over the phone. I don’t blame him. Not after the things I’ve said. I’d understand if he wanted nothing more to do with me.
After tonight, he just might get that wish.
“With what?” he eventually says.
“Moving an armoire.”
I don’t tell him that the armoire needs not to be moved, but disassembled completely. And that the hole in the bedroom wall it will leave behind needs to be sealed shut. And that there’s a door in the back of the house that will also need to be boarded up so no one will be able to enter Baneberry Hall without a key. All of that can wait until he gets here. Otherwise he might hang up.
“Can’t it wait until tomorrow?” Dane says.
“It can’t. I need your help. Please. I can’t do it alone.”
“Fine,” Dane says with an epic sigh. “I’ll be there in ten.”
“Thank you.”
Dane doesn’t hear that part. He’s already ended the call.
I shove my phone into my pocket and prepare for the job ahead. The plan is simple—block off the secret passage to the bedroom, gather up my things, and leave Baneberry Hall.
This time, I won’t be returning.
Once I’m back in Boston, I’ll list the house and sell it as is for whatever offer I get, no matter how small it might be. I no longer want anything to do with this place. Nor do I want the truth about what happened here.
I just want to be gone.
It’s not safe here. Not for me.
In the dining room, I gather the five Polaroids on the table and my father’s copy of the Book, still splayed spine-up on the floor. They’ll be going right back where I found them. Soon to be someone else’s problem.
My hands full, I march to the third-floor study and go straight to the desk, where I drop the Book and the photos. I then grab Buster and toss him into the closet where he’d first been discovered.
Much like Baneberry Hall, I never want to see that bear again.
I turn back to the desk, where the Book sits open.
It was closed when I dropped it there.
I’m certain of it.
Yet there it is, flopped open, as if someone has just been reading it.
I approach the Book slowly, considering all the ways it could have opened on its own. I can’t think of any. At least nothing that doesn’t border on the supernatural. Or, to borrow a term from Dane’s grandmother, the uncanny.
Bullshit, I think.
I then say it aloud, hoping that uttering the word will make it true.
“Bullshit.”
But it isn’t. I know that the moment I see the page the Book is open to. It’s the chapter that takes place on the Fourth of July. The day the kitchen ceiling was patched. I scan the page, one passage in particular leaping out at me.
Now it was time to patch the formidable hole in the ceiling. For that, I enlisted Hibbs, who brought a boy from town to help because the task was too big for just him alone.
My heart beats faster as I read it again and let the full weight of the words sink in.
A boy from town.
Who was in this house the same time as Petra.
Who likely knew her.
Who could have been her boyfriend. Or something.
Who might have persuaded her to sneak out her bedroom window.
Who might have suggested they run away together and became violent when Petra got second thoughts.
Who then broke into Baneberry Hall and dumped her body under the floorboards because he knew there was a hiding place there.
A boy, I realize, who’s in one of the Polaroids my father took.
I snatch the photo off the desk. When I first saw it, I’d thought it was my father standing behind Walt Hibbets and his ladder. I should have realized my father was likely behind the camera—and that it was someone else lurking in the back of the image.
I can’t see too many details, even after I bring the picture close to my face and squint. Just a narrow slice of clothing and an even smaller sliver of face poke out beyond the ladder. The only way I can get a bigger, better view is if I had a magnifying glass.
Which I realize with a delighted jolt that I do.
There’s one in the top desk drawer. I saw it there during my first trek into the study. It’s still there now, sitting among pens and paper clips. I grab it and hold it in front of the Polaroid, the mystery man now exponentially larger. I see