Chapter 68
Back upstairs in the house, I pace the first floor, weighing my options.
I could call Topher or the police. I have video now of someone breaking into my house.
But just as I didn’t think the figure meant me harm when I saw her in the fields, I don’t think Joan means me harm now.
If she did, she had the perfect opportunity to do something about it when she found me in the woods.
It almost seems like she wants to help me.
Plus, I can’t stomach talking to Topher.
I know the video doesn’t prove they are sleeping together.
Maybe he asked Madeline to check on the house, and that’s why she came down to his car.
Maybe she wanted to assure him that she’d keep an eye on things.
Let him know if I come back. But still, the way they held each other, a heartbeat longer than friends would.
The way she pulled his face to hers. Something is going on.
But I’ll deal with that later. I’ve got bigger fish to fry.
I pick up my phone. The home screen is back up. I click into messages. It seems to work, though it’s slow. I can feel a hundred miniature cuts slice through my thumb as I type out a brief message.
Hi. Want to come by for tea?
Three bubbles appear.
Sure. Now?
Yes.
I feel a little light-headed as I go into the kitchen to boil water. Our tea supply is rather pitiful, but I grab two dusty bags of chamomile and a jar of honey. Then, I wait.
Joan shows up five minutes later. She’s wearing the same jacket I saw on the video and is shaking a shiny, black umbrella.
“Hi. Everything okay?” she asks, walking over the threshold. I reset the alarm system after closing the door.
“I’m okay.” It’s hard to keep my voice normal. It sounds shrill. “Topher just left on a work trip. Want to sit in the kitchen?”
We sit at opposite ends of the kitchen table, where I’ve placed our mugs. My phone is on the seat of the chair closest to me, and I had pressed the record button when Joan knocked on the door. I don’t have any self-defense plans, but I can at least record our interaction, should anything go south.
“All I have is chamomile,” I say apologetically, my heart hammering. I take a sip and scorch my tongue.
“That’s fine. You’ve got a lovely home.” She’s tracing her finger along the edge of the mug, looking around the kitchen. It’s unsettling, seeing this charade. I would assume Joan knows the house quite well at this point.
I guess there’s no sense in beating around the bush. “I know you’ve snuck in here at night.”
It lands like a punch. She jerks her head toward me, eyes wide, then stands suddenly, knocking the table and causing her tea to slosh.
“What were you doing?” I ask. Suddenly, my voice isn’t shaking anymore. Her reaction shows me I do have the upper hand, if one exists in this situation.
“I . . . I . . .”
“I’ve got it on video. There’s a record.” Joan’s face shows a brief flash of anger. “But I haven’t shown anyone yet.”
She holds my gaze, almost defiantly, a few moments longer. Then everything in her seems to fold in on itself, and she crumples into her chair, with her face buried in her hands. Her body is shaking, with silent, shuddering sobs.
I know it’s dumb, but I walk around the table toward Joan and sit in the seat next to her. I rub her back and eventually the shaking stops. She sits upright and brushes her hair out of her face. Takes a steadying breath.
“I didn’t know what I married into.” She smiles ruefully and gives a short laugh. “I mean, I had some idea, I’m not dumb. People with all that old wealth . . . surely there was going to be something unsavory in their past. But I honestly didn’t know just how . . .” She trails off.
“How what?” I ask softly. The fierce, intimidating Joan now seems like a baby animal. I need to handle her delicately.
“How fucking evil they really are.” Her eyes slide to mine, finally making contact.
Joan takes a sip of her tea, exhales slowly, and tells me her story.
She tells me how she met Julian in college.
How he wooed her, how it felt like the world was their oyster.
When they got engaged, he’d insisted she take his name, even though she had wanted to keep hers.
But it was important to Julian that she carry on the Brook name.
When they first moved to Newfield Village, Joan was initially taken with her extended family, though Stuart never fully warmed to her.
But at first, she loved Madeline. Joan and Julian tried to start a family.
She had a miscarriage. Then another. Then another.
One day, Joan found a letter in Julian’s desk.
She’d been looking for some important file.
The letter was from Ezra. It said, “It’s time to come clean and admit what your family has done.
