Chapter 30
PIECES OF THE SAME PUZZLE
Itoss and turn and doze a little. But slumber eludes me.
So I stare at the ceiling through the dark, listening to the sounds outside my window.
The creak of tree branches. The rustle of leaves.
The dull clank of the iron gate as the roof groans overhead.
Somewhere further away, a train horn echoes through the hollow—a drawn out, lonely sound.
I can’t stop thinking about her, living in this town. Friends with Simon when the Vandenbergs disappeared. Then sent away.
Why?
Why did they send her away, and why did she come back five years ago? And why did she make an effort to see an old man from her past, but none at all to see her daughter or her husband?
Maybe Jude’s right. Maybe she had no idea Dad and I lived here. And maybe that should make me feel better somehow.
But it doesn’t. Not even a little.
Because in some small, honest, private part of my brain, I’ve always imagined her keeping track of me.
Paying attention to my whereabouts. Following my endeavors.
Maybe even listening to my podcast? If she didn’t know I was living in Foggy Hollow then she never bothered to look me up, and somehow, that hurts more than any of the other possibilities my imagination has conjured.
I blink at my ceiling.
Maybe she didn’t know.
Maybe she did.
Maybe it’s better thinking she’s dead. Easier to believe she isn’t out there at all, than to believe she is, choosing to stay away.
I turn on my side.
Questions and scenarios tumble about like clothes in a dryer. I wish I could shut off my brain, but it refuses to settle.
I turn onto my other side.
The clock reads 5:18 a.m.
With a huff, I sit up in bed and kick off my covers and wave the white flag.
Insomnia has won. Fighting it this late in the game feels futile.
With my elbows on my knees, I rub my eyes with the heel of my palms. When I look up, my attention settles on the bottom drawer of my writing desk where I keep the memory box and two of her favorite books—one became a bedtime story birthday tradition, and the other brought me and Twig together in fourth grade.
I pad across the creaky floorboards. I pull open the drawer, remove the box and the birthday book, turn on my lamp, and settle back into bed.
I open the story about the boy in the wolf suit and flip through the pages, stopping on the one where love sounds like hunger, and the monsters beg Max to stay.
She always read this page best, with her arm pulling me in extra tight.
And I wonder, was my mother a wild thing?
Or was she Max, and the wild thing was me, begging her to stay?
I set the book aside and open the box, beholding the collection within.
Faded postcards written in guilt. The letters, too.
I take them out, searching for clues in the tear-stained words.
Something—anything—that might reference Simon Vandenberg or this rift they traveled through.
I find nothing but apologies and empty promises.
But there is the front page of a National Enquirer, a magazine she could never quite resist. In hindsight, it almost feels like a clue.
I read the headline—Vampire Baby Born in Idaho, Doctors Baffled—while imagining another.
Family Disappears Through Inter-dimensional Portal, Girlfriend Left Behind.
Did she believe these wild stories? Was she searching for one similar to her own?
I move aside the sour cream container and the empty pill bottle and the Chinese finger trap, my intention set upon the photographs.
But those intentions are thwarted.
I freeze, staring down into the box where rosary beads have tangled with the antique necklace she was always wearing.
A skeleton key on a chain. I pick it up and measure the weight of it in my palm—this thin, oblong object with a handle like a clover and a small rectangle on the end that engages with the lock.
I snag my phone and take a picture.
Not thinking of the time, I text it immediately to Jude.
Insomnia must have gotten the best of him, too. Because as soon as the picture goes through, a scrolling ellipse appears on my screen.
The house is asleep, wrapped in a hush as I follow Jude through the east-wing corridor lined with looming marble statues.
He speaks in a low voice, as if not to disturb them.
We’re less inclined to run into Isabel in the east wing, he tells me.
When she wakes up, she’ll head to the dining hall where Tulane will bring her coffee and breakfast. We slip inside a room I’ve never been in before.
Jude closes the doors behind us.
Moonlight shines through the large recessed window, gleaming off the polished surface of a grand piano.
On the opposite side of the room stands a tall, ebony harp with silver inlays.
In between is a Persian rug, a settee, a pair of Victorian arm chairs, and a claw-footed coffee table.
A gilded mirror hangs above the fireplace, reflecting the soft glow of lamplight near a fainting couch.
Dark paneling, damask wallpaper, and medieval tapestries pull everything together, making the room as gothic and elegant as the rest of the home.
Simon’s Bible sits on the coffee table. Along with the pocket compass. Next to it, a silver tray with a steel thermos, a bowl of sugar cubes, a mini pitcher of cream, and two porcelain mugs.
“You made coffee?”
“I figured you might need some.”
“You figured right,” I say, sitting on the settee.
Jude sits, too, and pours me a cup. I say yes to cream and sugar, then take the mug between my palms, glad for its warmth. Once he has his own—no cream, no sugar—I reach inside the pocket of my puffer vest and take out the skeleton key.
I open the Bible and just as we suspected, the key slides into place—a perfect fit.
