baby, and my grandparents had passed away years ago, so the house had been mine for a while, but I still felt more like a squatter than a resident. Still, it was out of California and away from the rest of civilization, so it suited my needs well enough.
The manor hulked above a cove just north of the town of Birch Bay. The property extended from the private beach in the east well into the woods to the north, west, and south, thick with red maple, white pine, hemlock, and spruce. Despite the town’s name, the only birches I’d ever seen on Edgecliffe’s property had been planted in my lifetime, just outside the library windows, to replace a row of apple trees that had finally succumbed to the icy winds and salt air that blew in off the coast.
There were a number of paths down to the beach from the house, but I took the most circuitous one, making a long loop to the north and west through the tangled woods before turning east and making a steep, rocky descent to the shore. The ground felt as stiff as I was that morning, granite spurs sticking up into the path like knuckles cracking in the cold.
We hadn’t had any snow yet this year, but the water from last night’s storm had frozen in wintry puddles, and my sneakers shattered patches of ice as I dodged roots and rocks on the trail. Normally, running this path took enough concentration to clear my mind of other distractions, but today, the thoughts I was trying to outrun kept catching up with me.
I pushed an overgrown holly bush out of the way and saw Aggie’s face. I jumped over a branch that had come down in the storm and remembered the way I’d wanted to hide, to apologize, to beg forgiveness when she’d seen me that night so long ago. When I reached the top of the cliff, I had to stop and close my eyes for a second, trying not to see the image of her wrecked car that all the papers had carried for weeks.
People say Halloween’s the time for haunting, but for me, it’s always been Christmas.
Seven years, and the guilt still clung to me like an oil slick. No matter how many times I showered, the stench invaded my nose. I tried to stay away from the internet, but a masochistic streak drove me to search my own name from time to time, and I’d indulged again last night.
I’d expected the usual articles speculating on why I’d left Hollywood, running away from my role on Infinity Falls after the third season wrapped. I’d expected the whispers that nipped at the edge of every piece, the rumors that I was involved in her death, the breathlessly phrased, ‘Where is he now?’ questions that always carried a whiff of censure, suggesting I’d gotten away with something I shouldn’t have.
Honestly, I agreed.
Seven years since Aggie died, but what I hadn’t expected, what I hadn’t even remembered until last night, was that this December was also the ten-year anniversary of Infinity Falls’ first season. Apparently, there was going to be a reunion special with the remaining cast members sometime this January, and article after article had wondered whether I would take part and finally break my silence on what had happened all those years ago.
I’d had to slam my laptop shut to stave off a panic attack. Thinking about Aggie wasn’t so much picking a scab off a cut as it was driving a knife back into a wound that had never even had the chance to form one. I didn’t deserve for that gash to stitch close. But that didn’t mean I wanted to dwell on it.
It was better for everyone—for Aggie’s family, for my castmates, for me—if I kept myself apart. I was tarnished inside. My outsides should have been too, as a warning to people not to get too close.
Fog wreathed everything below the clifftop, and the inside of my head felt just as impenetrable, hiding dangers that could shipwreck me if I weren’t careful. I tried to clear my mind, but as I picked my way down the switch-back trail to the beach, all I could hear was her voice. ‘How could you, Eric? How could you?’
There was a reason I’d started going by my middle name as soon as I’d left L.A.
The water was still stirred up from the tempest the night before, but the tide was going out,