Chapter Twenty-Nine #2
“James didn’t know what to do with her after her mother died,” Caroline continued.
“Victoria was beautiful but dangerous, and useless on top of that, which is even worse for a farmer’s daughter.
Made his life miserable, and she was just as unhappy.
She spent her days locked up in her room, wandering the fields at night, riling up the cows, doing strange witchcraft in the barns.
James beat her for it, but she’d just laugh and keep on. ”
Marlowe pictured the old house, lit up by a full moon, the window cracked open, a girl in a white nightgown slipping out and into the fields, just as she and Nora had once done.
“He shouldn’t have beaten her.” Caroline sighed. “Only made her worse. That’s when she cursed the farm.”
“What—what was the curse?” Marlowe’s mouth had gone dry.
“Madness.” Caroline lifted her cigarette for emphasis.
“They married her off to some poor neighbor, and she poured her own madness into that land. Sealed it with blood, they say, muttering the curse on her deathbed. Childbirth gone wrong. No doctor. Bloody business.” Caroline gave Marlowe a grave look.
“Well, you already know what happened to Tom and his brothers.”
Marlowe nodded, a heaviness in her chest. Three brothers, three tragic deaths—an aberration she sometimes forgot, since it had happened when she was young. But now, after reading Dave’s journal, it all seemed darker. Sharper. A design crafted by a cruel hand.
“And then that girl in the nineties just disappeared into thin air,” Caroline added. “I warned the man who bought the land from me to be careful. I told him all about Victoria Gallagher. But he didn’t listen.”
“You think that girl went mad?” Marlowe asked, feigning casual interest.
“Someone did,” Caroline said, shrugging. “Someone took her, after all.”
“A Gallagher?”
“Oh no, Tom and his brothers were gone by then. The land was sold to some rich city family, same one that bought my brother Harry’s section years before.
Harry was none too pleased, but I said better to part well and lucratively.
” She exhaled a long plume of smoke. “A curse is a curse. Can’t argue with that, not with so many bad things happening on one patch of dirt. And now Harmon.”
Marlowe blinked furiously. She always thought of what happened at the Gray House as her own personal tragedy, separate from the others. But now it felt like something much bigger—something that had been waiting there long before she and Nora ever crept into that barn.
“Harmon’s father wasn’t much better.” Caroline’s voice dropped to a true whisper now that she had shifted to more recent history. “My nephew, Pete—my brother’s boy—was obsessed with that farm. I told him not to let Harmon linger around there, but Pete despised me. He never forgave me for selling.”
A flicker of something approaching regret passed through her eyes.
Marlowe wondered if she had ever reconsidered her hasty selling.
Real or not, it was her family curse, after all.
She was part of Victoria Gallagher’s bloodline.
Maybe she could’ve stayed, could’ve become the witch she seemed vaguely proud of having descended from.
Instead, here she was: old, brittle, shivering on a back porch with nothing but the company of strangers and cigarette smoke.
“Was there anything wrong with Pete?” Marlowe treaded lightly. She couldn’t exactly ask if he had been the type to lurk in the woods, hunt rabbits, and kidnap teenage girls.
Caroline lifted her head, and her eyes narrowed. She seemed to look again at Marlowe and see something other than an old family friend of Tom Gallagher’s. For the first time, she seemed unsure.
“No, there was nothing wrong with Peter.” The defensiveness in her voice was unmistakable.
Gossiping was one thing, but this crossed a line.
“He was passionate. Sad, maybe. Liked his drink too much—just like his father, Harry, who ran his share of the farm into the ground by the time Pete was grown.” She paused, as if she could say more about Harry but chose not to.
“If Harry and Pete were still alive, Harmon’s death would’ve destroyed them.
” She crossed herself quickly, a gesture of faith layered over her belief in the occult.
“Of course,” Marlowe said.
“It was that farm.” Caroline flicked her cigarette ash. “Pete never let go of it, and neither did Harmon. They let their anger fester. Harry encouraged it. Thought anger made men strong.”
Marlowe’s hands balled into fists in her lap. An angry man, in a family with a history of addiction and madness. Her mind raced, but Caroline wasn’t finished.
“I had to sell it.” Caroline’s voice cracked; the words were thin and fragile things. “I had to.”
