Chapter 20
TWENTY
Hidden in her basement, Marlowe felt deeply unsettled holding the account of a life unraveling in real time, knowing exactly where it led.
The scrawled entries, the growing paranoia—a handful of phrases jumped out to indicate that Dave had been lost in his grief, and his writings were an attempt at comfort, a way to make sense of things no one else could see.
But she couldn’t concentrate on them for long.
She skipped ahead to when, years later, someone else had been reading those same words as a call to arms.
Harmon’s threats were all typed up on a single page with dates and notes about whom he sent them to.
He wasn’t just lashing out indiscriminately; he’d done his research.
As Marlowe had figured, he’d emailed Stephanie about Kat and Dolly: Someone will take care of your daughters the same way they took care of Nora Miller.
There was another that Nate had received: That house will burn, with you and your children inside.
Marlowe couldn’t believe Nate hadn’t taken these directly to the police.
She would have. So why had Nate hesitated?
And how on earth could they tell the detectives Harmon wasn’t the first person to come to mind after discovering that body?
Marlowe began to see why her father and Nate needed to discuss the threats before handing them over to the detectives.
These emails—they established a motive for the Fishers.
According to the documents Ariel shared with Marlowe, Harmon had mailed three letters to the Gray House concerning the Gallaghers.
One in February read: I know what you did to me.
—Dave Gallagher. The next one was mailed in March with the same line but signed by Tom Gallagher.
The final one had been sent from Leroy the first week of November.
The letters lined up with the months of their deaths.
Deaths that Harmon seemed to think the Fishers had orchestrated.
Harmon had a flair for the dramatic, but his logic was absurd.
No one made Leroy reach for the rope. Tom had hoarded those pills himself.
And Dave … Marlowe hesitated. She had to admit, Dave was the one that never made sense.
The emails sent to Henry and Frank repeated the same few phrases.
I know what you did to Dave, what you did to Tom. You can’t kill us all …
Greed is a sin.
Leave this house, or I’ll tell what happened to Nora.
A fourth letter was mailed to the Gray House in June.
They’re going to find me. —Nora.
Marlowe was upstate at the time, which meant that Frank or Glory had tucked this envelope away without a word. It might have been meant for her. Ariel didn’t include the recipient line or envelope for that one.
Had there been tension in the air one week ago, when the family was gathered for Thanksgiving? All Marlowe could remember was being overwhelmed by the shrieks of the children and the endless revolutions around the kitchen by Stephanie, Constance, and Glory.
What was Harmon keeping in that tent? A can of gasoline? A box of matches? Marlowe paced across her bedroom floor, her heart slamming into her chest. She threw the poisonous threats aside, cursing Ariel for handing them over without any more context.
Ben’s decision to take another round of exterior photos suddenly made sense.
He was trying to locate the door someone could have slipped out of to get at Harmon in that field.
He had threatened to hurt the children, and he had put on a good front of possessing vital information.
This went beyond what Henry classified as the detectives “covering their bases.”
Marlowe’s head spun as she turned back to her desk. The journal entries. Ariel had given them to her for a reason. She couldn’t ignore them.
Marlowe sat down and began to read.
Most entries were short and consisted of fragmented sentences.
Hot day. Fields need rain.
Walked out to the Flats, thought of Father.
Hottest day of the year so far.
Marlowe stiffened when an entry dated from July mentioned her family.
Fisher boys helped unload the hay. Older one tried to hand back the cash I gave him. It made me angry, as if I need charity. We have our land. My land. But he’s just a boy. I can be patient with him. The girls messed around in the barn while we worked, making up some dance.
Sometimes I hear a strange singing, when I’m atop the Rise or passing the barn. No words I can make out, just soft fragments of melody. Wind in the leaves, some might say, but I don’t think so. Mother always said witches hum, while they spin their curses.
Marlowe looked up, staring hard at the wall. Could that have been them? She and Nora had made up a game while walking through the woods, where one of them came up with lyrics and a melody and the other had to write another verse with a shared theme—typically some girly love song.
Dave must have known it was them. Then again, when they branded the cows with paint, Tom should have realized the most obvious culprits, yet he had told her father it looked like Wiccan rituals. They had laughed over that, Marlowe remembered.
She continued tracing her finger down the inked lines.
The August pages were dense with his familiar complaints—missing cow leads, misplaced tools, the burdensome heat.
There was a suggestion that someone might have been toying with him, but he’d always resort to blaming his aging mind. Then he got more pointed:
Frank Fisher wants to buy. He’d do it tomorrow; I get the feeling.
Told Tom as much, and mentioned it again to me today.
When I go, he can have it. I don’t care, and I doubt it’ll bring him peace.
Those boys of his are trouble. Born too lucky to ever be careful.
And the daughter—she’s sheltered and timid, but she’ll put them through hell one day, I’d wager.
Innocence like that ends badly. As for her friend, Leroy used to call her a changeling.
I used to think it was a joke, but maybe Leroy saw more than I ever did.
He hadn’t even called Marlowe by her name.
To him, she had been just another sheltered girl, destined for corruption, her fate so familiar, he was almost bored by it.
And he said Nora was a changeling. A fae child swapped at birth, forced upon unsuspecting parents.
Marlowe had told Ariel people out here still believed in the old myths, but seeing it in Dave’s own hand was different.
