more uncomfortable by the fact that my mother chose not to seek a share of profits from the Book when they got divorced. My father begged her to change her mind, saying she deserved half of everything. My mother disagreed.
“I don’t want any part of it,” she would snap during one of their many arguments about the matter. “I never did, from the very beginning.”
So I get it all. The money. The rights to the Book. The infamy. Like my mother, I wonder if I’d be better off with none of it.
“Then there’s the matter of the house,” Arthur Rosenfeld says.
“What house? My father had an apartment.”
“Baneberry Hall, of course.”
Surprise jolts my body. The chair I’m in squeaks.
“My father owned Baneberry Hall?”
“He did,” the lawyer says.
“He bought it again? When?”
Arthur places his hand on his desk, his fingers steepled. “As far as I know, he never sold it.”
I remain motionless, stilled by shock, letting everything sink in. Baneberry Hall, the place that allegedly so terrified my family that we had no choice but to leave, has been in my father’s possession for the past twenty-five years.
I assume he either couldn’t get rid of it—possible, considering the house’s reputation—or didn’t want to sell it. Which could mean any number of things, none of which makes sense. All I know for certain is that my father never told me he still owned it.
“Are you sure?” I say, hoping Arthur has made some terrible mistake.
“Positive. Baneberry Hall belonged to your father. Which means it’s now yours. Lock, stock, and barrel, as they say. I suppose I should give you these.”
Arthur places a set of keys on the desk and pushes them toward me. There are two of them, both attached to a plain key ring.
“One opens the front gate and the other the front door,” he says.
I stare at the keys, hesitant to pick them up. I’m uncertain about accepting this part of my inheritance. I was raised to fear Baneberry Hall, for reasons that are still unclear to me. Even though I don’t believe my father’s official story, owning the house doesn’t sit well with me.
Then there’s the matter of what my father said on his deathbed, when he pointedly chose not to tell me he still owned Baneberry Hall. What he did say now echoes through my memory, making me shiver.
It’s not safe there. Not for you.
When I finally grab the keys, they feel hot in my hand, as if Arthur had placed them atop a radiator. I curl my fingers around them, their teeth biting into my palm.
That’s when I’m hit with another wallop of grief. This time it’s tinged with frustration and more than a little disbelief.
My father’s dead.
He withheld the truth about Baneberry Hall for my whole life.
Now I own the place. Which means all its ghosts, whether real or imaginary, are mine as well.
MAY 20
The Tour
We knew what we were getting into. To claim otherwise would be an outright lie. Before we chose to buy Baneberry Hall, we had been told its history.
“The property has quite the past, believe you me,” said our Realtor, a birdlike woman in a black power suit named Janie June Jones. “There’s a lot of history there.”
We were in Janie June’s silver Cadillac, which she drove with the aggressiveness of someone steering a tank. At the mercy of her driving, all Jess, Maggie, and I could do was hang on and hope for the best.
“Good or bad?” I said as I tugged my seat belt, making sure it was secure.
“A little of both. The land was owned by William Garson. A lumber man. Richest man in town. He’s the one who built Baneberry Hall in 1875.”
Jess piped up from the back seat, where she sat with her arms wrapped protectively around our daughter. “Baneberry Hall. That’s an unusual name.”
“I suppose it is,” Janie June said as she steered the car out of town in a herky-jerky manner that made the Cadillac constantly veer from one side of the lane to the other. “Mr. Garson named it after the plant. The story goes that when he bought the land, the hillside was covered in red berries. Townsfolk said it looked like the entire hill was awash in blood.”
I glanced at Janie June from my spot in the front passenger seat, checking to confirm that she could indeed see over the steering wheel. “Isn’t baneberry poisonous?”
“It is. Both the red and the white kind.”
“So, not an ideal place for a child,” I said, picturing