go in there,” she says. “I want to go in there. To show this house that I’m not afraid. How are you able to do it, Maggie?”
“I told myself what happened here wasn’t real.”
“I don’t have that luxury.”
“Then we’ll talk out here,” I say. “Just let me take this inside.”
I carry the pie downstairs to the kitchen and return with two bottles of beer. Although I don’t know if Marta drinks, it’s clear she needs something to get her through this visit. Back on the porch, she accepts the bottle and takes a tentative sip. I notice the rings on her right hand—an engagement ring and a wedding band—and remember how Brian Prince told me she never remarried. I can only imagine how lonely she’s been the past twenty-five years.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” Marta says after another, longer sip of beer. “I thought I was brave enough to go inside. But this house has a power to it. I can’t stop thinking about it, even though all I want to do is forget everything that happened here.”
I raise my beer in a grim toast. “I know that feeling well.”
“I thought you would,” Marta says. “It’s why I was glad you stopped by the bakery today. In fact, I was expecting it. I almost reached out to you, but after everything that’s happened in the past few days, I didn’t know if you’d want to talk. There’s much to discuss.”
“Let’s start with my father,” I say.
“You want to know if that book of his is true. At least my role in it.”
Marta gives me a sidelong glance, checking to see if I’m surprised to learn she’s read the Book. I am.
“I read it on the advice of my attorney,” she says.
“Is your part of the story accurate?”
“To a degree, yes. I met with your father, in exactly the same way it takes place in the book. He came to the bakery, and then I met him at the library.”
“What did you talk about?”
Marta holds the beer bottle with both hands, cradling it against her chest. It makes her look like a wallflower at a frat party. Timid and shy. “A lot of what eventually ended up in the book. Our time at the house. What happened that horrible day. He told me he was working on a book about Baneberry Hall, which is why I agreed to talk. I wanted him to know the truth. I was very honest about everything, from Katie’s illness to how I discovered her and Curtis’s bodies.”
“And all that stuff about thinking your husband didn’t do it?”
“We never discussed it,” Marta says. “That part is entirely fiction.”
I stare into my beer bottle, too ashamed by my father’s actions to look Marta in the eye.
“I’m sorry my father did that. It was wrong of him.”
What my father wrote about Curtis Carver is one of the many reasons I’ve struggled with the Book’s legacy. It’s one thing to make up an outlandish story and say it’s real. Tabloids do it every week. Rewriting someone else’s history isn’t as easy to ignore. By openly claiming that Curtis Carver hadn’t killed his daughter and himself, my father twisted Marta’s true tragedy until it started to resemble fiction. The fact that she’s here now shows a level of forgiveness I’m not sure I possess.
That’s why it pains me so much to now think there’s an inkling of truth to what my father wrote. Not just about Baneberry Hall being haunted.
About everything.
It’s not safe there. Not for you.
“Did my father ever mention ghosts?” I say.
“Of course,” Marta says. “By then, your family’s story had been all over the news.”
“You two didn’t talk until after we left Baneberry Hall?”
“It was about two weeks after,” Marta says. “I remember because it was the only thing people talked about when they came to the bakery. They worried I was distressed by seeing Baneberry Hall in the news so much.”
“Were you?”
“At first,” she admits. “But I was also curious about what your family had experienced here.”
“Why?”
“Because it wouldn’t surprise me if this place is haunted.” Marta steps off the porch to gaze up at the front exterior of Baneberry Hall. A reflection of the house fills the lenses of her spectacles, hiding the fearful curiosity I’m sure is in her eyes. “I don’t believe in ghosts. But this house—and what’s happened here—well, it could make me change my mind.”
I remain on the porch, watching her watch Baneberry Hall. What I need to ask next is a