The Story Keeper

Chapter 1

Fiona

New South Wales, Australia

My uncle Tad always said that books have a certain pattern to them—a rhythm in common regardless of genre. Every story has

a beginning, a middle and an end, and around those things, you have certain changes in the momentum that readers recognize:

rising and falling action, climaxes, black moments. Sometimes you sense an inflection point coming—a certain buildup that

you recognize subconsciously, even if you might not be able to explain why. Tad said that life is like that too, and I’ve

never felt the wisdom of that statement more than this year.

It’s the palms I spot first as I near Wurimbirra, and the sight of those waving fronds in the distance has my shoulders relaxing,

releasing tension I’ve been carrying for far too long. I thought I’d be excited to arrive back here today, but as I steer

my car through the concrete gate posts and onto the circular drive, the feeling that washes over me is a lot more like relief.

I haven’t lived here for more than thirty years, but for some reason, this is still the place that springs to my mind whenever

I hear the word home.

I park right outside the front doors and stare up at the facade of the mansion.

Built in 1886, Wurimbirra was designed in a Victorian Filigree style—eight enormous bedrooms upstairs and five living spaces downstairs including a grand ballroom.

The brick walls are stuccoed, lined to imitate stonework, painted in a once-bright beige that has faded to a weary grey, stained in places by red-brown dust. Verandas surround both stories, the top bounded by friezes and columns and brackets and balustrades.

Like much of the interior of the house, that cast iron detail was once a crimson red, but it’s now blistered and patchy.

The remaining paint has become rusty and browned—close to the color of dried blood.

The windows are filthy. There are thick nets of spiderwebs in the gaps between surfaces all around the front facade. Knowing this house as I do, that immediately tells me there’s a bad foliage webbing spider infestation.

Those little grey-brown spiders aren’t any danger to humans, but Uncle Tad always told me they do attract redbacks—one of

the world’s most venomous spiders—and huntsmen, which don’t do humans much harm but they are big and hairy and the mere thought

of them makes me shiver in disgust. I make a mental note to call around right away to find an exterminator.

I’d call a gardener too, but I can tell immediately that the existing gardens are beyond saving, at least here at the front

of the property. Each bed was once a curated mosaic of flowers and carefully shaped shrubs. What’s left after ten years of

drought and neglect in the wake of Tad’s death is a collection of sticks poking up from a thick cluster of weeds.

The icy wind seems to slice right through my coat as I slip from my car, the heavy key ring my cousin Jon gave me last night in my hand.

He was originally supposed to come with me today, partly because this is a big moment for me and he’s not just my cousin; he’s also my best friend.

But there are also practical considerations ahead that involve him too.

The house is still full of his dad’s stuff, for a start, and Jon sold me the contents along with the property.

We both understood all along that he’d walk through it one last time around settlement to help himself to anything he wished to take.

That’s why I was so surprised when he arrived unannounced to break the news he wasn’t joining me today after all.

“I wanted to come with you for moral support and I’m sorry to dump the cleaning on you but to be honest, Fi, I wasn’t going

to be much help with what little time I have and I really don’t want anything from the house,” he told me. “Maybe see if your

mum can help sort through Dad’s papers, but as for everything else, just throw out anything you don’t want to keep. My deadline

moved up and I have a ton of work left to do—it can’t be helped.” Jon is a novelist just as Uncle Tad was, and, also like

Tad, Jon always puts his work first. I do get it, even if, deep down, I’m disappointed that he’s not here.

I tell myself there’s something fitting about me being on my own today anyway. I’m standing on my own two feet, facing the

future as a single woman for the first time in twenty-five years. This is a moment of true independence. It calls for courage

and self-reliance, not sulking because my cousin has a life of his own to tend to.

I wonder what Uncle Tad would say if he could see me as I make my way up the concrete stairs, across the veranda to open those

double front doors with his key for the first time. I suspect he’d be pleased to see the house lived in again, but mostly

nervous, worried that I might change the place as I restore it.

“I’ll protect it, Tad,” I murmur aloud as I lift the weathered brass key towards the lock. “I’ll look after your home, I promise.

