run deep here on the island. There is not a single brick or blade of grass that has not been touched by their legacy. Your mother didn’t want any part of it, she ran as far and as fast as she could and she never looked back, but your grandmother felt that same connection, that same responsibility as you do. We both spent decades searching for the truth and what we found came with a terrible price. Your grandmother was never quite the same… after…’
‘What do you mean?’ Ava frowned.
‘She’d always been so happy, so kind, but the weight of the secrets of your family pressed down upon her, a heavy burden that in the end smothered her. I don’t want you to suffer as she did. If you want my advice, bulldoze that house to the ground and forget it ever existed.’
‘What could possibly be so bad?’
‘Ava,’ she began slowly.
‘No,’ she shook her head firmly, ‘I’m tired of everyone else making decisions for me or keeping me in the dark. This is about me, about what I need. I need to know where I come from. It’s important to me. Do you have any idea what it feels like to be adrift in the world with nothing and no one to anchor you? No one to turn to; no home to run to?’
‘No,’ Bunty admitted, ‘I don’t.’
‘This is my choice,’ Ava replied firmly, ‘and I want to know.’
‘Maybe,’ Bunty sighed again glancing at the slim gold watch at her wrist, ‘but not this evening. I have to go soon, or I will be late.’
‘Will you help me though?’ Ava asked softly.
‘Yes,’ she replied after a long moment, her tone carrying a hint of reluctance, ‘but I suggest you go away and think long and hard Ava, because truth always comes at a terrible cost.’
Kelley’s car made it almost to the top of the long winding road before it shuddered and rolled to a stop, the headlights flickering in the dying twilight before cutting out completely.
‘Okaaay,’ Kelley reassured himself as he glanced through the tree line to the huge ominous outline of the Lynch House. ‘I’m sure it’s a total coincidence,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Nothing at all to do with the big scary house on the other side of the trees.’
Shaking his head in denial he grabbed the heavily laden brown paper bag from the passenger seat, and the two bottles of beer nestled beside it, and climbed out of the car.
‘Nothing at all creepy going on,’ he mumbled to himself as he hiked through the trees further up the road toward the cliff top. ‘Just taking an evening stroll, absolutely nothing to worry about.’
The crack of a branch breaking, and the sudden sharp hiss of the wind had him freezing in his tracks, his body tensing as he stopped and listened, his eyes darting about warily. There was a distant hooting high up in the trees but otherwise nothing out of the ordinary.
‘You’re such an idiot Kelley,’ he shook his head as he started walking again. ‘She’s going to think you’re some kind of crazy stalker.’
He was right, he knew he was. The calmer more rational part of his brain had told him to wait at least until daylight, but when his brother had stopped by to grill him about the dark-haired stunner who’d pulled a Cinderella on him the night before he’d been surprised. Even more surprised to find that she was part of the Wallace family. But if he’d been surprised to find she’d inherited the most infamous house on the island, he’d been downright shocked to find she’d set up camp on the doorstep and not only that, but that she planned to renovate the old death trap.
He couldn’t help it, the place freaked him out and had done since he was a kid. In the tenth grade he, along with a couple of his friends, Johnnie Baxter and Benny Malone, had hijacked a six pack from Johnnie’s dad and headed up to the bluff on a dare. They’d chugged the beer and raced their bikes to the top of the cliff, although weaved their bikes may have been more accurate, considering they were all novices to alcohol and, rather embarrassingly, well on their way to being drunk after only two beers apiece, determined to confront the ghost of Luella Lynch herself.
They hadn’t confronted the ghost; his friend Benny crashed his bike into a tree and broke his leg. Johnnie hadn’t been much help