever solve the case?”
“I don’t know.”
“And what about the car? What do you think happened to Carol Lawson?”
“I don’t know what to think about that either. The media is all over it, speculating. True crime podcasters are featuring her story. ‘Where is Carol Lawson?’”
“Are you one of them?”
“One of what?”
“The media trying to track down what happened to her?”
“There’s a lot going on here. I’ve done a little looking.”