Guilt. It clung to her, as though all these years later she believed Harmon’s death was somehow her fault. If she had been braver—if she had just hung on to the farm—none of this would have happened. Marlowe recognized that kind of guilt all too well. The corrosive kind that lingered for years.
“I’m sure you did.” Marlowe stood up. “I should go. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Caroline’s sunken eyes followed her. “What did you say your name was?”
“Alice.” The old woman was sharper than Marlowe had first assumed. She wasn’t giving her real name. “Lovely to talk to you.”
Marlowe ducked around the side of the house, her heart thudding.
The exchange had left her breathless, nerves buzzing.
Old family rumors weren’t proof, but they hinted at something darker.
And Pete, angry and obsessed, lingering too long on cursed land.
His culpability was becoming more plausible with every passing moment.
Marlowe jumped as Ben Vance and Ariel Mintz appeared on the porch.
Both looked as out of place as she felt, but at least they belonged there, reminding everyone that Harmon’s killer had been caught.
Ben had even thrown on a tie. Ariel’s frizzy hair hung loose, and she’d swiped on mauve lipstick, but the dark circles under her eyes remained.
“What are you doing here?” Ariel’s voice was quiet but cold.
“I was about to leave,” Marlowe said.
“Great.” Ben smiled and jerked his head toward the road. “We’ll walk you to your car.”
Marlowe followed them in silence. At her car, Ariel crossed her arms. “Get anything good from Caroline Rodine?”
“I wanted to ask about Pete Gallagher,” Marlowe admitted. “I keep thinking about Mr. Babel, if he could’ve been real.”
“You sure you don’t want to go back in there and hound the grieving mother about her deceased husband?
” Ariel rolled her eyes. Her tone had turned sharper and less amicable than it had been in the previous days.
“Not everything’s some tangled mess. Sometimes it really is that simple.
” Whatever she wanted Marlowe to get out of Brierley’s notes, it wasn’t Mr. Babel.
“Pete was obsessed with the farm, just like Harmon,” Marlowe pressed. “I thought maybe he hung around the woods. It would make sense that he was lurking on what used to be his family’s land.”
“He had no reason to hurt Nora,” Ariel snapped. “He died years ago.”
Ariel was no longer the patient conversationalist, coaxing out Marlowe’s thoughts. With Harmon’s murder solved, the detectives were running out of time. So was Marlowe.
“I know,” Marlowe said. “But maybe he mistook Nora for someone else. Or he knew my family would be blamed and wanted to drive us out.”
Marlowe’s face flushed as the words tumbled out. The idea was wild, but Caroline had implied Pete was angry enough to do something reckless.
The detectives exchanged a look.
“Even if Brierley thought the Mr. Babel story was nonsense, he should have spoken to Pete,” Marlowe said. “It was negligence.”
“Pete Gallagher was a drunk.” Ariel’s voice snapped through the frigid air. “Like his father. Couldn’t button his shirt, let alone kidnap a girl without getting caught.”
Marlowe flinched, her back bumping up against her car. Ariel’s eyes were blazing, but Ben placed a gentle hand on her elbow, and she clamped her mouth shut.
Ben gave Marlowe a tired smile. “We don’t think you’re foolish.”
“I’m not foolish,” she said flatly. Then she glanced at Ariel. She had believed in her, even as Ariel played with Marlowe’s emotions. She still trusted in Ariel’s intelligence, at least. “With the Nate thing—I don’t know. I just can’t see it.”
“Is it possible, in your opinion, that they were romantically involved?” Ariel’s low and steady way of speaking had returned, as if her outburst had never happened.
“Of course it’s possible. But anything’s possible.”
Ariel hesitated but then simply said, “Well, we’ll see you again.”
Marlowe nodded. “I’m sure.”
She slid into her car and started the engine but didn’t drive off immediately. She watched them walk back to the house, heads bent in conversation.
They were being careful, guarded. They didn’t trust her. Somewhere, her name was pinned to a board next to Nora’s, with lines connecting her to Nate, to Henry—lines that couldn’t be erased.
Marlowe finally pulled onto the road, Ariel’s words echoing in her head: Sometimes it really is that simple.
Ben’s fake reassurance, Ariel’s sudden irritation and loss of patience with her—it was wearing her down.
What was she doing running around chasing old rumors and shadows in the woods?
Caroline’s words were echoing in her head too: Pete wasn’t a ghost back in 1998.
Back then, he was a real man. And he had been angry.