Chapter Seven
Slumped in the back seat, Hayley isn’t listening to music. But her family thinks she is, and for the most part, it keeps them from talking to her and makes them think she can’t hear what they’re saying, which is a great way to eavesdrop.
Not that they’re talking much now, in the car. They’re just listening to their stupid playlist from last summer’s Outer Banks vacation.
That’s what it’s called: Outer Banks Vacation.
So original.
When they made it, though, she thought it was epic.
They asked her for song contributions, and of course she added Taylor Swift’s “Carolina,” which they loved.
She wasn’t even annoyed when they learned all the lyrics and sang along, even Caleb.
It actually seemed kind of fun, the four of them on the road together.
But that was over a year ago, when she was just a little kid.
Now she’s a lot older and wiser, and if this trip had a playlist, she could think of a few other Taylor songs that fit, like “Cruel Summer” and “I Hate It Here.” But there’s no playlist, and no one’s into this trip even though Mom and Dad are trying to act like they are. Like everything’s normal.
Nothing’s been normal since June, when Mom came home from a weekend yoga retreat that turned out to be a secret visit to her hometown.
Of course, no one told Hayley that, but she overheard her parents arguing about it. A lot. Like, all summer.
They don’t fight in front of her and Caleb, but she can hear them in their room or down in the kitchen.
She told Chloe about it a few weeks ago, when Chloe got special permission to call Hayley from camp to wish her a happy birthday.
“Are they going to get a divorce?” Chloe asked, and she sounded kind of hopeful. Her parents are in the midst of a divorce.
“No! They’re just going through some stuff.”
“That’s what my parents said when my dad got his secret girlfriend.”
For a while last year, Chloe was sure the secret girlfriend was going to turn into her stepmother, but now her dad, T. J., has a new girlfriend who isn’t secret at all. He just moved in with her, and Chloe and her mom still live in their house in Westbrook.
“My dad doesn’t have a secret girlfriend, Chloe.”
“Maybe your mom has a secret boyfriend. Or girlfriend. You never know.”
“I do know. She doesn’t,” Hayley said, feeling a little bit relieved that Chloe only had five minutes of phone privileges at camp.
Still, it was really nice of her to call and say happy birthday.
Chloe had already turned twelve back in May.
Maddie Miller, who’s sleeping over at Chloe’s house tonight because Hayley can’t come, is still only eleven and she will be until almost Halloween.
“Dammit!” Dad shouts in the front seat. “That jackass just sped up so that I couldn’t get in!”
He’s been trying to merge into the right lane, which is moving, while their lane is not.
Dad waves his hand at a car that speeds up to the one in front of it so that he can’t get in. “Another jackass! Look at this! Do you see this, Tal’? Do you see what they’re doing?”
Mom opens her mouth like she’s going to tell him not to say bad words in front of the kids, but then she closes it.
Hayley rolls her eyes. It’s not like she hasn’t heard him dropping f-bombs when he and Mom fight about how Mom lied about where she was in June, and how she didn’t tell Dad some other stuff that happened before she met him.
One thing Hayley found out is that her grandfather, Oliver, who died when she was four, wasn’t Mom’s father.
Granny Nat married him when Mom was in college.
Mom’s real father was some random guy Granny Nat never married, and Mom never even knew who he was.
She still doesn’t, and she told Dad that she doesn’t care and doesn’t want to know.
Hayley definitely wants to know, because what if he’s rich and famous, maybe even a prince? That exact thing happened to the girl in The Princess Diaries, which Mom and Granny once let her stay up late to watch because it was their favorite. For an old movie, it was pretty good.
There’s a book too. Mom gave Hayley her copy. The spine was broken, and the cover was torn, like she’d read it a million times. Hayley promised she’d read it, but she mostly just likes to read stuff on her phone.
When she told Chloe about Mom’s dad being a total stranger, Chloe said she could find out who he is and Mom wouldn’t even have to know, because it’s all online. “All you have to do is send some spit to this genealogy website, and they tell you everyone you’re related to.”
“How would I get my mom’s spit without her knowing?”
“You send your own spit! You’re related to him too! You just need to pretend you’re an adult, because otherwise the company won’t let you do it.”
“How do you even know all this?”
“So many people are doing it.”
“Like who?”
“Like my counselor—her mom made her do it to see if her dad cheated on her.”
“How would it tell her that?”
“You know . . . if he’d fathered other kids without them knowing. Like, if she had half siblings out there.”
“Well, I’m just looking for my grandfather.”
“Right. So you should totally do the DNA thing.”
“I totally will.”
The car swerves as Dad starts to pull into the right lane in front of an SUV.
It almost slams right into them. The driver blasts her horn and gives them the finger.
Dad gives it back, along with a bad word Hayley can hear loud and clear through her headphones.
Ordinarily Mom would have something to say about that, but she folds her mouth so that her lips are inside, between her teeth, like she’s making sure she doesn’t slip.
Hayley goes back to the article she’s reading on her phone.
It’s about Caroline Winterfield, Mom’s friend who disappeared on prom night in 1999.
She was last seen at Haven Cliff, the creepy old house where they’re spending the weekend.
Mom made it sound like a beautiful fancy mansion when she told Dad, Hayley, and Caleb about it.
She didn’t mention that it’s haunted and cursed.
Hayley found that out on her own, by googling, along with other interesting facts.
Haven Cliff’s original owners, Asa and Edith Winterfield, built the house on an ancient burial ground.
They were super rich, and they supposedly hid treasure somewhere on the property back in the eighteen hundreds.
A lot of people have looked for it over the years, but no one has ever found it.
Asa and Edith were killed in the house by an axe murderer in 1894, and it’s been haunted ever since. Maybe not just by them, because the mansion turned into a hospital and an insane asylum before it was abandoned, so bad things happened to a lot of people there over the years.
Especially their great-granddaughter, Caroline Winterfield. There’s a picture of her in an article headlined “Haven Cliff Curse Strikes Again.” She vanished from Haven Cliff during a prom night party in 1999.
She was Mom’s friend.
Hayley was eavesdropping when Mom told Dad about it, but she didn’t give him many details.
Like, she didn’t say whether she was there the night Caroline went missing. According to the article, most of the senior class was at the party, and a lot of kids were swimming in the lake.
And Mom told Dad that Caroline drowned, but it turns out, that’s just what everyone thinks. Her body was never found.
Hayley goes through all the photos she can find online, enlarging every group shot of search parties and vigils, looking for her mom’s face. She isn’t in any of them, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t there. She told Dad that Caroline was one of her best friends.
If Chloe ever went missing, Hayley would do everything in her power to find her. Like, she’d go on TV and have news conferences and talk to podcasters, and she’d even call the president if she had to.
Maybe people didn’t do stuff like that back then.
When Hayley gets to Haven Cliff, she’ll look for some clues. And for the treasure. And of course, for her grandfather.
It’s a lot more interesting than hanging around with her family, or with a bunch of boring old people her mother used to know.
The car swerves, and Dad shouts, “Yes!” He waves at the driver of the eighteen-wheeler that let them into the right lane at last.
It’s slow going, but at least they’re moving forward again.