The House on Forgotten Hill (House of Secrets #4)

Chapter 1

My name is Olivia Nightingale, and this is my story.

My maiden name is Caraway, but we’ll get to that later.

It has been one month since my mother, Naomi Caraway, died.

I never imagined that by age thirty-two, I would have lost both of my parents and found myself all alone in the world. I’ve had other people in my life, of course. Friends and coworkers, and a few relatives I spoke to every now and then.

But they weren’t my parents.

My father, Julian Caraway, died when I was twelve years old. I remember the day it happened with a clarity that has never faded, although there are many other bits and pieces of my childhood I can’t recall at all.

It was in the middle of the night, and it was raining outside. The rain was beating so hard against my window, I hadn’t gotten much sleep.

There was a knock at the front door, and then I heard my mother’s slippers shuffling along the hardwood floor.

A moment later, the front door opened.

A man said, “Mrs. Caraway?”

Curious, I crept downstairs to see why a man had stopped by the house so late at night.

There were two police officers standing on the porch.

One was older, with thinning gray hair and a mustache.

The other appeared much younger. His gaze drifted past my mother and settled on me before moving back to her again.

Even at twelve, I understood what it meant when police officers came to your house. It meant something terrible had happened. My mother must have understood too, because she reached for the doorframe as though she needed it to remain standing.

“What is it?” she asked. “What’s happened?”

The older officer removed his hat.

There are moments in life when time seems to slow, stretching a few seconds into something far longer. I remember the officer’s mouth moving, and I remember hearing the words car accident. My mother said my father’s name, and then her legs gave way.

She sagged to the floor, and the younger officer stepped forward, trying to catch her before she struck the hardwood. I remained frozen on the last step of the stairs, refusing to believe what I’d just heard.

My father was dead.

He’d returned home from work that evening wearing a blue button-down shirt and a striped tie. As soon as he entered the kitchen, he kissed my mother, then bent to kiss the top of my head. A few hours later, he read me a bedtime story and said, “See you in the morning, sweetheart.”

But I never saw him again.

For the next several months, my mother almost never left her bedroom. Some mornings, I would pause outside her closed door and listen for movement. If I heard nothing, I would knock, then let myself in where I’d often find her beneath the covers, staring at the wall.

I brought her toast she didn’t eat and tea she allowed to grow cold. I reminded her when she needed to take a shower. I washed our clothes, heated canned soup for dinner, and learned how to write checks when bills arrived in the mail.

At the age of twelve, I didn’t know how to care for a grieving woman.

I barely knew how to care for myself.

Still, I tried.

At night, I lay in bed, my tears soft and quiet because I feared if she heard me and the pain I was in, it would make things even worse. Sometimes I pressed my face into a pillow to muffle the sound. Other times, I stared at the ceiling and wondered what would happen if my mother never got better.

Then one day, she did.

Or perhaps she only learned how to function again.

One morning, I came downstairs and found her standing at the stove, making scrambled eggs. Her hair was brushed, and she was dressed in jeans and a pale-yellow sweater. Although she looked thinner than she had before my father died, there was more life in her face.

“Morning, dear,” she said. “Are you hungry?”

I nodded, and she placed a plate in front of me and sat across the table while I ate. Neither of us said much, but I remember feeling hopeful for the first time in months.

My mother began leaving the house again after that. She went grocery shopping. She answered the phone when it rang. She even returned to work part-time and started hanging around with her friends again.

But looking back now, I can admit she was never the same after he died.

The woman who had once filled the house with music stopped turning on the radio. She stopped laughing. It was as if she’d stopped expecting anything more from life.

The first major decision she made after my father’s death was to sell our house, even though I begged for us to stay.

The house was the only home I had ever known.

It was where my father had taught me to ride a bicycle in the driveway.

Where he’d built a wooden swing beneath the large oak tree in the backyard.

Where the three of us had eaten pancakes every Sunday morning and played cards at the dining room table when storms knocked out the electricity.

I liked walking past my father’s office and picturing him sitting behind his desk or opening the hall closet and catching the faint scent of the coat he used to wear. Sometimes when I stood in the kitchen, I remembered the way he danced whenever my mother played one of her favorite songs.

Every room held a memory.

Wonderful memories that comforted me but caused pain for my mother.

“It hurts too much to stay here,” she told me. “I hope you understand.”

I didn’t, but she listed the house anyway.

Several weeks later, it sold, and we packed our lives into cardboard boxes and moved several states away to live near my mother’s sister. I’ll never forget watching our old house disappear through the rear window of the car until the road curved and there was nothing left to see.

We moved into a modest house a few blocks from my aunt’s house, and I’ve lived in the same state ever since.

There were times when I considered leaving, and in college, I almost did.

Then, at the age of twenty-two, I met Adrian Nightingale.

He was charming and attentive, and he swept into my life so fast, I didn’t have time to consider whether I wanted him there.

Within six months, we were engaged.

Three months later, we were married.

As charming and attentive as Adrian was to me the first year we were together, it wasn’t long before his interest switched from me to someone else, another girl I knew from school. Less than a year of marriage, we divorced.

There was no sentimental reason behind the decision to keep his last name. By then, I had become accustomed to being Olivia Nightingale, and returning to Caraway felt like taking a step backward instead of a step forward.

So, I didn’t.

Sitting at my mother’s table now, with a cup of coffee in my hand, I think about how much different the house feels without her in it.

Rain streaked the windows, just like it had the night my father died.

It had also rained the last time I spoke to my mother before her death.

By then, she had been in the hospital for almost two weeks.

Her doctors had warned me that the end was near.

Still, it was hard for me to accept. In the years since my father’s death, my mother had seemed stronger than any woman I’d ever known.

Even when she grew frail, some part of me expected her to recover.

On the final night of her life, I sat beside her bed, holding her hand while the machines surrounding her hummed and beeped.

For most of the evening, she’d said little, offering a few words of encouragement and then telling me she loved me.

Just before midnight, her eyes opened.

“Olivia,” she whispered.

I leaned in. “I’m here.”

She tried to speak again, but the words were too faint for me to understand.

“What is it, Mom?”

Her fingers tightened around mine. “Come closer.”

I stood and bent over the bed until my ear was only inches from her mouth.

Her breath trembled against my cheek.

“I need to tell you … to tell you …”

“Tell me what?”

“Your father … he didn’t die in an accident,” she whispered.

I pulled back, certain I had misheard her. “What?”

She looked me right in the eyes. “He was murdered. Don’t go … Don’t go …”