It’s time those poor souls got justice. I have proof. ”
“I confronted Julian about it,” says Joan. “I demanded to know what Ezra was talking about. But he refused to tell me. He said it was in the past and that he didn’t want to drag me into it. But he said he had to keep it a secret, otherwise everything they built was in jeopardy.”
“Someone was murdered here, right? A long time ago?”
Joan nods, almost imperceptibly. “Yes. But it was more than one person. Ezra’s letter said ‘those poor souls.’ And the Brooks played a role in it. I don’t know exactly what happened, but I know it was awful. Really awful.”
“I have this theory, I know it sounds crazy, but I think a person, an ancestor of mine, was executed for witchcraft. Maybe the Brooks were the ones to accuse her?”
“Witchcraft?” Joan says, a look of disbelief on her face. “Why would you think that?”
So, I tell her everything. The visions. The Ouija board. The story of the lost little New Jersey girl. The unequivocable fact that I’m being haunted.
“Oh my god.” She’s shaking her head. “I’m so sorry, you must have been so scared this whole time.”
“I was. But I’m not now.”
Joan laughs. “You are being haunted but you aren’t scared?”
“She’s not trying to harm me.”
“Why are you so certain she isn’t trying to harm you?” Joan cocks her head slightly.
“I think she knows I’m trying to help her.”
Joan nods her head, though I can’t tell if she’s agreeing with me or appeasing me.
“Something doesn’t totally make sense, though,” Joan says slowly.
“Let’s say the Brooks did accuse her, why is that so damning?
I mean, it’s bad, don’t get me wrong,” she says quickly.
“But it was so long ago. Their ancestors made a terrible mistake, like so many others. Why can’t they just acknowledge the past? ”
“Great fucking question,” I say with a grim smile.
But Joan does have a point. People want to bury the past all the time. But to go to these lengths to hide the truth? There’s something more to the story. I’ve always felt that.
“Wait, you never actually told me. Why were you breaking into Wildwood?”
Joan chews her lip before responding. “I thought we were being punished. I couldn’t understand why I kept losing the babies.
I was devastated. I felt like I needed to figure out what happened here, help bring closure to the dead, and maybe then, I’d be worthy of being a mother.
Your uncle knew about our secret. He said he had proof.
I thought maybe he knew where the bodies were.
I had overheard an argument one night between Julian and Madeline.
And they were saying something about needing to find the bodies.
So I figured maybe Ezra knew where the bodies were and if I could find them, I could make sure they were properly buried. Their deaths acknowledged.”
She laughs at the end, humorlessly. I think she thinks she sounds crazy. She doesn’t realize how much I relate.
“I should leave him.” Joan nods to herself, eyes narrowed.
Part of me wants to say, yes, leave that bastard. But it’s all so complicated.
“Would you?”
“I don’t see how I can’t. Now knowing what they are willing to do. That they would kill a dog—” She stops herself but not quickly enough and it feels like a knife slicing through my gut.
“They killed Hugo?” It comes out a question, my voice small, even though I knew it all along. But now that Joan is confirming it, I almost can’t believe it. “They murdered my dog?”
“I don’t know anything for certain,” she says. “But I’m fairly certain he’s dead. I’m sorry. I think they wanted to intimidate you, once you started asking questions.”
Rage simmers below my skin. But it’s not explosive. Instead, I invite it. I wrap myself in it. I’m going to get them.
Now I let the words out that I held back a moment ago.
“You are going to leave that bastard. You don’t need him. You built your own business. Not him.”
Joan squeezes my hand and gives a tiny nod. “We just need to find the bodies.”
Something doesn’t make sense, though. It had bugged me then, I realize, when I first found the letter.
“I don’t get it. I had found this old cemetery in the woods, with these old, unmarked graves.
Those unmarked graves must be for the bodies everyone is looking for.
Why didn’t my uncle just, I don’t know, do something?
Call someone out there? And the Brooks must have known about the cemetery, too, right? ”
I’m rambling, trying to figure out why something so obvious was not the answer.
Joan smiles and almost looks sympathetic at my naivete. “Trust me they tried to get the bodies. The Brooks did. But nothing is there. The bodies were moved long ago.”