No one loves this place more than I do.”

It’s possible that my whole life has been leading to this moment.

I dreamed of restoring Wurimbirra even before my degrees and my decades-long career in conservation architecture—in fact, it was this very building that inspired me to go into that field.

In the past I’ve designed restorations where structures were entirely gutted but for the facade, projects where complex extensions were added or layouts entirely re-imagined.

This will not be one of those projects. I haven’t figured out the detail but I already know the end goal: I want to strip back the veneer of neglect and time to highlight the original character of this remarkable home.

As I push the door open, the hinges protest with a long, low screech that sounds so ominous it almost startles me. If Mum

was here, she’d think that deeply unnerving sound was an auditory bad omen. It’s a very good thing that Mum isn’t here, and not just because of the creepy-sounding door—but she’s a problem for another day, and the door hinges can be fixed

simply with a burst of lubricant spray. I’ll pick some up in town later when I’m gathering whatever else I need to make this

place livable in the short term.

I draw in a deep breath as I step inside, a huge smile on my face as I look around. There’s an enormous, triple-width staircase

directly facing the door, leading to a grandfather clock at the landing on the second floor that has, as far as I can tell,

been in that same position since it was gifted to the original owners in 1887. The parlour is off to the left of the foyer,

the formal dining room to the right, and a long, dark hallway runs horizontally, right behind the stairs. Above me is an enormous

chandelier—potentially stunning under a century of dust, but also useless, given it hasn’t worked since the ’70s.

And that brings me to the central problem with this house—the lack of maintenance, not just since Tad died in 1999, but for decades before it.

My uncle was a brilliant man and he was proud of the grandiose scale of Wurimbirra.

Life had been very good to him and he had plenty of money.

For some reason I never could understand, he seemed to have no interest in maintaining the house the way he should have, outside of the gardens, which were his pride and joy.

He would spend hours out there every week, plucking by hand every sprout out of place, trimming the hedges the instant errant growth appeared, bringing in gardeners at the drop of a hat if his schedule or the scale of the one-acre block meant he couldn’t keep on top of it alone.

It was utterly confounding that when it came to the house itself, if I so much as suggested he get the shingles on the roof

replaced or install some air conditioning units, he always reacted as if I was threatening to bulldoze the place. I suppose

I should be grateful that he did at least repaint the interior of the house in 1957, so there’s no lead paint inside. The

“new” paint is in terrible shape but at least it isn’t a health hazard.

I drop the keys onto one of the two matching hall tables flanking the staircase and wince at the cloud of dust they dislodge

into the air. Jon did warn me last night that I’d likely find the house in need of a good clean.

“It’s been a long time since I went inside,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” I said. “Your dad’s death was such a shock, it only makes sense—”

“That’s not what I’m sorry about,” he said grimly. Jon’s imagination is vastly more vivid than mine, and even as a kid, the

eccentricities of his father’s stately home were fuel for all sorts of nightmares. I’ve seen that haunted, tortured look in

my cousin’s eyes before. “Please, please take care out there. You’re capable and brilliant and you know what you’re doing. But you’ve got rose-colored glasses on when

it comes to that house and . . .”

“It’s not haunted, Jon,” I said. If my tone was shorter than I intended it was probably because I was disappointed he wouldn’t

be joining me for the trip out to the house after all.

“The logical part of my brain knows you’re right,” he said, but then gave me a sad smile. “But Dad always said that where

there’s smoke, there’s fire. And Fi, you have to admit there’s a lot of smoke in the stories people tell about Wurimbirra.”

“Tad would say that,” I laughed. “He was the one operating the smoke machine!”

Uncle Tad was a storyteller by nature as well as profession and he loved to tell elaborate stories about the “ghosts” he supposedly

shared Wurimbirra with. So many ghosts. Not a menacing one among the crowd of them, at least in the stories Tad told me. I

was possibly the first child in history to grow up believing she lived in a haunted house and thrilled about the excitement

of it. I used to hope and pray I’d see one of Tad’s ghosts. Only as I grew older did I learn that there were other stories