I try to make sense of the items. My mother had the key, which she must have gotten from Simon. Simon had the Bible, which he hid under his floorboard. And the compass came from Enoch’s trunk. Three pieces of the same puzzle, only they don’t form a clear image.
“I went to the graveyard,” Jude says.
I look up at him.
“You were right. Ezra’s grave was disturbed.”
His words are alarming.
Unsettling.
Certainly worth discussing.
But my brain can only hold so many disquieting things at once, especially when it’s this tired. I take a few sips of coffee. It’s smooth and decadent, perhaps the best coffee I’ve ever had. Outside, birdsong begins—a few isolated chirps as the dark indigo sky gives way to a dusky gray.
I set the mug on the table. “I showed my dad the picture.”
“What did he say?”
“He didn’t know she lived here.”
He looks skeptical.
“I believe him.”
His skepticism grows.
It annoys the crap out of me. “And no, I don’t think it was a coincidence.
Obviously something supernatural is at play here, which isn’t a shock.
I never believed the Vandenberg cold case was a typical crime.
I’ve never believed this town was a typical town.
Now we have proof. Simon and my mother traveled through some sort of portal.
Ezra painted a portrait of me. And I’m reliving past events in my sleep. ”
“They could just be dreams.”
I look at him disbelievingly.
“Dreams don’t always have to mean something,” he insists.
My disbelief expands into incredulity. How can he think my dreams are just dreams? “Jude.”
But he’s agitated.
Visibly agitated.
A muscle in his jaw tick, tick, ticks away.
I could ask him why, access my curiosity.
Instead, I double down. “All last night, I kept thinking, how could my mom have been here before me? But she wasn’t here before me.
I was here first. In the freaking eighteenth century, somehow a figment of Ezra Vandenberg’s obsession.
Then my mom showed up, and Simon just happened to run into her at the library?
He and his family vanish. My mom’s sent away, only to disappear years later, but first she leaves me this? ”
I pick up the key. “She used to wear it all the time. Why would she leave it behind? Now you’re here, and I’m here.
With that portrait under my bed and a journal full of dreams about your family’s past on my nightstand.
I’m sorry, Jude, but I think it’s much easier to believe something supernatural is at play than to think this is all one insane coincidence after another. ”
He shoves his hand into his hair and curls it into a fist, his eyes a storm.
“Why are you so angry?” I ask.
“Because I’m having dreams, too.”
His heated response leaves me speechless.
I sit there for awhile, blinking at him as a clock ticks in the hallway.
“What kind of dreams?” I finally ask.
“Bad ones.” His voice is clipped. “They started after that night at the quarry.”
When he asked me to the ball.
He drags his hand down his face. “They’re all a little different, but there have been some common themes.” His knee begins to bounce. “The portrait always catches on fire, and you always die.”
I stare at him, not sure what to say.
When his eyes meet mine, they are haunted and pained. “It’s always me. I’m the one who kills you.”
Understanding dawns.
The shadows under his eyes. Not sleeping well. It’s been these dreams. He hasn’t regretted asking me to the ball. He’s worried he’s going to hurt me. “Jude, those dreams aren’t real.”
“You just said they mean something. According to you, these are all pieces of the same puzzle. So where do my dreams fit, Selah? You’re dreaming of the past, and I’m what—dreaming of the future?”
His knee is really going now—an agitated jackhammer. Without thinking, I place my hand on top of it, as if doing so might still his worries.
His tortured eyes meet mine.
And the air in my lungs goes hot and shaky. “You’re not going to hurt me, Jude. You’re not—”
Rafe.
But I stop myself before I say it.
“I’m not worried about your dreams. Not even a little.”
My words pull at some invisible thread. They unravel his anger, showing it for what it’s always been. Fear. Because for all his bluster about logic, he is worried about his dreams. More than a little.
His gaze drops to my hand.
“You’re not afraid?” he asks, his voice low.
My heart gallops. It pounds in my ears, in my throat, in my knees. I can feel it pulsing in my neck. I swallow. “It’s not fear I’m feeling right now.”
He sits there, leaning back against the settee, as still as a statue except for his hand, sliding closer to mine.
Our fingers touch.
It’s barely a graze, but heat pools deep in my abdomen. His attention dips to my mouth, then lifts again to my eyes. His are dark and fathomless. And I’m drawn like a moth to flame.
I lean closer, closer …
A chime clangs through the room.
My galloping heart careens.
The clock chimes a second time. A third. A fourth. Each metallic gong echoing through the room, the halls, the home. My body.
Outside, the Midnight Garden is no longer a shadowy blur. It’s begun to take shape—wrought iron benches, frost-covered moonflowers, that twisted tree. A chorus of birds chirp as the dusky sky melts into ribbons of peach.
Jude clears his throat and picks up the key, which has slid onto the velvet cushion between us. He peers down at it. “Think this could unlock the book at Evermore?”
It seems too big, but it’s the only lock we know to try.