one. Miss Pennyface was another. Although they were figments of your imagination, they seemed to frighten and fascinate you in equal measure. So much so that we sought out help from Dr. Weber.
There were also no portraits of William and Indigo Garson over the fireplace. Besides the deaths of Katie Carver and Indigo—who I do believe was killed by her father and was what I set out to prove in my book—all the other deaths at Baneberry Hall were simply tragic accidents and completely unrelated.
All of them but Petra Ditmer’s.
The guilt I feel about what we did hasn’t lessened one bit in the twenty-four years since she died. She was a bright young woman. She deserved better.
I know I’ll never forget that night, even though it’s all I want to do. I suspect it will take my death to erase that horrible night from my memory. Even then, I’m not so sure. I know we leave our bodies when we pass on. I hope we can choose to leave certain memories behind as well.
That night was supposed to be a good one—a much-needed break from the daily strife of Baneberry Hall. The house and all its problems had taken its toll on your mother and me. We could feel ourselves drifting apart a little more each day. The spark had gone out of our marriage, and we desperately needed to get it back.
To do this, we decided to have a “date night,” which is a polite way of saying we rented a room at the Two Pines with the intention of fucking like teenagers. We needed to be away from not just the house and its myriad issues but from you as well. Just for an evening. That sounds more harsh than it really is. You might be a parent yourself when you read this, in which case you’ll surely understand.
To get away, we hired Petra Ditmer to babysit. Thanks to your antics on the night she and her sister came for a sleepover, Petra had been forbidden from visiting Baneberry Hall and told us she’d need to sneak out in order to babysit. Your mother and I debated the ethics of this, deciding that since it was only for a few hours, a little dishonesty on Petra’s part was worth a night to ourselves. We needed it. Both of us agree about that. We needed time alone, to be us again.
Petra snuck out of her house and arrived shortly after eight. Your mother and I went to the motel, where our goal was achieved multiple times. We left the hotel at midnight, relaxed and happy. The happiest we’d been in weeks.
It ended the moment we entered Baneberry Hall and saw the body of Petra Ditmer.
She lay in a heap at the bottom of the steps, her arms and legs twisted under her like a pretzel. So twisted that at first I couldn’t tell what were legs and what were arms. Nothing seemed to be in the right place.
I knew she was dead, though. It was obvious. Her neck was also twisted. Turned at an angle so unnatural that I feel sick just thinking about it. Her right cheek lay flat against the floor, and her hair lay across most of her face. But I saw her eyes peeking out between the strands. Two large, shocked, dead eyes.
I couldn’t stop staring at them. It was too horrible to look away. I had seen dead people before, of course. But not one so young. And definitely not one so assuredly dead. All the other corpses I’d seen looked like they could have been sleeping.
Petra definitely wasn’t asleep.
You sat at the top of the stairs, gently sobbing. When we asked you what happened, you looked up at us and said, “It wasn’t me.”
You kept repeating it, almost as if you were trying to convince yourself as much as us.
“It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me.”
At first, I believed you. You were my daughter, after all. I knew you better than anyone, even your mother. You were sweet and kind. You wouldn’t purposely hurt anyone.
But then I thought about how you had punched Petra’s sister in the face during the sleepover. It shocked me then and shocked me again in recollection. It was proof that anger boiled just beneath your placid demeanor.
There was also physical evidence. Petra’s shirt had been torn. There was a gap in the seam at her shoulder, exposing pale skin. Just above it were three scratch marks