Chapter 6
SIX
A new tension had bloomed in the house overnight. The coffee had been brewed as usual, and the children were playing as if nothing had changed, but something had. A man had been killed on their property. What’s more, Nora had been evoked, the memory of that horrible night unleashed from its box.
Marlowe went upstairs to get a cup of coffee but quickly excused herself, claiming she had a work deadline. In reality, she spent the entire morning nursing a single cup of coffee while searching the Internet for anything she could find about Harmon Gallagher.
He was twenty-three. His social media pages were already flooded with overwrought comments mourning the tragedy of his death.
Marlowe studied his profile picture online—he grinned warmly beneath a camo ball cap, caught mid-laugh at a backyard barbecue.
He was broad-shouldered and had a solid build—the kind of person who probably wouldn’t go down easily without a fight …
At last, Marlowe rose from her computer and walked over to the large drafting table in the far corner of the room.
Her next project was for a client she had worked with before, who wanted Marlowe’s trademark: whimsical rustic scenes.
Friendly animals. Innocent children. In art school, Marlowe had dreamed of gallery shows and groundbreaking pieces, but it was hard to gain any recognition in the art world. It took guts to break through.
There at the drafting table, she opened her sketchbook to a new page, waiting for the right images to come.
She usually felt free to work out her ideas and impressions in this room.
She began to outline a face and a wave of untidy hair.
She filled the background with dark strokes.
A locked room, with only one window. A narrow bed.
She returned to the face. Marlowe dropped her pencil when she got to the pointed nose, the delicate eyebrows.
She knew whose face she was sketching. And she couldn’t bring herself to continue.
She tore her eyes away from her drawing, casting a glance out the French doors. The morning had already faded to a wintry afternoon. All too soon, the day would dim into evening. Marlowe gave up on the pretense of productivity and headed upstairs, empty coffee mug in hand.
Henry was seated in front of the fire next to Enzo. She crossed into the kitchen and rinsed her mug, placing it carefully in the dishwasher, before joining them.
“Marlowe.” Enzo blinked up at her from behind his thick spectacles. “There you are.”
Enzo pronounced Marlowe’s name the same way he pronounced Merlot, as if he were offering a taste of his favorite wine.
His voice had become gravelly over the years, and his speech had slowed, but his Italian accent was as thick as ever and carried the same warmth.
It was nice to see him rested and returned to his place in the family room.
Stocky and bald except for the squares of silver hair at his temples, he had a bent posture from the many years of hard, honest work he’d provided to their family.
Marlowe gave him a tight-lipped smile as she sat on the hearth, her back to the flames. “Where is everyone?”
“Stephanie and Constance took the kids to that ice-skating rink in Salisbury,” Henry said.
Marlowe nodded absently. That was the plan, she recalled. Of course, everyone was moving as usual.
“Mom went to town for groceries,” Henry said. “Nate and Dad are in the study.”
“Has there been any news?” Marlowe asked.
Henry sighed and closed the book he was reading. “Neighbors have been calling,” he said. “The detectives have visited just about everyone on the road, asking their questions. No one knows anything.”
“Well, I doubt anyone was taking a stroll that far from the road at that hour,” Marlowe said.
“Terrible thing.” Enzo shook his head, and Marlowe watched his pale, sagging skin pull at his neck.
He was bundled up in a knit sweater that consumed his shrunken limbs.
He had once been able to hoist her and Henry up, one under each arm, and carry them out of the kitchen when they were getting in the way.
He had always seemed to quietly favor Marlowe, or at least it felt that way when she was young. During summers in the country, Enzo told Glory and Frank that their daughter was the responsible child. It embarrassed Marlowe at the time. Being the good girl was tantamount to being a coward.
“They talked to Damen Miller. Charlie saw their car there this morning when he was out walking his dogs, and came by to let us know,” Henry murmured, rubbing his fingers against the woven blanket tossed over the armchair.
“Nothing out of the ordinary, though. I’m sure they’re going to have to talk to all the neighbors. ”
Henry worked for a blue-chip law firm in Manhattan, but he had done a few years at the DA’s office right out of law school. He knew how these things unfolded. Nora’s father was just another name on the list of locals.
“I hope they don’t upset him,” Marlowe said.
Many years had passed since she’d last spoken to Damen, but she used to visit often, bringing baked goods, and then casseroles when Jennifer got sick.
Increasingly, her presence had seemed to distress him.
Marlowe understood—she had lost the appearance of the sixteen-year-old girl who was best friends with his daughter.
The reality was shocking even to Marlowe, who had never considered what it would be like to mature without Nora by her side.
Damen stopped answering her calls altogether after Jennifer passed.
Henry shook his head. “They’re just stirring up pointless grief.”
Marlowe leaned against the edge of the mantel, feeling the heat of the fire radiate through her shirt.
She thought back to some of the outlandish theories she had heard about Nora.
Most of that noise had died down, even if the crackpot blogs still found a reason to post occasionally.
The twisted conspiracy theorists couldn’t resist a salacious cold case.
As for Damen, if he had theories of his own, he never shared them with anyone, and he had grown even more silent with age.
Marlowe had not told her family that Ariel and Ben had asked about Nora, and none of them had shared the details of their interviews with her.
“It must have been a dispute among hunters.” Marlowe brought herself back to the present. “Late at night.”
“That’s what I would guess.” Henry slid his finger between the pages of his book, a historical tome about the Vikings, but he did not open it.
“These hunters are not playing with toys,” Enzo said abruptly and then took in a deep breath, his sunken chest rising and falling. “Do not go looking for that bear.”
Henry’s shoulders slumped, and Marlowe bit her lip.