Maybe Harmon had seen this as proof, a justification for whatever he’d planned to do.
And Frank had wanted the land; that much was clear.
She flipped the page to find that Dave’s thoughts had turned inward toward the end of the summer.
I sometimes wonder what the point is. The corn is high as it’s ever been, the cows are healthy, but what’s it all for? I’ll be 53 this spring, but I feel ancient. My parents are gone. My brothers are gone. A blue heron stopped at the river this afternoon. There’s only me to see it.
Then, in September:
I heard those voices again, coming from the loft. I tried to ignore them, but they kept coming—clear as a bell. And then they said my name. I’ve heard them over the years, but now they’re calling me, whatever they are.
Marlowe’s blood ran cold. All those afternoons lying on their stomachs in the loft, she and Nora stifling giggles. Dave had never reacted besides a momentary stiffening of his shoulders, a sidelong glance. They’d assumed he hadn’t noticed. But that was all wrong.
This place is haunted. This morning, I found the milk cans moved. All stacked on the back table. And I swear, last week, I latched the gate. Something unhooked it. Something is out there, trying to tell me something.
How many times had they moved those milk cans? Had Nora done things on her own when Marlowe was in the city? Or had Dave started seeing things that weren’t there? She flipped to the entry she knew was coming: the October night she and Nora had snuck out after homecoming.
They’ve marked the barn. Mud from the pasture. I washed it out. Had to use the shovel to scrape it off. But now I wonder—who have I angered by scouring off the mark? And how will they retaliate?
Dave sketched it in the margin, the symbol Marlowe had dreamed up as a child, the twisted tree rising from the infinity sign, a circle around it. With his shaking hand, it looked sinister. Not like a prank, but like its own kind of wordless threat. He continued:
Tom was upset by the brands on the cows. He didn’t like the missing tools, but this would have been worse for him. It’s getting worse. And I wonder if he ever knew. I wonder if he saw where this was headed. The voices called Leroy, and then they called Tom. Now I think they’re calling me.
Marlowe clenched her jaw. She and Nora hadn’t done many pranks that fall besides the brand. Had they? There were a few Sunday afternoons spent in the loft; that was it. But Dave kept recording mysterious events through October and November.
I woke up past midnight, and when I looked out the window, I saw strange figures dancing on the lawn.
Coal stove running well this fall, but my bones stay cold. Wish Tom were here. I worry some cursed wind, the same kind that blew open the loft door last night, will start a fire in the house, and I’ll sleep through it. I worry over it, and I crave it.
They scratched that symbol into a fence post. This one I can’t wash off. It’s a warning, clear as day.
And then—
Evening time. The cows were riled again. Something walks among them, when I turn my back. I saw the changeling creeping out of the Gray House. Fishers aren’t here. She’s up to something. I ought to tell Frank, but I reckon he knows.
Marlowe checked the date and then searched it on her phone. November 12: a Tuesday. She had been in the city. Nora had no reason to be lurking about.
The entries started waning but became increasingly frantic.
I hear them. Every time I walk through the barn, I hear them.
The drawers of my office desk were all pulled out this morning. They’re looking for something.
It’s not my farm anymore. Maybe it never was.
Finally, the last entry, February 1997, the week he died:
Thaw came early this year. Unless we’re in for one more frost.
Marlowe let the papers fall from her hands.
Outside, the gnarled apple trees stood sentry beyond the garden.
She wanted to scream that it wasn’t their fault.
But it had started when he heard Marlowe and Nora.
He had been forced to endure their laughter, their tricks.
A man teetering on the edge, pushed over by childish games.
It was worse than she remembered. Nora had gotten bored during the weeks Marlowe stayed in the city, and carried on without her.
Dave’s final months had been plagued by these hallucinations. Pete Gallagher had discovered this after finding Dave’s journal. Harmon had known too. The Gallaghers had been angry. And why shouldn’t they have been? Dave, Tom, and Leroy had been driven to the brink of psychosis.
Marlowe stared down at the photocopied pages.
There was a reason Harmon had kept that journal.
It was evidence. Proof that evil things were passing between these two families.
Marlowe closed her eyes and flattened her shaking hands on the desk.
It was her fault. She had stirred all this up.
She and Nora had unwittingly cast the first stone in this feud.
And Nora had gone running out there into the dark, where vengeance lay in wait.
Marlowe thought back to that winter, the damp cold curling into the walls of the house as it always did, the kitchen still warm with Glory’s cooking, Nora rolling her red ball of yarn across the table.
How she had teased Nora about the scarf she was knitting for Sean.
They were waiting for the brownies to finish baking when her father burst in from his walk, hat askew, chest heaving.
“Call Charlie Beacon,” he said to Glory. “Dave Gallagher is passed out in the cow pasture.”
They watched from the window as Frank and their neighbor Charlie hauled Dave into the car, slipping on ice and nearly dropping him. That night, she and Nora crept to the top of the old staircase to eavesdrop on Frank and Glory.
“He had lung cancer,” Frank said. “Sick for a year and never got treatment. He just let himself go.”
Marlowe thought of Dave trudging through the ice and slush, facing the rise that blocked the Bean River, the sky streaked with pink and lavender behind him.
Alone. Without his brothers, without anyone left to anchor him.
One brother died in the barn; one in the house; the last Gallagher brother died in the field.