years. The girl who never came home the same night my family left ours.
The girl who most definitely didn’t run away.
“I’m not jumping to any conclusions,” the chief says. “Neither should you. We won’t know anything for a day or so. The remains will be going to the forensics lab in Waterbury. They’ll sort through everything, check dental records, try to make a positive ID.”
It would be nice to think I could be wrong. That those bones belonged to someone else and not a sixteen-year-old girl. A particularly loathsome member of the Garson family, maybe. An unknown victim of Curtis Carver.
But I’m sure it’s Petra.
“Were you able to tell how the body got into the ceiling?” I say.
“From above,” Chief Alcott says. “We found a section of loose boards on the first floor. Four feet by three feet. They could be lifted right up and put back into place without anyone noticing. Add in the rug that covered it, and you have yourself a perfect hiding spot.”
I know. My father had mentioned it in the Book. Until now, I thought he had made it up.
So many thoughts run through my head. All of them horrible. That there were human remains inside the house the entire time I’ve been here. That those remains used to be Petra Ditmer, Chief Alcott’s wait-and-see approach be damned. That her body had been stuffed into a duffel bag and shoved under the floorboards. That I probably walked over her dozens of times without even realizing it.
“What room was this in?” I say.
“Second one from the front. With the green walls and the fireplace.”
The Indigo Room.
The same place Elsa Ditmer was roaming when I returned to Baneberry Hall. Maybe she’s not as confused as we all think. There’s a chance that, despite her illness, she knows more than everyone else and is struggling to find the right way to tell us.
“Listen, Maggie,” Chief Alcott says. “I’m going to be honest with you here. If this does turn out to be Petra Ditmer—”
“It is.”
“If it’s her, well, it’s not going to look very good for your dad.”
She says it gently, as if I haven’t been thinking the same thing for the past six hours. As if my father’s last words haven’t been repeating themselves in my skull the whole time, like an echo that refuses to end.
So. Sorry.
“I understand that,” I say.
“I’m going to need to ask you this sooner or later, so I might as well do it now. Do you think your father was capable of killing someone?”
“I don’t know.”
It’s a terrible answer, and not just because of how noncommittal it is. It’s terrible because it makes me feel like a shitty daughter. I want to be like those children of suspected killers I’ve read about in tabloids and seen on Dateline. People who are certain of their parent’s innocence.
My father wouldn’t hurt a fly.
He’s a gentle soul.
I’d have known it if he was capable of murder.
No one ever believes them. I never believe them.
I can’t bring myself to be so adamant about my father’s innocence. There was a body in our ceiling, for God’s sake. Then there are his last words, which are so damning I’m glad I never mentioned them to Chief Alcott. I don’t want her mentally convicting my father before we know all the facts. Especially when the facts we do know make him look guilty as sin.
But then I think about my conversation with Brian Prince, when he all but accused my father of causing Petra’s disappearance. At that moment, I was more certain and quicker to defend. What I said then still holds up. We left Baneberry Hall together. That’s indisputable fact. My father couldn’t have killed Petra and hidden her body while my mother and I were inside the house with him, and he wouldn’t have had a chance to return once we were ensconced at the Two Pines.
But he did return. Not then, maybe, but later, coming back on the same day year after year.
July 15.
The night we left and Petra disappeared.
I have no idea what to make of that.
I’m on the verge of telling Chief Alcott about those visits, hoping she’ll have a theory about them, when the front door opens and state police investigators emerge with the body. Even though there’s nothing left of its human form, the skeleton is removed from the house like any other murder victim—in a body bag placed on a stretcher.
They’re carrying it down the porch steps when a commotion