“Enzo,” Henry said. “That was a long time ago.”
“A hunter clipped that bear’s leg. I didn’t believe it the first time we heard the story. And then I saw for myself. After that I couldn’t keep you kids out of the woods, looking for him. Only Marlowe knew nothing good would come of it.”
Enzo reached out and placed his hand on Marlowe’s knee.
She kept her face turned toward the fire, unable to return the warm gesture.
It unnerved her when Enzo slipped out of time.
It was unclear how much he understood about what had taken place yesterday.
His dementia was progressing steadily—some days he seemed acutely afflicted by it, but occasionally he appeared more lucid than ever.
Marlowe could remember all the afternoons she and her brothers spent huddled around Enzo as he told one of his famous yarns. Over the years, they became more adept at sensing his embellishments, but they still hung on his every word.
He seemed poised to begin another one at any moment, nodding slowly up and down. It was his signature way of conjuring a story from his boundless vault of memories.
“What did you say this hunter’s name was?” Enzo stared penetratingly until Marlowe met his gaze.
“Harmon,” she whispered. “Harmon Gallagher.”
Enzo hummed in recognition. “I remember when you moved down into that basement bedroom. Converted from that dreadful cellar just after your parents bought the place. And, of course, you remember that I was the first one who lived down there after the first renovation.”
“How could I forget?” Marlowe chuckled. The recollection seemed irrelevant but harmless enough.
“And many more improvements came after that. The master bedroom annex, front porch. A big, beautiful kitchen. But the bones of this old house …” Enzo trailed off, looking up at the patinaed trusses and then the slate mantel of the fireplace.
“Those have stood here unchanged for over a century. Something to take great pride in, but also a reminder of those who came first.”
Marlowe froze. Not so irrelevant. Hearing the name of the deceased had drawn him back to the history of this place.
After all, the Gray House had been a part of the original Gallagher farm.
The land had been divided down the middle decades ago, separating the Gray House from the farm across the road.
The Gallagher ancestors had dwelled in the house long before Marlowe or Enzo for that matter.
“Mysterious lot, all of them,” Enzo continued. “But that girl still gives me a chill.”
“Which girl?” Marlowe felt a shudder of anticipation.
“The Gallagher girl,” Enzo said.
She had expected her friend’s name to slip through Enzo’s cracked lips. But he meant another girl—a local myth Marlowe vaguely recalled her father talking about years ago. She wasn’t sure if the story was true or just part of the local lore bandied about by dubious real estate agents.
Marlowe and Henry remained quiet, allowing Enzo to continue his meandering story.
“The Gallaghers who lived in this house, great-grandparents to those brothers, had a beautiful daughter. The prettiest farm girl in the county. But this daughter harbored a rebellious streak. Her mother tried to keep her tethered to her chores around the fields and in the house, but the Gallagher daughter was always running off. The house was too confining for her, or so it goes.”
Enzo raised his brows upward. He was beginning to take some liberties, add in his customary drama, but the reflections on the house as some sort of prison rattled Marlowe.
“And where would she go?” Marlowe asked, trying to keep Enzo engaged and cogent. His stories always made the listener desperate for answers, even if she knew he was lying.
“Her favorite spot was at the top of the North Field, where the land rises and the grass grows tall and green. And out of sight from the house, you know. From her perch, she could look out at the house and the barn and, beyond that, deep into the valley. The Gallagher daughter sat up there every season. In the summer, she was cushioned by the waving grasses, and in the winter, she sat on a snowbank like it was her throne. She weathered the rain in the spring and the cool wind of autumn. That was her favorite, which got her in even more trouble, as fall was the busiest time for a valley farmer. She left the cows unfed and the kitchen dishes unwashed and the bread burning at the hearth. And then one day, out in the hedgerow, she started to hear voices whispering from the woods behind her. She came back home that night with stories that turned her parents’ hearts to stone.
They were convinced the poor girl was going insane or, worse, had been visited by a demon. ”
Henry shifted in his chair, and Marlowe’s gaze dropped to the floor. Neither of them spoke, but the air between them tightened.
Enzo continued: “She was confined to her bedroom, where the visions and whispers got worse until she went completely mad. Everyone murmured stories about the crazy girl at the Gallagher house. They said that on certain nights, you could hear her screaming. After that—well, that kind of story casts a long shadow on a family.”
Enzo fell back against the cushion, eyes wide and glassy like some ancient soothsayer’s.
It was an odd tale that didn’t really have an ending.
He just seemed to run out of things to say, and the story petered out.
A girl was locked in her room and went mad.
She didn’t die, but everyone else had to live with it.
“Don’t tell the kids that story,” Henry said. “They’ll be too scared of ghosts to sleep.”
Enzo wrinkled his brow. “That story is not about hauntings,” he said. “There’s a different lesson: Never lock up a child. When a girl wants to run free, let her. If she encounters strange things, it is better that she is free.”
Marlowe imagined what the Gallagher girl might have looked like, sketching her in her mind.
A great-aunt to the Gallagher brothers would have been born in the 1800s and covered head to toe in drab, modest clothing.
She would have weary eyes threaded with red veins and mirrored with tears.
Long unkempt tresses of strawberry-blond hair. Thin, baleful lips.
Down the hall, the heavy mahogany doors of the study swung open, and Nate and Frank emerged. Nate was frowning, but Marlowe’s father wore a look of utter calm, as if he had just woken up from a restorative nap.
Frank grinned at the trio in front of the hearth.
“Better get more logs, Nate,” Frank said. “Keep it roaring for us.”
Neither of the men offered an explanation about what they had been discussing, and Henry didn’t seem to be curious. He probably already knew. Marlowe was left to her own imagination, as usual.